The coming of war found Virginia Hall in Paris. She joined the Ambulance Service before the fall of France and ended up in Vichy-controlled territory when fighting stopped in the summer of 1940. Hall made her way to London and volunteered for Britian’s newly formed Special Operations Executive, which sent her back to Vichy in August 1941. She spent the next 15 months working with the underground in Vichy and the occupied zone of France. When the Germans suddenly seized all of France in November 1942, Hall barely escaped to Spain. Journeying back to London (after working for SOE for a time in Madrid), she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire by order of King George VI.

Virginia hall joined OSS’s Special Operations Brance in March 1944 and was sent back to occupied France. She landed in Brittany on a British PT boat (her artificial leg kept her from parachuting in). As “Diane,” she eluded the Gestapo and contacted the Resistance in central France. She mapped drop zones, found safe houses, and linked up with a Jedburgh team after the Allies landed at Normandy. Hall helped train three battalions of Resistance forces to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans and kept up a stream of valuable reporting until Allied troops over took her small band in September.

For her efforts, General Donovan in September 1945 personally awarded her a Distinguished Service Cross-the only awarded to a woman in WWII. She becomes the second woman to be a member of the Legion of Valor. Virginia Hall died in 1982. Her medal and citation is on permanent display at the CIA Exhibit Center, Langley, VA.