REVIEW: The Wolves at the Door
Jan. 25th, 2016 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America’s Greatest Female Spy: Judith L. Pearson. The Lyons Press, 2005.
This is the biography of Virginia Hall, an-American-born spy who worked for the British and later the Americans as an intelligence officer in France during World War 2. Her story is remarkable and Pearson does a good job of setting out how her upbringing, personality and ability particularly fitted Virginia for this work. Her hope was to have a career in the US’s diplomatic service, but because of her gender and the time, she kept being turned down. In the first of a number of twists in the tale, she was also disabled after a shooting accident at a hunt, which made it unlikely that she would ever be promoted from the clerking pool.
So, she resigned and moved to France, aware of the storm clouds emanating from Germany, but not really believing they’d reach Paris. Confident and clever, she had grown up visiting Europe and spoke several of its languages. There was a stymied romance with a Polish man in her twenties, but it would be her love of France that would last.
Pearson intersperses Virgina’s story with sections about the broader picture, some more directly relevant than others, I found, of how Europe was sliding closer to war, what happened among France’s leaders and how the British and then Americans responded by scrambling people to carry out espionage and interference. We also learn of the Resistance and the other ways of responding to occupation that occurred in France. It was certainly interesting to read about this part of the history of the second world war from an American perspective (although I thought the author was glib about the French revolution, for instance), and it really brought home for me what was happening in France, leading me to think more about the impact on the liberated country post-war than I’ve ever done before.
Virginia’s story really is a tremendous read. She joined a friend as an ambulance driver once war broke out, despite the fact that she had a below-the-knee amputation. Afterwards, she ended up in London, where her knowledge of France and her anti-Nazi sentiments got her noticed – fortunately by someone involved in the recently created Special Operations Executive. As they offered Virginia a chance to return to France and use her abilities to fight the Nazis, she would take it.
After rigorous training and much waiting, which sounds like it wasn’t easy for a do0er such as her, Virginia got to go to France. Her job was to support a network of French Resistance fighters (with money, and then, as things became more difficult, specific goods), look after downed Allied pilots and report what was going on in Lyon, partly for her cover as a reporter and but also to London. She was good at it, but the Gestapo had heard rumours and were looking for a ‘Limping Lady’.
They did not find her – Virginia returned to Britain via a long and dangerous route. But it was close. She would later return to France, trained as a radio operator and continue to support the Resistance and sabotage the Nazis as the Allied forces landed on the Continent on D-Day, now working for the American Office of Strategic Series. Events began overtaking Virginia’s usefulness, and her part in the fight grew less and less. By this point, she had met a Frenchman, younger than her, with whom she would share the rest of her life, after many years of holding people she had to trust with her life at a distance – discretion having been impressed upon her in training. But she continued working as a spy after the war, although she was hampered in peacetime by younger men not liking being bossed around by an older woman.
As with all biographies, I did wonder from where the author was basing the thoughts she attributed to Virginia – her papers, presumably, correspondence and dispatches - but I did wonder if it was always Hall or Pearson.
At times, it’s not an easy read: learning how keen Vichy France was to be even more anti-Semitic than the Nazis or reading the list of torture methods employed upon captured French resistance fighters.
This is the biography of Virginia Hall, an-American-born spy who worked for the British and later the Americans as an intelligence officer in France during World War 2. Her story is remarkable and Pearson does a good job of setting out how her upbringing, personality and ability particularly fitted Virginia for this work. Her hope was to have a career in the US’s diplomatic service, but because of her gender and the time, she kept being turned down. In the first of a number of twists in the tale, she was also disabled after a shooting accident at a hunt, which made it unlikely that she would ever be promoted from the clerking pool.
So, she resigned and moved to France, aware of the storm clouds emanating from Germany, but not really believing they’d reach Paris. Confident and clever, she had grown up visiting Europe and spoke several of its languages. There was a stymied romance with a Polish man in her twenties, but it would be her love of France that would last.
Pearson intersperses Virgina’s story with sections about the broader picture, some more directly relevant than others, I found, of how Europe was sliding closer to war, what happened among France’s leaders and how the British and then Americans responded by scrambling people to carry out espionage and interference. We also learn of the Resistance and the other ways of responding to occupation that occurred in France. It was certainly interesting to read about this part of the history of the second world war from an American perspective (although I thought the author was glib about the French revolution, for instance), and it really brought home for me what was happening in France, leading me to think more about the impact on the liberated country post-war than I’ve ever done before.
Virginia’s story really is a tremendous read. She joined a friend as an ambulance driver once war broke out, despite the fact that she had a below-the-knee amputation. Afterwards, she ended up in London, where her knowledge of France and her anti-Nazi sentiments got her noticed – fortunately by someone involved in the recently created Special Operations Executive. As they offered Virginia a chance to return to France and use her abilities to fight the Nazis, she would take it.
After rigorous training and much waiting, which sounds like it wasn’t easy for a do0er such as her, Virginia got to go to France. Her job was to support a network of French Resistance fighters (with money, and then, as things became more difficult, specific goods), look after downed Allied pilots and report what was going on in Lyon, partly for her cover as a reporter and but also to London. She was good at it, but the Gestapo had heard rumours and were looking for a ‘Limping Lady’.
They did not find her – Virginia returned to Britain via a long and dangerous route. But it was close. She would later return to France, trained as a radio operator and continue to support the Resistance and sabotage the Nazis as the Allied forces landed on the Continent on D-Day, now working for the American Office of Strategic Series. Events began overtaking Virginia’s usefulness, and her part in the fight grew less and less. By this point, she had met a Frenchman, younger than her, with whom she would share the rest of her life, after many years of holding people she had to trust with her life at a distance – discretion having been impressed upon her in training. But she continued working as a spy after the war, although she was hampered in peacetime by younger men not liking being bossed around by an older woman.
As with all biographies, I did wonder from where the author was basing the thoughts she attributed to Virginia – her papers, presumably, correspondence and dispatches - but I did wonder if it was always Hall or Pearson.
At times, it’s not an easy read: learning how keen Vichy France was to be even more anti-Semitic than the Nazis or reading the list of torture methods employed upon captured French resistance fighters.
