Born: 11 January 1897, France
Died: 23 or 24 April 1945
Country most active: France
Also known as: Jacqueline, Yvonne Cerneau
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Like many other SOE agents, Yvonne Rudellat paid the ultimate price. Using the cover name Jacqueline Gautier, the 45-year-old Rudellat worked as a courier, organized supply drops, and became skilled at sabotage after being deployed to France in July 1942. She lasted almost a year, but she was captured during a mission in June 1943, during which she was shot in the head. Transferred through several prisons, she ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, dying from typhus and dysentery less than two weeks after the camp was liberated in April 1945. Her sacrifice was recognized with a posthumous MBE, and inclusion on the Brookwood Memorial to the Missing, a monument to 3,500 individuals “to whom war denied a known and honoured grave.”