This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, it's Bobby from the Bobby Bone Show. I had an incredible time at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival and even got the chance to hang out with Diplo and Bailey Zimmerman while I was there. How did Ashes come together, Diplo? I pulled up real quick.
He was about to leave on tour. You're about to jump in your tour bus, and we had like three hours. It was really cool. He literally just like randomly showed up to my house. I'm like, oh, hey, Diplo, what are you doing?
He's like, I have a song that I want to show you. And I was like, okay. You can listen to the full episode out now wherever you get your podcast. And big shout out to my friends at Hyundai for making this possible. At a blast, cruising around the festival weekend in the all-new Palisade Hybrid.
To Aina. We all know that water is life. An average American household consumes over 300 gallons daily. 40% of Navajo families residing on a reservation the size of West Virginia struggle to survive on less than 10 gallons of water per day. Yearly St.
Bonaventure Indian Mission and School delivers over 1.5 million gallons of clean water to these families. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. Sunday Scaries are officially cancelled. Abercrombie's new Sunday Sets collection is taking their place.
made from their iconic soft day of fabric. These matching sets will give you that cozy Sunday feeling every day of the week. But we can't forget the OG, the ANF Essentials collection. Specifically, their viral essential popover hoodie that just came out in tons of new colors and prints. Permission to start living in sweats.
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And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. It's $15 a month. Two. Seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts.
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Okay, give it a try at mintmobile.com/slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 per three months plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything.
Here on this show from the arts to sports. and from history to business and everything in between, and we tell your stories too. because some of our very best have been from the people who listen to this show, from you. And this next story well, it's the story of Virginia Hall. And she's a World War two spy.
who overcame both physical and societal ills, during a time when the world seemed to be tearing itself apart. Literally.
Now for her story. as told by Judy Pearson. Virginia Hall was once asked why she never told her story. She replied that no one had ever asked her. In 2003, I began asking, My quest took me to her niece in Baltimore.
newly declassified intelligence records in the National Archives, Then to London, Paris and across the French countryside. I conducted countless interviews in English and in French. and read dozens of personal accounts. what ultimately unfolded Was the story of an incredible woman. She was intelligent, brave, and outspoken.
She was loyal, daring, and stubborn. But as a young woman, all of Virginia Hall's energies were directed at becoming a Foreign Service officer. At high school graduation, while her chums were thinking of marriage and families, Virginia announced that the only way for a woman to get ahead in the world was with an education. After several undistinguished years at Radcliffe and Barnard, She went to the Sorbonne in Paris and then the Consolaire Academie in Vienna. from which she graduated in nineteen twenty nine.
Back in the States, now fluent in French and German, She applied to take the Foreign Service exam. The exam consisted of three parts. The first was written, covering all manner of topics including world history, geography and sociology. The second tested the applicant's knowledge of a foreign language. Virginia opted for French.
And the third part of the exam, far more subjective. gave the examiner the power to judge what kind of officer the applicant would make. Virginia failed the exam, took it again. and was failed again. It was nineteen thirty.
Women had only had the right to vote for 10 years. And the number of female Foreign Service officers could be counted on one hand. gender discrimination was hard at work. She told a family friend that if she couldn't get into the Foreign Service through the front door, she'd try going in through the back door and landed a job as clerk at the American Embassy in Poland. She once again applied for the exam, but before she completed it, she was transferred to the American Consulate in Smyrna.
Now Izmir, Turkey. Here, her Her life changed forever. On a December Saturday afternoon hunting expedition with some friends in 1933, Virginia's gun accidentally discharged into her left foot. Despite doctors' best efforts, gangrene set in, and to save her life, They removed her leg from the knee down. What might have been considered by some as a life ending event, Virginia saw as merely a delay in plans.
When she was well enough to travel, she returned home to Baltimore to recuperate and be fitted with a seven-pound wooden prosthesis. And a year later, She was back at work, this time at the American Consulate in Venice, from which she requested to take the Foreign Service exam yet again. But this time, rather than test questions, a letter arrived, informing her that, according to an obscure statute, amputees were not accepted in the Foreign Service. the letter concluded by politely asking Virginia not to apply again. she simply wouldn't fit in.
As Hitler began blazing across Europe, a discouraged Virginia Hall left her consular job and went to France. Here, her leg was not an issue. she was gratefully accepted as a volunteer ambulance driver for the French army. nor was her leg an issue several months later. When in London, she was approached by a Special Operations Executive employee.
The S O E. This undercover paramilitary organization had been created by Winston Churchill to, as he said, set Europe ablaze. The current war was unlike any other. The Allies needed extraordinary warfare in the form of espionage and sabotage. Escaping French military had told the British that there were many in France who would be willing to rise up against the Nazis, given enough organization and arms.
Leaders who could be infiltrated into the country were needed. and Virginia fit the bill. The Brits didn't give a hoot about her gender. In fact, it was believed that women would make the best spies. This doesn't surprise those of us who are women.
but it was a revelation to the men.
Furthermore, Men were being whisked to Germany as laborers. A man on the streets in France needed reasons for being there. But a woman didn't. and could travel about more easily. Nor did the Brits care how many limbs Virginia had lost.
