Virginia Hall

The life of a one-legged spy orchestrating a jail break in Vichy France sounds like something out of an Ian Fleming novel. But Virginia Hall, and her wooden prosthetic she named Cuthbert, lived it.

Hall, born in Baltimore in 1906, took a job as an ambulance driver in Paris just before the Nazi occupation after a hunting accident cost her a leg. A friend in British intelligence recruited her for the Special Operations Executive, where she worked as a spymaster for the Allies.

Posing as a New York Post correspondent, Hall built a wide spy network and masterminded a jailbreak of Allied spies from the Mauzac prison in 1942, a gambit that earned her the honor of becoming the Gestapo’s most wanted person. After Nazi agent Robert Alesch compromised her network, she fled to Spain, crossing the Pyrenees mountains on foot, with Cuthbert’s help.

“Initially it was thought the Germans wouldn’t suspect someone with a wooden leg — her disability aided her cover,” Sonia Purnell, author of the Hall biography “A Woman of No Importance,” told The Hill. 

On the other hand, Purnell said, her disability made her easily identifiable and “she couldn’t run … it’s not great for a secret agent not to be able to run.”

British intelligence refused to send her back into the field. But once the United States joined the war, Hall found a home in the Office of Strategic Services. 

Hall was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for her wartime work. She worked CIA desk jobs for the remainder of her career and died in 1982.

— Zack Budryk