The knock came without warning, and when Nancy Wake opened the door to her parlor, she found a stranger already inside, a man Lieutenant Colonel Ian Garrow had brought with him unannounced. The mystery man had let himself in, sent her dog from the room, and helped himself to the most expensive bottle of whiskey she owned, the one she had been saving to open with her husband on victory day. Nancy was infuriated. Even in peacetime, stealing a stranger’s whiskey and being rude to their dog would earn anyone a lifetime ban from the house.
She ordered him out immediately and told him never to come back. The two men were shocked. They had not expected such an outburst from a dainty woman. She tried to warn Garrow not to trust the man, whose name was Paul Cole.
She believed he was a spy for the Gestapo. Garrow dismissed her concerns, telling her she was overreacting and being too secretive. But Nancy’s intuition, honed over years of survival, told her otherwise. She began to realize that Garrow was using her as little more than a bank account, that she and her husband had given the French resistance leaders whatever they wanted, and that they were overstepping their boundaries.
Nancy began spending less time around Garrow and more around Patrick O’Leary, the man running an escape line that became known as the O’Leary line. Through him, she could help save more lives directly, providing safe houses for prisoners of war and refugees before they were taken by a guide over the Pyrenees mountains on the freedom trail. She never revealed to Paul Cole that she was part of the resistance, and he assumed she was just a housewife. Her intuition had been spot on.
Paul Cole was truly a Gestapo agent. Soon after that meeting, he betrayed fifty members of the French resistance who were arrested, tortured, and ultimately killed. Eventually, even Lieutenant Colonel Ian Garrow was caught and put in jail. Instead of saying “I told you so,” Nancy and her husband tried to get him the best lawyer money could buy.
When that failed, they helped organize his escape. Nancy’s friends managed to smuggle a Nazi uniform into the prisoner, and Garrow was able to get out and begin his journey on the freedom trail. Nancy Wake was not supposed to be there at all. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, and at the age of two her parents moved to Australia.
She was raised in Sydney, a very independent and free-spirited girl. At sixteen she ran away from home to work as a nurse. A few years later she inherited two hundred pounds from her aunt, worth roughly eleven thousand five hundred pounds in today’s money. That gave her the financial freedom to travel and live her best life.
At nineteen she hopped on a boat and landed in North America to experience life in New York City, where she happened to be during Prohibition. She said, “I had never consumed so much alcohol in my short life. People were making it in bathtubs. ”
After getting that partying out of her system, Nancy decided to move to London to take journalism classes.
At twenty years old, she tried to get her first paid writing gig, and the hiring manager said he was passionate about Egypt. Nancy really wanted the job, so she claimed she was into Egyptology as well. She had no idea how to read or write Arabic, but she began jotting down scribbles on paper and handed it over to the man, claiming to know the language. He actually believed her, and she got the job.
It was deceptive, of course, but her ability to lie under pressure would become absolutely vital during her spy career. Eventually Nancy moved to Paris, where she found work as a freelance journalist. In most cases she would go looking for a great story to write first and a buyer later. Back in the 1930s she could pay for six months of life with just one article, because her small apartment was so cheap.
The rest of her money was spent on clothes, jewelry, travel, and attending parties. During this time she learned to speak French fluently. Nancy would take writing assignments all over France and became familiar with all the train and bus routes throughout the country. At the time she had no idea just how important and valuable this knowledge would be, but her familiarity with the French countryside would later save her life.
Her carefree lifestyle changed when she was on assignment in Vienna, Austria. For the first time she witnessed the atrocities of the Nazi regime. She said, “In the middle of that beautiful city there was a big wheel in the square, and the Jews were tied to the wheel and the SS were beating them. I stood there and I said, ‘If ever I can do something one day, I’ll do it.
‘”
Nancy decided to live in Marseille, France for a while in 1936 and began to explore the social scene. On a night out she always ran into a handsome man named Henri Fiocca. She wrote that he’d always been with a different girl, sometimes three or four the same day. She used to be popeyed at his stamina.
