Woman hero of WWII

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Sounds like fiction, but it's not.

A Mighty Girl

At age 23, British secret agent Phyllis Latour Doyle parachuted into occupied Normandy in May 1944 to gather intelligence on Nazi positions in preparation for D-Day. As an agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), Doyle secretly relayed 135 coded messages to the British military before France's liberation in August. For seventy years, her contributions to the war effort have been largely unheralded but, in December, the 94-year-old was finally given her due when she was awarded France's highest honor, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. 

Doyle first joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at age 20 in 1941 to work as a flight mechanic but SOE recruiters spotted her potential and offered her a job as a spy. A close family friend, her godmother's father who she viewed as her grandfather, had been shot by the Nazis and she was eager to support the war effort however she could. Doyle immediately accepted the SOE's offer and began an intensive training program. In addition to learning about encryption and surveillance, trainees also had to pass grueling physical tests. Doyle described how they were taught by a cat burglar who had been released from jail on "how to get in a high window, and down drain pipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught."

She first deployed to Aquitaine in Vichy France where she worked for a year as a spy using the codename Genevieve. Her most dangerous mission, however, began on May 1, 1944 when she jumped out of a US Air Force bomber and landed behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Normandy. Using the codename Paulette, she posed as a poor teenage French girl. Doyle used a bicycle to tour the region, often under the guise of selling soap, and passed information to the British on Nazi positions using coded messages. In an interview with the New Zealand Army News magazine, she described how risky the mission, noting that "The men who had been sent just before me were caught and executed. I was told I was chosen for that area (of France) because I would arouse less suspicion."

She also explained how she concealed her codes: "I always carried knitting because my codes were on a piece of silk -- I had about 2000 I could use. When I used a code I would just pinprick it to indicate it had gone. I wrapped the piece of silk around a knitting needle and put it in a flat shoe lace which I used to tie my hair up." Coded messages took a half an hour to send and the Germans could identify where a signal was sent from in an hour and a half so Doyle moved constantly to avoid detection. At times, she stayed with Allied sympathizers but often she had to sleep in forests and forage for food. 

During her months in Normandy, Doyle sent 135 secret messages -- invaluable information on Nazi troop positions that was used to help Allied forces prepare for the Normandy landing on D-Day and during the subsequent military campaign. Doyle continued her mission until France's liberation in August 1944. 

Following the war, Doyle eventually settled in New Zealand where she raised four children. It was only in the past 15 years that she told them about her career as a spy. In presenting the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour to Doyle, French Ambassador Laurent Contini commended her courage during the war, stating: "I have deep admiration for her bravery and it will be with great honor that I will present her with the award of Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration."

To read more about Phyllis Latour Doyle's incredible story, visit The Telegraph at http://bit.ly/1I1nvi2

For an excellent book about both famous and little known women heroes of WWII, we highly recommend "Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue," recommended for ages 13 and up, at http://www.amightygirl.com/women-heroes-of-world-war-ii

A complementary book telling the stories of heroic women of WWI was also recently released: "Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics" at http://www.amightygirl.com/women-heroes-of-world-war-i

For two highly recommended novels about women resistance fighters of WWII, both for ages 13 and up, check out "Code Name Verity" (http://www.amightygirl.com/code-name-verity) and "Rose Under Fire" (http://www.amightygirl.com/rose-under-fire). 

For more books about girls and women living through the WWII period, including numerous stories related to the Holocaust, visit our "WWII & Holocaust" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/…/history-biograp…/history-world…

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I recently heard about two women, Barbara Fleisher and Thelma Reese, two retired college educators who started a blog titled Elder Chicks and have written a book titled The New Senior Woman. On yesterday's blog they posted the music and lyrics to the song "June is Bustin' Out All Over and asked if our Junes are bustin out yet?

Yesterday being May 1st, this was my response...........

May 1st turned out to be a very good day for me. I have days when i feel like education, experiences, skills, ideas i have are not valued by anybody any more. But, a few weeks ago i read in the Historyo News Newsletter about an event called a “History Camp”, basically an “unconference” where people just show up at a pre-arranged place and time and decide what they want to talk about, within a perimeter.

