10 Real-Life Spies More Badass Than James Bond
3. Virginia Hall Smuggled Secrets In A Wooden Leg
There's a trope in the Bond books and films of villains to be scarred, disfigured, or otherwise disabled or impaired. You know they're a bad guy just by looking at them, then - something about them is missing, or else slightly off.
In real life, it's a lot less cut and dry than that, since A) you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, unless it's stroking a white cat in a menacing manner, and B) one-legged spy Virginia Hall was one of the best in the business. Having literally shot herself in the foot by accident on a mission, Hall lost her leg and used the prosthetic that replaced it - affectionately named Cuthbert - to smuggle information, a place where enemy officers would never think to look as she crossed various borders.
She was an American spook who started off at SOE and eventually wound up at the CIA. Working with the French Underground in Vichy, she wrote about the resistance as a correspondent for the New York Post, and eventually worked her way into the spy game in occupied France where she mapped drop zones, found safe houses, trained commandos, and linked up with a team after the Allied Forces landed at Normandy.
The Gestapo referred to her as the most dangerous of all Allied spies. And for a good reason, too.