![]() Another gentlemen also placed his white mouse. I took the liberty of placing two white mice on the coffin. Her coffin was draped in a Union Jack with a single poppy wreath placed on top. In line with her request, the small group met up. I understood that she wanted no fuss at her funeral and had only listed ten people she wanted to be present – five of those were ELMS members. On the 17 August 2011 I again travelled south, this time to say goodbye to Nancy as she made her final Home-Run. On seeing the mouse Nancy burst into a smile and said ‘After all these years you still remember!’ The white sugar mouse took pride of place that day. This was all gift-wrapped and I carefully carried it all the way to south London from North Yorkshire by train, without mishap! The day before I left I had visited Eden Camp Museum where I had spotted some white sugar mice, so I had included one on the top of the basket. On one occasion, bereft of any idea about what to take Nancy Wake, I eventually decided upon a wicker basket of preserves, wine, biscuits and fudge. ![]() Nancy presided over her birthday parties each year, gatherings of a few friends, mainly SOE but on each occasion some ELMS friends too. She was a member of ELMS and a great supporter of the Society and its work. Nancy Wake received the George Medal, 1939-45 Star, France and Germany Star, Defence Medal, British War Medal 1939-45, French Officer 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.George Medal – Legion d’Honneur – Croix de Guerre (3 times) – Medaille de la Resistance –Medal of Freedom – Companion of the Order of AustraliaĪ number of people in the Society will have known Nancy Wake personally. In December 2001 she left Australia for England where she lived out her remaining years. A third attempt to enter politics also failed and she and her husband ultimately retired to Port Macquarie where they lived until his death in 1997. The couple returned to Australia in 1959. Nancy Wake returned to England, and in 1957, married John Forward, an RAF officer. Shortly afterwards she ran for the Liberal Party against Labor’s ‘Doc’ Evatt and, having been narrowly defeated, made a second attempt in 1951, again unsuccessfully. In September 1944 she left the Resistance and went to SOE Headquarters in Paris, and then to London in mid-October.Īfter the war she was decorated by Britain, France and the United States but, being unable to adapt to life in post-war Europe, she returned to Australia in January 1949 aged 37. Upon liberation, she learned that her husband, Henri, had been killed by the Gestapo in August 1943. Working in the Auvergne region, she was engaged in organising parachute drops of arms and equipment, and after D-Day, was involved in combat with bodies of German troops sent to destroy the Maquis. In June 1943 she reached England where she began working in the French Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).Īfter a period of training, Nancy Wake returned to France in April 1944 to help organise the Resistance before D-Day. Fearful of being captured she too fled Marseilles and, after several thwarted attempts and a brief period in prison, Nancy Wake escaped across the Pyrenees. Her growing involvement in the Resistance saw Nancy Wake and her husband assisting in the escape of Allied servicemen and Jewish refugees from France into neutral Spain. Nancy Wake and Fiocca joined the fledgling Resistance after France’s surrender in 1940. In November 1939 she married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy industrialist, in Marseilles. In 1935 she visited Vienna and Berlin where the overt and violent anti-Semitism formed in her a desire to oppose Nazism. She settled in Paris, working for the Hearst group of newspapers as a journalist.Īs the 1930s progressed, the rise of German Fascism formed the basis of many of Nancy Wake’s stories. ![]() She ran away from home at the age of 16 and found work as a nurse, but a windfall enabled her to leave Australia for Europe in 1932. Her family moved to Sydney, where she grew up, when she was just 20 months old. Nancy Wake, a prominent figure in the French Resistance during WW2, was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on the 30th of August 1912. Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011) – ‘The White Mouse’. ![]()
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