Obituary: Nancy Wake "The White Mouse"

[Atmos]

'White Mouse' Nancy Wake dies

August 8, 2011 - 10:40AM

Australia's most decorated World War II servicewoman Nancy Wake has died.

Wake, known as the White Mouse, died on Sunday in a hospital in London, where she had lived since 2001. She was 98.

1. 'White Mouse' ... Nancy Wake, pictured here in 2004, has died.

2. A portrait of Nancy Wake, painted by Robert Hannaford

A close friend confirmed Ms Wake's death early today.

The fearless WWII French resistance fighter and leader had lived in a London nursing home for retired veterans since suffering a heart attack in 2003. Her health deteriorated recently after she was admitted to hospital with a chest infection.

After a typical fighting recovery late last week, her condition worsened over the weekend and she passed away peacefully at the Kingston Hospital.

When France was occupied by the Nazis in 1940 she and her French husband Henri Fiocca became active in the resistance movement.

Ms Wake saved thousands of Allied lives by setting up escape routes and sabotaging German installations. Trained as a spy by the British, she led 7000 resistance fighters in D-Day preparations and was on top of the Gestapo's most wanted list.

Called the White Mouse by the Germans because of her ability to evade capture, Ms Wake learnt at the end of the war that her husband was tortured and killed in 1943.

Ms Wake is regarded as a heroine in France, which decorated her with its highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and a French Resistance Medal.

She was also awarded Britain's George Medal and the US Medal of Freedom.

She was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2004.

[Atmos]

This article, by Nancy Wake's biographer Peter FitzSimons, first appeared on March 5, 2004

Overdue honour for one of the bravest

August 8, 2011 - 10:39AM

And so it is done. All these years on, after decades of pleas, plaints and petitions, Nancy Wake has accepted this nation's highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia.

It brings to a close a campaign that started almost immediately after World War II, when, despite the fact that the governments of the United States, Britain and France pinned to her lapel their highest honours for her wartime exploits fighting with the French Resistance against the Nazis, the Australian Government had never so much as given her an official pat on the back.

By the time she turned 60, in the early 1970s, on the occasions she returned to Paris the gendarmes would the instant they spied the rosette of her Officier de Legion d'Honneur salute and stop traffic for her to cross the road, while she was all but forgotten in Australia.

To be fair, in latter years this lack of recognition was in part caused by her refusal to accept any such honours. Twice she stood unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party in federal elections, and her overall view was that she wouldn't trust most politicians as far as she could kick them, which she'd like to do.

When I first met her for the Herald at her Port Macquarie apartment in April 2000, I raised the subject of whether she would accept an honour from the Australian Government. "No," she said with a ferocity that shocked me. "The last time there was a suggestion of that I told the government they could stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts. The thing is, if they gave me a medal now, it wouldn't be given with love, so I don't want anything from them."

The lesson for me when I came to write her biography was that the spirit which propelled her up the steps of the Gestapo headquarters at Montlucon in June 1944, rolling grenades like bowling balls and spraying German officers with machine-gun fire, was absolutely intact six decades on, even though the flesh had become weaker.

At the biography's launch Lieutenant-General Peter Cosgrove made a wonderful speech, concluding with: "Nancy Wake, you are a wonderful woman; you have been a great warrior for a great cause, and you have always done this country proud. I am deeply honoured to launch this book."

He bowed low, and some 250 people gave thunderous applause as Wake stepped up to the microphone. The crowd fell respectfully silent.

"I have only one thing to say," she rasped. "I killed a lot of Germans, and I am only sorry I didn't kill more." Stunned silence, followed by more thunderous applause.

She now lives in an absolutely first-class London nursing home reserved for distinguished war veterans. When I visited her late last year making my way past a man on the reception desk who was the closest Adolf Hitler lookalike I have ever seen it seemed she really had mellowed. This time when I asked whether she would accept an honour, she said she would, and I, for one, say bravo to those who have organised it.

[Atmos]

Wiki provides a brief summary of her WWII activities

Wartime service and Special Operations Executive

In 1937 she met wealthy French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca. (1898-1943), whom she later married on 30 November 1939. She was living in Marseille, France when Germany invaded. After the fall of France in the 1940s, she became a courier for the French Resistance and later joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow. The Gestapo called her the White Mouse. The French Resistance had to be very careful with her missions as her life was in constant danger and the Gestapo were tapping her phone and intercepting her mail.

By 1943, she was the Gestapo's most-wanted person, with a 5 million-franc price on her head.

When the network was betrayed in December 1943, she had to flee Marseilles. Her husband, Henri Fiocca, stayed behind where later, unknown to Nancy, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo on 16 October 1943. She was not aware of his death until the war was over. Wake had been arrested in Toulouse, but was released four days later. She succeeded, on her sixth attempt, in crossing the Pyrenees to Spain.

After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive and on the night of 29–30 April 1944 she returned to occupied France, being parachuted into the Auvergne and becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat. She coordinated resistance activity prior to the Normandy Invasion and recruited more members. She also led attacks on German installations and the local Gestapo HQ in Montluçon.

From April 1944 to the complete liberation of France, her 7,000 maquisards fought 22,000 SS soldiers, causing 1,400 casualties, while taking only 100 themselves. Her French companions, especially Henri Tardivat, praised her fighting spirit, amply demonstrated when she killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm during a raid. During a 1990s television interview, when asked what had happened to the sentry who spotted her, Wake simply drew her finger across her throat. On another occasion, in order to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid, Nancy Wake rode a bicycle for more than 500 miles (800 km) through several German checkpoints.

[JUDAS]

Makes me feel humble.

[lovelomsak]

I am also so humbled. An amazing woman. May the free world never forget her and honour her for ever.