Knitting and Spying by Nancy J. Farrier

 Do you like to knit? Do you have the nerve to knit in the middle of an enemy stronghold and work messages into your knitting to pass on to your country’s armed forces? That is what the women featured in today’s blog did during war time. I salute them for their bravery and determination. Let’s take a look at what they accomplished and how they alerted their forces using their needlework.

Knit/Purl Stitches by WillowW
Wikimedia Commons

First, keep in mind how knitting is done. There are two basic stitches. The knit stitch looks like a “v” and the purl stitch makes a small bump. Also, dropped stitches were used to make a hole. That means these patterns could have been read by feel in low light if needed. Plus, women were encouraged to knit and make items to help soldiers, so nothing was thought about a woman sitting in her window or in public with her knitting needles clicking away. Little did the opposition realize that she didn’t have to focus on her work, but could be watching and listening to later report conversations and movements. A perfect spy!

Phyllis Latour Doyle

Phyllis joined the RAF in 1941 after a friend was killed by Nazi soldiers. She planned to train to be an airplane mechanic but others noted her potential. Because her father was French, Phyllis grew up speaking fluent French and would be valuable as a spy behind lines. She agreed to become a spy and was trained by a cat burglar to do things like cross a roof top undetected.

1904 Picture of
Woman Knitting

At the end of her training, Phyllis parachuted into Normandy. She pretended to be a teenager to throw off suspicion. She traveled by bicycle and chatted with German soldiers. She would then go someplace secret, bring out her knitting and use one of her 2,000 codes to send a message. She would hide the knitted message by winding the strip around a knitting needle and inserting it in a hair tie. Each time she used one of the codes she’d been given she would mark the code, so she wouldn’t use it again.

Phyllis had to keep on the move. She would send her message and then go quickly before the Germans could trace the source of the message. They did not catch her. She often had to sleep on the forest floor unless she found some Allied sympathizers. She ate what food she could find and was often hungry, but she always had her knitting and her silk thread she used for her patterns.

In 2014, Phyllis was awarded the Legion of Honour, France’s highest decoration. She did not want to get this award but did it for her family. She was 93 at the time. Her family found out about her spy work in the late 1900’s when one of her sons read about her on the internet. She did not want to brag about the service she’d done for her country.

Madame Lavengle

WWI Ad for Knitting
By Marguerite Martyn
Wikimedia Commons

During WWI the Germans occupied her home putting her and her children at risk. Madame Lavengle did not quake in fear. Instead, she joined the resistance and used her knitting and her children to send coded messages right under the noses of the Germans in her home.

In an upper room, Lavengle sat at a window knitting. Every day she would sit there and knit. Such an innocent pastime, right? Meanwhile, she would tap her foot on the floor and her children below her would copy down the code she signaled with the tapping. The German Marshall in her home never suspected she was gathering and passing on information. Amazing.

Molly “Mom” Rinker

Molly Rinker owned a tavern during the Revolutionary War. She often had British soldiers in her town and in her tavern. She wanted to do something to help the Revolution, so she would go to the park and sit on a high hill or rock and knit. As she watched and listened, she would tie knots in her ball of yarn as a code. Then she would drop the yarn at a certain place for the Revolutionary soldiers to find. In this way, a woman in a lowly occupation, helped out her fledgling country. Thank you, Molly.

Binary Pattern by Kurt Pippen Fowler

Many people enjoy the art of knitting. With the onset of computer coding and languages, knitters learned to do patterns in binary language. When Morse code was invented, they used a variation of stitches to make the dot and dash for Morse code and sent messages that way. Knitting is so much more than making a pretty garment.

Do you knit? Do you do another type of needlework? Would you have been brave enough to be a spy? To be dropped behind enemy lines and send coded messages? Or to gather information right under the enemy’s noses? What a challenge and what amazing women.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

The Great Halifax Explosion: The Weak and the Strong of It

By Terrie Todd

Charles Upham, a Halifax Harbour yardman, finished his night shift on December 6, 1917, and returned home. After eating a big breakfast and stoking the furnace for the day, he burrowed under the covers to sleep for a few hours. In the next bedroom, his daughter Millicent, nine, was staying home from school sick. Her brother Archie, seven, was visiting her for a moment before leaving for school.

