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by Donna Pedace (Author)
Behind the veil of secrecy, not yet raised by the Air Ministry, there are great stories of courage and endurance. For the agent has no status, no friendly uniform or consul to rely on. With her friends, she is outside the law - until it catches up with her.
This book contains brief stories about the lives of a group of fifty-two (52) courageous women who dared to break all the accepted rules regarding women in war zones. They agreed to be field agents and go into German-occupied France during World War II (WWII) to do what they could to help bring down the Nazi Government and end the Nazi occupation of France.
"Female spies." The word conjures up images of James Bond villainesses in slinky dresses, purring double-edged one-liners through a haze of cigarette smoke as they coax information out of the enemy. Spying wasn't really perceived as glamorous until after the Bond myth took hold. Women have always been essential parts of the intelligence business, simply because women could often eavesdrop, run messages, or pass information without being noticed and suspected as men would have been. During the mid-1900s, few men believed that a woman could deceive them with spycraft.
The real lives of the women who volunteered to go behind enemy lines were much more mundane - and dangerous. The price that was often paid for such courage could be horrifying. It could, and often did, include imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, mutilation, and death. Any mix of those horrors awaited the women if they were caught.
In the dark days that followed the fall of France, a new volunteer fighting force was hastily improvised at the direction of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to wage a secret war against Hitler's armies. This force was called the Special Operations Executive (SOE.)
