During World War II, the Nazis were terrified
of a mysterious female spy that they called “The Limping Lady.” Hundreds of posters with her face were plastered
in every major French city, and yet she managed to slip by undetected. This was Virginia Hall: An American spy living
in Nazi-occupied France. She walked with a limp on her prosthetic leg
called “Cuthbert”. Even with her disability, she still managed
to orchestra jailbreaks for POW’s, run resistance newspapers, and get vital information back
to the Allies. Even Klaus Barbie, The Butcher of Lyon, considered
her to be one of the most dangerous Allied spies, and he was on a personal mission to
hunt her down. So, who was Virginia Hall, and how did she
become one of the most successful spies in history? Early Life in Baltimore
Virginia Hall was born on April 6, 1906 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Edwin Lee Hall, was an entrepreneur
who helped to run banks and movie theaters in the city. Her mother, Barbara, was hired to be his secretary,
and they fell in love. Virginia had one brother named John, and their
family lived in a mansion in Baltimore. They would spend summer vacations traveling
through Europe, and she grew up with all of the finest things in life. Virginia’s mother, Barbara was not born
into wealth, so she fully embraced this new upper-class lifestyle. She wanted Virginia to marry a well-to-do
man in high society. Barbara made sure that her daughter received
the best education at an all-girls academy called The Roland Park Country School. However, Virginia was not the dainty young
woman that her mother had hoped for. She always played the male roles in the school
plays, because she wanted to perform the sword fights and become the hero who saved the day. When she was outside of her school uniform,
she dressed in trousers and checkered shirts. After school, she would go through the woods
to hunt rabbits, and even wore live snakes as bracelets. Her classmates respected her confidence and
self-assurance, so they voted her in as the editor of the school newspaper, and class
president. Virginia was studying languages at her prep
school, and she told everyone that she dreamed of becoming a diplomat so that she could travel
around the world and have amazing adventures. Her father fully embraced her ambition, and
helped pay for language tutoring. However, her mother continued to push her
to act like a dignified young woman in Baltimore society. After graduating from High School, Virginia
studied at some of the most prestigious women’s universities in the country. She attended both Barnard College in New York
City, and Radcliffe, which is apart of Harvard University. Her mother had been scheming for years to
set Virgina up with men who she considered to be “good enough” to marry her daughter. She arranged for Virginia to court a young
man when she was just 19 years old. They became engaged rather quickly, because
their families wanted to unite their businesses. Unfortunately, her mother Barbara didn’t
seem to realize that just because a man has a trust fund and an Ivy League education,
that doesn’t make him a good person. Virginia's fiance was cheating on her constantly,
and they were not actually in love with one another. She knew that if she chose this path that
her parents wanted for her, she would never be happy. In the end, she chose to follow her dream
of becoming that hero who went on great adventures. Life in Europe
Virginia listened to her intuition, and broke off her engagement so that she could move
to France. She transferred to a University in Paris called
Ecole Libre Des Sciences Politiques. During her time living in Europe as a student,
she was able to practice the language with other native speakers, and became fluent in
French, Spanish, Russian, German, and Italian. However, when she spoke, it was always a dead-giveaway
that she was a foreigner, because she could never shake her American accent. After spending the end of her college years
enjoying the Paris nightlife in the roaring 20’s, she moved to Vienna, Austria. This is where she fell in love with a Polish
army officer named Emil. They wanted to get married, but her trip to
Europe was fully funded by her father. Out of respect for her parents, Virginia wrote
to her father to ask his permission. Sadly, he forbade her from marrying Emil,
because he believed that her life in Europe was just a phase. Her parents still wanted her to move back
to the United States to carry on the family legacy in Baltimore. She obeyed her father's wishes, and broke
things off with Emil. Virginia returned to the United States 1929
just in time to witness the beginning of the Great Depression. Her family’s finances were hit so hard,
they lost almost everything. To make matters worse, her father died of
