after the Allied Forces landed at Normandy. She helped to train three battalions of Resistance forces to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans, interfering with efforts to move troops north to reinforce the Normandy defenses. She kept up a stream of valuable reporting until Allied troops occupied the area in September; by these efforts, the Haute-Loirewas the second Department of France to be liberated, after Normandy, and the first to be cleared entirely by French forces.
For her efforts in France, General William Joseph Donovan personally awarded her a Distinguished Service Cross in September 1945 in recognition of her efforts in France, the only one awarded to a civilian woman in World War II. President Truman wanted a public award of the medal, but Hall demurred, stating that she was “still operational and most anxious to get busy.” She was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), and was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palme by France.
Hall married former OSS agent Paul Goillot in 1950, and joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951, working as an intelligence analyst on French parliamentary affairs. She worked alongside her husband as part of the Special Activities Division.
In 1966, at the age of 60, she accepted mandatory retirement and moved to a farm in Barnesville, Maryland. Hall died Rockville, Maryland 8 July 1982. She is buried in the Druid Ridge Cemetery, Pikesville, Maryland.
The French and British ambassadors in Washington honored her again in 2006, on the 100th anniversary of her birth. In 2016, a CIA field agent training facility was named the Virginia Hall Expeditionary Center. A display is dedicated to her at the CIA’s top-secret museum in Langley, Virginia.
On 21 March 2018, Congress awarded the OSS the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor. Inscribed on the coin is “Cuthbert,” which pays homage to “the limping lady,” the most decorated female civilian of World War II. The OSS Society, which helped bring the medal to fruition, exists to preserve the memory of their historic accomplishments.
She was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019.
Her story has been told in several books, including:
L’Espionne. Virginia Hall, une Américaine dans la guerre, by Vincent Nouzille (2007) Fayard (Paris), a French biography reviewed by British historian M.R.D. Foot in “Studies in Intelligence”, Vol 53, N 1.
Hall of Mirrors: Virginia Hall: America’s Greatest Spy of WWII, by Craig Gralley (2019) Chrysalis Books, ISBN 978-1-733541-50-3.
The Lady Is a Spy: Virginia Hall, World War II Hero of the French Resistance, by Don Mitchell (2019) Scholastic, ISBN 978-0-545936-12-5, a non-fiction book for ages 12–18.
The Spy with the Wooden Leg: The Story of Virginia Hall, by Nancy Polette (2012) Elva Resa Publishing, ISBN 978-1-934617-15-1, a non-fiction book for ages 10 and older.
The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy, by Judith L. Pearson (2005) The Lyons Press, ISBN 1-59228-762-X.
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, Virginia Hall, by Sonia Purnell (2019) Hachette UK.
Liberté: A Call to Spy is the first feature film about Virginia Hall. It had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2019, commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Hall is portrayed by Equity’s Sarah Megan Thomas, and the film is directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher.
The film A Woman of No Importance was announced in 2017, based on the book by Sonia Purnell and starring Daisy Ridley as Hall. It is currently in development and has yet to move into production.
Sources: [Marcus Binney, The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War, London, Hodder & Stoughton and others]
