Nancy Wake: World War Two’s Most Rebellious Spy

by Braddon, Russell

  ‘The first thing we do, when we get in touch with these Maquis leaders, is tighten up their security,’ she told Hubert. ‘This is awful. The way everyone knows us just drives me straight up the wall.’

  Hubert nodded. ‘Wonder where the hell Southgate is?’ he muttered distractedly. Maurice Southgate, who was in charge at Montluçon and who, according to London’s plans, was to have met them as soon as they landed and introduced them to Laurent, one of the leaders of the Maquis d’Auvergne. It would be Laurent’s role then to take them to Gaspard, chief of the whole area.

  Gaspard was in command of four groups, numbering about four thousand men, in the departments of Allier, Puy-de-Dome, Haute Loire and Cantal. After Nancy and Hubert had met all these groups, and sized them up and inspected their forces, they were to cable London and advise whether the whole Maquis was worth financing, arming and training in preparation for D-Day.

  But four days had passed and still there was no Maurice Southgate to introduce them to Laurent, and no wireless operator to send any messages to London. They seemed doomed to remain inactive in Cosne-d’Allier forever.

  However, their inactivity was not allowed to persist. News reached them that day that Southgate’s group in Montluçon had been the victims of mass arrests, which explained his delay. A special messenger then arrived to confirm the news. Not only that, but he told them that their wireless operator had regrettably landed on the other side of all this Gestapo turmoil and that he would have the greatest possible difficulty getting through to them – if, in fact, he had not, as seemed probable, already been captured. Then he left them. Southgate himself never did get to Nancy and Hubert to introduce them, as planned, to Laurent. First he had grievous troubles of his own on his circuit, and later he was himself captured by the Germans. After that there was only one thing for Nancy and Hubert to do – they must arrange their own introductions to the leader of the Maquis d’Auvergne.

  Nancy went to her host, the radio mechanic.

  ‘Jean,’ she said, ‘take us to Gaspard.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Jean told her, ‘but I will take you to see Laurent. He will know how to find Gaspard.’

  ‘Always Laurent,’ she thought. Well, it was a start at least. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said.

  They drove that day to Laurent’s hideout. When Nancy questioned the advisability of driving by day, Jean told her that it was safe enough. He knew all the secondary roads and the Germans, he claimed, preferred to stick to the Routes Nationales . Secondary roads were too dangerous for them. Nancy, taught by London to travel only by bicycle or train, or on foot, was at first not entirely convinced. The nature of the country through which she now drove, however, soon changed her mind.

  The ancient province of Auvergne is a highland district. There are mountains as high as 6,000 feet, there are plateaux, gorges, heavily wooded slopes, jagged volcanic rock formations. Most of the year it is cold and wet; all the year round it is inaccessible and ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. Not for nothing is it known traditionally as the Fortress of France. In this sort of terrain, she felt, the Maquis were at a decided advantage over the Germans and cars were emphatically more sensible than walking, which would be exhausting in the extreme, or bicycles, which would be pointless.

  They found their first contact and he, recognising Jean, led them to a second; the second led them to a third. So it went on. It was the sixth or seventh contact who eventually guided them to a house in a tiny village. Laurent, wanted for the shooting of several Germans in Clermont-Ferrand, was taking no risks. Their guide told them that the Maquis leader had been in this house for four nights.

  He was a tall, darkly handsome man of about thirty. His speech was uneducated but his mind was obviously acute. He greeted the two Britons with reserve and looked secretly amused as he noticed that one of them was a woman.

  Since it was already early evening he suggested that his visitors should sleep the night in his room and then go with him to find Gaspard in the morning. Nancy, determined to be quite independent, said that she herself would prefer to sleep in the car.

  Also, knowing that Laurent had already spent four nights in this same house, she pointed out that if she could find him so could the Gestapo. Accepting the validity of this argument, Hubert and Jean decided to join her in the car. They spent an uncomfortably sleepless night and were, in consequence, more than a little irritated when a very fresh-looking Laurent called for them in the morning.

