The Story of Virginia Hall, the Legendary "Limping Lady" from Baltimore

Fearless counterintelligence agent & organizer of resistance networks in Nazi-occupied France, considered by the Gestapo to be "one of the most dangerous of Allied spies" (1906-1982)

Once upon a time, there lived a woman born to a wealthy family in Baltimore, Maryland, whose name was Virginia Hall. As a girl, Virginia loved to hike, hunt, and horseback ride at her family’s farm; and in school, to learn languages and participate in sports, drama, and student government. More than anything, Virginia’s Mom wanted her to “marry well” and become a conventional, high society wife. However, Virginia wanted nothing of the kind. Virginia craved travel, adventure, and independence; and as her mother and those around her would soon learn, these imperatives would not be denied.

As a teen and young woman, Virginia traveled widely. Studying at prestigious schools in the U.S. and Europe, she became fluent in five languages and well versed in the foreign affairs, languages and cultures of many places; particularly, she loved the literary, artistic and music scene, and sense of freedom she experienced in Paris. Virginia dreamed of one day becoming a U.S. ambassador, and set out to realize her dream, even though at the time, for a woman, this sort of dream would not easily be achieved. Of the U.S. State Department’s 1,500 foreign service officers, only six were women, and none ambassadors; and women were prohibited from keeping their foreign service commissions if they married. Nonetheless, Virginia resolved to work towards achieving her dream.

At ages 23 and 24, Virginia took the U.S. Foreign Service Exam but failed it twice. Determined to gain relevant experience before trying again, Virginia obtained a job as a consular clerk for the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in 1931, worked there two years, then transferred to a second consulate in a Turkish city. While hunting in Turkey, Virginia suffered a terrible accident resulting in her left leg’s amputation below the knee, requiring her to use a prosthetic leg she called “Cuthbert.”

After recovering and learning to walk with her prosthesis, Virginia resumed work as a consular clerk in Venice. Living and working in a one-party fascist state under Mussolini, with Hitler now Chancellor in Germany and Stalin ruling the Soviet Union, Virginia found herself surrounded by a rising tide of fascism and extremism. Also, as a woman and, since her accident, an amputee, Virginia faced severe discrimination and was passed over for opportunities and promotions for which she was eminently qualified and capable, and kept at her low-ranking clerical position without any raise in pay. Nonetheless, she had not lost sight of her dream. In 1937, Virginia, with the full support and encouragement of her superiors, asked to retake the foreign service exam but was denied by those who administered it, on the grounds that as an amputee, she was not “able-bodied” and therefore, could not qualify. Her appeals to the Secretary of State and then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt were also denied.

After her unsuccessful appeals, Virginia was ordered to report in June 1938 to the U.S. Consulate in Talinn in the increasingly authoritarian Baltic state of Estonia. Virginia watched, as here too, a nationalist fever took hold: political parties banned; the press censored; and potentially foreign names changed to sound Estonian. In March 1939, Virginia, deciding she had had enough of clerking for the consulate and Estonia, resigned from the State Department.

In September 1939, Germany launched a sudden, terrible attack on Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war in response.

As she watched the Nazis’ fascist regime spread, with their brutal policies against European Jews, Virginia’s anger grew. So did her resolve and determination to do all she could to resist, and fight. At the outbreak of WWII, instead of heading home to the U.S., which continued to remain neutral, Virginia left for London and tried to volunteer for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army. Rejected as a foreigner, Virginia sailed to Paris and volunteered as an ambulance driver in the French Army, serving as one until France’s army and government collapsed.

As the Nazis overran France, Virginia recognized she must flee for her own safety, but resolved that as soon as she was able, she would do all she could to help her beloved France fight to regain its old freedoms, independence, and government. Against all signs and odds, Virginia was convinced the French could and would rise again.

So, Virginia fled to England and began working as a code clerk in the American Embassy. On her way there, a travel companion (who just happened to be an undercover agent) recognized Virginia’s talents, skill, intelligence, creativity, passion and potential, and provided her London contacts to the British intelligence agency later known as the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

In London, Virginia made contact with the SOE, which trained her as a spy! After completing her training, Virginia arrived in the southern half of France in August 1941 under the cover of a French-American New York Post columnist, one of the first spies Britain sent. As a pioneering secret agent, Virginia had to teach herself the "exacting tasks of being available, arranging contacts, recommending who to bribe and where to hide, soothing the jagged nerves of agents on the run and supervising the distribution of wireless sets." Virginia was industrious, fearless, and taught herself well. She wasted no time commencing her counterintelligence duties: recruiting a network of French citizens to the Resistance; rescuing several downed British pilots; and introducing several new SOE operatives into France.

