Afterword

‘IT WAS DREADFUL because you’ve been so busy and then it all just fizzles out.’ Nancy Wake, The Australian, 25 April 1983.

When I first decided I wanted to write about Nancy Wake, I did not realise just how insurmountable a task lay before me. She was an enigma, a courier who ferried hundreds of evaders including Jews to the foothills of the Pyrenees, the fierce Guerrilla fighter who fought side-by-side with the Maquis. The well-decorated woman of some military fame who claimed to be fearless. Her real story reads like a Hollywood fable, dabbed in beauty, shrouded in mystery, tainted with sadness. So, in search of the truth, I realised Nancy was far more than a warrior with the Resistance, and I longed to uncover the life she led before World War Two.

All that I’d ever read, all that I thought I knew, were facts to be pushed to one side. I scoured the internet, sleuthed genealogy sites, read newspaper archives, trawled through numerous interviews, dramas, and film productions, and finally devoured every available biography. I also managed to obtain copies of her military records. All this information enabled me to sculpt a picture of Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, the young woman who ran away from home, travelled the world, became a journalist, and carved out a new life from a petite apartment in rue Sainte-Anne, Paris.

Before leaving France at the end of the war, Nancy visited O’Leary while he recovered at the Palais Royal Hotel, having survived Dachau. Overjoyed to see a dear friend and saviour, she found him to be in good spirits. But happy reunions were equally tinged with sadness, as she also learnt the fate of her old friend and Resistance worker, fellow Australian Bruce Dowding. On June 30, 1943, the Germans carried out his execution by beheading at Dortmund, as part of their brutal crackdown on resistance fighters. On September 13, 1946, Bruce was mentioned in despatches for ‘gallant and distinguished services in the field’.

In January 1946, Colonel Buckmaster was asked to present the French Government with a Lysander aircraft as a gesture from the British Government and SOE. Nancy, still grieving and feeling depressed, refused the invitation to attend the ceremony, but Denis Rake persuaded her otherwise. She returned to Paris, where she met up with old friends, including Henri Tardivat.

Back in England, at a crossroads with little money, finding work became a priority. Denis told her of his new role with the Passport Control Office, based in Paris, and encouraged her to apply. In a matter of a few weeks, Nancy learnt she would be joining him, working in the same office. Her time there signified a fairly happy period in her life and allowed her to catch up and socialise with old friends. Of course, her darling dog, Picon, accompanied her and even slept beneath her desk at work.

As for Harold Cole, the traitor, or Paul Cole, as he was widely known, justice prevailed. In 1946, acting on a tip-off, police surrounded the apartment building where he lived with his partner. Cole, having heard footsteps on the stairs, opened the door and fired, only to be shot in return. He bled to death on the apartment floor in central Paris. When the news reached Nancy, she was able to reassure others equally affected by Cole’s treachery.

Sadly, she lost her beloved terrier late in 1947, when he fell ill with dropsy. The vet advised euthanasia. At thirteen, Picon was a good age—not that it made the loss any easier to bear. He had been her last link to the good old days. And so, Nancy said goodbye to the second love of her life, leaving her truly alone and bereft.

In 1948, she was honoured when Henri Tardivat invited her to attend his daughter’s christening and to be godmother. As a touching tribute, the baby would be named Nancy. Tardi, as she so affectionately called him, had been injured during the fighting at Belfort Gap and had to have his left leg amputated. Like so many, he made the most of his life, established a business in Paris, and had a family of his own. His friendship with Nancy lasted a lifetime, as did the closeness of their bond.

Many investitures were held at the British Embassy in Paris during those post-war years, and while Nancy waited for her turn to be decorated, she caught up with old friends once again. One, in particular, hosted what she described as the best dinner party of the year: Hector—the man she and Hubert had met after parachuting back into France in April 1943. He had been arrested and spent the remainder of the war in Buchenwald.

At the end of 1948, Nancy resigned her position, choosing to return to Sydney, a decision she later regretted as she found it challenging to re-settle in Australia. She sailed into Sydney Harbour in January 1949 to a rapturous welcome by the Australian press. The Sunday Sun reported, ‘Six Medal Heroine Returns.’ People stopped her in the street, shook her hand, and wished her well, and her family welcomed her. The reunion undoubtedly brought her some peace while she grieved the loss of Henri, and it enabled her to reconcile with her mother. She was also reunited with her beloved elder brother, Stanley, and was so relieved that he had survived his incarceration as a Japanese prisoner of war in Changi.

