Personal information

Born as Marie Parmentier in the German territory Alsace-Lorraine, her father Jean Parmentier was from Luxembourg. The territory became French again after the First World War and she went to Paris to study archeology at the Ecole du Louvre, where Marie met the archaeologist Joseph Hackin and became a French citizen after marrying him in 1928. She became closely associated with the research of her husband and together they made several excavation campaigns in Afghanistan. Marie even accompanied Joseph to Kabul after he was mobilized as Captain of the Reserve at the outbreak of war and sent there in March 1940. They travelled to London via Bombay and joined the civil service of the Free French Forces. When her husband was sent back to India as representative of General de Gaulle she choose to go with him, but they were lost on passage aboard Jonathan Holt from Liverpool to Takoradi.