For the sake of our story we have changed dates, altered the timeline of events, invented some episodes, omitted some individuals and created composite characters out of others. Out of respect for Nancy, the people she fought with and their families, however, we want to give readers an outline of some of the changes we have made, and recommend further reading for anyone who would like to know more.
Nancy was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1912. Her parents separated after the family moved to Australia. A gift from her maternal aunt allowed Nancy to travel first to America, then London, then Paris, where she worked as a journalist for the Hearst Newspaper Group. She was disgusted by the anti-semitic violence she saw on assignment in Vienna and Berlin and swore to fight the Nazis whenever she had the chance.
She met wealthy industrialist Henri Fiocca while on holiday in the south of France in 1936. She was in England when war was declared but returned to France immediately and she and Henri married on November 30, 1939, not in January 1943 when the Old Port of Marseille was destroyed, an event she watched from a distance. From the beginning of the war Nancy acted as a courier and moved refugees and escaped prisoners along the Pat O’Leary and Ian Garrow escape routes, earning the nickname the White Mouse from the Germans for her ability to slip through checkpoints. She also arranged and funded the escape of Ian Garrow from prison after he was captured. When challenged about the money for the bribe, she did make a formal complaint to the post office and claimed she’d used it to pay her bar bill.
Having heard the Gestapo were following her and tapping her phone, she fled Marseille and was for weeks trapped in France trying to escape over the Pyrenees. She did jump from a moving train under fire, losing all her money, jewels and papers in the process. Henri Fiocca was picked up by the Gestapo some time after Nancy left Marseille. They did torture him for information on Nancy which he refused to give in spite of the pleas of his family and he was murdered by the Gestapo on October 16, 1943. Nancy only learned of his death after the liberation.
Having finally reached England and been refused by the Free French, Nancy was accepted into the S.O.E. with Garrow’s help. She met Denis Rake during her training and she and Violette Szabo debagged an instructor and flew his pants from a flagpole. She did break in to the offices of one training base to read her report card (with another friend, not Denis), but as it was good, she didn’t alter it. She was dropped into France in the Spring of 1944. With her then and throughout the war was John Hind Farmer, codenamed Hubert, who also worked closely with the Maquis until liberation. They were met by Henri Tardivat who became a lifelong friend. In her biography she tells the story of overhearing Gaspard (Émile Coulaudon) and his men plotting to kill her and how having faced him and his men down, she and Hubert left to work with Henri Fournier instead, meeting up with Denis and his radio some days later. Nancy and Gaspard developed a good working relationship later in the war. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur as were Tardivat, Denis and Nancy herself. She also worked closely with Antoine Llorca (Laurent) and René Dusacq (Bazooka), and many others.
On D-Day itself Nancy was picking up René Dusacq from a safe house in Montluçon. She did blow up various bridges during her time in France, though not the Garabit Viaduct, which readers who know the region will recognize from the description in this novel. The timeline of events—Nancy getting her bus, the attack on Gaspard’s camp and so on—has also been altered. Nancy did kill with her bare hands, narrowly avoid assassination, lead men in combat and order a female spy shot. Her men would only obey the order to execute the woman when Nancy made it clear she was willing to do so herself. Nancy did participate in a raid on Gestapo Headquarters led by Henri Tardivat. She did not enter the building and poison the officers first. She regarded her epic bike ride (some five hundred kilometers in seventy-two hours) as one of her greatest achievements of the war, managing as a result to get a vital message to London via a Free French operator that they needed a new radio set and codes. The Maquis did give her a march past to celebrate her birthday on August 30, 1944, five days after the liberation of Paris. Nancy also led numerous actions against the Germans, captured fleeing German troops and saw them safely delivered to U.S. forces. The authors have represented and dramatized those actions in the battle of Cosne-d’Allier, though the battle itself is our invention.
Having tortured and murdered her husband in Marseille, the Gestapo actively hunted Nancy throughout her time in France. They plastered her image across the Auvergne, offered increasingly huge rewards for her capture and regularly sent spies to try and infiltrate the Maquis. Böhm is a dramatized version of those efforts. Though he is an invention, the atrocities carried out by the Nazis against individuals and entire villages in occupied France are not.
Whatever we have invented or altered the authors would like to note that the astonishing bravery, leadership and character of Nancy Wake is without doubt greater than any one novel can hold.
Nancy Wake was married to her second husband, John Farmer, for forty years and lived with him in Australia for most of that time. After his death she returned to Europe and died in 2011 in London. As she had requested, her ashes were scattered near the village of Verneix, five miles from Montluçon.
Nancy wrote her own biography, The White Mouse, as did Denis Rake, Rake’s Progress. Maurice Buckmaster also wrote a remarkable account of the S.O.E., They Fought Alone, which is still in print. Russell Braddon’s biography of Nancy, Nancy Wake, has been a consistent bestseller since publication. In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, by H. R. Edward, is an excellent scholarly study in English of what happened in the region where Nancy served; and Behind the Lines: The Oral History of Special Operations in World War II, by Russell Miller, is a fascinating collection of testimony from many other brave agents working behind enemy lines.
Darby Kealey & Imogen Robertson
Los Angeles and London, 2019