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'."
She was a first-hand witness to the rise of Adolf Hitler and was reputed to have interviewed him. These experiences were the catalysts for her determination to fight against Nazi tyranny if she ever got the opportunity.
In 1939, Wake married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy French industrialist whom she met on the social rounds of Marseilles. He was an expert tango dancer and became the love of her life. But their champagne-and-caviar lifestyle was abruptly ended by the German invasion of France.
By 1940, Wake was running messages and smuggling food for the French resistance, the Maquis. She branched out into helping downed Allied airmen escape capture and returning them to Britain. It has been estimated that she helped more than 1000 airmen escape.
It was perilous work despite her cover as the wife of a respectable businessman. She lived on her sharp wits.
"I'd see a German officer on the train or somewhere, sometimes dressed in civvies, but you could pick 'em. So, instead of raising suspicions I'd flirt with them, ask for a light and say my lighter was out of fuel," she recalled.
She told how she would get beautifully dressed and hang around making dates with Germans to get information.
"A little powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd pass their posts and wink and say, 'Do you want to search me?' God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was."
But in 1943, Gestapo agents were closing in. One day, she took flight. Wake told her husband she was going shopping and would soon return. They never saw each other again.
It took several attempts to cross the Pyrenees into Spain and on one occasion she was held and interrogated by the Vichy French collaborators of the German occupiers. She eventually reached Britain where she persuaded the Special Operations Executive to train her as a spy.
She later learned that her husband had been captured, tortured and executed for refusing to divulge information about her activities or whereabouts.
"I always felt responsible for his death," Wake said in 2002. "They tortured him. And his father said to him, 'They'll release you if you tell them where Nancy has gone.' And he said, 'Papa, laisse-moi tranquille'."
Fiocca's death did not, however, cause Wake to regret her resistance work. "I was broken-hearted, but I would have done it again. After all, the same could have happened to me."
Meanwhile, Wake trained in Scotland. She was taught survival in arduous conditions, parachuting, how to operate a radio, fire weapons, prime explosives and kill silently.
In early 1944, she and fellow SOE agent John Farmer were dropped into the Auvergne region of central France. Their mission was to organise the local resistance, collect nightly air drops of ammunition and arms, and establish radio links with their base in Britain.
Wake helped recruit an additional 3000 fighters to build a force of about 7000. She led groups of these fighters on guerilla attacks against German troops, installations and equipment.
In one confrontation with German soldiers, she lost her radio and codes and, therefore, all ability to communicate with her controllers in Britain. It was a severe loss because without a radio she could not receive orders or advice about air drops, nor could she report the results of her sabotage missions.
It meant a hazardous bicycle ride of 500km through German checkpoints to replace her lost codes. It was a marathon effort that took more than 70 hours. "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," Wake recalled.
The 1944 Normandy landings were approaching and the resistance was being primed to divert as many German troops as possible. Wake's groups were constantly on the move, sleeping rough and engaging the enemy in numerous firefights. Often, the local people suffered reprisals.
Wake was leading a force of more than 7000, a highly motivated army that was making life decidedly uncomfortable for about 22,000 German storm-troopers stationed in the Auvergne. In June 1944, the Germans attacked the resistance stronghold with the help of artillery and aircraft. At the end, about 1400 German soldiers lay dead; the resistance lost about 100.
During a later attack on an arms factory, Wake killed a sentry with a karate chop to the neck.
"They'd taught this judo-chop stuff with the flat of the hand at SOE, and I practised away at it. But this was the only time I used it -- whack -- and it killed him all right. I was really surprised."
There were sabotage missions, roadblocks and gun fights. Wake led an attack on Gestapo headquarters; she reputedly executed a woman who had been spying for the Germans.
In August, Paris was liberated and Wake's fighters celebrated in Vichy where she heard of her husband's fate.
Nancy Wake was the youngest of six children to Charles Augustus Wake and Ella Rosieur Wake, a woman with French and Maori bloodlines. When she was 20 months old, the family moved to Sydney where she attended North Sydney Girls High School.
Her father deserted the family leaving his embittered wife to raise the children.
"I adored my father," Wake told a South African newspaper in 2001. "He was very good looking. But he was a bastard. He went to New Zealand to make a movie about Maoris and he never came back. He sold our house from under us and we were kicked out."
An unexpected gift of pound stg. 200 from an aunt enabled Wake to travel to London where she went to a finishing school for young ladies. She loved parties and adored France.
"I've always got on very well with the French, perhaps because I'm very natural."
After the war, Wake stayed with the SOE and in the air ministry intelligence section before moving back to Australia where she stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for the federal NSW seat of Barton at the 1949 and 1951 elections.
She went back to England where she married Englishman John Forward, a former fighter pilot and prisoner of war. They returned to live in Sydney where she again unsuccessfully stood for parliament in the seat of Kingsford Smith. In the 1980s they moved to Lake Macquarie and into retirement. Forward died in 1997.
The French government made her a Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur, awarded her the Croix de Guerre with star and two Palms, and the Medaille de la Resistance. The British gave her the George Medal and the US awarded her the Medal of Freedom with Palm. She was also entitled to wear the British 1939-45 Star, the France and Germany Star, the British War Medal 1939-45 and the Defence Medal. She also held the New Zealand Returned and Services Association's highest honour, the badge in Gold.
Despite representations from the Returned Services League, successive Australian governments refused to recognise her heroism with an award. That was rectified in March 2004 when governor-general Michael Jeffery presented her with a Companion of the Order of Australia.
Ten years earlier, she had sold her medals to the RSL for $156,000. They were donated to the Australian War Memorial, despite the fact she was not officially an Australian nor had she fought as an Australian. It seems successive governments were reluctant to give her an award because she had never taken out Australian citizenship.
Wake left Australia in December 2001 saying she wanted to die in London where lived at the pound stg. 220-a-night Stafford Hotel in Piccadilly.
Her money ran out but the hotel was not prepared to evict her. It was revealed in February 2003 that Prince Charles had been helping pay the bills. She had her own stool at the hotel's bar, where she drank at least six gin-and-tonics each day, holding court for any admirers who dropped by.
Those who had contact with her later in life often shook their heads in despair at her decline.
"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."
After a heart attack in early 2003, she moved into a nursing home where she was supported by the Australian government.
Before the launching of her biography by journalist Peter FitzSimons in June 2001, the then defence force chief Peter Cosgrove said:
"Here is a woman of indomitable will, tremendous initiative [that] she was prepared to give everything a go. She lived life, in her younger years, absolutely in the fast lane and she had this ferocious determination not to vanish without a peep or a trace."
Posted by: S ||
08/08/2011 19:30 Comments ||
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#3
(echoing) Yes, good for him. She was one of those women in a million; a female underground operative (which wasn't all that uncommon towards 1943ish, given the speed with which that kind of campaign burned through male operatives) but also an effective combat leader. Ave, Nancy - for you, a place in the hall of heroes and gin-and-tonics until the end of time.
Hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in the country's famine unless more help arrives, a top U.S. official said Monday as Washington prepared to announce $100 million in new famine aid.
To highlight the crisis, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden visited a refugee camp on a patch of desert in eastern Kenya where tens of thousands of Somalis have massed. A drought has turned into famine because little aid can reach militant-controlled south-central Somalia.
Jill Biden is the highest-profile U.S. visitor to East Africa since the number of refugees coming across the Somali border dramatically increased in July. Biden arrived in a C-130 military transport plane and said she wants to raise awareness and persuade donors to give more.
"What I'm asking is for Americans to reach out and help because the situation is dire," said Biden, who met with two Somali mothers and their eight children. "There is hope if people start to pay attention to this."
[Bangla Daily Star] Police let a mob beat a 16-year-old boy to death on suspicion of being a robber at Tekerhat in Noakhali on July 27, witnesses told a private TV channel yesterday.
