Mary Lindell's escape network and imprisonment

Mary Lindell was a forty-seven-year-old English former First World War nurse when the Frankton raid took place. She founded and led the Marie-Claire line, helping Allied airmen and soldiers escape through France to Spain. About a hundred Allied airmen escaped with her help, and she sometimes collected fugitives at railway stations in her Red Cross nursing uniform as if they were patients. Her wartime experiences included serious injuries, repeated imprisonment, and captivity at Ravensbrück. Her son Maurice was captured and tortured, while Octave disappeared and was presumed dead, with the circumstances remaining uncertain. Some former associates accused her of being a double agent; the interpretation adopted here agrees with her biographer Peter Hore in rejecting that accusation. In the closing days of the war she helped obtain the release of forty-seven British and American women to the Swedish Red Cross. Her awards included the Croix de Guerre in both world wars, the Order of the British Empire, and the United States Medal of Freedom.