UNCOVERING THE PAST & SHINING A LIGHT ON THE HEROINES: Writing World War II Women’s Fiction

The series of World War II women’s fiction novels I continue to work on have fostered an even deeper appreciation of the era than I already had. As the niece of a Marine medic who landed on Iwo Jima, the great niece of an aunt who served as a nurse in Africa, and as the daughter of a woman who well remembers the home front life of Victory Gardens, food and gas rationing, black outs and civil patrols, it is not a time in our history very far removed from me (having been born in 1955 – a scant 10 years after VJ Day). First hand recollections instilled a feverish desire to know everything I can about the time, the world, how it began, how we rallied, and how the events changed us.

Since I’ve become a writer, it is not surprising that I gravitated to the period. When contemplating my series of novels, I decided that each book would have as its protagonist/heroine, a woman fulfilling a role that women took on in real life. I came to this decision for a specific reason. All through my life, reading WWII histories, I was continually frustrated by the lack of information on women. A mention here or there, very briefly, of nurses, and occasional references to women in the USO. Aside from the Rosie the Riveter coverage, presented mostly as novelty to break up the important stuff, the most frequent mention of women in wartime was coverage of prostitution.

I started searching because one day my Mother mentioned that her chemistry professor at Skidmore in the early 1950’s had been a chemist working on the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos location of the Manhattan Project – along with some of the most famous scientists in the world. That got me determined to find out more about the other women involved.

Mom also regaled me with stories about her youth during the war. She and my grandparents had a hefty Victory garden and we still have a ration book that my grandmother used. My grandfather was a foreman in the Scranton coal mines and, as such, got additional gas rations because he was employed in the war effort. Neighbors volunteered to be members of the civil patrols. All the kids participated in gathering tin, rubber and the ladies donated silk for parachutes, doing without stockings for the duration so that paratroopers and flight crews could be saved. Women at home scrimped, saved, sacrificed and sent care packages that kept their men in touch with home and what – and who – they were fighting for. No matter who they were, the folks at home did their part and have wonderful stories to be told.

Then I read a book by Janet Dailey, Silver Wings and Santiago Blue, which was a novel about the Women Airforce Service Pilots – the WASPS – who’d taken on the daunting task of plane ferry duty, anti-aircraft gunnery target towing, and the sometimes deadly job of test pilots for the various new aircraft being rolled out to beat the Germans and Japanese in the air wars above Europe and the Pacific. Investigating a bit I discovered a wealth of information.

Reading a biography of Ernest Hemingway, I encountered Martha Gelhorn, one of his wives who reported from many locales, including the front lines, during WWII. This discovery led me to uncover the cadre of female reporters and photographers who were right in the thick of things with the men – despite the battle they had to be permitted, and ultimately, accepted in that role.

Yet again, I was reading a book (I’ve been known to do that ….) called Shining Through by Susan Isaacs. The novel concerned a young Jewish woman who decides to help the war effort and ends up working for the US government and the OSS – the clandestine group that would become the CIA. As a German-speaker, she ultimately volunteers to become a spy in Germany, putting her own life in peril. Lo and behold, I discovered that, indeed, numerous intrepid American women were employed by the OSS (including Julia Child), and while most worked at desks or other, safer duties, many actually were trained and went into occupied territories, a number of them losing their lives.

Once I became enmeshed in the history of the female participants in WWII, and called to mind my aunt’s nursing service, that was another role I investigated. Sure enough, the role of the nurse was a vital one, and many perished in their duties working on the front lines. Early in the war when the generals let Guadalcanal surrender, a number of them were left behind caring for wounded prisoners and these nurses were subsequently captured, and spent the remainder of the war in Japanese POW camps such as Santo Tomaso, under horrific conditions – many of them, along with other internees, dying of disease and starvation.

Bette Midler’s film, “For The Boys” tells the story of a character some say was based on real-life singer Martha Raye and her USO tours during WWII. Lots of other women, famous and otherwise, toured with the USO. Marlene Dietrich for example, though German, was a fervent anti-Nazi and was a familiar USO performer. Soldiers recalled a particular instance in which she, clad in her ubiquitous slacks, helped soldiers get a rolled over Jeep back upright, wiping her hands and walking away afterwards.

Attempting to uncover more of the history of New York City during the War I came across “Over There” and “Helluva Town”, non-fiction titles that covered in great detail the City and surrounding areas during that time. Wouldn’t you know it? While I already knew of the most famous of the WWII female – the iconic Rosie the Riveter – when I read of the plot to sabotage the Long Island Grumman aircraft factory by an American Bund group, which was being funded by money coming in from the German Nazi party, a light bulb went off – how about a heroine Rosie who helps to thwart the plot?

An old movie from my (impressionable) youth, “The Yellow Rolls Royce”, a trilogy of romances involving the title auto. In one segment, a widowed American woman is trapped in Yugoslavia when war breaks out. With her car, her money, and her American fortitude, she aids the Yugoslav partisans in their battle against the Russian and German invaders (falling in love with one, natch). In fact, upon researching, there were many women caught behind enemy lines – including the wives and daughters of missionaries in the Far East. Yet another heroine’s story was born!

So. Why were the exploits of these women so casually dealt with in the histories? I guess because most of them were written by men. But in recent years numerous female historians have uncovered these courageous women and have begun telling their stories. And the self-publishing industry has allowed many, many women who participated to relate their own stories. These first-hand accounts are exceptionally valuable because you are getting the flavor of the times, and the people and details you cannot find as easily in current reports about those times.

It’s been a wonderfully educational experience studying all of the material, and learning of more and more roles American women played in the struggle, and victory, during this conflict. And it just goes to show that ideas come from innumerable sources. For me, I’m well on my way thanks to personal histories, film and fiction, and historical sources. All of this information also means that I can, with luck, help illuminate the history of women in wartime by virtue of my fiction.

The Women of the SOE

“We were all young, we were all different, but we all had the feeling in the beginning that we were going to be helpful. That was why we went into it. And to have impressed the people around them as they did is almost enough. They impressed everyone – the Germans, their guards. They behaved extremely well, those women.” Odette Sansom, SOE Operative, quote from the book Flames in the Field by Rita Kramer.

Following France’s capitulation to Germany, and the signing of the armistice between those nations on June 22, 1940, England’s Foreign Office made an argument that they find some way to assist the French and other resistance movements. A “new organization to co-ordinate, inspire, control and assist the networks of the oppressed countries who must themselves be the direct participants” was proposed by Hugh Dalton, who’d been appointed to the task by Winston Churchill, with the instruction to “now set Europe ablaze”. Soon named the Special Operations Executive (SOE), it was headquartered at 64 Baker Street, in London.

Agents’ training was tough and intensive, including a commando course, and mock interrogations, as well as training in the use of guns, explosives, wireless telegraphy, sabotage and how to survive their clandestine existence in Nazi-occupied territory. They were also taught the techniques of unarmed combat and silent killing. Major William Ewart Fairbairn, in charge of teaching these “ungentlemanly techniques” to the SOE said: “This, is WAR, not sport. Your aim is to kill your opponent as quickly as possible.” It would become clear that female SOE agents were equally as capable in this regard as their male counterparts.

“In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women … have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.” Captain Selwyn Jepson, SOE Senior Recruiting Officer.

In April 1942 Winston Churchill gave his approval on sending female agents into Europe (they had previously been employed in behind-the-scenes work in London rather than in harm’s way). The French Section of the SOE was under the leadership of Maurice Buckmaster, and Vera Atkins, CBE of F Section and Buckmaster’s Intelligence Officer, a masterful asset to the operation and its agents.

Vera Atkins’ attention to the most minute of details, and her resourcefulness at culling information, papers, and clothing, among other things, made her a formidable supervisor. Her SOE agent George Millar said of Atkins that she was “wonderfully soothing in her difficult job. A tough, clever and thorough officer”.

SOE agents carried out three primary jobs: “Circuit” (group) leaders were almost exclusively men. Wireless operators were both men, and women, despite the danger of the job. Lugging the conspicuous 30 pound equipment was bad enough, but the seventy feet of antenna required was also dangerous. That, and the fact that the Nazis generally could locate a radio transmission within half an hour. Finally, couriers were generally always women. Able-bodied men would raise suspicions, because they were either expected to be in the military, or they had been conscripted for forced labor outside of France.

Vera Atkins prepared her charges for their missions, as well as guarding their possessions and private papers – wills. She attended every departure of the agents that she could, and likewise attempted to be present for every return. Too many of her agents did not return. Of the 39 women SOE agents Vera Atkins sent into Europe, thirteen perished.

Two Who Did Not Return. Agents who were captured – men and women alike – faced brutal interrogations, torture and subsequent imprisonment or death, or both. Of the thirteen women who lost their lives in the battle for freedom, two women have reached legendary status for their bravery and fortitude.

