James Bond... was wearing a skirt?

No, it is not a story about how James Bond decided to swap his gender or any of this LGBT stuff.
I'm going to write a post about or of the favourite spies of Winston Churchill - the British prime minister during the Second World War.
A female spy, a girl coming from Poland, her name was: Krystyna Skarbek.

This lovely-looking photo was probably taken before the bombing of a bridge in Nazi-occupied France.
Despite her nice, harmless appearance, her achievements as a spy were really impressive, and she was one of James Bond's stories protoplast.
But, let's get back to the beginning.
Maria Krystyna Skarbek, born on May 1, 1908, in Warsaw, was the second child of Jerzy Skarbek, a landowner, and Stefania née Goldfeder, from the rich Goldfeder family of Jewish bankers in Łódź.
Because of her Jewish heritage, she did not enjoy a happy childhood. She felt separated from her countrymen. This taught little Krystyna how to stand up for herself and challenge traditions. She went her own way. She made her own, intentional decisions from the outset. Nobody expected her to influence the course of history when, as a small girl, she set fire to the priest's cassock to test his faith.
She mastered French fluently and also understood English and Latin. She swiftly learned horseback riding, skiing, and mountaineering. She was not only athletic and brilliant but also quite attractive. She was self-aware and courageous, and she attracted guys. However, she was always aware that the beauty of her intellect was more significant than her physical appearance.
In 1930, she took part in the Miss Polonia competition.
Following her father's death, she and her family relocated from Trzepnica to Warsaw, where she married Gustaw Gettlich, a Pabianice entrepreneur, on April 21, 1930. The wedding was held at the Church of the Protection of St. Józefa, although the marriage certificate was prepared in the parish of St. Jakub in Warsaw's Ochota neighborhood. The marriage did not endure long, as it split up after 6 months.
In November 1938, she married for the second time to Jerzy Giżycki, a traveler and young-adult novelist. In 1939, they both stayed in Kenya, where Giżycki worked as a diplomat in the capital of Abyssinia. When they learned of the war's onset, they fled to France, where she (separated from her husband) arrived in England in September 1939 and reported to the British intelligence services.

Espionage activities
When World War II got started, she was in Kenya with her diplomat husband. She did not get back to Poland before being defeated in the September Campaign. She traveled to Great Britain via France. She stormed into the Special Operations Executive's headquarters, requesting entry. The covert government agency coordinated all sabotage and intelligence actions in German-occupied territory.
As an agent, she was dispatched to Hungary to carry out underground activities, which she did together with Andrzej Kowalski (pseudonym of Andrew Kennedy).
Even though her mission was to aid the resistance effort in Europe during World War II, Krystyna Skarbek was forced to demonstrate her temperament to the very end. When acquiring new documents, she chose to seem seven years younger by ordering that her birth certificate be dated 1915 rather than 1908. That was her demeanor: carefree and independent. From that point forward, the spy used the codename Christine Granville. She began her clandestine activities in Budapest, posing as a journalist. She was a lady with many faces. She demonstrated her bravery and ingenuity by covering the Tatra subterranean path from Slovakia to occupied Poland multiple times.
Her activity allowed Poles detained in Hungarian camps to escape and join the Polish military forces in the West.
Her extraordinary imagination allowed her to save her own and others' lives. During the transit of Czech officers between Hungary and Yugoslavia, the conspirators' automobile broke down. A German patrol stopped them, resulting in arrest, but Krystyna revealed the phony documents without blinking an eye. Her charm was so effective that the Pole persuaded the Germans to assist her in pushing the automobile across the border. Throughout her life, Christine Granville cleverly leveraged her femininity to undermine the alertness of men working for enemy forces.
Christine Granville was an extremely valuable intelligence officer for Britain. It was she, a charismatic woman from a small town, who influenced the fate of Europe. During her stay in Poland, Krystyna Skarbek obtained documents with the date of the Nazi attack on the USSR. She handed them over to the British. This delayed the German Operation Barbarossa, which marked the beginning of the end of World War II.
No wonder Winston Churchill, who founded SOE, called the Polish woman his favorite agent. Krystyna Skarbek finished her war service in Cairo, where she was demobilized in 1945.