  In their gazogène they then followed Laurent, who drove a petrol-powered car. He drove fast and extremely well and they had difficulty keeping up with him. Eventually he left them behind, to wash themselves and breakfast in a mountain village, saying that he would go ahead and contact Gaspard.

  Gaspard made a rendezvous with them for several days later in a château at Mont Mouchet near St Flour, a considerable distance away. Having delivered this message Laurent then presented Nancy and Hubert with a petrol-powered car he had ‘obtained’ for them, so that Jean could drive back in his gazogène to Cosne-d’Allier to look after his radio shop.

  Following a guide in another car, they arrived at the château at Mont Mouchet at about midnight. They discovered that all the Maquis in that area drove petrol-powered cars and, in fact, scorned anything else as slow and unreliable. They stole all their cars, the guide told them. ‘That’s just what this mob looks like,’ Nancy muttered to Hubert, as she studied the crew who now received them. ‘Professional car thieves.’

  Gaspard was not there and they were shown into a room of their own to wait for him. Swiftly, when they had been left alone, Nancy looked round.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve got a bed each,’ she grunted. Hubert, who was ill, did not reply. ‘Rough-looking lot, aren’t they? Hardly welcomed us with open arms, did they?’ Still Hubert didn’t answer and Nancy looked at him anxiously. She was not to realise until later that Hubert, just out of a Regular Army Unit and talking only the purest academic French, felt not just physically ill but also mentally lost in the highly irregular and colloquial presence of the Maquis. Just as she had decided to ask him what was the matter, the door burst unceremoniously open and a voice informed them that food was ready and that Gaspard was ‘expected’.

  In the company of fifty surly and suspicious-looking Maquis, whose personal dirtiness was only exceeded by that of their table manners, Nancy ate an uncomfortable meal. As soon as they had finished, she and Hubert retired to their room.

  ‘Well, what a ruddy awful lot,’ she exploded. ‘They eat like pigs.’

  Weakly Hubert agreed. ‘They’re the end,’ he said. Rather discouraged they crawled into their respective beds, and went to sleep.

  All the next day they hung around and still there was no sign of the ‘expected’ Gaspard. Frenchmen had a reputation for being unpunctual at the time, but in this respect Gaspard, apparently, was excessively French. Nancy filled in some of her time trying to persuade one of the Maquis guides to go out and look for her wireless operator and to send him on to her should he find him, but the guide gave no sign of being willing to cooperate and she did not feel confident that she had had any success.

  ‘The hell of it is,’ she moaned to Hubert, ‘that without our wireless we can’t do a thing to help Gaspard or ourselves or anyone. And if Gaspard’s anything like his men he’ll only be out for what he can get from us.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of money,’ Hubert pointed out.

  ‘Yes, and they’re not getting a cent of it,’ she retorted, her hand gripping the huge purse clasp firmly. ‘Not until we’re in touch with London. Otherwise they’ll spend the lot for us, we won’t have organised anything and then they’ll dump us.’

  ‘Well, you’re in charge of the money, you decide,’ Hubert remarked listlessly.

  Late that night, as they lay on their beds, a wild hullabaloo shook the château.

  ‘Gaspard, I should say, has arrived,’ Nancy diagnosed. ‘Well, he’s held us up for two days. Now he can wait till the morning to see us.�
� She turned over and went to sleep again.

  In the morning they met him. He exuded arrogance, self-satisfaction and energy. He was surly. He was a bully and, Nancy decided, he was a bluffer. Glancing across at Hubert, she knew that his reaction to Gaspard had been the same as her own.

  Gaspard was evasive in his answers to all their questions about his troop dispositions, arms needs, future plans and the methods he would employ to carry out the instructions she brought him from London. Intuitively she decided that he had no intention of cooperating with London at all. She believed him to be an ambitious man who would try to trick her into giving him huge sums of money, into obtaining for him powerful supplies of arms, and who would then use all of them for his own private war.

  Her suspicions were confirmed that afternoon. She and Hubert sat outside a window of the château and eavesdropped shamelessly on Gaspard’s round-table conference with his lieutenants. Money and arms were what this conference wanted; but nothing could have been further from their minds than cooperation with London – all this Nancy heard.

