Of Cuthbert and great courage

Posted by Barbara on June 5, 2023 in Blog, Dame designate, feminism, History, Women's equality issues | 2 comments

Over the years, as damesnet has matured, I have come across the most extraordinary and courageous women of past and present. However, the women featured in a new BBC radio series called History’s Secret Heroes surpass any description I could possibly imagine.

There is something truly wonderful about idly scrolling around BBC Sounds and knowing that you will find something you wish to listen to, whether it be fact or fiction. There are ten 30-minute episodes in this series, and I want to highlight three in particular.  The narrator is the wonderful Helena Bonham Carter, whose powerful yet mellifluous tones are perfectly suited to the content.

The heroes – and heroines – in the series all performed extraordinary feats of bravery and resistance in World War 2.  First we learn of the exploits of Virginia Hall. She was an American who worked in France, initially with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and then the American Office of Strategic Services.  At one point during her activities she became the Gestapo’s most wanted target.  Before the war she worked as a US Consular Service Clerk across Europe, and while in Turkey in 1933, she tripped on a fence and accidentally shot herself in the left foot while hunting.  Gangrene set in and her leg was amputated below the knee. It was replaced with a wooden prosthetic she nicknamed Cuthbert.

Despite this disability, Hall became the second female agent to be sent to France by SOE’s F (France) Section, and remained there for a lengthy period. Her achievements were phenomenal by any standard. Based in Lyons, in Vichy France, she recruited a network of spies including the madam of a brothel. The sex workers passed on snippets of information picked up from the German soldiers they serviced.  She engineered the release of French spies from a German internment camp, deploying one of their wives to smuggle in tools to enable them to escape.  There are many more instances of her ingenuity and bravery in the podcast, but for me it is the account of how Hall finally escaped the Nazis by crossing the Pyrenees on foot and in great pain for over 50 miles, having to conceal the fact of Cuthbert to her guide lest he thought this would slow them up and abandon her.

From a disabled woman we then learn of the tenacity of an African American: Major Charity Adams was the first such woman to be commissioned in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and the commanding officer of the first battalion of African American women to serve overseas during the war. They were sent to the UK to sort out a two-year backlog of mail and parcels stored in warehouses in Birmingham destined for the hundreds of thousands of US soldiers fighting in Europe. There were food parcels half eaten by rats which needed clearing. These communications were essential for maintaining morale amongst the troops, and Adams organised her team into shifts, ensuring a 24-hour work schedule. A visiting US general demanded to inspect the entire team, and Adams refused, informing him that this would disrupt the work programme, nearly earning her a court martial.  Adams encountered racist and sexist discrimination, but successfully fought against it.

Next we encounter a Jewish woman. Bela Hazan was Polish and joined the resistance to fight the Nazi occupation of her country. She served as a spy and courier, and because she had ‘Aryan’ features according to Nazi classification, she was not obviously Jewish.  She was captured by the Gestapo, and although she was tortured, was able to maintain her cover story that she was a Polish Christian, albeit a resistance member. As a result she was entrusted with positions of some authority in the camps where she was held, including helping to manage a hospital ward at Birkenau. When her camp was about to be captured by Soviet forces late in the war, she survived a forced march that killed many of her fellow captives.  

This is just a brief summary; Bonham Carter brings these extraordinary women to life in her narration; do listen if you can.