Legion of frontiersmen (New Zealand) Command

WAKE Nancy Grace Augusta

Special Operations Executive, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry & Resistance Fighter, WW2

A32518 Legion of Frontiersmen, Australia

CITATION

Comapion of the Order of Australia (AC)

Gazetted 22 February 2004

The award recognises the significant contribution and commitment of Nancy Wake, stemming from her outstanding actions in

wartime, in encouraging community appreciation and understanding of the past sacrifices made by Australian men and women in

times of conflict, and to a lasting legacy of peace.

George Medal (GM)

Gazetted 13 July 1945, p3676

For brave conduct in hazardous circumstances. "This officer was parachuted into France on 29th November 1944, as assistant to

an organiser who was taking over the direction of an important circuit in Central France. The day after their arrival she and her

chief found themselves stranded and without directions through the arrest of their contact, but ultimately reached their rendezvous

by their own initiative. She worked for several months helping to train and instruct Maquis groups. Lieutenant Wake took part in

several engagements with the enemy, and showed the utmost bravery under fire. During a German attack due to the arrival by

parachute of two American officers to help in the Maquis, she personally took command of a section of 10 men whose leader was

demoralised. She led them to within point-blank range of the enemy, directed their fire, rescued the two American officers and

withdrew in good order. She showed exceptional courage and coolness in the face of enemy fire. When the Maquis group with which she was working was broken up by large-scale German attacks and wireless contact was lost, Lieutenant Wake went along to find a wireless operator through whom she could contact London. She covered some 200 kilometres on foot and by remarkable steadfastness and perseverance succeeded in getting a message through to London. It was largely due to these efforts that the circuit was able to start work again. Lieutenant Wake's organising ability, endurance, courage and complete disregard for her own safety earned her the respect and admiration of all. The Maquis troops, most of them rough and difficult to handle, accepted orders from her, and treated her as one of their own male officers."

Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France)

Gazetted 1970

Officer of the Legion of Honour (France)

Gazetted 1988

Croix de Guerre (Fance)

Gazetted

Medal of Freedom (USA) with palm

Gazetted 1949

Ensign Nancy Wake, British National, FANY, for exceptionally meritorious achievement which aided the United States in the prosecution of war against the enemy in Continental Europe, from March 1944. After having been parachuted into the Allier Department of France for the purpose of co-ordinating Resistance activities she immediately assumed her duties as second-in-command to the organiser of the circuit. Despite numerous difficulties and personal danger she, through her remarkable courage, initiative and coolness succeeded in accomplishing her objective. Her daring conduct in the course of the enemy engagement safeguarded the lives of two American officers under her command. Her inspiring leadership, bravery, and exemplary devotion to duty contributed materially to the success of the war effort and merit the praise and recognition of the United States."

Details: Received with bronze palm.

Medaille de la Resistance

Gazetted

AWARDS

Comapion of the Order of Australia (AC)

George Medal (GM)

1939-45 Star

France & Germany Star

Defence Medal

War Medal 1939-45

Chevalier of the Legion of Honour (France)

Croix de Guerre (France)

Medal of Freedom (USA)

Medaille de la Resistance

New Zealand Gold RSA Badge & Life Membership (1985)

Frontiersmen Dartnell Cross with 'V' device (Australia)

Frontiersmen Australian Centennial Medal (Australia)

NOTES

Born 30 August 1912 Wellington, New Zealand

Died 7 August 2011 London, England

Ashes scattered at Montlucon, France.

BIOGRAPHICAL

Born in Wellington, New Zealand on 30 August 1912. She lived and was was educated in Sydney. In 1932 Wake married a French businessman, Henri Fiocca. In 1940, she joined the French resistance movement. Between 1940 and 1942 she worked manning the dangerous escape routes through France and helped save the lives of hundreds of Allied Troops.