One night Henri came on to her, but she did not take him seriously as a potential boyfriend. He was charming, sexy, and amusing, but she was too experienced to want anything from a playboy. So they remained friends, and she would congratulate him on his ability to find a new woman every evening. Three years later, when Nancy was twenty-seven, she returned to Marseille and ran into Henri again.
She finally gave him a chance. It only took them a few weeks to realize they were perfect for one another, and Henri proposed. It turned out he was the son of a wealthy industrialist, and she would soon be the wife of a millionaire. In 1939, war was declared in France while Nancy was on a train from Paris to London.
She immediately went to the nearest recruiting office in London and offered her services to the war effort on behalf of Great Britain. Nancy wanted to help so badly that she was willing to postpone her wedding to Henri, but the only job they could offer her was being a lunch lady in the canteen. This was not the sort of help she had in mind, and she left the recruiting office. A few months later Nancy and Henri were married.
At first she made the most of being the wife of a millionaire. She said, “No woman could have been as useless or as frivolous as I was during those winter months. ” But the desire to help the war effort still pulled at her heartstrings, and she never let go of her deep-seated hatred for the Nazis. Even though Nancy and Henri were wealthy enough to avoid the war if they chose to, they both wanted to do as much as they could to help.
In 1940, Henri received his papers to fight on behalf of the French army. Since they had the financial means, they stocked up on food rations and helped feed their friends and neighbors who did not have the foresight to prepare. They even purchased their own vehicle so that Nancy could volunteer as an ambulance driver. The fighting was short-lived, and on June 16, 1940, the prime minister of France resigned.
Six days later an armistice was signed. By 1942, the Nazis occupied all of France. One might think everyone would want to fight for France’s independence from the Nazis, but it was more complicated than that. Germany put a man named Philippe Pétain in charge as the new marshal of France.
He had been a famous World War I hero, and many people still respected and looked up to him. Pétain was telling the public to cooperate with Germany. Meanwhile, officer Charles de Gaulle took the opposite stance. He believed the Nazis needed to be defeated, and he became in charge of a group of war veterans known as the French resistance.
These people would attempt to destroy Nazi infrastructure and kill as many Germans as possible. Marshal Pétain claimed that this resistance needed to be stopped, which led to the creation of a pro-Nazi paramilitary group called the Milice. These were French men who agreed with Nazi ideals, and by 1943 they had twenty-five thousand members. Many of them would work to infiltrate the French resistance as spies, only to later hand resistance fighters over to the Gestapo.
At first, Nancy and Henri casually involved themselves in subversive activities like delivering secret messages or aiding Allied soldiers they met in local hotels. Eventually they began working more and more with the French resistance. Nancy became part of an escape network led by Lieutenant Colonel Ian Garrow. At first he only trusted her to deliver coded messages, but she was eager to get in on the action.
Patrick O’Leary was leading people through an escape line that became known as the O’Leary line, and Nancy provided a safe house for those soldiers and refugees before they were taken over the Pyrenees. Nancy also began to smuggle pamphlets in the shopping basket of her bicycle so she could distribute resistance newspapers and secret messages. The Nazi soldiers never suspected her because she just looked like every other housewife in the country, and she could speak fluent French without a hint of her Australian accent. In 1942, Germany declared that they wanted three hundred fifty thousand Frenchmen to move to Germany to work in their factories.
No one in France was happy about this, but Marshal Philippe Pétain was able to negotiate a deal: for every three men who went to work in Germany willingly, they would release one French prisoner of war. That was enough incentive for fifty thousand men to volunteer. But not everyone was willing to bow down to the Nazis. Groups of men and women who despised the Germans began to disappear into the forests, calling themselves the Maquis.
These pockets of Maquis guerrilla fighters were a vital part of the French resistance. They worked to kill Nazis whenever they possibly could. The only issue was that they were not organized and had no way of communicating with one another. Eventually, the Germans learned that there was a beautiful member of the French resistance who was managing to transport secret messages, break prisoners of war out of jail, and organize safe houses.
