Bonus Episode - Presented by Hyundai

On today’s bonus episode, Georgia covers Georgia Gilmore and the Club From Nowhere and Karen tells the story of the Rochambelles.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder special bonus episode.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is a special bonus. You didn't do anything, but
we're giving it to you.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Anyway you deserve it. It's presented by Hyundai, and it's because.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
We like you so much and Hyundai likes you so much,
so we're giving you this special content.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Guys, what's more exciting than more stories?

Speaker 3 (00:38):
It's more, more, and more and more.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Because it's presented by Yundai, we're doing stories it kind
of like revolve around a car or a vehicle being
the hero of the story.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
So I think I've got a good one. I hope
you do too.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
All right, well, let's get into this bonus episode, shall we.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Let's do it. Okay, I'm first, You're first on any
bonus episode.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Okay, I'm gonna tell you a story today, Karen. It's
about a pivotal role that cars played in none other
than the Montgomery bus boycott.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, well, yes, it's right there in the title.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Right and the Montgomery bus boycott success was dependent on
the action and dedication of many individuals. Of course, today
we're going to focus on the work of one of
those people, in particular, a woman in her thirties.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yes, I love her name. It's Georgia Gilmore.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Oh yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So the main sources for the story are in interview
with Georgia Gilmore from the nineteen eighty seven documentary Eyes
on the Prize, a book called Driving While Black by
Gretchen Soren, and Georgia Gilmore's obituary in The New York Times,
which was published decades after her death as part of
an effort to recognize important historical figures that were previously
not acknowledged enough. And the rest of the sources can

(01:52):
be found in the show notes. So let's begin in Montgomery, Alabama,
December of nineteen fifty five. What a time and place,
as most of us know and should know, a forty
two year old seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give
up her seat on a public bus for a white passenger.
And Montgomery buses, of course, were racially segregated, and black

(02:14):
patrons were required to stand if a white person wanted
to take their seat, and black people were also barred
from becoming bus drivers. And all of this was in
spite of the fact that black people have made up
at least seventy five percent of ridership on Montgomery's public buses.
And so we've spoken about the Montgomery bus boycott at
length before, especially in your story about Claudette Colvin, the

(02:35):
teenager who refused to give up her seat, and that's
episode number four oh two, if anyone wants to listen
to it's incredible.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Karen did a great.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Job, thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
So when the bus boycott.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Kicks off in nineteen fifty five, this woman, Georgia Gilmore
is a thirty five year old mother of four. Ultimately
she'll have six kids, but she has four at the time.
She's lived in Montgomery as a black woman all her life,
so she has experienced all the racism there.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
She's worked as.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
A midwife, on a railroad and a domestic worker. By
nineteen fifty five, Georgia is the head cook at a
cafeteria called the National Cafe, which serves only white people.
She lives with her mother and also helps take care
of her youngest sister as well as multiple nieces and nephews.
And she's just generally known as a caring, motherly figure
in her community, and because of that, she earns the

(03:21):
affectionate nickname Big Mama. But above all of this, above
her caring, above her nurturing. She is known for her
outrageously delicious cooking. Oh, at all times, people are angling
to get invited to George's house for a meal. So
during this time, Georgia has already been privately boycotting the

(03:42):
Montgomery buses for months on her own, because in October
of nineteen fifty five, Georgia had boarded a bus, put
her coins in the farebox and had probably been screamed
at by the white bus driver that she needed to
board from the back at the bus, and so she
complies because she has to. But when she gets off
the bus to go runder the back, the bus driver

(04:04):
shuts the doors and takes off, even though she.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Had already paid.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So she's just like over it already, so she just
vows to never get back on the public bus in Montgomery.
And then three months later the official boycott actually begins.
So again, as we know from the Claudette Colvin story,
the boycott had been brewing over the course of months.
On December fifth, nineteen fifty five, right after Rosa Parks
is arrested and after a successful one day boycott of

