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Nelly Martyl was a soprano who was awarded the Croix de Guerre with the carte du combattant (signifying service under particular hazard) in 1920. She created parts including Leborne's La Catalane (1907), Erlanger's La Sorcière (1912), and Massenet's Amadis (1922), but also worked as a Red Cross nurse during the First World War. She served in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, where she was called "la fée de Verdun" (the fairy of Verdun), and at the Second Battle of the Aisne in 1917, and continued to work as a nurse after the war to help fight the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.