gregorypecks:

Bletchley Park
World War II code-breaking enclave in the English countryside of Buckinghamshire.

Thousands of women were employed here to decipher encoded German signals and secret communication sent between Nazi generals.

Far from being a group of experienced decoders, however, the estate’s recruits mainly consisted of young teenage military personnel, a smattering of crossword whizzes who had been able to compelete the Daily Telegraph’s puzzle in less than 12 minutes, and numerous 18-year-old girls plucked from their quiet home towns.

“It was the middle of the war when I recieved a call saying I was to go into war work to support Britain’s efforts from home,” explains 88-year-old Margaret Bullen, a machine wire operator who served from 1942 until the end of the war. A letter from the Foreign Office then arrived saying I had an interview – but I had no idea what it was for, and two weeks later, I was told I’d be off to Bletchley.”

“Before starting work we were told to sign the Offical Secrets Act, which was a rather frightening experience for someone as young and naive as I was,” says 90-year-old Becky Webb, who joined the war effort at age 18 in 1941. “I had no idea how I’d comply with it!”

“I never knew what any of my coworkers were doing, and vice cersa and my parents never knew a thing of it” reflected Ruth Bourne who also joined the war effort at age 18.

Despite not knowing much about what their work was or what it was being used for, what these women did was crucial. Intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain.

maleinstructor:

In the heat of battle, photographer Horace Bristol captured one of the most unique and erotic photos of WWII.

Bristol photographed a young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission, manning his gun after having stripped naked and jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot. The Marine was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul.

“…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.”

chels-e-lately:

emerald-avenger:

tarteauxfraises:

kendrajbean:

In the mid-1930s, an Australian journalist visited Germany to report on the rise of fascism and interview Adolf Hitler. The atrocities she saw there, which included the public beating of Jews, forever changed the course of her young life. Nancy Wake, who died Sunday at age 98, would spend World War II fighting Nazism tooth and nail, saving thousands of Allied lives, winding up at the top of the Gestapo’s most-wanted list and ultimately receiving more decorations than any other servicewoman.

Wake made her way from Spain to Britain, where she convinced special agents to train her as a spy and guerilla operative. In April 1944 she parachuted into France to coordinate attacks on German troops and installations prior to the D-Day invasion, leading a band of 7,000 resistance fighters. In order to earn the esteem of the men under her command, she reportedly challenged them to drinking contests and would inevitably drink them under the table. But her fierceness alone may have won her enough respect: During the violent months preceding the liberation of Paris, Wake killed a German guard with a single karate chop to the neck, executed a women who had been spying for the Germans, shot her way out of roadblocks and biked 70 hours through perilous Nazi checkpoints to deliver radio codes for the Allies. (via)

I’m going to keep talking about this until you all buy her god damn biography. Because I don’t think you guys understand.

She was NUMBER ONE on the Gestapo’s most wanted list during the war.  There was a 5 MILLION FRANC prize on her head.

They called her the White Mouse because of her skill for escaping certain death. 

She was parachuting into a camp once and got tangled in a tree. A French soldier saw her flailing around and said, “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.” She answered only, “Don’t give me that French shit.”

She would smuggle messages, food, and supplies in a supply truck and when she passed German posts she’d wink at the soldiers and say, “Do you want to search me?” They never did.

She found out at one point that her men had been hiding a female German spy, protecting her. The rule was to kill them, but the men didn’t have the heart. But Nancy Wake did. And she never regretted it.

When she killed a man with her bare hands, it was an SS sentry who’d spotted her and she killed him to prevent him from raising the alarm during the raid. She would later say of it, “They’d taught us this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practiced away at it. But this was the only time I used it – whack – and it killed him all right. I was really surprised.”

She died in 2011, 3 weeks before her 99th birthday.

If you don’t think Nancy Wake deserves a movie and a TV show and all the damn recognition in the world, you’re wrong. 

Yaaassssssss can we get a movie? This is like inglorious bastards BUT REAL AND WITH A WOMAN