  As soon as the conference broke up, Gaspard came to see them. ‘Now,’ he said with a great show of candour, ‘I shall put all my cards on the table.’ He then suggested to them, for their consideration, the decisions just taken at the conference, but not the motives behind those decisions.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Nancy lied, ‘but we have no money so we cannot finance you.’ She saw Gaspard did not believe her. ‘And we have no wireless operator so we can’t cable London to send you arms.’

  Next morning Gaspard held another conference, and again Nancy and Hubert eavesdropped from outside.

  ‘The woman is the trouble,’ someone said. ‘Of course she has the money. Let me seduce her and I’ll kill her as she sleeps and take the money afterwards.’ This was agreed – whereupon a second Maquis offered to murder Hubert also. The two British agents grinned tranquilly at each other. This was the first amusing thing that had happened to them since they had left London.

  ‘Don’t know who my “admirer” is, but he flatters himself,’ Nancy whispered. ‘No one out of this scruffy lot could get within miles of me.’

  Her would-be seducer approached her and, after flattering her with every compliment to which he could lay tongue, suggested an assignation that evening. Nancy stared at him appraisingly and indicated that she did not think much of what she saw.

  ‘I presume you would like to sleep with me,’ she stated bluntly. He answered that he would be enchanted.

  ‘Now, that’s very gallant of you,’ she thanked him, ‘but you see I have no desire at all to be murdered in my sleep and then to have all my money stolen.’

  ‘Madame Andrée! How could you think such a thing?’

  ‘I heard it.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Then I dreamed it! Now isn’t that an extraordinary thing to dream?’ Again she stared at him – this time coldly – until his eyes dropped. When he looked up at her again he was smiling. Holding out his hand he said, ‘You win, Madame!’ After that there were no further attempts at their assassination by Gaspard’s group.

  That evening one of Gaspard’s lieutenants, Judex by name, had planned a raid on a sports store in St Flour, and having gained the respect of Gaspard’s men by her victory over her proposed seducer, Nancy now forced home her advantage.

  ‘Judex, let me come with you,’ she begged. Judex stared in momentary surprise and then agreed.

  The raid was well planned and, although St Flour was garrisoned with German troops, their timing was so skilful that they met no obstacles on their way into the town. Blatantly they broke into the store, drove up their trucks and removed most of the stock of tents, blankets and boots. The proprietor was a collaborationist and they had no compunction in robbing him. Nancy herself worked with relish and excitement. She was, for the first time, impressed by Gaspard’s men. Much more important – they were impressed by her! Triumphantly they all returned to the château.

  Realising at last that he could neither bluff nor intimidate Nancy into giving him her money, nor into revealing to him the targets London had planned as his for D-Day, Gaspard now gave up arguing and thumping his fist at her. He had learnt to respect her, but she would not give him what she had, and she could not, without a wireless operator, provide him with what London would send, so, regarding her as utterly valueless, he bundled her off elsewhere.

  He sent her and Hubert to another group under the control of a man named Fournier at a place called Chaudes-Aigues. He and Fournier disliked one another intensely and Gaspard was secretly pleased at the thought of unloading these stubborn and useless foreign agents on to him.

  Fournier was as quick as Gaspard to realise that, for the moment, Nancy and Hubert were of no value to him. But he was a courteous man and an efficient one. In spite of the fact that he was chronically bad-tempered and endlessly arguing with his wife, he was always fair and he used his brains. Nancy respected him for this and also because she knew that he financed his group’s activities almost entirely out of his own peacetime savings.

  Politely Fournier suggested that, since they had no wireless operator, they might retire temporarily to a safer place until they could become operational. He then had them driven to a hotel in Lieutadès some distance away and there Nancy and Hubert spent several idle days wondering why on earth they had ever come to France.

  ‘For all the good we’re doing,’ Nancy vowed, ‘we might just as well have been parachuted into Brighton.’