Code Name: Louise. Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell Szabo was a French-born girl who moved to London with her family before the war. She had married French Foreign Legionnaire, officer Etienne Szabo and they had a daughter, though Szabo, who died of wounds received in the battle of El Alamain, never saw his child. Following her husband’s death, Violette Szabo offered her considerable resources as a fluent French speaker and someone familiar with France, to the SOE.

Following intense training, including navigation, escape and evasion, demolitions, explosives and cryptology, on April 5, 1944 Szabo parachuted into German-occupied territory near Cherbourg. Her first mission was a success. After reorganizing a group, she led them in sabotage missions, and her wireless reports with locations and details of factories producing war materials for the Germans enabled British bombers to decimate them. She returned to England safely on April 30, 1944.

On June 7, 1944, after arriving in Limoges, France, however, she was a passenger in a car stopped by a Gestapo road-block on June 10. Her fellow Maquis section agents escaped while she retreated into a house and fought off the enemy with a Sten gun until her ammunition ran out and she was arrested. After SD interrogation and torture in Limoges, including sexual assault, rape and severe beatings, reports of which indicate she divulged no information, she was interned first in Fresnes Prison in Paris. Later, Szabo was transferred to the Ravensbruch concentration camp. There, along with three other female SOE agents, - Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefert and Lillian Rolfe, Violette Szabo was executed with a bullet through the neck and her remains disposed of in the crematorium. Szabo, posthumously honored with the British George Cross, the Member of the Order of the British Empire and the French Croix de Guerre, was 23 years old.

Code Name: Nora. Princess Noor Inayat Khan had lived with her family in Russian, London and France before the outbreak of war. In 1940 the family fled to London on June 22, 1940 ahead of advancing German troops. Though influenced by her family’s pacifist teaching, she joined the WAAF and as Aircraftwoman 2nd Class was given wireless operator training. This stood her in good stead when she entered SOE training. Despite her superiors’ misgivings about her ability to engage in secret warfare, her fluency in French and wireless training tipped the scales in her favor. Khan was the first female operator dropped into France and despite the arrest of over half the radio operators in her group, she refused to return to Britain and continued transmitting.

Betrayed by one of two SOE agents, Khan was arrested on October 13, 1943 and interrogated in Paris. All reports indicate that she was a fierce fighter, and was designated an extremely dangerous prisoner. Her interrogation lasted over a month during which she attempted escape twice. Gestapo head Hans Kieffer later testified that she never gave them any information. She managed to escape on November 25, 1943, but was immediately recaptured and was imprisoned. Shackled in chains befitting her dangerous status, she was sent to Dachau concentration camp, along with fellow SOE agents Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman and Madeleine Damerment. All four were shot and executed. However, a Dutch prisoner witnessed, and later recounted, Khan’s brutal end. He claimed that an SS officer stripped and beat her until she was “a bloody mess”, before shooting her. Just before she was shot, she screamed “Liberte!”. The women’s bodies were sent to the crematorium.

Khan was posthumously awarded the British George Cross, the Member of the British Empire and the French Croix de Guerre. She was 30.

Two Who Returned.

Code Name: Lise. Odette Marie Celine Sansom was the daughter of a WWI hero and the wife of an Englishman. Her husband was already in the military when Sansom was asked to join the SOE. Leaving her three daughters, she made her landing near Cannes in 1942. As happened with numerous others, there were double-agents and betrayals and Sansom, along with her supervisor, Peter Churchill, were arrested. Odette immediately showed her mettle. Following her imprisonment Sansom was tortured by the Gestapo, which abuse included having all her toenails pulled out. She failed to break and stuck with her cover story: That she and Churchill were husband and wife and Peter was, in fact, the nephew of Prime Minister Churchill. Regardless ,Odette was condemned to death and transferred to Germany (along with Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden, Andree Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky) and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Unlike her unfortunate compatriots, who were executed there, the erstwhile Sansom, despite being emaciated and gravely ill, actually talked the camp commandant, Friz Suhren, into releasing her. In the face of the allies and the advancing Red army, he did just that.

Sansom was awarded the George Cross for bravery, and the Member of the Order of the British Empire and the French Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. She died in 1995 at age 82.

