Nancy Wake - Wartime Service and Special Operations Executive

Wartime Service and Special Operations Executive

In 1937, she met wealthy French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca (1898–1943), whom she married on 30 November 1939. She was living in Marseille, France when Germany invaded. After the fall of France in 1940, she became a courier for the French Resistance and later joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow. In reference to her ability to elude capture, the Gestapo called her the White Mouse. The Resistance had to be very careful with her missions. Her life was in constant danger, with the Gestapo tapping her phone and intercepting her mail.

In November 1942, Wehrmacht troops occupied also the southern part of France after the allied Operation Torch had started. This gave the Gestapo the unrestricted access to all papers of the Vichy régime and made life more dangerous for her. The Germans had an English spy, Sergeant Harold Cole, working for them.

By 1943, Wake was the Gestapo's most wanted person, with a 5 million-franc price on her head. When the network was betrayed that same year, she decided to flee Marseille. Her husband, Henri Fiocca, stayed behind where he was later captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo.

"A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd pass their (German) posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was."

Wake had been arrested in Toulouse, but was released four days later. An acquaintance managed to have her let out by making up stories about her supposed infidelity to her husband. She succeeded, on her sixth attempt, in crossing the Pyrenees to Spain. Until the war ended, she was unaware of her husband's death and subsequently blamed herself for it.

After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive. Vera Atkins, who also worked in the SOE, recalls her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well." Training reports record that she was "a very good and fast shot" and possessed excellent fieldcraft. She was noted to "put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character."

On the night of 29–30 April 1944 she was parachuted into the Auvergne, becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat in the Forest of Troncais . Upon discovering her tangled in a tree, Captain Tardivat greeted her remarking, "I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year," to which she replied, "Don't give me that French shit.”" Her duties included allocating arms and equipment that were parachuted in and minding the group's finances. She became instrumental in recruiting more members and making the maquis groups into a formidable force, roughly 7,500 strong. She also led attacks on German installations and the local Gestapo HQ in Montluçon.

At one point Wake discovered that her men were protecting a girl who was a German spy. They did not have the heart to kill her in cold blood, but Wake did. She said after that it was war, and she had no regrets about the incident.

From April 1944 to the 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 from 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. "They'd taught this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used it -- whack -- and it killed him all right. I was really surprised."

On another occasion, to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid, Wake rode a bicycle for more than 500 miles (800 km) through several German checkpoints. During a German attack on another maquis group, Wake, along with two American officers, took command of a section whose leader had been killed. She directed the use of suppressive fire which facilitated the group's withdrawal without further losses.

Read more about this topic:  Nancy Wake

Famous quotes containing the words wartime, service, special, operations and/or executive:

    The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.
    José Bergamín (1895–1983)

    I can counterfeit the deep tragedian,
    Speak, and look back, and pry on every side,
    Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
    Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks
    Are at my service like enforced smiles,
    And both are ready in their offices
    At any time to grace my stratagems.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The books may say that nine-month-olds crawl, say their first words, and are afraid of strangers. Your exuberantly concrete and special nine-month-old hasn’t read them. She may be walking already, not saying a word and smiling gleefully at every stranger she sees. . . . You can support her best by helping her learn what she’s trying to learn, not what the books say a typical child ought to be learning.
    Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)

    A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.
    Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    ... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the boss’s moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.
    Anne Bogan, U.S. executive secretary. As quoted in Working, book 1, by Studs Terkel (1973)