Hilda Atkinson A Rebellious Woman of 2 World Wars

[toofatfortakeoff]

My town, Barton on Humber, North Lincolnshire , has a record of fiery women in the war, as early as 1914 there was one young lass, Hilda Weatherall, scourging shirkers in the letters page of the Hull Mail.  The exchange of letters went on for little while, with some pro and some anti.  The correspondents were dead by the end of the war, bar Hilda.

Barton had spawned one of the first, if not the first feminist writer, Jane Courtney MBE, and also from another writer, (Piggott) an early novel that caused a shock about transvestitism so maybe something in the water that spawned a generation of feisty women.  

 

Another Hilda who was already in Belgium from about 1913 was Elizabeth Hilda Atkinson, was a governess but based in Charleroi. who prior to the war, became an English  teacher.  She was the daughter of Hoppers Company foreign sales director. Charles Atkinson attempted to have his daughter repatriated  with her friend Louie McDonald via  Holland. Apparently he went to Belgium to try and trace his daughter., 

She met her constant lifetime companion (or partner) Jeanne Godefroid and both joined the resistance for which they were arrested.   It would be nice to know more of the activities.

They continued to live in Belgium after the war and in WW2, they were part of an organisation that helped shot down RAF personnel return to Britain via France, Spain, and Gibraltar. Nobody knew anyone else's identity in the movement, code words always used,  which was successful to a point.

.  Among Hilda's and Jeans feats was stealing an aircraft, as I recall on a trailer, and defacing Nazi anti Churchill posters and covering them with Hitler posters. 

As an example ''Churchill is starving you.'' became ''Hitler is starving your children.'' They were betrayed in 1941 by a local student who was already a Gestapo agent and was apparently executed at the end of the war. This record has proved tricky to locate.  Belgium was conservative with collaborators but did mete out a lot of punishment locally to members of the enthusiastic Bande DuQuesne at La Louviere.  Again I dont know if this mob had anything to do with the arrest of Hilda.   

Hilda was given death sentence for smuggling the escapees and 6 months for the posters.

''Have you anything to say?'' asked the nazi judge. 

''Yes can I do the 6 months first!''  The arrest may have been carried out by a La Bande DuQuesne whose HQ was

 

Mme Godefroid was freed after a few months, but Hilda was transferred around several hard labour camps with cruelty and starvation, enduring allied bombing at Dresden and Koln until her liberation, weighing 6 stones,  by the Russians at Gommern. 

She was awarded the Belgian resistance medal, among others it would seem, looking at the photo below, best one available I'm afraid, and she returned to Yuba House in Barton with Jeanne where she lived until she died in 1978.  At her funeral in Barton, were two of the RAF men who she helped escape.  

Any more information on WW1 or WW2 activity will be, as ever, most welcome.  There isn't a great lot of Belgian info about, Ive gone down the avenues of google translate. 

(Most of info here comes from family and an article in Barton newsletters) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 19 February , 2021 by toofatfortakeoff