Unsung Heroes: Nancy Wake

It’s 1944, you’re a member of the resistance in occupied France, and your vitally important radio codes have just been destroyed in a German raid. What do you do?

Nancy Wake c.1945

Well, if you’re Nancy Wake you cycle alone across 500km of enemy territory in order to find replacements. Who was Nancy Wake and what made her so astonishingly badass? Let’s step back to the start of World War II to find out.

A New Zealand-born nurse, Wake had travelled the world before settling in France in the 1930s. At the start of the war she was living with her new husband, industrialist Henri Fiocca, in the hills outside Marseille. Within months this would be occupied territory as Western Europe fell to the rapid advance of Nazi forces.

With a continent falling to the horrors of war, and possessing sufficient money to live comfortably anywhere in the world, many of us might say “hmm, perhaps it’s time to move to America.” Many of us might choose to keep our heads down, live the life of a wealthy socialite – a relatively safe course of action even in wartime. But not Nancy Wake. She became involved in the Resistance, delivering supplies and acting as a courier, purchasing a vehicle to serve as an ambulance for the care of refugees. Wake became more deeply involved with the Resistance as the war continued, becoming a key figure in the escape lines that helped smuggle escapees, downed airmen and Dunkirk survivors over the Pyrenees and into Spain. (And here it should be noted that Wake was far from the only woman to go to extraordinary risks to save the lives of escapees. Andrée de Jongh of the Belgian Comète Line and countless others performed acts of extraordinary heroism to do what they saw as a necessary task.)

At rough estimate, the work of Wake and the rest of her escape line organisation lead to as many as a thousand people being safely smuggled out of France between the start of the war and 1943. But she didn’t stop there.

You see, it turned out the Gestapo didn’t approve of resistance movements or helping escaping prisoners. So strongly did they disapprove of such behaviour that by 1943 they had Wake (codenamed ‘The White Mouse’ for her ability to evade capture) listed at the top of their most wanted list, with a five million franc reward for her capture. There’s a curious sort of honour in being recognised as the Gestapo’s most wanted person, the scary sort of honour that would see most people go to ground and stop risking themselves. But not, as you’ve probably guessed by now, Nancy Wake. It would take the betrayal of her cell, her near capture, and the insistence of her fellow resistance members to get her to finally escape over the Pyrenees and safely to England via Spain. Along the way she endured four days of interrogation at the hands of the Vichy French in Toulouse, and walked away from that as if it were hardly even worth noting.

So, you’ve spent the last several years of your life helping escaping prisoners. You’ve narrowly avoided capture on more than one occasion, been arrested, interrogated, and hunted by the Gestapo. After a grueling journey you’re finally safe in Britain. This is where you stop, say to yourself “right, I achieved some amazing things, time to relax and let someone else finish things up,” yes?

No, of course not. What you do now, assuming you’re a solid brass badass like Nancy Wake, is join the Special Operations Executive. And then, after a scant few months of training you parachute back into Auvergne in central France and begin organising a guerilla warfare movement. After all, someone has to pave the way for the D-Day landings.

On this second round in France, now under operating under the aegis of the SOE, Wake and other men and women of the SOE led a 7,000 strong group of ‘Maquis’, or freedom fighters. It was during this time that Wake made her marathon bike ride to retrieve the radio codes. In between gruelling cross country bike rides and organising supply drops, she also found time to lead covert attacks on Gestapo headquarters at Montlucon, and to launch a strike on the SS 2nd Panzer Division which reportedly drew such ire that the division sent fully 15,000 troops after Wake and her Maquis. As with all the previous challenges, she wasn’t put off by a mere Panzer division coming after her.

“[Nancy Wake] is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men.”

– Henri Tardive, fellow Resistance member

So, by the end of the war in Europe Wake had been responsible for the provision of aid to refugees, the saving of hundreds of escapees’ lives, and a series of daring acts of heroism that could keep war film writers in business for decades. All of this done in the face of countless risk, and why? Because it needed doing, and she was in a position to do it, so she was damn well going to. It took 59 years for her own government to recognise her service and appoint her a Companion of the Order of Australia in honour of her achievements.

“I hate wars and violence, but if they come I don’t see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.”

– Nancy Wake

(As a final note, Wake is only one of many women whose valorous acts in World War II are worthy of note. The SOE had 39 women serving in France alone. Odette Samson, Lyubov Shevtsova, and Madeleine Damerment are just some of the many others whose stories are worth knowing.)

• Unsung Heroes: a new series on BadRep spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school…

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  Guest blogger Rob Mulligan blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes.