The forgotten world of female espionage

When the Germans occupied northern Italy in the autumn of 1943, they were pleased with the way that young Italian women, pedalling on bicycles around the country lanes in white socks and pigtails, smiled at them. The soldiers offered to help with their loaded baskets and gave them lifts in lorries. It took some months before they discovered that these smiling girls, known as staffette, were working as couriers, spies and carriers of weapons for the Resistance, then busy forming in the foothills of the Alps. When they realised their mistake, their reaction was often brutal.

This same temporary impunity held for the many thousands of Allied women who acted as messengers, radio operators and double agents behind enemy lines in both world wars. Helen Fry emphasises that the enemy was often slow to identify resisters in the many guises in which female Allied agents showed themselves.