Kickass Women in History: Virginia Hall

This month I’ve been reading about Virginia Hall, one of our better known Kickass Women. Virginia Hall was an American spy who recruited and organized resistance workers in France during WWII. She had a brilliant mind, a relentless work ethic, and an unparalleled ability to keep secrets and evade discovery despite being a tall, beautiful American who spoke French with a distinctly American accent and who walked with the aid of a wooden leg named Cuthbert. To the British SOE, she was “Marie,” to the OSS, she was “Diane,” to the Maquis she was “La Madone,” and to Gestapo leader Klaus Barbie, she was “that limping Canadian bitch.” All were titles she assumed with pride.

Hall was born in 1906 in Maryland, and was a tomboy who infuriated her mother by evading marriage. After studying in America and Europe, she got a posting with the American Embassy in Poland and then Turkey. An avid hunter, Hall accidentally shot herself in the foot while hunting birds. Her leg was amputated below the knee and for the rest of her life she used a prosthesis (the aforementioned Cuthbert).

After working as an ambulance driver for France, Hall was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to recruit and organize Resistance agents in Vichy, France. She was so successful that at one time the Germans referred to her as “The most dangerous Allied spy.” According to the excellent biography, A Woman of No Importance, Hall:

…had survived longer in the field than any other agent. She had evaded capture by the Germans and impeccably maintained her cover as a journalist. She had set up cast networks, rescued numerous officers, provided top-grade intelligence, and kept the SOE flag flying through all the tumult. She had almost alone laid the foundations of discipline and hope for the great Resistance battles that were to come. She had even crossed the Pyrenees in the winter snows with a wooden leg…an official report found that there was “no doubt” that any progress in France would have been “impossible” without her.

And that was only her first trip!

After she returned to England for a short time, she joined the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). They sent her to the south of France, where she organized resistance groups in the valleys. She then relocated to the mountains to assist the Maquis by arranging drops of supplies, providing weapons training, and coordinating efforts between the British, the Americans, and the Maquis groups who were often at odds with each other.

Countless women served in the French Resistance, but very few were in leadership positions (because sexism) and Virginia Hall had to fight for every scrap of authority she got with the SOE, the OSS, and the Resistance. She won respect by her toughness, her creativity, her tenacity, her work ethic, and her ability to get results. Sadly, after the war she had to fight sexism again within the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which relegated her to desk jobs. She was uncomfortable with official recognition for her war work but also frustrated that she had to prove her competence over and over again. She never wrote her memoirs or shared stories with her family, telling her niece that she “had seen too many corpses of colleagues who had talked.”

Hall married Paul Goillot, one of her Resistance colleagues, and they lived together in the USA until Hall’s death at the age of seventy-six. Today she is officially recognized by the CIA as a hero and as a pioneer, while France recognizes her officially as a “true hero of the French Resistance.”

My primary source for this entry is the gripping non-fiction book, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, by Sonia Purnell. ( A | BN | K | AB ) I highly recommend this exciting and meticulously researched book to history buffs for a more detailed look at Hall’s life and work, including her record-breaking hike over the Pyrenees and her masterminding prison escapes and sabotage operations on large and small scales. All quotations in this post come from that book.