Assigned the code name Hélène and the cover name of Madame Andrée, Wake parachuted into the Auvergne region of France on 31 April 1944. The flight over the Channel to France aboard a Liberator aircraft was not an easy journey for Wake. Hung-over after a raucous night out to celebrate her impending departure, Wake spent most of the flight fighting off the urge to throw up her Spam dinner in her oxygen mask. Her nausea aside, she certainly made an impression on both her flight crew and her reception committee. In irrepressible Wake fashion, she combined her army-issue overalls and tin hat with silk stockings, high heels and a camel-hair coat. She landed with another SOE operative, Major John Farmer, and their instructions were to link up with the local Resistance, and organise them so that they could both disrupt German lines of communication and launch acts of sabotage against the Germans in coordination with Allied landings in Normandy. Unfortunately, Maurice Southgate, who ran the STATIONER circuit that Wake and Farmer were supposed to join, was arrested before they could make contact. Worse still, their radio operator, Wake’s old conducting officer Denis Rake, had refused to be parachuted into France with them, demanding to be landed by Lysander instead. He was landed in France, but had taken off with a boyfriend for the first several days he was there, and Wake and Farmer had no idea where he was. They finally made contact with a local Resistance group, run by a man named Gaspard, but quickly discovered their presence was not welcome. Gaspard made it clear he was unwilling to work with the British and was not interested in any help that Wake and Farmer could provide. The fact that they did not even have a radio operator made the pair even less appealing to him. Stunned by their cool reception, Wake and Farmer went outside to discuss the turn of events, and happened to overhear the Resistance men discussing the fact that the SOE agents were probably carrying a lot of money and that perhaps one of them should seduce Wake, steal her money and kill her that evening. Wake was livid, and confronted the man, creating quite a scene. Gaspard decided to rid himself of both Wake and Farmer by passing them along to another Resistance group run by a man named Henri Fournier. Here they met with a much warmer reception, and Fournier graciously offered them hotel accommodation in a remote village called Lieutadès where they could await the arrival of their radio operator.
Denis Rake resurfaced in the middle of May, making contact with Wake as she was driving by the Lieutadès cemetery. Although Wake and Farmer were furious with Rake (as they were quite certain that he had been off following some amorous adventure), they were also extremely glad to see him. Moreover, Fournier was ecstatic that his group would now be in radio contact with London. Lists of explosives and weapons they wanted were coded by Wake and transmitted by Rake. Drop sites were scouted, and Wake and her team manned the sites from 10 p.m. until 4 a.m., signalling to the aircraft, retrieving the containers, unpacking them and distributing their contents to the Resistance. Wake was also in charge of the group’s finances. She decided which Resistance groups were to receive the arms and explosives as well as monetary support. Her position was an extremely powerful one and the various Resistance groups competed to win her favour. Even Gaspard and his men, who had been savaged by a German attack on their positions in late May, now came to Wake for supplies. However, not all of the air-dropped packages were earmarked for the Resistance. Occasionally parcels were dropped that contained personal items for the agents. Wake’s always contained Elizabeth Arden products, speciality teas, chocolates and letters from friends.
The large group of Resistance fighters in the Auvergne region eventually attracted the attention of the Germans, and many small battles took place. It was during one of these firefights that a Frenchman named Roger, who had earlier infiltrated the Resistance working as a Gestapo spy, was captured. Several Resistance men interrogated him rather brutally, and Roger confessed to being responsible for the arrest and torture of a number of Resistance members. His confession was recorded and Wake took it for transmission back to London. Roger was subsequently executed by the Resistance and buried in the forest. Wake was uncomfortable with the torture the man received, but conceded,
There is a lot to be said for the proverb ‘an eye for an eye’, and when all is said and done Roger was only paying for some of the abominable treatment meted out to his victims. Torture is horrible. But before any outsiders form an opinion they should study both sides of the story closely.8
When it came to the Germans, however, Wake had no qualms about delivering a swift and savage response. In an interview given after the war, she stated simply, ‘I loved killing Germans! I hated the Germans … I loathed and detested them and as far as I was concerned the only good one was a dead one. And the deader the better.’9
The Allied forces began landing on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944. Wake had been in Montluçon the day before picking up a new weapons instructor, and by the time she returned to Chaudes-Aigues, where Farmer and Rake were headquartered, she was dismayed to discover that most of the underground telephone cables, railway junctions and several factories in the area had been blown up in conjunction with the D-Day landings. She felt she had missed out on all the fun! There was definitely more sabotage to be done, however, and Wake comforted herself with the thought that more explosives and weaponry were arriving each night from Britain, and that she would soon get her chance. News of the Allied landings spread rapidly among the French, and soon large numbers of Resistance volunteers began streaming into the Auvergne region. All of these volunteers had to be interviewed, armed and outfitted. Wake was put in charge of footwear – each new recruit received a pair of British Army boots and two pairs of socks. There was little time for sleep as the airdrops came nightly, and all of the containers had to be unpacked and distributed. There were so many new recruits in the area that Farmer, the group’s commanding officer, decided, for security reasons, to move his small group further north. Before they could leave, however, they came under a massive German attack. Wake had just returned from an all-night stint receiving and unpacking containers up at one of the drop sites. As she crawled into bed she was startled by the sound of gunfire. The group’s lookouts arrived and announced that the whole area surrounding their mountain hideout was ringed by over 22,000 German troops who were supported by tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft. Wake, Farmer and Rake packed quickly and joined the larger group of Resistance fighters who had taken up positions on the plateau. As the Resistance worked feverishly to hold back the German onslaught, Rake attempted to contact London via radio, and Wake put all the weapons received the night before into working condition and drove them out to the Resistance’s outlying positions. Eventually a response from London was received and the whole group was ordered to withdraw from the area.
