Virginia Hall

Virginia Hall (1906-1982) was an American spy who worked for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during and after World War II.

She lost her left leg below the knee in a hunting accident when she was 27, after only being a clerk at the US embassy’s in Warsaw and Smyrna, Turkey. She had tried to get better jobs before her accident, but it was even harder after because she was now a disabled woman. However, after she unknowingly made friends with an undercover SOE agent, she was able to get a job as an agent there herself, and became the SOE's first female special force operator. She worked with the SOE for a few years before she was later recruited by the OSS, due to her spy experience.

Here are some of Virginia's memorable achievements and strategies that prevented her from getting caught by the Nazis:

Virginia went by many different identities during her time in the SOE in order to not get caught by the Nazis, and her work was incredible. When her alias was a reporter, she would embed coded messages into her news reports for her SOE bosses to find and decipher.
She set up a Resistance network, and created and safe house locations for Allied soldiers, spies, or anyone wanted by the Nazis. She established an "underground railroad" to help Allies in need escape to Britain!
She left secret messages using geraniums as indicators for sheduled supply pickups, hiding something behind a loose brick in a wall, or leaving a note in a cafe for a coworker to find. If any of these failed or something went wrong, Virginia always had possible escape routes planned out, and was ready to change her identity at a moment's notice.
Disguised as an old woman working as a milkmaid in France, Virginia scanned for possible Allied drop zones, watched closely for movement from Nazi troops, and looked for battle preparations around her while shepherding sheep in the fields. This was all in order to disrupt the fighting abilities of the Nazis, so they wouldn't be able to fight the Allies.
She would tap out messages to the OSS and Allies at night in the fields, only using a radio powered by an old car generator!
In her last OSS report in 1944, she said that her team had destroyed bridges, derailed German supply freight trains, severed an important rail line, took down telephone lines, killed over 150 Nazi soldiers, and captured another 500. All of this was done to make Germany's time in the war difficult, and it worked! The war ended about a year later in 1945, as the Allies were able to move through France easily with her help.