The story of the exploits of a nun, whose success in bringing about the escape of Allied and French prisoners from the Nazis in France, has made her a legendary figure, is told in Foreign Correspondence, an American weekly review.
Known simply as " Soeur Helene," the pun is carrying on the kind of work performed by Nurse Edith Cavell in Belgium in the last war, but,on a much larger scale.
The story relates that early in February, the Mothers Superior of convents in Montpellier and Lyon disappeared and it was not until a week later that French authorities learned they had been arrested by the Nazis. When this news reached Marshal Petain, he sent his envoy in Paris, Fernand de Brinon, to demand their immediate release, but the curt German reply was that the nuns had been arrested on charges of espionage and would be tried by a military court.