Devereaux Rochester (1917-1983)

DOSSIER:
Minnie Devereaux Rochester, daughter of Richmond Rochester and Aimee Lathrop Gunning, was born on 20 Dec 1917 in Queens, NY. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried Myron Reynolds. Minnie went by the name Devereaux Rochester predominantly, but also used the name Elizabeth Reynolds. She never married and died on 19 Mar 1983 at the Pontchaillou Hospital in Rennes, France. Her burial place remains a mystery.

CODE NAMES:
Apple Pie

The child of a fragmented cosmopolitan family, Devereaux lived an affluent lifestyle in the 1930s, travelling in style round much of Europe and developing excellent contacts within the European aristocracy. In her autobiography, she tells how she was on vacation in Greece when war broke out. Rather than return to the U.S., she jumped ship at Marseilles, lying to the American officer that she was desperate to buy some sanitary towels. Catching the train to Paris, she joined the American Hospital Ambulance Corps.

She was living in Paris when the Germans invaded France in 1940. Her mother was interned in Vittel concentration camp and, rather than lose her friends and leave her beloved France, Devereaux and Bridget (a British girlfriend working with the French resistance) moved to Chalon-sur-Saone, near the French alps. There they helped get Jews, allied airmen and young French men wanting to avoid forced labor in Germany, across the border into Switzerland.

She joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in early 1943. Following training, she landed in France in a Hudson aircraft on 18 Oct 1943 with Richard Heslop (organizer of the Marksman circuit, code name "Xavier", a male radio operator and a RF agent).

In Spring 1944 she was recalled by SOE to England, as she was deemed "too conspicuous". She left the Marksman circuit but didn't return to England, instead going back to Paris where she was arrested by the Germans on 20 Mar 1944 and incarcerated at the Fresnes prison. By summer she was transferred to the Vittel internment camp, where she stayed until liberation.

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After years in France working in advertising, Devereaux (a victim of multiple sclerosis) recalled her remarkable career in her book, Full Moon to France. Her account is a feverish montage of fearful, grim and then exhilarating incidents: suspenseful train journeys, grueling treks over wild mountain passes, way stations and hostile or kindly natives, a blessed oasis of love, brutalized prisoners and an occasional glimpse of beautiful, relevant scenery. Though one tends to doubt the accuracy of remembered conversations, the rage and youthful spirits carry conviction in the memoir of a woman who, unaccountably, dared.