{"id":23,"date":"2024-06-18T17:31:32","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T17:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2024-07-04T04:22:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T04:22:29","slug":"women-warriors","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/women-warriors\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Women Warriors from the Sky<\/span><\/h1>\n

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After the first World War and prior to the second, many countries organized airborne troopers, comprised of entirely men.<\/center>
Soon after the invasions of Belgium, France and Poland, women joined their brothers of the silk to aid in the survival of their way of life.<\/center><\/p>\n
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Lise de Baissac
\n\u201cOdile\u201d
\n(1905 \u20132004)<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n
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Along with\u00a0Andree Borrel, Lise de Baissac became the first two women agents to be parachuted into\u00a0France.
\nLise de Baissac was born in Mauritius on May 11, 1905. During the Second World War,she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE).<\/p>\n

Given the code name \u201cMarguerite\u201d, Baissac and\u00a0Andr\u00e9e Borrel, became the first women agents to be was parachuted into\u00a0France\u00a0on 24th September 1942. They landed in the village of Boisrenard close to the town of Mer.<\/p>\n

After staying with the French Resistance for a couple of days Lise moved to Poiters. Over the next few months Lise acted as liaison officer between the Prosper, Scientist and Bricklayer networks.As she did not have a wireless she had to travel to Paris to send and receive messages and collect funds, or to Bordeaux where Claude de Baissac was building up the large circuit, organizing sabotage and providing\u00a0reports on submarines and shipping.In June 1943, the\u00a0Gestapo\u00a0arrested several agents involved with the Prosper network including\u00a0Andr\u00e9e Borrel,\u00a0Francis Suttill\u00a0and\u00a0Gilbert Norman, but Baissac managed to escape back to\u00a0England. Lise was dropped back into France in April 1944, to work with the Pimento Circuit run by the SOE agent Anthony Brooks and joined her brother\u00a0Claude de Baissac, who had gone to Normandy to reconnoitre large landing grounds that could be held for 48 hours while airborne troops established themselves. A British army officer later claimed: \u201cThe part she played in aiding the Maquis and the British underground movement in France cannot be too highly stressed and did much to facilitate the Maquis preparations and resistance prior to the American breakthrough in Mayenne.\u201d According to her\u00a0Special Operations Executive\u00a0file: \u201cShe was the inspiration of groups on the Orne and by her initiative caused heavy losses to the Germans with tyre bursters on the roads near St Aubin-le-Desert, St Mars, and as far as Laval, Le Mans and Rennes. She also took part in several armed attacks on enemy columns.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

Lise de Baissac was awarded the MBE in September, 1945. After the war she married Henri Villameur, an artist and interior decorator living in Marseilles.<\/p>\n

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Krystyna Skarbek
\n<\/strong>aka
\nChristine Granville
\n(1908\u20131952)<\/strong><\/center>\u201cBewitching, beautiful with brilliant, brown, arresting eyes, and crackling vitality\u201d, had \u201ca positive nostalgie for danger\u201d and \u201cwas miserable without a chance to meet it.\u201d Under the nom de guerre \u201cMadame Pauline\u201d, Krystyna Skarbek parachuted into France carrying a map printed on silk and cyanide pills; her fearless bombast, resourcefulness and undeniable charm would be legendary. She became Winston Churchhill\u2019s favorite spy and is rumored to be model for Vesper Lynd, Ian Fleming\u2019s first Bond girl. She was said to be deadly with her pistol but preferred silent killing with her ever-present knife, or even her bare hands. That impish grin belied a woman capable of anything.<\/p>\n

Born Maria Krystyna Janina on May 1, in Warsaw to Count Jerzy Skarbek, and Stefania (Goldfeder) as their second child. Called Vesper (star) by her father and taking after her father\u2019s side of the family, the Skarbeks had saved Poland from medieval invaders and served its royal courts, she inherited the self\u2010assuredness, patriotism and fearlessness of her ancestors, she could be extremely persuasive, selfless and fiercely loyal, but was equally capable of cold ruthlessness. Krystyna\u2019s love for the outdoors, skiing and horses would serve her well later in life. A \u201ctom-boy\u201d, she rode astride rather than side-saddle and was an expert skier with regular visits to Zakopane in the Tatra mountains of southern Poland. Another trait that put her in good stead for her future clandestine work was her ability to keep secrets; throughout her life she was careful what she divulged, even to her closest friends. Physically stunning from the very start, in 1930, Krystyna Skarbek competed in the Miss Polonia contest, placing sixth; her father died the same year. She married and divorced Karol Getlich when she was young, and married Jerzy Gizycki, an adventurer and diplomat, at the Evangelical Reformed Church in Warsaw on November 2, 1938. After marriage the couple left for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Jerzy took up the post of Polish consul.They were in Ethiopia when German forces invaded Poland the following September. Krystyna and her husband went to London, where she volunteered to work for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS); she had a plan: she would go to Budapest, print propaganda leaflets, and ski across the Tatra mountains into Poland to undertake intelligence missions and assist Polish resistance fighters. Reluctantly, MI6 approved the plan. Given the name Christine Granville, she departed for Budapest on December 21, 1939. She met the one-legged Polish war hero Andrzej Kowerski, and the two fell in love; he became Andrew Kennedy. With the help of a member of Poland\u2019s Olympic ski team, she was able to cross the mountains into her native country. The Nazis considering the Tatra mountains too treacherous to cross did not guard that part of the frontier. In Warsaw, Krystyna located her mother but was unable to convince her to give up her work in the underground; she was later taken away by Gestapo and she died at Warsaw\u2019s Pawiak prison. Helping organize a system of Polish couriers to smuggle intelligence from Warsaw to Budapest, Krystyna Skarbek\u2019s intelligence activities were so successful that large posters with a reward for her capture were put up in every railroad station in Poland. She procured photos of German troops massing on the borders of the Soviet Union, alerting England of Germany\u2019s upcoming invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa. (Her prediction that Germany would invade the Soviet Union came true on June 22, 1941. British prime minister Winston Churchill,who had heard Soviet leader Josef Stalin dismiss the possibility, dubbed Skarbek his favorite spy.) SOE was founded in July 1940 and Granville, her official name upon naturalization as a British subject, began her career as one of the longest serving of all Britain\u2019s wartime women agents. She and her husband were arrested early in 1941 by the Gestapo. During her interrogation, Christine bit her own tongue hard enough to draw blood, coughed hard, and succeeded in convincing a Hungarian doctor that she was suffering from tuberculosis.
\nKowerski (Kennedy) and Christine, as a result of her \u201cillness\u201d, were released. She was then smuggled out of Hungary in the trunk of a car belonging to British ambassador Sir Owen O\u2019Malley, crossing successfully into Yugoslavia. O\u2019Malley, called her\u201dthe bravest person I ever knew. She could do anything with dynamite\u2014except eat it.\u201d Her husband followed in an Opel he claimed to have sold to someone across the border, and the two made their way through hundreds of miles of Nazi-occupied territory to SOE headquarters in Cairo.
\nOn July 6, 1944, she parachuted into southern France under the code-name \u201cPauline Armand\u201d. Her mission was to aid the French resistance in advance of the Allied ground advance in France.
\nDescribed by the legendary intelligence officer Vera Atkins as a \u201cbeautiful animal with a great appetite for love and laughter,\u201d her daring exploits are stuff of legend. She masterminded the escape of senior SOE agent Francis Cammaerts. Gaining the agent\u2019s release by threatening to turn a mob loose, after the Allies liberated the region, an officer of the French collaborationist Milice, handed Cammaerts over to Granville; Cammaerts had been due to be executed on the morning of his escape. In early August 1944, after a two-day hike through the mountains she persuaded Polish conscripts in the German garrison at Col de Larche, to desert and then managed to convince the resident German troops to surrender also. Arrested and detained by enemy authorities on numerous occasions, lies, threats, bribery and even sexual coercion were all tools of the trade craft for Agent Pauline; once she and Kennedy were stopped near the Italian border by two German soldiers. Told to put her hands in the air she did so, revealing a grenade under each arm, pin withdrawn. When she threatened to drop them, killing all the group, the German soldiers fled.
\nAfter the war Christine discovered that her mother had died in prison. She returned to Cairo where she took a job at Middle East headquarters, SOE agreed to continue paying her until December 1945, Christine also gained her parachute \u201cwings\u201d at the RAF base in Haifa and she became a British citizen in December 1946. In May 1947 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). French recognition of Christine\u2019s contribution to the liberation of France came with the award of the Croix de Guerre.
\nOn June 15, 1952. Christine Granville was stabbed to death in the Shelbourne Hotel, in London, by Dennis George Muldowney, whose advances Christine had spurned; Muldowney was hanged at HMP Pentonville on September 30, 1952. Following Andrzej Kowerski (Andrew Kennedy)\u2019s death in December 1988, his ashes were interred at the foot of Christine\u2019s grave.
\nHer Fairbairn Sykes dagger, medals and some of her papers are now in the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum Kensington, London. In May 2017, a bronze bust, by Ian Wolter, was unveiled at the Polish Hearth Club in Kensington, London.
\n\u201cGreat energy and very quick thinking and very helpful and very kind, a true, real person.\u201d Iza Muszkowska, 94 at the funeral.<\/p>\n

