About this item

Winner of 2014 Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young PeopleThere was a full moon on the evening of September 22, 1943, when Pearl Witherington, age 29, parachuted into France to aid the French Resistance as a special agent for the British Special Operations Executive SOE. Out of the 400 agents sent to France during the German occupation, 39 were women. Pearl, whom the SOE called cool and resourceful and extremely determined and the best shot, male or female, we have yet had, became one of the most celebrated female World War II resistance fighters.In Code Name Pauline Pearl describes in a series of plainspoken reminiscences her difficult childhood and harrowing escape from France in 1940 her recruitment and training as a special agent the logistics and dangers of posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to make her way around the country as an undercover courier and both failed and successful attempts at sabotaging the Nazis.