Chicks I'd like to have a beer with...

[Deuterium]

Hey grandma what'd ya do in the war???

During WWII A young woman from Baltimore, Virginia Hall, went to work for the French as an agent and was so successful that the Nazis began an all out hunt for her. By the winter of 1941, the Nazis were about to arrest her, but she escaped on foot over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. This was no easy task for Virgina Hall had lost her leg in a hunting accident earlier and wore a wooden leg at the time. Not content to rest she trained as a radio operator and then transferred to America's OSS. In November 1943, disguised as an elderly milk maid, she returned to France and resumed her espioniage duties.

Virginia was hunted by the Gestapo. They circulated a wanted poster with the warning, "the woman with the limp is one of the most valuable Allied agents in France and we must find and destroy her". But her elaborate disguise fooled the Germans and she painstakingly taught herself how to walk without a limp. Virginia collected and sent invaluable intelligence and coordinated air drops in support of D-Day. She also trained and led maquis resistance groups in guerilla warfare and sabotage.

After the war Virginia Hall was awarded America's Distinguished Service Cross in a simple ceremony...the only American civilian women to receive the DSC. She was also awarded the the MBE, the Member of the British Empire, for her courageous efforts. Virginia Hall continued to work for the OSS, later the CIA, until her retirement in 1966.


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SOEhall.jpg


"Jackie" Cochran
Her most distinguished aviation career began in 1932 when she obtained her pilot's license with only three weeks of instruction. From this time onward, her life was one of total dedication to aviation. After her first air race in 1934, she was respected by all for her competitive spirit and high skill. Her performance in the aviation events of the 1930's is legendary. Among her last flight activities was the establishment in 1964 of a record of 1,429 MPH in the F-104 Starfighter.

At the beginning of World War II, she became a Wing Commander in the British Auxiliary Transport Service ferrying U.S. built Hudson bombers to England. With the U.S. entry into the War, she offered her services to the Army Air Corps and formed the famed Women's Air Force Service Pilots. This group, more than 1000 strong played a major role in the delivery of aircraft to the combat areas throughout the world. For this service, she was awarded the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal.

Some of the honors she has been accorded include the Harmon Trophy, the General William E. Mitchell Award, Gold Medal of the Federation Aeronautique, and decorations from numerous countries.


http://members.lycos.co.uk/derekhorne/jc8.JPG

[Tim Nice But Dim]

Second World War George Cross Recipients

Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan was born on 1 January 1914, in Moscow. She became a Assistant Section Officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, seconded to the Women's Transport Service.

Inayat Khan was the first women operator to be infiltrated into enemy occupied France, on 16 June 1943. During the weeks immediately following her arrival, the Gestapo made mass arrests in the Paris Resistance Groups to which she had been detailed, but although given the opportunity to return to England, she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France. She was a wireless operator and did not wish to leave her French comrades without communications and she hoped also to rebuild her group.

The Gestapo did their utmost to catch her and so break the last remaining link with London. After three and a half months she was betrayed, taken to Gestapo Headquarters in the Avenue Foch and asked to co-operate. She refused to give them information of any kind and was imprisoned in the Gestapo HQ, remaining there for several weeks, and making two unsuccessful attempts to escape during that time. She was asked to sign a declaration that she would make no further attempts but refused, so was sent to Germany for 'safe custody' (the first agent sent to Germany).

She was imprisoned at Karlsruhe in November 1943 and later at Pforsheim, where her cell was apart from the main prison as she was considered a particularly dangerous and unco-operative prisoner. She still refused to give any information about either her work or comrades.

On 12 September 1944 she was taken to Dachau Concentration Camp and shot on the following day.

Noor Inayat Khan's George Cross was published in the London Gazette on 5 April 1949.

She is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial on Panel Number 243.


Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo

Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo was born on 26 June 1921 in the British Military Hospital in Paris of an English father and a French mother. She went to school in both England and France. Her family seat in France was a little village called Pont Remy, not far from Abbeville and right on the Somme. She boarded for a time in Abbeville right next to a park now contains Abbeville's library.
During World War II, Violette Szabo lived, together with her parents and daughter in Burnley Road, Stockwell, London SW9. She was an Ensign in the Women's Transport Service (FANY).

Violette Szabo volunteered for a particularly dangerous mission in France during April 1944, when she acted as a courier to a Frenchman who had survived the break-up of his circuit based on Rouen and was trying to reconstitute a group in this strategically important area. She had to travel from Paris to Rouen, contacting certain people believed to have remained unmolested and report back to her chief in Paris. She accomplished this dangerous task successfully and after about 6 weeks returned to England.

On D-Day plus one, 7 June 1944, she was dropped into France again.

Soon after her parachute landing, Szabo and her French guide were ambushed by a German patrol and wounded. Szabo insisted that her guide should escape while he could, and she herself was captured and taken first to Limoges and then to Paris. After brutal interrogations over several weeks when she divulged nothing, she was put on a train for Germany. On the journey while an air raid was in progress and the guards ran for shelter, she managed, despite being chained by the ankle to another prisoner, to carry a bottle of water to badly wounded British officers in a cattle truck. Unknown to each other, this group of officers included Wing Commander Yeo Thomas.

Imprisonment at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp followed and then two spells in labour camps, working under impossible conditions. Between 25 January and 5 February 1945, Violette Szabo was returned to Ravensbrück and shot together with two other agents: Lilian Rolfe and Danielle Block. The execution scene was later described in an April 1946 interrogation of one of the German onlookers, the second-in-command at Ravensbrück.

Violette Szabo's award of the George Cross was published in the London Gazette on 17 December 1946:

The KING has been graciously .pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to:

Violette, Madame SZABO (deceased), Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry).

Madame Szabo volunteered to undertake a particularly dangerous mission in France. She was parachuted into France in April, 1944, and undertook the task with enthusiasm. In her execution of the delicate researches entailed she showed great presence of mind and astuteness. She was twice arrested by the German security authorities but each time managed to get away. Eventually, however, with other members of her group, she was surrounded by the Gestapo in a house in the south west of France. Resistance appeared hopeless but Madame Szabo, seizing a Sten-gun and as much ammunition as she could carry, barricaded herself in part of the house and, exchanging shot for shot with the enemy, killed or wounded several of them. By constant movement, she avoided being cornered and fought until she dropped exhausted. She was arrested and had to undergo solitary confinement. She was then continuously and atrociously tortured But never by word or deed gave away any of her acquaintances or told the enemy anything of any value. She was ultimately executed. Madame Szabo gave a magnificent example of courage and steadfastness.

Violette Szabo was also awarded the Croix de Guerre (France). Her husband, Lieutenant Etienne Szabo (Free French Forces), was killed in action at El Alamein on 24 October 1942.

Violette Szabo is commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial on Panel 23, Column 3.

In 1981 a Blue Plaque commemorating Violette's life was unveiled at the house in Stockwell (London), that had been occupied by Violette Szabo, her parents and daughter.

Odette Marie Céline Sansom

Mrs. Odette Marie Céline Sansom (later Churchill, now Hallowes) was born on 28 April 1912.

Mrs. Sansom was infiltrated into enemy occupied France in October 1942 and worked with great courage and distinction until April 1943 when she and her commanding officer were arrested. On their way to Fresnes Prison they managed to talk together and agreed that for their mutual protection they should maintain that they were married. She stuck to this story and even succeeded in convincing her captors, in spite of considerable contrary evidence and through at least 14 interrogations. She also drew Gestapo attention from her commanding officer (Captain Peter Churchill) to herself, saying that he had only come to France on her insistence and even agreed that it should be herself and hot her commanding officer who should be shot.

