The French Resistance fighter from Sunderland who found her mum - in South Shields

Gladys Crozier grew up in the Trinity Street area of Southwick.

‘She put her life at risk to help stranded British airmen’

But her life was to change forever when she was in her 20s. She fell in love with a French-born sailor called Pierre Dagorn.

The couple settled in Sunderland but when World War II loomed, Gladys decided to follow her husband to France.

They set up home in Rouen, Normandy and she worked for the French Resistance, putting her life at risk to help stranded British airmen escape back home.

Betrayed to the Gestapo

Gladys become known as Madame Dagorn and was eventually betrayed to the Gestapo. She was taken to court and faced the death penalty before finally being taken to a munitions factory in Germany where she was forced to make bombs destined to be dropped by Hitler’s Luftwaffe on Britain.

Gladys was rescued when the Russians ‘liberated’ the workers and ended up in a Russian hospital when she suffered from appendicitis.

But there was a problem. Gladys was no longer a British citizen.

She only found out the truth when she had to find her real parents to get her British nationality back.

Reunited with the mother she hadn’t seen since she was two

Gladys had believed, for years, that her parents were a Sunderland couple who had died years before her return to Britain. It was later revealed that they had adopted her when she was a little girl.

Her real mum was a widow living in South Shields who had not seen her daughter since she was two years old.

The reunion happened at Easter in 1949 in a story which made incredible headlines in the Sunderland Echo.

It included a chat with Gladys who had finally met her real parent. She told an Echo reporter at the time: “I was worn out but glad to meet my mother’.

Who can shed more light on the story of Madame Dagorn, the heroine of the French Resistance movement?

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