Editing Violette Szabo (section)

==Early life==
Violette Bushell was born on 26 June 1921 in Paris, France, to Charles George Bushell and Reine Blanche Leroy,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Amazons to Fighter Pilots – A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women (Volume One)|editor-first=Reina|editor-last=Pennington|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.|year=2003|isbn=0-313-32707-6|location=Westport, Connecticut|pages=167}}</ref> as the second child of five and the only daughter. Szabo's father, son of a publican from [[Hampstead Norreys]], was serving as a [[British Army]] driver in France during the [[First World War]] when he met her mother, a dressmaker originally from [[Pont-Remy]], [[Somme (department)|Somme]]. After the war the couple lived in London, where Charles worked as a taxi-driver, car salesman and shopkeeper.

During the early 1930s, as a result of the [[Great Depression]], Bushell and her youngest brother, Dickie, lived with their maternal aunt in [[Picardy]], northern France. The family was reunited in South London when Violette was 11 years old.{{efn|First at 12 Stockwell Park Walk (now demolished), then at 18 Burnley Road, Stockwell, where she is commemorated by a [[Blue Plaque]] unveiled by the Greater London Council in 1981.}} She was an active and lively girl, enjoying gymnastics, long-distance bicycling and ice-skating with four brothers and several male cousins. Bushell was regarded as a [[tomboy]], especially after being taught to shoot by her father; her shooting was reputedly very accurate.{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|pp=10–14}}

While Bushell had temporarily lost the ability to speak English in Picardy, she quickly relearned the language while attending school in [[Brixton]]. There she was reportedly popular and regarded as exotic, owing to her ability to speak another language.{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|p=11}} Her home life was loving, though she often clashed with her strict father and once ran away to France after an argument. The family, except her monolingual father, would often converse in French.{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|pp=13–14, 16, 9}}

At the age of 14, Bushell went to work for a French [[Corsetmaker|corsetière]] in [[South Kensington]] and later worked at retailer [[Woolworths (United Kingdom)|Woolworths]] in Oxford Street.{{sfn|Ottaway|2003|pp=15–16}} At the outbreak of the Second World War, she was working at [[Bon_Marché_(Brixton)|Le Bon Marché]], a Brixton department store.