The Gestapo were most determined to discover the location of a wireless operator and another British Officer whose lives were of the greatest value to the Resistance organisation. Mrs. Sansom was the only person who had this information but although she was subjected to every sort of indignity and cruelty, she never gave anything away and by her bravery and determination not only saved the lives of the two officers but also enabled them to carry on their most valuable work.

She was in solitary confinement for 2 years and whilst in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp was kept in complete darkness for 3 months and 11 days, as a punishment for the Allied landings in the south of France.

Ultimately, she was taken by the German Camp Commandant to the nearest American unit in May 1945.

Odette returned to England in 1945, although her health had been badly affected by her period of imprisonment and torture. A medical report produced, in 1945, by the doctor treating her stated that "... she was in a state of high nervous tension due to maltreatment received in German captivity. Some nails on her toes were missing; there was on her back a rounded scar of about half an inch diameter, the result of a burn deliberately inflicted in the concentration camp".

Her award of the George Cross was published in the London Gazette on 20 August 1946:

The KING has been graciously pleased to award the GEORGE CROSS to:

Odette Marie Celina, Mrs. SANSOM, M.B.E., Women's Transport Service (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry).

Mrs. Sansom was infiltrated into enemy occupied France and worked with great courage and distinction until April, 1943, when she was arrested with her Commanding Officer. Between Marseilles and Paris on the way to the prison at Fresnes, she succeeded in speaking to her Commanding Officer and for mutual protection they agreed to maintain that they were married. She adhered to this story and even succeeded in convincing her captors in spite of considerable contrary evidence and through at least fourteen interrogations. She also drew Gestapo attention from her Commanding Officer on to herself saying that he had only come to France on her insistence. She took full responsibility and agreed that it should be herself and not her Commanding Officer who should be shot. By this action she caused the Gestapo to cease paying attention to her Commanding Officer after only two interrogations. In addition the Gestapo were most determined to discovier the whereabouts of a wireless operator and of another British officer whose lives were of the greatest value to the Resistance Organisation. Mrs. Sansom was the only 'person who knew of their whereabouts. The Gestapo tortured her most brutally to try to make her give away this information. They seared her back with a red hot iron and, when, that failed, they pulled out all her toe-nails. Mrs. Sansom, however, continually refused to speak and by her bravery and determination, she not only saved the lives of the two officers but also enabled them to carry on their most valuable work. During the period of over two years in which she was in enemy hands, she displayed courage, endurance

Before her capture, Odette had met and fallen in love with another SOE man: Captain Peter Churchill. They were captured together, but both survived and married in 1947. The couple divorced in 1953 and Odette became Mrs Geoffrey Hallowes in 1956


From - http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/agentgcs.htm

[Tim Nice But Dim]

Keeping it international...

LYUDMILA PAVLICHENKO
THE GREATEST WOMAN SNIPER
by

Thomas W Bruner
On 12 July 1916, a girl was born in Ukraine in the small village of Belaya Tserkov . She became a bright student in her elementary years. By the time she was fourteen, her parents moved to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. At that time she joined a shooting club and developed into a sharpshooter. She also worked at an arsenal as a grinder. Her name was Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko; the greatest female sniper who every lived.

In June of 1941, the Germans launched Operation Barbarosa attacking the Soviet Union. Lyudmila was studying at the Kiev University. She was 24-years-old and majoring in history. Many of the Russian students rushed to join the military. Lyuda was an exceptionally beautiful young girl. When she went to the recruiter, she requested to join the infantry and carry a rifle. The recruiter laughed at her. She pulled out a marksmanship certificate to prove her worth. He wanted her to become nurse. Being strong willed, she refused. She signed up with the 25th Infantry Division. She became one of the two-thousand women Soviet snipers of which only about 500 survived the war. As a sniper, she made her first two kills near Belyayevka. Her rifle was a Mosin-Nagent Russian <a style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=sniper%20rifle" onmouseover="window.status='sniper rifle'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">sniper rifle</a> with a P.E. 4-power scope. The Mosin-Nagent was a 5-shot bolt action rifle. It fired a 148gr bullet at a velocity of 2800 fps. It was effective out to 600 yards.

