Maps From Code Name Badass

Discussion Guide For Teens & Classrooms

What Dindy HearD

The Music & Broadcasts of WWII: Swing, French Chansons, BBC broadcasting, & More

Listen On Spotify

Quiz: Do you have what it takes to be a spy?

Fast Facts

```
Name: Virginia Hall Goillot
```
```
Nickname: “Dindy”
```

Codenames: Anna Müller, Artemis, Brigitte Le Contre, Camille, Diana, Diane, DFV, Germaine, Marie, Marie Monin, Marcelle Montagne, Mary, Nicolas, Philomène

Born / Hometown: April 6, 1906 in Baltimore, MD

```
Nationality: American
```

Death: July 8, 1982 (76 years old) in Rockville, MD

```
Family Home: Box Horn Farm, Maryland
```
```
Parents: Edwin and Barbara Hall
```
```
Siblings: Older Brother, John Hall
```

Husband: Paul Gaston Goillot (US citizen, French born, WWII Army vet - read the book to find out about their war zone meet cute!)

```
Children: None
```

Pets: Lots of animals at the farm growing up. Later in life, Dindy had 5 black poodles that she fed with a silver spoon (true story!)

Hobbies: Making cheese, doing outdoorsy things, hanging with animals, reading spy novels (when she’s not busy being a spy), tending to the gazillion daffodils (later in life), putting The Man in his place.

High School: Roland Park Country School
College: Radcliffe (left after a year), Barnard (left after a year), several institutions in Europe, grad school at George Washington University
Major in Colleges: Economics, French
Languages: Fluent in French and German, spoke Italian, Spanish, and Russian well
Location of Amputation: Below left knee

Random & Cool Dindy Facts

Dindy named her prosthetic leg 🦿 "Cuthbert" - no one knows why, but it caused some confusion in the field. Read the book to learn why someone in London messaged her to have Cuthbert eliminated if he was giving her problems. 😂

There’s a CIA training building named after her where spies go to learn how to be badasses just like one Virginia Hall

Dindy was chosen to represent one of the six pillars of the CIA officer: “Service” (Unoficially, she also represents “Badass”)

Dindy landed her bum in the big house once during the war and made some tart friends (read the book to find out what went down!)

Her cheesemaking hobby helped give her a great cover as an old French countrywoman during her second mission in France

The head of the British Special Operations Executive called her “Doodles”

She never used a cane until she was a legit senior citizen, even though she was often in a great deal of pain because of her prosthesis

Parts of her CIA file are still redacted

Dindy brought the 12-gauge shotgun that her dad gave her when she moved overseas to work in various US embassies

She never had children and her husband was a househusband—mama was the one bringing home the bacon…from the CIA.

One of Dindy’s assistants in the French Resistance hunted down her favorite French scent for her while she was on her second mission.

Dindy’s intelligence gathering for the Allies helped them liberate Paris and kick out the Nazis.

The CIA used Dindy’s guerilla warfare tactics as recently as the early 2000’s, when they were first in Afghanistan hunting Bin Laden.

Actress Alia Shawkat played Dindy in the fabulous “Spies” episode on Comedy Central’s hit show, Drunk History.

Awards & Honors

(( Above: Virginia Hall receiving her Distinguished Service Cross medal from General “Wild” Bill Donovan :: 1945 ))

Distinguished Service Cross: Virginia Hall was the only female civilian in WWII to receive this honor.

Croix de Guerre avec Palme (for service to France in WWII): This award is one of the unsolved mysteries of DIndy’s life. Read the book to learn why, and decide for yourself: did she lie, forget, or never know she’d received it?

