Agnès-Marie Valois: The Angel of Dieppe

by Linda Harris Sittig

Dieppe? Never heard of it? I’m not surprised.

Yet, for the Allied forces, it was one of World War II’s worst military disasters.

DIEPPE, FRANCE

On August 19, 1942, an Allied landing force of over 6,000 military personnel attempted an amphibious assault on the shores of Dieppe, a small town across from England in the Normandy section of France.

The Allied troops mainly came from Canada, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Germany had already occupied the town, but only 1,500 soldiers were physically present on location.

The Allies aimed to destroy German coastal defenses and buildings, but the raid backfired. There was not enough aerial and naval presence to support the troops on the beach, and the Allied tanks became mired in the sand. Finally, the Germans’ constant shelling, coupled with many well-placed obstacles, prevented the Allies from making any headway.

After six hours of fighting, over half of the Allied soldiers were either killed, wounded, or taken as prisoners of War.

Close to 2,750 men lay wounded on the stark battlefield—a mixture of both Allies and Germans. Only a handful of medics were available to help the severely injured. The nearest hospital was in Rouen, 49 miles away, and run by an order of Augustinian nuns.

Ten nuns, trained as surgical nurses, were sent post-haste to the battlefield. Agnès-Marie Valois was one of them.

AGNES-MARIE

Agnès-Marie was born in Rouen in 1914 and entered the convent of the Mercy of Jesus at twenty-two. The convent was run by the Canonesses of St. Augustine and was called the Hôtel-Dieu because it functioned as a hospital for the poor.

Agnès-Marie took her temporary vow in 1938 and her permanent, solemn vow in 1941. By that time, WWII had already exploded in Europe, beginning with the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939.

THE BATTLE

Because Agnès-Marie had been trained as a nurse, she was assigned to the surgical ward of Hôtel-Dieu. When the disaster at Dieppe occurred, Agnès-Marie and the other nuns were quickly transferred to Dieppe to take care of the wounded.

There are many stories of how she and the other nuns worked tirelessly. They treated the wounded, both Allied and German and held the hands of dying men calling out for their mothers.

Perhaps the story that is told the most was when Agnès-Marie was treating a POW who had been badly wounded. A German soldier suddenly appeared and aimed his rifle at the POW, intent on killing him.

Agnès-Marie stood up and positioned herself in front of the POW, facing the German soldier. He screamed at her to move, but she remained in place. He waved the rifle at her, and still, she would not move. Finally, the soldier furiously retreated, and the POW was saved. However, whether or not he survived the war was never recorded.

But Agnès-Marie’s courage became legendary.  On more than one occasion, the German soldiers demanded that she take care of their wounded first. She replied that she treated whoever needed her the most, regardless of nation or rank.

And she indeed never showed any favoritism; all the wounded deserved her attention. When the raid was finally over, Agnès-Marie walked the bloodstained beach that was strewn with bodies. When interviewed at a later time and asked to comment on the war, she replied: “It wasn’t war; it was a massacre.”

Days after the raid, when the most severely wounded had been tended to, the nuns were able to arrange transport for other wounded Allied soldiers to the Hôtel-Dieu, where the nuns could continue caring for them.

Dieppe in that late summer of 1942 was one of WWII’s horrific landscapes. It would take another 22 months for another horrific battle scene in Normandy to occur. This was the Allied seaborn operation nicknamed Neptune.

For many of us, that would be D-Day, the invasion that helped turn the tide of the European War Theater in the Allied favor.  And while Agnès-Marie was still nursing, she was not recorded as present on the D-Day invasion.

AFTER WWII

After the war, Agnès-Marie became a hospital administrator, and when the Hôtel-Dieu closed in 1968, she went to another convent.

Agnès-Marie passed in 2017 at 103 and is still remembered as ‘The Angel of Dieppe.’    

Thank you to fellow writer Elizabeth Becker, whose breakout novel, The Moonlight Healers (available February 2025 – https://www.amazon.com/Moonlight-Healers-Elizabeth-Becker/dp/1525830422), paid tribute to sister Agnès-Marie. I had never heard of the nun but decided to research her. And I am so glad I did – a true Strong Woman.

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I have five published books on strong women and am passionately working on my sixth. You can read the reviews and or find the order links at https://www.lindasittig.com.

Linda ~