Virginia Hall didn’t just outwit the Nazis—she escaped them on foot, through the freezing Pyrenees, with a wooden leg.

In 1942, with the Gestapo closing in and her face plastered on wanted posters, Hall had no choice but to flee France. She trekked for days across the Pyrenees mountains into Spain—dragging her prosthetic leg, which she called “Cuthbert,” over snow and rock. It was a brutal journey. She nearly died from exposure.

But that didn’t stop her.

Less than two years later, Hall volunteered to go back. The Allies dropped her behind enemy lines just before D-Day—this time disguised as an old French peasant woman. Using a bicycle and sheer nerve, she coordinated sabotage missions, trained resistance fighters, and disrupted German supply lines. Her efforts helped weaken Nazi defenses ahead of the Allied invasion.

Virginia Hall was never caught. And after the war, she quietly became one of the CIA’s first female field officers.