Wake travelled for two days with virtually no food or water. She and a group of about thirty Resistance men eventually reached the outskirts of the town of Saint-Santin where they decided to set up headquarters. Denis Rake joined them a few days later but he had buried his radio and destroyed his codes, so the group was without contact with London. This was a dreadful blow, since there was no way to arrange for supply drops or to receive orders. Through a local contact, Wake heard that there was a Free French wireless operator located approximately 200 km away. She volunteered to travel by bicycle in order to meet with him. Many of the group counselled against this plan as roadblocks had been set up across the entire region. Moreover, the Germans had declared that all the identity cards of local citizens had to be exchanged, under German supervision, for new ones. Obviously Wake could not participate in the exchange so all of her papers were now invalid. To travel such a distance without the proper identification was extremely hazardous. Without radio contact with London, however, the group was in serious trouble, and there appeared to be no better plan than Wake’s. She followed a circuitous route and was forced to take many detours to avoid German troops and roadblocks. After a great deal of difficulty, she finally found a Resistance group that was organised by the Free French, and their radio operator agreed to send a message to
Colonel Buckmaster at SOE on Wake’s behalf. Exhausted, Wake forced herself back onto her bicycle for the long trip home and returned to Saint-Santin a mere seventy-two hours after she had left. Her legs were on fire and it took her days to recover, but, when asked about her proudest moment of the war, Wake always said, ‘The bike ride.’10
Once Wake was able to travel again, she and her group moved north into a region under the command of Henri Tardivat. Tardivat set the group up in an area just outside of Ygrande, close to a field that could be used as a drop site. Wake was extremely happy in her new situation. She had great respect for Tardivat (Tardi, as she called him) and was impressed by his well-run group of Resistance saboteurs. Ambushes were one of Tardivat’s specialities and Wake joined him on countless missions, attacking German convoys that were heading towards the Normandy front. Wake and her colleagues favoured roads that ran through thickly wooded areas, where they could line the road with bombs and run a string from the trigger to their hiding spot. When the convoy approached, they would detonate the bombs and strafe the Germans with gunfire, forcing them to evacuate their vehicles. Tardivat insisted that there be no sustained contact with the enemy, and on his signal the group would simply blend back into the darkness. London had received Wake’s message from the Free French radio operator and dispatched not only supplies but also a new radio operator, who would work in conjunction with Denis Rake. Wake continued to be in charge of the group’s finances and the distribution of arms, and she was not above using her powerful position to secure herself some creature comforts. Sick and tired of sleeping on the damp ground with her compatriots, Wake decided she required indoor sleeping quarters, and she figured a bus with two facing rear seats would be just the thing. She had already received a mattress from Tardivat, so when he requested an additional shipment of Bren guns she was more than happy to accommodate, as long as he could provide her with the bus she wanted. Tardivat and his Resistance men set up a roadblock and stopped every bus that passed by until they found one with two facing rear seats. The unfortunate bus passengers had a long walk ahead of them, but Tardivat received his guns, and Wake now had a bedroom to call her own!
Wake’s group was constantly on the move and continued to come under German attack. They in turn attacked German patrols, and continued to ambush convoys of food that were being sent to feed both German civilians and the troops at the front. Wake maintained contact with all of the Resistance groups in the area, travelling extensively to provide them with money and arms, and also searching for potential drop sites where the group could receive their deliveries. She also continued to work closely with Tardivat on his sabotage missions. They blew up numerous bridges and attacked hundreds of convoys. Wake discovered she loved using the tripwire technique, which involved stretching a wire, attached to explosives, between two trees on each side of the road. The first vehicle in each convoy would blow up, causing damage to those behind it and blocking the road so that the rest of the group would come to a standstill. One of her most exciting missions was the attack she participated in on Gestapo headquarters in Montluçon. Tardivat came up with the plan, and spent days monitoring the headquarters and recording how many sentries were on duty, when the shift changes occurred and where the defences were situated. His plan called for one group to implement the actual attack and for another to cover the escape of the attackers. Wake was over the moon to discover she was to be included in the attacking group. Tardivat, Wake and fourteen others drove into Montluçon in four separate cars, and arrived in front of Gestapo headquarters at 12.25 p.m. As Wake described it, she ‘entered the building by the back door, raced up the stairs, opened the first door along the passage way and threw in my grenades, closed the door and ran like hell back to my car which was ready to make a quick getaway’.11 The getaway was not quite as quick as Wake had hoped, as the people of Montluçon crowded the streets, cheering for them, but blocking the cars in the process. Some frantic horn blowing cleared the way, and Wake and her colleagues made their escape. Wake seemed to thrive on danger, and there was plenty of it – not always in the form of German soldiers, either. Because of her powerful position, she was bound to make enemies, and one afternoon a Resistance fighter from a group that Wake had refused to arm decided he was going to kill her. Fortunately for Wake, the man had been drinking heavily. As her car approached a small village, the man, who was waiting for her, pulled out a grenade and the grenade pin. All of his drinking had slowed his reflexes, however, and he held it in his hand too long. The grenade exploded, taking his hand with it. When his intent was revealed to Wake, she refused to feel sorry for him and, from that point on, she always travelled with a bodyguard.
Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944, and the Germans pulled out of Vichy in September. Wake and her group immediately travelled to Vichy where Wake was stunned by the news that her beloved husband Henri Fiocca was dead. He had been arrested by the Gestapo in May 1943, and held in prison until he died five months later. Fiocca had been tortured extensively, but had refused to reveal the whereabouts of his cherished wife. For that act of courage, he ultimately paid with his life. Wake was devastated by the news and, while she was never one to second-guess herself, she was the first to admit, ‘I will go to my grave regretting that. Henri was the love of my life.’12 Wake did discover that her little dog Picon had survived, and she took some consolation from that happy reunion.
After the war, Wake was awarded numerous medals for her work in France, including the George Medal (from Britain); the Croix de Guerre with palm and bar, the Croix de Guerre with star, the Médaille de la Résistance, the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and the Officier de la Légion d’honneur (from France); and the Medal of Freedom (from the United States). She worked for the British Foreign Office, attached to the embassies in Paris and Prague, until 1949 when she returned to Australia and tried her hand at politics. She ran as a Liberal Party candidate in the Australian federal election of 1949 but was defeated. Wake returned to England in 1951 and took a position as an officer in the Intelligence Department of the British Air Ministry. She left this post in 1958, shortly after marrying John Forward, a former RAF pilot who had spent much of the war in a German POW camp. Her new husband convinced her that their combined pensions would go further in Australia, so the two returned there in 1959. Although she dabbled, unsuccessfully, in politics one more time, Wake spent the majority of her days playing golf, travelling and being a homemaker. She published her autobiography, The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the White Mouse, in 1985, and soon after that she and Forward purchased a flat in Port Macquarie where they intended to live out their final years. Wake’s husband died in 1997, and in 2001, at the age of eighty-nine, Wake sold her flat in Australia and returned to Britain. Australia had lost its appeal for her, and she resented the fact that the Australian government had never invited her to march in any military parades; nor had they recognised her war service with any sort of medal, always asserting that her service had not been as part of the Australian military. In typical Wake form, she announced, just as she was leaving Australia, that ‘I’m hoping to find some old friends in town … I’m heading for the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge to have a bloody good drink.’13
Wake took up residence at the Stafford Hotel in London, her stay funded by the sale of her medals, which fetched a price of £60,000. Following a heart attack in 2003, Wake moved into the Royal Star & Garter Home for ex-servicemen. A year later, the Australian government finally recognised Wake’s war service by awarding her the Companion of the Order of Australia. New Zealand followed suit in 2006, and awarded her the RSA Badge in Gold. In old age, Nancy Wake maintained much of the spark she possessed as a young woman, and had lost none of her sense of humour. While chatting with a reporter about the arrangements she had made with regard to her eventual death, she stated, ‘I’m going to be cremated and have my ashes flown over the mountains where I fought alongside all those men. And if there is such a person as St Peter, I’m going to make i
t easy for him: I’m going to plead guilty on all counts.’14
Nancy Wake passed away on 7 August 2011 at the age of ninety-eight. In March 2013, at a ceremony held in a wooded area just outside the village of Verneix, Montluçon, France, Nancy Wake’s ashes were scattered throughout the forest; the service was attended by two current FANY members, the Head of the Australian Defence Staff, the Australian military attaché from Paris and many others. Even in death, Wake’s vibrant personality shone through and, in keeping with her penchant for an early morning gin and tonic, a lively drinks reception was held, as per her request, at the mayor’s office, following the ceremony.
3
Noor Inayat Khan (1914–44)
Code Name: Madeleine
Largely due to the coverage of her work in the bestselling novel (and the movie made for television) A Man Called Intrepid, Noor Inayat Khan may be one of the best-known female operatives of the Second World War. Ironically, she was an incredibly unlikely candidate for the role of undercover agent. Noor was a deeply religious Indian princess and also a confirmed pacifist, who objected to any type of violence. Yet, despite her privileged background and her strong religious beliefs, Noor was committed to the fight against Nazism.
Women who Spied for Britain Page 5