Mary Lindell

Gertrude Mary Lindell (11 September 1895 – 8 January 1987), Comtesse de Milleville, code named Marie-Claire and Comtesse de Moncy, was an English woman, a front-line nurse in World War I and a member of the French Resistance in World War II. She founded and led an escape and evasion organization, the Marie-Claire Line, helping Allied airmen and soldiers escape from Nazi-occupied France. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over occupied Europe. During the course of the war, Lindell was run over by an automobile, shot in the head, imprisoned twice, and captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Her son Maurice was captured and tortured. Her son Octave (Oky), also captured, disappeared and presumably died in a German concentration camp.

Outspoken, controversial, and imperious, Lindell was called a "false heroine" by one critic, but she is credited with helping about 100 Allied airmen escape from France. At Ravensbrück she was the self-appointed leader of the British and American women imprisoned in the camp and as a nurse helped some of them survive. She advocated successfully with her German captors for the release of 47 American and British women to the Swedish Red Cross in the closing days of World War II.

Lindell was awarded the Croix de Guerre twice, once for her work in World War I and once for World War II.