Nancy Wake: World War Two’s Most Rebellious Spy

by Braddon, Russell

  ‘London says König says Gaspard’s got to withdraw with the rest of us,’ Denis shouted.

  ‘Thank God for that, then.’

  ‘Do you believe König really said it, or do you reckon London made it up?’

  ‘I don’t even care, Den. Just you write that message out again and this time sign it König.’

  Delighted at such an unscrupulous order, Denis obeyed it at once.

  Straight away Nancy drove alone and under fire to Gaspard’s position. She handed him the message. A grunt was the only indication he gave that it meant anything to him at all, but she now knew him well enough to be confident that this meant that he would do as he was told.

  ‘See you later on,’ she shouted in farewell. A small village about a hundred kilometres away, and close to Saint Santin, was their rendezvous when and if they escaped the German encirclement. Leaving Gaspard to repel a heavy attack, she drove off along the winding and exposed mountaintop road, heading back towards Fournier’s group at Freydefont.

  Five planes flew overhead and machine-gunned Gaspard’s position. Nancy careered along the difficult road and flung an apprehensive glance back over her shoulder to see where exactly the hated Henschels were. To her horror two of the planes at once broke sharply out of formation and headed wickedly down the road towards her.

  There was a vicious clattering behind her, a roar overhead and the dusty spurt of machine-gun bullets along the road in front – then both planes whipped away from her. In her rear-view mirror Nancy could see that the back of her car was riddled. She swore volubly in French and felt better.

  But it was not yet over. Climbing sharply upwards the planes parted company. One whirled down towards Gaspard again, the second swung around sharply and then hurtled straight back at her car.

  The car and the Henschel arrowed towards one another. For once the road was straight and there was no cover. Instinctively, in her terror, Nancy slowed down. The bullets spat like chain-stitching into the road ahead and the burst ended twenty feet from the car’s radiator. Her sudden change in speed had spoilt the pilot’s aim. As he thundered low above her Nancy caught sight of goggles and helmet and muttered to herself, ‘Good God, Old Nick himself.’

  Twice more he attacked and twice she slowed and swerved to save herself. And she was still more than two miles from Freydefont, with the Henschel preparing for yet another onslaught, when a young Maquisard flung himself into the roadway and signalled her to halt.

  ‘The village has been evacuated,’ he gasped. ‘Quick, follow me.’

  They flung themselves into a ditch as the plane, chattering unpleasantly, returned. As soon as it had passed the young Frenchman leapt to his feet and started running.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Nancy called after him. Puzzled, he halted. She dashed back to the car and wrenched the door open. Already she could hear the snarl of Old Nick’s approach as she rummaged along the bullet-torn back seat. Finally she flung herself back into the ditch. Machine guns chattered, the car exploded in flames and, the second the plane had roared past her, she joined her companion behind a rock.

  ‘Forgot these,’ she explained. Proudly she displayed a small saucepan, a jar of face cream, a packet of tea and a red satin cushion. The Frenchman looked at her as if she were mad and then, shrugging, told her that Fournier’s group were in the woods some distance away.

  Whilst the German plane circled, they ran; whilst he machine-gunned them, they crouched behind rocks. And so, alternately galloping and crouching, they reached the woods. There they found their colleagues highly amused by the curious sight that Nancy (clutching cosmetic jars, saucepan, tea and red satin cushion) had presented as she hurtled downhill with the Luftwaffe in pursuit. After a moment’s reflection she too decided that it had been funny and joined in their laughter. With gratitude she learnt that the youngster who had halted her car had volunteered for the job and had insisted on doing it alone.

  Darkness was falling at last when the Germans began to force their way over the plateau’s ledge. But they had left it too late. Already, along their previously selected lines of withdrawal, the elusive and destructive seven thousand Frenchmen were making good their escape. By obscure tracks and rocky descents, and even by road, they were picking their confident way through the oncoming circle of Germans. Anything they couldn’t carry with them, they burnt. They left nothing behind them except corpses and the rocks of the mountains.

  Fournier’s group had devised a particularly ingenious method of escape. Weeks ago it had been decided that the one way that no one could get out would be across the deep and fast-running river Truyère. Therefore, they chose that as their route. In the ensuing weeks Fournier’s men had worked hard and long, driving logs into the riverbed – logs that reached to within an inch of the swift-running water’s surface. They had thus created an invisible footpath to safety.

  The Germans, confident that the river could not be crossed in force without a bridge, and confident that there was no such bridge because their planes had not spotted one, guarded the Truyère only loosely that night, and at ten-thirty Nancy, escorted by Bazooka and four hundred of her men, slid quietly down the riverbanks.

  Guides led them across, footstep by footstep. They were fired on but they crossed in safety. Then they began the long trek to Saint Santin. It was a hundred kilometres by road and they intended marching there by obscure tracks and valleys over a route probably half as long again as that.

  They had walked an hour, silently and purposefully, when they met Gaspard’s group. Gaspard himself at once joined Nancy. Then, arm in arm, Gaspard on one side, Bazooka on the other, in the utmost goodwill, Nancy and the two men plodded along together. Each had at last learnt the true worth of the other and was well satisfied with the day’s action. They had cause to be satisfied. For the loss of under a hundred of their own men they had vitally engaged the attentions of twenty-two thousand crack German troops, of whom fourteen hundred now lay dead on the slopes that led to the plateau. And they themselves, in good order, were marching surely away to a rendezvous where they would live to fight many more battles for France and the cause and freedom.

  On the principle of keeping one experienced officer with each of the small escaping parties, Denis, Hubert and Nancy had all left along different routes. An Alsatian officer led Nancy’s group because he knew the area well. He had no teeth and no conversation but he was a good guide. Continually along the route the party would split up into smaller fragments as they reached districts familiar to others of its members.

  Finally, Nancy and a hundred and twenty men marched together. They stumbled on for three days and nights, passing through villages only when they knew that those villages had no telephone lines, going ten miles out of their way, if necessary, to avoid civilisation. All the way they met with friendly peasants and constant news of other groups who had passed by.

  The first night they halted by a prosperous-looking farm. One of the Maquis asked for water for his men and for ‘the girl’. The farmer’s wife refused the request except that she offered ‘the girl’ a glass of milk.

  ‘If you haven’t got water for your own countrymen,’ Nancy vowed, ‘you haven’t got milk for me.’ Raging with thirst they continued on their way. A little further on, at a very small farm, where poverty and hardship were written on every line of the family’s faces, they were proudly offered food and coffee. The coffee was terrible, but the marchers enjoyed it as much because of the spirit in which it had been offered as because of their thirst.

  On the second night they again received ready hospitality from a peasant couple. They had all adjourned to a barn to sleep when the wife called Nancy.

  ‘You must not sleep out there with the men,’ she said. ‘You must sleep in my bed.’ Gratefully Nancy accepted the offer and the Frenchwoman herself prepared to sleep on the floor. But when Nancy saw the filth of the sheets and of her hostess’s feet, as the other woman removed her sabots, she suddenly lost her appetite for the bed, made her excuses and rej
oined her men in the barn.

  On the third day they had trouble with German spotter planes, but they made good time nevertheless. They marched all night as well and in the morning reached their destination – a little village near Aurillac.

  The deputy mayor at once made them welcome and found them all billets. That day many others of the Maquis joined them – among them Denis and Mme Fournier.

  Typically, Denis arrived in a flurry of extravagant dramatics.

  ‘Gert,’ he said, ‘I found some of your eau-de-cologne when I left so I brought it out with me.’

  She looked in wonder at him. The joy of pouring eau-de-cologne all over her tired body was almost too beautiful to contemplate.

  ‘But,’ he added, ‘I’ve used it! I rubbed it on my feet on the way here! They were giving me hell.’

  Nancy knew that Denis had bad feet and she understood the solace that eau-de-cologne would have brought him on the long march.

  ‘That’s all right, Den,’ she told him. ‘I’m glad you used it.’

  Behind Denis she heard someone smothering his laughter and glanced towards him. Rake, when she looked at him again, had gone crimson. Then everyone began to laugh.

  ‘Well, actually, Ducks, and probably you’ll kill me for this, I didn’t use it for my feet, I drank it!’

  ‘Denis!’ she shrieked. ‘You fiend!’

  ‘Sorry, Gert. But I just had to have a drink. No use trying to lie to you. All the way, for three days, I’ve reeked like a perfume bar. Everyone between here and Freydefont knows it!’

  In the general amusement that followed, Denis drew Nancy aside.

  ‘There’s something serious I’ve got to tell you,’ he said. She stopped laughing and looked at him intently because it was unlike Denis ever to be serious about anything.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  He drew a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, looked her squarely in the eyes and said, ‘I burnt my codes on the way out. I was afraid the Germans might get me, so I burnt the codes. Hid my set too. That doesn’t matter – easily get another set, they’re hidden everywhere. But I haven’t got any codes. Sorry, Gert.’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘That’s all right, Den,’ she told him gently.

  ‘I had to do it,’ he muttered miserably.

  ‘Of course you did,’ she reassured him. But even as she spoke her mind was working fast. She had to get in touch with London. There would probably be many orders to be received and certainly there was a vast amount of information to be given. Without these orders, without delivering her information, without fresh supplies from the air, the successfully withdrawn Maquis d’Auvergne would no longer be seven thousand fighting soldiers but simply a disorganised rabble. Yet she had no code with which to transmit her messages even when she did find a wireless set. Well, there was only one thing to do – get a message through to London through an operator in another group that had not lost its code.

  She called on a banker and told him she needed a contact.

  The banker, who could travel with impunity, went into Aurillac and saw a man called Valentin. Valentin called on Nancy and advised her that there was a French operator across the mountains.

  She carried a bicycle across, having made arrangements to rejoin all her group at Saint Santin, to find the Frenchman.

  It was a long, hot trek, pushing her cycle up endless miles of mountain road and she reached her destination tired and irritable only to find that the radio operator had fled the district the day before.

  Wearily she wheeled her bicycle along to the nearest bistro. The patron rushed out in considerable agitation.

  ‘You must not come in here, Madame Andrée.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s a Communist here. He says he will shoot you.’

  Nancy was in no mood to be blackguarded out of a much-needed drink by the threats of a Communist. Angrily she strode into the bistro, head down like a young bull in a manner that had become almost characteristic, flung herself into a chair beside the Communist and slammed her revolver down on top of the table.

  ‘I hear,’ she announced disagreeably, ‘that you are going to shoot me. Well . . . you’ll need to be very quick on the draw! Patron, a cognac.’

  Not for a second, whilst she drank her brandy, did her eyes leave those of the Communist. Then she left the bistro, mounted her bicycle and rode to her rendezvous at Saint Santin. The vital message to London had still not been transmitted.

  When Denis heard of this disappointment he flung himself into a frenzy of concentration, tugging at his right ear, pinching the end of his nose, rolling his head back and slamming his forehead with the open palm of his left hand. These were his customary aids to a hilariously unprecise memory. Finally he announced to Nancy that when he had landed in France he had stayed in a ‘safe house’ en route to Lieutadès, at a town called Châteauroux, and in this house, he was sure of it, there was an SOE operator. Unfortunately Denis was always extremely vague about addresses. Often, in England, for example, he had addressed letters to friends simply by putting on the envelope their name and the town and then drawing the house in which they stayed. On another occasion he could only remember the number of the house across the road from the one he wanted – so he had addressed the letter ‘opposite No 27’. These were now the kind of directions he gave Nancy.

