The Famous Limping Lady of the OSS - Virginia Hall
Virginia Hall gala was an American spy with the British Special Operations Executive during World War 2.
she was known by many aliases including Murray moanin Jermaine Dye Ann Marie of Lyon Camille and Nicholas the German Gestapo reportedly considered her the most dangerous of all Allied spies following the war.
she worked in various elements of the CIA until she retired and she did all of this with a prosthetic leg which she named Cuthbert.
The limping lady Virginia Hall it is said that Hall was a legendary intelligence officer she organized agent networks recruited Frenchmen and women to run safe houses and assisted escaped prisoners of war she excelled in her role as a world war ii spy,
The gestapo desperately wanted to apprehend atta limping lady so how did a simple girl from baltimore maryland end up climbing the ranks of the British Special Operations Hall attended Roland Park country school and then the prestigious Radcliffe College and Barnard College where she studied French Italian and German but she was drawn to Europe and so traveled the continent studying in France Germany and Austria before landing a job as a consular service clerk at the American Embassy in Warsaw Poland in 1931.
Hall was an adventurous outdoors type and in 1932 she accidentally shot herself in the leg while on a hunting trip in Turkey her leg was later amputated from the knee down and replaced with a wooden appendage which as we said she named cuff Burr Hall headed back to the US where she attended graduate school at American University in Washington DC >for most people losing a leg might be enough to send them running home to take a job in the local bakery or florist but not for Hall.
She had greater ambitions in 1940 she joined the ambulance service in Paris France and then in 1941 she made her way to London and volunteered for Britain's newly formed Special Operations Executive she spent the next 15 months helping to coordinate the activities of the French underground in Vichy and occupied Zone in France Hall was great at her job which was good for the Allied forces but it meant she also started to make waves with the enemy.
November 1942 when operating in Lyon Paul knew she had to flee the German Gestapo posted a notice all over France the woman who limps is one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France we must destroy her she was being stalked by an equal adversary who had been tasked with removing halt from rising the ranks as a British spy Gestapo chief Nicholas Klaus Barbie who was also known as the butcher of Lyon was on her tail the Nazis believed Hall to be Canadian and Barbie once reportedly told ;
his colleagues I'd give anything to lay my hands on that Canadian beeyotch Hall had certainly gone under the skins of these Gestapo agents she made the decision to escape France by crossing the border into Spain but how could she trek through the mountains with Cuthbert her wooden left leg
well she had no choice as Barbie was sure to hunt her down an arrest torture and likely kill her sohal linked up with some other resistance members and vanished into the Pyrenees Mountains that separate France and Spain this courageous lady carried a rucksack and hiked up the snow by dragging her prosthetic leg using her good right leg as a snowplow.
According to Judith Pearson's 2005 biography of halt the wolves
at the door at one point during the journey she was able to send a message to her liaisons in London telling them that Cuthbert was giving her trouble they replied if Cuthbert is giving you difficulty have him eliminated hard-working Hall eventually made it to Spain after the war 40 year-old Hall was eager to remain in the intelligence business she spoke Italian fluently and headed to Venice for several years she was responsible for collecting and transmitting financial economic and political intelligence in her role monitoring the development of communism.
she eventually joined the CIA on December 3rd 1951 a natural footstep on Hall's career path and for the next 15 years she used her covert action expertise in a wide range of agency activities chiefly in support of resistance groups in Iron Curtain countries she eventually retired at the age of 60 in 1966 during her career Paul served a number of nations and they all acknowledged her courage the French government awarded her the quad de Guerre avec pound Britain's King George gave her the honor of member of the British Empire and General William Donovan the legendary head of the Office of Strategic Services presented her with a Distinguished Service Cross President Truman to present hall with the award himself in a public ceremony,
But she turned down the offer as she was concerned it would reveal too much to the enemy after she died on July 8th 1982 newspapers wrote up her obituaries in the back pages The Washington Post and The New York Times used brief Associated Press obituaries that were several paragraphs in length and the Baltimore Sun the newspaper from her hometown wrote up a more thorough account of her life with around 14 paragraphs later in 2006 the CIA hung an oil painting of Hall that shows her inside a barn in southern France in 1944 using a suitcase radio powered by an automobile generator and bike parts to transmit messages to London and the agency also named a training facility after her called the Virginia Hall expeditionary center it could be argued that Virginia Hall is one of America's greatest heroes yet very few people have even heard of this amazing woman maybe that's all about to change though as in 2017 the Hollywood Press reported ;
Paramount Pictures is considering making a movie about Virginia Hall the studio acquired the rights to another soon to be published book about her life a woman of no importance by the journalist Sonya Purnell according to the film website IMDB the studio has attached star wars Daisy Ridley to play Hall.
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