Military Power

Susan Travers, an English socialite who had spent much of her early life in the South of France (and had once been a competitor at the Wimbledon Tennis tournament), was the only woman to ever join the French Foreign Legions. After a failed attempt to become an Ambulance Driver during the Winter War in Finland, she went as a nurse to join the Free French in Dakar, West Africa. Here she persuaded the Red Cross to allow her to accompany the Foreign Legion to Eritea. There she gave up nursing and joined the Legion as a driver. She went with them to Syria and ultimately into the Western Desert, being present during the obstinate siege and breakout from Ben Hacheim. Later in the War she would be an ambulance Driver with the U.S. 5th Army in Italy before being reunited with the Legion during the invasion of Southern France in 1944.

In August 1945 Susan Travers was formally enlisted as the only female member of the French Foreign Legion. Her wartime career would earn her a Military Medal and the Legion d’ Honneur. Posted to Indo-China she became pregnant and married a fellow legionnaire, Nicholas Schlegelmilch. They would have two children and when Nicholas left the Legion in 1950 they moved back to Paris where they would live until Susan’s death in 2003.