Nancy Wake
The White Mouse

World War 2 was won on many fronts. It was won on contested territory such as Northern Africa where the Rats of Tobruk gave General Rommel his first taste of battlefield defeat. The war was also won in occupied France where a resistance movement sabotaged key supply lines, gathered information and maintained morale for a French uprising. A central figure in this resistance movement was a larrikin Australian by the name of Nancy Wake. Nancy's sense of humour, individuality, endurance, and abject defiance of authority where ideal attributes for a leader of a guerrilla army. For the Nazis, she was a cause of endless trouble, leading to her being code named the "white mouse" thus becoming another Australian vermin heading the Gestapo's most wanted list.

Hitler's most wanted

At 21, Wake was working as a journalist in France, testing her formidable capacity for hard drinking and falling in love. In 1939 Nancy married a handsome wealthy French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in Marseilles. Six months later, Germany invaded France. Slowly but surely Nancy drew herself into the fight. In 1940 she joined the embryonic Resistance movement as a courier, smuggling messages and food to underground groups in Southern France. She also bought an ambulance and used it to help refugees fleeing the German advance.

Being the beautiful wife of a wealthy businessman, she had an ability to travel that few others could contemplate. She obtained false papers that allowed her to stay and work in the Vichy zone in occupied France. She became deeply involved in helping to spirit a thousand or more escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied fliers out of France and through to Spain.

Although she was judged to be unruly, her exuberant spirits and physical daring were thought "good for morale''. Her involvement escalated to that of resistance fighter who led an army of 7,000 Maquis troops in guerrilla warfare to sabotage the Nazis. Henri Tardivat, one of her comrades, later said that:

"She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men."

She was so good at evading the Gestapo that they code named her the "White Mouse". By 1943, Wake was No 1 on the Gestapo's most wanted list and there was a five million-franc price on her head. It was too risky for Wake to stay in France and the Resistance decided she should go back to Britain. Her husband was subsequently caught and executed for refusing to reveal her whereabouts.

Back in Britain, she convinced the Government to train her as a spy. A disruptive student, she immediately applied her training by breaking into her supervisors safe in order to read her confidential report. Later she was parachuted back into France to prepare the French resistance for the d-day landing.

After the war she received numerous international honours, including the George Medal, the Croix de Guerre, the Medaille de la Resistance, the Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur and the US Medal of Freedom.

As for her home country, despite being immensely popular with the Australian public, her larrikin ways have not endeared her to Australian officialdom. In a tale all too common in Australia, she has never received any official medal to recognise her achievements. In regards to being overlooked, Nancy has always been philosophical; once saying :

'they can stick their award and be thankful it's not a pineapple'.

As for how she would like to be remembered, she says she hopes to go down in history as the woman who turned down 7,000 sex-starved Frenchmen, and says:

'I got away with blue murder and loved every minute of it.'

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