Meet Virginia Hall - The Limping Lady

[00:00:00]Did you know that in World War II there was an American spy working for British intelligence and infiltrated France, set up an expansive network of safe houses, couriers, gathered massive amounts of intelligence, and blossomed the French resistance to German occupation?

[00:00:17]Who after many months in country was known to the Germans and declared their biggest target, escaped by climbing the Pyrenees Mountains on foot to escape into Spain.

[00:00:28]Did you know that the spy was a woman?

[00:00:31]Her name was Virginia Hall.

[00:00:34]She was not just a woman, which for the 1940s was insanely unlikely to hold such a position of importance and danger, but she was an amputee. She lost a leg in a hunting accident and had a prosthetic.

[00:00:48]She was known to the Germans as the Limping Lady.

[00:00:51]>> [snorts] >> After her escape, she went back to France undercover with the Americans through the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. During this time, she went undercover as an older milkmaid, which disguised her limp. She hid guns and artillery in the barn rafters, put out radio broadcasts across the country, and rallied and informed the French. Her network organized and executed sabotage missions and bombed train tracks. She stayed until liberation and then went on to have a long career with the CIA.

[00:01:22]Virginia was so successful in going undercover and setting up espionage networks that her methods are still used by the CIA as recently as the '90s and 2000s in the Middle East.

[00:01:35]If you want to learn more about this unbelievably courageous and extraordinary woman, read A Woman of No Importance.