Sonia Butt D'Artois

Sonia Butt D’Artois was just a teen-ager studying at a private school in the south of France when World War II broke out, so her parents had her return to Great Britain, but she was still in her teens when she joined the Special Operations Executive (the British secret service). Newly married, fluent in French because of her earlier years in that country, and highly trained in the use of British, American, and German weapons and explosives, D’Artois parachuted into France where she trained members of the French resistance by day and blew things up by night.

After D-Day, she began joining the resistance fighters in bigger military actions and when the U.S. command offered her the opportunity to go home, D’Artois refused, continuing to criss-cross the battle lines for information until the Germans were defeated. Aware that many of the women she had trained and served with had already been captured, imprisoned, or even executed, “Tony,” as she has always been called, chose to keep going until the bitter end. In-your-face-women stop when they're ready.