Virginia Hall: the Invisible Spy

by Linda Harris Sittig

Some humans are flashy and command attention.

Other humans exude confidence and attract attention.

And some humans pass by primarily unnoticed, almost like they were invisible.

When you decide to become a spy in WWII, willing to join the French Resistance, you want to be in the third category.

And Virginia Hall became an expert in being invisible, even though she had a wooden leg. The appendage placed her in the ‘disabled persons’ category, and no enemy expects a disabled person to be a master spy.

Here is her extraordinary story.

Born in 1906 to a well-to-do family in Baltimore, Maryland, she was the adventurous type even at a young age. She excelled in school and learned to speak multiple languages. In 1931 Virginia decided to further her studies in Europe and, while on a bird hunting expedition, sustained an accidental gunshot wound to her left foot. Gangrene set in, and the leg had to be amputated from the knee down.

An artificial leg might have stopped certain people from pursuing an active life, but not Virginia.

In 1933 she procured a job as a consular clerk at the American Embassy in Poland.  She excelled in the position and applied to become a diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service.

She was denied, time and time again, because very few women were admitted to the Foreign Service in the 1930s, and she was considered disabled. She wrote to President Roosevelt, a disabled person, to plead her case, but her letters remained unanswered.

She quit the Department of State in 1939, still a consular clerk.

Denied the job of her dreams because of her prosthetic leg, she then applied to the newly created British Special Operations Executive, and they trained her extensively in various resistance operational techniques. In 1941 Virginia received orders from the SOE to infiltrate Vichy France posing as an American journalist working for the New York Post. She based her operations in Lyon, volunteered to drive ambulances for the French Army by day, and helped develop a complex of spy networks by night.

Adept with multiple languages, Virginia enlisted the help of Germaine Guérin, a woman who ran a successful brothel, whose clients tallied among high-ranking Nazi officers.

Germaine then passed on military secrets to Virginia that her ‘girls’ had learned from their clients.

Virginia quickly learned the advantage of appearing ‘invisible,’ and she discarded any of her fashionable clothes in exchange for non-descript garments. She often changed outfits multiple times in a day, depending on what her activities would entail.

She continued courageous and often outrageous maneuvers against the German Army, who referred to her as the limping lady.

Not one to claim the spotlight, Virginia helped choreograph the escape of numerous Allied airmen who had crashed in France. She arranged for their trek over the Pyrenees Mountains into neutral Spain and then on to England.

But perhaps her most daring exploit was when she coordinated the escape of 12 French Resistance agents held in the notorious Mauzac Prison. Enlisting the aid of a visiting wife, Virginia succeeded in having sardines in a tin brought to one of the prisoners. He then fashioned a key from the can, which allowed him to escape with the other 11 men.

In November of 1942, Virginia learned through intelligence sources that the Nazis were planning to invade Vichy France in Lyon, and she realized the perils she would face.

Without telling her plans to anyone, she enlisted a guide to help her walk the 7,500-foot pass in the Pyrenees to Spain. Together they covered almost 50 miles in two days. And remember, Virginia walked with a wooden leg.

Arrested in Spain and then freed by the American Embassy, she continued her SOE work in Madrid before leaving for England in 1943. By then, the SOE feared that her identity had been compromised and adamantly refused to put her back in France.

Once again, Virginia applied elsewhere. This time to the American Office of Strategic Services, better known as the OSS.

She was hired, helped to change her appearance and identity, and sent back to France to help train new resistance groups called Maquis who would support the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. That would be D-Day.

After WWII ended, Virginia traveled back to Lyon, where she learned that her friend, Germaine Géurin, had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp but had survived.

Most of her other friends and contacts were not so lucky.

In 1945 General William Joseph Donovan of the OSS personally awarded Virginia with a Distinguished Service Cross to recognize her efforts in France; the only civilian woman to receive this award in World WWII.

In 1947 Virginia decided to stay in the United States and promptly applied to join the Central Intelligence Agency. She became one of the first women to be hired by the CIA, and several of her intelligence maneuvers are still taught in modern-day classes.

She eventually retired with her husband, Paul Goillot, to Barnesville, Maryland. Virginia died at the age of 76 and is buried in Pikesville, Maryland.

Invisible? Hardly. A strong, viable woman indeed.

Thank you to blog follower Jim Race for sending me the idea for Virginia’s story.

If you enjoyed Virginia’s story and would like to read about more Strong Women, please sign up on the right sidebar to become a follower of Strong Women.

And if you would like to know about the books I have written, Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, Counting Crows and B-52 DOWN! please call your local bookstore and ask for a copy or go online. Amazon carries my books in both print and Kindle.

While I work on my newest book, featuring an unforgettable Strong Woman, I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and blessed Holiday Season.

~ Linda