n early September 1941, a young American woman arrived in Vichy France on a clandestine and perilous mission. She had been tasked with organizing local resistance networks against France’s German occupiers and communicating intelligence to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the fledgling British secret service that had recruited her. In reality, however, Virginia Hall’s supervisors were not particularly hopeful about her prospects; they didn’t expect her to survive more than a few days in a region teeming with Gestapo agents.
At the time, Hall admittedly made for an unlikely spy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s war cabinet had forbidden women from the frontlines, and some within the SOE questioned whether Hall was fit to be operating in the midst of a resistance operation. It wasn’t just her gender that was an issue: Hall was also an amputee, having lost her left leg several years earlier following a hunting accident. She relied on a prosthetic, which she dubbed “Cuthbert,” and walked with a limp, making her dangerously conspicuous. Indeed, Hall quickly became known as the “Limping Lady” of Lyon, the French city where she set up base.
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