Krystyna looked beautiful, no wonder she was able to play her part so well. Thank you sharing this. It was really interesting to read this & your other contributions on this train complete with pictures, illustrations & news clippings.

After leaving convent school Krystyna could have expected to become a society girl, living a life of leisure frequenting Warsaw’s salons. But her father’s death in 1930 left her future uncertain as Jerzy’s extravagant lifestyle had exhausted the family’s coffers. To support herself she took an office job above a Fiat garage, but she was soon taken ill and diagnosed with lung scarring caused by the rising exhaust fumes. Perhaps this accounted for her later dread of secretarial work, but bizarrely this incident would later save her life.

Illness also led her to discover another of her great passions. The family doctor suggested mountain air to improve her condition, and she took to skiing at the popular winter resort of Zakopane, high in the Tatra Mountains and just a few miles from the Slovakian border. For all her aristocratic breeding, Krystyna was no snob: she preferred simple living with unpretentious people, and soon endeared herself to Zakopane’s close‐knit community.
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Another famous female spy working for the SOE was french born, Vilolette Szabo. After the death of her husband, Étienne Szabo, a non-commissioned officer in the French Foreign Legion during the Second Battle of El Alamein, Violette was recruited by the SOE and trained to be part of a team for F Section Network intelligence gathering in France. During her second mission, she was captured by German Panzer a Regiment in southern France while trying to liaise with local Maquis, and was subsequently handed over to the SS. By all accounts, she was a very brave young woman, who resisted her capture, thus allowing a comrade to escape and stood up under brutal interrogation without giving up any of her fellows. After forced labor and much suffering, she was executed alongside two other heroic women, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, at Ravenbruck. She was only 23 years old.

Both she and her husband (a war hero in his own right) were posthumously awarded the Croix de guerre, and Violette became one of only 4 women to be awarded the George Cross.

A movie was made about her life in 1958, starring Born Free's Virginia McKenna (who doesn't look at all like her).

Vera Atkins was a young Romanian working in Bucharest when she met the dashing Canadian William Stephenson,Later, he would be known as agent “Intrepid,” the supposed inspiration for James Bond—but for now, he supplying pre-war intelligence to Britain.

Charmed by Vera, he introduced her the German ambassador to Romania (who, it’s said, loved beautiful women) in order to get information from him.. The ploy worked. Soon, Vera began gathering intelligence for the British while outwardly working as a translator for Stephenson’s steel business.

Vera Atkins was Jewish (her real name was Rosenberg), a fact she didn't readily disclose to the high-ranking anti-Nazi bureaucrats she worked with. In the years leading up to the war, she smuggled information to Churchill as he railed against Hitler’s regime in political exile—while the nervous English government tried to quiet him, believing Hitler’s promise not to invade.

When Churchill was brought back to power to steel England against imminent German invasion, Vera was assigned to a high-ranking position in the Special Operations Executive, also known as “Churchill’s secret army.” In spite of the S.O.E.’s success, England still needed American support. Churchill had secretly been in contact with Franklin D. Roosevelt, but it was well known the Americans were deeply against entering another world war—especially with Britain’s gloomy prospects. Roosevelt sent his head of intelligence, William Donovan—the future creator of the C.I.A.—to scout the situation on the ground in Europe.

Vera was a firm believer in the power of ordinary citizens to wreak havoc. She liked invented weapons that could be assembled on the fly, like rats stuffed with explosives! Instead of trying to impress Donovan with fancy dinners, Vera deliberately took him to the heart of the S.O.E., where “underpaid amateurs . . . fiddled with bits of metal bicycle tubing for guns” and “faked horse manure to conceal explosives".University students worked furiously to translate codes. In the end, Donovan was so impressed with the underdog S.O.E.’s effect on its formidable German enemy that he outlined the S.O.E.’s activities for Roosevelt, who in turn permitted Donovan to return to monitor the S.O.E.’s progress.

Wow these are some good stories :D
Love the train <3

Thank you for the game and an amazing lesson <3