Émilienne Moreau-Evrard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (August 2007)

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (August 2007)

Émilienne Moreau-Evrard (June 4, 1898 – January 5, 1971) was a French hero of World War I, a high-profile female member of the “Brutus” resistance network during World War II and later, a member of the “Assemblée consultative provisoire”. Moreover, she is one of the only six women recipient of the Ordre de la Libération.

[edit] Life

Émilienne Moreau was born on June 4 1898 in Wingles (Pas-de-Calais).

In 1914, her father, a retired miner, opened a grocery store in Loos-en-Gohelle close to Lens while World War I was breaking out.

[edit] World War I

Émilienne Moreau, who was starting a teaching career, had to support from October 1914 the German invasion in the North of France. In December of the same year, her father died while the German soldiers were housing in their village.

In February 1915, she created, in a basement, an improvised school for kids from Loos.

On February 25 1915, while the Scottish soldiers of the Black Watch counter-attacked in her village, Émilienne, who was only 17 years old, went to meet them and gave to them the exact location of the German position confined in an untouchable small fort. Thanks to these information, the allies went round of the small fort and made a success to reduce the German resistance in this particular corner without a lot of killed people. Further to this attack, Émilienne organised the first aid in her house with the help of a Scottish Medical Doctor in order to take care of the wounded people, but Germans tried to take back the village.

To save a British soldier who was under the enemy fire in the village, she went out of her home with explosives and succeeded, with the help of some Brit soldiers, to make the German flew from their waylay position in the neighbor house. A bit later, she shot two German soldiers though a closed wood door. Finally, the village was under the sole control of the allies.

Evacuated, she was awarded the Croix de guerre 1914-1918 with a army acknowledgement given directly by Marshall Ferdinand Foch and the Croix du Combattant by the French Army. Moreover, the British army awarded her the Military Medal, the Royal Red Cross (first class) and the Venerable Order of Saint John. This last award is rarely given to a woman. She has been personally invited to meet the President of the French Republic Raymond Poincaré and later the King of United Kingdom George V.

The French newspaper Le Petit Parisien wrote in details all she has done making her a national hero. The army and the press used her image to buck up the civilians and the fighting people. A bit later, the story of an Austalian-made movie titled “The Jeanne d'Arc of Loos” recount her accomplishments but it had been a lot criticised in the way it used a godlike title.

She ended the war as a teacher in a boy school in Paris after being graduate.

After the war, she went back to the North of France in the Pas-de-Calais and got married in 1932 to the socialist activist Just Evrard. In 1934, she became the General Secretary of the women socialist of her department.

[edit] World War II

When World War II was declared, Émilienne was living with her husband and her two children, Raoul and Roger, in the city of Lens. They escaped some days like a lot of North French people who tried to flee away from the war zone; but after the French Armistice, she went back to Lens with her family.

Émilienne, who was famous since her former military actions during the Great War, was quickly placed in a watched house in Lilliers. However, she was permitted to come back home after some while. There, in Lens, she started to distribute propaganda brochures against Marshal Pétain and his capitulation; and took contact with the Intelligence Service to give to them crucial information. At the end of the year 1940, Emillienne created with her husband a secret section in her socialist party in Lens.

Émilienne Moreau is yet known in the French resistance under two names: “Jeanne Poirier” and “Émilienne la Blonde”. She was in charge to link “Brutus” in Switzerland to the CAS (in English: Socialist Action Committee) mixed with some specific missions in Paris.

Then, she let in the resistance movement named “France au Combat” (in English: “The Fighting France”) founded in 1943 by André Boyer; there, she worked with Augustin Laurent, André Le Troquer and Pierre Lambert.

In Lyon, she was ready to be arrested in March 1944 further to the case of the “85 de l’Avenue de Saxe”; in this affair, seventeen of her friends resistance network were arrested by the Gestapo. Two monthes later, in Lyon once more, she succeeded again in escaping to another series of raids from the Gestapo ; in one of those, Nazi soldiers were waiting for her aside her house, but when they saw her, they fired in her direction but missed her... she quickly escaped using a basement in the neighbourhood.

Now officially hunted down, she tried several times to escape to England, but she only pass on her break out on August 7 1944.

Back in France on September 1944, she sat in the “Assemblée consultative” where she embodied the French female way. For her work in the French resistance, she is awarded the rare title of Compagnon de la Libération by Général de Gaulle in Béthune in August 1945.

When World War II was over, she became a politician in the French socialist party.

Émilienne Moreau-Evrard died on January 5 1971 in Lens at 72 years old. She is buried in Lens too.