Virginia Hall grew up in a prominent family in Adams County, Pennsylvania, the kind of young woman who was expected to marry well and maintain a gracious household. She had other ideas. She studied at Radcliffe College and then at the University of Freiburg in Germany, where her facility with languages -- she spoke French, German, Italian, and eventually passable Polish -- attracted the attention of the American Foreign Service. She joined as a clerk-typist in 1931 and was posted to Warsaw.
In 1933, while undergoing what was supposed to be routine gum surgery, something went wrong. The anesthetic failed. The pain was excruciating, and the aftermath was worse: an infection set in, and doctors were forced to amputate her left leg below the knee. She was fitted with a wooden prosthetic -- uncomfortable, heavy, and distinctive. She walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of her life.
When war broke out in Europe, Hall was working at the American embassy in Paris. She was too old and too disabled for military service. She was not deterred. She volunteered for the French army's ambulance corps, learned to drive field ambulances under the most demanding conditions, and was eventually recruited by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) as an agent.
In 1941, Hall was dropped into occupied France under the code name Marie Verne. She organized resistance networks, arranged the escape of Allied airmen, coordinated supply drops, and transmitted intelligence to London that proved critical to the D-Day landings. Her wooden leg, which she had named Cuthbert as a private joke, made her unmistakable if seen -- but her ability to pass as a middle-aged French peasant woman, moving freely through the countryside in her flat shoes and shapeless coat, made her nearly invisible.
The Gestapo knew she existed. They called her the limping lady and put a price on her head. In June 1942, she barely escaped a Gestapo raid in Lyon, fleeing on foot through the countryside while the Germans searched for her. She crossed the Pyrenees on foot -- with her prosthetic leg -- and made it to Spain, then Portugal, then back to London. She had been in France for less than a year and had already become a legend.
Within months, she was back. Dropped into the French Alps in November 1942, she organized what became known as the Heckler network, which eventually comprised over 1,500 resistance fighters. Her network helped prepare the ground for the Allied invasion of southern France in August 1944. When the Gestapo came for her again in June 1944, she again escaped -- this time through a network of safe houses run by members of the French Resistance, including a blind woman who guided her through checkpoints by describing the guards' positions.
At the end of the war, Hall was the only American civilian woman awarded the Distinguished Service Cross -- normally reserved for military personnel -- and the only woman among the 39 agents of the SOE awarded the United States' highest military honor. She later joined the CIA and served in Germany, Austria, and Korea during the early Cold War. She died in 1982 in Calais, Maine, at the age of 76.
Cuthbert the wooden leg is on display at the CIA Museum in Langley, Virginia. It is one of the most remarkable objects in American intelligence history.