In Code Name Pauline, Special Operations Executive Pearl Witherington describes in a series of plainspoken reiniscences her difficult childhood and harrowing escape from France in 1940; her recruitment and training as a special agent; the logistics and danger of posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to make her way around the country as an undercover courier; and both failed and successful attempts to sabotage the Nazis. She tells us how, when the leader of her network was caught by the Gestapo, she became "Pauline" and rose to command a 3,500-strong band of French Resistance fighters.