One of the most legendary spies of World War II retired quietly from the CIA in 1966 to live in Barnesville until her death in 1982. Virginia Hall Goillet was born in 1906 to the wealthy Hall family in Parkton, Md, near Baltimore. She was an independent young woman who loved the outdoors. She described herself as cantankerous, wore live snakes to school as bracelets, and was elected class president. At 19 she broke her engagement to an unfaithful fiancé. Hall briefly attended Radcliffe and Barnard colleges. Like many daughters of wealth at the time, she left for the European “Continent.”
She studied in Paris at the Sorbonne and fell in love with France. In the 1920s she traveled widely through Europe and studied French, German, and Italian while preparing for her chosen career in the diplomatic corps.
She returned home to grad school at George Washington University just before the stock market crash of 1929 which affected her family’s circumstances.
She applied several times to the state department but met with resistance despite high marks on her entry tests. Women were rarely considered for the kind diplomatic service she sought. The first female US Ambassador was not posted until 1949.
Hall did find a clerical position in 1931 at the U.S. Consulate in Warsaw and then in Turkey. In 1933, she organized a hunting outing while in Turkey, but she failed to put the safety on her shotgun which discharged while she was climbing a wire fence and gravely injured her foot. Antibiotics would not be widely available until the late 1940s and she struggled with gangrene and sepsis before her left leg was amputated below the knee to save her life. She was 27 years old. Hall was given a rather primitive 8-pound wood and aluminum prothesis which she christened “Cuthbert.”
After losing her leg, she returned to work as a consular clerk in Venice and then in Tallinn, Estonia. She still wanted to become a diplomat with the United States Foreign Service.
In March 1939, still a consular clerk, she was rejected again, this time because of her disability. She resigned from the Department of State. Six months later, after Hitler invaded Poland, Hall volunteered to drive ambulances in France near the Maginot Line. After the Germans overran France, a chance encounter as she escaped to England put her in touch with the head of the “Special Operations Executive” (SOE), the newly formed British Secret Service.
Hall intended to continue home to Baltimore but could not secure a ticket. Instead, she accepted an offer from the SOE to be the second female agent sent into Vichy France to build ‘up a Resistance network from scratch in a foreign land behind enemy lines.’ Hall quickly contacted a friend at the New York Post and offered her services as a reporter, her cover, and was soon sending her dispatches to New York through the US diplomatic pouch. No one in London gave Agent 3844 more than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving even the first few days.
With little instruction, Hall went on to build one of the most successful spy networks in Europe. She was a master of disguise, sometimes changing character several times a day. She was known as “Marie Monin,” “Germaine,” “Diane,” “Camille,” and even “Nicolas,” one superior called her “Doodles,” but she was “Dindy” to her close friends.
Hall was very inventive and resourceful. She originated spycraft that is still used today. She recruited women in bakeries, brothels, and shops to gather information. She was so successful that in 1942 the head of the Nazi Gestapo, Klaus Barbie, the “Lyon’s Butcher,” distributed wanted posters of “the limping lady” featuring her face. She was considered the most dangerous of all Allied spies. In November 1942 she escaped from Lyon, and with a guide, walked over a snow-covered 7,500-foot Winter pass in the Pyrenees to Spain. She covered 50 miles over two days with an 8-pound prosthetic leg. When she reported that “Cuthbert” might cause problems on her journey, she received orders to “eliminate” him if necessary.
But she wasn’t done. Despite the Nazis looking for her, Hall returned to France – this time working for her own country’s Office of Strategic Services (later the CIA). She drastically altered her appearance. She once posed for several months as an elderly French housekeeper, altering her teeth, and using her hobby of making cheese as part of her cover.
Hall’s first OSS mission was to scout safe houses for other agents, and eventually she was recruiting guerrilla groups for sabotage. Her Resistance network was known for saving thousands of Jewish lives during the war. She planned and led sabotage missions against the Germans that helped the Allied effort after D-Day.
Hall had managed to survive nearly three years operating behind enemy lines by being extremely low key and discreet. She had an uncanny sense of danger and narrowly avoided capture many times.
After the war, she received awards from the British, French and US governments — but she shied away from public ceremony. She didn’t want to be recognized.
In 1947, Hall was hired as a field representative for the newly formed Central Intelligence Group (later, the CIA), and she traveled to Italy, Switzerland and France collecting intelligence on postwar Europe, particularly about growing Communist movements.
Returning to the US, she continued working for the CIA, but like many of her fellow female operatives, she found herself blocked from the clandestine groundwork that she craved. The desk set did not appreciate her qualities, but she continued her career until mandatory retirement in 1966.
Hall and her husband, Lieut. Paul Goillot, a former OSS colleague, lived in Barnesville, gardening daffodils. Virginia died in 1982 and Paul in 1987. They are both buried in the Hall family plot in the Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, MD.
Years later, Virginia finally received the recognition she deserved within the CIA. In 1988, her name was posthumously added to the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame. In 2016, the new Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center building at the CIA was named in her honor.
If you would like to read an in-depth history of this extraordinary woman, we recommend A Woman of No Importance, The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, by Sonia Purnell. This book was also made into a movie.