Solving the puzzle of the wartime heroine buried in an unmarked grave
The street where Janie McCarthy lived in Paris. She risked her life to save countless Allied soldiers during the Second World War.
In February, tour guide and genealogist Mary G O’Sullivan made an unsettling discovery. Janie McCarthy, the Irishwoman, and fellow Killarney native, who risked her life to save countless Allied soldiers during the Second World War was buried in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Paris. How did a woman decorated by three countries for her work with the French Resistance end up in an ossuaire (or ossuary) with hundreds of others?
“She was courageous and patriotic, and her spirit inspired others. It is a tragedy that she lies in a paupers’ grave in Levallois-Per cemetery,” Ms O’Sullivan says, still moved by the experience. Had it not been for her meticulous research, we might not even know where Janie McCarthy, the teacher who escorted downed pilots out of wartime Paris to safety, was buried.
