"A woman of indomitable will." "The Fearless Matriarch of Resistance," Nancy Wake, "The White Mouse," crosses over to her reward.

"I loved killing Germans," she told a British journalist who had tracked her down in the bar. She repeated: "I loved killing Germans! In those days, I thought the only good German was a dead one. The deader the better."

Nancy Wake in 1945.

Nancy Wake, who inspired the film Charlotte Gray after becoming one the Allies' most decorated servicewomen for her role in the French resistance, passed away in a nursing home in London yesterday. The Australian, who the Nazis codenamed 'The White Mouse' due to the ease with which she escaped capture, left strict instructions to be cremated in a private ceremony. She wants her ashes to be scattered at Montlucon in central France, where she fought in a heroic 1944 attack on the local Gestapo headquarters. -- From The Daily Mail.

Another obit from The Australian: Fearless matriarch of resistance.

THE most decorated woman of World War II, Nancy Wake had a five-million-franc price put on her head by the feared German secret police, the Gestapo, for helping the French Resistance. Branded the White Mouse by her hunters, she became the most wanted resistance fighter in France.

It was an extraordinary turn of events for the former Sydney schoolgirl who had travelled to London and Paris in the early 1930s to try her hand at journalism.

Working as a newspaper reporter, Wake found herself in Vienna where she saw Jews being whipped in public by Nazi SS troops. In 2003, she described to News Limited's then-London correspondent, Bruce Wilson, one of the horrors she witnessed in 1938.

"The Germans and Austrians had set up a kind of Catherine wheel and tied these Jews to it, and as it went around they were beating them and throwing things at them," she said.

"I thought . . . what had they done, poor bastards? Nothing. So I said, 'God almighty, it's a bit much and I've got to do something about it'."

Another obit: Great Australian WWII heroine dies at 98 in London.

Wikipedia:

In 1937 she met wealthy French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca (1898–1943), whom she married on 30 November 1939. She was living in Marseille, France when Germany invaded. After the fall of France in the 1940s, she became a courier for the French Resistance and later joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow. The Gestapo called her the White Mouse. The French Resistance had to be very careful with her missions as her life was in constant danger and the Gestapo were tapping her phone and intercepting her mail.

By 1943, she was the Gestapo's most-wanted person, with a 5 million-franc price on her head. When the network was betrayed in December 1943, she had to flee Marseille. Her husband, Henri Fiocca, stayed behind where later, unknown to Wake, he was captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo on 16 October 1943. She was not aware of his death until the war was over. Wake had been arrested in Toulouse, but was released four days later. She succeeded, on her sixth attempt, in crossing the Pyrenees to Spain.

After reaching Britain, Wake joined the Special Operations Executive and on the night of 29–30 April 1944 she returned to occupied France, being parachuted into the Auvergne and becoming a liaison between London and the local maquis group headed by Captain Henri Tardivat. She coordinated resistance activity prior to the Normandy Invasion and recruited more members. She also led attacks on German installations and the local Gestapo HQ in Montluçon. From April 1944 to the complete liberation of France, her 7,000 maquisards fought 22,000 SS soldiers, causing 1,400 casualties, while taking only 100 themselves. Her French companions, especially Henri Tardivat, praised her fighting spirit, amply demonstrated when she killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm during a raid. During a 1990s television interview, when asked what had happened to the sentry who spotted her, Wake simply drew her finger across her throat. On another occasion, to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid, Wake rode a bicycle for more than 500 miles (800 km) through several German checkpoints.

Immediately after the war, Wake was awarded the George Medal in 1945, the United States Medal of Freedom, the Médaille de la Résistance and thrice the Croix de Guerre. She was not awarded any Australian or New Zealand decorations. She also learned that the Gestapo had tortured her husband to death in 1943 for refusing to disclose her whereabouts. After the war she worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry attached to embassies of Paris and Prague.

Nancy Wake, post-war, with a Resistance poster.



Yves montand sings, The Chant of the Partisans.

Le Chant des Partisans:

Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines ?
Ami, entends-tu les cris sourds du pays qu'on enchaîne ?
Ohé partisans, ouvriers et paysans, c'est l'alarme !
Ce soir l'ennemi connaîtra le prix du sang et des larmes.

Montez de la mine, descendez des collines, camarades,
Sortez de la paille les fusils, la mitraille, les grenades ;
Ohé les tueurs, à la balle et au couteau tuez vite !
Ohé saboteur, attention à ton fardeau, dynamite ...

C'est nous qui brisons les barreaux des prisons, pour nos frères,
La haine à nos trousses, et la faim qui nous pousse, la misère.
Il y a des pays où les gens au creux des lits font des rêves
Ici, nous, vois-tu, nous on marche et nous on tue, nous on crève.

Ici chacun sait ce qu'il veut, ce qu'il fait, quand il passe ;
Ami, si tu tombes, un ami sort de l'ombre à ta place.
Demain du sang noir séchera au grand soleil sur les routes,
Sifflez, compagnons, dans la nuit la liberté nous écoute.

Here is an English translation, which can be sung to the same tune:

My friend, do you hear the dark flight of the crows over our plains?
My friend, do you hear the dulled cries of our countries in chains?

Oh, friends, do you hear, workers, farmers, in your ears alarm bells ringing?
Tonight all our tears will be turned to tongues of flame in our blood singing!

Climb up from the mine, out from hiding in the pines, all you comrades,
Take out from the hay all your guns, your munitions and your grenades;

Hey you, assassins, with your bullets and your knives, kill tonight!
Hey you, saboteurs, be careful with your burden, dynamite!

We are the ones who break the jail bars in two for our brothers,
hunger drives, hate pursues, misery binds us to one another.

There are countries where people sleep without a care and lie dreaming.
But here, do you see, we march on, we kill on, we die screaming.

But here, each one knows what he wants, what he does with his choice;
My friend, if you fall, from the shadows on the wall, another steps into your place.

Tomorrow, black blood shall dry out in the sunlight on the streets.
But sing, companions, freedom hears us in the night still so sweet.

My friend, do you hear the dark flight of the crows over our plains?
My friend, do you hear the dulled cries of our countries in chains?