The life story of Madge Addy, a working-class Manchester woman who
volunteered to fight Fascism and Nazism in two major wars, is a truly
remarkable one. Madge left her job and her husband to serve in the
Spanish Civil War as a nurse with the Republican medical services. In
Spain she was wounded in a bombing raid, fell in love with another
foreign volunteer who became her second husband, was made a Prisoner
of War and was the last British nurse to leave Spain, witnessing the
horrors of Franco’s Fascist regime before she left. She was caught
up in the ‘Fall of France’ and lived in Marseille with her
Norwegian husband. From 1940 to 1944 Madge was first an amateur
resister and later a full-time secret agent, working with the likes of
Ian Garrow, Pat O’Leary and Guido Zembsch-Schreve. She also acted as
a courier, flying to Lisbon to deliver and receive secret messages
from British intelligence. She also became romantically involved with
a Danish secret agent and married him after the war. Madge’s wartime
achievements were recognised by the British with the award of an OBE
and by the French with the award of the Croix de Guerre. Chris Hall
brings Madge’s story to life using archive material and photographs
from Britain, France, Spain and Norway. Madge’s Spanish Civil War
experiences are vividly described in a mass of letters she wrote
requesting medical aid and describing the harrowing conditions at her
wartime hospital. Her activities in the Second World War show a woman
with ‘nerves of steel’ and a bravery at times bordering on
recklessness. As she herself said, ‘I believe in taking the war into
the enemy camp’.
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Madge Addy's War Against Fascism
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781526779595
Publisert
2021
Utgiver
Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter