Intrepid Woman

Today I was delighted to see that Amazon and at least one other bookseller are now taking pre-orders for "Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier's Secret War, 1942-45."   The book is a memoir authored by Betty Lussier, a long-time family friend and for me, a kindred Sagittarian.  Betty and I first met when we were part of a team working in the early 1980s with a bilateral US-Morocco project specifically aimed at assisting rural women to form cooperatives, among other things, in order to empower themselves financially.  Betty is simply the most amazing woman I have ever had the honor to know firsthand.

Betty's life story in many ways falls into the "life is stranger than fiction" category.  She had an extraordinary ability to have been in the right place at the right time so that she was on the spot for many seminal events of WWII and the years immediately following, including years under the Franco regime in Spain.  Not only was Betty on the spot, she took an active part in historically significant activities.  Even in the most challenging of circumstances, she rose to the challenge.  She is literally legendary.  Even better, she is still with us, as indomitable as she is intrepid.

Betty came from a family of strong and beautiful women.  Like me, she was one of four sisters.  Her equally strong Canadian-plains-born mother held things together on the family farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore while her husband and three of her daughters (the youngest was too young) were all in foreign lands contributing to the Allied cause.  Betty's father, Emile, raised his daughters in the same way that he would have raised the sons he never had.   Emile Lussier had been an ace pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WWI, flying a Sopwith Camel.  In WWII, he served with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

At 16, Betty followed in her father's footsteps by learning to fly.  She did so using a neighbor's Piper Cub.  The last I heard, she still has her pilot's license, although she doesn't fly solo any more.  Betty herself was born in Canada and, as a result, was entitled to a British passport.  In 1942, she travelled to Great Britain and was assigned to the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), where she is listed today.  

Betty resigned from the ATA after it was decided that women pilots would not be allowed to fly into combat zones on the European continent once the invasion had taken place.  As it happened, however, the newly-formed Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was looking for women to work in counter-intelligence at about the same time.  Thus, Betty was assigned to an X-2 unit, the first to be trained in Britain.  She describes how that happened here (note: you may have to scroll down to find the article "Remembering 109 - The Recollections of OSSers" because the link leads to a .pdf file and the first part is dedicated to the late Julia Child, another former OSSer).  Some of her OSS experiences are described in "Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS" by Elizabeth McIntosh.  Many more details will undoubtedly be provided in her own memoir.

During her OSS service, she met the Spanish-born man whom she later married.  After the war, she moved to Spain where they raised four sons together, before finally divorcing when their sons were of college age.  They remained good friends, however, until his death.  His extraordinary life also provides fodder for the "life is stranger than fiction" category, but I never knew him personally.  For an excellent piece that provides a fairly comprehensive description of Betty's life and experiences, see here.   

As I mentioned earlier, Betty and I met in Morocco in 1980.  Now she laughingly recalls how, when I met HWMBO in 1981, she advised me not to remarry at all.  She was afraid that I would regret it.  Of course, that was before she had met him.  When she did, the two of them became and are still great friends.  He also provided logistic assistance and moral support for her memoir and has been one of her most fervent champions.

We both know most family members and can report from firsthand knowledge that there are many strong and beautiful women among her grandchildren.  There are also some strong and handsome great-grandsons around the ages of my own Princess Butterfly and Prince Tyger.

Yes, I am absolutely delighted to see that this extremely modest and humble, albeit intrepid, woman will have her life work acknowledged by a wider audience.  I am very much looking forward to reading her memoir.