World War II ‘white angel’ French nun dies aged 103

DIEPPE, FRANCE: A French nun who was called “the white angel” by Canadian soldiers she saved during one of the worst single disasters to befall Allied armies during World War II has died aged 103, authorities said Saturday. Sister Agnes-Marie Valois died on Thursday in a monastery, officials in the northern town of Dieppe said. She tended to wounded soldiers in the Dieppe Raid of August 19, 1942, when a 6,000-strong force of Canadian and British troops lost 4,131 men — they were killed, wounded or captured in just six hours while briefly seizing a Channel port held by the Germans. Valois saved several lives by persuading German officials to tend to some of the wounded and also stole German rations to feed the injured. The raid, codenamed Operation Jubilee, was the first time the Canadian army had engaged in the European theatre of the war. Her father was an industrialist in the French city of Rouen. Born in 1914, Agnes Valois trained as a nurse with the Red Cross before joining the Augustine order in 1936.