By Southwester Staff

The International Spy Museum, located at 700 L’Enfant Plaza SW, launched a new exhibit to tell the story of Virginia Hall, who left Baltimore to join the French Army as an ambulance driver during World War II. Over the course of the war, she led reconnaissance, sabotage, and espionage efforts, despite having lost a leg in a hunting accident, which left her with a wooden leg she called “Cuthbert.”

Hall escaped the Nazis by hiking over the Pyrenees Mountains on her wooden leg. When she arrived in Spain, she was advised by the British that it was too dangerous for her to return, but she insisted on re-entering Nazi-occupied France in 1944, this time working with the American OSS. 

Disguised as a French milkmaid, Hall watched German troops and evaluated potential landing sites before the D-Day invasion. She radioed intelligence reports, coordinated parachute drops of supplies, oversaw sabotage missions, and planned ambushes of German soldiers. At one point, she was so dedicated to her cover that she filed down her teeth to play the role.  

The Spy Museum has artifacts from Hall’s life on view now, including her French Army uniform, her ID bracelet and the reproduction of a postcard she sent home two days after Hitler invaded Poland, where she wrote “And so the catastrophe has come… I am staying.” 

Also on view is a reproduction of a painting by artist Jeff Bass, named “Les Marguerites Fleuriront Ce Soir (The Daisies will Bloom Tonight),” after one of Hall’s personal radio codes. The painting is interactive, to increase accessibility to visitors who are blind or have low vision loss, and contains numerous sensors and audio recordings that tell the story of Virginia Hall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.