In a 1930s Belgrade bank, a cleaning lady quietly scrubs the general manager's office floor. No one walking past knows she is the most decorated female combatant in the history of warfare. This episode unpacks the staggering double life of Milunka Savić, born in a rural Serbian village where women in combat did not exist in the cultural vocabulary. When her tubercular brother was drafted for the First Balkan War in 1912, she cut her hair, bound her chest, took his identity, and marched into the infantry, where she survived nine deployments, earned a bravery medal and a corporal's rank at the Battle of Bregalnica, and was only discovered when shrapnel put her in a field hospital on deployment number ten.

Offered a face-saving transfer to the nursing division, she refused, stood at attention in her commander's office, said "I will wait," and  ...