Pvt. Pavlichenko fought about two and a half months near Odessa. There, she recorded 187 kills. The Germans gained control of Odessa, and her unit was pulled to be sent to Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. In June 1942, she was wounded by mortar fire . In May 1942, Lieutenant Pavlichenko was cited by the Southern Red Army Council for killing 257 German soldiers. Her total confirmed kills during WWII was 309 enemy. Lyudmila killed 36 enemy snipers. She found the kill logbook of one of the Nazi snipers she killed. He had taken the lives of over 500 Soviet snipers.
For the rest of the article - http://www.snipersparadise.com/history/pavlichenk.htm

Hannah Reitsch

In the 1932, medical student Hanna Reitsch began soaring and went on to become one of the first few people to cross the alps in a glider.

As the world's first female test pilot and helicopter pilot, Hanna flew everyting the Third Reich had: from the first helicopter (the Focke-Achgelis) to the prototype of a piloted V-1. She went on to set more than 40 altitude and endurance records in motorless and powered aircraft in her lifetime.

In 1945 she flew the last plane out of Berlin hours before the fall of the city. Although politics had nothing to do with her love of flight, she was the only woman ever to be awarded the Iron Cross and Luftwaffe Diamond Clasp.

From - http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/reitsch.html

[I love Rachael Leigh Cook]

Many more weren't so lucky

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Violetteszabo1944.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violette_Szabo

Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell Szabo, G.C., M.B.E., CdG (June 26, 1921 – February 5?, 1945) was a World War II secret agent.

Violette Szabo was the daughter of a French mother and an English father, born Violette Bushell in Paris, France. She was a secret agent in Occupied France, who was immortalised in the film Carve Her Name with Pride, based on the book of the same name by R.J. Minney. Her spymaster during her time in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was Leo Marks, who gave her what is now thought of as the definitive World War II code-poem Yours.

In 1940, Violette married Etienne Szabo, a French officer. Shortly after the birth of their only child, Tania, he was killed at the Battle of El Alamein. This was the event that caused Violette to offer her services to the SOE. Parachuted into France by the SOE, near Cherbourg she reorganized a resistance network that had been smashed by the Germans. She led them in sabotaging bridges and her reports to SOE headquarters on the factories producing war materials for the Germans were extremely important to establish bombing targets.

She returned to England and quickly was sent back to Limoges in France where she coordinated the local Maquis to sabotage German communication lines in preparation for D-Day. However, she was eventually betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo, despite putting up fierce resistance with her Sten gun. She was interrogated under torture, then sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where she was forced into hard labour and suffered terribly from malnutrition and exhaustion.

Violette Szabo was executed by the Germans on or about February 5, 1945 and her body disposed of in the crematorium. At Ravensbrück, three other female members of the SOE were executed by the Germans: Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, and Lilian Rolfe.

Szabo was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross; this was awarded posthumously on December 7, 1946. The Croix de Guerre was awarded by the French government in 1947. As one of the SOE agents who died for the liberation of France, Sub-lieutenant Szabo is listed on the "Roll of Honor" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre departément.

[Para]

What about Audrey Hepburn the film star, she worked as a courier for the Dutch Underground during WW2.
Violette Szabo, you may have seen the film about her called Carve Her Name With Pride.

[RFSU]

This is the real deal!



Nancy Wake
THE WHITE MOUSE


Nancy Wake was the Allies' most decorated servicewoman of WWII, and the Gestapo’s most-wanted person. They code-named her 'The White Mouse' because of her ability to elude capture. When war broke out she was a young woman married to a wealthy Frenchman living a life of luxury in cosmopolitan Marseilles. She became a saboteur, organiser and Resistance fighter who led an army of 7,000 Maquis troops in guerrilla warfare to sabotage the Nazis. Her story is one of daring, courage and optimism in the face of impossible odds.
With a roar that makes both her name and nickname seem quaintly ironic this is Nancy at 89: "Somebody once asked me, 'Have you ever been afraid?' ... Hah! I've never been afraid in my life." The Sunday Times (South Africa) describes her as a real-life Charlotte Gray "whose exploits with the French Resistance make Sebastian Faulks's fictional Charlotte Gray - on which the film version has been based - read like an Enid Blyton girls' school frolic."




