Free Madeleine's War by Peter Watson Page A

female doctor in the hospital where she worked. And she was secretly part of the Resistance, in which she had two roles. She helped with operations for anyone in the underground who was seriously injured during sabotage raids and who had to be treated in hideaways. And she stole medical supplies—drugs, bandages, surgical equipment, even German-made contraceptives. She helped keep the Resistance supplied with all that it needed.
    â€œI met her when she was helping with an operation on an injured Resistance leader who I knew well. He had fractured his skull after falling from a train when a sabotage expedition went wrong. Had he died it would have been a disaster—he had so much information inside his head. He survived the operation but he was so badly knocked about that he was never going to be his old self again. So I was there to debrief him, find out all he knew, the minute he recovered consciousness.
    â€œThe operation was a success, but it took time for him to regain consciousness. I sat by his bed the whole time and Celestine looked in every so often. To begin with, I only knew her by her Resistance code name—
Méduse
, Jellyfish. It sounds so much nicer in French.
    â€œEventually, I was able to debrief him. By then Celestine—Méduse—and I had got to know each other and, after that, and when we could, when circumstances allowed, we started an affair. We started sleeping together. Because of her Resistance duties, she was anxious not to get pregnant. So we made a point of using the German-made contraceptives—we made endless bad jokes about it.”
    â€œHow very adult. How did she die?”
    I paused to light a cigarette. The sunlight on the sea glittered like a thousand splinters of broken glass.
    â€œIt happened after about six months, by which time we had spent a few weekends together in the mountains, and I had met her parents, and her brother, who was also in the Resistance. Then a big Nazi fish fell into our lap. His name was Möricke and he was the man in charge of the area, a
Gauleiter
. He was an exceptionally cruel man. In retaliation for a Resistance attack on a railway yard, he had rounded up a group of children, twice the number of the German soldiers who had been killed in the attack, and had them shot, in front of their parents and families. You can imagine how popular he was.
    â€œHe was a keen rider but he had an accident and fell from his horse. He broke several ribs and injured his spine. The ribs were not the problem but the spine was. He had injured it in such a way that he couldn’t be moved—at least not very far. He needed to be operated on quickly, and there was no German doctor on hand. A French replacement was found and Celestine was selected as the anaesthetist.
    â€œThis all happened in a rush. There was just time to call an emergency meeting of the local Resistance committee. Celestine was there, too, not because she was on the committee, as I was, but because she would be involved in the medical procedure. The committee discussed whether Colonel Möricke should die during the operation. Celestine was asked her opinion and she said she could manage to administer too much anaesthetic and that the excess wouldn’t be noticed—Möricke would just ‘die’ during the operation.”
    Madeleine stopped and looked up at me.
    I looked down at her. A breeze was getting up—the weather was definitely beginning to turn.
    â€œShe described exactly how she would do it. There were seven people on the Resistance committee, six French and me. Normally, I didn’t have a vote on operational issues unless the other six were deadlocked. Which is what happened that time. Three thought it was too dangerous, that Celestine would be found out and executed and that she was too valuable to the Resistance to be put at risk. The other three said it was too good an opportunity to miss, getting rid of a monster, that such an