The year is 1942, and the shadows of Vichy France are crawling with danger. In Lyon, France’s third-largest city, posters begin appearing on street corners. A rough sketch shows a woman’s face with sharp features and shoulder-length hair. The Abwehr and the Gestapo hunt relentlessly for the woman they know only as “the limping lady.
” The woman in the poster is Virginia Hall, an American with a wooden leg who has become the unlikely mastermind behind the French Resistance. The Gestapo’s orders are clear and uncompromising: she is the most dangerous spy in the Allied forces, and they will stop at nothing to find and destroy her. Virginia Hall was born on April 6, 1906, to Edwin Lee and Barbara Hall in Baltimore, Maryland. Her family affectionately called her “Dindi.
” It was expected that Virginia would follow in her mother’s footsteps, marrying rich and living a life of leisure. Her father was a successful banker and cinema owner, but Virginia had other ideas. From her earliest school days she showed an independent streak and a desire for adventure. Ever the tomboy, Virginia declared in her 1924 yearbook at age eighteen that she “must have her liberty.
” She enjoyed hunting and being outdoors, where she could forge her own path. She was not content to live the life her mother envisioned for her. As much as she wanted to please her parents, she broke off her engagement to a suitably eligible bachelor in order to pursue her studies. Virginia’s dream was to become an ambassador, undeterred by the fact that the position was reserved almost exclusively for men.
Having a flair for languages, she began her university studies in 1924 at Cambridge, Massachusetts. A year later she transferred to Barnard College in Manhattan, the place where all young, well-to-do women with an independent streak wanted to be. In 1925, the place to be was Paris, which was the epicenter of an exciting literary and artistic scene. Virginia made the decision to move to Paris in 1926 to continue her language studies.
Being an average student, she ended up enjoying her cosmopolitan Parisian lifestyle somewhat more than her lectures. It was also here that Virginia developed a love for the country she would later repeatedly risk her life for. In the autumn of 1927 she moved to Vienna, where she studied languages, economics, and the press. She also met and fell in love with a young Polish army officer named Emil.
The relationship, however, was not given her parents’ blessing and was broken off. While in Europe she witnessed with dismay the birth of fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini and the rise to power of Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany and its influence in Austria. These political philosophies were diametrically opposed to the egalitarianism running through Virginia’s veins. After successfully completing her undergraduate studies, she returned home to Maryland in 1929, just prior to the Wall Street Crash that autumn, which wiped out the fortunes and livelihoods of most Americans.
The Halls were not immune. Only a few short years later, in 1931, Ned Hall died of a sudden heart attack. The death of Virginia’s doting father was an enormous blow. Ned had been accepting of Virginia’s alternative interests and desires, even buying her the shotgun she treasured on hunting trips.
The death of her father would not deter Virginia from pursuing her career ambitions. Virginia applied for and was appointed as a clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw. While her role was only administrative, she conducted her duties efficiently and diligently. Nonetheless, Virginia would never be content with a clerk’s desk job.
She had already been rejected by the State Department after taking the Diplomatic Corps entrance exam because she was a woman. She tried again while stationed in Warsaw but missed the deadline for applications, apparently through no fault of her own. In April 1933 she elected to relocate to Izmir in Turkey, which she thought would grant her greater access to the outdoors and adventure while she bided her time before making another attempt at the diplomatic entrance exams. It was here that young Virginia’s life would take an unexpected and dramatic turn for the worse.
Shortly after arriving in Turkey, Virginia took advantage of her access to the outdoors by going snipe shooting with friends. On December 8, 1933, one of her hunting trips ended in tragedy. Armed with her prized 12-gauge shotgun gifted to her by her late father, Virginia scrambled over a wire fence running across the wetlands the hunting party was traversing. In her haste she forgot to engage the safety latch.
As fate would have it, she tripped while clambering over the fence. In her attempt to grab the weapon as it fell, she accidentally fired a shell directly into her foot. She collapsed unconscious and losing a lot of blood. Her friends did their best to staunch the flow and carried her to the nearest hospital in town.
The wound was serious, but for three weeks following the accident Virginia seemed to be making a good recovery. A terrible infection then set in. Without antibiotics, there was little medical treatment that could be offered. Stopping the infection meant amputation, and this is precisely what happened.
