Kickass Girls

FOREST OF A THOUSAND LANTERNS

This, my most wondrous of tumblrs, is Virginia Hall, another woman who inspired OUR REALM IS THE NIGHT. Virginia was an American woman who worked for the British Special Operations Executive as a spy during World War II. 

Before the war, Virginia traveled Europe in the hopes of joining the diplomatic service. When a shooting accident resulted in the amputation of her left leg, she was essentially told her career in diplomacy was over. Because prosthetics give -10 diplomacy or something??

Others might have considered Virginia’s disability a problem, but she certainly didn’t. When WWII broke out, she joined an ambulance service in France until the puppet Vichy government occupied her location. She didn’t feel like working for them, so she figured no big deal, she’d just smuggle herself over to Britain. 

Which she did. 

She promptly trained for spycraft and got the SOE to send her back to France, where she coordinated the French underground for over a year. Things were going okay until 1942 - but when the Nazis finally seized full control of France, they had a list of names and Virginia’s was at the top. As the number one most wanted member of the French Resistance, Virginia figured it was time to peace out.

So she walked

Over the PYRENEES

on her prosthetic leg.

I mean, I have exactly 0 ambulatory disabilities and I would probably die in the Pyrenees. And you know the best part? Virginia had named her prosthetic ‘Cuthbert.’ When she informed SOE operatives of what she was going to do, she joked, ‘I hope Cuthbert doesn’t give me any trouble on the way.’

The operative didn’t get it. He signaled back, ‘If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.’ 

Virginia Hall trained guerilla forces, made maps, and communicated with the Allies from Spain until the war was over. She was awarded an MBE, and she is the only civilian woman to be awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for WWII.

Today’s super amazing kickass woman is Lizzie Compton, the Union soldier who wouldn’t let a little thing like being expelled from the army on account of her gender get in the way of fighting.

There’s little to go on for Lizzie’s early life, mostly because she never stuck to one story. Some say she came from Canada, some from the North, and one story even goes that she was born in Tennessee to abolitionist parents.

Whatever her beginnings, she enlisted with the Union army at the age of fourteen, and went out to fight. Lizzie’s adventures usually went something like this:

1. Enlist as a boy 2. Get injured 3. Get discovered while receiving treatment for her injury 4. Get kicked out of the army 5. Find a new regiment, rinse, repeat.

Sometimes Lizzie would wrangle herself a transfer, fearing she’d been discovered (or occasionally, having been discovered already). All in all she enlisted seven separate times, earning her the record for most re-enlistments. When she was arrested for dressing as a man, Lizzie reportedly said that she would rather die than be a lady. Ouch!

Eventually, Lizzie was discovered one too many times and kicked out of the army for good. She settled in Ontario and disappeared from history.

This is another fave of mine who inspired me while I was writing OUR REALM IS THE NIGHT.

Bessie was born on this month in 1892 to a family of sharecroppers in Texas. All her life she wanted to be an aviator, but no US flight school would admit her. Why? Because she was a black woman of Native American descent.

So what did Bessie do? She saved up money, and went to France to learn how to fly instead. Her incredible perseverance paid off and not only did she become the first black woman to hold a pilot’s license, she was the first person of Native American descent to do so as well.

Bessie wasn’t just a pilot. She did air shows and stunts, often honoring black veterans of WWI.

Hello, kickass people of all genders! Today I’m going to talk about one of the women who most inspired me as I wrote my novel, OUR REALM IS THE NIGHT. This lady was intelligent, driven, positive, kind, beautiful, and utterly devoted to a country that refused to acknowledge her heroism until decades after her death.

Her name is Lidia Litvyak, but some call her the White Lily (or Rose) of Stalingrad.

Lidia was born in 1921 in Moscow. Early in her life, her father was accused of treason by the Soviet Union, and sent to a work camp in Siberia. Lidia became dedicated to restoring the family name. And when the Russian air force was destroyed by Hitler in 1941, breaking the truce between the Soviet Union and Germany, Lidia got her chance.

Lidia had enrolled in a flying club at 14, and was making solo flights from the age of 15. When she heard that another great flyer and a Hero of the Union, Marina Raskova, was founding female aviation regiments for the new war, she was determined to join the fight. There was just one problem: she’d already been rejected from another aviation unit. She didn’t have enough experience, they said, even though she’d trained nearly 50 men to fly planes.

So what was a girl to do? Lidia decided to sidestep the problem by inflating her own hype. She lied about her experience and was assigned to the all-female 586th Fighter regiment. Later she was moved, from regiment to regiment, joining mostly-male regiments and showing up her colleagues. She liked to bleach her hair and collect bouquets, which she’d stick in the cockpit of her plane. She also ended each mission with unsanctioned aerial antics, right above the base - a move that irritated her male commander no end.

