The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

by Judith L. Pearson

  Future James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, then a ranking officer in British Naval Intelligence, suggested to Donovan that he seek out men of “absolute discretion, sobriety, devotion to duty, languages, and wide experience,” who were aged somewhere between forty and fifty. Donovan’s preference lay in the opposite direction—180 degrees. He sought out young people who were “calculatingly reckless” with “disciplined daring” and who were “trained for aggressive action.” And he began adding new members to his cast of characters: former thieves, safecrackers, forgers, circus performers, and Communists.

  The OSS’s first mission was to gather intelligence for the invasion of Vichy-controlled North Africa, Operation TORCH. The agency’s future depended on the success of this initial foray into espionage. OSS agents arrived in North Africa to enlist the help of French resisters there. In addition, they were able to coerce assistance from ten thousand Arab tribal leaders for the sum of fifty thousand francs. A false plan was leaked to the Germans, alluding to the fact that the invasion would occur at Dakar in Senegal. Once the invasion fleet was under way and the code phrase, “Robert arrive,” was broadcast on French radio, the Nazis were caught by complete surprise when the Allies landed at Morocco and Algeria, fifteen hundred miles from Dakar.

  As the battles raged after the initial landings, the OSS next involved its newly created Research and Development Department. Word had come from the field that something was needed to stop the seesaw battles and deter the Nazi advances into territory already fought over and won by the Allies. OSS agents found the answer in camel dung: it was everywhere in the desert. They launched the idea of developing explosive camel dung to be scattered by the Americans as they vacated an area. When Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s unsuspecting tanks drove over it, they would be left severely damaged, thereby critically slowing his advance. The invention was a booming success.

  With these achievements under his belt, Donovan silenced the concerns of many of his naysayers. The OSS had proven its merit and was ready to take on the rest of the war.

  Over the course of her first several weeks in the F Section office, Virginia gleaned more information about the OSS. During the summer of 1942, she learned that a forty-four-year-old multimillionaire by the name of David Bruce had been appointed to head the London office of the OSS. The following January, the American and British intelligence organizations struck a working agreement between them, with the Americans insisting that the two be equal worldwide partners, despite the fact that the British had a two-and-a-half-year head start in the field.

  A new idea took seed in Virginia’s mind and began to grow. Since the Americans were still relative novices in undercover work in France, her expertise would be of great value to them. She had almost completed her wireless training, giving her yet one more skill to add to her repertoire. Since the OSS and the SOE were working closely together, transferring to the American organization would be more like changing sections within SOE than changing entire entities. And as far as her being known by the Gestapo, she could avail herself of the many advances that had been made in disguises.

  Once she had fitted all the pieces into place, Virginia approached Buckmaster with the idea. He hated to see her leave his F Section, and he was certainly concerned for her safety. But he had learned during their three-year relationship that once she set her mind to something, very little would deter her. He begrudgingly gave his blessing for her to contact the OSS, and after several meetings her transfer became the subject of missives around Grosvenor Square. In a March 1944 memo, an OSS officer signed off on her request:

  I have interviewed the above mentioned lady and I feel confident that the main reason she wishes to transfer from SOE to OSS is for national reasons.… She has been briefed to go in the field as [a] radio operator with an organiser belong to OSS and she has again expressed a desire to go as an American body.

  The financial side, that is to say the salary she might earn with OSS, has never been discussed and does not seem to worry her in any way. She merely stated that all money she might earn she would like to be sent to her mother, Mrs. E. L. Hall, Box Horn Farm, Parkton, Maryland.

  On March 10, 1944, Virginia signed an agreement with the OSS. The term of employment was for one year, for which she would receive $336 per month, payable directly to her mother. The well-written contract was evidence of the number of lawyers on the OSS payroll and covered all points that might be of issue in the future. These included Virginia’s agreement “to proceed to any place to which she may be directed, whether within or outside the continental limits of the United States”; “to keep forever secret this employment and all information which she may obtain … unless she shall be released from such obligation”; and “that she assume absolutely, all risks incident to this employment.”

  With Army Major Paul van der Strict’s signature on behalf of the OSS, Virginia was accepted as a member of the Special Operations group. La dame qui boite was once again bound for Nazi-occupied France.

  14

  Return to War

  When Buckmaster had told Virginia in his letter to her in Spain that “the Gestapo are pulling in everything they can,” he had hard evidence to back his statement. The Nazis were furious about the acts of French Resistance, and carried out reprisals in every part of the country. In Paris, the Nazis murdered fifty people a day for five days after German government officials were gunned down. The murders stopped only after the Nazis were satisfied they had the culprits in custody, the latter having been ratted out by “helpful” collaborators. In Nantes, two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Paris, forty-eight citizens were executed for killing a German colonel. And in Tours, two hundred miles south of Paris, a grenade was tossed into a column of German soldiers on their way to a movie. More than half the city was burned to the ground, and a great many of the young men were taken away, never to be seen again.

  A great deal more had changed since Virginia left France. The Resistance found themselves no longer fighting just against the German army and the Gestapo. A new organization had entered the picture. It was called the Milice.

