Nancy Wake

"Freedom is the only thing worth living for. While I was doing that work I used to think it didn't matter if I died, because without freedom there was no point in living."

So said Nancy Wake who was born in New Zealand on 30th August 1912. She will soon be 99 years old.

She is a war hero.

Nancy Wake was codenamed "The White Mouse" and was once the Gestapo's most wanted.

She had already lived an eclectic life, some would say bohemian, and although her childhood was problematic she forged a path with resilience and determination, taking her to New York, London and Paris, and along the way noting the injustice being implemented by the National Socialists of Germany.

The advent of WWII thrust Nancy into the horrors of war, and after the fall of France in 1940 she became a courier for the French Resistance.

She once cycled 500 miles through German checkpoints to replace codes which a wireless operator had been forced to destroy during a German raid.



Her story provided the inspiration for Sebastian Faulks's novel Charlotte Gray, which was later made into a film with Cate Blanchett playing the lead.

As a result of her bravery and service she received the George Medal, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Medaille de la Resistance and three Croix de Guerres from France.

Nancy's life is an incredible story of courage and adversity, living day to day with the threat of capture, torture and death. She lived and breathed a war which few are left to relate, and few of us can relate to. Yet that war has affected each and every one of us to this day.

She is in the same company as Odette Sansom and Violette Szabo and many other women who sacrificed all for a cause.