Deccers

In 1932, the US Diplomatic Service didn’t want Woman of the Day Virginia Hall as a diplomat, despite her proficiency in five languages. It assigned her to clerical duties instead. Well, only six out of 1500 diplomats were women and that was probably six too many. When she reapplied in 1937, it found a cast-iron reason: no amputees. Its loss was the Special Operations Executive’s gain. In August 1941, Virginia, born OTD in 1906 in Baltimore, became the first female SOE agent to establish operations in Vichy France. She posed as a New York Post reporter, and didn’t let Cuthbert — her wooden leg, legacy of a hunting accident — hold her back. In fact, when she fled over the Pyrenees in November 1942 after successfully masterminding the escape of twelve SOE agents from Mauzac prison and personally putting Hitler’s nose out of joint, she radioed from a safe house to SOE HQ: “Cuthbert is being tiresome, but I can cope”. London misunderstood and responded, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him." I could tell you of Virginia’s service as a French Army ambulance driver after the Germans invaded in May 1940, or the way she built up the "Heckler" network in Lyon, recruiting and organising French Resistance agents, setting up safe houses, and aiding escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied airmen. I could also tell you how she gathered intelligence on German activities — including info gleaned by brothels frequented by German troops — and put it to good use by organising the sabotage of railways and trains, bridges and roads, telephone and telegraph lines; and pinpointing ammunition dumps, fuel depots — even a German submarine base in Marseilles that was later bombed by Allies. But you don’t want to hear about all that, do you? You want to hear about the prison escape. Mauzac-et-Grand-Castang internment camp was a Vichy French military prison repurposed from an unfinished gunpowder factory barracks in the Dordogne, used to suppress opposition and the French Resistance. In July 1942, it held 592 detainees: political prisoners, Resistance, foreigners, Jews…and twelve SOE agents. Virginia decided to spring them. “If they cannot come out officially, they will come out unofficially.” She couldn’t go anywhere near the camp herself — the “Limping Lady” was too well-known because her face was plastered all over Wanted/Reward posters everywhere — but she was a born organiser. She sent Gaby Bloch to visit her incarcerated SOE agent husband and smuggle in tins of sardines with tools concealed inside so that another SOE agent could make a pass key. She persuaded a sympathetic priest to smuggle in a wireless transmitter. She set up a support team, safe houses, vehicles, helpers, and even two French police uniforms for the operation. Virginia coordinated plans and the timing with the prisoners via smuggled notes: they were to stuff rags and blankets to make their beds look occupied, and unlock the barracks door and hang a painted sackcloth over it to make it look like a locked door. On the afternoon of 15 July 1942, she signalled Go by arranging for an old lady to walk past as the all-clear signal (an old man would have meant cancellation). During the hours of darkness, the guard in Watchtower No. 7 was distracted (or bribed. The jury’s still out) and twelve SOE agents using an old carpet for protection crawled under the perimeter barbed wire, and escaped into the surrounding woods in just 12 minutes. They rendezvoused with Virginia in Lyon and she got them back to London via Spain. Hitler was furious and sent 500 Gestapo and Abwehr agents into Vichy France to hunt down the the escapees, dismantle SOE networks, and intimidate local authorities. Virginia was named by the Gestapo as "the enemy’s most dangerous spy". France was too hot for her to stay where she was and that’s when she undertook a gruelling trek with “tiresome” Cuthbert over the Pyrenees to Spain before arriving back in London. Her wartime work is generally reckoned to have helped to shorten the war by disrupting Nazi operations with the impact of multiple divisions. So was that the end of her wartime career in France? Not at all. Virginia went back in 1944, ahead of D-Day, and operated in the Haute-Loire region for the Office of Strategic Service (now the CIA) by disguising herself as an elderly peasant — but that’s another story for another day. Her lifelong devotion to secrecy is one of the quotes displayed at the CIA: “Many of my friends were killed for talking too much.” Virginia Hall is the only woman civilian in WW2 to have been awarded the US Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism. She turned down a public ceremony so as not to blow her operational cover, and her reaction to her award was typical of her dry humour. “Not bad for a girl from Baltimore.”