Olivia Jordan (interpreter)

Eager to become involved, she travelled to France in January 1940. With help from General Pierre Héring, the military governor of Paris, who was the father of one of her friends,^[1] she joined the Sections Sanitaires Automobiles Féminines.^[2] This was a medical unit within the French army. It was managed by the Red Cross.^[4]

After minimal training in driving and nursing, she was sent north towards the Maginot Line, as the German army advanced rapidly. Under the banner of the Red Cross, the medical unit treated both German and Allied troops. In June 1940, she was ordered south in a convoy that came under German attack outside Clermont-Ferrand in central France. After the armistice, she traveled alone further south seeking to return to Great Britain. During this journey she was given papers to take to Charles de Gaulle. She finally boarded a destroyer with Polish troops, after initially being denied passage on the last British ship to leave Saint-Jean-de-Luz because they were reluctant to take a woman on board.^[2]

She delivered the papers to de Gaulle and her linguistic skills led to her becoming his driver and interpreter at the headquarters of the Free France government-in-exile in Carlton Gardens in London.^[5] She continued in this role until 1943, including during the London Blitz and was in the Café de Paris on 8 March 1941 when it was bombed, resulting in damage to her hearing. She used her father's Wolseley car until an official vehicle was assigned.

In June 1941 she was presented with the Croix de Guerre for her courage and endurance by General Maxime Weygand. In 1993, she was invited to the inauguration of a statue of Charles de Gaulle in Carlton Gardens.^[2] Jordan was one of those included in Army Girls by Tessa Dunlop.^[6]