One of the more remarkable obits I’ve read, considerably cut down from today’s Telegraph:
Susan Travers, who has died in Paris aged 94, was the only woman to have joined the French Foreign Legion; English by birth, she came to regard the Legion as her true family and played a key part in the breakout by its troops from Rommel’s siege of the desert fortress of Bir Hakeim in 1942.
When war came in 1939, Susan Travers was living in the South of France, where she had grown up, and she joined the Croix Rouge, the French Red Cross. Hitherto she had led the rather inconsequential life of a socialite, but the challenges that now faced her gave her a purpose for the first time . . . she made her way to London, where she volunteered as a nurse with General de Gaulle’s Free French forces. She was then posted to Eritrea and took on the hazardous job of driving for senior officers. The desert roads were often mined and subject to enemy attack, and she survived a number of crashes, as well as being wounded by shellfire. Her dash and pluck quickly endeared her to the legionnaires, who nicknamed her “La Miss”. For her part, she admired the Legion’s code of “honneur et fidelite”, and formed good friendships with many of her comrades, among them Pierre Mesmer, later Prime Minister of France.
. . . Their unit was attached to the 8th Army and, in the spring of 1942, sent to hold the bleak fort of Bir Hakeim, at the southern tip of the Allies’ defensive line in the Western Desert. At the start of May, Italian and German forces attacked in strength, Rommel having told his men that it would take them 15 minutes to crush any opposition; the 8th Army hoped the fort would last a week. Instead, under Koenig’s command, the 1,000 legionnaires and 1,500 other Allied troops held out for 15 days, and Bir Hakeim became for all Frenchmen who resisted the Nazis a symbol of hope and defiance. With all ammunition and - in temperatures of 51 C - all water exhausted, Koenig resolved to lead a breakout at night through the minefields and three concentric cordons of German panzers that encircled Bir Hakeim. Susan Travers was to drive both him and Amilakvari. The attempt was swiftly discovered, however, when a mine exploded, and with tracer lighting up the night sky and tank shells hurtling towards her, Susan Travers took the lead. Determined to get both her passengers to safety, she pressed the accelerator of her Ford to the floor and burst through the German lines, blazing a trail for the other Allied vehicles to follow. Although her car was struck by a score of bullets, and on one occasion she drove into a laager of parked panzers, she reached the British lines. Of the 3,700 Allied troops who had been at Bir Hakeim, more than 2,400 escaped with her, including 650 legionnaires, and Koenig became the hero of France. Susan Travers was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Ordre du Corps d’Arme for her feat.
. . . She remained with the Legion through the fighting in Italy and France until the end of the war, acting as both a driver and a nurse to the wounded and the dying. By May 1945 “I had become the person I’d always wanted to be” and, not wanting any other life, applied to join the Legion officially. She took care to omit her sex from the form, and her application was accepted. She was appointed an officer in the logistics division, and so became the only woman ever to serve with the Legion.
In 1956, Susan Travers was awarded the Medaille Militaire in recognition of her bravery at Bir Hakeim. The medal was pinned on her by Koenig, by then Minister of Defence. Forty years later, in 1996, she was given the Legion’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur, in recognition of her unique part in the force’s history.
