Code Name "Diane"--The Virginia Hall Story and America's Greatest Female Spy
Commander's Message
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Commander Article
We were privileged to have the National Commander visit the Department of Maryland on the 13th and 14th of March. A banquet in his honor was held at Greenbelt Post 136 Saturday evening and a breakfast on Sunday morning. the banquet was a grand evening attended by over 225. This certainly demonstrated our support to the National Commander. I was extremely proud to be your Department Commander and to be part of that dedicated support. I want to thank Post 136 for hosting the event and Ed White and his committee for planning and organizaing the banquet, breakfast and other weekend activities. A very special thanks goes to Bob Johnson who stepped in to be our Master of Ceremonies due to the illness of Ed White. In addition, I give a special thanks to Tom Davis who arranged a briefing on Saturday morning at the National Security Agency and a tour of their museum at Fort Meade. After the visit to NSA, we visited Clinton Post 259 and were treated to a delicious lunch. Thank you Commander Kern of Post 259 for your hospitality. We missed our 90% target date for membership, but we must keep moving to meet our next goal. Please continue to work your delinquent list. A cordial phone call or a friendly note by mail will go a long way to remind these members that we need their support. Everyone should be watchful for new members. I continue to remind American Legion members that the responsibility for recruitment belongs to every one of us. Don’t hesitate to ask someone to join if you think they might be eligible for membership. In addition to membership, we certainly do not want to neglect our support in other programs. Donatons to many of the programs we support are down. So please, take a look Read More ...
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Reflections of an Adjutant
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Adjutant Article
This article will not be a long one but is one of the more important ones I have penned in recent years. As many may recall, the members in Maryland have had the opportunity of renewing their annual membership online for several years. For the most part, this program has proved to be very successful. Obviously, there were a few minor glitches during the beginning, however, these have been resolved and we are now proceeding to the next step of the online renewal program. Sometime in coming months we will also be providing our members with the capability of printing their membership card when they renew on line. While this is a new capability, we do not believe that it will create large problems. However, since this will be in a test scenario, there is the possibility that there may be a glitch or two but they should be small and quickly solvable. Just think, we are actually moving into the 21st century; kicking and screaming, but we are going. All of the Posts have been notified that this upgrade is coming and should have little difficulty with it. Read More ...
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A Day in the Life of Service
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Virginia Hall
Historical commemorative by Staff Editor Michael Theriault
Virginia Hall was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1906. She attended Radcliff and Bernard colleges, but unlike most of her female college contemporaries, she sought a more spirited lifestyle and thus secured a position as a consular clerk for the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in 1931. She aspired to join the ranks of the State Department Foreign Service but suffered a serious tragic accident while hunting in Turkey in 1932; she slipped, lost the grip on Code Name “Diane” — The Virginia Hall Story and America’s Greatest Female Spy her rifle and the weapon discharged, striking her lower leg. By the time she could get medical attention, gangrene had set in and the surgeon had to amputate her leg below the knee. Her lower leg was subsequently replaced with a wooden appendage which caused her to noticeably limp. As State Department policy prevented Foreign Service officers from serving who had any amputations, her chance for a diplomatic career fizzled to an end in 1939. At the outset of World War II, Virginia hall was in Paris and she joined the ambulance corps as an enlisted woman. As the Axis forces Read More ...
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