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| Nancy Wake, 1912-2011 |
Hello again everyone, and thank you so much for all your kind comments after my last post. After a small break from blogging, businessing, and the world in general, things are feeling much better and I’ll be back to my usual blethering this week. Thanks for bearing with me while I took some time out.
I’ve just seen the news that the Australian war heroine Nancy Wake died here in London last night. Nancy’s life and deeds are an inspiration, and I’m always left gobsmacked reading about the risks this woman took to do what she thought was right. You can read her obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, and I would also recommend reading either of her two biographies: Nancy Wake: SOE’s Greatest Heroine by Russell Braddon or Nancy Wake: The inspiring story of one of the war’s greatest heroines by Peter Fitzsimons.
Below is a post I wrote about Nancy last October.
Nancy Wake, 1912-2011
It might seem a little flippant to suggest a war heroine as a style icon. It isn’t meant to be. I have never thought that style is simply about the clothes you put on, or how you wear your hair. It is also about the kind of person you are, and how you conduct yourself in life.
Nancy Wake was born in New Zealand, but lived most of her childhood in Sydney. A not very happy one by all accounts, with her father leaving and selling their home while she was young, and Nancy being brought up by a consequently bitter mother. She escaped home when she was 16 to work as a nurse… then her luck turned, and she was given £200 by an aunt. She now had they money to travel the world she had yearned to see more of.
Nancy went first to New York, then worked for a while in London until she got the chance to transfer to Paris (this is a story that I thought was fantastic – Nancy applied for the Paris job and was asked if she knew shorthand. ‘Of course’, she said, and proceeded to take down what her boss said and read it back to him in full. In fact though, she had just made random squiggles and memorised what had been said).
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| Nancy Wake in Paris, 1932 |
In Paris, Nancy lived an exciting, bohemian lifestyle of the 30s; having parties with friends in tiny French apartments with bathtubs of bootleg liquor, going to shows, travelling around Europe… and witnessing the rise of Nazism along the way. She was visiting London when war was was declared, and fled immediately back to Paris and her friends. Soon, she met and fell in love with rich businessman Henri Fiocca. They quickly married and moved to a hillside flat overlooking Marseille, living a life of champagne, money and society. It didn’t last long. Six months later, France was invaded.
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| Nancy Wake with her husband, Henri Fiocca |
Nancy became involved with the French Resistance. Initially she simply delivered messages and food, but eventually she was obtaining false papers and transporting people out of France (estimated at a thousand). The Gestapo was meanwhile searching for this Resistance worker who had caused them so much trouble, nicknaming her The White Mouse. For a time, as the wife of a wealthy businessman, Nancy had been safe, but she now became a suspect. By 1943 she was top of the Gestapo’s most wanted list, with a five million-franc price reward offered for her capture. She had to leave France, quickly. Henri stayed behind in Marseille while Nancy travelled secretly with a group of fellow workers over the Pyrenees.
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| Nancy Wake with Henri Fiocca and Captain Ian Darrow (centre) |
Once safely in Britain, Nancy joined the Special Operations Executive, and trained with them in Scotland for several months before being parachuted back into central France. Here, she camped out in the mountains with the local resistance, organised the different factions, arranged ammunition drops, led guerilla attacks, and liased by wireless with England - all in preparation for the planned D-Day invasion. At one point, she cycled 500 miles in 71 hours in order to replace some codes which had been destroyed: “I got back and they said, “how are you?” I cried. I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t do anything. I just cried.” Another time, she led a raid on a German gun factory and had to kill a sentry with her bare hands to stop him giving the alarm.
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| One of Nancy Wake’s false identity cards |
When France was finally liberated, the joy was tempered with tragedy. Nancy found that her husband Henri had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo. He had died without giving anything away.
“Henri said ‘You have to leave’, and I remember going out the door saying I’d do some shopping, that I’d be back soon. And I left and I never saw him again.”
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| Nancy in uniform |
Nancy was awarded the George Medal from Britain for her leadership and bravery under fire, the Resistance Medal, Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre with two bronze palms and a silver star from France, and the Medal of Freedom from America. She was finally appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia in 2004.
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| Nancy Wake in the 1950s |
Nancy continued her work with the SOE after the war, then remarried and returned to Australia in 1957. She moved back to London in 2001 to live out her final years in a retired veteran’s home in Richmond, and died on the evening of Sunday, 7 August, 2011.
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| Nancy Wake in 2010 |
1960s polka dot mod dress by Berketex
1970s green and red tartan knit jumper dress
1960s black and white check blanket dress
1970s floral print hippy smock dress by Emanuelle
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