I was one of the founders of the Alice Paul Institute, an agency that owns AP’s house and whose mission is to keep women’s history alive – especially the suffrage and ERA history, and is a center for training women and girls in leadership skills. I thought it might be an event that they would be interested in collaborating on, so i sent it on to several women involved with the Institute with not much hope of getting a response (as with most public history sites and especially those related to women’s history, they are very short staffed and short of funds).

Surprisingly, it was apparently the right idea at the right time. Yesterday, two API staff members, a public historian from Rutgers U and i had an initial brainstorming session for a “history camp” type of event in the Spring of 2015, for public history sites in the South Jersey/Philadelphia area. It was exactly the kind of grass roots, brainstorming/planning exercise that i have missed so much having retired about a decade ago and having only intermittent brain-challenging activities since then. As the meeting ended i recalled that i had once heard someone say that her Mother had told her “if you can’t find an event/activity that you want to participate in, start it yourself!” I thought “maybe i just did that.”

I left there and stopped at my library to pick up your book The New Senior Woman which was on hold for me, having requested it after hearing about “Elder Chicks” online or on tv, don’t remember which. So June isn’t bustin’ out yet, but May started out pretty well for this Elder Chick. I’m looking forward to your book and your blog in the coming weeks.

Women who sustained the movement

The Makers was a wonderful documentary of the contemporary women's movement. I wish someone would go down a layer and write a book about not just the queen bees of that movement, but the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of the women drones who have sustained the movement in many, many ways. 

I use drone in a most positive sense. If the Newsweek, LHJ strikes and other high profile events had been the only ones that happened in the country, they would have been a small triumph for the movement. Those examples can be expanded to untold numbers of examples of women and men who expanded the movement into all corners of the country by becoming community activists for women's equality and other concerns of women and girls.

There are the women who have spent their whole lives in vocations  or avocations working for the progress of women in all areas of society. There are the women's groups throughout the country who sued their employers for equal pay and equal opportunity.  There are the women who started NOW chapters in their communities and have kept them operating for five or six decades or who started consciousness-raising groups to give women a sense of I-am-not-alone-in-my-thinking, or it's-not-just-me.

There are women and men who were attorneys and judges and police officers who made the justice systems more supportive of women, especially abused women, and there were the people in communities who started women's shelters to give women and children a safe place to escape to. 

There are women who started women's studies and women's history courses so there were forums for discussion once consciousness-raising groups became passe and so we wouldn't forget our past. There were organizations of volunteers who preserved women's history artifacts and birthplaces and important sites in women's history.  

There are traditional organizations like the YWCA and LWV and AAUW and the Girl Scouts who have had women's and girl's concerns at the top of their agendas for decades.

There are all the local women and organizations who lobbied and petitioned and spoke and marched for the ERA and continue to do so today and the men and women who literally put their bodies between the clients of reproductive health clinics and the anti-abortion demonstrators who are there to harass them, to say nothing of the people who work at the clinics.

There are the women whose jobs are to ensure that women get equity in the workforce like the hundred's  of Federal Women's Program Manger's in the federal government. Their jobs  also include training the total work force in prevention of sexual harassment and assisting women who have been the victims of sexual harassment, who train supervisor's in opening their minds to placing women in non-traditional jobs and assist women with the difficulties that come with being the women in those jobs. There are the Directors of Divsions on Women, or whatever the local and state agencies are called, who lobbied and educated to make sure that government funds and grants were available for programs assisting women and girls. There are the women elected officials who are also supportive in that legislation.

There are the individuals and organizations that enlighten girls and young women in assertive communications and leadership skills and public speaking skills and self-empowerment skills. There are thousands of women and men who act as mentors to young women in corporations and in small businesses so breaking the glass ceiling becomes more likely for them.

This is only a short list, I'm  sure you can add a myriad of other examples to the list. You may question "Where would one start to do research on these 'drones'?" I have in my circle of friends and acquaintances someone that fits into each of the examples I have given, and I'm sure I am not unique, they are everywhere throughout the country. Please won't someone write that book?

Why aren't you a feminist?

http://spydersden.wordpress.com/category/feminism/

So true! Yeah, there are feminists who mat be too radical for some if us, but when you compare that statement to the history of MAN, and i literally mean MAN, feminists come out smelling like lilacs. ( i'm not fond of the smell of roses, but i do love lilacs.) 

Why have so many people refused to take on the label? It's like the word "liberal" and the word "union", or the words "community organizer". We have let the opposition define the word and they have put every negative connotation on those words and society has bought those connotations? How come? 