(04:29):
the buses, a group called the Montgomery Improvement Association calls
a meeting, and the group is an offshoot of two
other groups, the NAACP's local chapter and a group called
the Women's Political Council. About five thousand people wind up
showing up to this meeting, this famous meeting. It's held
at the Holt Street Baptist Church. The entire sanctuary and
the entire basement are both packed and there are loudspeakers

(04:51):
outside for the massive overflow of the crowd. And at
this meeting, it has resolved that the then twenty six
year old Martin Luther King Junior is going to lead
the Montgomery Improvement Association. His family's somewhat new in town
and he's the pastor of another church. And it's also
resolved that there's going to be a long term boycott
at the Montgomery public buses. That is a very short

(05:14):
summary of stuff that we should all study.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yes, that years and years of building up to that, right. Also,
what a brilliant move and it's the kind of thing
that people are now doing again today so effectively we're
just like you absolutely the boycotts and voting with your
dollar and all those things, like it's all we have.
It's seemingly anymore.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
The money talks, you know, and this is pivotal to Georgia.
At the meeting, it is also established that anyone who
has accessed to a car will help shuttle people to
and from their jobs so they don't have to ride
the bus because they still need to get to their jobs.
So let me get fired, right of course, Doctor King says, quote,
we're putting cabs there at your service. Automobiles will be

(05:58):
at your service. Among the thousands of people at this
meeting is our own Georgia Gilmour, who hears doctor King's
words and immediately springs into action. She establishes a group
that will sell bake goods to raise money for gas
and to buy additional cars for this elaborate carpool system
that will keep the boycott alive. The group is made

(06:19):
up of women like Georgia, who all cook for the cause.
In order to avoid being targeted by angry white neighbors,
Georgia avoids giving the group an identifiable name that could
give an idea of their identity or location, so she
simply calls the group.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
The Club from Nowhere.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Smart Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
The club sells peach pies, pound cakes, and when people
are very lucky. Georgia's fried chicken sandwiches, and they sell
them at beauty parlors, at taxi stands, at laundromats, stores, churches,
and cleverly outside White's only cafeterias like the ones she
works at. Every week, the club takes in about one
hundred and fifty dollars, which is close to eighteen hundred

(06:58):
dollars in today's money.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, this can fill more than thirty cars with gas
every week, or it can be put toward maintenance or
the purchase of additional cars.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
And I guess I had.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Never thought about how pivotal outside transportation would be during
the bus boycott.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
You don't boycott the bus and stop.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Going to work, no, you know, the Montgomery Improvement Association
meets every Monday, and at each of these meetings, Georgia
hands over the cash to a standing ovation from the crowd.
At the same time, black owned taxis carry boycotters to
work for ten cents, which is the same cost as
a bus ride. But then the city cracks down on
this forbidding them from charging anything less than forty five

(07:40):
cents per ride, which the boycotters can't afford, which is
the point, right, So activists from northern States donate fifteen
station wagons to black churches, since cars donated to churches
are harder for the state to seize than those donated
to individuals. Wow, so these cars get nicknamed rolling churches.
A Black farmers association donates land for parking all of

(08:03):
these shared vehicles, and while white owned insurance companies refused
to ensure the cars, a black insurance agent in Montgomery
gets a policy set up with Lloyd's of London. So
everyone is just doing what they can to work around
these racist institutions. So three months into the boycott, in
January of nineteen fifty six, Martin Luther King Junior is

(08:25):
arrested for the first time obstensively for driving thirty miles
per hour in a twenty five mile per hour zone. Which,
of course that's not the reason.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
It's the old broken tail light of all right.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
The real reason he's arrested is because he was driving
boycotters to work at the time, and during that week
Montgomery police have begun specifically targeting these car pools. When
doctor King's indicted, eighty people testify on his behalf and
Georgia is one of them. As a consequence of this,
she gets fired from her job at the whites only cafeteria,
and Doctor King advises Georgia to go and business for herself,

(09:01):
cooking for people out of her home. He and the
Montgomery Improvement Association give her some money to equip her kitchen,
so George's Home restaurant becomes wildly successful. People line up
for lunch and dinner, and they'll even eat standing up
if there's no room to sit down, because they just
want her incredible food. The specialties are fried or baked chicken.

