Virginia Hall (1906-1982)

DOSSIER:

Virginia Hall was born on 6 Apr 1906 in Baltimore, MD. In 1950 she married OSS agent Paul Goillot. Virginia died on 8 Jul 1982 in Rockville, MD.

Nicknamed "Artemis" by the Germans, the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."

CODE NAMES:
Marie Monin
la dame qui boite (The Limping Lady)
Marcelle Montagne
Diane
Germaine
Marie of Lyon
Camille
Nicholas

Virginia travelled the Continent and studied in France, Germany and Austria, finally landing an appointment as a Consular Service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland in 1931. She had hoped to join the Foreign Service, but suffered a setback around 1932 when she accidentally shot herself in the left leg while hunting in Turkey. The leg was later amputated from the knee down, and replaced with a wooden appendage which she named "Cuthbert". The injury foreclosed whatever chance she might have had for a diplomatic career, and she resigned from the Department of State in 1939. Thereafter she attended graduate school at American University in Washington, DC.

The coming of war that year found Virginia in Paris. She joined the Ambulance Service before the fall of France and ended up in Vichy-controlled territory when the fighting stopped in the summer of 1940.

She made her way to London and volunteered for Britain's newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), which sent her back to Vichy in August 1941. She spent the next 15 months there, helping to coordinate the activities of the French Underground in Vichy and the occupied zone of France. At the time she had the cover of a correspondent for the New York Post.

When the Germans suddenly seized all of France in November 1942, Virginia barely escaped to Spain. Rather whimsically, her artificial foot had its own code name (Cuthbert). According to Dr. Dennis Casey of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Agency, the French nicknamed her "la dame qui boite" and the Germans put "the limping lady" on their most wanted list.

Before making her escape, she signalled to SOE that she hoped Cuthbert would not give trouble on the way. The SOE, not understanding the reference, replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him". Journeying back to London (after working for SOE for a time in Madrid), in July 1943 she was quietly made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Virginia joined the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Special Operations Branch in March 1944 and asked to return to occupied France. She hardly needed training in clandestine work behind enemy lines, and OSS promptly granted her request and landed her from a British MTB in Brittany (her artificial leg having kept her from parachuting in) with a forged French identification certificate for Marcelle Montagne. Code named Diane, she eluded the Gestapo and contacted the French Resistance in central France. She mapped drop zones for supplies and commandos from England, found safe houses and linked up with a Jedburgh team after the Allied Forces landed at Normandy. Virginia helped train three battalions of Resistance forces to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans and kept up a stream of valuable reporting until Allied troops overtook her small band in September.