When You Stop Needing Applause

The memo arrived at the Oval Office on a warm morning in June 1945. President Truman read it, then set it down with amazement.

"Miss Virginia Hall feels very strongly that she should not receive any publicity or any announcement as to her award. She states she is still operational and most anxious to get busy. Any publicity would preclude her going on any operation."

The woman declining his personal invitation had just become the only civilian woman of the war to receive the Distinguished Service Cross. She had organized resistance networks across Nazi-occupied France. Coordinated sabotage operations that crippled German supply lines. Saved countless lives while the Gestapo hunted her with wanted posters calling her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies."

Now she was rejecting a White House ceremony.