“Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.”                                         Lou Holtz

1942 – Lyon, France: Klaus Barbie, the infamous chief of the Nazi Gestapo, first learned of the existence of the female spy from members of the French resistance he tortured. Code named Artemis, she quickly rose to the top of the Gestapo’s most wanted list in Nazi-occupied France.

Determined to hunt her down, Klaus put up wanted posters across France and assigned Gestapo patrols to look for her. He sent an order to all Gestapo agents: “The woman who walks with a limp is the most dangerous agent for the Allies in France. We must find and destroy her.”

Virginia Hall was born into an affluent family in Baltimore, Maryland. She grew up loving the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and horseback riding. From early on, she had a passion for languages and a lifelong interest in diplomatic service. After graduating high school, she attended Radcliffe College and then Bernard College, where she studied French, Italian, and German.

Wanting to complete her university work in Europe, Virginia studied in France, Germany, and Austria before landing an appointment as a consular service clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland. She spent seven years as a consular clerk at embassies, including assignments in Italy and Turkey.

While working in Turkey, Virginia went on a snipe hunting trip with three workmates. While climbing over a fence, her shotgun went off, discharging into her left foot. The doctor who treated her was forced to amputate her leg below the knee. After returning to Baltimore for rehab, Virginia was fitted with a prosthetic and learned to walk again. The wooden leg and brass foot weighed 7 pounds. She named the clumsy contraption Cuthbert.

By the fall of 1934, 28-year-old Virginia was ready to return to work. Her application to the U.S. State Department was rejected, citing that all applicants must be ‘able-bodied.’ She had no intention of letting Cuthbert slow her down. After an appeal, Virginia ended up working for the U.S. Foreign Service in Estonia. However, tired of another low-level clerk position and being overlooked, she quit and moved to Paris.

At the start of WWII in September 1939, Virginia volunteered as a military ambulance driver at the front lines. By chance she met a senior officer of the British Special Operations Executive. He recruited her as a special operations agent. After six months of intensive training, Virginia parachuted into occupied France. Her job was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in France.

Initially, Virginia posed as a war correspondent for the New York Post. A tall American woman with flaming red hair and a conspicuous limp, Virginia was a most unlikely spy for a secret paramilitary operation in France. She developed 20 aliases, changed clothes frequently, and relied on wigs and glasses to disguise herself. Still, she could not hide her awkward gait. When the Nazis got close, she dyed her hair gray, shuffled along with a cane, and posed as a milkmaid to conceal her limp.

Virginia and her team established networks, recruited resistance fighters, and developed an underground railroad to facilitate the escape of Allied pilots and get them safely back to England. They destroyed railroad tracks, derailed trains, blew up bridges, downed telephone poles, and disrupted German supply lines.

Virginia did her job so well that she got Klaus Barbie’s attention. Even though there were wanted posters everywhere in France with a reasonably accurate resemblance, Barbie never discovered the identity, name, or nationality of the limping lady he grew to hate.

With utter disregard for her safety and constant risk of capture and torture, Virginia Hall’s heroics contributed to the success of the D-Day invasion in June 1944 and, ultimately, the Allied victory against Germany in WWII. She is the only civilian woman to be awarded the prestigious Distinguished Service Cross during the war.

The CIA Museum in Langley, Virginia, pays tribute to five people: four agency directors and Virginia Hall. Today, 80 years after the war, her espionage methods are still taught in CIA classes, and there is a training facility at Langley that bears her name. Cuthbert, a symbol of Virginia’s courage, resilience, and determination, is on display at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis.