Скачать или смотреть An American World War II Spy Embedded in Lyon, France

Virginia Hall followed an unprecedented path that evaded public recognition of its importance until decades following her death. She was born in Baltimore on April 6, 1906 and attended preparatory school before graduating from Radcliffe College and George Washington University studying French and Economics.

In Turkey during 1933, her leg was amputated below the knee following a hunting accident and replaced with a wooden appendage. As Europe became engulfed in World War II, she traveled to France to become an ambulance driver. Following their defeat in June 1940, she relocated to Spain where she became acquainted with a British intelligence officer named George Bellows. She volunteered for a newly established British program and became an embedded spy within Lyon. Hall became one of 41 female agents sent into occupied France, an extremely dangerous cauldron. Only 26 women would survive the war

Her precarious duties as an agent in Lyon were to transmit vital information to British intelligence in London via wireless sets. She made logistical arrangements for other agents and escape itineraries for British airmen shot down over France. She even engineered an escape from the Mauzac Prison near Bergerac. Her work and growing notoriety with the German high command elevated her onto their most wanted list and earned her the moniker of the limping lady.

One of her most astonishing feats became her instinctive ability at evading capture. She remained ultra cautious with whom she confided with. Several of her purported contacts betrayed her colleagues. Her knack for avoiding dangerous meetings and questionable individuals spared her capture and certain execution.

She recruited two Lyon based French accomplices while hiding out in a local convent. Dr. Jean Rousset was a prominent gynecologist with a practice located adjacent to the banks of the Rhone River near the Place Bellecour. Germaine Guerin operated a Lyon brothel that serviced German military officers. Her sex workers passed on gossip and information overheard from their clients. Guerin provided Hall with several safe houses for allied agents. Both Rousset and Guerin would be later arrested and sent to concentration camps. Both would survive the ordeal.

On November 1942, she fled Lyon without telling anyone and boarded a train from Lyon to Perpignan. With a guide, she made a treacherous 7,500-foot passage over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. The Spanish authorities arrested her for illegally crossing the border. The government, then favorable towards German interests, had no idea as to her identity or significance. The American Embassy was able to secure her release.

The Allied invasion of southern France on August 15, 1944 shifted her assignment and locale. She would return to France posing as a milkmaid, but tactically worked as a wireless operator, establishing safe houses, drop zones and orchestrating small-scale military attacks. Despite the reticence of French Resistance forces and leaders over a female officer, her three battalions were able to conduct several successful sabotage operations and liberate the departments of the Haute Loire and LePuy. She downplayed any recognition for her wartime heroics and avoided writing memoirs detailing her experiences. A series of literary biographies and film portrayals emerged following the Millennium illuminating her exploits to a wider and more appreciative audience.