Code Name: Witch. The bane of the Nazis throughout the war, Nancy Wake became the most decorated servicewoman of World War II. Born in New Zealand and with Maori in the mix of her ethnic makeup, Wake ultimately ran away from home at 16 and began training as a nurse. With her earnings she ended up in London, but moved to Europe to work as a journalist. At the start of the war she was living in France in the height of luxury, married to a wealthy Frenchman. Six months after her wedding Germany invaded France. Wake joined the French Resistance and worked as a courier and smuggler as well as aiding refugees fleeing in advance of the Nazis. She helped more than a thousand escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied fliers to escape through France into Spain. Already under observation by the Gestapo she was so skilled at evading them that they named her The White Mouse. By 1943 they had put her at the top of their most wanted list. It was decided she was too “hot” and she should leave France. She made six attempts to escape by crossing the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. She was captured on one attempt by the French Milice (Vichy militia) and tortured for four days. She escaped with the assistance of another WWII legend, Patrick O’Leary, the “Scarlet Pimpernel of WWII.”.

After reaching London she began work with the SOE. As with the other women she was officially first assigned to the “First Air Nursing Yeomanry”, which was the innocuous cover that remained in place until after the war. Parachuting with a male SOE agent into the Auvergne region to organize the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day invasion, they were in the thick of 22,000 German troops. She led men in guerilla warfare, biked over 100 miles through checkpoints with replacement radio gear (in 71 hours). She said of her safe arrival “I got back and they said ‘how are you?’. I cried. I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t do anything. I just cried.”
Tears or not, she continued to plan drops and sabotages, hiding in the woods and traveling clandestinely to coordinate. Tracked by the Germans, in June 1944, 22,000 SS troops attacked her 7,000 Maquis. The end results after Nancy and her troops escaped: 1,400 German fatalities; 100 Maquis dead. Wake continued waging her amazing war against the enemy, including a raid on Gestapo headquarters in Montucon, where she killed a sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alert. And following another raid, on a German gun factory, she fought her way out, surviving shootouts at German roadblocks and personally executing a German female spy.

After the war The White Mouse, was showered with recognition. The George Medal for “leadership and bravery under fire”, the Résistance Medal, Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre with two bronze palms and a silver star and the Medal of Freedom from America. Oddly Australia, her adopted homeland, failed to recognize her until 2004 when she was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2006 she received the New Zealand RSA Badge in Gold. Nancy Wake is alive and living in a New Zealand nursing home, aged 97.

Aftermath: Immediately after the war ended, the SOE was disbanded. But Vera Watkins demanded to know what had happened to the 13 women who never returned. She finagled a military commission and hunted down the ends of all the courageous agents she had sent off to their deaths. In the process she gathered evidence against numerous Gestapo, SS and Nazi military which was used in prosecutions against them at the Nuremburg and Dachau war crimes trials. Of her tireless efforts, Atkins said: “You owe people something, after all, who fought for you and risked their life for you.”

Silence, yes
Let them have silence.
Call the roll of their names
and let it go at that.
To long sleep and deep silence
they have gone.
Deep among the never forgotten.

Carl Sandburg

They Sang Through The Storm

The USO performers who entertained the troops during WWII may look like a bunch of gals having a good time, but they performed miracles. They gave laughs where there was misery and they took the minds of the soldiers off the grim realities of their lives. They "flashed their gams" and gave out kisses and hugs and winks. They didn't carry guns, nor did they patch up the wounded. But they laughed, sang and danced their way across continents with a single goal in mind.

Bring joy. Bring a moment of happiness, of diversion and, for all the men, remind them that there was beauty and love waiting for them at home.

Through Lee's Eyes

Lee Miller was a beautiful woman. She was famous for her glamorous fashion photography and worked with Man Ray, to eventually open her own studio as a Surrealist.

In stark contrast to the beauty of her prior work, her photographs of World War II stand as a mute testimony to man's inhumanity to man.

Whereas the official Lee Miller website indicates she was "probably the only woman combat photo-journalist to cover the war in Eurpope", she was in fact one of several, including Margaret Bourke-White and Dickie Chappelle. But as one of a select few, she brought her artistic sensibilities and her photographic eye to the task of formulating a record of the War.

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller was no stranger to the darkest aspects of humanity. At the age of 7 she was raped and contracted gonorrhea. Subsquently a nude model for her father and brothers, all photographers, she learned the process as well.

A freak near-accident introduced the stunning young woman to Conde Nast, when he pulled her from in front of a car on a Manhattan street. Thus began her modeling career, which put her in front of the camera for a number of years, where she was much in demand. But her creative drive soon led her to pursue her photographic career, including her years with Man Ray, where she was student, lover and muse. Accordingly to numerous sources, many photographs credited to Man Ray were, in fact, Lee's.

