Band of Sisters: The Blue Squadron

Band of Sisters tells the dramatic story of Madeleine Pauliac, a French army doctor, and a group of Red Cross nurses and ambulance drivers--known as the Blue Squadron. At the request of Charles DeGualle, the group was sent to rescue French soldiers and civilians who had been captured, injured, or stranded during World War II. Written from letters, diary entries and interviews, the book recounts their rescue missions in Germany, Russia, and Poland in 1945, in the final days of the war and in the first months after the German defeat.

It’s a previously unknown story of heroism and daring by a remarkable group of women, none more brave and intrepid than Pauliac herself, who was the author’s aunt that he would never know.

Philippe Maynial is a film executive turned writer and the nephew of Madeline Pauliac, the main character of the narrative. Before he embarked on his research into his aunt’s experiences in World War II, Maynial spent his entire career in the film industry. He currently resides in France.

Richard Bernstein has been a prominent journalist and writer for forty years, first with Time magazine, then for a quarter of a century at The New York Times, and currently as a freelance writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. His foreign assignments for The Times included the posts of bureau chief at the United Nations, the Paris bureau, and Berlin. For six years, he was one of the paper’s daily book critics.