The Limping Lady – Women’s History Month
Written by Robyn Andrews
We officially introduced the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit to the Duke Library atrium for the next month. It’s quite an exhibit and covers many aspects of America during the years of the Holocaust.
One of the subjects is Hollywood! Yes, something that doesn’t seem connected actually was. Hollywood created several films during the time of World War II, but even they couldn’t come up with something like this . . . a spy. Okay, how about a lady spy? No? Okay, how about a lady spy with a wooden leg? A wooden leg named Cuthbert? Hah . . . gotcha!
No, I am not making this up. Not only that, but the fact that I’m even telling you could have me investigated. After all, this lady spy with the wooden leg, the “Limping Lady,” was in the CIA! Her name – Virginia Hall.
Born in 1906, Virginia started out as not your average young lady, quite the opposite. She liked hunting, wore men’s clothing, and once went to her high school wearing live snakes as a bracelet. All that aside, Virginia was an excellent student, editor of the school newspaper, captain of the field hockey team, voted “most original of our class.” Probably the snakes.
She attended Radcliffe and Barnard Colleges, but it wasn’t to her liking. So she learned French and traveled to Paris and Vienna, earning degrees in economics and international law along with learning German, Italian, Russian and Spanish because, why not?
Upon her return to the states, Virginia’s dream was to join the State Department as a diplomat. You’d think she’d be pretty qualified, maybe even overqualified. And she very well may have been except for that “lady” part. Eventually, she got a job as a clerk in the American embassy in Warsaw before transferring to Izmir, Turkey a few months later. Unfortunately, It was there, during a hunting expedition in 1932, Hall accidentally shot herself in the left foot. The wound turned gangrenous, and only a rapid amputation saved her life. Well, what does one do when one has been equipped with a prosthetic leg? You name it “Cuthbert.” Weirdly enough, it was Cuthbert that now allowed the State Department to reject Virginia’s application again due to a rule barring amputees from diplomacy. Who thought of that rule?
In 1940, Virginia said enough’s enough, quit and joined the French 9th Artillery Regiment as an ambulance driver. But when the German Army overthrew the French government, she escaped to London. Luckily, a friend had given her a phone number to call should she need a job when arriving in England. The number belonged to a senior officer of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a top-secret British agency. The officer was impressed that Hall had managed to travel as far as she had and immediately accepted her to train in weapons, sabotage, disguise, and espionage. She even got a code name – “Germaine.” Off she went to do spy things.
Posing as a reporter for the New York Post, Hall established a network of SOE operatives and French resistance fighters codenamed HECKLER. HECKLER organized agent networks, assisted escaped prisoners of war, and recruited French men and women to run safe houses—staying one step ahead (see what I did there?) of the Gestapo. But it was dangerous out there – of the more than 400 SOE agents ultimately sent to France, 25 percent didn’t return, so Virginia knew it would be a matter of time before she was found out (or her cover was blown as it were). And it did! At one point, Virginia was one of the most wanted spies in France. When things got hot and there began to be more Germans in France than the French, Virginia took a train south to the border and walked the 50 miles into neutral Spain…in winter. What was the welcome when she got to Spain? Jail. She entered the country illegally.
1944 – New country, new codename – “Diane.” Diane and her men “cut sixteen railway lines, derailed eight trains, blew up four railway bridges, cut all telephone wires in the area, and killed eighty Germans while suffering just twelve casualties themselves.”
The success of Germaine, Diane, Virginia, helped hasten the end of the war. Once the allies invaded Normandy, they’re, I mean her, services were no longer needed.
Upon her return to the states, she and Cuthbert were awarded a French Croix de Guerre and an American Distinguished Service Cross, making her the only female civilian to receive that medal during the Second World War. She was also one of only a handful of senior women leaders in the CIA.
Virginia Hall retired in 1966 and never spoke of her work publicly. She died in 1982.