Marguerite recieves a medal

She said: "It will be very moving for me.
"When I found out, all my friends who have died passed in front of me and the events of 50 to 60 years ago came back to me.

"I nearly burst into tears."

Today I witnessed something terrible

Dear Diary,
                  There are no words that could describe what I saw today. I saw my neighbour getting killed in his garden. I was up in my room putting a letter for the M.I. in my backpack and when I put the letter in my text book I heard someone shouting outside. I looked outside, and saw a few soldiers shouting at my neighbour. Then they smiled and shot him in the head. I started crying and couldn't believe what just happened. A person I knew getting killed in front of my eyes. I hate the war. That's why I'm helping the M.I.

Marguerit's Diary

Dear Diary,
                  You wouldn't believe this but I'm a secret agent! The British Military Intelligance gave me a job as a courier. From now on I'm going to carry notes for them. I'm going to carry them in my school bag so nobody will notice I have something to hide. I'm really excited about this, I don't think it's scary. If I'm cautious I wouldn't be caught. I think this is the best thing that happened to any teenage ever!  

Interview with Marguerite

'I was aware of risking everything but tried not to think about it. I wasn’t scared even though one of my brothers was shot by the Germans in Paris. She added: ‘We wanted to be of use to Britain. That was our aim, to help win the war. I would do it all again if I had to.’

News of the Legion D’Honneur, which the French foreign minister recommended she receive, brought a surge of emotions for Marguerite. ‘I don’t know why it has taken so long to come,’ she said. ‘But it means so much to me, I cannot say. When I think about it, I just burst into tears.’

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.’