Meet Virginia Hall

Virginia Hall might be the most badass lady you've never heard of. This episode covers her story as it was told in The Wolves at the Door by Judith Pearson. Hall grew up hunting and farming in the Maryland countryside but dreamed of working in the foreign service. In her 20s, while on a hunting trip with friends, she suffered the loss of her lower leg when her gun went off and fired into her foot at point blank range. She survived and walked with a prosthetic leg, which she named Cuthbert, for the rest of her life. She went on to serve in the war effort in France as an stick shift ambulance driver, driving wounded soldiers in from the battlefields. After that, she decided to link up with the Britain's Special Operations Executive to learn all about espionage -- James Bond style. She served in France for 13 months and eventually became known to the Germans as the "limping lady." Her cover almost blown, she narrowly escaped France and certain death at the hands of Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, by walking over the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. After a cooling off period in England where she learned to operate a radio, she returned to France to help orchestrate guerrilla warfare tactics and covert operations to sabotage train tracks and other vital supply lines for the Germans in advance of D-Day. She was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the only one given to a civilian woman in WWII. She was named an honorary member of the Order of the British Empire and given the Croix de Guerre in France.