Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011), also known as Madame Fiocca and Nancy Fiocca, was a nurse and journalist who joined the French Resistance and later the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and briefly pursued a post-war career as an intelligence officer in the Air Ministry. The official historian of the SOE, M. R. D. Foot, said that "her irrepressible, infectious, high spirits were a joy to everyone who worked with her".[1] Many stories about her World War II activities come from her autobiography, The White Mouse, and are not verifiable from other sources.
Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Wake grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. By the 1930s, Wake was living in Marseille with her French industrialist husband, Henri Fiocca, when the war broke out. After the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940, Wake became a courier for the Pat O'Leary escape network led by Ian Garrow and, later, Albert Guérisse. As a member of the escape network, she helped Allied airmen evade capture by the Germans and escape to neutral Spain. In 1943, when the Germans became aware of her, she escaped to Spain and continued on to the United Kingdom. Her husband was captured and executed.[2]
After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) under the code name "Hélène". On 29–30 April 1944 as a member of a three-person SOE team code-named "Freelance", Wake parachuted into the Allier department of occupied France to liaise between the SOE and several Maquis groups in the Auvergne region, which were loosely overseen by Émile Coulaudon (code name "Gaspard").[3] She participated in a battle between the Maquis and a large German force in June 1944. In the aftermath of the battle, a defeat for the Maquis, she claimed to have bicycled 500 kilometers to send a situation report to SOE in London.[4][2][5][6]
Wake was a recipient of the George Medal from the United Kingdom (17 July 1945), the Medal of Freedom from the United States (1947), the Légion d'honneur from France (1970: Knight; 1988: Officer), a Companion of the Order of Australia from Australia (22 February 2004), and the Badge in Gold from New Zealand (2006).[7][8
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