Nancy Wake in her FANY uniform.
Australian War Memorial
A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN pedaled her bike furiously along the quiet French road. Her legs were numb with exhaustion. Her seat was very sore. Although she desperately wanted to stop and rest, she knew that if she did, she might not be able to make herself get back on the bike. And it was of the utmost importance that she continue. She was responsible for the arming and the welfare of 17 different maquis groups including 7,000 maquisards (rural French Resistance fighters) whose lives and work against the Nazis now depended solely on her bike ride. And so she pedaled on, blocking out the pain and wiping the sweat from her brow as best she could.
When she passed German soldiers on the road, she forced a sweet smile and waved. Little did the soldiers know that this pretty woman whose smiles and waves they returned was the woman the Gestapo had named the White Mouse, who was near the top of its “most wanted” list and had an enormous price on her head. She had several code names as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), such as Andrée and Helene, but the name her parents had given her when she was born in New Zealand was Nancy Grace Augusta Wake.
When Nancy Wake had come to Paris from Australia, where she had grown up, as a young woman in the 1930s, she found work as a journalist and was tremendously curious about the horror stories that were coming out of Germany and Austria. Jews were streaming out of those countries with nearly unbelievable tales of brutality. She and her fellow journalists decided to see for themselves if those stories were true.
They were. When Nancy witnessed firsthand the bizarre and openly cruel behavior of the Nazis toward the German and Austrian Jews, she was revolted and extremely angry. She later said, “I resolved there and then that if I ever had the chance I would do anything, however big or small, stupid or dangerous, to try and make things more difficult for [the Nazis].”
Soon after falling in love with and marrying the wealthy Frenchman Henri Fiocca, Nancy got the chance she had been looking for. Several of them, in fact. She befriended some Allied officers who were imprisoned nearby but who were free to walk about by day. Through these connections she became a courier. She also learned of the Garrow and the O’Leary escape lines that led out of Nazi-occupied France, across the Pyrenees Mountains on the border of France and neutral Spain, and, finally, to England and freedom.
Nancy became key in helping escaped Allied servicemen and Jewish refugees cross these lines. She would discreetly pick up the refugees or Allied servicemen from the train station, find a hiding place for them, and then accompany them, via train, to their next destination.
Because Nancy was so successful in helping Allied prisoners and refugees escape, a description of her circulated among Gestapo officials. They didn’t know exactly who she was, but they gave her the code name the White Mouse because she was able to elude their grasp so well, especially when they thought they had her cornered. The Gestapo offered a reward in the amount of five million francs for information leading to her capture.
It worked. The Gestapo was closing in on her. Nancy’s phone line was tapped, her mail was inspected, and she was being followed. She was coming under suspicion of being the White Mouse and knew it was time to leave Marseille. She packed her bags, bid a sad farewell to Henri, got on a train, and tried to follow the Garrow Line into Spain, hoping to eventually reach England.
If Nancy thought that her trip across France and the Pyrenees Mountains was going to be as trouble-free as it had been for most of those she had assisted, she was very wrong. On her seventh try, she finally crossed into neutral Spain but not before being imprisoned twice, once in France and once in Spain; jumping from a moving train; being shot at by German soldiers; going several days without food; spending some nights in a sheep pen; and almost freezing to death while crossing the frigid Pyrenees Mountains.
When she arrived safely in England, eager to start fighting Hitler again, Nancy joined the SOE under the cover of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). The SOE was eager to recruit her, having already heard about her successful Resistance work in France. After she completed her SOE training, she was parachuted right back into France with her work partner, Major John Farmer, whose alias was “Hubert.” They were eventually joined by their radio operator, Denis Rake, who provided them with direct radio contact with the SOE headquarters in London. This radio contact would enable the agents in France to tell the SOE exactly what they needed, and in return, the SOE could tell the agents when and where supplies and money would be dropped. Without this communication the SOE agents would have been unable to assist the maquis they had come to help.
The first maquis leader they were supposed to work with, Gaspard, a man in charge of 3,000 to 4,000 men, mistrusted Nancy. In his mind, there were two things wrong with her: she was from England, and she was a woman. He didn’t trust the SOE either. He decided to have one of his men get Nancy drunk, seduce her, murder her, and then take her money. Nancy overheard his plans, and after boldly confronting her would-be assassin she walked away unharmed and soon began to work with a different and more friendly maquis leader, Henri Fournier.
Because of the radio transmissions provided by Nancy’s radio operator, Fournier’s band of maquis soon became the best-supplied group in the area. The good news quickly spread, and although Nancy lived with Fournier’s band, she was soon regularly visiting and supplying 17 different bands, which included 7,000 men in total, and eventually Gaspard’s men as well. They came to greatly respect Nancy and value her judgment. She worked day and night to keep the steadily increasing number of maquisards supplied with the weapons and explosives received by air-drop from London and then trained them to use those weapons and explosives effectively. She also provided them with SOE money so they could pay local farmers for provisions instead of stealing from them.
Although these maquisards were usually outnumbered by the Germans in the area, they often put up incredible fights that inflicted large numbers of German casualties. This made the Germans more determined than ever to wipe them out. The Germans sent in 22,000 troops, 1,000 military vehicles, and 10 airplanes. Nancy raced to the area of the fighting. After she had unpacked, prepared, and distributed all of the ammunition and arms from the last plane drop, Nancy was so exhausted that she fell asleep for a few hours under a tree.
An order came to withdraw from the battle. As Nancy left the area in her car, one of the German planes spotted her and began to chase her down. The pilot was close enough that Nancy could see his helmet and goggles. She could hear the whizzing of the bullets he was firing at her coming closer and closer. She flung herself out of the car and landed safely by the side of the road.
Then, in the midst of the retreat, Nancy’s radio operator got rid of his radio and radio codes to keep them from falling into the hands of the pursuing Germans, leaving Nancy without SOE contact. She and all the maquisards in the area would soon run out of supplies and weapons. It was essential to obtain a radio and new codes, and Nancy knew that there was only one way to do it. She would have to get on a bike and pedal to the nearest radio operator to ask London to send, via the next parachute drop, a new radio and new codes. The nearest radio operator was 200 kilometers (approximately 125 miles) away.
When Nancy presented her idea to the maquisards, they tried to talk her out of it. They reminded her that she had no identification papers. When she would be stopped at checkpoints, she would surely be suspected as part of the maquis. And furthermore, she—a woman—would be alone and unprotected for all those miles.
That was precisely the point, Nancy replied. She was a woman. If any of the men tried to pass a German checkpoint, they would be immediately identified as a member of the maquis and arrested, or possibly shot, on the spot. But as a single woman, alone on a bike, Nancy could easily pose as a housewife, simply out shopping for her family. And as Nancy knew from past experience, a pretty woman had ways of getting past German soldiers without any trouble. Despite their misgivings, the maquisards knew that without a radio they would all be useless in the fight against the Germans. So Nancy obtained a new outfit, applied the last remnants of makeup she had, and rode off on her bike.
Whenever German soldiers passed her on the road, Nancy smiled and waved. When she had to stop at a checkpoint, she would ask innocently, “Do you want to search moi (me)?”
The response from each officer was basically the same: “No, mademoiselle, you can carry on.”
She was finally able to find a radio operator who agreed to contact the SOE offices in London and ask them to send another radio and more codes. When she finally got back to camp, several days later, she could barely move. The bike ride had rubbed away the skin from her inner thighs. She was in terrible pain, unable to stand or sit. She couldn’t walk for days. But the radio and the codes came soon, with the next parachute drop. It had been worth it. Nancy’s maquisards were again organized and armed.
After she recovered from her bike ride, Nancy continued to fight the Germans with her maquisards. While making a raid on a munitions factory, Nancy killed a German guard with her bare hands before he could sound an alarm. Another time she and several other maquis interrupted a Gestapo meeting by hurling hand grenades into the room. And after the war, Nancy became one of the most highly decorated women from World War II, receiving numerous top awards from the governments of France, Great Britain, and the United States.
But what made Nancy the most proud was that bike ride that ended up totaling 500 kilometers and that she had accomplished in just 72 hours, one of the most difficult things she ever did and a key moment in the maquis’ fight against the Germans.
In 1985 Nancy wrote her memoir, called The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called “The White Mouse.” She died in London on August 7, 2011, at the age of 98.
LEARN MORE The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called “The White Mouse” by Nancy Wake (Sun Books, 1985).
Nancy Wake: The Inspiring Story of One of the War’s Greatest Heroines by Peter Fitzsimons (Harper Collins, 2001).
The White Mouse: Nancy Grace Augusta Wake
www.diggerhistory.info/pages_heroes/white_mouse.htm is a Web site with information on Wake and includes photos of her numerous medals.