Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, (30 August 1912 – 7 August 2011), also known as Madame Fiocca and Nancy Fiocca, was a New Zealand-born Australian nurse and journalist who joined the French Resistance and later the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II, and briefly pursued a postwar 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." 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 then went to the United Kingdom. Her husband was captured and executed.
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"). 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.
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).
Born in Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand, on 30 August 1912, Wake was the youngest of six children. She was Māori through her great-grandmother Pourewa, believed to be of the Ngāti Māhanga iwi, who was reportedly one of the first Māori women to marry a European. In 1914, her family moved to Australia and settled at North Sydney.
Shortly thereafter, her father, Charles Augustus Wake, returned to New Zealand and her mother, Ella Wake (née Rosieur; 1874–1968) raised the children.
In Sydney, Wake attended the North Sydney Household Arts (Home Science) School.
At the age of 16, she ran away from home and worked as a nurse. With £200 (1928 currency) she had inherited from an aunt, she journeyed to New York City, then London where she trained herself as a journalist.
In the 1930s, she worked in Paris and later for Hearst newspapers as a European correspondent. She witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement and "saw roving Nazi gangs randomly beating Jewish men and women in the streets" of Vienna.
In 1937, Wake met wealthy French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca (1898–1943), whom she married on 30 November 1939. She was living in Marseille when Germany invaded. During the war in France, Wake served as an ambulance driver. After the fall of France in 1940, she joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow, which became the Pat O'Leary Line. In reference to Wake's ability to elude capture, the Gestapo called her the "White Mouse." The Resistance exercised caution with her missions; her life was in constant danger, with the Gestapo tapping her telephone and intercepting her mail.
In November 1942, Wehrmacht troops occupied Vichy France after the Allies' Operation Torch had started. This gave the Germans and the Gestapo unrestricted access to all parts of Vichy France and made life more dangerous for Wake. When the network was betrayed that same year she decided to flee France. Her husband, Henri Fiocca, stayed behind. He was later captured, tortured, and executed by the Gestapo. Wake described her tactics: "A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd pass their (German) posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was."
In early 1943, in the process of getting out of France, Wake was picked up with a whole trainload of people and was arrested in Toulouse, but was released four days later. The head of the O'Leary Line, Albert Guérisse, managed to have her released by claiming she was his mistress and was trying to conceal her infidelity to her husband (all of which was untrue). She succeeded in crossing the Pyrenees to Spain. Until the war ended, she was unaware of her husband's death, and she subsequently blamed herself for it.
After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive and was trained in several programs. Vera Atkins, who was the senior female in the SOE overseeing the agents going into France, recalls her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well." Training reports record that she was "a very good and fast shot" and possessed excellent fieldcraft. She was noted to "put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character."
On 29–30 April 1944, as part of the three-person "Freelance" team headed by John Hind Farmer (code name "Hubert"), Wake parachuted into Auvergne province, France. Resistance leader Henri Tardivat discovered Wake tangled in a tree. He remarked, "I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year," to which she replied, "Cut out that bullshit and get me out of this tree." Denis Rake, a radio operator, was the third member of the team.
The team was to be a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Émile Coulaudon (Gaspard). The team's initial relationship with Gaspard was frosty. He wanted money and arms from the allies but was not cooperative until the French Forces of the Interior in London, the umbrella organization for the disparate resistance groups in France, instructed him to cooperate. SOE began sending in large amounts of arms, equipment, and money.
Wake's duties were pinpointing locations at which the material and money were parachuted in, collecting it, and allocating it among the maquis, including pay to individual soldiers. Wake carried with her a list of the targets the maquis were to destroy before the invasion of France by the Allies (which would take place on 6 June). The destruction of communication lines and other facilities throughout France would hinder the German response to the invasion.
Disaster. The reach of the maquis exceeded their grasp. On 20 May, Couloudon declared a general mobilization of resistance fighters, collecting in total about 7,000 men divided into three groups. His objective was to demonstrate that the resistance was able to liberate areas from the Germans with its own forces. On 2 June, the Germans launched a probing attack on Couloudon's base at Mont Mouchet; on 10 June the Germans launched a larger attack, and on 20 June encircled Couloudon's positions and forced the resistance fighters to flee after taking heavy casualties. Wake and the members of her team accompanied groups of maquis in a three-day 150 kilometres (93 miles), retreat westward to the village of Saint-Santin.