WHILE the story of the special team of operators I named The Virtues is entirely fictional, set in a fictional town, and comprised of fictional characters who form a fictional military division, every single one of my fictional heavenly heroines was inspired by a real World War II heroine and the story was inspired by real events.
Today, Temperance’s Trial IS FREE until May 28th. Yes! FREE. You can get it in ebook form at this link.
Here are the amazing stories that inspired the writing of Temperance’s Trial, Part 1 of the Virtues and Valor Serialized Story.
The hometown of fictional Marie Gilbert and her brother Edward, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, is an actual place and the great and honored reverend Pastor André Trocmé as well as Pastor Edouard Theis were actual people. These men of God inspired the entire town to smuggle uncounted Jewish children and their parents, possibly as many as five thousand or more, out of the country and to safety. Those children who could not be safely evacuated were taken in and “adopted” by families who informed the Nazis that the children were visiting relatives or war orphans.
When the Gestapo or the corrupt and collaborates Vichy police would raid the town, the citizens would routinely risk their lives by hiding children and parents anywhere they could and using elaborate schemes to signal when the coast was clear. Many residents were eventually arrested by the Gestapo. Sadly, the Reverand Trocmé’s own cousin, Daniel Trocmé, was sent to Maidanek concentration camp and tortured to death.
It may be significant to note that the townspeople received contributions from the Quakers, the Salvation Army, the American Congregational Church, as well as other Jewish and Christian ecumenical groups, the French Protestant student organization Cimade, and the Swiss Help to Children. All of these organizations helped to ensure that the Jewish refugees were housed and fed and could travel in relative safety to Switzerland or other safe havens.
In 1990, the entire town became the only French town and one of only two towns on earth to be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” for their humanitarianism and bravery under extreme danger during the Second World War.
Marie Gilbert, code named Temperance, was inspired by the incredible Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne who served as a wireless operator in the Spiritualist Network in Occupied France under the code named “Rose.”
Like Temperance, Didi Nearne, her brother Francis, and her sister Jacqueline fled the Nazis as the German war machine rolled into France. They eventually made their way to Great Britain via Spain.
All three of the Nearnes entered service with the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, which was called “Churchill’s secret army.” A group within the SOE was called the F Section Networks. These networks were established in France to transmit and receive coded messages just like Temperance does in Temperance’s Trial. Due to the ease of detection and the German’s determination to track down these operators, it was one of the most dangerous duties assigned to agents within the SOE.
While Didi’s sister, Jacqueline, was sent to France to act as a courier (much like Temperance’s friend, Prudence), Didi stayed in England as a signals operator and received the encoded messages coming from France. After some time, she volunteered to go to France and act as a wireless operator for the F Section.
On March 2, 1944, Didi became one of only 39 women to parachute into Occupied France. She used the aliases Mademoiselle du Tort, Jacqueline Duterte, and Alice Wood – and went by the code name “Rose”. She worked as part of Operation Mitchel, which organized finances for the resistance. During her first five months in France, she transmitted an astonishing 105 messages.
After many, many narrow escapes, including a time on a train when a Nazi soldier offered to carry the suitcase containing her wireless radio, Didi was finally arrested. While in Paris, she had sent a coded transmission from her room, much like my character Temperance. Within minutes, the Gestapo arrived and found her in possession of her wireless rig.
According to wartime records, Nearne “survived, in silence, the full revolting treatment of the baignoire” in the torture chamber of the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo on the banks of the Rue des Saussaies.
She nearly died from the torture. They beat her, stripped her, and repeatedly submerged her in a bath of ice cold water until she started to black out. Yet, she did not break. She stuck to her story of being an innocent French girl who had been duped into helping someone by sending messages she didn’t understand in return for money to buy eggs and bread.
She never once revealed her true identity. She never told of the other agents with whom she worked. Despite days of endless torture, she never gave up any information of planned operations.
At the time, Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne was only 23 years old.
On August 15, 1944, she was sent to the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp near Berlin, and from there was sent through several forced labor camps. She refused to work in any of the camps, even under threat of being shot. Instead, she defied her captors to shoot her, and ended up being transferred each time instead.
Eventually, she ended up in a camp in Silesia. There Didi finally realized that the only way she would survive this experience would be to give in and work otherwise she would starve. During the bitter cold winter in December of 1944, the Nazis moved Didi to the Markleberg camp, near Leipzig, where she worked on a road-repair gang for 12 hours a day.
On April 13, 1945, while being transferred to yet another camp, along with two French girls from a work gang, Didi escaped. The trio evaded their pursuers by hiding in the forest. Astonishingly, they were apprehended by the SS in Markkleeberg, but she used her French language skills to fool her captors into letting them go. In Leipzig, a Catholic priest hid her until the arrival of the United States troops.
Sadly, American intelligence officers initially identified her as a Nazi collaborator and held her at a detention center alongside captured SS personnel. Once London verified her identity as a secret agent, the Americans finally released her.
