Who Was The Real Artemis?
- Author Chat
- by Alexander Bentley
- 10/11/2025
Alicia Rayes has the code name Artemis in Furniture Sliders in recognition and remembrance of a World War 2 heroine, Virginia Hall Goillot (1906 – 1982).
She was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC), Croix de Guerre, and Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) and used the code names Marie and Diane. She was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II. The objective of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE and OSS agents in France allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. After World War II, Hall worked for the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Germans gave her the nickname Artemis (the Greek huntress, goddess of the moon and guardian of secrets), and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies”. Having lost part of her left leg after a hunting accident, Hall used a prosthesis she named "Cuthbert”. She was also known as "The Limping Lady" by the Germans and as "Marie of Lyon" by many of the SOE agents she assisted.
She was a thirty-five-year-old journalist from Baltimore, conspicuous for her reddish hair, a strong American accent, and an imperturbable temper; she often took risks, but intelligently. “I would give anything to get my hands on that limping Canadian [sic] bitch”. Reportedly said by Klaus Barbie, Gestapo chief, “The Butcher of Lyon”.
Virginia Hall left no memoir, granted no interviews, and spoke little about her overseas life - even with relatives. She received the USA’s Distinguished Service Cross, the only civilian woman in the Second World War to do so. But she refused all but a private ceremony with OSS chief Major General William J. Donovan—even a presentation by President Truman.
