Nancy Wake was a rebel who laughed often and remained fiercely feminine, according to author Russell Braddon. She was exuberant and gregarious, swore like a sailor, and could drink nearly all her male counterparts under the table.
Her story is an inspiring journey through the darkest days of World War II and of triumph in near-impossible circumstances. A fearless leader, skilled saboteur, and dedicated member of the French Resistance, Nancy's contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany and her uncanny ability to evade capture by the Gestapo earned her the nickname "the White Mouse."
Her notoriety among the Gestapo rose to the degree that a five-million-franc bounty was placed on her head. Nancy would go on to become the most decorated British servicewoman, earning accolades for her courage, resilience, and cunning as a member of the British Special Operations Executive.
Nancy Grace Augusta Wake was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on August 30, 1912. In 1914 her family relocated to Sydney, Australia, where Nancy would spend her formative years.
Nancy was a free-spirited and independent young woman and at the age of 16 left her home to work as a nurse. In 1928 Nancy received a 200-pound inheritance from a deceased aunt, which she used to pay for passage to explore the world.
After traveling to New York, Paris, and Berlin, she spent time in London training as a journalist. In the 1930s she chose to settle in the French capital, where she began to work as a European correspondent for Hearst newspapers.
Nancy enjoyed her Parisian lifestyle, working hard all day as a journalist and spending many long, glamorous evenings in the cafes and clubs that Paris was so well known for. She witnessed firsthand the rise of Adolf Hitler and the growing threat of the Nazis.
A friend who had been a socialist member of parliament in Germany but had fled after Hitler took power in 1933 told Nancy and her circle of friends of the dire political situation in Germany. Nancy and a few of her colleagues decided in 1934 to take a trip to Vienna to see the political developments for themselves and to sell a few articles there.
They witnessed the maltreatment and persecution of the local Jewish population. During a later trip to Berlin, Nancy bore witness to the Sturmabteilung, also known as the Stormtroopers or Brownshirts, and their abhorrent treatment of the Jews.
These experiences shaped Nancy's convictions and fueled her determination to fight against Nazi tyranny. Nancy returned to her life in Paris, where for the next few years she would continue her relatively carefree life.
She adopted a wire-haired terrier named Picon, to whom she became inseparable. Traveling to Marseille in October 1934 in the hopes of writing an article about King Alexander of Yugoslavia's visit to France, she witnessed his assassination along the Canebiere.
In the chaos that ensued, Nancy retreated into the safety of a nearby bar, where she met a beautiful young Yugoslavian woman named Stephanie. They went on to become lifelong friends.
The pair shared a flat together in Paris for a few years and spent their evenings courting many suitors while Picon loyally awaited their return. After the long nights out, with the situation across Europe becoming ever more dire, Paris became a hub for refugees.
People were not only fleeing Nazi Germany but also the fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It seemed that all-out war in Europe was more a question of when, not if.
In 1936, while at a nightclub in Marseille, Nancy met a wealthy French industrialist named Henri Fiocca. Nancy was dating an American man at the time, and Henri had an attractive blonde on his arm that evening.
Nancy was initially unimpressed by Henri's playboy persona. However, as they spent more time together, she grew to appreciate his charm, wit, and intelligence. The two soon fell deeply in love.
Henri Fiocca was born in Marseille in 1898. As a successful businessman, he was the heir to a prominent shipping company, which granted him considerable wealth and social standing.
Despite his privileged background and reputation as a playboy, Fiocca was known for his generosity and warm-hearted nature. Nancy and Henri's courtship was carefree and romantic, whether it was sipping pastis, dining at popular bistros, or holidaying in Cannes and Saint-Tropez.
They didn't realize how soon things would change with the war in Europe looming. Henri asked Nancy to marry him in 1939. The proposal was unexpected, but after keeping Henri in suspense for a few days, she gratefully accepted.
Nancy left her beloved flat in Paris, moving south to Marseille to join Henri. The couple planned to marry a few months later in 1940, circumstances permitting.
Nancy, who considered herself British as much as she did Australian or Kiwi, decided to spend a month in England before her marriage. However, as fate would have it, she disembarked her train at Paddington Station on September 3, 1939, to be greeted by the shocking news of the outbreak of World War II.
