Meet Virginia Hall, Famous WWII Spy With a Prosthetic Leg

Less than a year after her amputation, Virginia Hall moved to Venice, Italy, and solved the problem of traveling across the city’s many footbridges by purchasing her own gondola. A local gondolier helped teach her how to row. Virginia Hall Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo

The cruel Pyrenees Mountains stared down at Virginia Hall in November 1942. As a spy for Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), Hall had risked her life gathering information and establishing safe houses for downed Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots. Though this brave American woman had operated for over a year out of the French city of Lyon, much longer than most spies, now her cover was blown. Losing her left leg in a hunting accident years earlier made the normally treacherous trek from France into Spain even more difficult for Hall. Her hip ached, what was left of her leg bled, and her prosthetic leg—which she called Cuthbert—was falling apart.

“Cuthbert is being tiresome, but I can cope,” she radioed London during her climb.

“If Cuthbert is tiresome, have him eliminated,” they advised.

Though at times it seemed impossible to keep going, Hall knew the suffering on the mountain in front of her was nothing compared to what she would face from the Gestapo if she had remained. Finally, Hall and the men traveling with her reached the top of the pass. Her salvation was within reach, but just as with the ongoing war, the path ahead was still long and daunting.

The Making of a Secret Agent

Even though few women served as spies in World War II, Hall was a perfect fit. She had attended college in France, spoke five languages, and had worked for American embassies throughout Europe before the war. She served as an ambulance driver in France after the Germans attacked. As she was leaving the country, Hall met George Bellows, who recruited her for Britain’s SOE. SOE was created with the hope that its agents would not only be able to pass along useful information, but also encourage the resistance in France and eventually commit acts of sabotage. In Winston Churchill’s words, the job of SOE was to “set Europe ablaze.”

Virginia Hall operated a 111 MKII Radio in 1944 to send intelligence reports in Morse code to the Office of Strategic Services. To generate electricity, the radio was attached to a car battery that was charged by pedaling an upturned bicycle frame. “The Daisies Will Bloom at Night” by Jeffrey W. Bass, 2006. Oil painting. Public domain

Hall soon joined SOE, with her cover being that she was a reporter for the New York Post. Not long after arriving in France in September 1941, Hall determined that the city of Lyon was perfect for her mission and quickly set up her circuit, code-named Heckler. She passed on vital information and established safe houses for the RAF pilots. One of her more daring exploits was engineering the mass escape of 12 of SOE’s most valuable agents, not long after her arrival.

Saving Nazi-Held Prisoners

Twelve SOE agents, feeling lonely, had responded to an invitation from one of SOE’s wireless officers to meet up on October 24. This gathering was a massive breach of security, and it had disastrous results. All the agents were arrested and imprisoned. For six months, the agents suffered in Périgueux, an impenetrable prison in southwest France. Gaby Bloch, the wife of one of the agents, approached Hall and asked her to help get the men out. Hall knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she agreed.

First, Hall appealed to American ambassador Admiral William D. Leahy. Leahy’s effort didn’t free the men, but it did result in their transfer to the Mauzac internment camp. Here, Bloch could ensure the men received adequate nourishment to regain their strength, and though the barbed wire fences and watchtowers posed problems, they would be easier to overcome.

For her bravery and ingenuity, Hall was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross from Gen. William J. Donovan, September 1945. Public domain

Hall instructed Bloch to recruit guards to carry messages for them. Hall and Bloch smuggled in items so the men could craft a key to their door. Most impressively, Hall and her friends hid a radio in the wheelchair of a double-amputee priest who visited the men in prison. To the men’s astonishment (and the astonishment of London as well), the men could now communicate freely with the outside world. They even passed along information they heard from a guard about the location of a munitions factory, resulting in its bombing a few nights later.

Meanwhile, Hall planned the men’s escape route, which would take them over the Pyrenees and into Spain. When the night finally came, the men opened the door with their key and dashed one by one to the spot in the fence they had cut with wire cutters. Through their daily exercise, they had previously timed their sprints to the fence, and they now executed them precisely. All the men made it out, and soon they were across the mountains and back in London to an SOE command who was amazed at what their American agent had accomplished.

A May 12, 1945, memorandum to the president from Gen. Donovan regarding the Distinguished Service Cross awarded to Hall. Public domain

Working for the Americans

Hall continued her work for months, but in November, the Nazis were closing in. Many of her friends had been arrested, and the Germans would soon take over the Free Zone, occupying all of France. It was then that she made it into Spain and eventually back to London. SOE refused to deploy her back to France because she was too well known and hunted by the Gestapo.

Instead, Hall trained as a wireless operator and convinced the newly formed American counterpart to the SOE, the Office of Strategic Services, to deploy her. In March 1944, Hall returned to France. Before the end of the war, she would pass along vital information and outfit countless resistance groups, eventually commanding one herself and directing many acts of sabotage. After the war, Hall moved back to America and worked for the CIA before retiring in 1966. Throughout her career as a secret agent, she was pursued by the enemy at every turn. But in the end, they never managed to capture—as the Germans referred to her—the Limping Lady of Lyon.