Heroine Wake a 'role model for courage'

[1938 Observer]

Nancy Wake-------"The White Mouse"

Tributes have flowed from both sides of the Tasman in honour of World War II heroine Nancy Wake, who has died in hospital aged 98.



New Zealand-born Ms Wake grew up in Sydney and after a brief stint as a nurse, worked as a journalist in Europe, where she married a French businessman in 1939.

Trapped in France when the Nazis invaded, Ms Wake worked with the Resistance as a courier and later as an effective saboteur and spy.

She became the Gestapo's most wanted person, receiving the enduring nickname "The White Mouse".

RSL national president Rear Admiral Ken Doolan has paid tribute to the courage of Ms Wake and says she remains a great role model for all Australians fighting for freedom.

"What Nancy Wake did was quite unique and for her time she stood up in the most courageous way, and she's a tremendous role model in that respect," he said.

Ms Wake 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.



Video: War heroine Nancy Wake dies (ABC News)
Victorian RSL president David McLachlan told ABC local radio that Ms Wake thwarted the Gestapo with her every attempt.

"She was very much involved in providing information for the planning of D-Day," he said.

"She parachuted back in behind enemy lines after she'd been back to England.

"The Gestapo hated her, wanted her, more than anybody else, and she was an incredibly brave woman."

Close friend Les Partell says Ms Wake, who died just days before her 99th birthday, earned her nickname because she was so hard to capture.

"They could not catch her," he said.

"Whenever somebody dobbed her in, they would go there and she would be gone. Nancy would get away from them.

"The world offered a reward for anyone who could catch The White Mouse. They grabbed her husband, Henri, and the Gestapo tortured him to death."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says Ms Wake was a woman of exceptional courage who had saved the lives of hundreds of allied personnel during World War II.

"Our nation honours a truly remarkable individual whose selfless valour and tenacity will never be forgotten," she said.

"Nancy Wake will remain an abiding inspiration to generations of Australians."

Across the Tasman, New Zealand veterans' affairs minister Judith Collins says Ms Wake's achievements have been acknowledged by members of the Special Forces, past and present.

"Her death will deeply affect many veterans, who will view her passing with a great sense of loss," she said.

She says while Ms Wake had lived most of her life abroad, she had visited family in her home country as a teenager.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-0...y-wake/2829254

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Nancy WakeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Nancy Wake
30 August 1912(1912-08-30) – 7 August 2011(2011-08-07) (aged 98)

Nancy Wake c.1945
Nickname White Mouse, Heléne, Madame Andrée, Witch
Place of birth Wellington, New Zealand
Place of death London, England
Allegiance France
United Kingdom
Service/branch Special Operations Executive
First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
Years of service 1943–1945 (SOE)
Rank Captain
Unit Freelance
Battles/wars World War II
Awards Companion of the Order of Australia
George Medal
Officier de la Légion d'Honneur
Croix de guerre (France)
Medal of Freedom (United States)
RSA Badge in Gold (New Zealand)

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake AC, GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011), nicknamed "The White Mouse", served as a British agent during the later part of World War II. She became a leading figure in the maquis groups of the French Resistance and became one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen of the war.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Wartime service and Special Operations Executive
3 Post-war
4 List of honours
5 Portrayal
6 Notes
7 References
8 External links


[edit] Early lifeBorn in Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand, Nancy Wake was the youngest of six children. In 1914, when she was two years old, the family moved to Sydney, Australia and settled at North Sydney.[1] Later, her father Charles Wake went back to New Zealand and never returned to Sydney, leaving her mother Ella Wake (1874-1968) to raise the children.

In Sydney, she attended the North Sydney Girls High School. At the age of 16, she ran away from home and worked as a nurse. With £200 that she had received from the will of an aunt, she journeyed to New York, then London where she trained herself as a journalist. In the 1930s she worked in Paris. Later she worked for Hearst newspapers as European correspondent. She witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler, Nazis, and saw the violence towards Jews, gypsies, blacks and protesters on the Paris streets and in Vienna.

[edit] Wartime service and Special Operations ExecutiveIn 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.[2]

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.[3] 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.[4] 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, 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.[5]

[edit] Post-warImmediately after the war, Wake was awarded the George Medal in 1945,[6] the United States Medal of Freedom, the Médaille de la Résistance and thrice the Croix de Guerre. She was not awarded any Australian or New Zealand decorations.[7] She also learned that the Gestapo had tortured her husband to death in 1943 for refusing to disclose her whereabouts. After the war she worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry attached to embassies of Paris and Prague. She was married for the second time in 1957, to an English ex RAF fighter pilot, John Melvin Forward.[8]

Wake stood as a Liberal candidate[9] in the 1949 Australian federal election for the Sydney seat of Barton, running against Dr. Herbert Evatt, then Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Ben Chifley Labor government. Whilst Chifley lost government to Robert Menzies, Wake recorded a 13 per cent swing against Evatt,[10] with Evatt retaining the seat with 53.2 per cent of the vote on a two-party preferred basis. Wake ran against Evatt again at the 1951 federal election. By this time, Evatt was Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The result was extremely close, however Evatt retained the seat with a margin of less than 250 votes.[11] Evatt slightly increased his margin at subsequent elections before relocating to the safer seat of Hunter by 1958.

Wake left Australia just after the 1951 election and moved back to Europe to work, although she returned to Australia with her second husband, John Forward, in the early 1960s. Maintaining her interest in politics, Wake was endorsed as a Liberal candidate at the 1966 federal election for the Sydney seat of Kingsford Smith. Despite recording a swing of 6.9 per cent against the sitting Labor candidate, Wake was again unsuccessful.[12]

Around 1985, Nancy and John Forward left Sydney to retire to Port Macquarie.

Wake was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1970 and was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1988.[13]

In 1985, Wake published her autobiography, entitled The White Mouse. The book became a best seller, and it has been reprinted many times since.[14]

Her husband, John Forward, died at Port Macquarie on 19 August 1997; the couple had no children. She later left Australia for the last time and emigrated to London.

In 2001, a comprehensive biography about Wake was written by Australian author Peter FitzSimons and called Nancy Wake, A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine, (ISBN 0 7322 6919 9) and it also became a best-seller.

She initially refused offers of decorations from Australia saying "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 love so I don't want anything from them".[7]

In February 2004, she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.[15] In April 2006, she was awarded the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association's highest honour,[16] the RSA Badge in Gold.[17] Wake's medals are on display in the Second World War gallery at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra.[1]

Before her death in 2011, she was living in The Star and Garter Home in Richmond, London.

On 3 June 2010, a 'heritage pylon' paying tribute to Wake was unveiled near the place of her birth in Oriental Parade, Wellington, New Zealand.[18][19]

Nancy died on Sunday evening August 7 2011 at the Kingston Hospital nursing home for retired veterans after being admitted to hospital with a chest infection
More at the link------------ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake

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Nancy Wake: a born warrior

Peter FitzSimons wrote a biography about Nancy Wake and says the Australian war heroine was a force of nature.

[1938 Observer]

Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 1 of 6

Tells the story of the Australian who, after engineering the escape of hundreds of allied servicemen from occupied France during the Second World War - and following her own escape and subsequent training as an S.O.E. agent by the English - lead to her being made the Gestapo's most wanted woman.



Nancy Wake- Codename 'The White Mouse'(1987) Part 2 of 6




All parts are available on Youtube




LEST WE FORGET.