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Lise De Baissac was a leader in the French Resistance whose efforts contributed to the success of the D-Day landings.
- Women played key roles in D-Day, the Allied assault on Nazi-held France that is the largest amphibious invasion in history.
- "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers," said journalist Sarah Rose. "No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water."
- These are three of British agents who contributed to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.
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It has been 75 years since upward of 150,000 Allied troops began storming the beaches of Normandy by air, land, and sea. As the June 6 anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in military history approaches, journalist Sarah Rose illuminated several less widely known combat heroes who fought for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe in Operation Overlord: Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, and Odette Sansom. They are among the 39 female agents who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secret World War II intelligence agency created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze."
"Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says Rose, who started researching the history of women in combat and was surprised to learn that their roles dated back to World War II. "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers. No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water. They did what men did. They led men."
In her new book, D-Day Girls: THE SPIES WHO ARMED THE RESISTANCE, SABOTAGED THE NAZIS, AND HELPED WIN WORLD WAR II, Rose chronicles three of these agents' contributions to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.