Chile's first female pilot recounts sexism and dangers of WWII

SANTIAGO, Chile - Margot Duhalde lies awake scared when she remembers what she was doing over 70 years ago: flying fighter planes without a radar over England in World War II - and sometimes crashing.

A country girl from southern Chile, of French Basque ancestry, she became her country's first female pilot - and the only woman aviator to join the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle's government in exile.

Now 96, in a military retirement home in Santiago, it frightens her to recall the dangers she faced while playing her part in Europe's fight against the Nazis.