Hall’s wartime tales live on

James Bond he is not. But Roger Hall’s wily adventures in the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, seem to be the stuff that movies are made of. Comedies, that is.

Nothing in Hall’s U.Va. experience quite prepared him for the vital role he was to play in France as part of the OSS’s Special Operations unit during World War II. Certainly not French class.

“I was an abysmal French student,” lamented Hall (English ’41). “And it was the one class at Virginia that could have prepared me for the OSS.” He’s quick to clarify that he didn’t flunk out of French; he just dropped the class when his grade sank below 50 percent.

But his English degree undoubtedly contributed to his later literary success. Hall’s popular memoir, “You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger,” records his escapades in occupied France during World War II, where he “organized local guerrilla outfits and did some flag waving.”

Reprinted 14 times since its publication in 1957, “Cloak and Dagger” is now considered something of an intelligence classic. Former CIA agent Hayden Peake dubbed it “one of the best OSS memoirs,” according to The Washington Post.

As members of the Special Operations unit, Hall and his colleagues weren’t spies, exactly, but they frequently employed subterfuge and innovation. “Cloak and Dagger” details some of Hall’s adventures, as well as those of his friends.

In one wartime maneuver, when an indestructible German tank was blocking a key crossroads, Hall’s companion, dressed as a French farmer, strolled up to the tank and uttered one magic word: “Mail!”

“They bought it,” Hall said. “The tank suddenly opened, and in went two grenades.”

In another save, Hall held two Germans at gunpoint outside a tavern while his fellow officer, dressed as a peasant, went in, ready for a fight. The Germans were enjoying a drink at the bar when “out came the submachine gun,” Hall recalled. The next thing he knew, Hall’s companion had the Germans singing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem — at gunpoint, of course.

Aux grands maux les grands remedes, as the French would say. Desperate times require desperate measures.