Photo: Pen & Sword
A young Australian who joined the French Resistance, worked undercover for British intelligence, and helped save thousands of allied soldiers and Jews in war-torn France, was guillotined by the Gestapo in 1943 after he was betrayed by a British double agent. Yet Corporal Bruce Dowding’s bravery have been largely forgotten because France’s attempt to award him its highest national honors – the Croix de Guerre and Légion d’honneur – encountered his own country’s bureaucracy. A young teacher in Melbourne, he went to Paris on a scholarship in 1938. His nephew, Peter Dowding, has had little joy persuading his government to give his uncle the prominence he feels he deserves, but remains “determined that [Bruce] and the others who died with him – for France, and for freedom – will not be forgotten.”
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