Violette Szabo

In WWII, Violette Szabo worked for Special Operations Executive (SOE), the British spy organization. She grew up as a tomboy, the only girl of 5 children. She was sent to live with her aunt in France during the Great Depression and was fluent in French when she moved back to London at 11. Szabo married young and had a daughter. Her husband was deployed to Africa and died in action just four months after the birth of her daughter. Partially out of a desire to contribute to the war effort and partially to avenge her husband's death, she enlisted in the SOE. Her French fluency, athleticism, and marksmanship made her a great recruit.

Szabo completed her first mission for SOE in German-occupied France in April 1944. She gathered intelligence on a compromised spy circuit codenamed Salesman. Her second mission occurred two months later, the day after D-Day. It was intended to sabotage German communications in France. Three days in, she was in a car and stopped by Germans. There is some confusion of what happened next (there may have been a gunfight), but she was captured, tortured, and transferred to multiple German labor camps before, ultimately, being taken to Ravensbrück. In February 1945, she was executed, along with two other SOE women spies.