The Amateur Female Spies Who Boosted The CIA During WWII

Soon after its inception in 1942 General William Donovan realized that the agency would benefit significantly from having female spies in its ranks. A trip to espionage training school Wanborough Manor had helped alert him to the fact that women were achieving great success in the field of espionage while posing as wireless operators and couriers.

And Griggs’ job was made all the harder by the fact that she couldn’t tell any possible recruits about the true nature of the work. But pretty soon, about 4,000 women had agreed to sign up for the clandestine operations. Sadly, most of their stories of bravery, courage, and gung-ho spirit have since been overshadowed by those of their male counterparts.

Gertrude Sanford Legendre’s story was already so remarkable before she joined the OSS that she’d been depicted on screen by none other than Hollywood legend Katherine Hepburn. Yes, in 1937 her South Carolina super-rich family, which also included socialite sister Sara Jane and polo-playing brother Stephen, were given the biopic treatment in Holiday.

Gertrude developed a taste for adventure in her teens with a global hunting expedition which, as well as domestic destinations such as the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, also took in locations including Iran, Canada, and South-east Asia. New York City’s American Museum of Natural History benefited greatly from the numerous specimens that she caught along the way.

Unsurprisingly, both parties had a desire to serve their nation once America became embroiled in World War Two. Gertrude first became affiliated with the OSS when she presided over a cable desk as a clerk in Washington, DC. But she got the chance to wear a WAC uniform when she was sent over to Paris to serve as a second lieutenant.

Gertrude, who had apparently been hoping to reconnect with old acquaintance George S. Patton at the time, was captured alongside her driver and two fellow OSS officers as they approached the front. All had no choice but to surrender after opposition snipers forced them to take cover.

While near the Swiss border, Gertrude leaped from her moving train and defied orders from shocked German guards to find freedom. The equally stunned OSS implored the unlikely action hero to keep her dramatic story to herself when they sent her back to the States. Gertrude’s near-death experience didn’t put her off from traveling, though.

It’s fair to say that Cora Du Bois and Jeanne Taylor had two very different backgrounds. The former grew up in New York City with parents who had emigrated from Switzerland. And after graduating from Columbia University with a history degree, she continued to further her interest in anthropological matters with various trips across the globe.

Jeanne, on the other hand, hailed from the Minnesota city of Saint Paul and was a good nine years younger than Cora. She did, though, make it to New York herself to pursue her career ambitions after earning a place at the St. Paul School of Art and the Art Students League of New York.

But their paths began to cross in more ways than one during the final year of World War Two. Having attracted the attention of William Langer — who was serving as an analyst in the OSS — for her anthropological fieldwork in Indonesia, Cora was invited to serve as an area expert for the agency.

Jeanne was also tapped up by the OSS to work as a graphic designer. And her life changed dramatically once again when she was transferred to Ceylon, the country which later became known as Sri Lanka. It was here where she met her fellow OSS recruit Cora.

Cora then smashed the glass ceiling in 1953 when she became the first Harvard female faculty member to receive the prestigious Harvard-Radcliffe Zemurray Professorship. This essentially guaranteed the war heroine an Arts and Sciences tenure at the esteemed American college.

Maria Gulovich was working as a school teacher in Slovakia, a country then occupied by the Germans, in 1944 when a Jewish friend asked her for some life-saving help. Putting herself at risk, the 20-something agreed to take in her pal’s sister and her five-year-old son.

That’s right: the captain was working undercover as a part of the anti-fascist resistance. Not only did he discover a new, safer place for the Jewish pair, he also offered the multilingual Maria a position as a translator and courier. The schoolteacher accepted, and following a stint with Russian Intelligence, she attracted the attention of the OSS.

Unfortunately, Maria was forced to flee into mountain territory alongside various other rebel troops when the Slovak uprising was thwarted by the occupying forces. It was here, though, that she proved to be the OSS’s most valuable asset.

Luckily for Maria, she and four other allies, a couple of airmen from Great Britain and two fellow officers from the OSS, were out scavenging for vital supplies when an attachment of German troops burst into their mountainside shelter. The U.S. individuals who’d been staying in the lodge were either killed there and then or transported to a concentration camp.

Even with a severely frostbitten foot caused by the adverse weather, Maria refused to stay put, concerned that she and the other allies would be caught. In March 1945 the five-strong group eventually found safety in the Romanian capital of Bucharest; later, they were transported to OSS’s Italian headquarters.