Virginia was of the first women to join the CIA and receive a promotion to Career Staff  (the CIA’s varsity squad)

Chosen by the CIA to represent “Service,” one of the Agency’s Six Guiding Principles

In 1988, Virginia was posthumously honored by becoming one of the first people to be inducted into the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame

Inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2019

I go to the International Spy Museum and meet Dindy for the first time when I see their display about her. It was love at first sight. 💗 🕵️‍♀️

🙌 I sell BADASS in Fall 2017 and we announce in Publisher’s Weekly in Feb. 2018

People start talking about Dindy! 👄 🎤 📚 🎧 👀 📺

👇 😹 👍

Virginia Hall begins at 5:23 🕵️‍♀️

Virginia Hall Pre-War Timeline

1931 - 1938 Worked for the State Department’s Foreign Service as a Clerk
- 1931 - 1933 :: Warsaw, Poland (Virginia is 25 years old)
- 1933 :: Smyrna (Izmir) Turkey
- 1934 - 1938 :: Venice, Italy
- 1938 - 1939 :: Tallin, Estonia

1937: Virginia takes the Foreign Service exam to become a Foreign Officer for the State Department and is disqualified for consideration due to her disability and the patriarchy. (Read the book for a more detailed explanation of this clusterf*ck).

May 1939: Virginia resigns from her work as a State Department clerk and goes to Paris. While there, she works as a journalist and begins looking at how she might fight the Nazis, who have yet to take France.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invades Poland. Two days later, Britain, France, New Zealand, and Australia declare war on Germany.
1940: Virginia joins the French ambulance service, after having been rejected by the British service, likely due to her disability. Below is a newspaper clipping from the Baltimore Sun that told her hometown how she was driving an ambulance on the front lines of France once the Nazis decided to invade. I dug this out of the mircrofiche treasure chest at the New York Public Library.

*** Check out the interesting juxtaposition between this article about badass Dindy and the “Wifie” ad beside it. I CAN’T EVEN.

1941: Virginia heads over to England, since Hitler’s all up in Paris. She begins working as a code clerk for the US. Oh yeah, the Blitz begins and she risks her life just by being in London.

1941:

👀 Virginia is recruited by the Special Operations Executive to serve as a spy for them in Vichy-controlled France when she attends a party at the house of SOE fixer Nicolas Boddington. MI5 does a background check on her and she passes with flying colors.

🕰 Historical Timeline ⏳

Dindy lived and worked during some of the most explosive times in history. Below is a snapshot of what happened in the world during her lifetime and what she was up to as history was happening around her. Above? Dindy hanging with some pals looking glam AF. 💄 👑

1906: Virginia Hall enters the Earth 👶 (or 🌟 “A Spy Is Born”)
1914: WWI begins 🪖
1917: The Russian Revolution ends czarist rule and ushers in the age of COMMIES! 😬
1918: World War One ends (thank Christ) ✌️
1922: Comrade, this is the year the Soviet Union was founded (This is the Russian Federation flag, because emojis aren’t great with history 🇷🇺 )
1924: Dindy graduates from high school, tries a couple US colleges, then hangs out to finish her degree in Europe. #hardknocklife 🍾
1929: The US stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins. 😥Dindy’s home for a wee bit.
1931: Dindy begins work abroad with the State Department, as a clerk in European consulates. First stop: Warsaw, Poland. 🚢 🎫 🇵🇱
1932: FDR becomes President. 🇺🇸 Later, he would write a letter to the State Department arguing for a fellow disabled government employee (ahem. Virginia Hall) - he used a wheelchair due to childhood polio, so he knew a thing or two about how real the struggles are for disabled folks. 🧑‍🦽
1933: Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. 🥸 🇩🇪 Nazis boycott Jewish shops, burn 📚 🔥 , and open the Dachau concentration camp, where some of Dindy’s fellow spies would one day be sent to die.
1933: 🇹🇷 Dindy moves on to the embassy in Smyrna (Izmir) Turkey, where a few months later she has her hunting accident and subsequent amputation. She’ll soon have her prosthetic leg 🦿. She’s 27 years old.
1934: Hitler consolidates his power in Germany through political executions in the “Night of the Long Knives” 🔪 🩸
1934: After a year of recovery in the States, Dindy returns to her embassy work abroad, this time at the American Consulate in Venice, Italy. 🚢 🎫 🇮🇹
1935: German Jews of stripped of their rights by the Nuremberg Race Laws.
1936: Mussolini (fascist leader of Italy, where Dindy is currently stationed) takes Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 Oh yeah, and civil war erupts in Spain because FASCISTS & Franco (El Fascist Numero Uno in España, is declared head of Spain. Oh dear). 🇪🇸 💣 But, weird? The Berlin Olympic Games still go on. 🏃‍♂️ 🏅
1937: paper 📝 Dindy takes part of the Foreign Officer’s exam and is disqualified (long story, read the book!) because of her disability, patriarchy, and dumbassery on the part of my least favorite Secretary of State, Cordell Hull - who, annoyingly - has a highway named after him. I know this because I was on the highway and saw his name and had screaming fit.
1938: 🇪🇪 Dindy transferrs from Venice to the consulate in Tallin, Estonia.
- November 7, 1938: ⚡️⚡️Kristallnacht :: “The Night of Broken Glass”; Jews and their businesses are attacked all over Germany, Austria, and the Sudentenland (a disputed territory bordering Germany and the Czech Republic, then Czechloslovakia, where my great-great grandparents are from).
1939: Virginia resigns from her career as a clerk in the State Department and goes to France. She is now 33 years old and tired of this bullshit. So: PARIS. 🇫🇷 🥐 🧀 🍷 ❤️
- Germany takes Czechoslovakia. 🇩🇪 x Czechia 🇨🇿
- The Spanish Civil War Ends
- The Nazis and Soviets form an alliance. 😬
- September 1: Nazis invade Poland. 🇩🇪 x 🇵🇱
- September 3: 🇬🇧 Britain, France 🇫🇷 , New Zealand 🇳🇿 , and Australia 🇦🇺 declare war on Germany. 👊
- September 5: The US declares neutrality. 🇨🇭
- Sept. 10: Canada declares war on Germany. 🇨🇦
- September 27: Poland surrenders 10 days after the Soviets invade. 🏳
1940: Shit gets (even more) real.💥
- April 9th: Nazis invade Denmark 🇩🇰 and Norway 🇳🇴
- Dindy tries to join the British ambulatory service (ATS), but they turn her down. She goes back to France and volunteers as tribute, should the Nazis invade. They say, oui. So…
- ⛑ 🚑 Virginia joins the French ambulance service and becomes an ambulance driver on the front lines, when the Nazis invade France. Which brings me to…
- May 10: Nazis invade France 🇫🇷 , Luxembourg 🇱🇺 , Belgium 🇧🇪 , and the Netherlands 🇳🇱 (where Anne Frank and her family are now beginning to set up their attic)
  - May 10 - June 25: 🛩 💣 🥀 🇫🇷 The Battle For France (spoiler alert: France lost). Dindy is driving up and down the Maginot Line, trying to save wounded men. The Luftwaffe is bombing from above, civilians are clogging the road.
- 🇬🇧 Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister
- May 15: 🇳🇱 The Netherlands surrenders to Germany
- May 28: 🇧🇪 Belgium surrenders to Germany
- June 3: Germans bomb Paris 💔
- June 10: 🇳🇴 Norway surrenders
  - 🍕 Italy declares war on Britain 🫖 and France 🥐
- June 14: Germans invade Paris 😭