On Christmas Day 1933, surgeons amputated Virginia’s left leg below the knee. When she woke up from her surgery Virginia fell into despair, not so much from the pain she was experiencing but from wondering how she would ever achieve her life’s ambitions. Despite the success of the operation, Virginia’s condition worsened. Sepsis brought her within an inch of her life.
She would later describe a delirious vision of her late father Ned urging her to survive as what gave her the strength to continue fighting. Miraculously, Virginia pulled through and after some weeks was transferred to a more modern hospital in Istanbul to convalesce. Prosthetics in those days were comparatively primitive. Virginia was fitted with a rather cumbersome wooden leg which she not so endearingly named Cuthbert.
Her stump continually caused her pain, which would be exacerbated by later wartime conditions when medicines and supplies were scarce. Virginia returned to work in May 1934 against the better judgment of her doctors. The stresses on her body, however, proved too much, and she returned home to the United States, where she relearned how to walk and live as an amputee. In November 1934 she secured a position at the American Consulate in Venice.
While there she again applied to become an ambassador but was rejected, this time because of her disability. To add insult to injury, Virginia was transferred to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a Baltic state experiencing its own wave of nationalistic fervor and the rise to power of a fascist dictator. As the 1930s drew to a close and the murmurings of war in Europe grew ever louder, Virginia had little to show for seven years of faithful service to the American State Department. She chose to resign from her position and remained in Tallinn for a few months while she planned what to do next.
It was Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939 that prompted Virginia to leave Estonia, catching a last-minute ship to London. Setting aside diplomacy, Virginia resolved to direct her energies toward the Allied war effort but was unable to find a branch of the British army willing to accept a disabled woman from neutral America. Exasperated, Virginia traveled back to Paris in February 1940, where she enrolled as a military ambulance driver in Metz in northeastern France. She bravely carted injured soldiers from the front line to a hospital 200 miles away in Paris, often under direct enemy bombardment.
The German offensive against France began on May 10, 1940, unexpectedly attacking through the Ardennes forest in the north. The French army was quickly routed, and Paris was abandoned a month later. With France effectively conquered, Hitler marched into Paris and split the nation into two zones. In the north and west was the Nazi-occupied zone, and in the south was the so-called free or unoccupied zone.
Octogenarian hard-right French war hero Marshal Philippe Pétain was installed as the leader of what became known as Vichy France. While officially neutral, Vichy France was effectively nothing more than a puppet state whose strings were pulled by the Third Reich. Pétain promptly signed an armistice with Hitler, and thus began a period of French-Nazi collaboration until France was liberated in June 1944. After her unit was disbanded, Virginia had no option but to fall back with the retreating French army to central France.
In August of 1940 she crossed into the unoccupied zone, where she intended to make her way back to England. Virginia did not know how, but she resolved to one day return to France to help liberate the country she had grown to love. It was a chance encounter with an undercover British agent named George Bellows in the train station of a small Spanish town that would set the wheels in motion for Virginia’s life as a career spy. Bellows posed as a salesman and claimed to be able to arrange passage back to London for Virginia.
In truth he was on the lookout for new recruits. The two struck up a conversation during which Virginia described the worsening situation for the French people and her exploits as a military ambulance driver. Bellows was so impressed by her passion and bravery under fire that he made the bold decision to give Virginia the phone number of a friend of his in London. That friend was none other than Nicholas Bodington, the newly appointed head of F Section of the British Special Operations Executive, known as the SOE.
Created by the British government as a secret autonomous organization reporting directly to the Prime Minister, the SOE waged a secret war of sabotage and subversion against the Germans in France. Having only a vague idea of what Bellows was alluding to, Virginia promptly forgot about the phone number while she focused on her travel arrangements. She made it safely back to London but then decided she was due a trip home to the U. S.
to visit her mother, who worried constantly about her escapades in Europe. Virginia’s plans were, however, thwarted by the war, and she was unable to secure a coveted ticket for the Atlantic crossing. Stuck in London, Virginia suddenly remembered her conversation with the man in Spain and the telephone number still stuffed in her coat pocket. She made the call and, after a brief discussion with Nicholas Bodington, was invited to his home for dinner.
Evidently Bodington was as impressed by Virginia as Bellows had been, for the next day he rushed to SOE offices at 64 Baker Street to dictate an urgent memo recommending Virginia’s appointment as secret liaison officer for F Section of the SOE. In this case Virginia’s American citizenship was to her advantage, because America was at that stage not yet at war. This meant that travel to and from France was much easier for her. The methods and tactics of the SOE were a far cry from the traditional form of so-called gentlemanly spying conducted by British intelligence.
SOE agents were deployed behind enemy lines under deep cover with only their own wits to rely on. Code name Geologist, Virginia’s primary purpose was to coordinate and organize an underground resistance network that would support the Allied war effort when it eventually launched a counter-offensive against the Germans. In February 1941, at the age of 35, Virginia traveled to the New Forest in Bournemouth, where she undertook an intensive crash course in the art of espionage, sabotage, and guerrilla tactics. A job as a foreign correspondent working for the New York Post was Virginia’s cover.
The purpose of her journalism was twofold: firstly it was essential to maintain her cover, but secondly and more importantly it allowed Virginia to encode vital intelligence which was sent back to the SOE. Armed with only the most basic of training, a few poison capsules, and her own drive and determination, Virginia left for the unoccupied zone of France on August 23, 1941. Arriving in Vichy France on September 3, Virginia promptly announced her arrival using her real name as a special envoy for the New York Post. She immediately set to work writing articles containing as much information as possible about the situation in France as her cover would allow.
She began making connections, including the U. S. ambassador Admiral William Leahy, as well as Suzanne Bertillon, who was the chief censor of the foreign press in Vichy’s Ministry of Information. Suzanne and Virginia became friends, and this ensured that Virginia’s articles sent back to SOE headquarters went uncensored.
Yet Virginia battled in those early days to make meaningful connections and rouse a spirit of resistance. Despite not being formally occupied, Vichy France was crawling with Gestapo agents, and the Vichy police controlled by their Nazi overlords were equally a security concern. The American ambassador had also prohibited any clandestine activities from being conducted through his office, presumably because America had not yet entered the war and spying was not a good look for a neutral country. Virginia chose a month later to move on to Lyon, France’s third-largest city.
Here she thought she would have more success away from the wary gaze of the American ambassador. She had heard there were the first murmurings of resistance in the city. It was also conveniently located near the Swiss border, which would allow for a quick escape if necessary. But the city was also home to Klaus Barbie, the SS operative and head of the Gestapo in Lyon.
With increased opportunities came increased danger. The city was also teeming with refugees fleeing the Nazi invasion. Food was rationed and finding accommodation was near impossible. Virginia had to settle for a room at a nunnery.
The 6:30 PM curfew was not exactly ideal for instigating a resistance movement, but nevertheless the convent became the SOE’s first and perhaps most reliable safe house. It was not long before Virginia managed to secure a room at the Grand Nouvelle Hotel in the center of town. This became her first proper base of operations, from which she directed most of her activities. Virginia quickly made contacts in the city, including the American Vice Consul George Whittinghill.
That he was an American was no guarantee that he would be willing to cooperate. Denouncements were commonplace, and Virginia had to play her cards with tact no matter who she attempted to recruit. As it turned out, Whittinghill was sympathetic and became one of Virginia’s earliest recruits. He assisted in smuggling messages out of France to the American Embassy in Bern for onward transmission to London.
This was done using a diplomatic mailbag, which typically wouldn’t be searched by the authorities. For much of Virginia’s mission, the diplomatic bag was her only means of communication with the SOE in London. By October of 1941, a dozen or so agents and many packages containing money, ration cards, and other supplies had been parachuted into France. Two notable friendly contacts made by Virginia while in Lyon were gynecologist Dr.
Jean Rousset and brothel owner Joe Mangere. Both of these people provided safe houses for SOE agents and other allies to lie low before making their escape across the French border. Rousset would also provide a clean bill of health to Germaine’s prostitutes suffering from venereal diseases. These diseases were intentionally spread to the German soldiers that frequented the brothels.
Another tactic was for the prostitutes to entice soldiers to try heroin, which they promptly became addicted to and thus useless as soldiers in the German Army. Virginia also went out of her way to help all those who called on her, arranging for the escape of many downed Allied airmen and undercover agents needing to get beyond French borders. While Virginia built up her network of agents, pockets of disorganized dissidents across France embarked on their own acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against Nazi rule. The assassination of a German colonel in Nantes sparked a brutal crackdown, including the execution of 48 innocent French citizens.
