BROADCASTS.com

b'In 1942,\\xa0the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was\\xa0on the front lines. To \\u201cset Europe ablaze,\\u201d in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive\\xa0 (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

I\\u2019m talking with Sarah Rose, author of, D-Day Girls about the stories of three of these remarkable women. There\\u2019s Andr\\xe9e Borrel, a scrappy and streetwise Parisian who blew up power lines with the Gestapo hot on her heels; Odette Sansom, an unhappily married suburban mother who saw the SOE as her ticket out of domestic life and into a meaningful adventure; and Lise de Baissac, a fiercely independent member of French colonial high society and the SOE\\u2019s unflap\\xadpable \\u201cqueen.\\u201d Together, they destroyed train lines, ambushed Nazis, plotted prison breaks, and gathered crucial intelligence\\u2014laying the groundwork for the D-Day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war.'