Young Rebel
Nancy Wake was born in the gusty heights of Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand, on 30 August 1912 to Charles Augustus and Ella Rosieur Wake, the youngest of six children. The biography Nancy Wake, by Australian journalist and rugby personality Peter Fitzsimons, strongly records her edge lineage:

"Ella Rosieur Wake came from an interesting ethnic mix, her genetic pool bubbling with material from the Huguenots, the French Protestants who had famously fled France so they could pursue their religion freely, and Maori, as her English great-grandmother had been a Maori maiden by the name of Pourewa. She had been the first of her race to marry a white man, in the person of Nancy's English great-grandfather Charles Cossell, and they were wed by the Reverend William Williams at Waimate Mission Station on 26 October, 1836. Legend has it that the great Maori chieftain, Hone Heke, had loved Pourewa himself and had sworn death to them both, but had been killed in the Maori Wars before fulfilling his threat. In sum, Ella's people went a long, long way back in New Zealand, and physically she was like the land itself, rustically beautiful.

"Young Nancy's father, Charles, however, was of solid English stock...an extremely good-looking, tall man of easy, extroverted charisma and enormous warmth, he was a journalist/editor by trade, then working on a Wellington newspaper. He was a dapper dresser who never seemed to have a worry in the world."

When Nancy was 20 months old, her parents moved to Sydney where she grew up, chafing under the confines of genteel society. She was much younger than her brothers and sisters, and strongly independent. "I was a loner and I had a good imagination." She was a rebel, in particular shunning her mother’s strict religious beliefs.

Wake was raised without affection by her embittered mother after her father had walked out on them. "I adored my father," Wake recently told the Sunday Times, sitting on her bar stool with a walking stick in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other. "He was very good-looking. But he was a bastard. He went to New Zealand to make a movie about the Maoris, and he never came back. He sold our house from under us and we were kicked out." Wake ran away from home at 16 and went to work as a nurse. Then an aunt in New Zealand sent her £200 - a princely sum in those days. She left for the world. Wake used the money to travel to London and then to Europe where she worked as a journalist, swinging with a cosmopolitan set of independent and carefree young people. It was a glamorous life of parties and travel, and she lived it to the full. "I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural."

In 1930s Europe she witnessed the rise of Hitler, Nazism and anti-Semitism. In Vienna she saw horrific Dantescan scenes: Jews chained to a massive wheels, rolled around the streets and whipped by Nazi stormtroopers in a city square. The sight fed an early determination to work against the Nazis and eventually led to her courageous role in the French resistance.

In 1939 Nancy, married a handsome wealthy French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, in Marseilles (apparently seduced by his proficency in tango). "He was the love of my life." Together they had a charmed and sophisticated life of travel, dinner parties, champagne and caviar, shopping and furnished accessories, residing in a luxury apartment on a hill that overlooked Marseilles and its harbour.

Joining the Resistance
Six months after they married, Germany invaded France. Slowly but surely Nancy drew herself into the fight. In 1940 she crossed the line between observation and action, and joined the embryonic Resistance movement as a courier, smuggling messages and food to underground groups in Southern France. She bought an ambulance and used it to help refugees fleeing the German advance. Being the beautiful wife of a wealthy businessman, she had an ability to travel that few others could contemplate. She obtained false papers that allowed her to stay and work in the Vichy zone in occupied France, and became deeply involved in helping to spirit a thousand or more escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied fliers out of France through to Spain.




Her missions with the Resistance meant her life was in constant danger. She became a suspect and was watched. The Gestapo tapped her phone and opened her mail. She took many identities. She was so good at evading the Gestapo they nicknamed her the "White Mouse". By 1943, Wake was No 1 on the Gestapo’s most wanted list and there was a five million-franc price on her head. It was too risky for Wake to stay in France and the Resistance decided she should go back to Britain.
"Henri said ‘You have to leave’, and I remember going out the door saying I’d do some shopping, that I’d be back soon. And I left and I never saw him again."

Escape was not easy. She made six attempts to get out of France by crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. On one of these attempts she was captured by the French Milice (Vichy militia) in Toulouse and interrogated for four days. She held out, refusing to give the Milice any information, and with the help of the legendary 'Scarlet Pimpernel of WWII', Patrick O'Leary, tricked her captors into releasing her.

Finally Wake got across the Pyrenees and from there to Britain. She was on safer ground, but had no news of her husband, who worked separately.


Back to the Fighting
Nancy Wake, then 31, became one of 39 women and 430 men in the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive which worked with local resistance groups to sabotage the Germans in the occupied territories. She was trained at a British Ministry of Defense camp in Scotland in survival skills, silent killing, codes and radio operation, night parachuting, plastic explosives, Sten guns, rifles, pistols and grenades. She and the other women recruited by the SOE were officially assigned to the First Aid Nursing Yeomantry and the true nature of their work remained a closely guarded secret until after the war.



In late April 1944, Nancy Wake and another SOE operative, Major John Farmer, were parachuted into the Auvergne region in central France with orders to locate and organise the bands of Maquis, establish ammunition and arms caches from the nightly parachute drops, and arrange wireless communication with England. Their mission was to organise the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day invasion. The Resistance movement's principal objective was to weaken the German army for a major attack by allied troops. Their targets were German installations, convoys and troops. When dropped over Auvergne Nancy's parachute became stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her 'that French ****'.

There were 22,000 German troops in the area and initially 3-4,000 Maquis. Gaspard’s recruitment work, with the help of Wake, bolstered the numbers to 7,000. Nancy led these men in guerrilla warfare, inflicting severe damage on German troops and facilities. She collected and distributed weapons and ensured that her radio operatives maintained contact with the SOE in Britain. (See discussion point from a reader regarding the accuracy of these figures).

On one occasion Nancy cycled 500 km through several German checkpoints to replace codes her wireless operator had been forced to destroy in a German raid. Without these there would be no fresh orders or drops of weapons and supplies. Of all the amazing things she did during the war, Nancy believes this marathon ride was the most useful. She covered the distance in 71 hours, cycling through countryside and mountains almost non-stop. Her focus was rock steady to the end of her epic journey, when she wept in pain and relief.


"I got back and they said, "how are you?" I cried. I couldn't stand up, I couldn't sit down. I couldn't do anything. I just cried."

Pitched Battle
It was an extremely tough assignment: a near-sleepless life on the move, often hiding in the forests, travelling from group to group to train Maquis, motivate, plan and co-ordinate. She organised parachute drops that occurred four times a week to replenish arms and ammunition. There were numerous violent engagements with the Germans. The countryside was wracked with hostage taking, executions, burnings and reprisals.


No sector gave the Reich more cause for fury than Nancy’s – the Auvergne, the Fortress of France. Methodically the SS laid its plans and prepared to obliterate the group, whose stronghold was the plateau above Chaudes-Aiguwes. Troops were massed in towns all around the plateau, with artillery, mortars, aircraft and mobile guns. In June 1944 22,000 SS troops made their move on the 7,000 Maquis. Through bitter battle and escape, Nancy and her army had cause to be satisfied: 1,400 German troops lay dead on the plateau, 100 of their own men.

Nancy continued her war: she personally led a raid on Gestapo headquarters in Montucon, and killed a sentry with her bare hands to keep him from alerting the guard during a raid on a German gun factory. She had to shoot her way out roadblocks; and execute a German female spy.


