Marguerite Garden 1926-2010

[Troy Tempest]

Schoolgirl on a bicycle kept tabs on German warships

In August 1940 Marguerite Vourc'h, returning from boarding school near Paris found her village of Plonodiern, in western Brittany, occupied by German troops. The Resistance was virtually non-exhistent then but her father, Antoine, the local doctor, sought sympathisers on his rounds: Marguerite, in pretended innocence, established from friends where their families' sympathies lay.

Plomodiern, on a hillside about five kilometres from the coast, was a perfect spot from which to track the movements of German boats in the Bay of Dournenez. Marguerite would cycle along the coastline, gathering intelligence on soldiers, boats and mines, which was duly relayed to MI6. No one took a schoolgirl for a spy. As the war progressed, Marguerite became involved in helping Allied airmen escape to Britain. An operation to repatriate 40 airmen proved to be her undoin: when the men arrived in Britain, the BBC broadcast a coded message that the "fourth son of a doctor in Brittany" had arrived. It was too obviously a reference to Marguerite's family, and the Gestapo came calling.

Marguerite was at school at the time and her mother was also absent. Warned by friends not to return, they hid in a run-down apartment in Paris. A few months later the city was liberated. The sixth of nine children, Marguerite Vourc'h was born on 25.1.1926, at Plomodiern, where her father was both the doctor and a councillor. After the war she studied architecture at the Beaux Arts, but after meeting james Garden, a Scottish army surgeon visiting Paris, whe left college and headed for Scotland. They married in 1949, eventually settling in Lanark, where he became an orthopaedic surgeon.

She received handwritten letters of thanks from the Air Chief Marshal for her help in securing the release of many of his men, but for many decades her story went untold for the simple reason that she had remained true to her orders to remain silent. In 2003, her contribution was recognised by the French government and she was appointed a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur. The next year her story formed part of a BBC2 documentary, Crafty Tricks of War. "It wasn't bravery, it was necessity," she recalled. "It was sad and frightening. But there was something about those days, maybe it was the adrenalin. I have never been so alive."

Marguerite is survived by her seven children.