(09:22):
There's fried fish, there's liver, collared greens, turnips, you know, beans,
potato salad, candy jams, and for a little extra you
can also get a slice of sweet potato pie. So
just that classic Southern couisine that I freaking it's the best.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
It's the best.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
But in addition to providing for Georgia herself and her family,
the restaurant serves another important purpose.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
It's a secure.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Meeting location for doctor King and other activists to gather
and discuss plans without worries of being overheard by the
wrong people, you know, like in a public place. This
is important because, as the boycott wears on, Montgomery's segregationists
grow increasingly hostile. Georgia says they would often yell slurs
at her when she walked around the city, but she
says that she would yell right back at them. Yes, yeah,

(10:09):
but for those security reasons, and because George's food is incomparable,
Doctor King often brings visiting dignitaries to George's house for dinner,
so she feeds future presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Wow Yeah, in her home. While this is going on,
the Club from Nowhere keeps chugging along, selling food and

(10:29):
bake goods around Montgomery, often to white people who have
no idea that they're helping to fund the bus boycott.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Perfect. I love it because you cannot, like, at the
end of the day, good food is undeniable, right, So.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
With the help of the Club from Nowhere, the Montgomery
Improvement Association's fleet of cars winds up swelling to three
hundred vehicles, which sustains.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
The boycott for over a year.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Brilliant.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
I just always imagine people like boycotting and protesting not
continuing on with their lives in any way necessary. Which
was the need for vehicles and transportation.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yes, I mean like that. This took an entire very organized, yes,
intricate plan, totally so good.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, and so again, seventy five percent of the city
buses ridership had been black, and a huge portion of
that had been black women, who often had jobs of
domestic workers and neighborhoods far from their own. So Georgia says,
quote they were maids and cooks. They were the ones
that really and truly kept the bus running. After the

(11:36):
maids and cooks stopped riding the bus, well, the bus
didn't have any need to run end quote just yeah,
you got to show them with the money. It's the
only thing they listened to. At the end of nineteen
fifty six, the City of Montgomery files a lawsuit against
the Montgomery Improvement Association, saying they've been legally operating an
unlicensed taxi business. But right around that very same time,

(11:58):
the Supreme Court upholds district court ruling that had found
that the segregation of city buses was unconstitutional. And again
that story is covered by You Karen in episode four
or two. The boycott comes to an end in December
of nineteen fifty six after three hundred and eighty one days,
and buses in Montgomery and in other cities are desegregated.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Two years later, in nineteen fifty seven, George's family personally
sues the city of Montgomery after her son Mark is
beaten by police and arrested for being in a whites
only public park. This ultimately results in the desegregation of
parks in Montgomery, and Mark, her son goes on to
serve in Montgomery's city government.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Wow Yeah. Georgia says that she.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Probably wouldn't have learned how to drive if it weren't
for the bus boycott. After it ends, she says, quote,
I was able to save enough money to buy a car,
and then I was really a big shot because I
felt I'd come up in the world.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
There's no better feeling totally when you have your own car.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Cars in general played a big role, as we're learning,
in the greater civil rights movement. The author Gretchen Soren,
whose book is one of the main sources for the story, says,
quote the automobile gave African Americans freedom from humiliation and
the ability to go where they wanted to go when
they wanted to go end quote. In nineteen sixty one,
the Freedom Writers challenge segregation on interstate buses, and Georgia

(13:21):
hosts many of them in her home, sheltering them from
violent segregationists and of course feeding them as well. Georgia
passes away at the age of seventy and nineteen ninety
while she's preparing food for a celebration to mark the
twenty fifth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March. In
her late sixties, Georgia had been featured in the nineteen
eighty seven civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, which

