![]() ![]() In 1943 she escaped to London, via a precipitous passage over the snowbound Pyrenees. Her distinctive appearance (she was known as “la dame qui boite”, or the limping lady) her success in planning spectacular operations such as the escape from prison of 12 arrested agents and the infiltration of her network by double agent Robert Alesch - a priest later tried and executed for collaboration - placed Virginia in mortal danger. Soon after her arrival, a dozen SOE agents were arrested in Lyon, leaving her almost the sole agent in Vichy France. Purnell observes: “Dispatching a one-legged thirty-five-year-old desk clerk on a blind mission into France was, on paper, an almost insane gamble” but Virginia duly travelled there in 1941, claiming to be a journalist for the New York Post. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTĪ chance meeting with an undercover British agent furnished her with the phone number of Nicolas Bodington, a senior officer in the fledgling SOE. ![]()
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