Code-named the "White Mouse" by the Gestapo, Nancy Wake is one of the most decorated women of the Second World War. She received the George Medal, 1939/45 Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal, British War Medal 193945, French Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, French Croix de Guerre with Star and two Palms, US Medal for Freedom with Palm and French Medaille de la Resistance for her courageous endeavours. Wakes' medals are on display in the Second World War gallery at the Australian War Memorial.

THE most decorated female servicewoman of WWII, Australian Nancy Wake, is to receive a helping hand from the Australian Government in recognition of her contribution.

Prime Minister John Howard said today the Government would pay for a carer to take 91 year-old Ms Wake away from the London nursing home where she lives. "There's been discussion with her about these arrangements and she is very happy with them," Mr Howard told Sydney radio 2GB.

"She will be provided with some additional help and some additional support and comfort in her very advanced years and in special recognition of what a remarkable courageous and special Australian she was and remains." After growing up in Sydney, Ms Wake moved to France in her early 20s as a journalist where she married a Frenchman.

During the war she helped rescue allied soldiers and after being trained in England, Ms Wake was dropped back into France as a highly trained spy with the Marquis Resistance. Her husband was executed by the Nazis and she became the Gestapo's most-wanted person. She became known as "The White Mouse" because of her ability to elude capture.

Nancy Wake was born in the gusty heights of Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand, on 13 August 1912 to Charles Augustus and Ella Rosieur Wake, the youngest of six children. The biography Nancy Wake, by Australian journalist and rugby personality Peter Fitzsimons, strongly records her edge lineage:

"Ella Rosieur Wake came from an interesting ethnic mix, her genetic pool bubbling with material from the Huguenots, the French Protestants who had famously fled France so they could pursue their religion freely, and Maori, as her English great-grandmother had been a Maori maiden by the name of Pourewa. She had been the first of her race to marry a white man, in the person of Nancy's English great-grandfather Charles Cossell, and they were wed by the Reverend William Williams at Waimate Mission Station on 26 October, 1836. Legend has it that the great Maori chieftain, Hone Heke, had loved Pourewa himself and had sworn death to them both, but had been killed in the Maori Wars before fulfilling his threat. In sum, Ella's people went a long, long way back in New Zealand, and physically she was like the land itself, rustically beautiful.

"Young Nancy's father, Charles, however, was of solid English stock...an extremely good-looking, tall man of easy, extroverted charisma and enormous warmth, he was a journalist/editor by trade, then working on a Wellington newspaper. He was a dapper dresser who never seemed to have a worry in the world."

When Nancy was 20 months old, her parents moved to Sydney where she grew up, chafing under the confines of genteel society. She was much younger than her brothers and sisters, and strongly independent. "I was a loner and I had a good imagination." She was a rebel, in particular shunning her mother's strict religious beliefs.

Wake was raised without affection by her embittered mother after her father had walked out on them. "I adored my father," Wake recently told the Sunday Times, sitting on her bar stool with a walking stick in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other. "He was very good-looking. But he was a bastard. He went to New Zealand to make a movie about the Maoris, and he never came back. He sold our house from under us and we were kicked out." Wake ran away from home at 16 and went to work as a nurse. Then an aunt in New Zealand sent her £200 - a princely sum in those days. She left for the world. Wake used the money to travel to London and then to Europe where she worked as a journalist, swinging with a cosmopolitan set of independent and carefree young people. It was a glamorous life of parties and travel, and she lived it to the full. "I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural."

In 1930s Europe she witnessed the rise of Hitler, Nazism and anti-Semitism. In Vienna she saw horrific Dantescan scenes: Jews chained to a massive wheels, rolled around the streets and whipped by Nazi stormtroopers in a city square. The sight fed an early determination to work against the Nazis and eventually led to her courageous role in the French resistance.

In 1939 Nancy, married a handsome wealthy French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in Marseilles (apparently seduced by his proficency in tango). "He was the love of my life." Together they had a charmed and sophisticated life of travel, dinner parties, champagne and caviar, shopping and furnished accessories, residing in a luxury apartment on a hill that overlooked Marseilles and its harbour.