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Nancy Wake<\/strong>
\n\u201cWhite Mouse\u201d<\/strong>
\n(1912\u20132011)<\/strong><\/center>Nancy Wake is credited with helping hundreds of POWs escape, was the Allies\u2019 most decorated woman of WWII, and the Gestapo\u2019s most-wanted. Because of her ability to evade capture, the Nazis code-named her the \u2018White Mouse\u2019. Dropped by parachute into the Auvergne region of France, the saboteur and Resistance fighter, organized an army of 7,000 Maquis guerrillas. Even without a weapon, she could be deadly. \u201cShe is the most feminine woman I know until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men\u201d-Captain Ian Garrow. \u201cSomebody once asked me: \u2018Have you ever been afraid?\u2019 Hah! I\u2019ve never been afraid in my life\u201d -at the age of 89.<\/p>\n

Born the youngest of six children, in Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand, on August 30, 1912 to Charles Augustus and Ella Rosieur, Bancy was \u2018a force of nature\u2019. When Nancy was still in diapers, her family moved to Sydney. Nancy attended the North Sydney Household Arts School and at the age of 16, ran away from home. With \u00a3200 that she had inherited from an aunt, she journeyed to New York City, then London where she trained herself as a journalist; moving to Paris she worked for Hearst newspapers as European correspondent.
\n\u201cI was a loner and I had a good imagination.\u201d
\nIn 1939 Nancy married French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in the town hall of Marseilles. \u201cHe was the love of my life.\u201d Living in luxury on a hill overlooking Marseilles when Germany invaded France just six months after being married, she joined the Resistance as a courier, smuggling messages and food to underground groups in Southern France. She bought an ambulance and used it to help refugees fleeing the German advance. She obtained false papers that allowed her to stay and work in the Vichy France, and spirited more than a thousand escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied fliers out of France.
\nThe Gestapo nicknamed her the \u201cWhite Mouse\u201dand by 1943, she was No.1 on the Gestapo\u2019s most wanted list and there was a five million-franc price on her head. Being too risky for Nancy to stay in France decided she should go back to Britain.
\n\u201cHenri said \u2018You have to leave\u2019, and I remember going out the door saying I\u2019d do some shopping, that I\u2019d be back soon. And I left and I never saw him again. She learned that the Gestapo had tortured her husband to death in 1943 for refusing to disclose her whereabouts.
\nNancy Wake became one of 39 women and 430 men in the French Section of the British S O E. She was trained in survival skills, silent killing, codes and radio operation, night parachuting, plastic explosives, Sten guns, rifles, pistols and grenades.
\nIn late April 1944, Nancy Wake and Major John Farmer, were parachuted into France, in preparation for the D-Day invasion, to locate and organize the bands of Maquis, establish ammunition and arms caches from the parachute drops, and arrange radio communication with England. Their mission was to organize the Resistance. The Resistance movement\u2019s principal objective was to weaken the German army for a major attack by allied troops. (Nancy\u2019s parachute became stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her \u2018that French shit\u2019.)
\nOn one occasion Nancy bicycled 500 km, in 71 hours through several German checkpoints to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid. In June 1944, a bitter battle between 22,000 SS troops and her 7,000 Maquis resulted in 1,400 German and 100 of her own men dead. Nancy personally led a raid on Gestapo headquarters in Montucon, and silenced (killed) a sentry with her bare hands during a raid on a German gun factory. She had to shoot her way out roadblocks; and execute a German female spy.
\nNancy continued to work with the SOE and at the British Air Ministry in the Intelligence Department. In 1960 she married a former prisoner of war, Englishman John Forward, and returned to Australia to live. On December 6, 2001, Nancy left her home in Port Macquarie, Australia to spend her final years in her cherished England. Nancy became a resident of the Stafford Hotel in London, welcomed warmly, offered free residence and her own specially reserved bar stool, until moving to the Star and Garter forces retirement home in 2003 where she passed away eight years later on August 7. Right up to her death, she remained assertive about what would happen to her body: \u201cI want to be cremated, and I want my ashes to be scattered over the mountains where I fought with the resistance. That will be good enough for me\u201d.
\nNancy Wake \u2013 Code Name: The White Mouse<\/p>\n

