Marguerite Garden, who died on May 5 aged 84, was a Scottish grandmother who, as a 14-year-old schoolgirl in occupied Brittany, risked her life daily to work as a courier for British military intelligence and helped Allied airmen escape across the sea.

Map of France

Map of France

Flag of France

Flag of France

Do you think Marguerite was brave?

Friday 14 May 2010


Family and friends gathered at St Nicholas Parish Church in Lanark to remember Marguerite Garden.
In 2003 she was awarded the Legion d'Honneur for her services to the French resistance.
She married a Scottish doctor and settled in Scotland after the war. She died in hospital last week, aged 84.
Born in 1926 in Plomodiern, Finistere, Ms Garden was brought up in the coastal area of Brittany as one of nine children.
During the Nazi occupation, her father, a local doctor, played a crucial role in the resistance movement and helped organise the evacuation of young French men from the region.
At the age of 14, Marguerite risked her life to work with the French Resistance in her picturesque home village of Plomodiern in Brittany. She and her father, who was also awarded the Legion D’Honneur, arranged escape routes out of France for hundreds of local men, including Marguerite’s brothers, to allow them to continue fighting from England.
It was also at her family home that the head of MI6 — the intelligence-gathering network for which she worked - began making radio transmissions that were picked up at Bletchley Park, the Enigma code-breaking station in England.
Her work did not stop there. Marguerite carried out many dangerous missions. She scoured the Brittany coastline, searching for mines, to ensure British maps were accurate. She also carried messages and parcels between her network and another in Paris.
‘There was no reason to suspect me,’ she said. ‘I was a young girl, travelling to my school. I was never arrested.’

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