Joining the Resistance

Six months after they married, Germany invaded France. Slowly but surely Nancy drew herself into the fight. In 1940 she crossed the line between observation and action, and joined the embryonic Resistance movement as a courier, smuggling messages and food to underground groups in Southern France. She 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, and became deeply involved in helping to spirit a thousand or more escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied fliers out of France through to Spain.

Her missions with the Resistance meant her life was in constant danger. She became a suspect and was watched. The Gestapo tapped her phone and opened her mail. She took many identities. She was so good at evading the Gestapo they nicknamed 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.

"Henri said 'You have to leave', and I remember going out the door saying I'd do some shopping, that I'd be back soon. And I left and I never saw him again."

Escape was not easy. She made six attempts to get out of France by crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. On one of these attempts she was captured by the French Milice (Vichy militia) in Toulouse and interrogated for four days. She held out, refusing to give the Milice any information, and with the help of the legendary 'Scarlet Pimpernel of WWII', Patrick O'Leary, tricked her captors into releasing her.

Finally Wake got across the Pyrenees and from there to Britain. She was on safer ground, but had no news of her husband, who worked separately.

Back to the Fighting

Nancy Wake, then 31, became one of 39 women and 430 men in the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive which worked with local resistance groups to sabotage the Germans in the occupied territories.

She was trained at a British Ministry of Defense camp in Scotland in survival skills, silent killing, codes and radio operation, night parachuting, plastic explosives, Sten guns, rifles, pistols and grenades. She and the other women recruited by the SOE were officially assigned to the First Aid Nursing Yeomantry and the true nature of their work remained a closely guarded secret until after the war.

In late April 1944, Nancy Wake and another SOE operative, Major John Farmer, were parachuted into the Auvergne region in central France with orders to locate and organise the bands of Maquis, establish ammunition and arms caches from the nightly parachute drops, and arrange wireless communication with England. Their mission was to organise the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day invasion. The Resistance movement's principal objective was to weaken the German army for a major attack by allied troops. Their targets were German installations, convoys and troops. When dropped over Auvergne Nancy's parachute became stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her 'that French shit'.

There were 22,000 German troops in the area and initially 3-4,000 Maquis. Gaspard's recruitment work, with the help of Wake, bolstered the numbers to 7,000. Nancy led these men in guerrilla warfare, inflicting severe damage on German troops and facilities. She collected and distributed weapons and ensured that her radio operatives maintained contact with the SOE in Britain. (See discussion point from a reader regarding the accuracy of these figures).

On one occasion Nancy cycled 500 km through several German checkpoints to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid. Without these there would be no fresh orders or drops of weapons and supplies. Of all the amazing things she did during the war, Nancy believes this marathon ride was the most useful. She covered the distance in 71 hours, cycling through countryside and mountains almost non-stop. Her focus was rock steady to the end of her epic journey, when she wept in pain and relief.

"I got back and they said, "how are you?" I cried. I couldn't stand up, I couldn't sit down. I couldn't do anything. I just cried."

Pitched Battle

It was an extremely tough assignment: a near-sleepless life on the move, often hiding in the forests, travelling from group to group to train Maquis, motivate, plan and co-ordinate. She organised parachute drops that occurred four times a week to replenish arms and ammunition. There were numerous violent engagements with the Germans. The countryside was wracked with hostage taking, executions, burnings and reprisals.

No sector gave the Reich more cause for fury than Nancy's the Auvergne, the Fortress of France. Methodically the SS laid its plans and prepared to obliterate the group, whose stronghold was the plateau above Chaudes-Aiguwes. Troops were massed in towns all around the plateau, with artillery, mortars, aircraft and mobile guns. In June 1944 22,000 SS troops made their move on the 7,000 Maquis. Through bitter battle and escape, Nancy and her army had cause to be satisfied: 1,400 German troops lay dead on the plateau, 100 of their own men.

Nancy continued her war: she personally led a raid on Gestapo headquarters in Montucon, and killed a sentry with her bare hands to keep him from alerting the guard during a raid on a German gun factory. She had to shoot her way out roadblocks; and execute a German female spy.

