Nancy Wake

B. Information About Nancy Wake

Nancy Wake (a female), was born in 1912 in Wellington, New Zealand. In 1914, at the age of two, her family moved to Sydney, Australia. Her father, Charles Wake, later left the family and returned to live in New Zealand, leaving her mother, Ella Wake (1874-1968) to care for their six children. Nancy attended North Sydney Girls High School for girls and at the age of 16 she escaped from her home and worked as a nurse. Then, with a 200-pound inheritance from her aunt’s will, she left for London and New York alone where she qualified as a journalist. In the 1930s, she worked in Paris. She later served as a correspondent for the European Hearst Newspaper Network owned by William Randolph Hearst. In this role, she saw Hitler’s violence against Jews, Gypsies and protesters on the streets of Paris and Vienna.
On November 30, 1939, she married a wealthy French industrialist named Henry Fiocese, and they lived in Marseille when the German army invaded the city. She died in 2011, at the age of 98.

C. Achievements

After the fall of France in the 1940s, Wake began to help the French resistance movement. She later joined the smuggling network of Captain Ian Garrow. Because of her ability to evade the Gestapo, her name was called “White Mouse”, and her activities on behalf of the movement were carefully chosen for fear of her life and the discovery of their activities. In 1943,  the Gestapo declared Wake as a wanted woman, and five million Francs were promised for to the person who will extradite her. Wake was arrested in Toulouse, but released four days later. After six attempts, she crossed the Pyrenees to Spain. Then she moved to England and joined the Special Operations Director, on her behalf, she was dropped on the night of April 29, 1944, back to France and acted as a contact person between London and the local resistance group. The group’s resistance activities and recruitment of its members were planned by it and under its leadership there were attacks on German facilities and the local Gestapo headquarters. From April 1944 until the liberation of France from the Nazi occupation, some 7,000 members of the resistance groups led by 22,000 SS soldiers fought and resulted in the deaths of some 1,400. Her colleagues during this period praised her fighting spirit, which proved itself while killing an SS soldier with her own hands to prevent him from triggering the alarm while raiding the seat of the German forces. She was employed at the British Embassies in Paris and Prague as an employee of the United Kingdom Government Intelligence Division trusting the RAF. After the war, Wakeke was awarded many different awards, including the Presidential Medal of Liberty and the Sign of the Legion of Honor.