Nancy had to abandon her plans and beat a hasty retreat back to France. Henry and Nancy brought their nuptials forward and held their wedding reception on November 30, 1939, at the Hotel du Louvre in Marseille.
After a brief honeymoon in Cannes, the newlyweds returned to Marseille, where Nancy settled into her new life as a French housewife. During the Phoney War, Henry and Nancy stocked up on tinned goods, coffee, sugar, tea, and cigarettes in anticipation of rationing and shortages.
Shortly after March 1940, Henri received his call-up to join the French army. Nancy decided that she needed to make herself useful in the war effort.
She convinced Henri to buy her a vehicle, which she had converted into an ambulance. Nancy joined a voluntary ambulance unit and until June 1940 ferried fleeing refugees and injured soldiers and civilians to hospital.
The horrors that she saw, including machine-gunned civilians and children, made her resolve to oppose Nazi Germany all the more firm. When Paris fell, Nancy was compelled to return to Marseille, where she was soon joined by Henri returning from his military service.
Marshal Philippe Petain, a French World War I hero, was installed as the head of the Vichy government, a puppet regime that collaborated with the Nazis. He signed the Armistice convention with Nazi Germany in Compiegne, effectively dividing France into the German-occupied zone and the so-called free zone.
The situation for France was made even more bleak with the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk during May and June of 1940. The British attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on July 3, 1940, put further strain on Anglo-French relations.
The French pinned their hopes on General Charles de Gaulle. After the signing of the Armistice, he fled to London and established the Free French Forces.
On June 18, 1940, he made his famous radio address urging the French people to resist the German occupation and join him in the fight for freedom. De Gaulle's leadership and vision laid the foundation for the French Resistance movement against the Nazi regime.
As the war in Europe escalated, Nancy found herself drawn to the French Resistance. She was fueled by her passionate hatred for the Nazis and her love for her adopted country of France.
Nancy was in the fortunate position of having enough funds and social connections to purchase black market goods and food, but she nevertheless, like everyone else, lived under constant fear of being denounced. The only thing worse than falling into the clutches of the Vichy police was coming face to face with the Gestapo.
As Nancy planned her next move, she surely had no inkling of just how desperate the Gestapo would later be to get their hands on her. Later that year, in 1940, Nancy met a French army officer who had remained in France as a resistance organizer and was in league with de Gaulle.
He asked Nancy to take an envelope with her the next time she traveled to Cannes. The envelope was then to be picked up from a hotel by another member of the resistance.
Nancy persuaded Henry to agree and thus became a courier for the French Resistance, delivering all manner of letters and parcels around the regional resistance networks. The Hotel du Louvre in Marseille, where Nancy and Henry had their wedding reception, was like a second home to them.
One evening when Nancy entered the bar, she noticed an out-of-place blonde man sitting on his own. As it turned out, he was an English officer interned on parole by the French.
Nancy and Henry quickly befriended the officer and began supporting a group of English army officers allowed out from their internment as POWs on parole. Using their social connections and Henry's considerable wealth, Nancy spent the first three years of the war sheltering downed Allied soldiers and airmen.
Her base of operations was a safe house Henry had purchased outside Marseille. At great risk to her and Henry's safety, she arranged for new clothes for the men along with forged papers and false identification cards.
Nancy then organized for the men to be ferried across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain and then back to Britain. It was in this way that Nancy met Scottish army officer Ian Garrow.
He was organizing an escape route for British men interned in the French prison camps. He was shortly joined by a Belgian who went by the name of Patrick O'Leary; his real name was Albert Guerisse, and he would eventually take over leadership of Garrow's organization, which became known as the O'Leary Line.
With the continued support of her husband, Nancy began working in earnest as a courier for the French Resistance, smuggling documents, distributing pro-resistance leaflets, and helping downed Allied airmen escape from France. In 1942, Henry and Nancy received the troubling news that Garrow had been arrested.
He was to serve three months' solitary confinement and was then to be transferred to the Mauzac concentration camp to serve a 10-year sentence. Garrow wrote to Nancy to ask for her support and assistance; he was starving and anxious over his transfer to Mauzac.
O'Leary had engaged a prominent Marseille lawyer to defend Garrow, but the lawyer did absolutely nothing to help his client and, through either inaction or incompetence, lost Garrow's appeal. Nancy felt compelled to help Garrow, but Henry was reluctant owing to the risks that Nancy's involvement would present.
Henry was eventually persuaded by Nancy to agree to her plan. Nancy intended to pose as Garrow's cousin and send him food parcels and visit him once transferred to Mauzac.
Nancy was then visited by a fellow prisoner of Garrow who had been acquitted and released. He sought out Nancy at Garrow's behest and told her that the men in the prison had heard talk of there being a guard at Mauzac who was open to being bribed to assist in an escape plan.
Nancy barely gave a second thought before agreeing to do all she could to free Garrow. Leaving Marseille on November 11, 1942, Nancy headed towards the Mauzac camp, located outside the small town of Bergerac.
Under the pretense of being cousins, Nancy managed to visit Garrow but was unable to make any headway in identifying the friendly guard. During her second visit to Mauzac, Nancy was approached by the rumored prison guard at a bar.
In exchange for his help, the guard demanded payment of 500,000 francs with an upfront deposit of 50,000 francs. He also needed a guard's uniform, which would be used by Garrow as a disguise for his escape.
The problem was that Nancy was short by 40,000 francs. She was compelled to ask Henry to telegraph the balance of the money to the nearest post office, which she collected and promptly paid to the guard.
Nancy had a close call when she was interrogated the next day by the Vichy police, who were tipped off about the large sum of money she had received. Ever the silver tongue, Nancy wangled her way out of the situation by convincing the authorities that for a woman of her status, 40,000 francs was only a small sum and very necessary to settle her drinks bill.
After a prison guard's uniform was smuggled into the camp, Garrow managed to slip out of the prison camp in his disguise. During the changing of the guard, he jumped into the car that was waiting for him and was whisked off to Toulouse to regain his strength.
He later was able to successfully trek over the Pyrenees into Spain, and from there he made it back to England. When a French gendarme called at Nancy's home to inform her of the escape of her "cousin," she did the only thing a naive French housewife would do and called Henri in delight to say how joyful she was to receive the news.
She suspected that the Gestapo was listening in via phone tap, so it was the most inconspicuous and in-character thing for her to do. It was soon thereafter that Nancy started to hear rumors the Gestapo were searching for a woman they began referring to as the White Mouse.
Nancy knew that it was her they were after and that she would have to tread more carefully. What made things even worse was that Nazi Germany invaded the so-called free zone in November 1942.
The presence in Marseille of not only the Vichy police but also the Gestapo made involvement in resistance activities all the more dangerous. As Christmas of 1942 approached, Nancy continued to smuggle Allied men out of France and act as a courier to the resistance.
She was determined to enjoy as normal a Christmas as wartime circumstances would allow. Henry owned a chalet in Naves, and as was customary before the war, Nancy purchased a piglet and a small plot of land to grow potatoes to feed it.
A local farmer was commissioned with fattening up the pig ready for that Christmas. When the pig was ready for slaughter, Nancy traveled to Naves by bus, where she collected the black market pork.
She was however informed by the locals that the Gestapo were on the lookout for a young woman recently having caught the Naves bus. She chose instead to return to Marseille by train.
She lugged the heavy suitcase filled with approximately 60 kilograms of choice pork cuts into the luggage compartment. To her consternation, she was joined in the compartment by a young man who appeared suspiciously like a German officer.
Putting her wiles to good use, she began to flirt with the man, ultimately convincing him to carry her suitcase off the train upon arrival in Marseille. When he and Nancy were stopped by customs to check the suitcase, he gallantly pulled out his Gestapo papers and they were promptly whisked through customs without being searched.
To show her gratitude, Nancy promised to meet the young man for a drink. Needless to say, she stood him up, and Nancy and Henry put on a splendid meal for their friends that Christmas.
1943 brought further pain and suffering for the French people with the establishment of the Milice, that cruel and sadistic French auxiliary of the German Army formed to hunt down members of the French Resistance. Nancy began to suspect that she was being watched.
She thought she heard faint clicking sounds when she used the telephone and so assumed, rightly, that her phone had been tapped. A friend then informed Nancy that a man had been spotted digging through her mailbox.
A third tip-off came from the proprietor of the cafe on the corner of Nancy's street, who said that he was sure he saw a man following Nancy when she left home. It became clear to Nancy that she would have to leave France for her own safety.
With a heavy heart, she made the agonizing decision to leave her beloved husband behind, knowing that their separation might be permanent. Nancy packed her bags, carrying her best jewelry in her handbag and a wad of notes in her bra.
Henry and Nancy were compelled to say only a casual goodbye owing to the Vichy Police Commissioner living next door. Nancy would tragically never see Henry again.
Nancy's intention was to travel to England via the same escape route through the Pyrenees Mountains that she had been arranging for so many Allied servicemen. Her luck as the White Mouse was however about to run out.
Nancy's first stop on her journey west was in Toulouse, where she intended to link up with other members of her resistance circuit. In Toulouse she stayed at the Hotel de Paris and continued her work as a courier while she waited for arrangements for her Pyrenees crossing to be settled.
While returning to Toulouse from Perpignan, her train was suddenly stopped and everyone on board was arrested by the Vichy police. Hustled into the back of a truck, Nancy and several others with her took the opportunity when the truck stopped to jump out and make a dash for it.
Bolting down the nearest side street, Nancy and the others unluckily ran straight into the path of protesting students fleeing from police in the other direction. The two groups collided and found themselves cut off on both sides by the authorities.
The escaping train passengers were recaptured and taken to jail. During her interrogation by the Vichy police, Nancy decided her best course of action was to rely on the fact that she had been traveling under her real name.
She asserted that she was Madame Fiocca of Marseille and that she was on a business trip with her husband. The Vichy police however had already decided that they intended, come what may, to charge Nancy with a crime.
She was first accused of being a prostitute from Leeds. When this didn't stick, she was accused of being involved in the bombing of a cinema in Toulouse by members of the resistance.
Nancy felt it futile to deny the accusations, as her captors seemed to have already decided her fate. Over the next four days she spent her time either being interrogated or beaten up by the Vichy police, who continued in vain to extract a confession out of her.
Then one morning she was dragged from her cell and told to wait in the corridor outside. Glancing up, she locked eyes with none other than Patrick O'Leary.
Thinking that he too had been arrested, she quickly averted her gaze to avoid the two being associated and causing even more trouble. In truth, O'Leary was there to rescue Nancy.
After three days in captivity, members of the O'Leary Line were convinced that Nancy had not given anyone up and so they decided to rescue her from the clutches of the Vichy police. O'Leary posed as a senior member of the Milice and a close friend of its head, Pierre Laval.
O'Leary's story was that Nancy was his lover and that they had been traveling together when they were separated in the commotion on the train. He said Nancy had kept silent for fear of incurring the wrath of her jealous husband.
After a few tense moments, the police commissioner was convinced. O'Leary and Nancy walked arm in arm out of the jail. The White Mouse had slipped through the enemy's fingertips and was once again at large.
Upon their release, Nancy went to stay with a woman named Francoise, where she was to lie low pending her mountain escape. Francoise was a chain-smoking, black-coffee-drinking resistance stalwart who provided food and shelter to all those hoping to make it across the mountains to freedom and safety.
Nancy and the others in her party made several unsuccessful attempts to cross the Pyrenees Mountains owing to a heavy Nazi and Milice presence along the frontier. A sixth attempt to make the crossing was postponed as Francoise was planning for the escape of ten men from Castres prison.
A friendly guard made the escape possible by offering his fellow guards a spiked bottle of wine. On the evening in question, this sent the guards promptly off to sleep and allowed the prisoners to slip out without raising any alarms.
The nine prisoners, along with the guard, joined Nancy and Francoise, where a few days were spent lying low and scrubbing their muddy clothes clean enough to be worn in public without arousing suspicion. The party was divided into two groups and set off by train for Perpignan along the French frontier.
Nancy's group also comprised O'Leary, a French radio operator, a New Zealand airman, and a French ex-policeman. The train journey was going smoothly until a railway official threw the doors open to their compartment to warn the escapees that the Germans were stopping the train for a search.