Betcha that'll teach him not to be suspected of thievery
.A video footage of the incident telecast on Somoy TV channel last night showed how the mob beat him after police forced the boy, Shamsuddin Milon, to get off a police van.
Police claimed that six suspected robbers were beaten to death on that day.
A local said they handed over the boy to SI Akram after locals caught him on suspicion of being a robber.
Another witness said, "I saw the boy getting on the police van."
"The coppers were repeatedly telling people to kill the boy," said another witness to the incident.
A local claimed that he knew Milon for long and the boy had never been involved in any criminal activities.
Home Minister Shahara Khatun told the TV channel that the people responsible for Milon's death will be brought to book.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... three coppers including a sub-inspector were suspended on Saturday night for negligence in duty after Milon's mother Kohinoor Begum filed a case against the coppers and two locals, reports our Noakhali correspondent.
The suspended coppers are Akram Sheikh, sub-inspector of Companyganj Police Station, and constables Abdur Rahim and Hema Ranjan Chakma, said Police Super Harunur Rashid Hazari.
A three-member probe committee led by Additional Superintendent of Police Mahbubur Rashid has been formed to probe Milon's death, he said.
On August 3, Kohinoor filed the case with the Judicial Magistrate's Court claiming that villagers beat her son to death in the presence of police suspecting him to be a robber.
She alleged that police did not try to save her son from the angry mob. They left maimed Milon lying on a road, instead of arranging treatment for him.
After Milon succumbed to his wounds, police took his body to the cop shoppe, said Kohinoor.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/08/2011 00:00 ||
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The Instant Vigilance Committee -- the Bangla version of a flash mob.
(KUNA) -- Riots that rocked an area where a local man was shot by police were roundly condemned Sunday as the shocked community surveyed the devastation caused.
Community and politicians were swift to criticize the rioting, looting and arson that swept across Tottenham in north London last night.
The violence came two days after a man named locally as Mark Duggan, 29, was bumped off by police.
After a peaceful protest by community members demanding "justice" for Duggan, the mood turned nasty and buildings and vehicles including a double-decker bus and two police cars were engulfed in flames.
People were left destitute after being forced to flee their burning homes and looters went on the rampage in a retail park near Tottenham Hale Tube station, grabbing whatever they could.
Teenagers and adults were said to have turned up in cars and filled their boots with stolen items, unimpeded by police, while others stuffed shopping trolleys with electronic goods, reports said.
Every single handset was stolen from a mobile phone shop.
Scotland Yard said 26 officers were maimed during the unrest, and 42 people were placed in long-term storage for offences including violent disorder, burglary and theft.
Downing Street called the rioting "utterly unacceptable", while Home Secretary Theresa May said: "Such disregard for public safety and property will not be tolerated." Mayor of London Boris Johnson said he was "appalled at the scenes of violence and destruction".
Local MP David Lammy said the community "had the heart ripped out of it" by "mindless, mindless people", many of whom had come from outside Tottenham to cause trouble.
Speaking from behind the police tape in the main Road today he said: "What happened here on Thursday night raised huge questions and we need answers.
"The response to that is not to loot and rob. There are homeless people standing back there.
"We have officers in hospital, some of whom are seriously injured. It's a disgrace. This must stop." Cries of "the police want to see the place burn" greeted Lammy's speech.
The sense of anger at what the looters had done was clear among the local community today. Police Commander Adrian Hanstock told news hounds at Scotland Yard that there had been "no indication" that violence would flare up.
He said: "Last night's peaceful demonstration was hijacked by a small number of criminal elements, who used that for their own gain.
The looting, the damage, the concern that has been caused to businesses and people who have lost their homes and their livelihoods is absolutely unacceptable." He said that things have changed since the riots at Broadwater Farm in 1985.
"There have been problems in the past, but I wouldn't say there is animosity. We have a vibrant community in Tottenham and we want to enable them to live peacefully.
"We don't accept that there is overwhelming discontent within the community."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/08/2011 00:00 ||
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Yuuuppp - you know thingys is serious in the UK when their beloved iconic DOUBLE-DECKER BUSES START GETTIN' TORCHED = GET SET ON FIRE.
