Virginia Hall-Spy
Allied archives on World War II abound with accounts of unprecedented
bravery and commitment to the defeat of the Axis threesome of Germany, Japan
and Italy.Indeed, some of the stories have become the foundation from which
many cloak and dagger thrillers were made in Hollywood. Perhaps one of the most
spectacular of these stories was that of Virginia Hall.
Hall began life most unspectacularly in Baltimore, Md., April 6, 1906, as the
youngest daughter of Edwin Lee Hall. She apparently acquired a sense of adventure
from her father. He had run away to sea at the age of nine aboard one of his
father/s clipper ships.
In time her father acquired substantial wealth and social position and it was into this environment that Virginia grew and matured. She attended Radcliffe and later Bernard College from 1924 to 1926. When not pursuing her academic interests in foreign languages (French, Italian and German), she picked up free movie tickets for herself and friends from her father who owned several movie theaters in Baltimore. Virginia soon tired of the social clime in Baltimore and looked around for something more exciting.
In 1931, Virginia began what she thought would become a life-long career in international relations. She took a clerk's position with the American Embassy in Warsaw at a salary of $2,500 per year. Over the next few years she would serve in Tallinn, Estonia, Vienna, Austria and Izmir, Turkey. At Izmir she would suffer an unfortunate accident that would impact her life and career significantly. While hunting, her shotgun slipped from her grasp. When she grabbed for it, the gun discharged and pellets struck her foot. By the time medical help arrived, gangrene had already developed. The surgeon amputated her leg to save her life. She was fitted with an artificial limb that she in later years would call 'Cuthbert'. Her future friends in the French underground would refer to her as 'la dame qui boite' or 'The Limping Lady'. (See anecdote at foot of page)
The accident ended Virginia's plans for a long career with the State Department. Not only did the State Department personnel chiefs have a closed mind about women in the career service but there also existed a regulation that disallowed employment of anyone with "any amputation of a portion of a limb." Displeased with the response she received from the U.S. State Department, Virginia resigned her clerk's position in May 1939. When war broke out later that year she was in Paris and joined the French Ambulance Service Unit as a private second class. The fall of France in June 1940 prompted her to flee to England. It was here, while working as a code clerk for the military attaché in the U.S. Embassy, she was recruited by British Special Operations Executive.
The British SOE opened Hall's eyes to a very different world. The
organization had been created by the British government on July 16, 1940, to
undertake sabotage, subversion and the formation of secret military forces in
German occupied Europe. It would essentially function as an intelligence-gathering
agency first and foremost but in the words of Winston Churchill, he wanted it
"to set Europe ablaze." As a new SOE recruit, Virginia received training
in weaponry, communications and security. Because of her fluency in French,
Hall's first assignment saw her setting up resistance networks in Vichy, France,
beginning in August 1941. Her cover was that of being a reporter for the New
York Post. In Vichy, Hall sent in her reports freely without interruptions from
the government headed by General Henri Pétain, France's World War I hero.
She described Vichy as a small town increasingly beset with shortages and deteriorating
living conditions including the absence of butter and milk. By early 1942 her
reports indicated that people were near starvation, which curiously occurred
simultaneously with the tightening of German control.
In early 1942, she relocated to Lyons and began espionage work out of an apartment.
Here she established contact with the French underground and began assisting
in the return to England of downed American aircrews and escaped prisoners.
While doing this Hall continued to write stories but when America entered the
war she became an enemy alien and then had to conduct business clandestinely
from bistros and restaurants, being constantly vigilant to avoid Vichy and Gestapo
officers.
The aftermath of the invasion of North Africa in November 1942 brought a torrent
of German troops into Vichy. Their sudden presence forced Hall to leave the
country. She crossed the Pyrénées Mountains in the dead of winter
on foot with help from a Belgian Army captain, two Frenchmen and a Spanish guide.
Following a brief incarceration in the border town of San Juan de Las Abadesas
by Spanish authorities, she was soon released at the behest of the American
consul and after a brief rest resumed her career as a spy.
After what she called a dulling few months in Madrid operating under the cover of being a reporter for the Chicago Times, Hall asked SOE to transfer her back to France where she could be more help in the war effort. She was sent back to England where she received training as a wireless operator. Once trained she was moved to the American Office of Strategic Services headed by the "Wild Bill" Donovan. Hall, soon to operate under the code name of Diane, began her second tour as a spy in France and joined the resistance in the Haute-Loire region of central France. Here she worked in setting up sabotage and guerrilla groups and then supplying them with money, arms and rations.
