Susan Travers, The Only Woman in The French Foreign Legion

Susan Travers was the daughter of an English Royal Naval officer born on September 23, 1909. Her father had been British Consul in Marseilles and after WWI he moved the family to Cannes, France. There Susan flourished in the socialite gaiety of French living and at one time was a semi-professional tennis player. However when the war came she decided to help the French cause by volunteering with the Red Cross (Croix Rouge) in Finland where she didn't like the blood or the illness but developed a flair for driving an ambulance. She rejoined the French troops in Britain following the fall of France. She was attached as a driver for senior officers in Eritrea. She survives several crashes and a wound from a shell. It was during this time that she had become involved in a number of romantic encounters, including Prince Dmitri Amilakvari and Marie-Pierre Koenig, both of whom she had driven.

Bir Hakeim changed the war for Travers. The Italian and German forces pounded the Bir Hakeim for 15 days as the Free French Forces suffered heat, shells, thirst, and low supplies. Finally on June 10th 1942, Koenig gave the command for a retreat and his car took the lead with Travers driving. She broke through the 3 cordons of concentric panvers encircling the Bir Hakeim fort, through machine gun fire and shells. They arrived at the British lines next morning, the car riddled with bullets, shrapnel, the shocks destroyed and the brakes unservicable. She served throughout the rest of the war as driver and nurse. "Shells were falling around us like rain and sudden, violent explosions tore the   night, showering our car with burning metal....The wounded who could walk were ordered to get out and continue on foot to lessen the weight of the vehicles picking their way through the mines. From starting off as a reasonably   well-planned evacuation it had become a shambolic flight", Travers recalled years later.