Her disability was unknown to most. She walked only with a slight limp. At the SOE's training camps, Virginia learned things her Baltimore contemporaries would never have imagined. I had the good fortune to interview one of the instructors while I was in London. Leslie Fernandez taught SOE recruits, including Virginia, Physical combat.
In other words, how to kill. and Virginia wasn't shown any favoritism because of her missing leg. she wouldn't have accepted it anyway. The only training she didn't receive was in parachuting, the primary means by which agents were infiltrated. It was 1941, and America had not yet entered the war.
Virginia would be free to enter France as a non combatant. which she did using journalism as her cover. And when we come back, we'll continue this story, Virginia Hall's story. The spy with a wooden leg. and to hear about her grit, her perseverance.
And rising above the odds, well we love stories like this. The Spy with the Wooden Leg continues After these messages. Lee Habib here. As we approach our nation's 250th anniversary, I'd like to remind you that all the history stories you hear on this show are brought to you by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn't just a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you as well.
Go to Hillsdale.edu to find out about their terrific free online courses. Their series on communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again, go to hillsdale.edu and sign up for their free and terrific online courses. Hey, it's Bobby from the Bobby Bone Show. I had an incredible time at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival and even got the chance to hang out with Diplo and Bailey Zimmerman while I was there.
Check this out.
So how did ashes come together, Diplo?
Well, uh I kind of briefly met Bailey I think a Morgan's show, one of them. And I think He's just the guy in Nashville. He's cool as hell, and I had a new kind of sound I wanted to do. I think he's the one guy that could carry it. I came to his house, I had a show.
I pulled up real quick. He was about to leave on tour. You're about to jump in your tour bus, and we had like three hours. played the record for him, we kinda like got a scratch and then he handled it on his own on the road. Yeah.
It was really cool. He literally just like randomly showed up to my house and I'm like, oh, hey, Diplo, what are you doing? He's like, I have a song that I want to show you. And I was like, okay. And then.
Now we're here playing it live. You can listen to the full episode out now, wherever you get your podcast. And big shout out to my friends at Hyundai for making this possible out of blast, cruising around the festival weekend in the all-new Palisade Hybrid. Time for a sofa upgrade? Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699.
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Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Mm-hmm. You heard it before many times. Water is life. But do you know that almost half of the homes on the Navajo Reservation do not have clean running water?
With your support, St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School is ready to give water to Navajo families.
So we invite you to help provide this precious gift of life to those in need. Contrary to many average Americans, Navajo families survive on just 10 gallons of water per day. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. Sunday Scaries are officially cancelled.
Abercrombie's new Sunday Sets collection is taking their place. Made from their iconic soft day of fabric, these matching sets will give you that cozy Sunday feeling every day of the week. But we can't forget the OG, the ANF Essentials collection. Specifically, their viral essential popover hoodie that just came out in tons of new colors and prints. Permission to start living in sweats.
Shop Abercrombie in the app, online, and in stores. Right now, America's Christian Credit Union is offering the top 12-month certificate rate in the nation. This limited time offer is just for new ACCU members. Earn 4.75% APY on deposits up to $1 million, and it only takes $1,000 to get started. It's called the Term Share Certificate.
Similar to a CD, but with a mission and supports what matters: Christian schools, churches, adoptions, and more. Visit America's ChristianCU.com to get started. America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA. And we returned to our American stories. And when we left off, Virginia Hall was sneaking into France.
back in 1941. Not a time actually to be going into France. And she was posing as a journalist to act. as a British intelligence operative. Let's return to the author.
Judy Pearson. I spent hours digging through the British National Archives at Kew and the Imperial War Museum Archives in London. both of which were rich in material. I heard the oral histories of those recruited agents who had daringly dropped into occupied France, where Virginia and others awaited them. When I arrived in France after spending several days digging through the archives in Paris, I rented a car and took off across the country to visit first hand all of the cities Virginia had worked from.
She was ultimately sent to Lyon, the center of resistance activities in unoccupied France.
So I went to Lyon as well. There, under her journalism cover, while ostensibly collecting information for newspaper articles, Virginia was also collecting information about Nazi activities. Her flat, innocently appearing as that of a hardworking writer, was the clearinghouse for every British agent who was sent to central France in 1941. Through Virginia, they were able to connect with fellow agents. and contact others to help them.
They collected counterfeited money and wireless radios needed to perform their work. When they were captured and imprisoned, Virginia worked on their escapes. She organized her own group of resistance members in Lyon. and had contacts in Marseille and at the Spanish border. two places from which people could disappear should the need arise.
She and her group saved innumerable lives of both downed Allied pilots needing passage out of France and agents who were being hunted by the Gestapo. But it wasn't long before Virginia herself became hunted. Clause Barbie, later known as the Butcher of Lyons, spread the word that a lady with a limp, an Englishman or a Canadian, was wanted in connection with espionage activities. His posters announced that Virginia was the most dangerous of all Allied spies, and that everyone should help him find and destroy her. Virginia's exodus across the Pyrenees Mountains The rugged chain that separates France from Spain.
was in November 1942. The cold and rigorous march would have been exhausting for any one. but dragging a seven pound wooden leg through the snow made it all the more difficult for Virginia. She hadn't dared tell the guide about her leg. He was already grumbling because she was a woman.
At one point, she was able to radio London to tell them she was on her way out of France. She mentioned that Cuthbert, her clever nickname for her leg, had become quite tiresome. The recipient of the message, ignorant of the leg's name, wired back that if Cuthbert had become tiresome, She should have him eliminated. At the end of the gruelling thirty mile journey, Virginia was arrested in Spain for not having papers. She was imprisoned for six weeks, released only after her former cellmate, a Barcelona prostitute.
was able to get word to the British Consulate that she was being held. By the time Virginia had returned to England in early 1943, a new intelligence organization had been born. Its name was the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS. it was patterned after the SOE, with one exception. It was pure bred American.
led by a hero from World War I named General Wild Bill Donovan. Virginia was desperate to get back into the fight. and transferring to the OSS made sense since she was an American. But there was a concern. She was now a hunted woman, whose sketched picture had been spread throughout France.
A return could only be facilitated if she were disguised. that of an old peasant woman fit the bell. On her second trip to occupied France, Virginia's intelligence and ingenuity served her and saved her many times. This time she acted as her own radio operator, setting up numerous resistance cells. Three months after returning to France, the greatest armada the world had ever seen.
Across the channel for the D-Day landings. When the signal was given, Her resistance cell went into action. Cutting off Nazi supply lines and disrupting their communications, all in a successful effort to aid the Allied invasion of Europe. By the fall of 1944, all of France was liberated. During Virginia's second stint in the country, She had had the pleasure of leading 1,500 resistance volunteers who killed 150 Nazis and captured 500 more.
Her team had sabotaged numerous transportation and communication links. Virginia's leadership and sang froid was not only admired, it became legendary. They called her Lamadan. The Madonna. Virginia was awarded the Member of the British Empire.
the French Croix de guerre a vacc palm. and the American Distinguished Service Cross. the only woman in World War II to receive that American distinction. But Virginia wasn't interested in accolades. She wanted to continue her work in espionage.
Although the OSS had been dissolved, Virginia was one of the first women on board the new intelligence agency, known as the Central Intelligence Group. It became the Central Intelligence Agency in December, nineteen forty seven. But the new world of intelligence was very different from the one Virginia had previously been a part of. Communism was the enemy now. And as one observer put it, Joseph Stalin made Hitler look like a Boy Scout.
Virginia wanted desperately to become an operative again, willing to undergo whatever training was necessary. but at the advanced age of forty one she was looked upon as old school, Her skills were outdated, and her aggressiveness was offensive to the younger men who were her superiors. Her experience was dismissed as not pertinent. After all she'd been through and all the sacrifices she'd gladly made. Once again, Virginia Hall.
didn't fit in. Virginia had married Paul Goya in 1950. a French-American she had met toward the end of the war. She accepted mandatory retirement from the CIA in 1966. and she and Paul moved to a farm in Barnstown, Maryland.
They raised poodles, gardened, and grew old together. Virginia died in 1982. and Goyo followed five years later. She was never bitter about the fact that her career hadn't begun or ended as she would have liked. Rather, Virginia chose to remember the magnificent days in the middle.
the days when her clever mind and brave heart help defeat fascists. bent on world domination. And a special thanks to Judy Pearson. And by the way, her book... about Virginia Hall.
was called Wolves at the Door, The True Story of America's Greatest Female spy. And I had never heard that story, and I'm a big World War two buff. And it doesn't get better. than a story like that. I mean the woman accidentally shoots her foot off.
And for most people, that's it. She gets turned down once, twice. but is determined to be a member of the Foreign Service. eases her way into France when most people will be running from France as the Nazis come and occupy the country. And ultimately Klaus Barbie, the butcher, has her as the most wanted person, in the Nazi regime when it comes to spies.
Certainly, what an impact she had, her life, what an example. And by the way, To be the only woman to win the American Distinguished Service Cross. I don't know why more of us don't know this story. But that's what we do here in Our American Stories. And my goodness, what Judy Pearson did here, the author I mean, she literally walked in Virginia Hall's shoes.
traveled all over Europe just to honor her story. And these are the kind of writers and researchers we love to put on the show. Virginia Hall story The Spy with a Wooden Leg Here. on our American stories. Hey, it's Bobby from the Bobby Bones Show.
I had an incredible time at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival and even got the chance to hang out with Diplo and Bailey Zimmerman while I was there. How did Ashes come together, Diplo? I pulled up real quick. He was about to leave on tour. You're about to jump in your tour bus and we had like three hours.
It was really cool. He literally just like randomly showed up to my house. I'm like, oh, hey, Diplo, what are you doing? He's like, I have a song that I want to show you. And I was like, okay.
You can listen to the full episode out now wherever you get your podcast. And big shout out to my friends at Hyundai for making this possible. Had a blast, cruising around the festival weekend in the all-new Palisade Hybrid. The day begins at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club at Boston Logan Airport. You get the clam chowder.
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