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Sabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en<\/strong>
\n(1913\u20132001)<\/strong><\/center>Hard to believe but the world\u2019s first female combat pilot was from a Muslim country.
\nAdopted by Turkish President Mustafa Atat\u00fcrk in 1925, Sabiha was given the surname G\u00f6k\u00e7en meaning \u2018belonging to the sky\u2019. During an airshow of gliders and parachutists, she got very excited and Atat\u00fcrk asked her whether she wanted to become a skydiver? \u201cYes indeed, I am ready right now\u201d. The President instructed the head of the school to enroll her as their first female trainee.
\nSabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en (March 22, 1913 \u2013 March 22, 2001)
\nSabiha\u2019s birth and early childhood is very confusing but during Turkish President Atat\u00fcrk\u2019s visit to Bursa in 1925, her life dramatically changed. Sabiha, no last name, at only twelve years old, spoke with President Atat\u00fcrk and expressed her desire to study in a boarding school. After learning of her story and about her miserable living conditions, Atat\u00fcrk decided to adopt Sabiha and took her to live in the \u00c7ankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara.
\nShe attended the \u00c7ankaya Primary School in Ankara and the \u00dcsk\u00fcdar American Academy in Istanbul.
\nAtat\u00fcrk, who attached great importance to aviation and oversaw the foundation of the Turkish Aeronautical Association, in 1925 took Sabiha along with him to the opening ceremony of T\u00fcrkku\u015fu (Turkishbird) Flight School on May 5, 1935. During the airshow of gliders and parachutists invited from foreign countries, she got very excited. Atat\u00fcrk asked her whether she would want to become a skydiver, to which she responded: \u201cYes indeed, I am ready right now\u201d. Atat\u00fcrk instructed Fuat Bulca, the head of the school, to enroll her as the school\u2019s first female jump student. That same year, Atat\u00fcrk granted Turkish women full political rights, making Turkey one of the first nations in the world to give women the right to vote.
\nShe was meant to become a skydiver, but Sabiha was more interested in flying than jumping. She made her first solo flight in 1936 and received her pilot\u2019s license. Sabiha was sent to Russia with seven male students for an advanced course in glider and powered aircraft piloting.
\nA year later she joined the military aviation school at Eskisehir, becoming the first woman in the world to obtain military flight wings .
\nSabiha honed her skills by flying bombers and fighters in the 1st Aircraft Regiment at Eski\u015fehir Airbase. After participating in the Aegean and Thrace exercises in 1937, she took part in the Dersim rebellion and became the first Turkish female air force pilot to fly in combat. The General Staff citing the \u201cserious damage\u201d that she had inflicted with her 50 kg bomb to a group of fifty fleeing \u201cbandits.\u201d including killing the rebel Ieader, she was awarded with a Takdirname (letter of appreciation). She was also awarded the Turkish Aeronautical Association\u2019s first \u201cMurassa (Jeweled) Medal\u201d for her superior performance in this operation.
\nIn 1938, she carried out a five-day flight around the Balkan countries to great acclaim. In the same year, she was appointed \u201cChief Trainer\u201d of the T\u00fcrkku\u015fu Flight School of the Turkish Aeronautical Association, where she served until 1954 as a flight instructor and became a member of the association\u2019s executive board. She trained four female aviators, Edibe Suba\u015f\u0131, Y\u0131ld\u0131z U\u00e7man, Sahavet Karapas and Nezihe Viranyal\u0131. Sabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en continued to fly around the world until 1964. Her book entitled \u201cA Life Along the Path of Atat\u00fcrk\u201d was published in 1981 by the Turkish Aeronautical Association to commemorate Atat\u00fcrk\u2019s 100th birthday.
\nThroughout her career in the Turkish Air Force, Sabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en flew 22 different types of aircraft for more than 8,000 hours, 32 hours of which were active combat and bombardment missions.
\nSabiha G\u00f6k\u00e7en International Airport in Istanbul is named after her. Sabiha died two months after the official opening of the airport, on March 22, 2001, her 88th birthday, at the Gulhane Military Medical Academy in Ankara.
\nShe was selected as the only female pilot for the poster of \u201cThe 20 Greatest Aviators in History\u201d published by the United States Air Force in 1996.<\/p>\n
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Lilian Rolfe<\/strong>
\n(1914-1945)<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

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Lilian and her twin sister Helen Fedora Rolfe were the daughters of George Rolfe, in Paris. She and Helen came to England for summer school to learn English and spoke French at home. When the twins were 17 in 1930, the family moved to Brazil with Lilian and Helen \u201cfinishing school\u201d there.[<\/sup>She worked for the Canadian Embassy but when the war started she changed to the British Embassy. She completed courses in first aid and Morse\u00a0code. At the onset of World War II, Lilian worked at the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro;before going to London, England in 1943 to join the Women\u2019s Auxiliary Air Force. Because of her fluency in French, she was recruited into the Special Operations Executive(SOE),where she was trained as a wireless operator.<\/p>\n

Following the\u00a0D-Day landings, an increasingly aggressive manhunt by the\u00a0Gestapo\u00a0led to the arrest of her superior officer. Nonetheless, Rolfe continued to work until her arrest at a transmitting house in\u00a0Nargis\u00a0on 31 July 1944. Transported to\u00a0Fresnes Prison\u00a0in Paris, she was interrogated repeatedly and tortured until August 1944, when she was shipped to\u00a0Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp. According to an admission made by a German officer after the war\u2019s end, she was so ill that she could not walk. On 5 February 1945, 30-year-old Rolfe was executed by the Germans and her body disposed of in the\u00a0crematorium.The name of Lilian Rolfe is engraved on the\u00a0Runnymede Memorial\u00a0in\u00a0Surrey, England. The \u201cLilian Rolfe House\u201d at the Vincennes Estate,\u00a0Lambeth\u00a0was dedicated to her memory. In her honor, the government of France posthumously awarded her the\u00a0Croix de Guerre.[<\/sup>
\nThree other female members of the SOE were also executed at Ravensbr\u00fcck:\u00a0Denise Bloch,\u00a0Cecily Lefort, and\u00a0Violette Szabo.<\/p>\n

