May 30th, 2008
12:27pm Friday 30th May 2008
From the Durham County Advertiser 50 years ago.
- Among workers at Morley's Factory, Langley Moor, where she worked as a machinist, 46-year-old Mrs Irene Howe was known as a quiet, friendly woman, who preferred to listen to what others had to say rather than talk about herself.
Even many of her friends knew only that she was a Belgian and had fallen in love with a British soldier in Brussels just after the liberation, and had come to Langley Park eight years later as his bride.
It was not until after she had collapsed at work and died last week that the majority of the workers learned that Mrs Howe, or Mlle de Rideaux, as she was known in her own country, had once been acclaimed by the people of Brussels as one of the heroines of the resistance movement.
A Belgian Prime Minister had pinned one of his country's highest honours on her blouse, the British and American ambassadors had written letters of congratulations.
The woman who, according to a workmate, was "the essence of kindness" had once had a pistol as her constant companion, and had known the agony of a Gestapo interrogation.
Mr Howe said: "Apparently, she and her friends had a cottage along one of the escape routes used by Allied airmen who had been shot down."