Location of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Suddenly, the children heard a huge rushing wind tear through their house as shards of glass flew from the windows. Glass lodged into the back of Archie’s head while Millicent’s face was sliced to shreds. Their screams roused their father.

Cloud created by the Halifax explosion. Photo: Wikipedia

Although he’d been protected under the blankets, Charles ran barefoot into the next room, cutting his feet on glass fragments strewn about the floor. Seeing his children cut and bleeding, he led them out of Millicent’s room only to discover the entire east side of their house gone. The explosion had knocked out their staircase, trapping them on the second floor of a building about to collapse. The long strip of oilcloth that had covered the stairs, still attached at the top, flapped in the cold December wind.

Charles used the oilcloth like a rope to let himself down, then pulled it taut. He persuaded the children to slide down, even as beams and walls were caving in. Both children, though covered in blood and oily soot, did as their father urged and slid down the oilcloth. Immediately, the house went up in flames.

Charles carried Millicent piggyback and led Archie by the hand to safety. Though Millicent lost an eye and Archie later had twenty-two pieces of glass removed from his head, all three survived thanks to a humble oilcloth. All over Halifax, the strongest and most important parts of buildings (beams, joists, bricks) often became instruments of death while lesser, weaker items (like oilcloth) became lifesavers.

Oil Cloth Factory (Hubbard Free Library Collection)

The Reluctant Healer of Halifax is the final and sixth book in Barbour Publishing’s Enduring Hope series by various authors. In one-fifteenth of a second, the world’s prettiest harbor suffered the world’s largest man-made explosion prior to Hiroshima. A story of love, loss, faith, and honor set against Canada’s most devastating moment of the First World War. Watch for it in August 2026.

Terrie Todd is the award-winning author of ten historical novels, all set in Canada where she lives with her husband Jon. A former church drama team leader and newspaper columnist, she’s also a frequent contributor to Guideposts Books, mother of three, and grandmother of five.

 

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Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick - Parachutist

 By Nancy J. Farrier

Tiny with parachute - Wikimedia Commons
State Archives of North Carolina

Georgia Ann Thompson was born in 1893. She grew up in North Carolina and earned the nickname Tiny because she started weighed only three pounds at birth and grew up to be only five feet tall and 80 pounds. For her whole life people called her Tiny, although her determination and spirit did not match her diminutive size.

 

Tiny married at 12 and had a baby girl at 13. Her husband died in an accident when she was fourteen and she had to support her child working long days in a factory. 

 

Tiny in promotional photo as 
The Doll Girl
NC State Archives, public domain 

Georgia attended the 1907 State Fair and first saw Charles Broadwick’s Famous French Aeronauts perform. This group went up in hot air balloons and parachuted back to the ground. This was prior to skydiving from airplanes and so the new sight was thrilling to Tiny.

 

She went to Charles Broadwick and begged him to allow her to travel with them and learn to jump from a balloon. He agreed. Her mother was not happy with the decision but agreed on the condition that Tiny would leave her daughter with her mother instead of dragging her around the country. Tiny left her family and joined Broadwick’s group. Broadwick legally adopted Georgia in 1908 and she became Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick.

 

Charles Broadwick recognized a new performer and the boost she would bring to their tickets sales. She was small and had long, curly hair, so he introduced her as The Doll Girl. Tiny was 15 when she made her first jump from a hot air balloon. The sensation she created lasted through 1912 and then the show’s popularity slowly declined.

 

Tiny on jump seat
Wikimedia Commons

A famous pilot, Glenn Martin, saw Tiny jump and approached her about jumping from an airplane instead. She had no hesitation and wanted to work with him. Charles Broadwick made a different parachute for Tiny made of silk. It fit in a knapsack. A string attached it to the plane’s fuselage so that when Tiny dropped, the string would release the parachute.

 

Tiny rode suspended in a small seat behind the wing of the plane. When Martin reached an altitude of two thousand feet, Tiny pulled the lever and the seat swung away. For her first jump, she landed in Griffith Park in Los Angeles and became the first woman to parachute from a plane. She also became the first woman to parachute into water when she jumped into Lake Michigan.

