During World War 2, a Bermudian soldier and author, John Hartley Watlington, was based in France. His experiences were revealed in "Under Cover in France," published in the 4th quarter, 1949, of the Bermuda Historical Quarterly. Also during World War 2, a housewife and mother who has resided in Bermuda since 1948, Marie Lucie Therese Forbes (nee Devaux), now 80 years old, of "Bay Song", Seabright Avenue, Paget, of a proud and distinguished French family, was based in St. Lucia, West Indies, from 1940, with her husband. In 1941, she made her own highly individual sacrifice for France. It was her amateur ("ham") radio transmitter, which she built herself from scratch and used to become the much acclaimed Forster female "ham" operator in the entire Caribbean and Mid Atlantic area.
There and throughout the East Coast network of radio "hams" in the United States, she became legendary over the air-waves by her "handle" (a "ham" radio term for her identification) of "The Duchess" for her ability to broadcast in French and English with equal fluency. Her most prized possession, her radio transmitter, was confiscated for use by British and French military authorities. It was the only communications device that could be "spared", because of urgent war-time use of military equipment, to allow a Colonel Perelle, of the Free French forces, to broadcast from St. Lucia to sympathizers in nearby Martinique and Guadeloupe, in defiance of the jamming equipment of the Vichy controlled French battleship Jeanne D'Arc based 23 miles away in Fort-de-France. Her brother, Leonard Devaux (later awarded the Legion d'honneur), now residing in France, was then General De Gaulle's Free French Consul in St. Lucia. He arranged for those who responded to the radio transmissions to be secretly sent by trawler from Martinique and Guadeloupe to St. Lucia, then on to Europe to fight for the Allies. Some of those soldiers participated in the liberation of Paris. Several other members of the Devaux family have served France in Consular capacities in the Caribbean.
Bermuda had another link with France during World War 2. The famous French submarine "SURCOUF," then the largest submarine ever built, was based in Bermuda until it perished off the coast of Panama. Her sailors contributed to local history as the first members of active French armed forces ever to be stationed in Bermuda as allies, not British enemies, in any time of peace or war.