She was accomplishing so much, and she continued to go undetected. Nancy had such strong intuition about people’s character that she had face-to-face meetings with several Gestapo spies but was never caught. They called her the White Mouse because she would always slip out of their hands. In 1943, the White Mouse became one of the Gestapo’s most wanted and had a five million franc bounty put on her head.
She and Henri knew it was time for her to escape. But if they both left at the same time, it would look suspicious. Henri also wanted to stay in France because he felt a duty to his family’s business. As she was preparing to leave, Nancy told Henri that if he was unfaithful and moved on with another woman she would understand.
After all, she had no idea when they would see each other again. But he promised to wait for her. For Nancy, escaping the country was not straightforward. For three months she traveled around the country on buses and trains, waiting for the perfect opportunity to cross the Pyrenees mountains undetected.
She had to circle the country so many times that she eventually ended up not far from her home in Marseille. Nancy stood outside her house, wishing so badly to go inside and see her husband one last time. But she knew it would be too dangerous for both of them, and she chose to walk away. Unfortunately, all her efforts were in vain.
She was caught with false identification on one of these trains, and the Gestapo threw her in jail. While in custody, the Gestapo began to beat and interrogate her. They had no idea they had captured the famous White Mouse. When they asked why her identification was fake, she claimed she had left her husband to be with another man and wanted a fresh start with a new identity.
The Gestapo did not believe her and claimed she must be responsible for setting off a bomb a few weeks earlier. They interrogated her for four days, and she may have died if not for her friend Patrick O’Leary. When Nancy never showed up at a rendezvous point, O’Leary knew she must have been captured. He pretended to be the lover she claimed to be running away with.
The Nazis finally believed her cover story, and she was able to leave. Patrick O’Leary was finally able to get her on the freedom trail, and she made her way to England. Once she arrived in the United Kingdom, she decided to join Winston Churchill’s group called the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. Churchill’s goal was to gather all the various factions of the French resistance and Maquis and have them come together to be one large organized group.
D-Day was approaching, and they needed help from the resistance to get France ready for the Allied invasion. Nancy moved to Scotland with a group of new recruits, and they all began their spy training. The first stage was endurance. They were made to do exercises both day and night, and a lot of people could not make it past that first stage.
For those that were left, they were trained in combat, silent killing, weaponry, Morse code, disabling a German tank, and a lot more. Even though she had absolutely no experience in combat, Nancy was determined to get stronger so she could fight for the people of France and return home to her husband. Nancy was forced to practice karate chops on a wooden desk to harden her hands. Her instructors claimed that one swift chop to the neck was enough to kill a Nazi.
At first she found this hard to believe, until it actually happened during a fight. She chopped a Nazi in the neck and then kicked him in the groin. The first time she did this to a German officer, she was shocked at how easily it killed him. Once her training was complete, it was time for Nancy to return to France so she could help organize the Maquis.
She parachuted from a plane wearing a camel hair coat and high-heeled shoes. Once she landed, the Maquis were taken aback by the look of a posh housewife descending from the sky. This was all part of her disguise, of course, since being underestimated as a harmless housewife was part of her cover. Even though she was the famous White Mouse, her beautiful and fashionable appearance did not leave the Maquis with a lot of confidence that a woman could do the job.
Just as the Nazis thought, they thought she must be useless, and they were not impressed that the British had sent such a dainty woman to help them. It was her job to convince these strangers to work with the SOE. She promised that the British would send supplies, and it took several days for a radio operator named Denis to arrive. Finally the supplies came through.
Not only did they get the standard munitions, but the SOE sent Nancy her special requests: new silk stockings, makeup, tea, and bottles of expensive whiskey. To break the ice, she challenged the men in the Maquis to a drinking contest. Whoever was still standing at dawn would win. After this, the members of the resistance lightened up, and they knew they could trust her.