The SOE’s overarching goal was to create a network of sleeper cells. Those cells would lie dormant until the formal Allied forces were ready to retake France. The informal, disorganized, and largely ineffective resistance attacks posed a risk to the SOE’s operation. But where others failed, Virginia succeeded.
Her rapidly growing network, codenamed Heckler, comprised dozens of informants, smugglers, confidants, and saboteurs. Little did Virginia know that the proverbial rug was about to be pulled from beneath the feet of the SOE’s operation. A key objective for the SOE was to infiltrate wireless radio operators to improve communication with agents on the ground. While Virginia was able to communicate via the diplomatic bag, the process was cumbersome and slow.
For a long while there was only a single wireless operator agent working undercover in France. Georges Bégué was based 200 miles away from Virginia and thus not of much direct use to her. While quicker and more efficient, transmitting wirelessly was still dangerous. The Vichy police had methods of detecting broadcasts and triangulating their source via their ominous black vans.
Georges had been transmitting from France for far too long, and the net was closing in around him with each passing day. A second wireless operator, codenamed Christophe, was knocked unconscious during his parachute landing in France and then captured by Vichy police. After his release from custody, Christophe took up residence in a Marseille safehouse known as the Villa de Bois. By October 1941, numerous other SOE agents and wireless operators had been deployed to France, including Jean-Philippe Avril, who was to serve as Virginia’s wireless operator towards the end of that month.
In total disregard of all security protocols, Christophe invited all known SOE agents in the south of France to meet him at the Villa de Bois. Unbeknownst to the SOE and its agents, the Villa de Bois safehouse had already been compromised. The Vichy police learned of its location from a captured SOE operative carrying details of it on his person when parachuting into France. Something didn’t feel right to Virginia, and she wisely decided not to take up the invitation, despite having spent the last seven weeks alone feeling isolated and cut off from the SOE and her colleagues.
Unfortunately, the others were not as cautious. Approximately a dozen operatives and wireless operators traveled to the Villa over a two-week period. The agents walked right into the waiting trap of the French counter-terrorism force, the dreaded Sûreté. One by one the agents were arrested.
Absent a miracle, their likely fate would be to face the firing squad. What became known as the Marseille mouse trap was a major victory for the Vichy regime and a major setback for the SOE. The arrests effectively obliterated efforts over the preceding months to grow a network of spies in France. Virginia Hall was left as one of the few remaining agents at large in France.
Notably, with the arrest of all wireless radio operators, she was the only one with the ability to communicate with SOE headquarters via the diplomatic case. The months that followed were a new low for Virginia. The SOE’s networks in France had been decimated. Not only this, but America entered the war on December 7, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Virginia worked alongside notable SOE agents Peter Churchill and Benjamin Cowburn, but what played on her mind most was how to free the agents from captivity. The captured agents became known as the Clan Cameron. Their escape from custody was essential not only to their survival but also to the success of the SOE’s continuing operations. The first challenge was to establish where they were being held.
The longer they remained in custody, the more likely they would be tortured and then executed. It was discovered that they were being held at Périgueux prison in southwestern France. The prison was an impenetrable fortress, and the chances of escape were virtually nil. SOE agent Gabby Block had been arrested along with her husband Jean-Pierre Block.
After being fortunate enough to be released from custody, Gabby was put in touch with Virginia to see what help she could offer. Putting her contacts to good use, Virginia learned through a telegram received by American Ambassador Leahy on March 14, 1942, that the prisoners were to be moved from Périgueux prison to a Vichy-run internment camp at Mauzac. The initial plan was for the prisoners to escape while en route from prison to the camp. This idea died on the vine because the malnourished prisoners were unlikely able to flee on foot.
They were also to be transported in chains, and the Vichy guards had orders to shoot anyone attempting to escape. While considerably less fortified than Périgueux, Mauzac was still encircled by two barbed wire fences and a series of watchtowers. Although the prisoners were housed in barracks in the open, escape would still be no mean feat. Camp conditions were far better for the prisoners, and they began to regain their strength from an improved diet and the ability to exercise.
