There she published her autobiography, The White Mouse. Tired of a world that didn’t see her strength and intelligence, Wake and her second husband, former RAF officer John Forward, retired to Port Macquarie in 1985. While many relied on their war-hero reputations to gain offices throughout the 50s and 60s, Wake was never able to unseat the incumbent male officials that were always her opponents. Wake continued to receive similar honors throughout her life.Īfter years of grueling war and resistance, many would probably like to spend the rest of their days living the quiet life, not Wake.įor decades, she ran as a liberal candidate in several Australian elections. Perhaps most impressively, Wake also received the Croix de Guerre not once, not twice but three times over. Perhaps the most notable incident involved an SS sentry whom Wake actually killed with her bare hands–a well-placed judo chop to the man’s throat sealed his fate.Īt the war’s end, Nancy was laden with great medals and honors: the United States Medal of Freedom, the French Médaille de la Résistance and the British George Medal. Wake was going to keep her Maquis safe and secretive, no matter the cost. Wake personally killed spies and sentries. They blew up bridges, ripped railroad tracks and assaulted German troop convoys. She and her teams attacked infrastructure to cripple Nazi movements wherever possible. No job was too big or too small for Captain Nancy Wake. At their peak, they listed over 7,500 agents. From the time she was untangled from the parachute in the tree, she began recruiting and building the Maquis groups into effective resistance forces. She trained extensively in the many skills she would need to re-infiltrate Vichy Regime France. From Spain, Wake smuggled herself all the way to Britain, where she became an SOE officer. Wake would not know of his execution until after the war’s end–she blamed herself for the rest of her life.Īfter seven harrowing attempts, Wake made it through the Pyrenees to Spain. They tried in vain to torture him for her whereabouts, but his loyalty was unfailing.

Wake had no idea it would be the last time she would see him–Henri was quickly captured by the Gestapo. Completely off the grid and by herself, Wake needed to find a way out of the country undetected. Wake had to get out of France–she couldn’t afford to get caught, and she couldn’t afford to quit the resistance. Suddenly, the escape network was betrayed. 1942, there was a reward of 5 million francs for her capture. Her elusiveness earned her the moniker of “the White Mouse.” By Nov. From the very beginning Wake and her new husband, Henri Fiocca, were members of the French Resistance in Marseilles–she drove ambulances, carried covert messages and aided escape networks.Īlready, Wake infuriated the Gestapo. She recorded with alarm how Nazi gangs were brutalizing Jewish men and women in the streets. Throughout the 30s, Wake worked in Paris as a correspondent for Hearst and reported as an eyewitness to the rise of Hitler’s power. In London she trained herself and became a first-rate journalist. She left home, became a nurse and worked her way across the globe, bouncing from Sydney to New York City to London. At age 16, it was already clear that Nancy was going to be in charge of her own destiny. Not long after, her father left her and her siblings in the sole care of their mother. By 1914, her family had moved to Australia. It is one of many wild-but-true incidents from the life of Nancy Wake, one of the most invaluable intelligence officers of the Allied war effort. It sounds like something from a movie, but this is genuine history. “Don’t give me that French shit,” Nancy growled back. With a sardonic twitch in his smile, he looked at the ensnared Wake and said, “I hope all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year.” Her liaison, local Maquis Captain Henri Tardivat, appeared in the drop zone.

She knew, well before jumping from her plane, that discovery meant certain death.Īs she descended into the trees, her chute got tangled in a branch. It carried one British Special Operations Executive officer: Captain Nancy Wake. In Nazi-occupied France, March 1, 1944, a single parachute drifted through the night into the Forest of Tronçais in the Auvergne province.

Nancy wake