A one-legged American woman who spied for British Intelligence in France during the Second World War will today receive the public recognition that she denied herself when she was alive.

Virginia Hall will be honoured at a ceremony hosted by the British and French ambassadors to Washington 24 years after she died, aged 78, near her home in Baltimore, Maryland.

Sir David Manning, the British Ambassador, will present her niece, Lorna Catling, with a Royal Warrant personally signed by George VI.

Officials said yesterday that Hall should have received the warrant in 1943, when she was appointed MBE for her espionage work, but had not because it might have blown her cover.

At the time “the woman with a limp” was regarded by the Gestapo as “the most dangerous of all Allied spies”. They circulated posters offering a reward for her capture, saying: “We must find and destroy her.”

The limp was the consequence of a shotgun hunting accident in Turkey during the 1930s in which doctors had to amputate her left leg below the knee. This injury wrecked her dream of becoming a US State Department officer and she wound up in Paris in 1940, working for the ambulance service, when France fell to the Germans.

A skilled linguist, Hall made her way to London and volunteered for Britain’s newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), which sent her back to Vichy France in August 1941. She spent 15 months pretending to be an American journalist while running a network of spies, as well as an underground railway for Jews and allied airmen in Lyons, before narrowly escaping capture and fleeing to Spain.

Her artificial foot had its own codename, “Cuthbert”, and before making her escape, she signalled to London that she hoped it would not give her problems. SOE, perhaps forgetting the code, replied: “If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.”

Hall later joined the American Office of Strategic Services who sent her back into France in 1944. She eluded the Gestapo, disguising herself as an elderly goat herder by stuffing her dress with sack cloth. She sent back valuable information through Morse code messages, worked with the French Resistance in central France, training guerrilla battalions, while also mapping drop zones for supplies and commandos coming from England.

In the final days of the German occupation of France her teams destroyed four bridges, derailed freight trains, wrecked telephone lines, killed more than 150 enemy soldiers and took more than 500 prisoners.

After the war in Europe ended, President Truman wanted a big White House ceremony so that he could present her with the Distinguished Service Cross, the only one awarded to a civilian woman in the war. But, once again, she declined because she was still involved in intelligence work. Instead, she picked up her medal in a low-key private ceremony and carried on working for the CIA until 1966.

Mrs Catling, her niece, also from Baltimore, told The Times yesterday: “She never wanted any recognition. I think she believed she was just doing her job. Even when she retired, she would talk about books and animals, but not about the incredible things she had done.

“I’m still finding out about her. I’m impressed, very proud and totally in awe of her.”

WOMEN UNDER COVER

Julia McWilliams

Joined the Office of Strategic Services, and was head of the secretariat in China. Developed shark repellent for navy and OSS divers

Josephine Baker

US-born entertainer active in the French Resistance. Used to write secret information in the margins of her sheet music and pass it on in concert venues

Marlene Dietrich

Born in Berlin, she was granted US citizenship in 1939. Recorded anti-Nazi messages in German that were transmitted to German troops

Countess Aline de Romanones

Born Aline Griffith in New York; was recuited by the OSS while working as a model. Went to Madrid and became a decoder. Married into Spanish nobility, and wrote fictionalised accounts of her experiences

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe Pack

American wife of British diplomat. Seduced powerful men, helped to crack German Enigma code and delivered the Italian and Vichy naval cipher code books to the Allies

Sources: defenselink.mil, Times archives, New York Times