Victory and Sadness
On June 6, 1944, D-Day, allied troops began to force the German army out of France. On 25 August 1944, Paris was liberated and Wake led her troops into Vichy to celebrate. However her joy at the liberation of Paris was mixed with a devastation she had secretly anticipated: in Vichy she learned that her beloved husband Henri was dead. A year after Nancy had left France in 1943, the Germans had captured Henri, tortured and executed him, because he refused to give them any information about the whereabouts of his wife.
Within a year Germany was defeated. 375 of the 469 SOE operatives in the French Section survived the war. Twelve of the 39 women operatives were killed by the Germans and 3 who returned had survived imprisonment and torture at Ravensbruck concentration camp. In all 600,000 French people died because of World War II, 240,000 of them in prisons and concentration camps.


Post War
Nancy Wake continued to work with the SOE after the war, working at the British Air Ministry in the Intelligence Department. In 1960 she married an English former prisoner of war, John Forward, and returned to Australia to live.
After the war her achievements were heralded by medals and awards: the George Medal from Britain for her leadership and bravery under fire, the Resistance Medal, Officer of the Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre with two bronze palms and a silver star from France, and the Medal of Freedom from America.

However she was never awarded a medal by the Australian government. When the Australian Returned Services League recommended that Wake be awarded a medal, they were turned down. Angry at the Australian government’s attitude, Wake decided that she would never accept a medal from them: she vowed it would go down in history that the most decorated Australian had never been awarded an Australian medal. The Sydney Morning Herald (April 28th, 2000) surmised that she was turned down for a medal because she was born in New Zealand and was considered a New Zealand citizen. In 1994 she refused to donate her medals to the Museum of Australia and proclaimed to the New Zealand Press Association in Sydney (Evening Post, April 30, 1994) that she was still a New Zealander and reminded the press that she had kept her New Zealand passport, despite her 80 year absence from the country.


Recognition
Wake’s dramatic life story and her feisty, courageous personality made her the ideal subject for documentaries and dramatisations. She tells her own story with interviews, reconstructions, stills and film footage in Nancy Wake - Code Name: The White Mouse.
In 1987 a television mini-series was made about her life. However the subject was irritated by historical liberties that were taken with her life story, such as showing her having an affair while working for the Resistance in Auvergne:

"What do you think my bosses in England would have thought, all those thousands of pounds to train me and for me to go and have an affair. Really!

"The mini-series was well-acted but in parts it was extremely stupid. At one stage they had me cooking eggs and bacon to feed the men. For goodness sake did the Allies parachute me into France to fry eggs and bacon for the men? There wasn’t an egg to be had for love nor money, and even if there had been why would I be frying it when I had men to do that sort of thing?"

Nancy Wake’s comrade Henri Tardivat perhaps best characterised the guerrilla chieftain: "She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then, she is like five men."

Nancy Wake, lives at Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia, but has recently expressed a desire to spend the remaining years of her life abroad, either in Britain, where many of her friends are, or France, where she rose to international fame during WWII (see postscript).

"The people of Port Macquarie have been wonderful to me, as have most individual Australians I've met, but I just feel I would be better off in the UK or France where I could go to special occasions as a member of a services club."

Demonstrating the esteem with which she is held internationally, in France when she is wearing the rosette of her Officer de Legion d'Honneur, all the gendarmes halt and salute her. Asked if her desire to leave could be swayed if the Australian Government were to at last acknowledge her achievements with an Australian honour she replied flatly and with characteristic vigour,

"No. The last time there was a suggestion of that I told the government they could stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts. The thing is if they gave me a medal now, it wouldn't be love so I don't want anything from them".

Nancy Wake: A lover and a fighter. She is just as assertive about what will happen to her body when she, improbable as it seems, is gone, assured that this wake will be a respectuful one:

"I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes to be scattered over the mountains where I fought with the resistance. That will be good enough for me".

[RGRBOX]

Kick ass info... some great ladies..

[digrar]

Cheers RFSU, I was going to put the white mouse up when this thread first kicked off but I got distracted.