For several weeks before D-Day, Hall and her accomplices relocated frequently to avoid being pinpointed by Nazi radio direction finders. In early May 1944, she operated from the attic of a home owned by Col. Fernand Vessereaux, head of the local police and once chief of protocol in Edouard Deladier's cabinet. From there she donned a disguise as a peasant. To hide her bad leg, she wore heavy woolen clothes and added filler to her skirts and dresses to make her look much larger than she really was. In this garb and disguise, she herded her goats up and down the roads near the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon and very carefully reported on German Army activities and troop movements.
Hall would relate years later that her life in Haute-Loire was very difficult. She had to be constantly on the alert for the Gestapo who was intent on capturing the lady with a limp. Indeed, the Gestapo hierarchy regarded her as the most dangerous allied agent in France. Despite this, she maintained regular contact with London and was the first to report that the German General Staff had relocated their headquarters from Lyons to Le Puy, about 100 kilometers north of Marseilles.
August 15, 1944, as part of Operation Anvil, French troops landed
at their country's Mediterranean cities of Marseilles, Saint Tropez and Saint
Raphaël. At this juncture, an American and a French officer and an American
radio operator strengthened Hall's operation. Working under the code name Jedburgh,
the team began organizing, training and arming three battalions of Forces Francaises
d' Interieur that later took part in eminently successful sabotage operations
against the retreating Germans.
Hall and her team provided daily intelligence reports as the battle lines changed
almost every day as the German Army retreated back to their homeland. The team
became particularly adept at destroying enemy communication lines. Hall, never
trained in guerrilla warfare because of her physical condition, became a superb
manager. In the final days of the German occupation of France, her teams destroyed
four bridges, derailed several freight trains headed for Germany, downed key
telephone lines, killed more than 150 enemy soldiers and took more than 500
prisoners. The German retreat was anything but smooth and without incident thanks
to Hall's groups and others like them.
Hall's career in World War II ended with a last assignment to Innsbruck, Austria. For her protection, her code name was changed to Camille. For her cover she became Anna Muller, a German subject born in Turkey. The assignment was to focus on the discovery of last-ditch Nazi efforts to resist allied forces. The collapse of the German forces, however, caused the cancellation of the mission.
At the conclusion of the war, Col. James R. Forgan, the OSS commanding
officer in the European theater of operations, nominated Hall for the Distinguished
Service Cross, the army's highest military medal after the Medal of Honor. Hall
picked up her citation quietly and according to one observer, did not seem to
be impressed she had been awarded such a high honor.
After all, she had just done her job. Hall's citation, however, quickly made
it to OSS chief Bill Donovan's desk in Washington. On May 12, 1945, he sent
a memo to President Truman recommending he present the award. Hall declined
on the grounds that she was still employed and active in intelligence work.
President Truman acceded to her wishes and Bill Donovan presented her the medal
in a private ceremony in his office.
In 1951, a 45 year-old Hall started work for the CIA in Washington. She began her CIA career as part of the Office of Policy Coordination and became an intelligence analyst on French paramilitary affairs. One year later she became one of the first women operations officers in the new Office of the Deputy Director of Plans. In this capacity she prepared political action projects, interviewed exiles, and planned resistance and sabotage nets to be used against the Soviet Union in the event of war with that country. Hall accepted several overseas assignments with the CIA but spent the last years of her career as a GS-14 in Washington, D.C. At the mandatory retirement age of 60, she turned in her agency badge in 1966 and found new passions in gardening and French poodles.
Toward the end of her life Hall had to deal with bad health. She died in 1982 at the Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Md. The Baltimore Sun reported that the simple funeral services contrasted remarkably with the drama of her earlier life during World War II when life from one day to the next often hung in the balance. Regarded as one of the true heroines of the war, Virginia Hall, or The Limping Lady, rests today in the Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Md., not far from her birthplace.
Anecdote:
As stated in the text the aftermath of the invasion of North Africa in November
1942 brought a torrent of German troops into Vichy. Their sudden presence forced
Hall to leave the country. She crossed the Pyrenees mountains in the dead of
winter. Before setting out on the journey Virginia radioed SOE in London that
she hoped 'Cuthbert' would not be troublesome. London replied, "If Cuthbert
troublesome eliminate him." London had forgotten that 'Cuthbert' was the
codename for her artificial leg!
Virginia Hall is awarded the Distinguished Service Cross
by
Bill Donovan, chief of Office of Strategic Services in 1945.
By Dr. Dennis Casey
HQ AIA/HO
Kelly AFB, Texas