Hello, it's Helen von Kater.

I'm here to tell you about history's secret heroes,

a new podcast for BBC Radio 4.

In this series, you'll hear about some of World War II's best kept secrets.

These are stories of unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception, and unbelievable courage.

Over the next ten minutes, you'll hear a preview from Episode 1.

December 1933, the lush wetlands of the Gettys Delta,

where the Gettys River meets the Aegean Sea on Turkey's west coast.

Virginia Hall, a 27-year-old clock at the American Embassy, was going hunting.

She had a hunting gun left to her by her father,

and she took a group of friends out to the Delta to shoot snipe.

This is Sonja Penel, author of a woman of no importance, World War II's most dangerous spy.

Among the salt marshes of the Delta Hall was scanning the skies.

Snipe are waiting birds, but hunters often shoot them in flight.

So she wasn't really looking where she was going, I'm afraid to say,

and as she was walking through the reed, she tripped on a wire and fell.

And as she fell, she grabbed her gun,

and she literally shot herself in the foot.

A doctor was summoned from the American hospital in Istanbul.

He said the only way that we might be able to save her life might

is by cutting off her left leg.

And so Hall's left leg was amputated below the knee.

...