During the day the prisoners played games of boules. They used their games as cover to determine the time it would take to cross from the barracks to the prison yard fence. They also learned where the watchtowers had their blind spots and which patches of ground would best hide their tracks. Virginia was by this stage being actively hunted by the Gestapo and Vichy police.
She could not show her face near the Mauzac camp, so Gabby traveled 35 miles three times a week to visit her still-imprisoned husband. The purpose of her visits was also to hang out in the local hotel bar where the camp guards gathered to drink. She dropped loud hints about a likely Allied victory in the war and the potential rewards for those that could help speed up its end. Gabby managed to befriend a guard named Jose Sevilla, who proved later to be a valuable ally.
With supplies and funds provided by Virginia, Gabby was able to smuggle in vital messages, equipment, and supplies needed for the escape. A jar of jam concealed a small file. Beneath fresh laundry lay a pair of wire cutters. Hollowed-out books contained a screwdriver and a hammer, and tins of sardines contained enough metal to be repurposed as tools and blades.
One of the prisoners, Georges, managed to fashion a key to their barracks door using metal from the sardine tins and bread to make a mold of the lock. While he hammered and chiseled away at the makeshift key, the other inmates sang choruses as loud as they could to mask the noise. Sevilla, whom Gabby had enlisted at the local bar, aided the escape plans by convincing the camp commander that the watchtower closest to the prisoners’ barracks was not safe for use at night. While this was going on, Virginia was making vital arrangements for the prisoners once they were clear of the camp.
The men would cross the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain and from there return to London. Safe houses, forged papers, getaway drivers, ration cards, and train tickets were all taken care of by industrious Virginia. Just as the escape plan was about to be executed, Virginia was recalled to London by the SOE. She had been operating undercover for far too long, and the SOE feared that she would soon be apprehended.
Virginia knew that she needed to hurry things along, and so she yet again came up with a cunning plan. She enlisted the assistance of a 70-year-old French priest, a veteran of the Great War during which he had lost both of his legs. This priest had begun making pastoral visits to the camp, and his station and disability made him a prime candidate for smuggling in a radio. This he did by hiding said radio under his cassock in his wheelchair.
He was allowed time alone with the prisoners in their barracks, at which time he produced the radio to their astonishment. Georges wasted no time in setting it up, which included running a length of cable and antenna to the camp perimeter fence. He immediately began transmitting and managed to make contact with SOE headquarters back in London. The SOE was stunned to hear from Georges, especially when they learned that he was transmitting from within the prison camp.
He told the SOE how soon they planned to make their escape, and this brought Virginia more time. The prisoners also had another internal problem. One among their number did not wish to join in the escape for fear of reprisals against his family. He had threatened to alert the camp guards should they follow through on their escape plans.
The only solution the others could think of was to spike the man’s beer on the evening of the escape, sending him off to sleep and leaving him behind. By this stage the escape plans were almost complete, but disastrously the key the prisoners had produced did not turn the barracks door lock. They hastily had to engineer a new key before the end of the new moon period, when the nights were at their darkest. Fortunately the new key worked, and Virginia gave the prisoners a pre-agreed signal on July 15, 1942, confirming that the escape was to proceed that night.
Sevilla applied the camp chief and senior guards with wine that night to ensure they were suitably inattentive. He had also enlisted the guard manning Watchtower 7 to light a cigarette at the appropriate time to signal to the men that the coast was clear for their dash to the fence. The guard, however, let the team down, and so passed a few agonizing hours while both Sevilla and the prisoners waited for the signal. Sevilla, realizing the guard was a no-show, climbed the watchtower himself at 3 AM and lit his pipe, indicating to the prisoners that they should make a dash for it.
The men unlocked the barracks door and began one by one to move along a string guide that they had run from the barracks to the camp fence. As each man reached the fence he signaled by pulling on the string: one tug meant all clear, and three short tugs indicated danger and to hold off. In a call that was far too close for comfort, the prisoners encountered a guard while all this was going on. Fortunately, he was one of the guards sympathetic to their cause.
