Eve's daughters: Marguerite Marie Jeanne (Vourc’h) Garden

After the end of the Second World War a young Frenchwoman called Marguerite Vourc’h went to study architecture in Paris, at the Beaux Arts. It was while here that she met a Scottish army surgeon, James Garden, who was on holiday in the city. Against the wishes of her father, at the age of 20, she cut short her studies and followed James to Scotland where they were married in 1949. James became a prominent orthopaedic surgeon and they eventually settled in Lanark.

Marguerite was a keen amateur naturalist and she was an important influence in the founding of the Corehouse Nature Reserve – now run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust – as well as supporting many other conservation projects in South Lanarkshire. She worked tirelessly collecting funds every year for the Poppy Appeal on behalf of the Royal British Legion as well as serving many years in the Red Cross.

It is the fact that after the war she had received a letter handwritten by the Air Chief Marshall thanking her for her help during the war years that makes Marguerite more than just a young Frenchwoman going against the wishes of her father. She had remained true to her orders and had remained silent for decades as to the part she played that had caused this personal communication, but the truth makes her one of those women in history who deserve the title of heroine, even perhaps more so when you consider that she was only 14 years-of-age when it all began.

Marguerite was born on 25th January 1926 – the sixth of nine children – at Plomodiern in the Finistère department, a coastal area of western Brittany. Her father, Antoine, was the village doctor and also a local councillor. He had been a veteran of the First World War and had been awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur. She went to school locally and then to the Maison d’education de la Légion d’Honneur at St. Denis, just outside Paris due to her father’s past war record and standing in the community. However, when the city was occupied, she had to flee and return to be with her family where she found that her home village had been occupied by German troops.

Her father had arranged for the local evacuation of French male youth from the region after denouncing the establishment of the Vichy government and two of Marguerite’s brothers – Jean and Guy – were amongst those who stole away in a small boat. After some 12 days at sea, they were picked up by a British submarine.

(Marguerite (left) with family and friends)

During this time, the Resistance was basically non-existent, but her father sought out sympathisers during his rounds as doctor, while his daughter, under the guise of childish innocence, found out from her friends where their families’ sympathies lay.

She said: ‘I think my Involvement began when my father took me with him when a lobster boat was going away so I got to know the people who were preparing It. Later on, when my father wasn’t around, they trusted me enough to come to me and ask me to help.’

Her village was around three miles from the coast and it was an ideal spot from which to track the movements of German boats in the Bay of Dournenez. For days she would cycle around the local coastline gathering intelligence on soldiers, boats and the location of mines which was then relayed back to MI6. Under the cover of being a 14-year-old schoolgirl on holiday no-one suspected her as a spy and she soon found herself in contact with the Resistance as she helped deliver false identity cards to the networks. She even managed to continue her undercover work whilst Gestapo and Wehrmacht officers were billeted at her family home in January 1941.

Marguerite continued to study just outside Paris, but during holidays and half-terms she was able to resume her spying. The fact that she was a schoolgirl provided perfect cover for carrying messages and parcels between her local Resistance group network and another in Paris. She would return to her school with bulging folders containing military information amongst her school books. She recalled : “There was no reason to suspect me. I was a young girl, travelling to my school. I was never arrested.”

While harbouring airmen waiting to leave France, she helped conceal them upstairs in the family home while a German slept in one of the bedrooms, completely unaware, which was rather nerve-racking. ‘What better cover than to have the Wehrmacht in the house,’ said Marguerite.

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.

As war progressed Marguerite’s activities increased and she became involved in aiding Allied airmen escape to Britain by hiding them in lobster boats and also passed on information about German ship positions which had been extracted from an unsuspecting harbourmaster by family friend Madam Le Roux.

Unfortunately, Madam Le Roux was arrested whilst at the Vourc’h family home but the Germans failed, at first, to make any connection. However, Marguerite’s father made his escape in fear of what Madam Le Roux may say under interrogation and made his way to North Africa. When the Gestapo arrived on the family doorstep Marguerite’s mother told them that her husband had abandoned his family, which they believed and hence Marguerite did not come under suspicion.

‘I opened the door to them,’ said Marguerite. ‘They smelled of the Gestapo, of Turkish cigarettes. My father had learned what was happening and didn’t come home, so my mother told them that he had left us and they accepted that. If it hadn’t been for that story, they would have taken us away. 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.’

A few months before Paris was liberated, Marguerite and her mother joined up with Jean-Claude Camors (code-named Raoll) who was a Resistance friend of one of her brothers. Together they had planned an operation to help 40 Allied airmen back to Britain who were hiding in Brittany. All was put into place, but before actioned Raoll was recognised by a German double agent and shot. This meant that Marguerite and her mother we left trying to find a place where they could hide and feed the airmen. After approaching the local priest he agreed to hide them in his church where they remained for days whilst the Resistance waited for a chance to repatriate them.

After successfully returning back home, however, the BBC broadcast a coded message that the “fourth son of a doctor in Brittany” had arrived. This was blatantly a reference to Marguerite’s family and soon the Gestapo were calling again. Fortunately, however, Marguerite was at school at the time and her mother was visiting the Breton town of Quimper. They were warned by friends not to return home and they hid in a run-down apartment in Paris. However, the two younger sisters of the Vourc’h family were still at home and the Gestapo would interrogate them mercilessly. “They’d wake the girls up in the middle of the night, holding their rifles to the girls’ faces,” Marguerite recalled. “They would do anything they could to terrify them into saying where mother was. But it didn’t work.”

Her husband died in 1992 and in 2003 Marguerite’s efforts and bravery were finally rewarded by the French government when she was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. She was also nominated for Woman of the Year award in the same year. A few years later she moved from the Lanark family home (the home they bought from Dr. Joe Bryant – the brother of Admiral Ben Bryant who had been the submarine commander who had rescued her brothers from the Atlantic in 1940) to Edinburgh when she was struggling to maintain her independence owing to the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease which rapidly progressed, leading to her death aged 84, on 5th May 2010. She is survived by seven children, thirteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.