(13:43):
is the source of her quotes in this story. In
her interview, she says, quote, you cannot be afraid. If
you want to accomplish anything, you've got to have the willing,
the spirit, and above all, you've got to have the
get up end quote. And that is the story of
Georgia Gilmoh and the Club from Nowhere and the women
who helped drive the Montgomery bus boycott.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Hell yes right, love it.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Also, it's so important to hear these stories of people
who are just like You're being threatened, people are screaming
at you, and still they just keep doing what they're doing.
They stick to the plan. They clearly do it with
some joy. Throw some good food in there, Like, I
don't know, that's such a what a beautiful recipe for
actually affecting change totally.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
It's inspiring. The HUTSPA, the hut spas, hutspaying.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay, ready for my story. Yeah, it's a bit of
a left churn. We're going to World War two, Okay.
The thing that I love to do. It's kind of
interesting that that, you know, to do a little theme
and to be like, oh, the theme is cars, and
Maren found this story and it's about ambulances. I don't
know if you knew that ambulances have been around for centuries.

(14:57):
The earliest one operated in fourteen eighties Spain.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
I've never considered that, right, but that's so interesting.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, well, because you got to figure, we've always had war,
so they've always made ambulances.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Right, So in fourteen eighty Spain, it was a simple
two wheeled horse shrawn cart used to evacuate the wounded
from battlefields. During the American Civil War, sturdy or four
wheeled horse drawn wagons became the standard, and then around
the same time in cities like Cincinnati, and New York,
they saw the very first hospital affiliated ambulances, again pointing

(15:36):
back to the nick remember the crooked ambulance driver.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah, they don't like fight each other for totally.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
So within a few decades, horses gave way to engines,
of course, and by World War One, motorized ambulances were
the norm. Men and women stepped up to drive them,
often as civilian volunteers, unaffiliated with any military, and they
would drive them into active war zones to evacuate wounded
and deliver supplies.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
That's when I hear at first eight questions, have they
ever been in an ambulance before?

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yes? I have? You have? I have too, But I
was unconscious, you were not. What did you do? I
had a seizure. You probably have the same thing.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
It's same exact reason.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
So for women who were not allowed to serve in
combat roles, ambulance driving was the closest they could get
to seeing action.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
In world come interesting.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
They weren't typically posted on the front lines. They certainly
weren't integrated into any official military division. Those are, of
course reserved for men. But today's story is centered on
a group of courageous women dedicated on taking down Hitler
during World War Two. They banded together to form an
all female ambulance Corps, which became the first unit of

(16:48):
its kind to join an official combat division on the
Western Front. This is the story of the Roe Chambeau Group,
best known by their nickname the Roe Shambells. Oh my goodness, right,
never heard of this?

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Never?

Speaker 1 (17:02):
So The main source used today is Ellen Hampton's book
Women of Valor, The rocham Belles on the World War
II Front, and the rest of the sources are in
our show notes. So this story starts in the late
nineteen thirties with a woman named Florence Conrad. She's a
wealthy American widow in her early fifties and she has
basically moved to France and lived there for many, many years.

(17:25):
She loves France, so when World War II breaks out
in nineteen thirty nine, Florence is determined to help in
any way she can, so she doesn't run back to
the United States for safety. She actually ends up volunteering
as an ambulance driver during Germany's brutal invasion, but as
tensions escalate and the US joins the war, Florence is

(17:46):
forced to basically leave France she knows as an American
she risks being arrested and detained by Germans for sure,
so she moves to New York City, where she decides
to use her wealth and connections to form an all
women's ambulance core to basically launch back in Europe. Wow.
Florence isn't the first wealthy woman to have this idea,

(18:08):
because back in World War One, many rich American and
European benefactors, including several women, raised money to create and
support volunteer ambulance cores, and many women drove those ambulances.
The logic then was very simple. If women take over
the driving duties, more men can be freed up for combat.

