Wartime heroine dead

Press, 14 November 1977, Page 15

Wartime heroine dead

NZPA London Eva Trenchard took one secret to her grave — the underground wartime code name she used as one of the most successful agents in helping stranded British' airmen to escape the Nazis, United Press International reported. “Who knows?” she used to ask. "Something similar might be needed again one day.” Miss Trenchard, who died late last week aged 93, was one of the wars

unsung heroines, and that was the way she wanted it. It was her anonymity that saved the lives of 27 British airmen trapped behind German lines. Miss Trenchard ran the Scotch Tea Shoppe in Monte Carlo — directly across the road from the German occupation headquarters — and operated so quietly that she was never even suspected. “They thought I was just a harmless Eng-

lishw o m a n stranded behind their lines by the invasion,” she once said. “Some of my French friends were arrested and shot on the same day for helping airmen. The Gestapo never suspected me or even questioned me.” Miss Trenchard hid stranded Britons and took them through the blackout to “safe houses” that she rented nearby. The men stayed there until they could be smuggled over the Spanish border.