Madeleine Damerment

Infobox Military Person
name=Madeleine Damerment


caption=
born=birth date|1917|11|11
died=death date|1944|9|13
placeofbirth=Lille, France
placeofdeath=Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany
nickname=Agent Bricklayer, Solange
allegiance=United Kingdom, France
branch=Special Operations Executive, French Resistance
serviceyears=1944
rank=Field agent and guerrilla commander
unit=
commands=SOE F Section networks#Bricklayer
battles=
awards=Légion d'honneur, Croix de Guerre, Médaille de la Résistance
relations=
laterwork=

Madeleine Zoe Damerment (b. November 11 1917 [http://www.64-baker-street.org/agents/agent_fany_madeleine_demerment.html Damerment, Madeleine - Biography ] ] , Lille, France - d. September 13 1944, Dachau) was a World War II spy.

Biography

Madeleine Damerment was born in Lille, the daughter of the Headpostmaster of Lille; following the occupation of France by the Germans in World War II, her family became actively involved with the French Resistance. The unassuming twenty-two-year-old Madeleine worked as an assistant to Michael Trotobas on the escape line set up by Albert Guérisse. She helped downed British airmen and others to escape France until 1942, when it is believed that one of her fellow resistance workers, Harold Cole, betrayed the group and she had to flee to England.

Once in England, Damerment volunteered to work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Trained to be a courier for the "Bricklayer" network, on the night of February 28, 1944, she and agents France Antelme and Lionel Lee were parachuted into a field near the city of Chartres in France. However, they had been betrayed and the waiting Gestapo arrested them on landing. Shipped to Gestapo headquarters on the Avenue Foch in Paris, Damerment was subjected to examination and torture. On May 12 1944 she was sent with several other captured SOE agents to the civilian prison for women at Karlsruhe in Germany. She was held there under horrific conditions until September 11 when she was abruptly transferred to Dachau concentration camp with fellow agents Eliane Plewman, Yolande Beekman and Noor Inayat Khan.

At dawn on September 13 1944, the day after their arrival in Dachau, the four young women were taken to a small courtyard next to the crematorium and forced to kneel on the ground. They were then executed by a shot through the back of the head and their bodies cremated

Following the end of the War, Madeleine Damerment's valiant contribution to freedom was recognized by her government with the posthumous awarding of the Legion of Honor, Croix de Guerre, and the Médaille de la Résistance. She is recorded on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey, England and as one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, she is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre département of France.

References