a sudden heart attack from all of the stress of his life crumbling around him. This left their family even more financially
destitute than before. Now, that snobbery and sense of entitlement
that her mother held onto for so long was gone. The family was no longer apart of high society,
and Virginia was free to pursue her dreams once again. She decided that she would leave the United
States and apply for job at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland as the Consular Service
Clerk making $2,000 a year, which is roughly $30,000 after inflation. It’s probably not a coincidence that she
chose to move to Poland. It had not been very long since she broke
off her engagement with Emil, and she probably hoped that she could find him again. Sadly, that never happened. Most historians believe that he would have
died during World War II, since he had a career in the Polish military, and the Nazis killed
so many people when they occupied Poland. While working at the embassy in Warsaw, Virginia
was given administrative tasks like decoding messages and filing paperwork. This was nothing like the adventurous life
she imagined. She took a diplomat’s entrance exam, and
scored 100%. With her language skills, Ivy-League education,
and stellar resume, she should have been able to easily move out of a clerical position. Every time there was a job opening, she tried
to apply, and they would “lose” her application. Virginia could tell that the odds were stacked
against her. She believed that maybe the problem was isolated
to Poland, so she decided to transfer to the American embassy in Izmir, Turkey. Once she was living in Turkey, she tried to
make friends with her new co-workers. Despite having so many setbacks, she still
hoped that maybe she could become one of the special few women who were accepted as diplomats. But the plans for her future career were completely
ruined when she was on a hunting trip with some friends. Virginia was trying to climb over a wire fence
when her gun accidentally went off, and she shot herself point-blank in the foot. She fell, and sank into the mud. Dirt and bacteria poured into the hole in
her shattered foot. Her friends wrapped her foot in a tunicate,
and carried her to the car. She was in the hospital for three weeks, but
bacteria had gotten into her open wound, and it caused an infection that began to spread
throughout her entire leg. Just a few days before Christmas, he leg had
to be amputated from the knee down. At 27 years old, she became permanently disabled
for the rest of her life. The doctors gave her a wooden peg leg, and
she named it “Cuthbert.” After learning to walk with her prosthetic,
Virginia was still determined to continue working towards her goal. She applied to work at the consulate in Venice,
Italy, and passed the oral language assessment with flying colors. But once they saw her leg, they rejected her
immediately, and forbid her from taking the diplomat’s exam. Virginia was fuming, so she wrote a letter
to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. He wrote back that “Hall could become a
fine career girl at the Consular Service” as in- he thought she should continue to be
a clerical assistant, along with the rest of the women who worked at the embassies. The Secretary of State officially banned her
from ever applying for higher positions again. She had absolutely no hope left of ever becoming
a diplomat. Life as an SOE Spy
For the next few years, Virginia Hall kept her head down, and continued to do clerical
work, but she was clearly unhappy. Even after her aspirations had been shot down,
she still dreamed of going on those adventures. After World War II began, Virginia felt compelled
to help in any way she could. So she decided to leave her job and move back
to France in 1939. She was now 33 years old, and completely started
her life over from scratch as an ambulance driver. Just one year later, in 1940, Nazi Germany
occupied France, and Virginia had to escape through the Pyrenees mountains in Spain and
France on a trail known as “Le Chemin de la Liberté”, or “The Freedom Trail”. The journey is 72 km or 44-miles, with elevations
as high as 6,000 feet. This typically takes 3 to 4 days for even
able-bodied people to complete, and it would have taken Virgina Hall even longer with her
disability. During the course of the war, over 2,000 experienced
mountain guides who lead groups through The Freedom Trail were captured and executed by
the Nazis, and thousands of civilians were taken prisoner. Somehow, despite the pain she experienced
with her prosthetic leg, Virginia Hall climbed through the mountain trails undetected. Once she arrived in England, Virginia Hall
went straight to the American Embassy in London to volunteer her services to the British Special
