国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

   

Ambassadors to honor female WWII spy

(AP)
Updated: 2006-12-11 12:12

BALTIMORE - In 1942, the Gestapo circulated posters offering a reward for the capture of "the woman with a limp. She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies and we must find and destroy her."


This undated photo provided by artist Jeff Bass shows a section of his painting of the female War World II spy Virginia Hall. Hall, a Baltimore native working for the British intelligence agency, and the limp was the result of a wooden left leg. [AP]
The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun while hunting in Turkey.

The injury derailed Hall's dream of becoming a Foreign Service officer because the State Department wouldn't hire amputees, but it didn't prevent her from becoming one of the most celebrated spies of World War II.

On Tuesday, the French and British ambassadors plan to honor Hall, who died in 1982 at age 78, at a ceremony at the home of French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte in Washington.

British Ambassador Sir David Manning plans to present a certificate signed by King George VI to Hall's niece, Lorna Catling. Hall should have received the document in 1943, when she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.

"I think it was ironic that the State Department turned her down because she was an amputee, and here she went on and did all this other stuff," said Catling, who lives in Baltimore. Catling said she didn't learn many of the details of her aunt's espionage career until after her death.

Hall, who was fluent in French, was living in Paris when the Nazis invaded in 1940, and she decamped for London, where she was recruited by the secret British paramilitary service, the Special Operations Executive, becoming its first female field operative.

Hall was sent to Lyon, becoming "the heartbeat" of the local French Resistance, said Judith L. Pearson, whose biography of Hall, "Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's First Female Spy," was published last year.

"Any agent from London came through her flat. She coordinated them with Resistance members," Pearson said. "Most agents only stayed about three months in the field. She stayed 15 months."

After the Gestapo wanted posters made her situation untenable, she fled through the Pyrenees mountains into Spain. During the journey, she sent a radio message to London, reporting that "Cuthbert" — her nickname for her prosthetic leg — was giving her trouble.

Her commanders didn't understand the reference, and their reply suggested the gravity of Hall's circumstances and her value to the Allied cause: "If Cuthbert troublesome eliminate him."
12  


Top World News  
Today's Top News  
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
报价| 咸阳市| 唐海县| 乌拉特中旗| 乡宁县| 扎赉特旗| 盘山县| 浮山县| 巩留县| 阿克| 维西| 昌吉市| 泸州市| 青州市| 齐齐哈尔市| 吉水县| 中阳县| 留坝县| 珠海市| 潜山县| 基隆市| 长沙县| 大洼县| 都江堰市| 定陶县| 东辽县| 保山市| 卫辉市| 门头沟区| 富宁县| 长兴县| 榆中县| 宿州市| 鄯善县| 新郑市| 丹凤县| 扬中市| 稻城县| 柏乡县| 孟州市| 西贡区|