Book Description

Following the German occupation of France in 1940, French women moved deftly into the jobs and roles left by their male compatriots—even the role of soldier. In Lieutenant Sonia Vagliano: A Memoir of the World War II Refugee Crisis, Vagliano provides a gripping and compelling account of how her team of young French women was attached to a US First Army unit that arrived in Normandy two weeks after D-Day. From 1943 to 1945, Vagliano followed her unit from Normandy to Paris, through Belgium, and finally into Germany, where they cared for 41,000 total displaced persons and prisoners of war. Vagliano not only describes her experiences in rich detail—from caring for thousands of refugees in the worst possible conditions to defusing landmines and being kidnapped, shot at, torpedoed, and bombed—she also recounts the major events of the war in Europe, including the liberation of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally, the liberation of the concentration camps. Having spent five weeks at Buchenwald repatriating the 21,000 remaining prisoners, she is a unique witness to the transition period between the camp's liberation and its transferal to Russian oversight in July 1945. She saw firsthand "to what extremes the human imagination can go in its search for the most cruel methods of torture." Striking a balance between daredevil escapades and the sobering reality of a wartime account, this book won the Prix Saint Simon for best memoir under its original title, Les demoiselles de Gaulle. Now, translator and editor Martha Noel Evans brings the young French lieutenant's story to readers in English for the first time.