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Pearl Witherington<\/strong>
\n\u201cAgent Wrestler\u201d<\/strong>
\n(1914-2008)<\/strong><\/center>\u201c<\/em>Agent \u201cWrestler\u201d was a secret agent of Britain\u2019s Special Operations Executive (SOE). Dropped in by parachute in 1943, she organized 1,500 Resistance fighters against the Nazis.
\nCecile Pearl Witherington was born in France on June 24th, to English parents. Pearl\u2019s childhood was hard; her alcoholic father died when she was 15, forcing her to begin working at an early age to support her mother and three younger sisters.She had been engaged before the war but he was captured while fighting in the French Army.
\nIn December 1940, as the Nazis were invading Western Europe, Pearl managed her family\u2019s escape to England. Working for the Air Ministry, because of her fluent French, she was accepted into the SOE training. At age 29, on the night of\u00a0 September 22-23, 1943, after three weeks of training, Pearl parachuted\u00a0in near Ch\u00e2teauroux, France. \u201cAgent Wrestler,\u201d and her 1,500 Resistance fighters blew up 800 stretches of railway lines and supply routes.\u00a0The Nazis put a price on Witherington\u2019s head of one million francs. On\u00a0 June 11, they attacked her headquarters, casualties among her force were horrifically high but Pearl narrowly escaped.
\nWhen the fighting was over, she reunited with Henri Cornioley, her fianc\u00e9 from\u00a0before the war. They went to London in October 1944 and were married. In 1945, the new Mrs Cornioley was appointed a military MBE for her wartime work. With the war over, the couple settled in France. Pearl raised funds for the SOE memorial at Valen\u00e7ay, inaugurated in 1991.
\nIn 2004, Pearl Cornioley was appointed Commander\u00a0of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, receiving the insignia from Queen Elizabeth during a state visit to France.\u00a0In April of 2006, at age 91, Pearl was awarded her RAF Parachute Wings in recognition of her wartime jumps and night-time drop into occupied France.
\nPearl Cornioley died in Ch\u00e2teauvieux, France on February\u00a024,\u00a0 2008.\u201dDeep down inside me I\u2019m a very shy person but I\u2019ve always had a lot of responsibilities ever since I was quite small. So I thought, \u2018Well, this is something I feel I can do\u2019 . . . And anyway I didn\u2019t like the Germans. Never did. I\u2019m a baby of the 1914-18 war.\u201d\u00a0\u2013 Cecile Pearl Witherington\u00a0Cornioley<\/p>\n
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Jacqueline Nearne<\/strong>
\n(1916-1982)<\/strong><\/center>On September 2, 2010, police were called to a tiny, seaside flat in Torquay, England and discovered the body of local \u2018cat lady\u2019 and eccentric recluse Eileen Nearne. They also discovered medals, papers and\u2026\u2026an amazing story of two girls.<\/p>\n

Eileen Mary \u201cDidi\u201d Nearne was a member of the UK\u2019s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. She parachuted into occupied France as a radio operator under the codename \u201cRose\u201d.
\nDidi was not the only special agent in the family \u2013 her sister Jacqueline was also SOE.
\nIn January 1943, Jacqueline \u2014 codename \u201cDesigner\u201d parachuted into Occupied France. Before leaving, she had made Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of the French section of SOE, promise that Didi would never be sent on a mission to France, but fourteen months later on March 2, Eileen \u201cDidi\u201d Nearne \u2014 codename \u201cRose\u201d was also dropped into occupied France. On landing she was greeted by two Frenchmen, who exclaimed: \u201cOh, a young girl. Go back, it\u2019s too dangerous!\u201d
\nGiven the mission of helping set up a network in Paris called \u201cWizard\u201d, over the course of the next five months she transmitted 105 messages to London.
\nAll the while, Jacqueline became the courier for the Resistance, delivering messages and weapons across France, organizing sabotage operations, blowing up a Luftwaffe aircraft engine factory, setting fire to Nazi equipment, damaging railway lines and stealing 30,000 liters of German fuel; nearly a year-and-a-half of constant operations. In April 1944, despite her protests, Jacqueline was returned to Britain.
\nOn July 25, 1944, \u201cDidi\u201d was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo before being incarcerated at Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp. She was only 23. On August 15, just ten days before the Allies liberated Paris, \u201cDidi\u201d was put on a train crammed with hundreds of others into cattle trucks. After nine months of Hell, with the Allies advancing through Germany, \u201cDidi\u201d and two other women made for their escape; appalled at the state of the women, a priest hid them in a bell tower. When U.S. troops arrived in Leipzig, Didi and her friends gave themselves up to them.
\n\u201cDidi\u201d Nearne was one of only a handful of British agents to survive Ravensbr\u00fcck. When Didi arrived back in Britain, Jacqueline was appalled at her emaciated, confused state.
\nAfter the war \u201cDidi\u201d and Jacqueline lived together in London. After Jacqueline died from cancer on August 15, 1982, \u201cDidi\u201d moved to Torquay and lived there, unnoticed, until her death. She was 89 years. No one in Torquay had any inkling about Didi\u2019s wartime adventures!
\nOriginially to be a modest funeral, until it emerged she was a member of the UK\u2019s Special Operations Executive, Eileen Mary \u201cDidi\u201d Nearne\u2019 s funeral was provided free of charge by the Torbay & District Funeral Service of Torquay,and held on September 21, at Our Lady Help of Christians and St Denis Roman Catholic Church; the eulogy was made by Special Forces Club Chairman Adrian Stones. Her ashes scattered at sea,
\nRarely had two members of the same family sacrificed so much to such dangerous work.<\/p>\n