(18:29):
But despite the brave service of female ambulance drivers in
World War One, by the dawn of World War II,
many men have convinced themselves women are too soft to
serve in such violent, stressful environments, and various world militaries
decide that ambulance drivers have to be men. In fact,
in the World War II era, military bureaucracy and tighter

(18:52):
control over access to combat zones make it much more
difficult for civilian volunteers, especially women, to serve in these
same roles. But Florence doesn't care. So Florence quickly raises
enough money to purchase nineteen ambulances, and then she also
pulls in a partner, a French American woman in her

(19:13):
early thirties named Suzanne Torrez who goes by the nickname Toto,
and Toto quickly becomes Florence's right hand woman. Together, Florence
and Toto start recruiting exclusively female ambulance drivers, eventually amassing
a group of twelve. Most of their recruits are young
French nationals in their early twenties, desperately wanting to go

(19:34):
home to France stuck in the US because of war.
So the recruits take Florence's ambulances out to the Old
World's fair Grounds in Flushing, Queens and they practice driving
them nice. They also learn basic auto mechanic skills, and
they volunteer at a local hospital to learn the medical
basics and first aid. Meanwhile, Florence and Toto realized the

(19:59):
group could ben fit from some good old fashioned branding,
so they start mulling over a good name, hoping to
land on something that celebrates their frenchness but also that's
recognizable to Americans. They decide on the Row Schambeau Group,
after the legendary general who led French troops to help
the Americans during the American Revolution.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
I had no idea. I just know Rochambeau is rock
paper scissors. Yeah, it's based on a guy.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
That makes sense, now that you say that, I.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Mean everything is. I mean, this is why people think
history is interesting. I wish someone had told me this
is why history is interesting. But anyhow, it's too late.
All the while, it's too late to learn. All the while,
Florence is working to overcome the restrictive military bureaucracy. Unlike
in World War One, for example, when volunteer ambulance corps

(20:54):
operated more casually and with few bureaucratic hurdles, they still
had to have the formal backing of an official military
group before they could operate within war zones. Obviously, you
can't just pull up and be like, look, I'll take
care of this happen. Yeah, but kind of, I mean
it sounds like kind of because it was volunteer, you know. Yeah,
But none of that's going to stop Florence. She makes

(21:16):
it happen. The Roe Schambau Group gets the endorsement of
the DC outpost of the Free French Forces, and that's
France's government in exile led by Charles de Gaull. This
is the French pronunciation. Like the airport, Just like the airport.
The airport's a guy.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
What a coincidence, you know, oh hair airport.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
We got Rochambeau, We got guy, we got a gall
So the Rochambeau group and all of these vehicles are
sent to a Free French outpost in Morocco, but shortly
after arriving they find themselves in limbo yet again. Ambulance
drivers are desperately needed. But the problem is that no

(21:56):
unit is willing to take these lady ambulance drivers in
because the idea of women being integrated into an actual
military unit is like inconceivable. To that right, only men
serve in those capacities. So without official assignment, the Rochambeau
group can't deploy to the front. They are just stuck

(22:16):
on the sidelines, and obviously this is discouraging, but the
women haven't come this far just to give up. They
live on a houseboat in Morocco waiting to join the fight.
Where is that movie Elizabeth? Thanks? Get it going? Outfits,
the lipstick, the bathing suits, the fucking chit chat, the cigarettes,

(22:39):
the makeouts, the full makeups. Oh, Happy Pride Month. Everybody
speaking of Florence. Meanwhile, is on the phone NonStop. She's
pitching the Rochambau group to military powers that be, hoping
they will just take a chance on them. This lady
is the real deal, going for it and it works.
She does it time in a huge way. She manages

(23:02):
to get a hold of General Philippe Leclair. He's the
leader of the French second Armored Division and he's a
rising star in the Free French forces. After hearing Florence's pitch,
Leclaire is skeptical, and, as Ellen Hampton writes, quote, women
in an armored division exclamation point, I should have said
it like this, women in armored division. Yes, that's how

(23:25):
she wrote it. General Leclair had never heard of such
a thing. He probably figured the women would cut and
run at the first firefight. But ambulances driven by women
were better than no ambulances at all, he relented, end quote.
Isn't that it's like those are all the stories where
it's like, oh, well, I guess we could do nothing,
or it could I guess have women have a chance?

