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    Limping Lady Returns to France (21 MAR 1944)

    Limping Lady Returns to France (21 MAR 1944)

    Courtesy Photo | A sketch of Virginia Hall circulated by the German Gestapo in occupied France...... read more read more

    UNITED STATES

    03.19.2024

    Story by Lori Stewart 

    U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

    by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

    LIMPING LADY RETURNS TO FRANCE
    On 21 March 1944, Miss Virginia Hall, an American civilian serving in the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), entered German-occupied France to help organize the French resistance. Through perilous undercover activities, Hall played a significant role in the Allied victory in France.

    Born in Baltimore in 1906, Hall was college-educated in the U.S. and Europe and dreamed of a career in foreign service. She served with the State Department as a consular clerk in Poland, Turkey, Italy, and Estonia. An accidental gunshot wound while on a hunting trip required amputation of her left leg. Thereafter, she wore a wooden leg, hence her nickname “The Limping Lady.” The disability derailed her diplomatic career; she resigned from the State Department in 1939.

    After France declared war on Germany, Hall enlisted as a private in the French ambulance corps. When France surrendered, she ended up in London as a code clerk in the U.S. Defense Attaché Office. Bored with the desk job, she joined the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in April 1941. During her first mission in occupied France, Hall posed as a reporter for fifteen months while secretly organizing, funding, supplying, and arming the French resistance. She sent regular radio messages to London about German activities, organized acts of sabotage against German forces, and helped rescue political and military prisoners. German intelligence considered Hall “one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France” and increased their efforts to capture her. To ensure her safety, the SOE recalled Hall to London in mid-1943.

    On 21 March 1944, Hall arrived back in France via boat (not via parachute with her wooden leg under her arm, as many accounts state). This time she was employed by the OSS, forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Known as Diane (one of her many code names), she embarked on her mission to inform London about the strength and movement of the Germans in France as the Allies prepared for Operation OVERLORD. Hall organized three French combat battalions to harass the Germans and, working again with the French resistance, organized sabotage teams to destroy German ammunition dumps, railroads, bridges, highways, and telephone lines.

    In September 1945, Maj. Gen. William Donovan, head of the OSS, awarded Hall the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC). She was the only female civilian to receive the DSC during the war. She later worked for the CIA until her mandatory retirement at age sixty in 1966. Virginia Hall died on 14 July 1982.

    Virginia Hall received many accolades for her wartime activities. She was inducted into the MI Hall of Fame in 1988. In 2006, the British ambassador presented Hall’s niece with a Royal Warrant, signed by King George VI in 1943, making Virginia Hall a member in the Order of the British Empire. Hall had refused to accept it in 1943 because it might have blown her cover. Additionally, on 21 March 2018, Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the collective members of the OSS in recognition of their superior service and major contributions during World War II. Hall’s exploits were specifically mentioned in the award citation.


    New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 03.19.2024
    Date Posted: 03.19.2024 10:11
    Story ID: 466516
    Location: US
    Web Views: 0
    Downloads: 0

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    TAGS

    World War II
    This Week in MI History
    Virginia Hall
    Office of Strategic Security
    Special Operations Executive
    MG William Donovan

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