CONTROVERSIES
Being a double agent accustation.
In 1941, she returned to the British headquarters in Cairo, where she was barred from taking further action. Despite a lack of proof, the Poles accused her of playing a double game. It was about ties with the so-called Musketeers, Stefan Witkowski's separate Warsaw resistance organization. Their insubordinate conduct contradicted the stated stand of the Polish government in the battle against the occupation.
She remained on the blacklist until 1944. She was then parachuted into enemy territory in southern France. She served as a courier for the British SOE and aided the French resistance. She distinguished herself by single-handedly rescuing captured saboteurs from the Gestapo.
She was refused a mission to Poland during the Warsaw Uprising, despite repeated requests.
OTHER INTERESTING FACTS

• Krystyna outsmarted the Gestapo by continuously converting her weaknesses into strengths. In 1941, she was detained in a flat in Budapest. The interrogation took many hours. The intelligent agent devised a strategy to get out of difficulty. She bit her tongue and coughed forth blood. She lied, claiming to have severe TB and just a few days to live. Officers were terrified and sent the agent for tests. A German specialist detected malignant abnormalities in her lungs. Krystyna Skarbek foresaw it. These were the leftovers of a mild sickness she caught while working at the Fiat factory in Warsaw. For fear of becoming ill, the Gestapo freed her and agent Andrzej Kowerski from detention.
• Christine Granville lived a double life, yet she never forgot her family. She was strong and empathetic. During the war, she returned to Warsaw to help her mother and persuade her to flee. Unfortunately, Krystyna Skarbek did not complete this objective. Her mother decided she should stay in the country. Stefania Skarbek died in the Warsaw Ghetto.

DEMOBILIZATION AND SAD ENDING
In April 1945 she was demobilized.
Unfortunately, Krystyna Skarbek, like many Poles serving for the United Kingdom, did not get recognition from this country after the war. Despite obtaining British citizenship, she only received £100 in severance money, a thank you from Churchill, and a note stating that she was no longer needed. She referred to this setting as "the terrible peace."
She experienced the same fate as thousands of Polish troops who proved to be useless after the war. Without British citizenship and little severance money, she worked as a hotel maid, telephone operator, and hostess on passenger ships.
During one of her trips, she met a flight attendant, Dennis Muldowney, an extremely jealous and unpredictable man. On June 15, 1952, in the London hotel "Shelbourne", Krystyna Skarbek was fatally stabbed by him. To this day, many conspiracy theories surround the death of Churchill's favorite agent.
Krystyna Skarbek-Giżycka was buried at the Roman Catholic cemetery of St. Mary in Kensal Green, north-west London.

A TRIBUTE
Krystyna Skarbek was an outstanding woman for her time. Today, its secrets are kept in British intelligence files. She did, however, flee from them since that was her nature. Krystyna Skarbek defied the norms and lived by her own rules to the end.
With no doubt, she was an inspirational person. It is thought that British writer Ian Fleming, who was enthralled by his encounter with the agent, invented the character of Vesper Lynd, the first Bond female (a knife was her favorite weapon, just like Krystyna's was).
He most likely got a cue from Krystyna Skarbek.
Or perhaps Krystyna Skarbek helped invent James Bond? This is only one of the many questions that Churchill's special agent wasn't going to answer for us today.

Resources:
https://www.polskieradio.pl/8/1594/Artykul/975894,Fortepian-w-sluzbie-polityki
https://www.polskieradio.pl/39/156/Artykul/1631366,Krystyna-Skarbek-Ulubiona-agentka-Churchilla
https://christinegranville.pl/krystyna-skarbek-kobieta-ktora-zmienila-bieg-historii/
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krystyna_Skarbek
https://www.rmf.fm/magazyn/news,33457,krystyna-skarbek-polska-agentka-brytyjskiej-tajnej-sluzby-uhonorowana-tablica-pamiatkowa-w-londynie.html
https://metro.co.uk/2017/01/26/the-real-life-james-bond-q-is-a-woman-reveals-head-of-mi6-6407008/