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Dickey Chapelle
\n<\/strong>aka
\nGeorgette Louise Meyer
\n(1918\u20131965)<\/strong><\/center>Georgette \u201cDickey\u201d Chapelle leaped off the towers with the Screaming Eagles at Fort Campbell, jumped with troops in Korea and Vietnam, participated in more battles than any other American\u201417 operations in all, was the only female photographer during the bloodiest battles of the war in the Pacific, wrote nine books and was also a pilot.
\nAfter reporting on the Battle of Iwo Jima, where she took one of her most iconic photos, she was assigned to the invasion fleet anchored off Okinawa and under the Admiral\u2019s direct orders not to go ashore. Dickey Chapelle went anyway and made her way to the U.S. Marines Sixth Division command post, before the Navy caught up with her, withdrew her military press credentials, pulled her off the island and sent her home.
\nTen years later she contacted General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr. Commandant of the Marine Corps, who would help Dickey reinstate her military press pass.
\nFor the next ten years she covered wars around the world, including the Hungarian uprising, during which the Soviets arrested her as a spy, threatened her with execution, and held her for seven weeks at Budapest\u2019s notorious \u201cHouse of Terror\u201d
\nMain Street Prison. Dickey also covered conflicts in China, India, Korea, Iraq, Iran, Algeria and Lebanon, the Cuban revolution and finally the war in Vietnam where she was killed by a boobytrap while covering Operation Black Ferret. Georgette \u201cDickey\u201d Chapelle became the first American female war correspondent to die during combat operations.
\nBorn Georgette Louise Meyer on March 14, 1918, to strict pacifist parents Paul Gerhard Meyer and Edna Franziska Engelhardt Meyer, she grew up in a safe middle-class home in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Despite the sheltered upbringing, Georgette was determined to live by her own rules. Enamored by aeronautics, at the age of 14 she wrote an article \u201cWhy We Want to Fly\u201d under the byline G.L. Meyer for the United States Air Service magazine; believing it was written by a young man, the editor published it.
\nThat next year she met Admiral Richard \u201cDickey\u201d Byrd who spoke at her high school; Georgette immediately changed her name to Dickey.
\nGraduating high school two years early as Valedictorian, she was one of only three women admitted to the Engineering School at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but she spent more time at the airfield hitching rides in airplanes, writing articles about aviation and taking aerial photographs. Dickey missed too many classes, earned low grades, and was asked to leave MIT after her second year. Working for TWA, she made her way to New York, where she studied photography, married her teacher WWI Navy photographer Tony Chapelle in 1940 and began pursuing a career in photojournalism.
\nHer career as a war reporter lasted close to three decades. She received numerous awards from the Women\u2019s National Press Club and the Overseas Press Club\u2019s George Polk Award. With Vietnamese paratrooper and U.S. Army jump wings pinned to her Australian bush hat, black-rimmed glasses, pearl earrings and camera, she ventured where other reporters feared to tread. Dickey Chapelle was \u201cadopted\u201d into many different nations\u2019 military units, including rebel groups in Algeria and Cuba, where Fidel Castro called her \u201cthe polite little American with all that tiger blood in her veins\u201d. She became the first female reporter to win approval from the Pentagon to jump with American troops. In 1962, she was interviewed by a young Mike Wallace for his radio show. He asked Dickey whether jumping out of planes, being at the front, or going into combat with the Marines was a \u201cwoman\u2019s place\u201d, to which she responded: \u201cIt is not a woman\u2019s place. There\u2019s no question about it. There\u2019s only one other species on earth for whom a war zone is no place, and that\u2019s men. But as long as men continue to fight wars, why I think observers of both sexes will be sent to see what happens.\u201d
\nOne evening while in Laos, three separate Marines approached her to say that she\u2019d photographed or interviewed their fathers in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
\nOn the evening of November 3, 1965, she had dinner with Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt, Marine Commander in Vietnam and told him that \u201cWhen my time comes, I want it to be on a patrol with the Marines.\u201d
\nAt 08:00 the following morning, Georgette Louise \u201cDickey\u201d Meyer Chapelle while on patrol with a Marine platoon during a search and destroy operation 16 km south of Chu Lai, Quang Ngai Province a lieutenant in front of her kicked a tripwire boobytrap, consisting of a mortar shell and hand grenade. She was hit in the neck by a piece of shrapnel, severing her carotid artery; she died soon afterwards, uttering her final words: \u201cI guess it was bound to happen\u201d. She was 46.
\nDickey was given a full military burial with full honors. She was carried to her grave by an honor guard consisting of six Marines at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dickey became the first female war correspondent to be killed in Vietnam, as well as the first American female reporter to be killed in action.
\nIn October 2016, at the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association banquet in San Diego, Dickey Chapelle, the \u201csmall woman with a foul mouth\u201d who relished running Marines half her age and twice her size into the ground during PT was honorably given her Eagle, Globe and Anchor pin and the title: United States Marine by Commandant Gen. Robert Neller.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9e Borrel<\/strong>
\n(1919 \u20131944)<\/strong><\/center>Along with Lise de Baissac, Andr\u00e9e Borrel became one the first women agents to be was parachuted into\u00a0France\u00a0on\u00a0 September 24, 1942.
\nAfter the fall of France during the Second World War \u2013 Andree Borrel joined the resistance and helped British Airman who had been shot down over France to return to England. Andr\u00e9e came to England via Lisbon to avoid arrest by the Gestapo her activities had become known to the Germans.
\nOnce in England she joined the French section of the Special Operations Executive.After training, Andree was parachuted into France and carried out clandestine operations. She also acted as a courier for the Prosper Network because of her knowledge of Paris.
\nAndree Borrel was arrested on the June 23, 1943 \u2013 probably because of a traitor in the group. She was taken to Gestapo Headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch, Paris and interrogated with brute force. She was then sent to Fresnes Prison until May 1944.
\nAndr\u00e9e was then sent to Natzweiler Concentration Camp, where on the July 6 1944 she was executed by a lethal phenol injection and then incinerated in the Camp Crematorium.
\nAndree Borrel was posthumously Awarded The Croix de Guerre, Medaille de la Resistance, by the French Government for her sacrifice for France. Also Awarded the..KCBC (King\u2019s Commendation For Brave Conduct) by the British Government.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/parachutists.org\/www.ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/women-warriors-lest-we-forget\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Phyllis \u201cPippa\u201d Latour Doyle<\/strong>
\n(1921)<\/strong><\/center>As one of very few female agents working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), in preparation for D-day, Pippa was dropped by parachute into Normandy on May 1 1944, to spy upon and sabotage Nazi-occupied Europe. Under the code name Paulette, at age 23, to trick the Nazis, she posed as a poor 14-year-old French girl, using a bicycle to sell soap, schmooze enemy soldiers and gather intelligence; she relayed 135 secret messages back to England. She had joined the Royal Air force in 1941 to train as a flight mechanic until the clandestine services spotted her potential. Growing up in French Equatorial Africa, Pippa was fluent in the french language; instead of repairing aircraft, she was earmarked for training in espionage.
\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t until after my first round of training that they told me they wanted me to become a member of the SOE. They said I could have three days to think about it. I told them I didn\u2019t need three days to make a decision; I\u2019d take the job now.\u201d
\nBorn on April 8 in South Africa to Philippe, a French doctor and Louise, a British citizen; her father died just three months later and when she was three, her mother who remarried a racing driver, was killed when the race car she was driving crashed into a barrier; Phyllis then went to live with her father\u2019s cousin in the AEF(French Equatorial Africa); later returning to South Africa. She moved from South Africa to England and joined the WAAF in November 1941 as an air frame mechanic but was immediately asked to become a spy. \u201cI did it for revenge.\u201d Her godmother had committed suicide after being taken prisoner by the Nazis and her godmother\u2019s father had been shot by the Germans.
\nTrained by a cat burglar, \u201cWe learnt how to get in a high window, and down drain pipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught.\u201d Given three separate code names \u2013 Genevieve, Plus Fours and Lampooner \u2013 she was first deployed in Aquitaine in Vichy France in 1942. Any intelligence that she gathered, she would encode for transmitting with codes that were hidden on a piece of silk she used to tie up her hair. She was once brought in for questioning, but the Nazis did not examine her hair tie, and she was released. She would sleep in forests, forced to forage for food, or stay with Allied sympathizers. \u201cOne family I stayed with told me we were eating squirrel,\u201d she told the Army News, \u201cI found out later it was rat. I was half starved so I didn\u2019t care.\u201d
\nPippa was awarded the Croix de Guerre on January 16, 1946 and the Member of the British Empire (MBE Military) on September 4, 1954.
\nAt 93 and living in a rest home in New Zealand, 70 years after parachuting behind enemy lines, Phyllis Latour Doyle was presented with France\u2019s highest decoration. \u201cI have deep admiration for her bravery and it will be with great honour that I will present her with the award of Chevalier de l\u2019Ordre National de la L\u00e9gion d\u2019Honneur\u201d\u2013French ambassador to New Zealand, Laurent Contini.
\nAs of February 2018,Pippa resides in Auckland, New Zealand.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

