Helen Johns Kirtland was an early woman war photojournalist active at the end of World War I. She was the “the first and only woman correspondent allowed at the front after Caporetto, the 1917 Italian retreat in which 275,000 troops were captured.”
Served in the US Civil War disguised as a man
With a degree in mathematics and a Navy correspondence course on cryptology Wilma Davis was hired to work in the Army’s Signal Intelligence Service in the late 1930s.
OSS cartographer during WWII
Maria Gulovich, a young Slovakian schoolteacher, was only 23 when she began harboring Jews from the Nazis. She joined the underground resistance and began working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a guide and interpreter.
Leslianne Shedd—a young, courageous, highly successful CIA operations officer serving in East Africa—was a passenger on an Ethiopian Airlines flight when it was hijacked and then crashed into the Indian Ocean in 1996, killing 125 people, including Leslianne.
During the First World War, Lawrence disguised herself as a man, and using the alias Denis Smith, joined the British Army.
American who fought in the US Civil War disguised as a man
Englishwoman Hannah Snell assumed the identity of her brother-in-law, James Gray, after her child died and her husband deserted her. For four years, she served in the British Royal Marines.
American WWII intelligence officer