The Barry Hobbs Collection of Great War Medals 215
A Great War ‘French Resistance’ Allied Subjects’ Medal and Croix de Guerre pair awarded to Madame Jeanne Cleve, who ‘hid 150 British prisoners of war in an attic and guided them to the coast right under enemy noses’
Allied Subjects’ Medal, bronze, unnamed as issued; France, Third Republic, Croix de Guerre, bronze, the reverse dated 1914-1918, with bronze star emblem on riband, together with the recipient’s riband bar, good very fine (2) £600-£800
Jeanne White née Cleve was born in Maroilles, France in 1885. Her wartime exploits are summarised in the following article, published in the Thurrock Gazette in 1971:
‘Jeanne White, 86, can be pardoned for drifting into daydreams as she does occasionally, for as a French Resistance fighter, playing a perilous game of cat and mouse in the First World War, she has more than most to remember. Jeanne married a British soldier and came to live in Rosedale Road, Grays, in 1926. The soldier was Alfred White one of 150 British prisoners of war who Jeanne hid in an attic and then guided to the coast right under enemy noses. She lived with her mother and sister in a large rambling farmhouse at Lille. When her father was killed in the Resistance while blowing up a bridge, and she saw her beloved France “shaking under the enemy’s boots” she joined the hundreds of French, members of the underground movement, who devoted their lives to sabotage. “I did it for revenge,” she added, banging a small wrinkled fist on the arm of the chair. Jeanne is a delightful old lady with flashing blue eyes undulled by age, a penchant for cognac and an impressive flow of French invective. She is independent in the extreme and longs for the day she can leave Thurrock Hospital and go back to her home. She has been hospital-bound for a year now because of a fractured hip. She felt she could not kill or handle a gun but suggested to her mother that the farmhouse, which had a huge attic running its entire length, was an ideal place to hide British PoWs while they waited for a boat to cross the Channel to safety. Her mother agreed and soon they had the first group of men hidden and were busy sorting through the clothes that would turn the men into French peasants for their dangerous journey. The clothes were taken along to the farmhouse at night, as was the extra bread which Jeanne persuaded the mayor to give her. “I would accompany the man as wife or sister because most of them could not speak French,” said Jeanne. “We never had any trouble on the journey, although a soldier had to kill two Germans who searched the farmhouse because they found him hiding in the attic.” Of the 150 soldiers Jeanne helped to safety not one of them was caught. “I heard from them all once after the war,” she said. “But that’s all.” “Alfred was one of the last to go,’ she added. “He wanted me to go with him to England - but I was too frightened because I couldn’t speak a word of English - imagine that.” So Jeanne the resistance fighter waited seven years to pluck up enough courage to come to Grays and marry her soldier sweetheart in Grays Parish Church.’
Sold together with wooden glazed framed certificate from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs informing the recipient - ‘Madamoiselle Jeanne Cleve’ - of the award of her Bronze Medal, ‘specially instituted by His Majesty’ - ‘with appreciation of the valued services which you have rendered to British Prisoners of War in the course of the Great War’ ... ‘for the timely help which you gave to our distressed comrades’ ... ‘in recognition of the signal services which you have thus given’ ... ‘as a token of gratitude for such assistance to his subjects’. Also sold with two (identical) portrait photographs of the recipient as a young lady and two more taken in later life; the recipient’s Republique Francaise Passeport a l’Étranger with photograph, dated September 1923; Republique Francaise Sauf Conduit document authorising the recipient to travel from Rouen to Paris on 5 July 1918; the recipient’s marriage certificate, dated 8 May 1926; the recipient’s husband’s birth certificate, dated 27 April 1893; and a newspaper cutting.
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