Hannah Senesh
\n<\/strong>
\n(1921\u20141944)<\/strong><\/center>A poet and Special Operations Executive (SOE) paratrooper, Hannah Senesh was one of 37 parachutists on the only rescue mission by the Jewish people during the Holocaust. She was dropped by the British Army during the Second World War to rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to Auschwitz.
\nHannah was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured; refusing to reveal details of her mission, he was tried and executed by firing squad. She is hailed as a national heroine in Israel, where her poetry is widely known and the headquarters of the Zionist youth movements Israel Hatzeira, a kibbutz and several streets are named after her.Born July 17, 1921 in Budapest, Hungary to Katalin and author\/ journalist B\u00e9la, Hannah kept a diary from age 13 until shortly before her death. She enrolled in a Protestant private school for girls that accepted Catholic and Jewish student; considered a gifted pupil, she joined Maccabea, a Hungarian Zionist students organization. She left Hungary for Eretz Yisrael, British Mandate of Palestine in 1939 and she studied in the Girls\u2019 Agricultural School at Nahalal, writing poetry, as well as a play about kibbutz life.
\nIn 1941, she moved to Kibbutz Sdot Yam and joined the Haganah, the paramilitary group predating the Israel Defense Forces. In 1943, she enlisted in the British Army Women\u2019s Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class, began her training in Egypt as a paratrooper for the British SOE and volunteered to be parachuted into Europe.
\nHannah Senesh trained in Egypt and was one of the thirty-three people chosen to parachute behind enemy lines. With the goal of reaching her native Budapest, Hannah parachuted into Yugoslavia along with fellow SOE Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstei on March 14, 1944 and spent three months with Tito\u2019s partisans. She wrote her poem \u201cBlessed is the Match,\u201d during this time.
\nOn June 7, 1944, at the height of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, Agent Senesh crossed the border into Hungary and was arrested by Hungarian gendarmes, who found her British military transmitter, She was taken to a prison, stripped, tied to a chair, whipped and beatenfor three days; she lost several teeth. The guards wanted to know the code for her transmitter so they could find out who the parachutists were and trap others. Transferred to a Budapest prison, Hannah was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, but only revealed her name and refused to provide the transmitter code, even when her mother was also arrested. They threatened to kill her mother if she did not cooperate, but she refused. While in prison, Hannah used a mirror to flash signals out of the window to prisoners in other cells and communicated using large cut-out letters that she placed in her cell window.
\nShe was tried for treason on October 28, 1944. Throughout her ordeal her courage never waivered; refusing the blindfold and staring squarely at her executioners, Hannah Senesh was executed by a firing squad on November 7. She was 23 years old.
\nHer diary was published in Hebrew in 1946. Her remains were brought to Israel in 1950 and re-interred at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. She had one brother Gy\u00f6rgy.Found in Hannah\u2019s cell after her execution:
\n One \u2013 two \u2013 three\u2026 eight feet long
\nTwo strides across, the rest is dark\u2026
\nLife is a fleeting question mark
\nOne \u2013 two \u2013 three\u2026 maybe another week.
\nOr the next month may still find me here,
\nBut death, I feel is very near.
\nI could have been 23 next July
\nI gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

Yvonne Baseden
\n\u201cOdette\u201d<\/strong>
\n(1922-2017)<\/strong><\/center>At the age of 22, on the night of March 18\/19, 1944, paired with Gonzagues de Saint-Geni\u00e8s (\u201cLucien\u201d), Yvonne Baseden parachuted into France, near Mont-de-Marsan, as a British SOE operative. They worked alongside the local Resistance helping to prepare for the (D-Day) invasion.She played a key role in the first daylight parachute drop of weapons and supplies over\u00a0France(Operation Zebra). Later captured and imprisoned in Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp; \u201cLucien\u201d was fatally wounded.
\nYvonne survived that pit of Hell;\u00a0traded by the Swedish Red Cross for Nazi prisoners and released,spending\u00a0her first nights of freedom, sleeping under the skeletons of dinosaurs on the floor of the Malm\u00f6 Museum of Prehistory.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n

Anne-Marie Walters
\n\u201cAgent Colette\u201d
\n(March 16,1923\u2014October 3, 1998)<\/h1>\n
<\/div>\n

