Ann Stringer

When her husband (who was also a reporter) was killed in action in France just before the U.S. got involved in World War II, in-your-face woman Ann Stringer showed up at Army Headquarters and demanded to be allowed to serve as a war correspondent herself. At first, she was denied, but ultimately, she was accredited and sent into France four days after D-Day.

Initially, Stringer and other women correspondents were prevented from going to the front lines, but that denial didn't last either and eventually, she sent back articles from the front in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. In fact, Stringer was with the troops when they liberated Buchenwald and Dachau Concentration Camps and she covered the Nuremberg trials, as well.

What she's best known for, however, is that at one point, while the male reporters were all ignoring her and focusing only on their competition with each other, Stringer jumped on a C-47 cargo plane to Paris. Looking out the window, she noticed unusual activity in a village below and talked the pilot into landing in a field. Which is how Stringer came to know that the Russian troops and the U.S. troops had finally linked up in Germany -- major news around the world! In-your-face women can't seem to help staying one step ahead of everybody else. It's just who they are.