Underground medicine in occupied France: carers in the French Resistance (1943-1945)

“Here there was no network, no leader […] just the wounded who required immediate care […]; they crushed me under the weight of their immediate trust […] I was Doctor Martel, a guerrilla surgeon, without instruments, without a hospital, without aides and without a home […].” These are the words of Alec Prochiantz, a hospital intern who became a surgeon for the Morvan maquisards in the summer of 1944, in his wartime memoirs. The sudden plunge into clandestinity that he describes raises questions about the little-studied medical Resistance in occupied France, which is the subject of this article. It sketches a general collective portrait of the men and women who cared for Resistance fighters and the forms of their commitment, before exploring the role of Resistance organisations that were unequally in touch with the realities on the ground. In the end, it uncovers the war as lived by these carers and the particular characteristics of the relationship between carers and patients in the underground.