He simply told the men to keep the noise down and proceeded on his rounds. In just twelve minutes, all twelve men managed to slip under the prison fences and barbed wire, escaping into the night where they were greeted outside by the mess sergeant enlisted to help in the escape. They traveled together in twos and threes to a hollow a couple of miles away, where their getaway driver was waiting. They were driven away undetected and hunkered down in a safe house that had been well stocked with supplies on Virginia’s instructions.
The camp guards only realized that an escape had occurred at daybreak the next morning. Immediately a huge manhunt was launched to find the men. The crackdown by the Gestapo in the wake of the embarrassing escape was nothing short of brutal. The German high command was already becoming increasingly frustrated by the ongoing resistance movement gaining momentum in the French free zone, and the Mauzac prison break was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Hitler’s clampdown was severe. Raids and searches intensified, and just about the entire SOE operation went to ground while waiting for the dust to settle. Virginia had the people in her network spread the rumor that the escapees had been picked up by Royal Air Force bombers and were no longer in France. Despite the Gestapo kicking in doors all over France, they came up with nothing.
Following an intensive two-week manhunt, the search was called off. The prisoners were safe. Over a further two-week period, the escapees slowly made their way back to Lyon by truck and train. After linking up again with Virginia, they were separated among various safe houses to avoid attention.
All twelve men eventually made it back to London. The Mauzac prison break, masterminded by Virginia, Gabby Block, and other helpers, became the stuff of legends within the SOE. The official SOE historian M. R.
D. Foote called it one of the war’s most useful operations of the kind. Virginia and her ever-growing network were on a high. Their successes and effectiveness as a resistance movement in France were growing.
But little did they know that it was all to soon come crashing down. Despite the very many precautions that Virginia took in her day-to-day activities, the longer she remained in France, the more it became almost inevitable that her network would be penetrated by the enemy. The only unanswered question was how much damage the enemy would be able to inflict. The Nazis had learned that the ringleader of the underground French Resistance based in Lyon was a woman.
They did not have a name for her and knew her only as the limping lady. Virginia knew that the ring around her was rapidly closing and that her every movement was being observed. What she didn’t know was how the Nazis were managing to stay so hot on her heels. Some weeks prior to the Mauzac escape, a young priest with piercing blue eyes named Robert Alesch had been introduced to her through one of her most trusted confidants, the aforementioned Dr.
Rousset. Despite his heavy German accent, his story was that he was a French patriot having grown up near the German border within the Alsace region. He claimed that his father had been killed by the Nazis and that he wanted to get his revenge. Virginia was skeptical of the young priest but allowed him access to her network and to work with Dr.
Rousset for the potentially valuable information he would be able to provide about the Atlantic Wall. In reality, Robert Alesch was Agent Axel, an undercover Abwehr agent who had managed to infiltrate Virginia’s network. While Agent Axel never succeeded in giving away Virginia’s precise location, the damage he did to the French Resistance was immense. Agent Axel led the Abwehr to many secondary SOE agents and members of the resistance.
In addition, the Abwehr was tipped off about the Allies’ intention to land an expeditionary force at Dieppe in northern France. When the Allied forces arrived in August 1942, they were met by unexpectedly strong resistance, which resulted in four thousand soldiers being captured, killed, or wounded. Although the Abwehr began making inroads into Virginia’s Heckler network, the tide of the war was turning. In the fall of 1942, the Wehrmacht was encircled by the Russian Red Army.
British forces liberated Libya and Egypt in October, and Axis forces were pinned down in Tunisia as part of Operation Torch. November 1942 saw American forces landing in Algeria and Morocco and a continuing push of the German Army out of North Africa. In direct response to the Allied landings in North Africa, Hitler ordered the immediate occupation by German forces of Corsica and the south of France. This was the end of nominally independent Vichy France.
A direct German military occupation of Lyon meant that Virginia could no longer remain in France. Thanks to her vast network of informers, Virginia was tipped off prior to the Nazis’ invasion of the free zone. She was able to gather her documents and money and catch the last train out of Lyon just three days before the Wehrmacht marched in on November 8, 1942. The train took Virginia to Perpignan, an old Catalan town twenty miles from the Spanish border along the eastern edge of the Pyrenees Mountains.
