The Greatest Woman I Wish I Knew

Just one part

The Greatest Hero I Never Knew
Here is the most amazing story I think you will ever hear about how a tiny man became a woman to help protect "her" country.

I never met my great-great-grandfather, Les Corbin. He did not like to talk about the war, but one day he did tell a story about his wartime service in France during the Great War, and a young French woman named Marie Dubois.

Les was 5' 1½" tall and weighed 110 pounds. He was strong with well-muscled arms and legs, sculpted from years of biking, running and horseback riding.

He was not the most handsome man... and definitely not a pretty woman. His face was slightly bony with thin lips and a prominent nose. His eyebrows were like mad caterpillars even after careful plucking. His skin was pale and smooth. His hair was black and baby fine. His deep-set brown eyes were warmed with little gold flecks.

Les Corbin was born in Wales, one of nineteen siblings. Some time after the family emigrated from Wales to Canada they fell on hard times and Les left school in Grade 4 to run errands and make deliveries. In this pre-welfare era money in the hand today was worth much more than education.

Les was sixteen when the Great War broke out in 1914 and immediately went down to the recruiting centre to sign up as an ambulance driver. The only problem was that recruits had to be at least eighteen, seventeen with parental permission. There was no way Mrs. Corbin was going to lie and send one of her youngsters off to war, not even if it did mean one less mouth to feed and a regular paycheque. And while some strapping young farm boys could lie about their age and get away with it, there was no way anyone with one good eye and half a brain would have mistaken baby-faced Les for eighteen.

So Les went back to work as a courier and took on an extra job at a stable.

Over the next six months he developed a more mature body, luckily gaining another inch and slimming down, with more muscle and even less baby fat and on his seventeenth birthday, Mrs. Corbin kept her promise and signed a letter of parental consent for Les to enlist.

And so Marie Dubois was born.

Marie Dubois: the brainchild of a recruiting officer who had had a vision of how she could serve her country right from the very first time Les had walked into his office at the tender age of sixteen. False identification papers were drawn up and Les was sent for specialized training at a secret location in Northern Ontario. For the next three months Les was known only as Marie Dubois, speaking and listening to nothing but French and German hour after hour until "she" had the fluency of a Parisienne or Berliner. She learned radio operation, cryptology, self-defence, and a number of specific skills vital to her undercover assignment in France.

When seventeen-year-old Marie Dubois left for Europe on a troop carrier she had no way of knowing if she would ever see her family again, but she was resolved to do her best, and to her lasting credit she lived up to every promise she ever made to her God, herself and her country.

After arriving in France Marie barely had time for a breather before jumping straight into her cover with the French underground.

Every morning Marie walked from their farm to the nearby village, Douaumont, pushing "her" little baby girl Jacqueline in a carriage, sometimes carrying in Jacqueline's very dirty diaper information that was crucial to the war effort. Whenever a guard demanded she show her papers, she was terrified he may have something more in mind. Every time she felt a hand on her she held her breath, lest she be found out. Death would be the sweetest thing compared to what they might do to her should they discover her secret. More than once the rough hands of the German guards stripped and searched Jacqueline, luckily strategically avoiding the actual contents of her diaper.

Every day Marie worked in the village Tobacconist shop where she also served coffee, mentally recording information that the German soldiers discussed, not knowing that the serving girl who came to the table next to them could understand every word they said.

In the evening she returned to the farmhouse sanctuary where she gave Jacqueline back to her real mother.

All the information that she had gathered throughout the day was wired to England. Any official intelligence she received was carefully hidden in Jacqueline's diaper before they left the next morning so she could give it to her contact in the Tobacconist' shop.

This was her life for almost two years. By that time Marie had grown more fearful, for the battle was all around her and the fighting was fierce with many losses on both sides. Many familiar guards had been replaced with others, unknown to her and more vigilant, who checked
everyone, even Marie and Jacqueline more thoroughly than ever. It was becoming more dangerous to send the pair of them out into the German-controlled countryside as Jacqueline had now become a bright, high-spirited talking two-year-old. Marie could not be sure what the child might say to any friendly guard who playfully pinched her dimples and tickled under her chin.

One day Marie and Jacqueline disappeared. I don't know what happened to Jacqueline for her story is not part of my great-great-grandfather's story. I do know though that after less than two short years, according to all official records, Marie Dubois was declared missing in action and presumed dead. Her body was never found, and her file permanently closed.

Les Corbin was smuggled out of France and back to England where he served for the rest of the war as an ambulance driver.

To my knowledge there are no photographs in existence of Marie Dubois, and only a handful of Les Corbin.

My grandmother has one tiny picture of Les. If you look at the cover photo for this story you will see him standing their with the love of his life, my great-great-grandmother, Annie. Just standing their on the porch of the house he built in the 1930s with his son, my great-grandfather.

So here he / she is lady's and gentlemen, my great-great-grandfather Lester Corbin, the heroic woman I wish I had known.