‘Most dangerous’ was an unlikely hero
The French peasant woman scrambled to keep her goat herd intact
as a German convoy roared by. A soldier in the back of a truck
called out,
”
Hey, darling, save all your dances for me at the ball
tonight
”
as his comrades laughed.
‘Most dangerous’ was an unlikely hero
The French peasant woman scrambled to keep her goat herd intact as a German convoy roared by. A soldier in the back of a truck called out, “Hey, darling, save all your dances for me at the ball tonight” as his comrades laughed.
She muttered sourly until the convoy had passed then got the herd across the road. Three hours later a squadron of British bombers destroyed the convoy before it reached its destination.
She had many cover names but the woman born as Virginia Hall in 1906 to an American theater owner and his wife was termed by the Gestapo as “the most dangerous Allied agent in Europe.”
Virginia grew up in a privileged world and studied languages at Radcliffe and Barnard. Upon graduation she was fluent in French, Italian and German.
When she became a clerk in the State Department many of her colleagues objected to a woman in what had been n all-male environment. But her superiors saw her as an asset and posted her to assignments in Estonia, Austria and Turkey.
While hunting one evening in Turkey, Hall dropped her rifle. She tried to grab it but it went off and fired its load into her right foot. By the time help arrived gangrene had set in and her leg was amputated.
The State Department notified her that she was no longer employable. That was in the spring of 1939 and she was living in Paris when World War II erupted. Hall immediately joined the French ambulance service.
A French official noticed her competence and learned of her background. Before long she was transmitting vital information to England. After France fell in 1940, she, a Belgian captain and two Frenchmen followed a Spanish guide through the Pyrenees in the dead of winter.
Hall got to England just as Winston Churchill was organizing a special unit that “would set Europe afire.” She was recruited and smuggled back to France. The Gestapo became aware of her and circulated posters for a “woman with a limp.”
After training in organization and weaponry she helped form guerilla units to wreak havoc on German bases and played an important role in the D-Day invasion.
At war’s end she worked for the CIA, the successor to the OSS. Agency chief William Donavan recommended her for the Distinguished Service Cross, which President Harry S. Truman approved.
Rather than a public ceremony, which she felt could jeopardize future operations, she accepted it privately from Donavan in his office.
Virginia Hall retired at the mandatory age of 60 and for the remaining 16 years of her life raised flowers and owned a succession of poodles. She died in 1982 in Maryland and her tombstone carried only her name and the dates of her birth and death.
It did not reflect that she was the recipient of a Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor in recognition of outstanding valor, or that she was the only woman who had won the medal.