By early 1942, Virginia was leading resistance operations in Marseille and planning and executing the successful escape to England of twelve SOE agents and Resistance fighters arrested and incarcerated by the Vichy French police. Several escapees later returned to France and became leaders of SOE networks. Virginia also coordinated robust efforts in organizing, funding, supplying, and arming the French Resistance; securing safe houses for agents; overseeing SOE parachute drops to supply resistance fighters; and orchestrating sabotage attacks against German supply lines.

As Virginia’s success and tales of her notoriety grew, so did the Nazis’ determination to catch the woman whom members of the French resistance affectionately nicknamed “The Limping Lady” (“La Dame qui Boite”). Employing endless disguises to quickly change her appearance—sometimes four different ones in a single day—and using various code names, Virginia managed to keep her cover and evade capture for almost a year and a half. However, by late 1942, Virginia recognized that the Gestapo was desperate to catch her, elevating her to the top of their “most wanted list” and circulating a sketch of her with the order: “The woman who limps is one of the most dangerous Allied agents in France. We must find and destroy her.”

Just as the Gestapo was closing in, Virginia escaped to Spain on foot across a 7,500 foot pass in the Pyrenees, a harrowing journey of approximately 50 miles over two days in the snow, in great pain from her prosthetic leg. During the journey, she successfully hid both the fact of her prosthesis and her pain from her guide, who would not have led her had he been aware of her condition.

Crossing into Spain, Virginia was arrested and spent twenty days in jail for lack of documentation, before her release as a result of efforts of the American Embassy. She worked for a while for the SOE in Madrid, then returned to London in July 1943, where she asked her SOE superiors to allow her to return to France to continue her work. When they (quite understandably) refused to do so, citing the risk, Virginia took a wireless course, contacted the American Office of Strategic Services (the precursor agency to the Central Intelligence Agency), and persuaded them to hire her and return her to France in March 1944.

In France for her second tour, Virginia renewed her contacts in the Resistance and proceeded to set up sabotage and guerrilla groups and supply each with arms, money, and rations. Still very much wanted and actively hunted by the Gestapo, Virginia, disguised as a peasant woman, herded goats across the countryside as a cover while spying on German troop movements and activities. In the German occupation’s final days, Virginia’s teams destroyed bridges, derailed freight trains returning to Germany, downed key telephone lines, and took more than five hundred prisoners. They reclaimed villages well before Allied troops advanced into France. On the eve of the D-Day invasion, Virginia led several thousand French resistance fighters.

Toward the end of the war, Virginia left for Austria to foment anti-Nazi resistance there with her future husband, Lieutenant Paul Gaston Goillot. The operation was called off when the German forces collapsed, and the pair returned to Paris; in 1957, after living together on and off for years, they married.

After the war, in 1947, Virginia joined the newly-created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), becoming one of its first female employees and serving as an intelligence analyst gathering information about Soviet infiltration of European countries until her resignation the following year. In 1950, Virginia was rehired as a member of the Special Activities Division to head extremely secret paramilitary operations in France, and to model the establishment of resistance groups in several European countries in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union. The CIA acknowledges that while employed there, Virginia was passed over for promotions, honors, and opportunities for which she was qualified, despite support and efforts from superiors who worked with her closely. Nonetheless, her presence as the first female operations officer in the CIA’s entire covert action arm inspired others. In 1966, she retired at the mandatory retirement age of 60.

For her efforts in France, Virginia was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross in 1945, the only one awarded a civilian woman in World War II. Virginia was also made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire and awarded the Croix de Guerre by France. In 1988, Virginia’s name was added to the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame; it has also been used in a CIA field agent training facility and a section of the CIA Museum.

In Fall 2021, the CIA Museum staff commissioned a 3D recreation of one of its Intelligence Art Collection’s most famous paintings depicting Virginia Hall in the early morning hours operating a radio powered by a makeshift generator built from a bicycle frame. The 3D recreation was created to allow the blind or visually impaired to feel the painting by running their fingers over the scene, and thereby also trigger audio recordings to further explain what is depicted in the image.

Virginia never realized her dream of becoming an ambassador. However, in 2006, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, British and French ambassadors gathered in Washington, DC to celebrate and honor Virginia and her indomitable spirit, and to present a certificate signed by King George IV to Virginia’s niece.