There was nothing for it but for them all to jump from the moving train as it slowed. As they landed in the dirt, they were greeted by a hail of gunfire from the approaching Germans.
The party scattered, darting into the vineyards in an attempt to escape their pursuers. They eventually managed to regroup atop the nearest mountain.
Nancy discovered to her sorrow that she had dropped her handbag containing her jewels. She would have to make do with the francs she still had stuffed in her bra.
The party then stayed two freezing nights in a deserted barn, where they hid by day and walked by night to O'Leary's safe house in Canet-Plage. From there they caught a train back to Toulouse to start all over again.
By this stage Nancy was convinced that their resistance circuit had been compromised. They were having too many close calls and were being boxed in by the Gestapo at every turn.
O'Leary however didn't agree, a stance that ultimately cost him his freedom. While the escape party bided their time before making another attempt to cross the Pyrenees, O'Leary agreed to meet a new recruit within their circuit.
This recruit had asked specifically to meet Nancy, whom he described as the amusing girl from Marseille. Nancy wisely did not attend the meeting.
Upon arrival at the cafe where the meeting was to take place, O'Leary was promptly arrested by the Gestapo. The new recruit was in fact Agent Number 47 of the Gestapo; his name was Roger Le Neveu and he was known also as Roger La Legionnaire.
O'Leary was sent to Dachau, where he was sentenced to death. The camp was fortunately liberated by the Allies before his sentence was meted out.
With O'Leary's arrest, the entire resistance circuit was compromised. Francoise's apartment had to be immediately vacated.
Nancy traveled to another safe house owned by a lady named Madame Sansot in Nice. It was decided that there was nothing for it but for them to take their chances once again and head back to Perpignan and over the mountains.
Before the next attempt could even get going, another hurdle presented itself. Nobody knew the identity of the man who was to arrange for their guides across the mountains, nor the password he required.
Industrious Nancy, following a few clues, marched right up to the door of the house belonging to the man whom she suspected was the right one. When her knock was answered, she announced herself forthrightly as Nancy Fiocca and told the man that they both worked for O'Leary and that she needed to get to Spain.
Her direct approach worked, and the man quickly ushered Nancy in to discuss the necessary arrangements. Nancy's party consisted of her, one New Zealander, two Americans, and former Air France pilot Bernard Gohan.
They were smuggled in the back of a coal lorry to where they would start their hike across the mountains. They met their Spanish guides and immediately started the journey across the high peaks of the mountains, where the Germans patrolling with their police dogs were less likely to be.
The trip, which was to take approximately 48 hours, required the party to march for stretches of two hours with a 10-minute break in between. Despite the grueling hike, freezing temperatures, and being caught in a blizzard, they eventually crossed a river into Spanish territory.
Two days later they were provided with a hot meal and spent two nights recovering at a local safe house. The night before Nancy and company were to be driven to Barcelona, the Spanish authorities raided the safe house.
The luckless escapees were rounded up and sent to a local jail, where they spent three nights without food or water. Nancy and the others were eventually tried for illegal entry into Spain, but the British government pulled a few strings and paid a few bribes, thus securing their release.
Nancy made her way to Barcelona, where she was finally out of danger. From there she traveled to Madrid and then by boat back to England, where she met up with Ian Garrow.
Nancy knew her work wasn't yet done. Her husband, her dog, and her adopted nation remained under Nazi captivity. It wouldn't be long before she would return to France, this time as a soldier.
In London, Nancy hoped that she would soon be joined by her beloved Henri and dog Picon. She was however plagued by nightmares that her husband had been killed.
She refused to let bad dreams get the better of her and so planned for Henry's return by securing a flat and buying Henry a dressing gown and slippers. She quickly tired of waiting around and spending time socializing in the pubs.
She wanted to get back to France to continue the fight and be reunited with her husband. Calling on the connections she had made during her trip through Spain, she asked to join the Free French movement but was rebuffed.
Undeterred, she was soon put in touch with the Special Operations Executive, formed in 1940 by Winston Churchill. She was quickly recruited.
Her chief aim was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and support local resistance movements. In a strange twist, Nancy had a run-in with one of the instructors the evening before she was to leave for a six-week training course in Scotland.
