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INTRODUCTION Women and the French Resistance: The Story of Virginia d’Albert-Lake Judy Barrett Litoff Something broke inside me. I knew somehow that it was all over. There was no more reason to hope. The sun that only a few minutes ago was so bright and warm, now seemed eclipsed by a grey fog. Disappointment and fear clothed me in a hot vapor. Sweat started in my armpits; my scalp tingled; I had no choice but to stand there in the center of the dusty road, grip my [bicycle] handle bars, and wait.1 These were the thoughts of Virginia d’Albert-Lake shortly before her arrest by German authorities on June 12, 1944, as she escorted downed Allied airmen to a hidden forest encampment near Châteaudun, France. Virginia’s life was now at a crossroads; her important and dangerous work with the renowned Comet escape line was over. She would spend the next eleven months as a German prisoner of war, much of it at the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, where she almost died. Her incredible story, as revealed in her wartime diary and memoir, is representative of thousands of unheralded and nearly forgotten escape line resisters who, at great personal risk, protected, nurtured, clothed, and fed downed Allied airmen. What distinguished Virginia from most other resisters, however, was that she was an American citizen who had the option to return to the safety of her native country. Yet she chose to remain in France to be with her beloved husband, where her dangerous work with the Comet escape line nearly cost her her life. Born on June 4, 1910, in Dayton, Ohio, Virginia d’Albert-Lake was the first of three children of Franklin and Edith Roush.2 Shortly after World 1. Virginia d’Albert-Lake, ‘‘My Story’’ (hereafter ‘‘My Story’’), p. 28. The original typescript of this memoir is in the possession of Patrick d’Albert-Lake. 2. Biographical information on Virgina d’Albert-Lake has been culled from the editor’s interviews with Virginia’s son, Patrick d’Albert-Lake, Cancaval, Dinard, France, July 22–23, 2003; taped interviews by Jim Calio with Virginia and Philippe d’Albert-Lake, Cancaval, Dinard, France, October 1989; and the d’Albert-Lake Family Papers, in the possession of Patrick d’Albert-Lake. Biographical information on War I, the family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where Virginia’s father established a medical practice and her mother founded a private country day school. After graduating from high school, Virginia attended St. Petersburg Junior College and eventually continued her education at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where she received the B.A. degree in 1935. During the summer of 1935 she began graduate study at Columbia University, but in the fall she returned to St. Petersburg, where she taught at her mother’s school. The following summer she traveled to England to attend an international convention on progressive education. She also made a side trip to France, where she met and fell in love with Philippe d’Albert-Lake, a young Frenchman who had grown up in Paris and at the family’s château, Cancaval, near Dinard, Brittany. In a 1993 interview Virginia remarked that ‘‘my mother was devastated’’ upon learning that she intended to marry someone from France. ‘‘She stayed in bed for a week. She didn’t want me to marry a Frenchman and move away.’’3 Despite her mother’s misgivings, the couple was married at the First Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg on May 1, 1937. After honeymooning in New York City, they set sail for France, where they set up housekeeping at Philippe’s apartment at 57, rue de Bellechasse, located in the seventh arrondissement of Paris. With the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Virginia began keeping a diary, written in pencil in four different notebooks. Inserted in the notebooks were postcards of where she traveled as well as newspaper clippings that she later described as ‘‘mostly German propaganda.’’4 Her Virginia d’Albert-Lake is also included in Margaret L. Rossiter, Women in the Resistance (New York: Praeger, 1986), pp. 204–211; Jim Calio, ‘‘Resistance and Remembrance ,’’ Philip Morris, November–December 1989, 36–39; and Thomas Fleming, ‘‘‘Deliver Us from Evil,’’’ Reader’s Digest, August 1991, 115–119. Relevant works in French include Catherine Rothman-Le Dret, L’Amérique déportée: Virignia d’AlbertLake de la Résistance à Ravensbrück (Nancy: Presses Universitaires...

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