Number wise, New Zealanders are among the smallest collection of people on earth. But historically, we've changed the world with our ideas. Over the next few weeks in Independent Women we will be looking at female Kiwis who should be a source of inspiration for us all. These heroes are proudly brought to you by THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE, a website dedicated to a new way of thinking about our identity, our people, our stories, our achievements and our place in the world. To visit the nzedge site, click on the logo before you read about our kiwi legends! Nancy Wake was the Allies' most decorated servicewoman of WWII, and the Gestapo's most-wanted person. They code-named her 'The White Mouse'. 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 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.Nancy Wake was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, the youngest of six children. Her parents moved to Sydney when she was 20 months old. Nancy grew up there. She was much younger than her brothers and sisters, and strongly independent. She was a rebel, in particular shunning her mother's strict religious beliefs.
At 20 she first went to England and then to Europe where she worked as a journalist, moving 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.
She witnessed the rise of Hitler, Nazism and anti-Semitism. In Vienna she saw Jews chained to a wheel and whipped by Nazi storm troopers in a city square. This 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. Together they had a charmed and sophisticated life of travel, dinner parties, champagne and caviar, shopping and luxury apartments.
Six months after they married, Germany invaded France. Slowly but surely Nancy drew herself into the fight. In 1940 she joined the emerging 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 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.
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 (militia) in Toulouse and interrogated for four days. She held out, refusing to give them 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.
Nancy Wake, then became one of 39 in the French Section of the British Special Operations Executive working 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, Stun guns, rifles, pistols and grenades.
In February 1944, Nancy Wake and another 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Twelve of the 39 women operatives were killed by the Germans and 3 who returned had survived imprisonment and torture at Ravensbruck concentration camp.
After the war Nancy Wake continued to work with the SOE. In 1960 she married an English former prisoner of war, John Forward, and returned to Australia to live.
Nancy Wake, now 87, lives at Port Macquarie, NewSouth 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.
Number wise, New Zealanders are among the smallest collection of people on earth. But historically, we've changed the world with our ideas. Over the next few weeks in Independent Women we will be looking at female Kiwis who should be a source of inspiration for us all. These heroes are proudly brought to you by THE NEW ZEALAND EDGE, a website dedicated to a new way of thinking about our identity, our people, our stories, our achievements and our place in the world. To visit the nzedge site, click on the logo before you read about our kiwi legends! 
Nancy Wake was the Allies' most decorated servicewoman of WWII, and the Gestapo's most-wanted person. They code-named her 'The White Mouse'. 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 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.Nancy Wake was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912, the youngest of six children. Her parents moved to Sydney when she was 20 months old. Nancy grew up there. She was much younger than her brothers and sisters, and strongly independent. She was a rebel, in particular shunning her mother's strict religious beliefs.