(23:46):
God forbid? So General Leclair agrees to take the Rochambeau group,
but only temporarily. They can serve through the push to Paris,
after which he will keep their ambulances and replace these
women with male drivers. Okay, it's good enough for now.
Florence is like fine. All the women ditch the Moroccan

(24:07):
houseboat and they head to Algeria for advanced training, joining
an official French medical battalion in a massive Allied camp
that houses around thirty thousand men. But after recruiting eighteen
more drivers in Morocco, which brings the numbers of the
Rochambau group up to thirty, they are still a tiny
group of women in this ocean of men. They endure

(24:29):
regular harassment, of course, tons of condescension and bullshit from
military men who just see them as a joke. It's here,
in this very masculine camp that they become known as
the rocham Bells, and over time they come to embrace
this nickname, and that is kind of what a lot
of people know them as today. In May of nineteen

(24:49):
forty four, after weeks of intense training in Algeria, the
women of the Rochambau Group get their first marching orders.
They'll be traveling with General Leclair's division to England to
prepare for D Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied France. Inevitably,
sexism follows the women onto the transport ship, where American

(25:11):
officers refuse to let them board because in their minds
and experience, women don't serve in military divisions, so there
must be some sort of mistake. General Leclair eventually has
to step in and tell them, quote, they're not women,
they're ambulance drivers. So two months after D Day, in
August of nineteen forty four, the Rochambeau Group arrives at

(25:31):
Utah Beach and they begin to run their ambulances as
the Allies push out of Normandy. Form many of the women,
this is their first time back in France since fleeing
the Nazis, and they are overjoyed to be home. But
the Battle of Normandy, as we know, is a particularly
brutal one, and they are now tasked with evacuating wounded soldiers,

(25:53):
driving through bombed out roads and through minefields, typically without
maps or navigation of any kind, all while under fire.
During one run, Florence drives sixty miles off course while
searching for a field hospital. She's not some rich American lady.
That's just like all by your ambulances. She's hewing it
her probably lovely. The chaos is relentless. One night, German

(26:17):
bombers hid an apple orchard where the women's ambulances are parked,
but they do not flinch. Instead, they patch up their
vehicles and get back to work transporting the wounded, including
one of their own. During that air strike, a brand
new recruit, an American named Pollywood Smith, was crushed inside
her ambulance. She does survive, but she lives with life

(26:38):
changing injuries, and she never regains the full use of
her legs. Because the women of the Rocha and Bo
group are officially serving with the Allied forces, they are
not a civilian group. They are considered enemies in the
eyes of the Germans, so if they're captured, the threat
of death, torture, or sexual violence are very real for them.
Several women narrowly escape being arrested, so too Florence's second

(27:01):
in command is One morning, she ends up face to
face with a German tank covered with soldiers who are
trying to flee Normandy. The tank's commander stops and threatens
to take Toto prisoner, but ultimately he has to move
on because there's nowhere to put her on this overcrowded tank,
so just sheer luck. Another close call involves a woman

(27:23):
named Adite Shaler, who's in her mid thirties at the
time and in the final days of the Battle of Normandy,
takes her ambulance to a garage for overnight repairs and
becomes separated from her driving partner, so there's always two
of them in an ambulance together. Adet's partner is twenty
six year old Micheline Grimpel, who, before joining the Rochambeau

(27:45):
group actually worked in the French Resistance. This makes her
particularly vulnerable to a German arrest, so with all that
in mind, when Adit returns the next day, Micheline has
vanished as a deep sur which is nearby towns for her,
she accidentally crosses enemy lines. A bullet bounces off her
helmet before a team of German soldiers stop her ambulance

