Category: War

In honor of the anniversary of The Americans With Disabilities Act. An American who didn’t let the loss of her leg stand in her way. (OK, that’s an excuse – I didn’t want to wait for her birthday, which is in April.)
Born April 6, 1906. Virginia Hall: America’s Greatest Female Spy – Historic Heroines. This linked article is long, but still worth your time.
She spoke five languages, and worked at several consulates across Europe, but the Foreign Service kept rejecting her application. Mostly it seems, because she was raising the alarm about Hitler long before most Americans – and especially those in the US Foreign Service – were taking him seriously.
While hunting in Turkey, she had an accidental discharge of her firearm, which resulted in her losing her left leg below the knee. (She was climbing over a fence.) She named her wooden leg Cuthbert. Despite the injury she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France during the Blitzkrieg. After the Nazi occupation of France, she made her way to England and joined the Special Operation Executive. (SOE was competitor to MI6, but protected by Churchill.)

After rigorous spy training designed to test the mettle of even the most resolute male candidates, she returned to Vichy France undercover as an American Journalist (prior to the US having joined the war). There, at great personal risk, Virginia, worked doggedly to collect intelligence, help form the French Resistance and rescue downed RAF pilots. She organized sabotage efforts on German supply lines and successfully planned daring POW prison escapes. All the while, knowing that capture would mean imprisonment and certain torture at the hands of the Vichy Police or German Gestapo.

She was on the Gestapo’s “most wanted” list.
After America got into the war, she “transferred” to the OSS (which later would become the CIA). And did more of the same. By this point the Americans wanted experienced agents to prepare for the invasion everyone knew had to come eventually. But since she was known to the Gestapo, she disguised herself (and her limp) as an old woman.

Upon her return to occupied France, Virginia immediately jumped back in with the French Resistance working tirelessly as a covert wireless radio operator reporting critical intelligence that could affect the D-Day invasion. … While on the move, Virginia used her previous experience organizing resistance efforts to assemble a fighting force of French guerillas that could support the Allied Invasion. Many initially refused to take orders from a woman, however, as she demonstrated her ability to provide valuable weapons and explosives with London’s full confidence, their sentiments rapidly changed. When the Allied Troops invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, Virginia and her resistance army of over 400 volunteers sprang into action. Destroying train tracks, disrupting supply lines, attacking German troops and committing other acts of sabotage, Virginia and her force slowed the Nazi response to D-Day in any way possible.

After the war, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the only civilian woman to receive one. The recommendation, and citation – from the desk of Harry S. Truman – can be viewed at this link. (The interface isn’t the best, but you can enlarge the documents.) Some of the documents weren’t declassified until 1991.
Rejected Princesses also has a nice piece on Virginia Hall. I am really starting to love Rejected Princesses. (“Well-behaved women rarely make history.”)
The CIA has an official site devoted to her, but it is a bit short. Virginia Hall: The Courage and Daring of “The Limping Lady”. Still, it is worth a look. (And they gave me the idea about the ADA.)

A native of Baltimore, Virginia Hall Goillot is perhaps best known for her heroic service in the British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, but she actually spent more time in CIA.

She died in 1982. In 2017 the CIA named a training center in her honor, and a commissioned painting of her hangs in CIA headquarters.