  Shortly after France had fallen to the Germans, World War I veteran Joseph Darnand was made head of the Légion française des combattants, the Legion of French Veterans. The organization consisted of chivalrous gentlemen hoping to recoup honor for the defeated French army. But the group was too staid for Darnand’s taste and a year later he developed a faction within the legion called the Service de l’ordre légionnaire, which supported Pétain’s Vichy France. In January 1943, he reorganized once again, and the Milice was the result.

  This Vichy secret police force was a paramilitary organization that swore an oath against “Jewish leprosy,” democracy, and individualism. The Milice was really a Fascist gang, half fanatics, half thugs. Their ranks swelled to thirty-five thousand and included the dregs of French society: former criminals, gangsters, and the depraved. The Milice worked in the areas where they lived, familiar areas, making them much more effective than the Gestapo in that regard. And unlike the Police Nationale, which sought out “enemies of the state,” the Milice hunted, tortured, and killed for personal gain and satisfaction. Those with grudges against former lovers or business associates found the Milice the perfect outlet for their revenge. The populace hated its members and it quickly became the most dangerous enemy of the Resistance.

  Buckmaster had also been right when he told Virginia, “What was previously a picnic, comparatively speaking, is now real war.” The France she was about to reenter in March 1944 was more starving, more dangerous, and more desperate.

  As its architects saw it, the OSS was charged with three functions: intelligence, which included research and analysis, secret intelligence, counterespionage, and collateral offices; operations, which included sabotage, guerrilla warfare, psychological warfare, and related activities; and the self-explanatory schools and training.

  Within those functions were the seven branches, organize
d in a similar fashion to those of the SOE. Each branch had a director who reported to another director, who ultimately reported to General Donovan. The branches included the Secret Intelligence (SI), which gathered on-the-spot information from within neutral and enemy territory; Special Operations (SO), which conducted sabotage and worked with Resistance forces; Morale Operations (MO), which created and disseminated “black propaganda”; Operation Groups (OG), which trained, supplied, and led guerrilla forces in enemy territory, sort of a combination SI and SO; Counterespionage (X-z), which protected Allied intelligence operations and identified enemy agents overseas; the Maritime Unit (MU), which conducted maritime sabotage; and finally Research and Analysis (R&A), which produced the economic, military, social, and political studies and estimates for every strategic area from Europe to the Far East.

  Within R&A was the research and development unit, sometimes referred to as the “department of dirty tricks.” It was run by Dr. Stanley Lovell, the happy and bespectacled rebel responsible for the exploding camel dung used in Operation TORCH. He and his team never tired of creating new products with an eye on destroying the enemy. “Aunt Jemima” was a powdered form of TNT that looked like any other wheat flour. When detonated it was a powerful explosive, but to avoid suspicion, it could also be kneaded, baked, and eaten with no harm to the consumer.

  Likewise, Lovell’s group also invented an exploding lump of coal that could be tossed onto a coal truck and would eventually find its way into the firebox of a Nazi locomotive. And then there was the “firefly,” a little plastic cylinder that could be dropped into the fuel tank of a Nazi vehicle. Once the tank’s gasoline had expanded the rubber retaining ring, it would explode. The “firefly” would be as successful in a Nazi staff car as in a Panzer tank.

  Monday, March 20, was a gray day in London. The city’s trees and flowers had no confidence that spring was coming anytime soon. Consequently, new growth and buds were nowhere to be found on any of them. Virginia took a noon train out of Victoria Station, heading south for the English Channel. She lugged two suitcases. One was soft-sided and bulging like a cow about to calve. It carried the items she would use to change her identity. The other suitcase was smaller, about two feet long, but at thirty pounds, heavier than the first. It contained a Type 3 Mark II transceiver, a combination radio transmitter and receiver.

  While many OSS agents were infiltrating France by parachute, Virginia’s wooden leg would prevent her from jumping. Rather, she was returning to France by sea. Two hours and sixty-six miles from London, Virginia’s train arrived at the port city of Portsmouth. She took a cab from the station to a pub, where she met a young British naval officer. After a quick lunch, he took her to the Devonshire Royal Navy Base, a blur of British and American naval uniforms, and dropped her off at a small building set apart from the others.

  Inside, Lieutenant Paul Williams welcomed Virginia and immediately offered her a cup of tea. Her companion hadn’t arrived yet, Lieutenant Williams told her, so in the meantime, he would give her a quick rundown on their operation. She would be crossing on a Motor Gun Boat, officially MGB 502, under the lieutenant’s command. The mahogany-skinned vessel was 117 feet long, fast, and safe. The trip to the French coast would probably take no more than six hours.

  And Lieutenant Williams told Virginia she shouldn’t worry about the Germans. MGB 502 was fitted with a two-pounder Vickers antiaircraft gun, a couple of twin-mount. 50-caliber machine guns, and a semiautomatic two-pounder gun.

  Virginia wasn’t really interested in the details of the armaments; only that the boat had them.

