She came home and joined the State Department as a clerk. She spent three years in Europe, becoming fluent in French, German, Spanish and Italian. She was born in 1906 and like her mother was ambitious but directed her ambition “t oward a career and exploring the world rather than bagging a feckless husband.” At age twenty, after one year at Radcliffe and one at Barnard, she moved to Paris and enrolled in the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. Virginia Hall was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore banker and a social-climbing mother. Purnell writes, “women were…subjected to the worst forms of torture the depraved Nazi mind-set could devise.” Quote from a former member of the SOE in war-time Franceīesides being a gripping tale of the Resistance in France during the Second World War, this is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman, with an artificial leg, who operated behind enemy lines at a time when being a female in a combat zone was unusual, let alone one who was disabled. “If caught,” Ms. The nerve strain and fatigue, the all-demanding alertness of living a lie, theseĪre to meet, accept and control. “‘ There are endless nightmares of uncertainty,’ explained one. “A Woman of No Importance,” Sonia Purnell
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |