Marie-José Villiers

Villiers was born Marie José de la Barre d’Erquelinnes on April 30 1916 at Cuckfield, Sussex.[1] After the end of World War I, the family returned to Jurbise.[1] Villiers was educated at home before attending the Convent of the Assumption at Mons.[1] She also attended a finishing school in Haywards Heath, Sussex.[2] She was one of seven children, five boys and two girls.[2]

In 1938 Villiers and sister joined the newly formed Motor Corps of the Red Cross.[1] She was trained as an ambulance driver and mechanic and, after the German forces invaded Belgium, she accompanied the Corps on missions throughout the country.[1] While helping to evacuate patients from hospitals, her vehicle was strafed by enemy fighters and two of her charges died.[1]

After the occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Italian air force officers occupied her Villiers’s family chateau Villiers joined the newly formed Resistance and gathered information on German aircraft at the nearby Chièvres airfield.[1] Villiers became part of “Service Zero”, initially headed by Charles Woeste.[2] She was trained to recognise all the different aircraft by their silhouettes and draw target maps by the Resistance.[3] Her work was of great value to British intelligence, which needed to know the proportion of bombers to fighter planes at any given time.[1] She extended her intelligence activity to cover several German airfields in Belgium and northern France, and recruited agents to help her.[1]

By October 1942 Service Zero had been betrayed and many of its members, including Woeste, were arrested.[2] With her family already in Britain, Villiers went underground, sneaking through France and Spain before flying to London from Portugal.[2]

In Britain, Villiers worked for Belgian Emergency Relief.[3] In autumn 1944, she went to the American Delta Base in Marseille as a liaison officer.[1]

Villiers met her husband, Charles Villiers, after a British friend asked her to look after him because he had fallen ill while staying at a hotel in Brussels.[2] The couple married in 1946.[3] They then took a four-month honeymoon, travelling through Africa in an old Chevrolet delivery van to research investment opportunities.[1][2] The couple had two daughters together, in addition to Charles's son from a previous marriage.[3]

After her marriage, Villiers became friends with the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.[3]

Villiers trained as a school care worker and spent 20 years working in the East End of London.[1]

In 1988, she published Granny was a Spy, an account of her wartime exploits.[1]

Villiers died on 1 February 2015, aged 98.[3]

For her wartime work, the Belgian government awarded her the Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Couronne with Palme, Croix de Guerre with Palme, Médaille de la Resistance, Médaille Commemorative de la Guerre 1940-45 and the Croix des Evades. The French government awarded her a Croix de Guerre. From the American government, she received the Bronze Star.[1]