If you are here, you know that I read a lot of history books. But the amazing woman who are story focuses on today is someone who I hadn't heard of in any book... I actually heard of her from the classic show, Drunk History. This whole video is full of badass women but Virginia's section starts at 5 minutes, 22 seconds.
Virginia Hall was a woman born to an upwardly mobile Baltimore family. Her mom had all of her hopes pinned on Virginia for a wealthy husband to help the families upward social trajectory. Virginia was like....nah. She wanted to see the world and have experiences so she got jobs at US embassies in Europe and in the Near East (like Turkey. Is the Near East a thing people actually say?) Anyway, she busted her ass for almost no money and no respect but liked being in Europe, A hunting accident (literally shot herself in the foot) and a terrible case of gangrene left her with an amputated leg and fake leg named Cuthbert. (Though she was super guarded about her leg - it makes sense because she was fighting a lot of sexism throughout her life and why would you also add on abelism to that mix).
Through much persistence, some good luck and the desperation that comes in war time she finally was able to get the British to drop her into France to work with The Resistance. Very quickly she made herself indispensable, working to build a network of people who were reliable and trustworthy so when agents were dropped into France they could be the most effective possible. Then the problem became that the agents who dropped into France spent a lot of time chasing women and drinking - it also didn't help that a lot of times that in the rush to get people in the field they didn't get as much training as they should have. And then it doesn't help that her handlers in London did a lot of micromanaging and sending other people with no experience to be her boss even though she was the only reason any of the resistance was having any success.
Her time in France was marked by close calls, amazing jailbreaks, loss, intrigue and everything else that you could think of. This book is amazing and exciting and celebrates a woman who went out of her way to stay out of the spotlight and under the radar. And because of that and, frankly, because she was a woman in a man's world, she never got the respect, title or paycheck that she deserved. So all hail Virginia Hall - a bad bitch who deserves to have at least 100 primary schools, a cool cocktail and several parks in France and Baltimore named after her. Let's make it happen!