- June 16: Marshal Pétain becomes French Prime Minister
- June 22: France signs an armistice with Germany 😡
- June 23: Hitler tours Paris ☠️
- 🇬🇧 Dindy leaves France and goes to England.
- There is much bombing between England and Germany. The Soviets have also taken Latvia 🇱🇻 , Lithuania 🇱🇹 , and Estonia 🇪🇪 during this time.
- September 7: “The Blitz” begins 💥: 🇩🇪Germany begins bombing 💣 🛩 England 🇬🇧. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.
1941: Making James Bond Look Like A School Boy
- 🔍 January: Virginia Hall is 34 years old - a Grown. Ass. Woman. - when she is recruited by SOE at a London party.
- 🏳 April - June: People are surrendering to the Nazis (including Greece, my family’s homeland), some are joining them, and Hitler decides he doesn’t want to be besties with Stalin anymore, so now Germany is fighting Russia (always a bad idea, just ask Napoleon).
- 🩸 July: Hitler’s Final Solution to “exterminate” all Jews in Europe begins being put into motion.
- 💥August 20: The siege of Leningrad begins. (If you haven’t read David Benioff’s City of Thieves, put it on your TBR = so good).
- 👊 🇫🇷 August 23rd: VIRGINIA HALL ARRIVES IN LYON FOR HER FIRST MISSION IN FRANCE. FUCK TO THE YES.
- ⛪️ Dindy is in Vichy, living with nuns and then in a hotel, until she switches things up and moves on to Lyon, my favorite city in France. Good choice, Dindy.
- 🕍 French Jews are being rounded up and deported to concentration camps. Most of them never make it home.
- 🇯🇵 🛩 🌊 Dec. 7: The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and the USA enters the war, declaring war first on Japan, then Germany (Germany declared war on us first blah blah blah).
- 👮 Dindy narrowly escapes being swept up in a mass arrest in Marseille. Now she has to figure out how to break these dudes out of the big house.
1942: The Year of Shit Hitting The Fan
- ❄️ Winter / Spring: Dindy’s in Lyon, breaking people out of prison, setting up meets, and narrowly escaping capture over multiple times.
- Vichy and the Nazis are besties and trying to hunt down all the SOE and Resistance fighters they can. Various Resistance cells run into trouble, and the whole cell run by SOE in Paris eventually collapses. Double and even treble agents abound.
- ☀️ August: Stalin and Churchill buddy up in Moscow and the first all-American air attack in Europe occurs. Everyone’s bombing the shit out of everyone.
- A sneaky priest employed by the Abwehr (German intelligence agency) comes to Lyon and begins sowing the seeds of misery for Dindy and her cohort. De la merde!
- 🍂 Autumn: Whoa, things are getting bad in Lyon. Dindy’s on the run - the Gestapo is on to her - and she still has people to break out of prison, agents who will be deported to a concentration camp unless she gets them out.
- Want to know what happens? You know what to do.
- 🩸 October 18: Hitler orders the execution of all British commandos, which includes Virginia Hall.
- 🏔 November 11: Dindy escapes to Spain over the Pyrenees mountains. She would later tell her niece, Lorna, that out of everything she went through in her career, this was the most terrifying.
- 🥸⚡️😬The Nazis occupy ALL OF FRANCE. Dindy gets the eff out.
- 🇪🇸 November 13: Dindy imprisoned in San Juan de las Abedesas prison in Spain….and placed in the prostitute’s cell.
- December 2: Virginia Hall is released from prison in Spain.
1943
- 🌲 February: The Nazis start the Service du travail obligatoire in France, which decrees that all able-bodied men who don’t have a job must work for Germany’s war effort. This forced labor causes the “Secret Army” to get a lot bigger, as young men flee to the forests of France to plot their revenge on the Nazis. This ragtag fighting force would be known as the Maquis, and soon it will be Dindy’s job to train them.
- 🇪🇸 May: Dindy’s working in Madrid, Spain for SOE, bored as hell and anxious to get back in the real fight. They offer her a desk job. Hell.
- 🍕 September 28th: Italy surrenders to the Allies. Ciao, fascism! See you later.
- 🇮🇹 October 13: Italy declares war on Germany because why not?
- 🇬🇧 November: Dindy leaves Spain and returns to London. Adios! She decides to train as a radio operator (on her own damn dime, no less, since SOE won’t agree to make her a W/T op). This is arguably the most dangerous job for a spy because it’s the only way that people on the ground can be in touch on the regular with the Allies and arrange for weapons drops and sabotage missions.
1944
