Allied spy was courageous, yet not well known
The Nazis were coming. It was November 1942, and Virginia Hall, a spy based in Lyon, France, knew she had to flee.
She was a Maryland-born operative with a wooden leg and a sobriquet, “The Limping Lady” — who was considered one of the most effective Allied spies leading the French resistance. She organized agent networks, assisted escaped POWs, and recruited French men and women to run safe houses, according to an account of her career on the CIA’s website.
But she was being stalked by a pursuer of equal repute: Gestapo chief, Nikolaus “Klaus” Barbie, who went by his own moniker, “The Butcher of Lyon.” The Nazis believed Hall was Canadian, and Barbie once reportedly told his underlings, “I’d give anything to lay my hands on that Canadian bitch.”
Hall was then a special agent with the British Special Operations Executive. She decided she had to escape France by crossing the border into Spain. But how could she trek into the mountains that separated the two countries with a wooden left leg?
She’d lost her real one after a hunting accident years earlier, and had learned to walk with a 7-pound prosthetic limb she nicknamed “Cuthbert.” She linked up with other resistance members, and with the help of a guide, vanished into the Pyrenees. She carried a rucksack and hiked up the snow by dragging her prosthetic leg and using her good right leg as a snowplow, according to Judith Pearson’s 2005 biography of Hall, “The Wolves at the Door.”
Eventually, Hall made it to Spain. Although she was jailed for not having a passport with the right stamps, she was let go after 20 days.
Hall was determined to return to France, despite her most-wanted status among the Nazis. The British refused, but the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, agreed to send her back on its behalf to help the Allies prepare for D-Day.
After World War II, Hall continued to work for the CIA until her retirement at the age of 60 in 1966.
Hall might be one of history’s most audacious, yet littleknown spies.
After the Baltimore native died on July 8, 1982, at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Md., newspapers consigned her obituaries to the back pages.
But recently, the CIA named a training facility after her as the Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center.
And earlier this year, the Hollywood press reported that Paramount Pictures might make a movie about Hall.