Nancy Wake - WWII Spy The Germans Called "The White Mouse"

The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) of WWII has fascinated me since I ran across it a few years ago while studying parts of that war I hadn't encountered in school. Ian Flemming was involved with it, and some of the characters in his books would be based on people he knew during the war. If you have never encountered that particular part of WWII history I can recommend Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat. (That link will take you to a old post of mine. I found the book at my local library.) In many ways the stories are better than what Flemming would write after the war.

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake: 30 August 1912 to 7 August 2011.

Nancy Wake was one of the many women who worked for the SOE. Nancy Wake obituary: SOE agent during the second world war nicknamed 'the White Mouse' by the Gestapo.

In the run-up to D-day, Wake, who was born in New Zealand and raised in Australia, joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was eager to recruit French-speaking women to serve as couriers.

Vera Atkins, who worked in the SOE's French section, remembered her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well". Her training reports record that she was "a very good and fast shot" and had a good eye for fieldcraft. On several occasions, she "put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character".

In April 1944, Wake was dropped by parachute into the Auvergne region along with Major John Farmer, leader of the Freelance resistance circuit. Wake was a woman of very high energy, he said, with "very clear ideas of how she wanted everything done". On landing, her parachute got stuck in a tree. One of the Frenchmen greeting her said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. "Don't give me that French shit," she replied with her customary bluntness.

There is a lot more at that link.

For a more lighthearted look at her career, you could see her entry in Rejected Princesses, Nancy Wake. (Well-behaved women seldom make history.)

She rescued Jews and POWs. She blew up bridges and kept over seven thousand French rebels in line. She had a bounty on her head worth five million francs.

She was called The White Mouse by the Nazis because of her ability to allude them.