  One of the men who had looked after him was, as he had said, an operator. Didn’t know his name, but he had a hunch shoulder. Couldn’t remember the address, but the house looked like this. Wasn’t sure of the contact, but it was the patron of a bistro in a tiny square that was unmistakable because it contained one scraggy tree and faced on to a rather squalid canal. Graphically he described the square, the tree and the canal.

  Then and there Nancy decided to cycle the great distance to Châteauroux to look for the bistro, the house and the man whom Denis had described.

  15 EMERGENCY MESSAGE

  Clothing was her main problem because, having abandoned everything on the plateau, she possessed only the slacks and blouse that she had worn all the way from Freydefont – and she did not imagine that she would be very successful travelling by bicycle for two or three days through German-infested country clad in such unfeminine and battle-stained slacks.

  She decided, however, to wash and patch them and then risk riding into Aurillac, where she knew a tailor who would make her a respectable-looking outfit. As she was doing these repairs, a car drew up outside the house. From it descended Laurent. He had driven contemptuously straight through the German encirclement on the plateau and so had made a leisurely trip all the way to Saint Santin.

  For a while everyone alternately hugged him and cursed him, glad to see him, but furious that they themselves had walked whilst he (typically) drove. At once Nancy discussed with Laurent the possibility of her travelling by car to Châteauroux, but even he admitted that that was impossible. The Germans, he pointed out, furious at their failure to wipe out the Maquis on the plateau, had tightened all roads through the main towns almost to the point of strangulation. Nancy would be lucky to get through by bicycle; by car it was out of the question. Personally, Laurent objected to the idea of her going by any conveyance whatever.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, and that ended it. She had had the power of being the group’s sole contact with London; now she had the consequent responsibility.

  In her clean slacks she cycled into Aurillac and visited the tailor. He measured her quickly and told her to come back in two hours for a fitting. Although his shop was right alongside the Milice he seemed unperturbed and anxious to help. The suit, he declared, would be ready for her to wear the next day.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘I’ll be back in two hours. Now where can I buy some shoes?’ He gave her the address of a shoemaker and so, still conspicuous in her slacks, she left him.

  Idly she shopped for an hour, buying things that she thought would be useful for her men, then she went to the shoemaker.

  ‘Ge
t out of Aurillac,’ he warned, the second she entered his shop. ‘The tailor has sent a message that both the Germans and the Milice have been asking him who the woman was who came into his shop in trousers.’

  Leaping on to her bicycle she sped out of the town, using back streets all the way, and returned to Saint Santin. So she still had no clothes in which to travel to Châteauroux and now she could not possibly return to Aurillac for her suit wearing slacks.

  Instead she borrowed a dress from a very old lady in Saint Santin. This was an elegant peasant model, date about 1890, and Nancy felt far from happy in it – not because of the Germans but because of her own men!

  She made arrangements that she should ride into Aurillac in the cart of the old lady’s husband, travelling as his daughter. So that no one should see her in her terrible disguise, she agreed with the old man that he should pick her up with his cart at dawn.

  But all her cunning was in vain. Just as she clambered into the cart, looking, as she frankly admitted to herself, like the complete ‘farmer’s dopey daughter’, Denis came out into the road. Maliciously he surveyed her scrubbed and shining face, on which there was no trace of make-up, her hair, deliberately washed and combed so that it was lank and straggly, her incredible peasant’s boots and her quaint white piqué dress. Then, doubled up with laughter, he raised the alarm.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted. ‘Quick, quick. Just come and see our Gertie!’ Sitting in front of a mound of vegetables, a pair of torn trousers in her arms (her excuse to re-visit the tailor) and affectionately mocked from all sides, she rattled off towards Aurillac, her face deep red with embarrassment and laughter.

  The old man’s cart was halted a dozen times during the twenty-kilometre ride. The Germans questioned him and searched his vegetables, but they showed no interest at all in his revolting-looking daughter. Nancy didn’t blame them.