  Although strong tides formed along the Breton coast, Lieutenant Williams continued, there were plenty of deserted beaches that suited the operation perfectly. She and her companion would be landing at a point called Beg an Fry. His crew was familiar with the waters there, no shoals or offshore reefs. When they were close to shore, the boat would slow down considerably, running quieter and with less wake. Virginia and her companion would go ashore in a camouflaged rubber dinghy.

  This is it, Virginia thought. I’m finally going back to France. Lieutenant Williams told her they’d be leaving at twenty-two hundred hours. A knock at the door ended their conversation. The door opened at his command and Virginia turned to see a stocky, balding man with spectacles. He announced that his name was Aramis and offered Virginia his hand. He had a slight French accent, which Virginia took as a good sign. It meant he was probably of French parentage and could compensate for her decidedly Anglo accent.

  She introduced herself as Diane, the code name she and Major van der Strict had decided upon before she left London. Lieutenant Williams had some other business to attend to and suggested that perhaps Aramis and Virginia would like a private office to discuss business. After that, they would all meet again in the officer’s mess for dinner and make their final preparations for departure.

  As soon as they were alone, Aramis was very anxious to get to know his new working companion and began by telling Virginia all about himself. In no time at all, he had told her that he was a commercial artist from Pittsburgh, was sixty-two years old and was a civilian. This would be his first mission in the field, but he felt confident that he was up to any challenge that came their way.

  Virginia was concerned about Aramis immediately. It wasn’t his age or his inexperience; it was his willingness to open up so completely with a relative stranger. Never mind the fact that they would be partners. The number one rule for agents at the OSS and the SOE was never to tell the truth about themselves. New recruits were taught they could only abandon their cover if they were in a closed room with a staff member who took the initiative to say, “We are now talking under X conditions.” Then, and only then, could an agent divulge the truth about himself.

  Failure to adhere to that rule had gotten recruits thrown out. They were cleverly tested on it. Regardless of their performance on a particularly grueling day of physical trials, intelligence tests, and “Gestapo-style” questioning, the hopeful students were told one by one that they had failed. They were then sent individually to a room where a sympathetic staff member would offer them a cigarette and ask what had happened, hinting that perhaps something could be done about it. Recruits were often so relieved at a friendly face that they forgot the basic requirement of secrecy and divulged everything that had happened to them that day, without the staff member telling them they were talking under “X conditions.” And that became their demise.

  Virginia was not willing to put herself or their mission in jeopardy by saying anything more than was absolutely necessary. She told Aramis that she had done a significant amount of wireless training at the SOE classes in London, avoiding any mention that she, herself, had been an SOE agent. Their circuit would be a joint operation with the Brits, who would call it SAINT. The Americans would refer to their circuit as HECKLER. She would be the wireless operator. It was her understanding, she said, that their objective was to gather as much information as possible about German troop installations and movements in central France, and to locate potential reception fields for parachute drops. In addition, she had been told that Aramis would spend most of his time working in Paris, developing safe houses there, and that he should have any necessary outgoing messages couriered to her. She would transmit them along with her own findings.

  Finally, Virginia disclosed that she would be disguising herself as much older for their mission and would don her costume after dinner. Once they’d covered those topics, Virginia had very little more to say to Aramis and their conversation dwindled to a discussion of weather and how it might affect their trip that night.

  Their dinner with Lieutenant Williams was a much brighter event, as he regaled them with stories about his experiences in the Navy. At eight o’clock, Virginia excused herself to begin preparations for her disguise. She returned to a small room where she had dropped off her belongings earlier. The room had a sink and running water, necessary for the first part of her disguise. Pulling the
hairpins from the carefully formed bun at the nape of her neck, she wet her hair in the sink and applied the dye she’d brought with her from London. By the time she’d finished, her soft brown hair was a dull gray color that she would eventually pull into a severe bun and cover with a large babushka.

  Next, Virginia remade herself into a plump, elderly woman. First she donned a starched peplum to make her hips appear broader, and over it she pulled on two heavy woolen skirts. To increase the bulk on her torso, she put on a man’s shirt and sweater, and stuffed all of that under a ratty woman’s pullover. Brown woolen stockings and scuffed sabots completed the look.

  The entire outfit had been provided courtesy of agents and refugees coming out of France. Both the British and American governments wanted to make sure everything about the people they infiltrated into occupied territories was authentic, so they developed a wardrobe department that would rival any in Hollywood. And as other agents had done, Virginia had also spent several days the previous week in a dentist’s chair, having her fillings changed to resemble those done by French dentists.

  The final part of her transformation was to change the way she moved. The “Limping Lady” nickname the Gestapo had given her was insulting. Virginia had assumed all along she walked in a fairly normal manner. Evidently she had not concealed her limp over the years as well as she thought she had. Under the present circumstances, it was vital that she master a new gait. In keeping with her disguise, a shuffle was appropriate, combined with the kind of stoop brought on by old age. She had practiced and perfected this demeanor over the past months. It had to pass muster.