 

Then, in 1914, WWI started. The military was losing planes and pilots. If the plane went down there was no recourse but for the pilot to go down too. The Army Air Corp went to see Tiny in San Diego. The asked her to jump from a military plane to see how it could be done safely.

 

Tiny Broadwick after 4 parachute jumps
on San Diego's North Island
NC State Archives, public domain

Tiny jumped four times for them at San Diego’s North Island. The first three went perfectly. The fourth one had problems at the start. She jumped and the parachute lines tangled in the tail of the plane. The wind was high and she had no way to get back in the plane. Tiny wasn’t one to get flustered. She cut all the lines except for one short piece. This caused her to fall free of the plane but the parachute wasn’t open. (This is most likely the first free fall, certainly the first for a woman.)

 

Tiny maintained her focus and used the short line to pull out the parachute. It then opened up and she had a safe flight down. That short cord became the early prototype for the rip cord on parachutes today. Most importantly, she proved that a pilot had the chance to get out of his damaged plane and get safely to ground. This is when the parachute became known as the “life preserver of the air.”

 

Tiny had to give up jumping in 1922. She’d broken many bones and dislocated shoulders during her career. Her ankles were problematic when she landed, so she retired.

 

Tiny demonstrating her parachute
to 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg
NC State Archives, public domain 

Tiny became known in aviation circles and to the military for her contributions. She was given many awards and honors. Among those, she was made an honorary member of the 82^nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg. 

 

At the time of her retirement, Tiny was quoted as saying, “I breathe so much better up threre, and it’s so peaceful being that near to God.” The National Air Museum Director, Philip S. Hopkins said, “…Measured by her courage and by her accomplishments, she stands tall among her colleagues—the pioneers of flight…” Tiny died at 85 and is buried in North Carolina.

 

What an amazing woman. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done any of those things, but I admire her for doing them. What a contribution to our military too. I found it very interesting that pilots were taught to parachute by a teenage woman who weighed less than a hundred pounds. Wow.

Have you heard of Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick? Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? Here is a fun interview with Tiny done in 1963. Don't forget that I’d love to hear from you.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

Canadian Heroines: Lillian Freiman

Lillian Freiman

By Terrie Todd

What I love most about this woman is that she didn’t just toss money at causes. She immersed herself in the work.

Being born female alone would have been a strike against the likelihood of her becoming a leader. Being born Jewish would be strike two. Somehow, Lillian Freiman rose above. She knocked the ball right out of the park using her resources to benefit others.

Her father provided a great example. On June 6, 1885, Lillian was born the fifth of 11 surviving children to Moses and Pauline Bilsky. The family settled in Ottawa in the early 1890s and Moses became a prominent member of the city’s Jewish community. Their home was open to all who needed help, particularly new immigrants.

By the time she was a teen, Lillian had joined the Ottawa Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society. She also started working with troubled youth through the city’s Children’s Aid Society.

In 1903, at 18, she married Archibald J. Freiman, a Lithuanian-born Jew who founded Freiman’s, a successful department store. Lillian bore three children—Dorothy, Lawrence, and Esther—before the Great War broke out. Nevertheless, she devoted herself to providing comforts to the soldiers at the front and those stationed in Ottawa. In 1915, she installed 30 sewing machines in her home, where women gathered to make sheets, blankets, and clothing to send overseas. This club later became the Disraeli Chapter of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE).

In 1917, Freiman foresaw the difficulties returning soldiers would face in their transition back to Canadian society. She helped form the Ottawa chapter of the Great War Veterans’ Association of Canada. This organization later became the Royal Canadian Legion. Freiman contributed space in her home and furnishings for the office that served as the local headquarters. She wrote the first letter of the organization at the desk she donated.

When the great flu pandemic struck Ottawa in 1918, Mayor Harold Fisher recruited Lillian Freiman to organize a special body to deal with the crisis. She rose to the challenge, working relentlessly with Dr. Robert Law. Lillian organized 1500 volunteers who nursed the sick and provided food and clothing. A born caregiver, she set up and managed three temporary hospitals.

In 1921, when Lillian learned of a poppy initiative occurring in France, she saw the potential of a similar campaign to help Canada’s veterans and their families. She gathered women in her home to create cloth poppies. The first Poppy Day occurred on November 11, 1921. Freiman chaired the Legion’s Poppy Campaign from that year until her death in 1940. The lower half of her coffin was covered with red poppies.

