In early September 1941, a young American woman named Virginia Hall arrived in Vichy, France, on a clandestine and perilous mission. She had been tasked with organizing local resistance networks against France’s German occupiers and communicating intelligence to the Special Operations Executive, the fledgling British Secret Service that had recruited her. In reality, Hall’s supervisors weren’t particularly hopeful about her prospects. In fact, they didn’t expect her to survive more than a few days in a region teeming with Gestapo agents. Admittedly, Hall made for an unlikely spy. She was an amputee, having lost her left leg several years earlier in a hunting accident. She relied on a prosthetic, which caused her to walk with a limp. That, in itself, made her dangerously conspicuous. She quickly became known as the “Limping Lady of Lyon,” the French city where she set up base. Hall, however, had no intention of letting her disability stop her from playing a role in the war effort. She didn’t just survive the wartime years, she also played a crucial role in recruiting large networks of resistance fighters and directing their assistance to the Allied invasion. She broke 12 of her fellow agents out of an internment camp, evaded the treachery of a double-crossing priest, and once her pursuers began to close in, she made an arduous trek over the Pyrenees into Spain…….limping all the way. Yet, despite all of these accomplishments, Hall is not widely remembered as a war hero. In the end, she was the only civilian woman of World War II to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism against the enemy.
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| Hall receiving the Distinguished Service Cross in Washington, DC, from Major “Wild Bill” Donovan in 1945 |
