When the First World War ended, hundreds of British veterans stayed in France to look after the graves of their fallen countrymen as part of the newly chartered Imperial War Graves Commission. Through the 1920s and 1930s, these veteran-gardeners married local women, raised bilingual children, and dedicated themselves to caring for their beloved dead.In 1940, the Second World War swept over Europe, stranding the gardeners in Nazi-occupied France. Their bosses explicitly ordered the gardeners to remain at their posts, even when their villages were under attack by the invading Germans. While some managed to escape on their own, nearly two hundred gardeners were arrested by the Nazis.A handful of others managed to stay free and join the French Resistance. With their English-language skills and their unshakable loyalty to the Allied cause, the gardeners and their families took on crucial roles in the effort to save British and American airmen who were shot down in France, serving as interro