Those mountains were her only means of crossing into Spain, which she would have to do on foot. She hired a local guide, notorious for their penchant for abandoning their clients should they become too slow. It was her experience crossing the fifty miles of the Pyrenees that made Virginia again rue the day that she had forgotten to engage the safety on her shotgun that fateful day in Turkey. Her left leg caused her intense pain, her prosthetic rubbing her stump until it bled profusely.
The journey would have been difficult enough without her disability, and so her attempt was all the more courageous. She maintained radio contact with the SOE during the crossing, including mentioning that Cuthbert was being tiresome but that she could cope. Somewhat amusingly, the radio operator on the other end didn’t realize that she was referring to her affectionately named prosthetic limb and so said in response that she should have him eliminated. Despite the odds, Virginia and her guide descended the mountain range three days later, arriving safely at a Spanish border town.
Virginia was promptly arrested by the Spanish authorities for having illegally crossed the border, but the American Embassy secured her release before too long. From there she was able to return to England. The months that followed her escape from France were a frustrating period for Virginia. The SOE leadership would not allow her to return to France, believing her notoriety presented too much of a risk.
Virginia was instead given a desk job arranging safe houses for operatives in Spain. This was hardly the treatment a war hero should receive, but Virginia never sought accolades or fame. In 1942 the Americans established their own version of the SOE, which they called the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. The Allied preparations for the Normandy invasion were gathering momentum.
The head of the OSS, William Donovan, wanted to bolster the agency’s clandestine operations within France. He knew that there was no one better to call than Virginia Hall. Virginia returned to France via American gunboat on March 21, 1944, to reprise her role as the spy the Germans feared most. To overcome the problem of her being recognized, she disguised herself with makeup and dressed as an old peasant woman.
Virginia was accompanied by 62-year-old OSS agent Henry Lassot, who was to be the leader of the new Saint resistance network. Between March and July of 1944, Virginia proved as effective as ever, supplying arms to various resistance groups and organizing small-scale but disruptive sabotage attacks on German infrastructure and soldiers. She then moved on to the south of France, where she played a vital role in assisting the rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian resistance fighters who had fled Nazi conscription. The maquisards eventually and reluctantly accepted Virginia’s authority over them.
With the three battalions she commanded, she significantly hampered the Nazis’ defensive preparations against the Allied invasion. In 1944 Virginia was working as hard as ever. In eight weeks she transmitted 37 intelligence reports, supervised the delivery of 27 parachute drops of essential supplies to the French Resistance, and organized and directed the activities of 1,500 resistance fighters. She also executed successful attacks that led to the death of over 170 German soldiers and the capture of 800 others.
Virginia’s mission had been an overwhelming success. As 1944 drew to a close, the defeat of the Nazis was a virtual certainty. The Allies invaded from the west, and the Soviet Union pushed the Wehrmacht back from the east. While there were countless other brave men and women who worked tirelessly in support of the resistance, Virginia’s role in the south of France cannot be understated.
Her contribution was recognized by her being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in September 1945 by General William Joseph Donovan. True to form, Virginia declined the public awards ceremony wanted by U. S. President Harry Truman because she was still in active service.
She feared the publicity may compromise her and her agents. Virginia was also made an honorary member of the Order of the British Empire, an MBE, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre with palm by France. Shortly after the war, Virginia returned to France under very different conditions to find out what happened to her closest associates. Unsurprisingly, many were captured and sent to concentration camps.
A few were lucky to survive and live again in a free France. In 1947 Virginia joined the CIA, where she faced continued discrimination for being a woman and having a disability. Assigned to a desk job, she was persistently passed over for promotion. She returned to France in the 1950s to assist in setting up resistance groups in the event of a Soviet attack and supported efforts to combat the spread of communism in Western Europe.
Virginia went on to retire from spying in 1960. Throughout her spying career she avoided unnecessary romantic entanglements, but Virginia nevertheless fell in love with OSS Lieutenant Paul Goillot, whom she married in 1957. The couple moved to a farm in Maryland, where she lived until her death on July 8, 1982. Virginia never spoke much of her career in military intelligence during World War II, which resulted in her slipping into obscurity.
It wasn’t until much later in the 21st century, after her death, that public curiosity about Virginia’s life story was sparked. We can only wonder whether after her retirement Virginia looked back on her life with satisfaction, knowing that she not only secured her own liberty but also the freedom of millions of people around the world.
