Free French Air Forces

When she is well enough to stand, she goes back on tour across North Africa and the Middle East, singing for soldiers in hospital tents and on airfields, and every performance is also a reason to be in a place where someone might say something useful.

In October 1944, after Paris is liberated, she comes home wearing the uniform of the Free French Air Force.

For this work, she receives the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Resistance, and in 1961, from Charles de Gaulle's government, the Legion d'honneur.

She is pinned with it in her own garden, with her children lined up to watch.

It is the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Later this afternoon, Martin Luther King Jr. will speak about a dream.

But before him, a fifty-seven-year-old woman steps to the microphone wearing the uniform of the Free French Air Force with her medals on her chest.

She has flown in from Paris.