Nancy Wake - Honours

Honours

Wake was appointed a Chevalier (knight) of the Legion of Honour in 1970 and was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1988.

Initially, she 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." It was not until February 2004, that Wake received the Companion of the Order of Australia.

In April 2006, she was awarded the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association's highest honour, the RSA Badge in Gold. Wake's medals are on display in the Second World War gallery at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra.

On 3 June 2010, a "heritage pylon" paying tribute to Wake was unveiled on Oriental Parade in Wellington, New Zealand, near the place of her birth.

Read more about this topic:  Nancy Wake

Famous quotes containing the word honours:

    Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

    If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelist honours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    Come hither, all ye empty things,
    Ye bubbles rais’d by breath of Kings;
    Who float upon the tide of state,
    Come hither, and behold your fate.
    Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
    How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
    From all his ill-got honours flung,
    Turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung.
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)