Damerment, Madeleine

(19 17-1944)

Participant in the French Resistance and a member of the British secret service in World War II. Madeleine Zoe Damerment was born in Lille, France, on November 11, 1917. Her family joined the Resistance after the Germans defeated France in 1940. Damerment worked as an assistant to Michael Trotobas with the PAT escape line, a group set up by Albert Guerisse, a Belgian army doctor, to help downed Allied airmen escape to England. Andree Borel and Nancy Wake were also members of this group. When a traitor divulged particulars about the group in 1942, Damerment was forced to make her way to Spain. There she was temporarily detained at a camp near Bilbao. After her release, she reached England where Damerment volunteered to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). After training, she and two other agents were parachuted into France near Chartres on February 28, 1944. Damerment, described as unassuming and "brave and gentle" (Women of the SOE n.d.), was to join the Bricklayer network as a courier. The agents’ plans had been betrayed to the Germans, however, who were awaiting their arrival. Arrested as she landed, Damerment was taken to Gestapo headquarters in Paris and interrogated and tortured.

On May 12, Damerment was transferred with seven other captured female agents to the Karlsruhe civil prison. On September 10, 1944, on the direct order of Ernest Kaltenbrunner, the head of the SS Security Office, she was transferred with Yolande Beekman, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman to Dachau. There, on September 11, 1944, the day after their arrival, they were shot.


Damerment was posthumously awarded the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre, and the Medaille combatant de la Resistance. Her name is inscribed on the SOE Runnymede Memorial and on the Valen^ay SOE Memorial in France.

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