Victory and Sadness

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, allied troops began to force the German army out of France. On 25 August 1944, Paris was liberated and Wake led her troops into Vichy to celebrate. However her joy at the liberation of Paris was mixed with a devastation she had secretly anticipated: in Vichy she learned that her beloved husband Henri was dead. A year after Nancy had left France in 1943, the Germans had captured Henri, tortured and executed him, because he refused to give them any information about the whereabouts of his wife.

Within a year Germany was defeated. 375 of the 469 SOE operatives in the French Section survived the war. Twelve of the 39 women operatives were killed by the Germans and 3 who returned had survived imprisonment and torture at Ravensbruck concentration camp. In all 600,000 French people died because of World War II, 240,000 of them in prisons and concentration camps.

Post War

Nancy Wake continued to work with the SOE after the war, working at the British Air Ministry in the Intelligence Department. In 1960 she married an English former prisoner of war, John Forward, and returned to Australia to live.

After the war her achievements were heralded by medals and awards: the George Medal from Britain for her leadership and bravery under fire, the Resistance Medal, Officer of the Legion d'Honneur and Croix de Guerre with two bronze palms and a silver star from France, and the Medal of Freedom from America.

However she was never awarded a medal by the Australian government. When the Australian Returned Services League recommended that Wake be awarded a medal, they were turned down. Angry at the Australian government's attitude, Wake decided that she would never accept a medal from them: she vowed it would go down in history that the most decorated Australian had never been awarded an Australian medal. The Sydney Morning Herald (April 28th, 2000) surmised that she was turned down for a medal because she was born in New Zealand and was considered a New Zealand citizen. In 1994 she refused to donate her medals to the Museum of Australia and proclaimed to the New Zealand Press Association in Sydney (Evening Post, April 30, 1994) that she was still a New Zealander and reminded the press that she had kept her New Zealand passport, despite her 80 year absence from the country.

Recognition

Wake's dramatic life story and her feisty, courageous personality made her the ideal subject for documentaries and dramatisations. She tells her own story with interviews, reconstructions, stills and film footage in Nancy Wake - Code Name: The White Mouse.

In 1987 a television mini-series was made about her life. However the subject was irritated by historical liberties that were taken with her life story, such as showing her having an affair while working for the Resistance in Auvergne:

"What do you think my bosses in England would have thought, all those thousands of pounds to train me and for me to go and have an affair. Really!

"The mini-series was well-acted but in parts it was extremely stupid. At one stage they had me cooking eggs and bacon to feed the men. For goodness sake did the Allies parachute me into France to fry eggs and bacon for the men? There wasn't an egg to be had for love nor money, and even if there had been why would I be frying it when I had men to do that sort of thing?"

Nancy Wake's comrade Henri Tardivat perhaps best characterised the guerrilla chieftain: "She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men."

Nancy Wake, lives at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, but has recently expressed a desire to spend the remaining years of her life abroad, either in Britain, where many of her friends are, or France, where she rose to international fame during WWII (see postscript).

"The people of Port Macquarie have been wonderful to me, as have most individual Australians I've met, but I just feel I would be better off in the UK or France where I could go to special occasions as a member of a services club."

Demonstrating the esteem with which she is held internationally, in France when she is wearing the rosette of her Officer de Legion d'Honneur, all the gendarmes halt and salute her. Asked if her desire to leave could be swayed if the Australian Government were to at last acknowledge her achievements with an Australian honour she replied flatly and with characteristic vigour,

"No. 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".

Nancy Wake was awarded the Comapanion of the Order of Australia on 24 February 2004, and in September 2004 was awarded the Legion of Frontiersmen Centennial Medal by the Australian Division

Nancy Wake: A lover and a fighter. She is just as assertive about what will happen to her body when she, improbable as it seems, is gone, assured that this wake will be a respectuful one:

"I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes to be scattered over the mountains where I fought with the resistance. That will be good enough for me".