Nancy Wake

She became a French Resistance Fighter during her visit to Vienna, Austria in the 1930s where she witnessed the Nazi gangs beating Jewish men and women in the streets.

Working as a journalist in Europe, she interviewed Adolf Hitler in Vienna in 1933 and then vowed to fight against his persecution of Jews.

She met a Marseilles industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in 1936 and married him in 1939 to settle in Marseilles, France. With the German invasion of France, she used her wealth and social standing to help French Resistance Groups defeat the Nazis. In 1943, she fled France when the Nazis learned of her activities in helping the Allies. Her husband was arrested and executed.

Nancy Wake was born in New Zealand but her family moved to Australia when she was 2. She spent her childhood in Sydney and after her studies she traveled to Europe where she worked as a journalist. In 1939 Nancy married French industrialist Henri Fiocca who was killed during the War. Nancy Wake joined the French Resistance with the nickname of "The White Mouse". After having been arrested, she was released but left France for Spain, then England. There, she became a British special agent.

After the fall of France in 1940, Nancy became a French Resistance courier and later a saboteur and spy.

She left France in 1943 to England where she was trained by the British Special Operations Executive or the S.O.E., an intelligence group working with the French Resistance. In April 1944, she parachuted into France to help with preparations for the D-Day invasion. She collected night parachute drops of weapons and ammunition and hid them in storage caches for the advancing Allied Armies, set up a wireless communication with England, and harassed the Nazis.

On 29th April 1944, Nancy was parachuted into Auvergne (region of France) with the task of helping the resistance to prepare for the armed uprising that was due to coincide with the D-Day landings. She received several medals after the war and worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry before coming back to Australia in the 60s after she married John Forward.

She was awarded the George Medal on July 17, 1945 for her services to the Allied Troops in Special Operation in France during World War II and the A.C. (Companion of the Order of Australia) on February 22, 2004 for her services to wartime and Australia.

After the war, she worked for the British government and returned to Australia and ran unsuccessfully for public office there in the 1950s.

She was awarded the France Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1970 for her services during World War II. She was awarded the Officer of the French Foreign Legion of Honor in 1988. In 2006, she was awarded the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association Badge in Gold. Her medals are on display at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra.

Her life as a World War 2 French Resistance fighter inspired the novel, and film, Charlotte Gray (2001).