Forest Park Author Edits Memoir of Female World War II Fighter

A Forest Park woman has edited a new memoir that reveals the life story of Pearl Witherington, one of the most celebrated female World War II resistance fighters.

Out of the 400 agents sent to France during the German occupation, 39 were women. 

For years, Pearl Witherington resisted giving interviews or sharing her experiences as a special agent for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), fearing her story would be overly romanticized, according to a news release from the Chicago Review Press.  

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At 80, however, she agreed to a series of lengthy interviews. Her reminiscences, gathered, translated and gently edited by Forest Park author Kathryn Atwood in Code Name Pauline: Memoirs of a World War II Special Agent, detail her recruitment and training as a special agent, the logistics of parachuting into a remote rural area of occupied France, hiding in a wheat field from enemy fire, the dangers she faced during work as an undercover courier and her post-war life, according to the release.

She also explores her difficult childhood spent in the shadow of World War I in France and her family’s harrowing escape from Paris as the Germans approached in 1940. Each chapter includes Atwood's opening remarks, providing context and background on the SOE and the French Resistance.

"With an annotated list of key figures, an appendix of original unedited interview extracts—including Pearl’s husband Henri’s story—and never-before-published photographs from Pearl’s personal collection, Code Name Pauline will captivate World War II buffs of any age and inspire young people—just as Pearl wished," according to the release.

Patch talked to Atwood, who told us more about herself and Code Name Pauline.

Forest Park Patch: Tell us about your role in editing Code Name Pauline? Where would readers see your hand in the story? 

Kathryn Atwood: When researching and writing my young adult collective biography, Women Heroes of World War II (2011), I chose women whose wartime stories contained inherent drama that had the potential to hold the interest of my target audience.  The women who worked undercover for the British wartime organization, the Special Operations Executive, had lives full of such drama. One name that stood out from the other female SOE agents was Pearl Witherington, an agent who began her work in France as a courier and went on to lead thousands of French resistance fighters when her network leader was arrested just before D-Day. 

As the saying goes, you have to know a lot to teach a little; in order to distill the wartime work of the women featured in Women Heroes into individual chapters, I had to begin with full-length biographies. And though I kept seeing mention of a Pearl Witherington memoir titled Pauline, I couldn't find it anywhere -- even a contact at the Imperial War Museum in London had no idea where I could find a copy.

It turns out that Pauline had been published in French by Hervé Larroque, a journalist who had interviewed Pearl during the 1990's. My husband John can read French so we purchased a copy, he wrote up an enormous summary, and I used this as the basis for the chapter. 

John and M. Larroque struck up a sort of pen pal friendship and during their correspondence M. Larroque told John that an English translation of the memoir had been approved by Pearl during her lifetime (she died in 2008) but that he had yet to find someone who would publish the translation as it was -- still in its original Q&A format. When I queried Lisa Reardon, my editor at the Chicago Review Press, she said they would be willing to publish it only if I would shape the material into a straight narrative and add introductory comments for each section. I did so and they published it.

Patch: What is your professional background, and how did it lead you to this opportunity? 

Atwood: I began my college studies as a history major/English lit minor and ended up reversing them. So I'm not an historian per se, but a writer with an intense interest in history. I reviewed books for several sites and print journals for a few years before... My dad was a WWII vet and I used to listen to his stories about the US Army Air Corps and watch a WWII documentary show with him while I was in high school. 

Patch: Why should we read Code Name Pauline?

Atwood: Pearl had an alcoholic father and because she was the oldest sibling in her family, she had to grow up very quickly. But it was this steely personality that made her such a capable SOE agent. She finally agreed to work on her memoir with M. Larroque because she wanted young people to understand the potential connection between misfortune in childhood and success in adult life. While Code Name Pauline definitely has that potential I think because the book is geared towards young adults, it can also be utilized as a concise introductory to the SOE.

Patch: What's next for you? 

Atwood: I just finished a book on WWI heroines for the Chicago Review Press and it's due out in April, in time for the war's centennial.