D-Day Girls

Friend of the blog (you know, she admits to reading it sometimes) Sarah Rose wrote a book. Not too far in yet, but it's good! You should buy it. History but a real page-turner.



A bit more about it:

D-Day Girls, written with novelistic detail, weaves together five women’s narratives using historical research from contemporary periodicals, archives, and interview records. The British government, Rose writes, was initially concerned about allowing women into the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret agency formed in 1940 to foment insurgency in land captured by Nazi Germany. Nicknamed the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” by Winston Churchill, the SOE did not send female agents overseas until 1942. As Rose writes, “Putting women in the line of fire was obscene, the brass said: War is fought by men for the sake of women and children. … The Edwardians who ran the war … believed female recruits would deliver a new weapon into Hitler’s hands: rape.” Such arguments, as Rose recounts them, echo contemporary U.S. officials’ concerns about putting women in combat.