the whole family was arrested. Georges was shot, along with other parriots but Robert, their son was released. Elsie (known as Polly) and her daughter (Little Elsie) were violently treated during interogation but gave away no information and were condemened to death.

After a period in Ravensbruck concentratiion camp they were sent to Mauthausen in March 1945. Unbelievably within a month, after Polly (Elsie) had become very ill, both she and her daughter were evacuated by the Swiss Red Cross.

The children and mother were reunited abd her adopted homeland was freed. Later both children worked in the Belgian Congo.

Mme Marchal nver really recovered her health. Her Norwich Training College friends made a collection in 1945 to help her as she had lost her home as well as her belovedhusband. She never told her friends of the honours she had been awarded for her bravery and they first heard of them from her son, after her death in March 1969.

Airey Neave (in 'Saturday at M.I.9')gives a full account of the Comet Line to which Elsie Marechal belonged. He says that the family were ardent admirers of Edith Cavelle - fondly remembered in Norwich and Brussels. In Chapter 9 entitled 'The Marcechal Affair' Neave includes an interview with Mme Marechal. He is angrily explicit about young Elsie's suffering during interrogation, writing "I thought of her when, as an official of the Tribunal at Nuremburg, I met Goering in his cell three years afterwards."

Throughout her life Elsie never forgot her time at college and was grateful for the influence