What Was the Name of Her Other Leg?
Day 111 of Writing
My fictional end of the cold war era spy, Maggie Cuthbert Hall, is a nod to Virginia Hall, one of the most amazing spies you’ve never heard of. An American born in Baltimore, she became the most highly decorated female civilian during World War II.
I have known about her for years, but she is little known to the general public. Part of the reason she has not been paid enough attention to is that she took being a spy seriously. She did not write a memoir, there is no private diary, and she spoke to neither family or friends about what she had done during the war.
There have been a half dozen books out about her, but hers is a story that screams to be made into a movie. That has not been an easy task. There was a recent indie attempt, but it so far has had very limited distribution. It is titled Liberté: A Call to Spy and premiered in June 2019. Since 2017, J.J. Abrams has had a film project about her in development set to star Daisy Ripley. It is based on the book A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell. That would be awesome, but there does not seem to be any forward movement on it.
At the age of 27, Virginia lost her left leg due to a hunting accident. It was replaced with a wooden leg that she called Cuthbert. This did not deter her from wanting a job in the foreign service. She spoke French, Italian, and German, as well as her native English. She was highly educated. She wanted to be a diplomat, but being a woman, there was little interest in giving her that kind of job. The highest she was able to go at the Department of State was a consular clerk.
Realizing that her ambitions were thwarted because of her gender, she left the State Department. She traveled around Europe, picking up various jobs such as driving an ambulance in France. While in Spain, she met British intelligence officer George Bellows. She made a strong impression, and he introduced her to Nicolas Bodington, with the newly-created Special Operations Executive (SOE).
SOE was created to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe. Virginia was recruited and sent to France. It was a dangerous assignment. There were 41 female agents sent there, and just 26 survived the war.
Virginia was a great organizer. She put together her own network of SOE agents. She knew who to bribe, where to hide, how to secretly move people and goods, where to distribute wireless communications, and how to manage many other important clandestine activities. If a downed British airman could get to the American Consulate in Lyon, all they had to say was that they were a friend of Olivier. They would then be passed on to Hall, who was based there, and she would help get them home.
Most importantly, she was a survivor. She abandoned her chic fashions for plainer clothes, and she used make-up and other elements to change her appearance. She had great instincts that kept her from danger. She was never arrested, despite the giveaway of her limp. She often dressed as an old peasant woman and shuffled to hide her limp.
She refused to work with agents she saw as amateurish or lax in security. When she was suspicious of a major meeting, she chose not to go. Twelve agents who did attend were arrested by French police, leaving Virginia one of the few agents left free and the only one with the means to send communications back to SOE.
After the debacle of having 12 agents arrested, she discovered the prison where they were held and arranged for a radio to be smuggled in. She later organized their daring prison break and escape back to England. Many of these agents returned to France to serve important roles in the war effort.
While the Nazis knew who she was, they were never able to track her down, despite her being on their most wanted list. The “Butcher of Lyon”, Klaus Barbie, reportedly said of her “I would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian bitch.” She was American, Klaus, you ignorant Nazi bastard.
This is just a taste of her story. She lived a life of unimaginable bravery and heroics, while battling non-stop sexism. She is a pivotal but little known figure in the war effort.
She was also involved in sexspionage, which is a real thing. Sexspionage also plays a role in my story, and has a long and interesting history. I will write more about this topic in a future entry.
What’s Up with Us
We ate our first tomato from the garden. This grow light experiment seems to be working.
I wrote earlier about getting mosquito bites on my elbow from a mosquito new to Southern California. My elbow got infected and swollen and extremely painful- so much so that I could barely bend my arm. It is a week in and is better but still painful. Doctor says it may take two weeks to recover. We’ll see if the biologicals we got help us wipe out these nasty foreign imports.
We are living in the most bizarre and horrifying of times. In the midst of ever rising covid infections and the federal government essentially walking away from the problem and leaving it to the states, we also are having massive protests. Yes, they know they are risking their lives, but the marchers feel that the issue of police brutality is too important to do nothing. I do wish they were more self-policing in doing the basics to help stop the spread of infection.
America has many problems to address, but our biggest one right now is our abandonment of science. The political party that is in charge at the federal level has rejected science almost across the board. They reject the science on climate change, evolution, gender identity, sexual orientation, and much more. When science does not align with their political or religious positions, their solution is to throw out the science. That is the recipe for disaster that the president cooked up with covid-19 by ignoring all of his medical experts.
There is a disastrous form of science denial that I think both the left and the right have been involved with, and that is the antivax movement. Their ignorance of science has lead to a resurgence of diseases we thought we were rid of. It could also stand in the way of recovering from covid if a vaccine is developed but not enough people take it to create the necessary herd immunity.
I don’t know that science can save us from racism, other than pointing out that we are all more alike than we are different, and that skin color is determinitive of nothing. Science may be able to save us from covid-19, though, but not enough people are listening. In fact, they are doing the opposite. People who ask that they be given their six feet of distance or tell people they need to wear a mask are sometimes met with hostility and even threats of violence. I have heard many stories about this, and have personally experienced it, even here in more liberal Los Angeles. My wife was threatened with violence for asking someone to give her some space. The hatred and anger from these ignorant individuals is dangerous and frightening.