- 🇷🇺 January 27: The 900-day siege of Leningrad FINALLY ends. Christ. That was rough. Russians everywhere celebrate with vodka...if they can find any.
- 🇺🇸 March 10: Dindy leaves SOE and joins the all-new OSS - Office of Strategic Services. SOE won’t send her back into the field, but the cowboys and cowgirls of the OSS are down with the risk (naturally). The OSS would become the precursor to the CIA. They decide to send her into France for a second mission.
- 🇫🇷 👵 🚤 March 21: Virginia Hall returns to France! New code name: “Diane.” Find out all about the drama of this second mission - and her very challenging (male) partner - here.
- 🐄 March - June: It’s the Dindy 500 - our girl is moving all over the countryside, posing as an old country woman, selling cheese in the markets by day and organizing fighting units and weapons drops all throughout the Haute Loire by night. She finally ending up in Le Chambon, France on July 14th.
- 🪖👊June 6: D-day, bitches! The Allies and the Secret Army Dindy has helped train in France throw hell at the Nazis, who run back towards the Fatherland with their demon tails between their legs.
- 😥August 5: Anne Frank and her family are arrested.
- 💥August 19th: The Resistance uprising begins in Paris
- 🎉 August 25: Liberation of Paris! It’s a little-known fact that it was Dindy’s intelligence gathering that helped make this possible.
- ♥️ September 4: Dindy’s future husband, Lt. Paul Goillot, US Army, falls from the sky. (MEET CUTE!!! Read the book to get all the details).
- 🇬🇧 September 26: The war in France is pretty much over, so Dindy heads back to London in preparation for her next mission. (Paul will be meeting up with her and together they’ll be training as a team to go into Austria. It’s time for Dindy to brush up on her German).
- 😭 October 30: Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Germans begin burning records and taking out witnesses to their sadistic rule as fast they can.
- 🇦🇹 December 19: Dindy and Paul are sent various places to put their next mission into place. They manage to get a team of saboteurs into Austria to fuck shit up, but the war is over before they can join them.
1945
- 💔 January: The Soviets liberate Auschwitz. It’s as heratbreaking as you can imagine, and then a lot more.
- 🚢 🌊 🇯🇵 By the way, the war in the Pacific is super intense, but BADASS is focused on Europe, so.
- ✌️ February 12: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill meet at their famous get-together in Yalta to plan the end of the war.
- April 12: FDR dies and Harry S. Truman becomes President of the United States.
- April 28: Mussolini is captured and hung by Italian partisans. #goodriddance
- 🎉 April 30: Hitler commits suicide. Dindy would call him a lot of things, inclusing a “cowardly salad.” Yeah, it would have been awesome to see him tried and executed, but I’m just glad he’s not on the Earth anymore, aren’t you? * shivers *
- 🎊 May 8: V-E Day (Victory in Europe). On May 7th, the Germans surrendered unconditionally and it as official on the 8th. (Um. The war in the Pacific is still raging, btw).
- 🏅 May: Virginia is awarded one of France’s highest honors, the Croix de Guerre ave Palme. Did she know? Did she forget? Dis she hide this news? I explore this mystery in the book and you can be the judge.
- 🎖 May 12: Virginia Hall is awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. She doesn’t let it be in a big ceremony at the White House because, as she said, she was “still operational and anxious to get busy.” She received the award from OSS chief General “Wild Bill” Donovan, with her mom in attendance.
- 🇩🇪 June 5: The Allies divide up Germany and take over its government.
- 🚗 June 17 - 22: Dindy takes a road trip with Paul in France, doing post-mission work, including tracking down the people she worked with to find out what happened to them and to pick up equipment. She writes passionately in her report about the struggles her comrades faced after the war and advocated for SOE to give some of them money and assistance. Many of them went to concentration camps, and some never returned. Those who did often had found they’d lost everything.
- 🩸 💣 August 6: The first atomic bombed is dropped in Hiroshima, Japan by US forces. Thousands die and even more are left with radiation poisoning and a destroyed land.
- 🩸 💣 August 9: A second atomic bombed is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
- 🇯🇵 August 14: Japan surrenders unconditionally. World War II is over.