After the war, Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government, that nation’s highest award given to foreigners, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by King George VI for services rendered in France during the enemy occupation.
Given what she underwent at the hands of her captors for years and years, her very survival is remarkable. When asked how she kept going, she replied, “The will to live. Willpower. That’s the most important. You should not let yourself go. It seemed that the end would never come, but I always believed in destiny, and I had a hope.”
Didi lived with her sister Jacqueline until her sister’s death in 1982. Afterward, she lived alone, a total recluse, haunted by her experiences as a captive of the Gestapo.
When Eileen Mary “Didi” Nearne died alone on September 2, 2010, it was several days before her death was discovered. It wasn’t until officials looking through her belongings hoping to find a relative whom they could contact that they discovered her true identity. Once they realized her incredible bravery and service, the entire community of Torquay, England, came together and gave her a funeral worthy of such an amazing war heroine with full military honors.
Unsurprisingly, there are very few actual photographs of Didi from the war and none of her operating a wireless rig. For the cover of this book, another suitable individual was selected. Pictured on the cover in place of “Temperance” and operating a wireless radio is none other than Mrs. Mac.
The complete Virtues and Valor series is on a rolling sale today through June 4th! Here are the dates:
Temperance’s Trial
Marie Gilbert and her elder brother flee from Vichy France after the Gestapo arrest her father for suspicion of aiding Jewish children to escape the oncoming fascist front. Once in London, Marie is recruited into an experimental all female cohort dubbed the Virtues, a collection of seven extraordinary women with highly specialized skills, and given the codename TEMPERANCE. Assigned to Occupied France, she transmits messages deep in the heart of Nazi territory.
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939603-45-6
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-240-1
Homeland’s Hope
Stage and screen legend Virginia Benoit performs for standing room only crowds in her adopted home of France. When the Nazis roll into Paris, she flees to Casablanca, taking the heart of an enemy General with her. While in there, Virginia, soon codenamed HOPE, devises a plan to use her position, talent, and influence with the high ranking Axis officer to aid the Allied cause.
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939603-46-3
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-241-8
Charity’s Code
Dorothy Ewing works on the home-front, receiving and sending messages to her team in France and coordinating a secret mission. Using the codename CHARITY, she receives and sends messages to her team in France and coordinates a secret mission with her husband via coded letters. She intercepts the transmission from TEMPERANCE alerting to her blown cover. The clock is ticking in a race to save Temperance’s life.
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Ebook 978-1-939603-47-0
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-244-9
A Parcel for Prudence
Assigned the code name of PRUDENCE, Muriel Tolson’s natural French allows her to infiltrate Occupied France where she works as a courier; carrying messages, money, and sometimes people through the secret resistance network aiding the allies to accomplish very dangerous missions behind enemy lines.
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Ebook 978-1-939603-48-7
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-245-6
Grace’s Ground War
Can Ruth Aubertin, codenamed GRACE, and her team pull off the mission of rescuing TEMPERANCE, or will too many variables crash together at the wrong time? As a Jew deep in the heart of the Nazi occupation, Ruth knows that the Allies must win this war, and she will do everything in her power to make sure that happens.
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Ebook 978-1-939603-49-4
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-246-3
Mission of Mercy
Doctor Betty Grimes works undercover as a nurse with the codename MERCY. When Betty is sent to the local prison to see to a prisoner who has taken ill, her shock at finding TEMPERANCE nearly blows her cover. Now TEMPERANCE is sick and Betty needs to get her well enough for the coming rescue operation to succeed.
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939603-50-0
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-247-0
Flight of Faith
Pilot Helen “Troy” Mulberry flies between Britain and France transporting passengers, supplies, or performing reconnaissance under the codename FAITH. Shot down over France during the mission to rescue her fellow agent from the clutches of the Nazis, Can Helen make her way through enemy territory with no language skills and somehow come through with a means to get her team back to Britain?
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939603-51-7
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-248-7
Valor’s Vigil
An American spy undercover in a Nazi uniform operating under the codename VALOR, Leopold Schäfer is in charge of the prisoners in Occupied France’s Valeurville prison. After the arrest of the radio operator codenamed TEMPERANCE, Leo must handle the situation with the utmost caution. Can he protect her without blowing his own cover, or will he place his own life in danger to keep her safe?
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68190-022-3
Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-68190-249-4
The Complete Virtues and Valor Series
In 1941 Great Britain a special war department assembles an experimental and exclusively female cohort of combat operatives consisting of four willing spies, a wireless radio operator, an ingenious code breaker, and a fearless pilot. Dubbed the Virtues, each woman is hand-picked, recruited, and trained to initiate a daring mission in Occupied France. As plans unfold to initiate the largest prison break of Allied POWs in history, the Nazis capture the young radio operator. It will take the cohesive teamwork of the rest of the women to save her life before Berlin breaks her and brings the force of the Third Reich to bear.
Get the book directly from Hallee at this link or click "order now" for a list of retailers.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68190-024-7
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-68190-085-8
