Virginia Hall
Virginia may be the most impressive of women spies. While they all kicked Hitler’s butt, Hall did it with only one real foot—the other was a prosthesis, and a terrible prosthesis given the time.
No stranger to danger, she served as an ambulance driver during the invasion of France, which we’re sure was an incredibly difficult task with the lack of automatic transmissions and even harder still with the clutch.
Before even becoming an agent, she organized the resistance, helped downed pilots, and carried out raids in 1941 under the guise of an American reporter.
The Germans declared the “Limping Lady” one of the most dangerous Allied spies in 1942, and with her very unique limp, she was forced out of France.
The American equivalent of SOE recruited Virginia in 1944 and sent her into France via parachute in 1944, with her prosthesis in her backpack.
From her landing onward, she disguised herself as a farmhand and trained French resistance troops, organized sabotages, and helped with the resistance role in D-Day.
WIKI:
Special Operations Executive Hall made her way to London and volunteered for Britain's newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), which sent her back to Vichy in August 1941.
She spent the next 15 months there, helping to coordinate the activities of the French Underground in Vichy and the occupied zone of France. At the time she had the cover of a correspondent for the New York Post.
When the Germans suddenly seized all of France in November 1942, Hall barely escaped to Spain. Rather whimsically, her artificial foot had its own codename ("Cuthbert"). According to Dr. Dennis Casey of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Agency, the French nicknamed her "la dame qui boite" and the Germans put "the limping lady" on their most wanted list.
Before making her escape, she signalled to SOE that she hoped Cuthbert would not give trouble on the way. The SOE, not understanding the reference, replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him". Journeying back to London (after working for SOE for a time in Madrid), in July 1943 she was quietly made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
Office of Strategic Services French identification certificate for Marcelle Montagne forged by OSS Virginia Hall joined the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Special Operations Branch in March 1944 and asked to return to occupied France.
She hardly needed training in clandestine work behind enemy lines, and OSS promptly granted her request and landed her from a British MTB in Brittany (her artificial leg having kept her from parachuting in) with a forged French identification certificate for Marcelle Montagne. Codenamed "Diane", she eluded the Gestapo and contacted the French Resistance in central France.
She mapped drop zones for supplies and commandos from England, found safe houses, and linked up with a Jedburgh team after the Allied Forces 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 overtook her small band in September.