Pres Obama's statement was not an exaggeration

Re: Women's Issues « Reply #693 on: July 20, 2013, 12:20:13 PM » Quote I haven't commented on the Zimmerman case, altho i have strong emotions about it, because others are doing a superb job of it. But let me just comment on the president's speech yesterday. In case any person thinks he was exaggerating the events that have happened to him, let me just say that everyone inour interracial family, including me, has had similar experiences. They range from when my future DH and i were leaving his development in southern New Jersey, pulling out from a stop sign, so we couldn't have been driving too fast and Van (DH) said he saw the police car coming, so he was being extra careful. The cop stopped us, ask for Van's ID, where did he live? Even tho he had his license in his hand. Asked where were we going? Which, of course, was of no consequence, but Van said he was taking me to Philly. Cop asked where did i live - again, of no consequence. Van asked why we were stopped, cop said he was speeding, which was impossible. Then, even though it was just dusk and he could see me perfectly well, the cop came around to my side of the car and shone the flashlight in my face. He gave Van a "warning" which was really a warning about being with a white woman. My dgt when driving her college boyfriend to the Trenton train station in her father's Diamante, a lower end luxury car, was followed down a Trenton street and into the parking lot of the train station. The boyfriend was about 6'2" and with them was a young man we had as a foster child who was about 6' and 250 lbs of muscle, he was a weight lifter. The cop told them to stay in the car and asked for her license and the car registration. He asked where they were going??? She said she was taking Nick to get the train. Who were the guys in the car? Whose car was it? Why were they in Trenton??? Then he walked around to ask for Nick's ID and saw he had on a Marine Corps shirt. Asked if he was a Marine, Nick said yes, and he said o.k. and left. The only explanation was that he thought these 3 young Black people should not have been driving that car.  Pure harassment! My son, a good student and well-known athlete, closed his eyes one day in class, the teacher asked him, in front of the class, if he was on drugs! He was furious! He has never even smoked a cigarette. Friends of the same son stopped in front of our house one evening to unload a bike of a friend from the trunk of the car. Included in the group were 2 football players, 3 basketball players and the president of the junior class, all young Black men, none had ever been in trouble. I mention the athletes because we are a town of about 25,000, the police know the trouble-makers, but they also come to the games and know of the athletes and all of these boys where frequent visitors to the recreation center which is onthe same municiple property as the police dept and the police frequent it also. While they were unloading Anthony's bike, a police car pulled up behind the old white Plymouth with lights whirling. Within 3 minutes there was another police car and the K-9 truck and before the discussion ended a third police car was there. So neighbors were out to see what was going on. This was a neighborhood that was 85% Black, so it was not even that the cops were seeing these young men in the "wrong place." The police asked what was happening - "we're dropping Anthony off to play basketball." "Whose bike is it?" Anthony's. "Anthony, what is the serial number on your bike!?!"  Really??? I'm sure you've all had bikes growing up, do any of you know the serial numbers? "Where do you live?" (to each one) Our foster son had on a varsity jacket that had belonged to his cousin from another town, they asked him 3 times, why do you have on a "Boro" jacket? My husband went out and asked what was the problem, said he knew these boys, they were good boys, not problems. The police responded that there was a report of a white cadillac creating a problem on Main St - 5 blocks away, AND this white plymouth looked nothing like a cadillac! These were all boys who had been taught to respect authority, but all those cops did that night was to say to them, no matter who you are we will always suspect you because you have dark skin and will feel free to harass you when we please. Now the irony is that that son and dgt of ours now have a cousin who is a NJ State Trooper and my dgt has a very good college friend who is also a NJ State Trooper. That is progress and i hope they are raising the conscience of the other troopers. I just wanted to make it clear that when you hear any person of color speak about these experiences, they are not exaggerating or just repeating stories they've heard from others, and it is not just in the cities, or in the South, or to the poor. This is a suburban Philly town that was named the best place to live in the u.s. by Money Magizine about 7 yrs ago!!!  They have ALL been in similar situations. One other point, i think the prosecution missed an opportunity to have the 6 women jury identify with Treyvon Martin, what woman has not been on the street in a fearful situation for what negative event might happen to her? Such is life for people of color and women in this world. I am not saying that white men have not sometimes been in frightening situations, but i am sure it has not been as often or as scary for them as for us.

