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While World War Two was in full swing, with battles raging across Europe, Monuments Men working behind enemy lines were charged with protecting art from the Nazis. The group was made up of a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians and others. But it wasn't until the war ended in 1945 – and the effort turned to returning art – that women became involved.

"At the end of war, the word goes out in an article written in Stars and Stripes that this Monument effort needs more bodies," explains Edsel, and it was at that point that women began signing up to join the cause.

The Allied armies' Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) team, as it was officially called, ultimately included 27 women, the majority of whom were from the United States, but about six to seven were British and a handful of the women were French. Edsel has met and interviewed several of these women whom he describes as brave war heroes and is in the process of writing a book about them.

Among the British team members was Anne Popham Bell, the niece of author Virginia Woolf. Popham Bell's father was keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum and an authority in Italian drawings. Anne Popham Bell grew up immersed in art and went on to study art history herself at the Courtauld Institute in London. That knowledge made her an invaluable asset to the MFAA team.

"Her initial job in the British military was driving a motorcycle at night, under blackout conditions in order to deliver photos to a runway," explains Edsel. "Those were harrowing experiences, on a motorcycle, while London is being bombed, driving along a bomb-cratered road."

In 1945, Popham Bell was dispatched to the MFAA Branch of the Control Commission for Germany, and ultimately found herself stationed in Bünde at Divisional Headquarters where she became the highest ranking female officer at the location, charged with coordinating the Monuments Men in the field. But that wasn't all.

Later, Popham Bell helped the MFAA team return some 5,000 church bells that had been looted from churches across Europe. They had been taken by the Nazis to be smelted to create war materials, Edsel explains.

"There was a shipyard in Hamburg filled with all of these church bells as far as the eye could see. There were church bells piled on top of church bells and she had to go through all of them looking at foundry marks to try and figure out what country they came from and what church," continues Edsel. "She was in charge of coordinating that."

Mary Regan Quessenberry, who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, was another member of the Monuments Women. Quessenberry graduated from Radcliffe in 1937 with a degree in arts history and then spent a year traveling the world as a Radcliffe Scholar. During that time, Quessenberry visited China and Japan, where she studied Asian art with Harvard professor and future Monuments Man Langdon Warner. Later, she returned to the United States and to Radcliffe in order to pursue a Master of Arts, where her professors would include another future Monuments Man, Mason Hammond. 

In 1942, Quessenberry enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corp, which was the first female unit to serve in the US Army in a capacity that did not involve nursing work. "She was a real war hero," says Edsel, who visited Quessenberry to interview her a few years before she passed away at the age of 94. "She was among the first graduating class of the Women's Auxiliary Corp. There were 40,000 women who applied and about 400-plus were accepted. She was in the very first graduating class and was in England [during the war] as early as 1943."

Quessenberry initially underwent training that allowed her to assess bomb damage from aerial photographs following air raids. She used this skill to identify important monuments and culturally-significant sites that should be avoided during future bombing runs. But after the Allied victory, as the war was winding down, she too responded to the article in Stars and Stripes seeking Monuments team members.