Strong in Will

Marie-Louise Dilkes (1886-1964) wrote about her World War II experiences in 1955--ten years after the war yet before files of her experiences were declassified. She based her writings on letters to her sisters, her nightly journal, recollections of conversations, and newspapers. For a woman who was educated at the end of the nineteenth century, she came into her own at the start of the twentieth century. She was literate and wrote about her experiences through the arts, literature, and architecture of France and quoted from writings that inspired her. Marie-Louise Dilkes was a woman of her times, for her times, and in some respects ahead of her times.