Starr Wars 1944<\/p>\n

\u201cCollette\u201d parachuted into the Armagnac area of southwestern France on January 3, 1944 to become a courier for the SOE and George Starr\u2019s Wheelwright circuit. Throughout spring and summer, she carried messages, often on foot or bicycle, also she received air drops, delivered explosives, and helped downed airmen to escape.
\nBorn in Geneva, Switzerland to an English father, Deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Francis Paul (F.P.) Walters, and a French mother, she moved to England with her family after the outbreak of World War II and joined the WAAF in 1941. On July 6, 1943 she was recruited into SOE and spent the summer and autumn learning the clandestine arts from Special Training School 23 at Loch Morar, Scotland. Described as \u201cwell-educated, intelligent, quick, practical, and cunning\u201d and \u201cwill not hesitate to make use of her physical attractiveness in gaining influence over men\u201d, Anne-Marie\u2019s first attempt to parachute into France in December of 1943 was called off due to bad weather over the drop zone; her flight back to England ended in a crash-landing because of fog. She suffered a minor head injury in the crash.
\nOn the night of January 3,1944, her jump this time was successful. With fellow agent Claude Arnault (\u201cJean-Claude\u201d) and after parachuting into the Armagnac area in SW France to join George Starr\u2019s WHEELWRIGHT network, \u201cCollette\u201d acted as a courier until after D-Day. Yvonne Cormeau was Starr\u2019s wireless operator and Claude Arnault was the explosives expert. Anne-Marie\u2019s cover story was that of a student from Paris recovering from pneumonia and staying with a friend of her father. She stayed with the family at their farmhouse; Starr\u2019s headquarters was just 3 kilometres away. As a courier, she traveled by bus, train, bicycle, and charcoal-powered vehicle all over southwestern France. One of her first jobs was to organize the flight to Spain across the Pyrenees for a group of fifteen members of the French Resistance who had escaped from a French prison. She also helped smuggle several suitcases full of explosives to Toulouse to blow up a gun powder factory. \u201cCollette\u201d was accepted by the resistance fighters, the marquis, regarded her as \u201cthe true sister of the marquisards.\u201d
\nOn June 21st, two thousand German soldiers attacked Starr\u2019s Wheelwright network. During the battle Anne-Marie distributed hand grenades to the maquisards, burned and buried documents, and salvaged the network\u2019s money during the retreat; nineteen of the maquisards were killed.
\nShe left France on August 1, 1944 and traveled through Spain to Algiers where she met with British authorities who proposed that she return to France for Operation Jedburgh, but SOE vetoed, so she returned to London carrying urgent dispatches.
\nOn July 17, 1945, in recognition of her \u201cpersonal courage and willingness to undergo any danger,\u201d Anne-Marie Walters was awarded the MBE for her vital work in occupied France and the Croix de Guerre and the M\u00e9daille de la Reconnaissance fran\u00e7aise from France. In 1946, Anne-Marie Walters published Moondrop to Gascony about her war-time activities, winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize the next year. After the war, she lived the United States, Spain, and France and was a translator, an editor, and literary agent.
\nAnne-Marie Walters Comert died in France in 1998, at the age of 75, from complications of Alzheimer\u2019s disease and is survived by her two children, Jean-Pierre and Sophie.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anyone had told me that I would spend the summer of 1943 being timed at assault courses, tapping Morse messages on a dummy key, shooting at moving pieces of cardboard, crawling across the countryside and blowing up mock targets, I would have shrugged my shoulders with disbelief.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Elisabeth Friang
\n\u201cBrigitte\u201d<\/strong>
\n(1924-2011)<\/strong><\/center>Brigitte Friang, a paratrooping journalist, and member of the French Resistance during WWII, not only survived being shot in the stomach, captured and tortured by the Gestapo, being recaptured after escaping, and more torture, she survived Fresnes Prison and Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp and the hellish Dachau deathmarch of May 1945. Becoming one of the few journalists of her generation to cover the Suez conflict, the Six Day War and the Vietnam War, Brigitte was, during the opening hours of Operation Castor, parachuted into \u0110i\u1ec7n Bi\u00ean Phu (Vietnam). She made several combat jumps including one with Lt Col Bigeard\u2019s 6th Colonial Paratroop Battalion at Tu-Le.<\/p>\n

Born on January 23, 1924 in Paris, to a bourgeois family, Brigette was only sixteen and still in high school when France was invaded by Hitler\u2019s Wehrmacht on May 10, 1940. She immediately joined the French Resistance, where she participated for the next three years decoding clandestine transmissions and in August 1943, she entered the Office of the Air Operations (BOA) to carry documents and radio bags, to set up clandestine dropzones, to organize parachuting missions into western France, to welcome the agents and finally to oversee the weapons of the BCRA (Secret Service of Free France). In March 1944, Brigitte was betrayed by a member of her network, but managed to escape being captured until March 21, when she attempted to organize the escape of her mentor, one of General Charles de Gaulle\u2019s top assistants, Pierre Brossolette. Brigitte was shot and arrested at the Trocadero by the Gestapo; she was twenty years old. Barbarically tortured and interned for the next fourteen months, she refused to break. Brigitte survived the untreated wounds of her arrest, the hunger, the cold, the Nazi barbarism of torture and rape until the final days of the Third Reich, when Brigitte, along with a convoy of women, was forced on a \u201challucinating\u201d three week march of nearly 300 miles (470 km) on foot to Dachau for extermination.
\n\u201cWalk as far as you can.\u201d was the mantra that the young 57 pound(26 kg) Brigitte repeated with every step in her fight against death. She escaped again and on her return to Paris after liberation, she personally welcomed home the survivors of the death camps.
\nAfter World War Two she went to work for French press secretary Andre Malraux from 1947 to 1951 and again for 1958 and 1959. She passed her military paratrooper certificate, became a war correspondent, first for the written press, then for television. She was again captured (twice but released unharmed), this time by the Vi\u1ec7t Minh. First woman correspondent of the war, from 1951 to 1954, Brigitte Friang was one of the few women to cover the French-Indochina war; she celebrated her 30th birthday on January 23, 1954 in \u0110i\u1ec7n Bi\u00ean Phu. Brigitte covered the Suez expedition in 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Tet Offensive in 1968. After 1968, Brigitte became an independent journalist and wrote several books. She had told her life story in \u201cLook Who Died\u201d (Robert Laffont). She was also the author of \u201cParachutes and Petticoats\u201d,\u201dRegarde-toi qui meures: 1943\u20141945\u2033, \u201cLook at Yourself Dying\u201d and also \u201cAnother Malraux\u201d- recounting her relationship with General de Gaulle.
\nAwarded the military title of Cavalier of the Legion of Honor, Brigitte Friang was Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit, Rosette of the Resistance and Croix de Guerre 1939-1945 and TOE (Territories of External Operations).
\nElisabeth \u201cBrigette\u201d Friang passed at the age of 87.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Sonya Butt
\n<\/strong>
\n\u201cSonia d\u2019Artois\u201d<\/strong>
\n(1924-2014)<\/strong><\/center>The final surviving female British spy of WWII and heroine of the\u00a0SOE, \u201cPlucky\u201d Sonia Butt was parachuted under the codename \u201cBlanche\u201d into the city of Sarthe, France, only nine days before\u00a0D-Day. Coordinating ambushes and sabotage; she delayed the progress of the 2nd SS Panzer Division on its way to Normandy. Sonya put on such a convincing act that on France\u2019s liberation, a local mob labeled her a Nazi collaborator and she narrowly escaped being beaten, tied to a lamp post and having her head shaved.<\/p>\n