Lidia flew a plane called a Yak-1. People called her a natural-born fighter pilot, and she was the first female pilot to shoot down enemy aircraft. Not only that, but to this day Lidia holds the record for most kills made by a female fighter pilot - most people agree that she made 11 solo kills and 3 team kills.

But in 1943, at the age of 21, Lidia disappeared. 

She was on her fourth mission of the day, escorting other Soviet aircraft to their base. As they neared it, Lidia saw a group of German bombers and moved to attack. But she didn’t realize that a pair of Messerschmidts were flying cover. The Messerschmidts moved in, and the three planes disappeared behind a cloud. Another pilot in the dogfight said that the last he saw of her plane, it was pouring smoke and pursued by up to eight enemy aircraft.

Her colleagues found neither Lidia nor the wreckage of her plane. Without proof that she’d died, Soviet policy dictated that Lidia should be considered compromised - captured and forced to reveal information, essentially making her a traitor to the Soviet Union according to the rules at the time. For all that she’d wanted to redeem her father, she hadn’t managed to escape his fate.

Lidia’s downed airplane was found 36 years later, near a village called Dmitrievka. Only then was her name cleared of potential treason, and she was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union award in 1990.

Lidia and her story always struck me as one of contrasts - not just the contrast between male and female, which usually gets overhyped, but the contrast between love for one’s country, and a country’s love for its citizen. The stories of the USSR’s female aviators, and how they fought the state in order to fight for the state, always stuck with me. 

Okay people, BUCKLE UP for a piece of history full of plot twists and more spirit than Scrooge’s house on Christmas Eve.

This is the story of three Popes, the trial of a dead person, and a miracle. And it all begins way, way back in the year 864 AD.

We begin with a (sort of) protagonist to the tale: Formosus, a bishopy guy, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Formosus loved missions (not the Han Solo type mission, the let’s-talk-about-Jesus type mission). He decided to mission in Bulgaria and teach the Bulgarians about Catholicism. This went pretty well for him.

UNTIL.

He got accused of some pretty serious stuff from the Pope, a fellow named John VIII. John accused him of corrupting the Bulgarians and attempting to overthrow him as Pope, which I’m sure you can figure is a big no-no. John VIII kept Formosus out of power and out of the spotlight until he died in 882.

When John VIII bit it, Formosus waltzed back in to the Holy Roman Empire and resume his bishopin’ ways. And things seemed to get EVEN BETTER for him: he became Pope!

Being Pope carried a lot of political power and responsibility. Formy got to deal with the Holy Roman Emperors, who’d set their sights to conquering Italy. Worried about the itchy fingers of Emperor Guy, Formosus invited Guy’s nephew to come on down and invade Rome for a good old-fashioned coronation. I couldn’t tell you whether it turned out to be good luck or bad, but either way Formy died soon after crowning Arnulf of Carinthia as the new Holy Roman Emperor. Both Arnulf and Formosus shuffled off this mortal coil in 896, leaving the door wide open for the epic smear campaign that became THE CADAVER SYNOD.

Technically, Formosus was succeeded as Pope by Boniface VI, but Bonny only lasted a couple of weeks before he, too, went to meet his maker. The man who became Pope thereafter: Stephen VI.

And Stephen did not love Formosus.

Now, Pope Formosus died on April 4th, 896. Nine months later, in January 897, Stephen exhumed Formy’s remains and put him on trial. According to historians, Formosus was propped on a throne and an unlucky deacon was appointed his counsel. Formosus was accused of corrupting the Bulgarians and trying to overthrow his predecessor, John VIII. The Holy Roman Emperors looked on, ensuring that Formosus would get his humiliation for acting against them during his lifetime. Once it was ensured that the dead guy could mount no decent defense for himself, they stripped him of his Papal vestments, cut off the fingers he’d used for blessings, and dug him a new grave in a cemetery for foreigners. Just in case you thought that xenophobia and the ‘foreigners’ question is solely a question for our times.

But this. Wasn’t. Enough.

Somebody decided that the best way to end THE CADAVER SYNOD was to dig up the mutilated corpse of Formosus, tie weights to it, and toss it in the Tiber River.

And thus, surely, the strange and morbid tale of the Cadaver Synod would be over, right?

NOPE.

Rumors began to spread. People didn’t love Stephen’s spectacle against his enemy, and whispers ran through Rome that Formosus’ body had washed up on the banks and was now granting miracles. Formosus body was recovered and interred in St. Peter’s Basilica, in Rome. Pope Stephen, on the other hand, got chucked in prison where he was strangled in the summer of ‘97. Numerous Popes went back and forth on who was the real bad guy of the Cadaver Synod, leaving us with but one gem: it is now illegal in the Catholic church to put a dead guy on trial.