THE QUIET HEROINE OF LA RESISTANCE AGENT TORTURED BY GESTAPO A WARTIME resistance heroine who survived torture by the Gestapo was laid to rest yesterday. Lucie Bruce was just 15-year-old Lucie Chevalier when she joined the organisation in her native Belgium. But the fighter codenamed Lulu spied on German troops, blew up bridges and a station and helped to hide downed British airmen. Towards the end of the war Lucie was captured by the Gestapo, who tore her fingernails out and put her through three mock executions. But she refused to reveal any secrets. She was sent to a labour camp in Germany and put to work in a munitions factory. She escaped despite being shot in the arm and spent six weeks evading capture until she reached Holland, malnourished and having lost her teeth. Dutch underground fighters returned her to Belgium - where she carried on with her work in La Resistance. After the war she married and settled in Bridport, Dorset, where she died aged 82. Her second husband David Bruce said after her funeral yesterday: "She had a remarkable life and was incredibly brave in the face of the Nazis. She carried out very dangerous and risky assignments. "When her father found out she had joined the group he tried to get her out of it but she was already too valuable and knew too much. "She was horribly tortured by the Gestapo. They kept her in water up to her waist and left her in cold cells for days on end without food. "They pulled all her nails off and she wore false ones for the rest of her life. She also had a nasty wound on her arm where she was shot. "She suffered badly from arthritis in later life and I'm sure this was from the torture. "She was a remarkable woman who spent her life doing things for others." Lucie leaves three children, two stepchildren, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