Perhaps Lillian’s greatest achievement—and most personal investment—involved Ukrainian war orphans. Government regulations passed in the 1920s made it difficult for immigrants, especially Jews, to enter Canada. Not one of Eastern Europe’s 137,000 Jewish orphans had been granted entry to Canada or the United States. Freiman arranged a meeting with Frederick Charles Blair, an official with the Department of Immigration and Colonization. She requested that a thousand Jewish Ukrainian war orphans be allowed into the country and launched a campaign to raise money and find adoptive families. In 1921, after raising $100,000, she traveled to Belgium to oversee the transport and placement of about 150 children. The Freimans adopted 11-year-old Gladys Rozovsky.

Lillian Freiman died on November 2, 1940, at the age of 55. She was the first Jewish Canadian to receive the Order of the British Empire.

Sources:

100 Canadian Heroines: Famous and Forgotten Faces, by Merna Forster, Dundurn Press, 2004

Wikipedia

The Canadian Encyclopedia

Emmaleen Kimball is 14 when she becomes convinced she really belongs to a tribe of Gypsies. Why won’t anyone tell her the truth? Was the whole world out to deceive her? And more importantly, did they really think she’d never figure it out?

Bernadette Kimball is 27 with no marriage prospects in sight. And with all the men fighting overseas, that isn’t likely to change. Not that she cares. Who needs a family? Families are just one big mess of secrets and lies.

April Kimball-Madden carries the burden of a secret she promised never to share. How can she tell Emmaleen when she’s never told her own husband the truth? Joey has no idea Emmaleen isn’t really his wife’s little sister and if he ever finds out who her biological father is, it will open a can of worms so big her household will never survive.

Can these three sisters reconcile their worst fears and deepest longings before it’s too late? Will the faith they’ve been taught and the mercy they’ve been shown be enough to bring peace to their hearts even in the midst of war?

April’s Promise was short-listed in both the 2020 Word Awards & the 2020 Braun Book Awards.

Terrie Todd’s novels are set in Manitoba where she lives. She lives with her husband, Jon, in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada where they raised their three children and where her novels are (mostly) set. They are grandparents to five boys.

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Battleship Texas

Grand Old Lady of the Sea by Martha Rogers

This battleship is now over a 100 years old and has a grand history of service to our nation. Here she is shown with the original twin steel towers or lattice masts which were replaced in an overhaul in 1925.

She was first launched on May 18, 1912 and commissioned on March 12, 1914. In 1916, the Texas became the first of U.S. battleships to be outfitted for war. Anti-aircraft guns and two 50 caliber guns were mounted on platforms atop the boat cranes. They were the first to be controlled with directors and rangefinders, analog forerunners of today's computers. Below is a picture of the these first gun towers.

 

In WWI she made numerous sorties into the North Sea in support of other navy vessels carrying troops. Her service with the Grand Fleet included occasional forays to reinforce the British squadron in the North Sea when threatened by German units. The fleet alternated between bases at Scapa Flow and the Firth of Forth in Scotland.

Here the crew poses on top of one of the turrets' main battery guns in 1918. 

After an overhaul in 1919, she became the first American battleship to launch an airplane, a British built Sopwith Camel, at Guantanamo Bay. Later that year, her captain, Nathan Twining, employed naval aircraft to spot the fall of shells during a main artery exercise. As a result, more floatplanes were added to all of the battleships. 

After another overhaul, her fire-control equipment was upgraded, and her armament was increased to eight 3-inch guns and torpedo tubes were removed. Six of the larger guns were relocated to the main deck. She was designated as the flagship of the United States Fleet and resumed duty along the eastern seaboard.

In WWII, she escorted war convoys across the Atlantic and shelled beaches for the North African campaign and the Normandy landings where she played an important role in the defense by being closer to shore and bombarding the coast with shells while troops were sent from the larger ships a little further out. Texas was a part of a combined US-British flotilla of 702 ships which included seven battleships and five heavy cruisers.

After that, she sailed to Cherbourg to join the Arkansas in defense against the German fleet. The Texas was shelled and wrecked the pilot house. Of the seven injured, only one didn't make it, helmsman Christian Christianson. Captain Baker escaped with no injuries and had the bridge cleaned. Then she rejoined the battle.

