On This Day in History: March 21

Virginia Hall

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Virginia Hall shot herself in the foot, literally, and lost the bottom half of her left leg. But she later learned caution for a career where the smallest mistake was lethal—being a resistance leader in France during World War II. The Nazis called her “the most dangerous of all Allied spies.” She barely escaped their grasp in 1942, fleeing to Spain by walking 50 miles through the mountains on an artificial leg. Then, with D-Day looming and the French Resistance needing her once again, she went back.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 21, 1944--

Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1906. In 1933, when she was 27, she worked at the American Embassy in Turkey. While bird hunting there, she tripped and Kerblam! She named her new leg “Cuthbert.” She wanted to be a diplomat, but the Department of State said sorry you need two legs for that. President Roosevelt, the guy in the wheelchair, said come on let her. But they said nope and she said fuck you I quit and went to drive an ambulance in France while the Germans were in the process of conquering it.

Having to flee the Blitzkrieg, she met James Bond, or some other British spy, and Hall said fucking hire me and the Brits said spies don’t need two legs so okay. Based in Vichy France—the part the Germans hadn’t yet occupied—she was the first female spy in France for the UK’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). For more than a year she worked to organize resistance movements, supply them with weapons and cash and medical assistance, and help downed Allied airmen escape.

She was uptight about security, and when SOE sent her a supervisor named George Duboudin she said no fuck this guy he sucks and will get us killed. She refused to introduce him to her contacts. She was right, because George’s lack of caution saw him die in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.

In late summer of 1942, she helped a dozen resistance agents break out of prison and the fucking Nazis were pissed and cracked down. She said oh fuck gotta nope outta here, and she and Cuthbert fled across the Pyrenees.

Upon her return to England, Hall was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire and she said that’s nice send me back to France. They said no and she said goddammit but then the precursor to the CIA said hey, and on March 21, 1944, she arrived back in France to fuck some more Nazi shit up. She had to go by boat, because Cuthbert didn’t appreciate jumping out of airplanes.

She played a critical support role for D-Day, and after the war joined the CIA. The world only recently came to learn of her, because Hall didn’t discuss her wartime exploits, explaining, “Many of my friends were killed for talking too much.”

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