  On the third day she was sitting listlessly on the wall of the local cemetery when she heard a car approaching. She wondered if it was a German patrol car and, if so, just what she would say when they questioned her. But she was too miserable to be worried so she stayed where she was. A loud laugh shattered the stillness of the cemetery and then, astonishingly, a beautiful, clear voice shouted across to her in English, ‘What you doing there, Duckie? Picking yourself a grave?’

  With a shriek of joy, she flung herself off the wall and rushed to the car that had halted by the graveyard. ‘Den-Den, you darling,’ she greeted him. ‘How lovely to see you. Where on earth have you been?’

  The new arrival was Denis Rake, once her instructor at the Mad House, veteran already of long service in the South of France, now (after endless hazards) rejoining her as a wireless operator. Their war, at last, could begin.

  13 OLD ENEMIES AND NEW FRIENDS

  Denis had had terrible difficulty catching up with Nancy and Hubert. ‘My dear, swarms of Germans chasing me everywhere,’ he vowed. Now that he had arrived, all three of them felt elated, as if nothing were beyond them. Indeed, with the means of contacting London suddenly at hand, their status among the Maquis had been transformed. They had immediately become a source of power because they had Nancy’s money and plans, and Denis’s ability to summon arms, explosives and advice, and the specialised knowledge needed to instruct the Maquis in the use of every weapon that London could send them. Even Gaspard, they knew, would at last be glad to see them.

  But Gaspard, playing his own game (even whilst he had endeavoured to relieve Nancy of her money) had already made contact with another agent, a Frenchman called Patrice. Patrice, however, knowing that Nancy was supposed to be Gaspard’s official liaison with London, had refused to arm the ambitious Frenchman. Then Gaspard heard of a British team headed by an officer named Victor. Promptly he began to woo that group. But Victor also received instructions from London that Gaspard was to work only through Nancy and accordingly rejected his advances.

  So eventually Gaspard found that he had lost the Frenchman, Patrice, lost the Englishman, Victor, and dismissed the Australian, Nancy, to Fournier! And Nancy, far from being deceived by his duplicity, had understood perfectly what he had been doing and had determined to bring him to heel.

  ‘I’m a wake-up to him, Den,’ she declared. ‘He just wants everything we can give him, except orders. Well, we’ve got to show him that London is boss, not him. So we’ll arm Fournier first and G
aspard can wait!’

  They drove in Denis’s car from the cemetery at Lieutadès to Chaudes-Aigues, where they found Fournier. Whilst Denis worked systematically to install his radio, rigging up an aerial, finding batteries and looking up codes, Nancy told the balding little Maquis leader that his group were to be the first to receive arms, at which Fournier was ecstatic with pride and pleasure – and with delight at having scored a point off Gaspard!

  As Nancy and Denis coded their first message to London, he kept interrupting with new weapons he would like and more explosives that would be useful. At last, in spite of Fournier, the coding was completed. Surrounded by entranced Frenchmen, Denis began his accomplished transmission. Open-mouthed, utterly amazed, the forest-fighters listened to the magical tapping of the Morse key that could bring them Sten guns, grenades and bazookas from across the channel. They breathed heavily and stood rigidly beside the Englishman until their tension transmitted itself even to Denis.

  ‘Tell them all to clear out,’ he demanded. ‘They’re making me nervous.’ All the spectators left – except Fournier. He refused to budge so Denis continued his tapping. But suddenly he stopped, checked his time schedule and then whispered hoarsely to Nancy, ‘God Almighty. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m sending now at the time scheduled for tomorrow , not for today. Got me dates mixed, Duckie. Afraid there’ll be no one even listening to this lot at home.’ Howling with laughter they went through the pretence of asking for some further instructions from London and then disconnected the set.

  ‘We must wait a little,’ Nancy giggled to Fournier in French. ‘London wants us to contact them again tomorrow.’

  ‘But why do you laugh?’ the perplexed Frenchman inquired.

  ‘Oh,’ Nancy answered truthfully enough, ‘just something Denis said. He was on the stage once, you know. Denis is always making me laugh.’