Nancy wake

WALT: write a biography about a famous New Zealander

Nancy Wake, a figure in the French Resistance during the Second World War, was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 30 August 1912. Her family moved to Sydney, where she grew up.  She ran away from home at the age of 16 and found work as a nurse, but a windfall enabled her to leave Australia for Europe in 1932. Wake settled in Paris, working for the Hearst group of newspapers as a journalist.  In November 1939 she married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy industrialist, in Marseilles. Six months later Germany invaded France. Wake and Fiocca joined the fledgling Resistance after France’s surrender in 1940.

Her growing involvement in the Resistance saw Wake and her husband assisting in the escape of Allied servicemen and Jewish refugees from France into neutral Spain. Fearful of being captured she too fled Marseilles and, after several thwarted attempts and a brief period in prison, Wake escaped across the Pyrenees. In June 1943 she reached England where she began working in the French Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
After a period of training, Wake returned to France in April 1944 to help organise the Resistance before D-Day. 

Upon liberation, Wake learned that her husband, Henri, had been killed by the Gestapo in August 1943. In September 1944 she left the Resistance and went to SOE Headquarters in Paris, and then to London in mid-October. After the war she was decorated by Britain, France and the United States but, being unable to adapt to life in post-war Europe, she returned to Australia in January 1949 aged 47.