(28:09):
and try to take her prisoner, but indeed lies and
insists she's with the Red Cross, and it works. The
Nazis back off and she drives away. Oh my god,
But sadly she never finds Micheline. No one ever does.
Even those search efforts for her continue into the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
There are rumors that Micheline was taken into custody by
Nazis while in Normandy, ostensibly during the few hours where
she and Adit were separated, and that she may have
eventually ended up in a Soviet prison camp. But there
is no paper trail confirming or denying this.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Oh my god, what a mystery.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
As the women of Rochambeau Group deal with all the
loss and grief that comes with war, their work continues. Eventually,
General Leclair's division pushes all the way from Normandy to Paris,
and Paris is liberated in August of nineteen forty four.
The women of the Rochambeau Group are right there when
that happens. It's a euphoric time in France. French citizens

(29:11):
are amazed to see this all female ambulance corps working
alongside male soldiers, and when they do see that, a
tidal wave of women rush to join the Rochambeau Group.
Newspapers report that as many as five hundred women sign
up each day, Florence and Toto are totally overwhelmed with applicants.

(29:31):
They have to turn most of them away. They can
select only six new recruits to join their ranks. Meanwhile,
General Leclair calls the Rochambeau group in for a meeting.
From the beginning, Leclair's plan was to swap them out
for male drivers once they got to Paris. Now he
tells them, quote, you have carried out your mission with
such brio and devotion, winning the admiration of your commanders

(29:55):
and all in your unit, that I will keep you.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Oh my gosh, endo amazing.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
The women are over the moon, But according to Ellen Hampton,
Toto is so concerned that they'll break decorum and begin
celebrating when they're told this news that she keeps them
at attention. She does not let them like celebrate or
do anything, because, of course, when you are the minority,
you have to be better, not the same as the

(30:21):
men or the white people or whatever it is. You
have to be better all the time. So they have
to wait to celebrate, like when they get somewhere else.
I don't know. So from here, the Allies continue marching
toward the French German border. The Russia. Bo group splits up,
and the women are now serving with different medical battalions
within General Leclair's division. This eastward push is a huge slog.

(30:46):
A very rainy autumn becomes a brutally cold winter. When
the women aren't having to dig their ambulances out of
the mud, they're being forced to navigate them through sleet
and snow. During this part of the war, the women
of the group are responding to some of the worst
violence they've seen so far, but they always rise to
the occasion. By the time they arrive in Strasburg, near

(31:08):
the German border, they've clearly changed the minds of their
male naysayers. In one mission, two of the women pull
up beside a tank whose commander has been hit and
is now seriously wounded. As they do that, their windshield
gets blown out and they're hit with shards of glass.
But they still manage to successfully pull the man out
of the tank and back to the ambulance, And they

(31:30):
pull it off so quickly and so well that the
soldier's taking cover nearby burst into applause.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
They have glass shards in their face, basically, and they
get it done. Love it. In another high stakes moment,
one of the women rescues an American officer after he's
struck down by enemy fire. As bombs continue dropping, she
hops out of her ambulance, crawls over to him, and
using her necktie, manages to drag this six foot body

(32:00):
to safety. A newspaper article reports quote, three seconds later
there was a direct hit on the spot where he
had been WHOA. The officer survives, so by February of
nineteen forty five, France has been liberated and General Leclair's division,
with the Rochambeau group in tow has helped reclaim important

(32:20):
French cities from the Nazis. From here, Americans push into
Germany while General Leclair's troops are given time to rest.
But a few weeks later, in April of nineteen forty five,
they're dispatch to Austria, and while they're in Austria, Toto
somehow happens to find Hitler's personal stationery, so for the