- September 28: Virginia Hall officially resigns from OSS. A few days later, the OSS ceases to exist.
- 🕊 October 24: The United Nations is created.
- November 20: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials begin.
- ❄️ 💥The Cold War begins almost immediately as democratic countries and communist Russia begin side-eyeing each other, but doesn’t technically begin until 1947.
1946 Post War Life
- 🕵️‍♀️ January: President Truman creates the Central Intelligence Agency
- Dindy works in various capacities for CIA fronts, but is not yet part of the CIA, including the SSU - the Strategic Services Unit, which was an American clandestine operation that fought communism.
1950
- 🍜 🍵 The Korean War begins because, apparently, the world just can’t get enough of killing people. (I lived in Korea for a while - it’s a really cool place. It’s crazy the DMZ is still up.) The war would end in 1953, with the country being divided into North and South.
- Dindy works for a CIA front in New York City, with offices in the Empire State Building. Paul moves in with her and they live in sin. 🤭Dindy’s mom is scandalized.
1951
- 🕵️‍♀️December 3, 1951: Virginia Hall joins the CIA
1953
- 👗 CIA director Allen Dulles commissions the “Petticoat Panel” to take a look at gender disparities in the Agency.
1955
- 🪖The Vietnam War begins. It wouldn’t end until April 30, 1975. We’re not sure if Dindy was involved in any of the CIA ops over there, but it’s possible, given her paramilitary experience.
1956
- 🙌 July 3: Virginia Hall makes herstory once again by becoming one of the first women to make Career Staff at the CIA.
1957
- 💜 👰 🤵 Dindy and Paul tie the knot - 13 years after being together. Dindy is 51 years old by this point. Don’t you just love how she rolls on her own timeline, despite society’s expectations? This - as well as the choice to be child-free - was pretty unheard of in these days. After a brief stint running a restaurant, Paul was a househusband and it was Dindy who brought home the bacon.
- 👀We’re deep in the Cold War here, and Dindy has been working on various paramilitary desks, including having a hand in missions in South America. A lot of her file was redacted. But does she get sent overseas, despite having more field experience than many CIA directors during her tenure as an intelligence officer had? Nope. Read the book to learn all about the discrimination she experienced at the CIA: sexism, ableism, and ageism. A triple threat of invisibility.
1961
- 🐖 🌊 🇨🇺 Bay of Pigs fiasco occurs in Cuba. We have no idea how involved Dindy was with this one, but she likely had something to do with these ops, given her placement in the Agency at the time and her paramilitary experience.
- 🇩🇪 The Berlin Wall goes up. West and East Germany would be divided until they tore that shit down in 1989.
1966
- 🌼 Dindy turns 60 and so has to retire from the CIA, which was mandatory once you hit the big 6-0 at the time. She and Paul hung out on their property in MD, tending to daffodils, their poodles, hanging out in nature, and reading spy novels. Dindy was in quite some pain by this point - Cuthbert was giving her more trouble than usual and her body was breaking down after years in a high-stress environment. But she kept on keeping on.
1982
- 😢 Well, it’s always time for an agent to end a mission, isn’t it? Dindy died on July 8th, 1982 in her home in Rockville, MD. She was 76. Paul would hang on until 1987. After he died, his family gave Dindy’s niece, Lorna, Dindy’s radio from WWII (no idea how they let her keep that after the war!). It would be years before anyone would know about Virginia Hall.
2006
- 🖼 Virginia Hall is finally recognized in public for her war efforts with the unveiling of a painting that was commissioned for the CIA. In “Les Marguerites Fleuriront Ce Soir” (a coded phrase for munitions drops that Dindy used), artist Jeff Bass depicts Dindy sending messages from the field via London with one of her résistants peddling a bicycle to get them electricity. The unveiling took place at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C., where not only was it the first time France publicly acknowledged her efforts - a statement by then president of France Jacques Chirac was read - but it is also when Dindy’s MBE from the King of England had finally been discovered in a random drawer and returned to Dindy’s family. However, there was no mention of her Croix de Guerre…
2021
- 📕 Author Heather Demetrios publishes Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall on September 7th.