If you were caught spying, you could be arrested, tried, sentenced to life in prison, or to death by firing squad-being a woman was no protection from the death penalty, as the executions of English nurse Edith Cavell and French spy Gabrielle Petit can testify. What were the challenges for working for the Alice Network? Spying took a particularly grueling kind of courage: not just nerving yourself up for one dangerous act, but setting yourself to do it over and over and over again, for months and possibly years as you tried to survive in a war zone. Movies might make you think spying is all couture gowns and cocktail parties and thrilling action, but the reality was boredom and danger keeping your head down and trying not to be noticed as you gathered and passed intelligence. Were there some facts that surprised about female spies? So I had first hand accounts for a good many of the scenes I had to dramatize! And there were some excellent first hand sources: Louise de Bettignies' surviving female lieutenant Leonie van Houtte (known in my book under her code name of Violette) went on in real life to marry a journalist after the war, and he wrote a memoir about her experiences as a spy. World War I is now more than 100 years in our past, so a lot of material is no longer under wraps. Was the research difficult to find unclassified material on The Alice Network? Elsie Inglis, a doctor in WWI who founded hospitals in France and Serbia, stayed with her patients when Germans took over her Serbian unit, and when threatened to sign a certificate stating that she had been well treated, looked the German commander in the eye and said "Make me." Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Russian female sniper in World War II who racked up 309 kills and met Eleanor Roosevelt. So many! Marthe Cnockaert, to whom the Germans awarded an Iron Cross for her work nursing German soldiers, never realizing she was spying on them at the same time. And since sex sells, Mata Hari is the one who ends up the most famous-or notorious.Īre there any other women you found fascinating that deserves some recognition for their efforts? She became more famous than her counterparts less because of what she did, than because "sexy female spy" is more of a draw than just "female spy." And I'm afraid the Madonna-whore double standard was alive and well in the intelligence business at the time women in espionage were either cast as saintly patriots who worked for their country without ever compromising their virtue (Louise de Bettignies, Edith Cavell both portrayed in propaganda as fragile paragons of martyred femininity) or they were sultry untrustworthy harlots who wormed secrets out of men with sex (Mata Hari, portrayed in propaganda as a devious sexpot). Mata Hari became famous not because of her spy work, which is dubious, but because she was a beauty and an exotic dancer with some sexy photographs. However, why we do not hear more about these other female spies like Louise de Bettignies? The story of Mata Hari fascinates us today. Far easier to laud the women who contributed to the war effort in more traditionally feminine roles like nursing. In my research I saw a palpable unease with the idea that women had been asked to participate in such a dishonorable business as spying. During wartime women have always stepped into male-dominated fields-but after the war is over, they are asked to step back again. Also, plain old sexism played a certain role in gradually forgetting women like Louise. But such women-Pearl Witherington, Nancy Wake, others like them-eclipsed the female spies who came before them, just as World War I itself tends to be eclipsed in the national memory by World War II. A generation of girls grew up knowing their stories, and some were motivated by those stories to join the SOE and become spies themselves in the next world war. In their day, women like Louise de Bettignies and Edith Cavell were heroines, lionized and medalled and written about. Why do you think their story is largely forgotten? They took a vital and dangerous role in the war effort. It was fascinating that these women did not passively spend their time in WWI. When I saw the huge recent boom in popularity for 20th century war fiction, it made sense to revisit some of those old plot ideas, and see if anything grabbed my imagination. I've always had ideas for books in a wide array of historical periods, from ancient Rome clear through to World War I. I love ancient Rome, and I'd love to write more books about it someday, but I've never been a one-era writer. What drew you to take a break from Ancient Rome and write about women in WWI?
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