Hidden heroes: Local author honors World War II women spies in new book

LOS LUNAS — “Their patriotism, their bravery and their sense of adventure inspired and amazed me,” wrote Los Lunas-based author, Donna Pedace, in the foreword of her latest book, “Women Warriors — The Hidden Spies of WWII.”

The book, published late this summer, provides insight into the lives of 52 courageous women who served as field agent spies in France through Special Operation Executive (SOE) — a volunteer fighting force created by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in response to the Nazi occupation of France.

In doing so, they “dared to break all the accepted rules regarding women in war zones.”

“My intent in writing this book is to shed light on the lives of a remarkable group of women and their extraordinary contributions during WWII,” Pedace wrote. “Women have contributed so much to every culture, but they have often received little recognition from those who have written about it. Especially in military history, the vast majority of authors have included very little about women’s contributions.”

The idea for the book came about through research Pedace conducted for her first book, “Scandalous Women of the Old West — Women Who Dared to be Different.”

“I saw a line somewhere that said something like, ‘This woman reminds us of Nancy Wake,’ and I thought, ‘Who is Nancy Wake?’

“Her story sounded interesting, so I started investigating her, and then I stumbled upon the fact that there was this whole group of women who parachuted in behind enemy lines,” Pedace recalled. “I’m reasonably well read and aware, but I didn’t know anything about them.”

Intrigued, Pedace went down a rabbit hole of research and discovered that Britain had kept the files of the women classified for decades after the war. She said their reasoning was the public wouldn’t have approved of women taking on those roles, so their stories remained classified for much longer than the men’s stories did.

“The men became heroes, but many of these women died before their families knew what they had done during the war,” said Pedace. “So I just thought that the stories of the women, as much as I could find, deserved a little recognition.”

Beginning in late 2022, Pedace spent more than a year delving deep into the hidden world of female SOE field agents. Unfortunately, they have all since died, Pedace noted, so her primary resources were England’s National Archives and many books and papers written by others who had first-hand knowledge of the SOE or of the agents themselves.

While there were a few whose stories were well documented, information for many of the women was often scarce and hard to come by. In fact, through her persistent research, Pedace, herself, was responsible for the declassification of seven of the women’s files within England’s archives.

“Nobody had ever asked the question,” said Pedace. “Some of the women ... they have nothing, no files. I suspect they just got lost when the organization was shut down.”

Pedace wrote in her book “the SOE pioneered recruiting women to go into active war zones.” This was likely due to women being able to get through enemy lines easier as they didn’t attract as much suspicion, she said.

“The Germans were locking down all the roads and the trains and male agents were stopped, frisked and questioned much more often than the women,” said Pedace. “The Germans won’t suspect the women; they won’t believe that a woman could do that — that was the original rationale.”

The spies spent a lot of time moving around from place to place and many of the women were either radio operators or messengers working in networks known as circuits. Each circuit covered a specific sector of France and was made up of three or more people.

“Those were the two main roles, though there were a few women who ran their own circuits,” said Pedace. “(The radio operator) was the most dangerous job. Most of the women who were executed were radio operators, because the Germans could track them, so they were almost always separate from the main circuit.”

Pedace said the threat of capture was also strong for the messenger, who was the mode of communication between the circuit leader and the radio operator.

“Female field agents volunteered, knowing that arrest, torture and execution were a very real possibility — a fate that awaited many of them,” Pedace wrote in the book. “Some joined because they needed income during the war, some joined for adventure, but all joined because they had a burning passion to defeat the Nazis and free France from the tyranny of occupation.”

Pedace said these circuits were critical because they allowed the resistance to keep fighting by supplying them with money, weapons and other supplies. They were also integral in informing the resistance of where they should attack.

“The resistance would have run out of supplies very early in the war if they had not had all of that help,” said Pedace. “They bombed hundreds and hundreds of train tracks that stopped the supplies coming in to the Germans … that’s why the radio operators were so important.”

While a few of the women have had books written about them individually, Pedace’s book is the only one that covers all of them, to her knowledge. This has led to interest from military museums to have her book in their shops, and she is proud to have recently learned that her book will be included in the library of the Special Forces club in London — a prominent establishment in the intelligence world.

“I believe it is very comprehensive,” said Pedace of her book. “If you have any interest in World War II or the intelligence business, I’m hoping it will be of interest, and I hope people read it and have some understanding of what these women did and what they sacrificed and what they endured to try to bring about the freedom of France and end the war.”

“Women Warriors: The Hidden Spies of WWII” can be purchased online through Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com.