(32:41):
next several weeks she uses it to write letters to
her friends and family.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
I thought you're gonna say. She says that she's him
and like its spy and pretends, oh.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
My god, such a victory of like this is mine now.
Then on May seventh, nineteen forty five, the news breaks
Germany has surrendered again. It's a euphoric moment. This war
is finally going to end, and in the coming months
and years, the Rochambeau group receives awards and decorations for
their incredible service and the women get full military pensions.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Right, But when the celebrations fade, they have no idea
what's next for them. Even though the war was brutal,
it gave these women a kind of freedom and a
purpose that they have never had and would really never
have as civilians totally. At the time, French women aren't
exactly empowered. They can't open a bank account or get

(33:36):
a job without their husband's permission, and French women don't
have the right to vote until nineteen forty four. Several
members of the Rochambeau group return to their old lives
they don't have, you know, they basically have secretarial work
or raising kids as the options available to them. Several
marry men that they served alongside during the war, which

(33:58):
wonderful beep plot c plot to this movie. A few
find ways to keep pushing boundaries, like Toto, who stays
in the military and eventually commands her own medical battalion.
Damn Toto Again, whose full name is Susan Torres, passes
away in nineteen seventy seven at the age of sixty nine.
So she just lived it, I mean, just how it

(34:20):
got in there, such about us. So In total, fifty
one women serve as ambulance drivers with the Rochambau Group
during World War Two. Six are wounded during their tenures
and survive, with another twenty eight year old Leonora Linsley,
dying from a horrible head injury, and of course twenty
six year old Micheline Kimprel, who disappears and it is

(34:42):
never seen or heard from again. Like most women of
their time and culture, the ladies of the Rochambeau Group
are very modest about their war experiences. Despite living these
unbelievable stories of bravery and grit, only three of them
write memoirs, all of them in French. Over time, their
historicals service becomes increasingly obscure, particularly outside of France. But then,

(35:05):
several decades after the war, an American journalist living in
France named Ellen Hampton attends an event where a few
members of the Rochambeau Group speak about their service. Ellen
leaves inspired and eventually writes a book about the group,
entitled Women of Valor. It has since been published in
French and English, making the story accessible to an international audience.

(35:29):
Women of Valor is written after the passing of Florence Conrad,
who dies in France in nineteen sixty six at the
age of eighty. She's on the front lines at fifty five.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
That's unliable, Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Then gets to have thirty more years of like, well,
I guess yes what I.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
Did, definitely smoking those things.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Hell yes. This book drives home Florence's on parallel determination
to get her historic ambulance project off the ground. The
book includes a snippet of an obituary Toto wrote for Florence,
which lovingly says, quote, when I met Florence Conrad in
New York, she already had the glow in many American circles,

(36:07):
and above all in the French community, of a veritable legend,
a legend that did not surpass reality. Florence is no
doubt a very worthy captain, but Toto's words, specifically of
her being a veritable legend, could easily describe any of
this so called Roe Schambell's and that's the story of
the incredibly courageous fleet of female ambulance drivers in World

(36:29):
War Two, the Roe Shamba Group.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
Damn, come on, look at the bonus episode coming in high.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
It's bonus, it's bonus information.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
It's empowering.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
It's like, get out there, do your thing, don't take
no for an answer, make it happen. Yeah, even if
you're middle.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Aged, especially I sincerely though, like we don't have to
say this, but they kind of let us do whatever
we wanted.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, and that is really cool and we really appreciate that.
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
It's pretty cool, and we like their car.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
We're both driving what are we like?

Speaker 1 (37:03):
So thank you, Hyundai, Thank you for listening to this
bonus episode. We hope you liked it and stay sexy.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
And don't get murdered goo.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Goodbye, Elvis.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 (37:21):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Our senior producers are Alle Hundra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Our editor is Aristotle las Veda.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
This episode was mixed by Leoni Quilacci.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
And follow the show on Instagram at my favorite Murder.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Listen to my Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
And now you can watch us on exactly writs YouTube page.
And while you're there, please like and subscribe.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
Good Bye, bye,