Sonya Esm\u00e9e Florence Butt was was born in Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey,<\/strong>\u00a0England on May 14, to a RAF officer, and grew up in the south of France. After her parent\u2019s divorce, her mother took her and her brother abroad. She returned to Britain and joined the Women\u2019s Auxiliary Air Force, the very day she became eligible: November 14, 1941(age 17 1\/2).\u00a0 She \u201cgot into hot water<\/em>\u201d doing tasks such as peeling potatoes; she\u00a0advertised\u00a0 her fluency in French in an attempt to get attached to the Free French squadrons and escape her dreary routine. This did bring her to the attention of SOE, and she was soon accepted for training on December 11, 1943.
\nOn\u00a0 May 28 1944, only nine days before\u00a0D-Day, Sonya was parachuted into the department of the\u00a0Sarthe\u00a0in the area of\u00a0Le Mans\u00a0to work as a courier, under the\u00a0nom de guerre Suzanne Bonvie \u2013codename \u201cBlanche\u201d.\u00a0She was one of the last WAAFs to land in France before the Allied invasion. As a courier, her primary responsibilities were to carry money, pass messages and maintain contact with the SOE agents, Maquis and local operatives working with the Resistance.\u00a0 After one of the other agents dropped with her was shot during a battle between the Maquis and the Nazis, Sonya took on the additional role of weapons instructor.\u00a0 \u201cI filled in wherever the need arose<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0In June 1944, she was stopped by two Germans and detained for questioning,\u00a0thrown in solitary. Four hours later they came back, her cover story and false papers held; she was released.
\nThe Americans took Le Mans on August 8.\u00a0 Accused of being a Nazi collaborator, her fellow resisters explained to French mob that she was no traitor. General Eisenhower\u00a0 asked that she pass through enemy\u2019s lines and relay intelligence about enemy positions and supplies to General Patton\u2019s army? Sonya bicycling through battlefields, her jacket peppered with bullets. Once being knocked her off her bicycle by Nazi soldiers, beaten and raped. Left in rags, she took refuge in a farmhouse; the next day she delivered the information\u00a0 and returned the way she came.
\nIn October 1944, on the successful completion of her mission, she returned to England.\u00a0 She had fallen in love, while making her second training parachute jump, with Canadian SOE agent Guy d\u2019Artois;\u00a0 he was decorated for assisting the Maquis in Burgundy. She became Mrs. Soniad\u2019Artois, moved to Canada\u00a0and quietly disappeared from public view to become a wife and mother of\u00a0three sons and three daughters.\u00a0On March 15, 1999, Major Lyle Guy d\u2019Artois\u00a0 died in the Veterans Hospital in\u00a0Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec. Sonia Esm\u00e9e Florence \u201cToni\u201d\u00a0Buttd\u2019Artois passeed away at the Lakeshore General Hospital in Pointe-Claire, Quebec on December 21, 2014. She was honored on January 10, 2015 at Saint-Thomas d\u2019Aquin Church in Hudson, QC. She was 90.
\nSonia and Guy were buried together in\u00a0National Field of Honour Cemetery\u00a0Pointe-Claire,\u00a0Montreal,\u00a0Quebec,\u00a0Canada.
\n\u201cWhat little I was able to do was motivated by my love for France.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Catherine Leroy
\n(1944-2006)<\/strong><\/center><strong< strong=\"\"> <\/strong<><\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Born in war, on August 27, 1944 in the suburbs of Paris during the city\u2019s liberation by the Allies.\u00a0She was a multi-award honored war photographer,\u00a0the first news-person, male or female, to parachute into combat with US forces, and the first to photograph the Vietcong behind their own lines, one of only two women photojournalists during the early years of the Vietnam conflict.
\nShe attended a Catholic boarding school and in 1963, at the age of 18, to impress her boyfriend, she earned a parachutist\u2019s license and had logged 84 jumps by 1966.<\/p>\n

With no contracts and very few of published photos, she purchased a
\none-way ticket from her native France to\u00a0Laos\u00a0in 1966. With just her
\nLeica M2\u00a0and $200 in her pocket,\u00a0she decided to travel to Vietnam to \u201cgive war a human face<\/em>.\u201d
\nAt first impression, she was an un-intimidating, five-foot-tall,
\npig-tailed girl, but when fully loaded with pack, boots, cameras, and
\nclose to her bodyweight of 85lbs of gear, she proved that women could
\ntough it out in the field and spew notorious obscenities with the
\ntoughest Marine. In 1967, she was hit by a mortar burst, her chest was
\nripped open; the shrapnel that would have killed her, was only stopped
\nby her Nikon F-2. During the Tet offensive, in early 1968, she was
\ncaptured by the North Vietnamese Army. Explaining that she was a
\njournalist, the soldiers were charmed into letting her go, and were
\npersuaded to let her take photos, saying that it was important because
\nonly one side of the story was being seen. The photos ran\u00a0 in Life
\nmagazine; she wrote the cover story herself.
\nIn 1975, with America leaving Indochina, Leroy moved on to Lebanon,
\nwhere the civil war was just beginning, to continue her work.\u00a0During the
\nIsraeli siege of Beirut in 1982, her stunning pictures began to change,
\nless of battle dead and dying and more were of the living, such as a
\nfather with his one-legged daughter; her leg has been blown off in the
\nsiege, a young warrior cradling a kitten and crippled and demented
\npatients abandoned in a bombed-out mental hospital.\u00a0Beirut was
\nconsidered the high watermark of\u00a0 her career as a combat photographer: \u201cI was there for Newsweek magazine and we documented our experiences in the book God Cried (1983)<\/em>.\u201d
\nLeroy never promoted herself or her work but still won numerous honors,
\nincluding in 1967 George Polk Award for the\u00a0Picture of the Year. She was
\nthe first woman to receive the\u00a0Robert Capa Gold Medal\u00a0Award \u2013 \u201cbest
\npublished photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional
\ncourage and enterprise\u201d \u2013 for her coverage of the\u00a0civil war in Lebanon,
\nin 1976.\u00a0In 1997, she was the recipient of an Honor Award for
\nDistinguished Service in Journalism from the\u00a0University of Missouri. \u201cI\u2019ve
\nalways found that it was very exhilarating to be shot at without
\nresult.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest high of all, a massive rush of adrenaline.
\nThe high you experience in times of great danger is a high that you
\ncannot experience anywhere else<\/em>.\u201d
\nBy the 1980\u2019s, the physical and psychological traumatic stress of combat
\nphotography had begun to change Leroy; she grew sick of war and the job
\nof photographing it. She turned to fashion photography\u00a0 in Japan,
\nlooking like a tiny and very lethal Ninja, clad entirely in a black Yoji
\nYamamoto creation, wearing black wrap-round sunglasses.
\nAfter hanging up her camera, she moved to Los Angeles and opened\u00a0Piece Unique, selling used haute couture.
\nCatherine Leroy died July 8 2006 in\u00a0Santa Monica,\u00a0California, just a week after her lung cancer was diagnosed.
\nHill Fights<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Women Warriors from the Sky After the first World War and prior to the second, many countries organized airborne troopers, comprised of entirely men.Soon after the invasions of Belgium, France and Poland, women joined their brothers of the silk to aid in the survival of their way of life. Lise de Baissac \u201cOdile\u201d (1905…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parachutists.org\/ladiesofskydiving.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}