Thread by @ajcdeane

This is the 35th instalment of #deanehistory. After yesterdays bunkerbuster of an instalment, this one is a little shorter.

With a grateful hat tip to @CaptnCrash, this is the story of The White Mouse – Nancy Wake.

Kiwi-born & Australia-bred, Wake was a free spirit from the word go. When she was 16 she ran away from home in Sydney to work as a nurse, then went to London to train as a journalist. She worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris & Vienna, seeing the rise of the Nazis firsthand.

When the war broke out, she was living in Marseille. She was an ambulance driver until France fell, when she joined the Resistance. Her work was known to the Gestapo but her skilfulness is avoiding them was 2nd to none– they christened this mysterious operative “The White Mouse.”

Things were harder once the Wehrmacht occupied Vichy France. Her network was betrayed. She escaped France, into Spain. Her husband, also in the network, remained; he was killed. Reaching the UK she joined Special Operations Executive. After training she parachuted into Auvergne.

Caught in a tree in her descent, she was found dangling from its branches by the Resistance. Apocryphally or not, their leader is said to have told her he hoped all trees would bring forth such beautiful fruit. She replied, quite understandably, “don’t give me that French shit.”

SOE supplied weaponry and cash for distribution by Wake and her group, and she coordinated targets for attack in the run-up to D Day. But, keen to show their ability to defeat the Germans themselves, the Resistance overreached.

They moved from guerrilla fighting to full combat in which they were outnumbered and outgunned. Wake proved herself every bit the equal of her male colleagues in heavy fighting, and then in a retreat that took three days.

Needing to tell London what was happening, she volunteered to cycle a 300 mile round trip to the nearest known SOE radio facility, doing so successfully.

In times of relaxation, she also proved herself more than the equal of her comrades by drinking them under the table.

Joined by some Americans, Wake’s group undertook several attacks on German vehicles and successfully defended themselves from an attack, whilst continuing their distribution of materiel obtained from air drops. During one of the raids, she killed a German with her bare hands.

Here, the controversial part about Wake. There were three women in their camp. They were being abused. Two, she convinced her comrades to release. The third, she interrogated and concluded was a spy. She ordered the Resistance to shoot her. They did.

Wake’s group took part in further tough operations against the Germans, now on the back foot, after the Allied invasion of southern France. Many fell around her – but Wake survived.

After the war she remarried (an RAF bomber pilot) & ran unsuccessfully for office in Australia several times. She returned to London after her 2nd husband died & was to be found in her regular spot at the Stafford Hotel belting down G&Ts setting the world to rights into her 90s.

She died just shy of her 99th birthday. Her ashes were scattered over the hills upon which she had fought for freedom.