All too soon, she was looking for new opportunities, eager to have a fulfilling role. A contact in the Liberal Party suggested she try her hand at politics, prompting her to run for the federal seat of Barton in the forthcoming elections. Politics had never appealed to Nancy before, but she spotted an opportunity to make a difference. Speaking to the press at the time, she explained that she recognised much political unrest in Australia, some of it reminiscent of Germany prior to the war.

Naturally, the press was all too eager to cover her recent decision, and once again, Nancy found herself making headlines. ‘Maquis Heroine Tries Politics.’ After tireless campaigning and the Federal elections in 1949, Dr HV Evatt, her Labour opponent, retained his Barton seat. Nancy, however, had managed to shrink his majority and was encouraged to carry on, sailing into the 1951 elections. Once again, she was defeated, with Dr Evatt retaining his seat. However, she’d worked her magic once more, shrinking his majority considerably, and he won by a mere two hundred and forty-three votes. Nancy was the first woman to run in the elections, an achievement in itself, but she’d had enough and decided to return to England and her little flat in London. I must say, having studied those election results and the proceeding years, I have a strong notion she might have won the next election in 1953 if only she had stayed.

Back in England, a new role with the Air Ministry beckoned. Nancy was part of a team of four who gave lectures on evasion and escape, an area in which she was well versed. Later, she was nominated to write the Manual of Combat Survival, a classified publication that would be of particular interest to aircrews in the event of them becoming stranded in an unfriendly country.

It was during this period that she first met John Forward, an RAF officer stationed in Malta. They met at a friend’s dinner party. Such was the impression Nancy made on the slightly younger pilot that he turned up at her flat one grey, rainy day and never left. They married in 1957, and Nancy returned to Malta with her new husband. She and John were happy together by all accounts. The next chapter in her life brought more recognition and fame when the biographer, Russell Braddon, wrote a book about Nancy and her wartime exploits. When John’s posting ended in 1959, he retired from the RAF, and he and Nancy decided to relocate to Sydney, Australia. Later, they would move to Port Macquarie.

After deciding to write her own biography in the early eighties, The White Mouse was published to huge acclaim in 1985. Soon afterwards, a Sydney production company produced a mini-series about Nancy’s life, which took her back to France, to find old friends such as Madame Sainson, who still lived in the same small flat in Nice.

In 1994, Nancy sold her medals at auction, receiving quite a tidy sum of money. When asked if she would have preferred to keep them, she replied, ‘There was no point in keeping them. When I die, I’ll probably go to hell, and they’d melt anyway.’

Later, in 1997, John passed away in his sleep, leaving Nancy a widow once more. In the years that followed, her own health declined after suffering one or two minor strokes. In 2001, having decided to live out her years in London, Nancy left Australia for the last time. She took up residence at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s Place, where the staff came to know and love her immensely. They even had a chair made especially for her, placed by the bar, ready for her arrival at eleven o’clock every morning, when she would order the first gin and tonic of the day. When her funds eventually ran dry, the hotel soaked up the costs, gratefully receiving generous donations from well-wishers and benefactors. Rumour had it that HRH, the Prince of Wales, was one such benefactor. A spokesman from St James’s Palace later confirmed that the prince was indeed contributing to Nancy’s hotel bills, which reputedly amounted to around eighty-thousand pounds annually.

In 2003, she moved to the Royal Star & Garter Home, having become too frail to remain at the hotel. While there, she received visitors over the last years of her life and mail, often from children who also sent drawings, and I imagine that warmed her heart, planted a smile on her lips, and set a twinkle in those blue-grey eyes.

On 7 August 2011, Nancy died in Kingston Hospital, London, having been ill with a chest infection. She was almost ninety-nine years old. In keeping with her express wishes, she was cremated, and her ashes were scattered near Montlucon, over the mountains of the Auvergne. Such a fitting tribute to a remarkable lady who once lived and fought with the Maquis.