1944: Marie Moreau and Pop-Culture Coincidences

Source: Vintage Photos of Beautiful Female Partisans and
Resistance Fighters During World War II

     After my grandfather died, my mother found a handwritten account of his time in the maquis (Fourth Company, Second Battalion, Drôme FFI). He wrote at least two stories about the courageous couriers for his unit, whom he referred to as "intelligence girls."  

    Other of his stories might also have involved the couriers, but he didn't explicitly say so (he used phrases like "we found out," or, "later someone told us," that might have been referring to information from the couriers).  But he rarely identified people by either their real or code names in his stories, so I don't know if his stories referred to the same woman or more than one.  

    So, I created a composite character codenamed "Jeanne" (after Jeanne d'Arc), who became the unit's best intelligence officer and the moral heart of the group.  Jeanne became the best intelligence girl of my grandfather's stories, a smart, clever, and no-nonsense woman my grandfather admired, and I reveal her "real" name toward the end of the book: "Marie Moreau." Yes, the alliteration in her initials was deliberate.

    I actually know the names of several real-life women who served in my grandfather's FFI unit, but there's no way for me to connect Grandpa's stories with their real-life counterparts, and because I didn't want to misidentify anyone, I gave the composite Jeanne a fictitious real name.

    Coincidentally, it turns out that Marie Moreau is also the main protagonist in Gen V, a spinoff of The Boys TV show.  

    Sigh.  I had to rename my character. She is now "Marie Morand."