At one point, on June 25, 1944, Texas was hit again by an explosive that turned out to be a dud. The ship's Admiral Carleton Bryant saved the dud for posterity. Here he's shown in the left picture with the dud along with Captain Charles Baker. That shell became part of the museum display on the ship. The one on the right is a shot of her being fired at on that date.

                                                

After her performance there, she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet and provided gunfire support during the battles of Iwo ima and Okinawa. She spent five years as part of the Pacific Fleet.

At the end of WWII, on August 14, 1945, she returned to Okinawa and stayed there until September 23 when she became a part of Operation Magic Carpet. She set a course on that day with homeward bound troops to San Pedro, California on October 15. She made two more round-trip voyages to bring home American soldiers in November and a third in November. From San Pedro she steamed toward Norfolk, Virginia by way of the Panama Canal where she was prepared for inactivation. On June 18, 1946, she was officially placed in reserve at the shipyards in Baltimore, Maryland.

In April of 1947, the Texas Legislature established the Battleship Texas Commission to care for the ship. On March17,1948, at a cost of $225,000, she was towed from Baltimore to Laporte, Texas where was anchored in the Houston Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument where she was to serve as a permanent memorial. On the 21st of April, she was ceremoniously decommissioned and nine days later, her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register and became the first permanent battleship memorial museum in the US. She then was commissioned as the flagship of the Texas Navy.

This is where Texas sat as a Memorial Museum until August 31, 2022.

On that day, preparations began to move her to Galveston for much needed repairs at a cost far more than what it cost to bring her from Norfolk. She will be repaired and refurbished for $35 million as opposed to scrapping her for $30 million. After that she will have to make it on her own. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department will no longer pay the foundation for its upkeep. 

Texans love their history and they love the battleship. With the number of people wanting to see it preserved, we will find a way to keep it as a reminder of her part in preserving our country's freedom.

 Thousands upon thousands have visited the memorial and climbed around and explored the ship. Our three sons loved going down to LaPorte and having a fun day at the ship with a picnic lunch. Their dad and i usually had as much fun as they did.

Martha Rogers is a multi-published author and writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to eleven grandchildren and great-grandparents to six. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years teaching Freshman English at the college level. She is a member of ACFW, ACFW WOTS chapter in Houston, and serves as President of the writers’ group, Inspirational Writers Alive. 

 

NURSE EDITH CAVELL: SAVING LIVES ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

By Mary Davis

“Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt, so unhappy.” ~Edith Cavell

Born Edith Louise Cavell on December 4, 1865 in Swardeston, England where her father was a vicar for forty-five years. After a regular education, she became a governess for various families and served as a governess in Brussels, Belgium from 1890 to 1895. When her father fell seriously ill, she went home to nurse him back to health. In helping her father, she discovered her passion for nursing. At age thirty, she applied to become a nurse probationer at the London Hospital.

She worked in several different hospitals in England. Then as a private traveling nurse, she treated individuals in their homes in villages across England. Her patients’ ailments included gout, eye afflictions, appendicitis, pneumonia, pleurisy, and cancer, among others, giving her a wide range of experience. When typhoid broke out in 1897 in Maidstone, Cavell was sent to help. For her work there, she and others were awarded the Maidstone Medal.

In 1906, she took a temporary post at a private nursing institution. Later that year, Dr. Antoine Depage recruited her to be matron at a newly established nursing school in Brussels. By 1910, Cavell launched a nursing journal in Belgium. Within a year, she was training nurses for three hospitals and dozens of schools.

When World War I broke out, Cavell had been visiting her widowed mother. Instead of remaining in England, she returned to Brussels, where she knew her skills would be badly needed. Her clinic and nursing school had been taken over by the Red Cross. Cavell was firm with her nurses that they were to attend to everyone in their care equally regardless of their nationality. The Germans advanced and, in November 1914, Brussels fell. Sixty English nurses returned home, but Cavell and her assistant remained.

Two British soldiers managed to make their way to the hospital. Cavell hid them for two weeks before helping them get to neutral Netherlands. As other British, Belgium, and French soldiers made their way to the hospital, Cavell aided them in safe passage to the Netherlands, as well as French and Belgium civilians of military age. This scheme had been devised by Prince and Princess de Croÿ of Belgium (brother and sister). The escapees were given money, papers, and guides to get them to safety over the Dutch border.