One British account has it that he was an armed "gangsta" leader who shot an officer from Scotland Yards elite firearms squad CO19 in the side of his chest with a handgun.
#20
Reminds me of Bronze Night in Estonia a few years back.
The violence didn't stop until the second night, when police went in and started cracking skulls.
#21
WAFF > SPENDING CUTS, [Uncaring]POLICE BEHIND UK RIOTS: LCOALS SAY, + pervasive High Unemployment.
"No Jobs, No Prospects, No Anything", + now cuts in Public-Social benefits as coupled wid long-standing civilian allegations of local/area Police seemingly stopping + arresting, etc. anyone widout cause or proper Warrant [Abuse of Police-Govt Authority]???
versus
* CHINESE MIL FORUM POSTER > claimss that many of the Rioters are Caribbean, Mixed-Race = Black-White descendants from former British Colonies, NOT ASIANS OR MUSLIMS???
(KUNA) -- Anti-EU campaigners accused Sunday British Prime Minister David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... of showing "contempt" to voters after a Downing Street aide rejected calls for a referendum on British membership.
Writing on behalf of the prime minister, Cameron's political private secretary Laurence Mann said that the previous referendum on Common Market membership in 1975 produced a "very clear result".
And he said that a "simplistic in/out referendum" would offer an artificial choice which did not represent the full range of opinions in the UK and would be "highly unlikely to settle the question of Britannia's membership of the EU at all".
In a letter to Conservative Party member Anita Segar, who had written to Cameron demanding a referendum, Mann said: "The Government believes it much more effective to use the weight of our membership to negotiate and force positive change." And his letter, obtained by the media here also urged her not to lose sight of the EU's "very useful work" on global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty, adding: "These are compelling arguments for why we believe Britannia should be an active member." The anti-EU Independence Party leader here Nigel Farage said that the letter amounted to a "clear snub of the will of the electorate".
"I think we have finally seen the Prime Minister's true colours when it comes to the EU," said Farage.
"He's a fan and despite the weak eurosceptic posturing we have witnessed recently by parts of the Conservative Party, it is clear that Cameron has no intention of letting us have our say on future EU membership.
"The argument that the 1975 referendum delivered a clear mandate for membership is incredibly poor. "Firstly, that was when the British people were asked about the European Economic Community.
Over the last 36 years the EEC has morphed into the EU with its tentacles now reaching far and wide.
"Secondly, anyone under the age of 53 was not able to vote in 1975. By refusing a referendum it shows utter contempt for a massive chunk of the population."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/08/2011 00:00 ||
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Who wouldn't want to back Italian, Spanish, and Greek bonds?
Read it all
It is clear that President Obama does not agree with Smiths wisdom. Obamas policies are jeopardizing not only our national security and economy, but our constitutional sovereignty too.
That is why I have been considering running for President. The Republican Party must nominate a leader who, unlike Obama, understands instinctively that Americas liberty, prosperity and national security are inextricably linked.
Sadly, last weeks debt-ceiling legislation, potentially resulting in catastrophic cuts to our defense budget, only reinforces my deep concerns. This may have been the best we could get, and it is far better than we feared. But the deal risks massive defense cutbacks, potentially pointing a dagger at the heart of our security and sovereignty.
---------------
To date, in my view, no Republican candidate has persuasively argued that our economic recovery and long-term prosperity are completely intertwined with a strong national security posture. If no one else is prepared to make that case, I will.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/08/2011 19:59 Comments ||
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#4
there is no way he could be elected.
True, but as a candidate, Bolton and his mustache could say the things that need to be said, things John McCain avoided when he decided to play Mr. Nice Guy.
An anti-armor shoulder launched missile. The twist is that it uses a low speed initial launch system then fires up the main rocket en-route which enables it to be launched from inside a room or enclosed space.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
(KUNA) -- Riots that rocked an area where a local man was shot by police were roundly condemned Sunday as the shocked community surveyed the devastation caused.
David Cameron