Operations Executive, or the “SOE”. Now that the nation was at war, the English
knew that they could use her special abilities. They were impressed with her language skills,
and agreed to bring her on as one of their spies. The SOE trained her in weaponry, security,
communications, as well as resistance activity. They gave her the code name “Heckler”. Once she received her training, Virginia had
to hike back into France on foot through the Pyrenees mountains once again. During the journey, she ran into some issues,
and contacted the SOE, saying “Cuthbert” was giving her trouble. They responded, “If Cuthbert is giving you
difficulty, have him eliminated.” They had no idea she was talking about her
leg. In 1941, she returned to france with false
identification, and pretended to be a newspaper reporter from The New York Post. She was actually publishing secret intelligence
that she had gathered from a spy network that she created. More than 2 million people in France were
able to get valuable information through these resistance newspapers. Whenever the British SOE spies made their
way into France, they had to report to this mysterious “Agent Heckler.” Every single day was a new adventure for her. On several occasions, she saved the lives
of Allied pilots who survived from their downed aircrafts. Any time she recovered a pilot or a prisoner,
she brought them to a safe houses where they could receive medical attention. As time went on Virginia, began to plan more
and more ideas about how they could help the Allies. Together with a French doctor named Jean Rousset,
they plotted jail breaks to free Prisoners of War from Nazi camps. Dr. Rousset worked at a mental asylum, and
they had to transport patients on a regular basis. So, as long as the POW’s could pretend to
be mentally ill in the back of the ambulance, they were able to bring the men across the
checkpoints. Then, Virginia would help guide them on a
multi-day journey into the United Kingdom on The Freedom Trail. Of course, Virginia Hall was far from being
the only Allied spy who was working in France. She was just one of the most successful. During World War II, Great Britain sent 400
SOE agents into France, and 100 of them were captured and killed. To the Nazis, she was just a helpless woman
who walked with a limp. However, while her physical disability should
have made her less suspicious, it also was a very specific train that made her stand
out from the crowd. It was rare to see a young woman walking with
a limp and a prosthetic leg. The more Virginia went above and beyond to
save people, the more she earned a reputation for herself. News began spread that a limping woman named
Agent Heckler was helping the Allied troops in plain site. Klaus Barbie was the Chief of the Gestapo
in Lyon, France, and he heard the news of Agent Heckler and her elaborate POW jail breaks. No one knew who “Heckler” truly was, or
what country she came from. The only dead giveaway was her accent. However, Klaus Barbie must have had a hard
time believing an American could be so fluent in French, so he was once quoted saying, “I
would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian bitch.” Barbie ordered his men to hang over 200 posters
of Virginia Hall’s face, and it read: “The Limping Lady. The most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.” They put a bounty on her head, offering a
reward for anyone who could come forward with any information about her whereabouts. Eventually, someone was tempted enough to
turn her secret location in to the Gestapo. In November of 1942, she sent a message back
to London that the address of her safe house had been compromised. They ordered her to run, but she told them
that before she could escape, she must save two captured SEO agents named Alex and Fabian. However, just as she was attempting to break
them out of jail, a huge influx of Nazi soldiers showed up. They had just arrived after defeating territories
in North Africa. These were thousands of fresh eyes who were
seeing the wanted posters for the very first time, and they would be on the lookout for
the young woman with the distinctive limp. Once she saw the new soldiers, it was clear
to Virginia that if she did not leave immediately, she would be captured. She packed her bags and left town just in
the nick of time, because the very next day, Dr. Jean Rousset was arrested and killed for
running his underground escape route in the asylum. The Gestapo burst in the Heckler HQ, but she
was already gone. Virginia Hall just barely had a 24-hour head
start making her way back on the Freedom Trail. It was just enough time to save her life. However, just as Virginia Hall could practically
see her freedom on the horizon, the Spanish police arrested her for illegally crossing
the border. She was brought to jail. At the very least- she wasn’t in the hands