Like many of her fellow heroines in the OSS, Barbara Lauwers was fluent in many languages including French, German, and English. The Czech native, who had graduated from university with a degree in law, initially plied her trade in journalism before joining her husband in America as World WarTwo raged on.

Barbara’s ability to speak multiple languages certainly came in handy during her stint with the WAC. She was later transferred to Rome, where she served in the agency’s Morale Operations Branch.

Named Operation Sauerkraut, this particular effort saw Barbara join various OSS agents to interview captives who originally hailed from Germany and Czechoslovakia and were being held in prisoner-of-war camps.

If that wasn’t enough, then Barbara was also responsible for the inception of a fake organization dubbed The League of Lonely War Women. The crafty idea was to trick German men into thinking that their other halves had done the dirty on them during their time away.

“We, of course, are selfish too — we have been separated from our men for many years,” read the leaflet from the viewpoint of the nation’s wives and girlfriends. “With all those foreigners around us, we would like once more to press a real German youth to our bosom.”

You could say that American native Cordelia Dobson had quite the wake-up call on March 11, 1938, while she was enjoying an opera production during a trip to Vienna. This, of course, was the same day that Adolf Hitler and his army decided to invade their neighboring country.

And Cordelia was able to remember exactly what went down that fateful day in an interview published on the CIA’s official website. She recalled, “Things just happened so fast. All of our civilian rights, the police system, and certain protections that everyone took for granted were just gone.”

Following the ordeal, Cordelia headed back to her American homeland to complete her education at Reed College, eventually graduating around the same time her homeland entered into World War Two.

Cordelia got her desired overseas job when she was transferred to London and then the Swiss city of Bern, where she served alongside Allen Dulles, a future director of the CIA.

Like several of her colleagues, Cordelia also found her life partner while serving in the OSS. William J. Hood worked as an officer for the agency and it was during a shared flight to Switzerland that the pair first met.

Doris Sharrar already had a military background of sorts. In her teenage years she and her family relocated to the Maryland area of Silver Springs from Basin, Wyoming after her dad had landed a position with the Veterans Administration.

Doris eventually found herself in Egypt after accepting an offer to study at photo reconnaissance school. While posted in North Africa, she was tasked with producing relief maps of the island of Sicily made out of balsa wood in preparation for the invasion of Italy by Allied forces.

Of course, times were much less enlightened back in the 1940s. And during her spell in Italy, Doris was taunted by her male military colleagues, all of whom were carrying sidearms. The former typist’s request to have a weapon of her own was initially rejected, but her constant pressuring eventually paid off.

On this occasion, Doris decided to take matters into her own hands. She asked a pal who served as an engineer to make a faux grenade which she then showed off in the mess hall, the name given to the military’s dining facilities.

Doris also returned home from her military duties with a new man in tow. She and Charles Bohrer, an officer in the OSS, not only went on to marry, but they also signed up to the fledgling CIA together. In 1979 Doris stepped down from her position of counterintelligence deputy chief and later forged a career in real estate.

Born in 1915 to parents who were both reporters, Elizabeth ‘Betty’ McIntosh spent her early childhood in Washington, DC, before moving with her family to Honolulu at the age of ten. After graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Washington, she headed back to Hawaii.

Betty’s life changed forever when she saw and reported on Pearl Harbor coming under attack from the Japanese in December 1941. Recognizing her language skills, the OSS recruited the reporter two years later, and she became one of the Morale Operations Branch’s few female workers.

One of the most remarkable incidents which occurred during Betty’s OSS career was when she endured a highly turbulent flight to the country formerly known as Ceylon. While initially fearing for her life, the reporter eventually found comfort in the nonchalant demeanor of an OSS officer named Julia McWilliams.

As for Betty, well she landed jobs with the State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Voice of America before accepting a position with the CIA in 1958. She occasionally returned to her day job, though, writing autobiography Undercover Girl in 1947 and The Women of the OSS: Sisterhood Spies in 1998.

In the late ‘00s, Betty forged a friendship with the aforementioned Doris Bohrer, a fellow OSS officer who was living in the same Northern Virginia retirement home. The pair soon discovered that although they’d never crossed paths before, they’d both worked in the same Washington building at the same time!

Of course, all good things have to come to an end. And following the Allies’ victory in World War II, the OSS was dissolved with an executive order signed by President Harry S. Truman. General Donovan said at the time, “We have come to the end of an unusual experiment.”

Although the OSS was no more, it did essentially live on in the shape of the Central Intelligence Group formed by Truman a year later. And then within 12 months the CIA was created by the National Security Act of 1947.