Takeaways from The Extraordinary Life of a One-Legged American Spy
Quick Reflections on ‘A Woman of No Importance’ by Sonia Purcell
I recently finished A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purcell. This post is not a summary. These are my principal takeaways from the extraordinary life of Virginia Hall.
The book postulates that the secret life of a Resistance spy afforded Virginia Hall the opportunity to find her true self and cause. That true calling was fighting for the defense of her adopted home, France, for she was American, born-and-bred.
There’s something folded in this — one thing inside another thing.
There’s the idea that inside the secret (the false identity) is actually the truth. We could call this our ‘shadow’. We are one person, or we present one way to the world. But there is inside us another person — a shadow person — a person we could be, given the appropriate circumstances. Sometimes, those circumstances are awful — the mass-starvation, deprivation, and terror of Vichy France, for example. Virginia Hall lived a life of enormous meaning, supplying valuable intelligence to the war effort, contributing meaningfully to D-Day and more. But it came at tremendous personal cost, many close run-ins with death, losing many friends, knowing they were tortured and killed in heinous ways.
I’m moved by how much this woman sacrificed out of love for her adopted nation. There should be a word for this. Searching, I found a discussion on English Stack Exchange where someone coined the phrase — amor ceterae patriae — love of another country. They further condensed it to — ceterapatriotism; I certainly feel this way, not just about America, but many countries where I’ve spent any length of time. To me, it’s like romantic love vs. family love. There are things we are born into and there are the things we choose.
Back to Virginia Hall and this book:
The book captured the highs and lows of an extraordinary life. Here are some of the bits that will stay with me:
Virginia lost her leg in her early twenties following an infection after a shooting accident. Much later on, evading the Nazis, she made the arduous climb over the Pyrenees. During the climb, she concealed the fact of her wooden leg from the guides because, if she was seen as a potential weak link, there was a chance they might abandon her.
She re-trained and re-infiltrated France as a radio operator despite knowing that radio operators had terrible odds of survival. She did so because she didn’t want to be dependent on other operators to communicate to headquarters. If you’re someone who always tries to draw lessons from biographies, there’s one — always be the one controlling the communications.
Back to my takeaways:
Buzzwords: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion:
On the one hand, Virginia would seem like an ideal candidate for the idea that diversity is strength. She was serially discriminated against for being a woman, first in the state department and later in the CIA. Interestingly, in the field, her competence silenced critics. But during peacetime, her identity was used against her. She also had a disability. Her leg had been amputated below the knee. And yet, the manner in which she lived her life suggests that she would be against tokenism, or diversity simply for diversity’s sake. Her story suggests a few things to me. Firstly, there are qualities much deeper than identity that mark people for their roles/callings. Secondly, smart leaders can see possibilities where others see barriers. For example, the SOE (who hired her) saw potential where the State Department lost an asset because of their bigotry.
Post-War Life:
After the war, though brilliant, she suffered. She’d seen many friends and colleagues die. Also, although the author wasn’t able to find anything to support this, I think it’s fair to say that Virginia must have been very disillusioned by the CIA’s protection of former Nazi and Abwehr intelligence officials. During the war, Virginia operated out of Lyon. Klaus Barbie had been her primary nemesis. That the CIA allowed the butcher of Lyon to escape to Bolivia must have rankled her immensely.
Promotion:
Virginia was adamantly uninterested in commendations, awards, etc, . She only sought promotion in order to advance her work, not for the title. Her extraordinary valor was inwardly motivated. She lived a dramatic, intense life, with a lot of pain in it, and a lot of loss, but she also was one of the few people, I imagine, who knew what they were capable of in extreme situations.
The Book:
And, like any good war biographer, Sonia Purcell does an excellent job reminding us how ghastly it is living in those circumstances — starvation, privation, tyranny, arbitrary violence. She shows us how swiftly France found itself in that predicament. All of us, for our own countries or, if we are ceterapatriots, our adopted countries, must make concerted efforts to live in peace, and yet confront tyranny when the time comes, otherwise, we, too, will have to endure horrors.
Sorry, it’s not a very upbeat post. But Virginia Hall’s story is remarkable and worth sharing. Non omnis moriar. (I shall not wholly die — Horace). Because you helped the Allies win the war. Well done to the limping lady from Baltimore.
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thoroughly enjoyed the read, I hope you're well mate! This is Arthur from UChi