The Caretakers

When the First World War ended, hundreds of British veterans stayed in France to look after the graves of their fallen countrymen as part of the newly chartered Imperial War Graves Commission. Through the 1920s and 1930s, these veteran-gardeners married local women, raised bilingual children, and dedicated themselves to caring for their beloved dead.

In 1940, the Second World War swept over Europe, stranding the gardeners in Nazi-occupied France. Their bosses explicitly ordered the gardeners to remain at their posts, even when their villages were under attack by the invading Germans. While some managed to escape on their own, nearly two hundred gardeners were arrested by the Nazis. A handful of others managed to stay free and join the French Resistance. With their English-language skills and their unshakable loyalty to the Allied cause, the gardeners and their families took on crucial roles in the effort to save British and American airmen who were shot down in France, serving as interrogators, couriers, and hosts, sheltering the airmen in their own homes and, in some cases, even in the First World War cemeteries.

The Caretakers tells the surprising story of three of these unlikely heroes: Ben Leech, a 51-year-old barman from Manchester, became a cemetery gardener and joined the Resistance in Beaumont-Hamel, a tiny village whose name was synonymous with the disastrous British attack on the first day of the 1916 Somme campaign; Rosine Witton, the wife of a British gardener who was arrested and sent to a Nazi internment camp, became a key conductor on the famous Comet Line, a civilian network that rescued Allied airmen, personally guiding at least 75 airmen to safety before being arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the squalid Ravensbruck concentration camp; Robert Armstrong, an Irish cemetery gardener working in Valenciennes, avoided arrest for some time as Ireland never declared war on Nazi Germany, so was never technically classified as an enemy national during his time as a member of the Resistance.

Author Caitlin Galante DeAngelis also offers a timely remembrance to the vulnerable and working-class members of the War Graves Commission who were abandoned behind enemy lines by the organization tasked with protecting them. With meticulous research in national archives and the archives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, along with personal interviews of the families of British gardeners and American airmen and never-before-published journals and papers of Resistance members, author Caitlin Galante DeAngelis reveals untold stories of human courage, resistance, and survival.

"A deeply moving account of self-sacrifice, and physical and moral courage. DeAngelis' meticulous research brings to the fore a story that needs to be told." - Dr. Helen Fry, author of Mi9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two and Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of Two World Wars among many others

"A heartfelt and stunning tribute to ordinary people rising to meet the challenge of extraordinary times." - Alexandra Churchill, historian and author of In the Eye of the Storm: George V and the Great War among others

"The Caretakers is a truly fascinating book, and an absolute must read. Equal parts labor, social, and military history, DeAngelis' work is a testament and memorial to those brave souls who rescued, hid, and aided downed allied airmen in the Second World War. DeAngelis proves we still have much to learn and that there are important stories to be told from the Second World War." - Dr. Brian D. Laslie, Command Historian, United States Air Force Academy

"The Caretakers is brilliantly researched, and an enthralling read. This fantastic book shines a much needed light of the unsung men & women of Imperial War Graves Commission who showed loyalty, bravery, and patriotism in all its guises during the dark days of the Nazi Occupation of Europe." - Kate Vigurs, author of Mission France: The True History of the Women of the SOE

"The Caretakers reveals compelling stories of the guardians of Silent Cities who found themselves caught up in another Total War, and how they and their families had to live with Nazi terror, fight to resist fascism, and face deportation to the death camps. A fascinating and groundbreaking book; DeAngelis emerges as a wonderful storyteller of a truly forgotten aspect of WWII." - Paul Reed, host of the Old Front Line podcast

"What does it mean to care for the dead, to dwell in that cemetery garden? In this moving book, Caitlin Galante DeAngelis tells the surprising story of what it cost to care for the dead of the First World War, through the Second."--Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

Caitlin Galante DeAngelis is an internationally renowned expert on cemeteries. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University with a dissertation on the political histories of cemeteries in Britain and America. Formerly a lecturer at Harvard, she was also employed by the President of the university to write a proprietary report about Harvard’s historical ties to slavery.

Hopkins has been interviewed as an expert on cemetery history by media outlets including the Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and WBUR and her cemetery photography has been published in Atlas Obscura and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die by Loren Rhoades. She is an active member of several UK-based historical associations including the Western Front Association and the Great War Group,and contributed a popular article about the 80^th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s blog.

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