The Cellar - The White Mouse has died

War heroine Nancy Wake dies

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Nancy Wake, the French Resistance fighter who became Australia's most decorated World War II heroine, has died in a London hospital at the age of 98.

Born in New Zealand and raised in Sydney, Ms Wake was nicknamed "The White Mouse" by the Gestapo because she was so hard to capture.

She is regarded as a heroine in France, which decorated her with its highest honour, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and a French Resistance Medal.
As well as the Legion d'Honneur, Ms Wake was awarded Britain's George Medal and the US Medal of Freedom.

Ms Wake left Australia and moved to France in 1932, joining the Resistance after the German invasion in 1940 and helping shelter displaced Jews fleeing the Nazi regime.

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Credited with helping to save thousands of lives, Ms Wake was placed at the top of the Gestapo's most wanted list and fled France for England on the advice of her husband Henri Fiocca in 1943.

"Henri said, 'You have to leave', and I remember going out the door saying I'd do some shopping, that I'd be back soon. And I left and I never saw him again."

Trained as a spy by Britain's Special Operations Executive, she then returned to Nazi-occupied France to work with the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944.

Parachuted back into France, Ms Wake's job was to distribute weapons among Resistance fighters hiding in the mountains.

"In those days it was safer, or a woman had more chance than a man, to get around, because the Germans were taking men out just like that."

To arrange the delivery of weapons and other supplies, messages had to be sent via radio phones.

Ms Wake's group lost theirs during a raid by German troops.

This disastrous loss meant Ms Wake had to pedal more than 200km to another radio operator.

More at the link.

Nancy Wake was extremely good at what she did, a fighter, a leader, a secret agent; and she really hated the Nazis. She had been in Vienna when the Nazis took over and she saw the pogroms, and her husband (and many comrades) were tortured and killed.

She saved or helped save thousands of allied men and refugee Jews, and killed quiet a few Germans on her own account, and has said in interviews she regretted not killing more. During a raid in support of the D-day landings she killed one with a barehanded blow to the side of the neck.

Quite a woman.