Jeanne Macherez
Jeanne Macherez was a Frenchwoman, of advancing years, when the First World War broke out. The fact she was a civilian, with no military training, makes the act of courage with which history credits her all the more extraordinary.
She was born in Guise, France, in 1852. She married, moved to the town of Soissons, France, before he husband died in 1904. When the German army invaded in 1914, she was aged 63 and in charge of 201 Auxilary Hospital, which had ten ambulances. On August 31, 1914, a German officer entered Soissons, shepherding a group of French civilians in front of him which he had taken hostage so he was protected by human shields. The German officer addressed people in the town and demanded to speak to the mayor, proclaiming that if the mayor did not make himself known, he would make sure that the city would be burned, sacked and its population killed. It was at this point, with next to no regard for her personal safety, that Macherez left the ranks of the watching townspeople and offered herself to the German officer. “The mayor?” she is reported to have said to him. “It’s me!”
For the next twelve days, Macherez acted as go-between between the German forces and the town. Her skilled negotiation with the Germans and ability to act courageously under intense pressure ensured without question that the people of Soissons suffered less under the German occupation than they otherwise would have done. Macherez voluntarily placed herself in a position of peril and fewer people died as a result.
On September 12, 1914, the Germans were beaten back in the Battle of the Marne and were forced to retreat to the right bank of the River Aisne. Soissons was therefore released and Macharez returned to her role of running the hospital with modesty and without a fuss. But she retains a special place in the heart of the people of the town to this day, an ordinary woman who did something extraordinary when it mattered.