of the Nazis, and could finally get some rest. Joining the CIA
We are not sure just how long Virginia Hall spent living in a Spanish jail cell, but she
had to contact the American embassy in order for them to finally release her. Once she was free, Virginia contacted the
SOE, and let them know that she was alive and well. After spending time in prison, she was even
more eager to get back to helping with the war effort. She requested to be sent back into France,
because she felt that her duty was not over. They refused, saying that the Gestapo already
knew who she was, and they were right. Illustrations of Virginia's likeness were
hung on “Wanted” posters all over Nazi-occupied Europe. It would be far too risky. As far as the SOE was concerned, Agent Heckler
had done her duty, and they didn’t expect anything more from her. Once she knew that the British would not take
her back, she took a break from being a spy, until 1944. This is when she learned about the planned
Allied invasion of Normandy. She met up with the American Office of Strategic
Services, or the “OSS” for short. This was the precursor of the CIA. Since her face was recognizable, they helped
her to dress up as an elderly woman. This was actually the perfect disguise, because
it looked totally natural for an older woman to be limping. They also taught her morse code, and she learned
how to become a radio operator to send messages back to the Americans as quickly as possible. After returning to France as an old woman,
Virginia made goat’s milk and lived out a daily existence as a milkmaid. Yet again, the Nazis thought she was harmless,
so Virginia was able to hide in plain site delivering milk and cheese to the camps as
the Germans openly discussed top-secret information in front of her. They had no idea that she could speak fluent
German, of course. After identifying their most vital locations,
Virginia contacted the Allies over the radio, and helped to orchestra the bombings of several
bridges and major Nazi infrastructures throughout France before the Allies ever reached the
shores of Normandy on D-Day. Even in the midst of battle, she was on the
ground sabotaging as much Nazi gear as she possibly could. The Americans celebrated their victory over
the Nazis, and no one ever knew that they needed to thank Virginia Hall for prepping
the road to victory beforehand. After the War, and Legacy
When the war was finally over in 1945, Virginia Hall was recognized for serving her country. She was the one and only woman to receive
The Distinguished Service Cross of the United States of America. Even though this was such a prestigious honor,
and the world would have been shocked to know just how much she contributed to the Allied
victory, she requested for the award ceremony to be held in secret. She did not want the newspapers to show pictures
of her face, because she wanted to continue working as a spy. The Office of Strategic Services was renamed
The Central Intelligence Agency, or the CIA, and Virgina Hall would go on to become one
of their very first female secret agents. After years of focusing on her career, she
finally got married when she was 44 years old to a fellow spy named Paul Goillot. The CIA gave Virginia and Paul husband new
aliases, and they were sent her to work in Venice, Italy to monitor the progress of Communism
in the country. For several years, she gathered data on financial
and political information and transmitted it back to the United States. Then, she joined a division of the CIA called
National Committee For Free Europe before retiring when she turned 60 years old. Even after she was retired, she knew that
the missions she participated in were still top-secret. So she never revealed the details of her exploits,
and she never gave a single interview. She lived to be 76 years old, and died in
1982. Years after her death, a CIA agent named Craig
R. Gralley read the documents of Virginia Hall’s incredible story, and he felt inspired
to retrace her steps on The Freedom Trail. He wanted to experience what it must have
been like for her to go through the mountains. Even as an able-bodied man, he stumbled multiple
times, and almost fell to his death. Gralley wrote, “I’m hiking above 6,000
feet and have stumbled twice on this narrow and rocky trail deep in the French Pyrenees. There’s nothing to grab on to if I fall;
only thorny brush and an occasional scrub pine cling to the steep mountain slope.” Today, she continues to inspire people with
her story. As a spy, Virginia Hall kept most of her life
a secret, because she was fighting to keep people safe from the Nazi regime. She worked quietly behind the scenes without
ever expecting fame or glory. In the end, she truly did accomplish her dream
of going down in history as a true hero.
