Marie-Laure Buisson is interested in several heroines, known to the general public or unknown.
They have been pilots, caregivers, spies, shot down planes or trapped the enemy. These madly courageous women risked their lives and sometimes gave it up for their country, to fight a tyrant or to follow a destiny that put them on the front line.
A former lawyer, Marie-Laure Buisson admires these warriors whose lives read like adventure stories. Some are unknown to the general public, such as Jihane, a Kurdish fighter captured by Daesh, or Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian princess engaged in Her Majesty’s secret service during the Second World War. Others are better known, such as Geneviève de Galard, the heroine of Diên Biên Phu who made the cover of Match on June 5, 1954. The author, herself a colonel in the reserve and an honorary legionnaire – she is godmother of the 4th foreign regiment – often rubbed shoulders with the military. This allowed him to release the untold story of Cassiopée, an air force pilot who played Mata Hari in Mali.
“women fighters”, by Marie-Laure Buisson, ed. Presses de la Cité, 349 pages, 21 euros