Response to Adam Turner's "Doing History in Public" on Nursing Clio blog

Jean Perry #

I loved this article, especially the links to “The Presence of the Past” and “Think Talk Make Do”. Reading just “The Book Introduction” link in The Presence of the Past was fascinating although i found the lack of comment about women’s connection to the past disappointing and telling. Were there no such responses from women about having connections to women in the past, whether to their families or at museums, reading history, etc? 

In one sense i can understand that, if it is true. I’m fortunate that various generations before me have extensive information about four Scotch-Irish brothers/ancestors who came to south central Pennsylvania in the early 1700′s and that my biological family has stayed in the area, so i know a lot about their environment and the history they lived through. Of course, i have no history about any of the women in their lives! It’s very frustrating. 

I also recognize that most people that the surveyors talked to probably know little women’s history unless they read some biographies, or the women were connected to men whom historians have written about – and lord knows that info has often not been factual! 

It still surprises me that as women’s history and women’s historical sites have been getting more attention since the 1970′s that there was only one place where the word “women” was mentioned in that explanation of how they interpreted the information from the surveys.

I found NC about six months ago and have loved it. Thank you for your initiation of this blog and for your time and expertise in sharing it with us. I have frequently shared some or all of it with friends who are feminists and some who have an interest in women’s history. I taught high school and then college history at various times in my life, but have been a reader about women in history since my sophomore year in high school – 50+ yrs ago. I have had women’s history as both a vocation and an avocation ever since. I was a founding member of the Alice Paul Institute, which continues educating school children and adults in Alice’s fight for a suffrage amendment and an Equal Rights Amendment. I actually met and talked with Alice Paul in her 92nd year.

Some of those women who were with me on the founding board of API are still dear friends and many of us meet every Jan 11 – Alice’s birthday – for dinner. They are all women who are interested in women’s history. I know there are millions of such women in the country, which is the reason for my surprise at the lack of mention in the link to The Presence of the Past.

Here is the link to the API, it is housed in the home she grew up in which was bought and renovated by an interested group of women and conducts tours, telling Alice’s and the suffrage and ERA story, and trains school girls in leadership skills and the fact that they CAN be leaders! Certainly “Doing History In Public.”

http://www.alicepaul.org/

May 10, 2013

Reply

Elizabeth, how are we doing?

Posted by Marguerite Kearns on May 30, 2013 in 60-Second History Lesson | 0 comments

Daniel Cady, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s father.

by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The tears and complaints of the women who came to my father for legal advice touched my heart, and early drew my attention to the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my father’s business, I could not exactly understand why he could not alleviate the sufferings of these women.

So, in order to enlighten me, he would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by turns. One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them my present of a new coral necklace and bracelet. They all admired the jewelry, and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases of future ownership. “Now,” said Henry Bayard, “if in due time you should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine. I could take them and lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I could even exchange them for a cigar, and you could watch them evaporate in smoke.”

A CHILDHOOD RESOLVE TO CUT THE NASTY LAWS FROM THE BOOKS

With this constant bantering from students, and the sad complaints of women clients, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time, my attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the beginning and the end of the law.

However, this mutilation of his volumes was never accomplished, for dear old FloraCampbell, to whom I confided my plan for the amelioration of her wrongs, warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that he had discovered my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws were made, the large number of lawyers and libraries there were all over the state, and that if his library should burn up it would make no difference in woman’s condition.

“When you are grown up, and able to prepare a speech,” said he, “you must go down to Albany and talk to the legislators; tell them all you have seen in this office — the sufferings of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the old ones will be a dead letter.” Thus was the future object of my life suggested and my duty plainly outlined by him who was most opposed to my public career when, in due time, it was entered upon.”

SOURCE: Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s memoir. Information about Daniel Cady, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s father.

How are we doing Elizabeth? The story of the students taunting her about their being able to take control of her jewelry and being able to do with it what they wished reminds me of the MALE legislators who still think they are in control of women's bodies, and they can be. This is like playing whack-a-mole. Women and their supporters have been whacking away at those MALE moles who keep wanting to take us back to the 19th century and it appears that it will be necessary to be whacking away for many years, perhaps decades to come.......the price of keeping those changes that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, et al worked

 so hard to make.