Of course, she got a lot of attention while living in the forest, since she was an attractive young woman among a bunch of men. Years later, one of her biographers asked if she ever had a lover while living with the Maquis. She rolled her eyes, saying, “If I had accommodated one of them, I would have had to accommodate all of them. ” In reality, while she may have been a huge flirt, she was always faithful to her husband Henri.
One night Nancy had a nightmare that Henri had been killed by the Nazis in a firing squad. She woke up in a cold sweat and hoped it was just a dream. For once, she wanted her strong intuition to be wrong. As D-Day approached, the radio operator Denis got himself caught up in the crossfire between the Maquis and the Nazis.
He believed he might be captured, so he destroyed the radio. Thankfully, he made it out alive, but now the resistance members were left stranded without any way to communicate with the British. If they could not communicate with the Allies, thousands of men were going to die. The nearest SOE radio was over two hundred kilometers away at a château, and they would never be able to drive a car there without getting caught at a checkpoint.
So Nancy Wake offered to ride her bicycle. Over the next few days, she rode, occasionally stopping to refresh her makeup so she looked like a pampered housewife. Luckily, she remembered the roads from her time taking so many buses and trains as a journalist, so at least she knew where she was going. Every time she reached a Nazi checkpoint, she would smile and flirt with the guards.
One of her go-to lines was, “Hello officer, would you like to search me? ” It worked every time. Once she reached the château, she told them she was the White Mouse and she needed to contact the British immediately. Once the SOE knew of their location, she had to make her way back immediately, pedaling another two hundred kilometers.
Later in life, Nancy said the bike ride was the most frightening thing she had ever done, but it was also the proudest. Because of it, the Maquis were able to get another radio sent to them, and she and the other resistance fighters continued to kill Nazis without any hesitation. She said, “If you ask me, the only good Nazi is a dead one. ”
The war was finally over, and the Allies won.
Nancy was recognized for her bravery and was awarded the U. S. Medal of Freedom, the George Medal from the UK, the Badge of Gold from New Zealand, and the Order of Australia. If it were not for her work organizing the Maquis and securing that radio, thousands of people would have died in the forest.
Unfortunately, by choosing to save thousands of men, she had to sacrifice the one who had meant the most to her. Henri had remained faithful to her and was awaiting her return. But the Gestapo had raided their home and arrested him under suspicion of being the husband of the White Mouse. They tortured him, and eventually they offered him his freedom in exchange for confirmation that Nancy was the White Mouse.
He refused to betray his wife, and he was killed by firing squad. The day he died was the same day Nancy had the nightmare about his death. Their connection was so strong that she somehow knew when the love of her life had been killed. Now that she had nothing left for her in France, Nancy moved to London and joined the Air Ministry.
Nancy Wake carried the guilt and sorrow over the death of her husband for the rest of her life. She would go on to move to Australia and marry a second time, to a man named John Forward. But she still kept a photo of Henri next to her bed. When asked if she had any regrets, she replied, “I killed a lot of Germans.
I’m sorry I didn’t kill more. ”
As she grew older, she was still not happy, especially after becoming widowed for a second time. She decided to sell her war medals at auction and used that money for her retirement. Since she continued to be restless, she longed to be back in Europe.
At the age of eighty-eight, Nancy decided it was time for a fresh start, so she moved to the Stafford Hotel in London. When the concierge asked how long she would be staying, she said, “Until I die. ”
Hotel employees absolutely loved having her there. The staff even had a special chair made for her at the hotel bar, complete with a plaque that said “Nancy’s Corner.
” They also painted a tiny white mouse on the ceiling of the hotel in her honor. When guests heard that the famous Nancy Wake was staying there, they would often stop by to speak to her at the bar. Because of this, she was never alone and continued to socialize, which was the thing she loved most. Eventually Nancy ran out of money from her retirement fund, and she could no longer pay the steep price tag of living in a luxury hotel.
When the Prince of Wales heard about this, he invited her to Buckingham Palace for tea. He paid for her bill and continued to do so for the rest of her life. She passed away in 2011, when she was ninety-eight years old.
