Yvonne Pagniez

Yvonne Pagniez (10 August 1896 – 18 April 1981) was a French journalist and award-winning writer, and a member of the French Resistance during the Second World War.

Pagniez was born at Cauroir, near Cambrai, the daughter of Lucien Pagniez, a sugar manufacturer, and his wife, the former Marguerite Risbourg. Yvonne Pagniez studied Philosophy before becoming a nurse during the First World War.

First World War Pagniez, her mother and her sisters fled from the Cambrai region when it was occupied in 1914. Her brother, Maurice, was wounded, then interned and finally reunited with his family in Switzerland. Her father, arrested as a spy in 1915, escaped from prison at Le Quesnoy and also made his way to Switzerland. After working with refugees in Savoie, Yvonne Pagniez was trained as an intelligence agent prior to the Armistice of 1918 which ended the war. She then worked with the Red Cross to repatriate refugees before returning to Paris to complete her degree.

Early career In 1925, she married an older relative, Philippe Pagniez, who was a doctor. The following year, she gave birth to a son, named Yves.

Second World War In 1940, at the outbreak of war, Pagniez declined to be evacuated from Paris, choosing to remain with her husband. She joined the Organisation civile et militaire, a movement of the Resistance. On 4 June 1944, she was arrested by the Gestapo; on 15 August, she was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Her work as a war correspondent in Vietnam and Algeria resulted in further publications. After the defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, there was no longer a place for the French in the region, and Pagniez returned to France, retiring to the isle of Ushant (Ouessant) in Brittany.

Death She died on 18 April 1981, aged 84.

Published works Novels Ouessant (1935) Pêcheur de goémon (1939) Scènes de la vie du bagne (1947) Évasion 44 (1949) Ils ressusciteront d'entre les morts (1949)

Non-fiction Françaises du désert (1952) Oasis sahariennes (1952) Français d'Indochine (1953) Naissance d'une nation : choses vues au Vietnam (1954) La guerra de Indochina y el Vietnam rojo (in Spanish; 1954) Aspects et conséquences de la guerre en Indochine (1954) Le Viet Minh et la guerre psychologique (1955) Ailes françaises au combat (1957)