Upon leaving Man Ray, and returning to New York, Miller established her own studio and commercial photography business and was a well-known portrait photographer, including among her clients British actress Gertrude Lawrence. Her work was also included in numerous exchibitions. Her commerical endeavor was abandoned when she met, and married, Egyptian businessman, Aziz Eloui Bey.

However, at the outbreak of WWII the two were separated and Miller was living in London with British artist, Roland Penrose (their son, Anthony Penrose authored the books, Lives of Lee Miller and Lee Miller's War).

Her professional association with Conde Nast led to her receiving accreditation as a war correspondent for the U. S. Army at the age of 35. She and Life Magazine correspondent David E. Scherman worked together and he was the photographer of the famous photo of Lee, above, bathing in Hitler's bathtub. Note her boots, which were covered in the mud of Dachau, the liberation of which she witnessed and recorded.

Throughout the War in Europe she recorded the people and the carnage with unerring vision. Her photographs of a field hospital in Normandy contain pictures of her fellow female participants in the war, the field hospital nurses. She was one of the first journalists into the concentration camps, Buchenwald and Dachau. She recorded the devastation of the London blitz, the aftermath of the Normany D-Day landings, the liberation of Paris, numerous battles and likewise recorded the human toll of men, women and children off the battlefield. Not only providing the photographs, she wrote the text that accompanied them. Following the war she remained to catalogue for the world the devastation wrought upon the lands and the people.

While her surrealist taste led her to photograph wrecked pianos, crushed typewriters and mannequins amid the rubble of destruction, it is the photographs of the toll on humanity that resonate to me. Her famous photograph of a dead German SS officer , above,illustrates the quiet power of her work.

Among her husbands and lovers were Shuman, Penrose, Man Ray, Aziz Eloui Bey. Following the war she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress and her later life was complicated by alcohol and her emotional problems. When she discovered she was pregnant with Anthony, who was to be her only child, she married Penrose and the moved to Sussex and lived on Farley Farm, which became a gathering place of artists, but Miller gave up photography for gourmet cooking.

Upon her death from cancer at aged 70, Lee was cremated and her ashes scattered in her herb garden.

Her lack of communication on her life and her war experiences was not to stifle her history. Her son, Anthony, discovered her journals and the negatives of her photographs, thus enabling us to view the world that Lee Miller viewed. Through her talented and tormented eyes.

In addition to Anthony Penrose's books on his mother's work and her life, biographer Carolyn Burke released "Lee Miller, A Life", in 2006.

Other titles by and about Lee Miller, her life and her art include:

The Art of Lee Miller by Mark Haworth-Booth (Yale Univ. Press)
Lee Miller and Roland Penrose: The Green Memories of Desire by Katherine Slusher(Prestel Publishing)
Roland Penrose & Lee Miller: The Surrealist and the Photographer by Penrose & Miller(National Galleries of Scotland)
Lee Miller: Portraits from a Life by Richard Calvocoressi

Through Lee's Eyes

Lee Miller was a beautiful woman.

War Is Hell

I'm distracted from my studies of the "good war", fought by the "Greatest Generation", as a result of studies and reports on the current misguided military excursion. I don't want to call it a war because that gives it an official status that I cannot tolerate.

Beyond the 4,000 plus soliders - men and women, so many of them teens and young adults - who have died, there are the countless thousands who are coming home not just wounded, battered, and bitter, but homicidal and suicidal. They are having flashbacks and uncontrollable impulses. They are killing wives, girlfriends, husbands, children, family members and perfect strangers. And themselves.

The untold number of suicides is a disgraceful fact being hidden by the government, the VA hospitals, the military and yes, the media.

For shame.

For the life's blood of our youth.

For the future of this country.

Won't someone have the courage to stand up and tell the truth?

Blood & Guts

A few weeks back, there was an obit for a lady from France who'd been a spy. Then a few days ago, there was another.

I've got the clips somewhere and I'll do a more in depth analysis, but ultimately I wanted to note their passing.

They were spies. They led troops. They saved men. One was a little feminine thing and she made numerous trips over various mountain ranges, leading downed pilots to safety. She got medals and acclaim, but in the end, until she died, who knew?

The other lady was less "hands on" shall we say, but equally important.

So why aren't they the stuff of legends? Why aren't they listed in the "Greatest Generation" bestsellers? What happened to the women who gave their lives?

I'm getting a slow start, but I'm not giving up on the commemorative projects I envision for these brave souls.

If you have other anecdotes, if you know women who gave their all - or even a lot - let me know. Because I'm here for the long haul and I'll have these ladies' contributions in print or else.