She was fired on the spot. Fortunately, the SOE realized their folly and rehired her a short time later.
So off Nancy went on various rigorous training courses, during which she learned weapons handling, homemade explosives, hand-to-hand combat, parachuting, and other essential skills required for clandestine operations. As a member of the SOE, she would be parachuted back into France to help coordinate, re-arm, and support the French Resistance fighters in their struggle against the Nazis.
On the night of April 29, 1944, Wake and her fellow SOE agent Hubert, a British army officer whose real name was Major John Farmer, were dropped into the Auvergne region of central France. Working under the code name Helene and various others, Nancy's mission was to help organize, arm, and train the local Maquis resistance fighters in the lead-up to the Allied D-Day landings.
There they were to meet up with a man named Hector, who was to connect them up with Gaspard, the leader of the Maquis of Auvergne, who was believed to be leading an army of three to four thousand men strong. While they managed to meet Hector, he didn't have the information Nancy and Hubert needed.
Hector said a courier was on his way with everything they needed, but he never turned up, and Nancy and Hubert would never see Hector again. To make matters worse, the radio operator that SOE in London had arranged to work with Nancy and Hubert chose to spend the week with a local boyfriend instead of linking up with the SOE.
They were thus unable to communicate with London to coordinate supply drops. There was nothing for it but for Nancy and Hubert to use their own resourcefulness to find Gaspard.
When they managed to meet him, it did not go well. Gaspard had no knowledge of Hector and was not expecting the arrival of any SOE agents.
With no radio and no money, the SOE agents were useless to Gaspard, and so he sent them to meet a man called Henri Fournier, who was in charge of the Maquis in the Show's Egg region. There they waited until eventually the SOE's radio operator emerged from his tryst and joined up with Nancy and Hubert.
The radio operator, whose name was Denis, contacted London and arranged for Allied planes to airdrop supplies atop a nearby mountain plateau. For nights on end, Nancy and Hubert worked to collect the supply drops, unpacking and degreasing the weapons that were then handed out to the Maquis soldiers.
Nancy and Hubert were then joined by another SOE operative named Rene Dusacq. He was one of the SOE agents Nancy had trained with, and he was nicknamed "Bazooka" because that was his favorite weapon.
While the writing was already on the wall for Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich by 1944, Nancy and the Maquis knew they would still be in for a fight before France would be liberated. Barely a day went by without skirmishes between the Maquis and the German army.
On June 6, 1944, the Allied troops landed at Normandy, but this brought no end to the fighting in central France where Nancy was based. On June 10, 1944, a large force of 11,000 German troops accompanied by tanks, artillery, and armored cars attacked Gaspard's three-thousand-strong force at Montlucon.
The Maquis fought bitterly, inflicting enormous losses on the German side, but were eventually forced to withdraw from the area and linked up with Fournier's forces. The German forces remained in hot pursuit, and it wasn't long before the Maquis found themselves beset by a German force comprising 22,000 men.
By the end of the fighting, approximately 1,400 German soldiers lay dead, whereas the Maquis suffered losses of only 100 men. Nancy and the Maquis withdrew to the northwest of their position.
The journey took four days, all the while the Maquisards were being pursued by the German forces supported by the Luftwaffe. In the rush to evacuate, Nancy's wireless operator buried his radio and destroyed his code books in case he was captured.
Nancy and Hubert were back to square one with no way of communicating with London or the outside world. With time running out and the need for assistance more urgent than ever, Nancy decided to take on the seemingly impossible task of re-establishing contact with the SOE herself.
Armed with little more than her determination and a bicycle, Nancy set off on a grueling 500-kilometer journey through enemy territory. The journey was fraught with danger, as the roads were heavily patrolled by German troops, and Wake was forced to avoid checkpoints and confrontations at every turn.
Despite the immense physical and mental strain, Nancy pushed on, using her knowledge of the local terrain and her instincts to navigate the perilous landscape. For two days and nights she rode without sleep or rest, battling exhaustion, hunger, and the ever-present threat of capture.
Finally, after traversing the treacherous 250 kilometers, Wake arrived at her destination and was able to send a situation report to the SOE in London, which included a request for another wireless transmitter. Her objective complete, she faced the daunting prospect of the return trip on the bicycle.