“I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved.” ~Edith Cavell

Cavell helped about 200 Allied soldiers over the course of a year, until August 3, 1915 when she and several others were arrested for harboring Allied soldiers. Confined in Saint-Gilles prison for ten weeks, she spent the last two in solitary confinement. She was tried and found guilty of treason.

Ordinarily, medical personnel were protected under the First Geneva Convention. However, if that position was used for any belligerent action the protection was forfeited. According to German military law, this type of action was punishable by death.

On October 7, 1915, Cavell and the others were brought before a court-martial. Cavell herself signed a confession of her actions on October 9 and was sentenced to death. She knew from the onset of her actions that this would be the outcome if caught, and yet she chose to offer aide anyway.

Due to the provisions of the First Geneva Convention, Britain was powerless to do anything to help her. However, the United States had not yet joined the war and tried to put diplomatic pressure on Germany to spare her life. Spain also tried to gain her a reprieve, to no avail.

Chaplain Reverend Horace Gahan met with her the day before her execution. She told him she had come to peace with her actions and fate, and held no resentments. She spoke these words to him on the eve before her execution.

“I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” ~Edith Cavell

Cavell and one other in the group arrested were put to death by firing squad. Others, including Princess de Croÿ, were held in prison. Cavell was forty-nine.

A shock wave raced around the world at the news of her death, and it united people in pride and grief. It also sharply increased anti-German sentiment. The Allies refused to let her death be in vain and used it in propaganda.

The first films about Cavell and her execution were in 1916, followed by more films, plays, and television shows decade after decade. Songs and an opera were written in her honor as well. She had monuments and statues dedicated to her.

After the war, her body was transported from Belgium to England where the King granted special permission for her to be buried on the grounds of Norwich Cathedral.

At the time, Britain denied Cavell was involved in any kind of espionage. However, in recent years, a former head of MI6 revealed new evidence that strongly suggests Cavell had assisted in smuggling information as well as soldiers.

I marvel at individuals like Edith Cavell, who risk their lives for strangers. For my children, grandchildren, family and loved ones, I could see myself doing this, but I don’t know if I’m brave enough or strong enough to do that for strangers.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man to lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

I can see why, two months later, the parents of Edith Piaf (my May post) named their daughter after this brave martyr. World War I was raging, and Edith Cavell’s death was fresh on everyone’s mind.
 

MRS. WITHERSPOON GOES TO WAR (Heroines of WWII series)

A WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) flies a secret mission to rescue three soldiers held captive in Cuba.

Margaret “Peggy” Witherspoon is a thirty-four-year-old widow, mother of two daughters, an excellent pilot, and very patriotic. She joins the WASP. As she performs various tasks like ferry aircraft, transporting cargo, and being an airplane mechanic, she meets and develops feelings for her supervisor Army Air Corp Major Howie Berg. When Peggy learns of U.S. soldiers being held captive in Cuba, she, Major Berg, and two fellow WASPs devise an unsanctioned mission to rescue them. With Cuba being an ally in the war, they must be careful not to ignite an international incident.

Get it HERE!

 

MARY DAVIS, bestselling, award-winning novelist, has over thirty titles in both historical and contemporary themes. Her latest Quilting Circle release is THE DÉBUTANTE'S SECRET (The Quilting Circle  4), THE DAMSEL’S INTENT (The Quilting Circle  3) is a Selah Award Winner. Some of her other recent titles include; THE WIDOW'S PLIGHT (The Quilting Circle  1), THE DAUGHTER'S PREDICAMENT (The Quilting Circle  2), “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in The MISSAdventure Brides Collection , Prodigal Daughters Amish series, and "Bygones" in Thimbles and Threads. COMING IN OCTOBER 2022 THE LADY'S MISSION (The Quilting Circle  5).

Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-seven years and one cat. She has three adult children and three incredibly adorable grandchildren.

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Sources:
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Edith-Cavell/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edith-Cavell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell
https://www.azquotes.com/author/21237-Edith_Cavell
https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/oct/12/edith-cavell-nurse-martyr-and-spy