Physically exhausted and with her inner thighs in a terribly bad state, she pushed through and made it back to her camp safely. Nancy said after the war that, looking back on her achievements, the 500-kilometer bicycle trip was what she was most proud of.
Nancy and a smaller group of Maquisards then set up a camp not far from Ygrande in the Allier region. The SOE also sent in a young American Marine to serve as Nancy's radio operator and re-establish a method of reliable communication.
Tiring of sleeping rough on the cold hard ground, Nancy managed to do a deal whereby she secured additional supplies of Bren guns in exchange for being provided with a small bus in which she could lay a mattress. Nancy had managed to hang on to a few of her lace nighties from before the war and slept in them each night, much to the amusement of the Maquisards.
The plan of action for Nancy's group was to continue sabotaging and fighting the Germans while staying mobile. The Germans held an overwhelming number advantage, and so the resistance had to stay on the move and engage in guerrilla warfare tactics.
After one of the skirmishes, Nancy learned that among the German prisoners taken by the resistance were three women. When she heard that they were being used as prostitutes by the men, she demanded that they be released into her custody.
Two of the women were French and were later released. The third woman was a German and a committed Nazi.
Nancy reluctantly accepted that this woman would have to be shot. The German spy spat at Nancy and stripped naked when she faced the firing squad; she shouted "Heil Hitler" as she was shot.
Nancy recounted in her autobiography that the Nazis had made her tough and that the atrocities she witnessed made her feel no pity for her enemy. One of the most famous anecdotes from this period involves Nancy's participation in a daring raid on a German gun factory.
Entering through a back door, she threw a bunch of grenades into the factory before slamming the door behind her and bolting back to their getaway vehicle. It is said that the factory was completely wrecked and the grenades wiped out a fair share of German soldiers.
Nancy also claimed in a post-war interview that she silently killed a sentry with her bare hands by giving him a judo chop to the back of the neck. She said they taught this judo chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE and she practiced away at it, but this was the only time she used it and it killed him all right; she was really surprised.
On August 15, 1944, the Allied invasion of the south of France began. As the Allies advanced toward victory, Nancy continued to lead her team of Maquis fighters in a series of successful guerrilla warfare campaigns against the Nazis.
Her efforts played a significant role in undermining German control of the region and contributed to the eventual liberation of Paris on August 25. In September 1944 the Germans evacuated Vichy, and the French Resistance, including Nancy as one of their foremost leaders, marched into the city to great celebration.
The French Nazi collaborators had all but vanished into thin air. However, amidst the celebrations of victory, a devastating personal tragedy awaited Nancy.
She learned that her husband Henri Fiocca had been captured in 1943 and then tortured and executed by the Gestapo. This news was understandably devastating to her, but Nancy found solace in the knowledge that Henry had remained true to their cause and their love until the very end.
After the war, Wake returned to Britain and continued her work with the British Air Ministry's intelligence department before moving back to Australia in the 1950s. She ran twice unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Liberal candidate.
In 1957 she remarried, this time to an Australian ex-serviceman named John Forward. They were married 40 years until John's death in 1997.
Nancy's extraordinary wartime exploits earned her numerous accolades, including the George Medal from the United Kingdom, the Medal of Freedom from the United States, and from France the Medaille de la Resistance, three times the Croix de Guerre, and the Legion d'Honneur, among many others. Nancy said that she always felt underappreciated by her childhood nation, with successive Australian governments refusing to confer upon her any honors.
It was only in 2004 that she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. Despite the accolades, it wasn't until 1985, with the publication of her autobiography, that her story truly captured the public imagination.
The book became an international bestseller and cemented Wake's status as a World War II heroine. Nancy said that she always felt responsible for Henry's death but never regretted the decisions she made or the life she lived.
It is believed that she aided in the rescue of as many as 1,000 Allied servicemen from behind enemy lines. In 2001 Nancy returned to London, where she lived in the Stafford Hotel in Piccadilly.
She could be found at all hours sipping gin and tonics at the hotel bar and entertaining all those who stopped to chat. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 98.
Nancy's ashes were scattered in the hills of the Auvergne, the region where she had once led her team of Maquis fighters in their courageous fight against the Nazis.