Nancy Wake: World War Two’s Most Rebellious Spy

by Braddon, Russell

  Nancy, who had already told the Ambassador this irritating story, now jolted him with her elbow.

  ‘That’s her, that’s her,’ she hissed. The Ambassador was markedly distant with the elegant woman, who excused herself in considerable embarrassment as soon as she could. Thereafter the guest of honour enjoyed herself all night.

  The next afternoon there was a big ceremony at the Cenotaph at which Nancy and the others were to lay wreaths. Again crowds packed the square. Steadily the atmosphere grew more excited. The Mayor began to make a speech.

  Whilst he spoke, a woman edged her way steadily through the press of the crowd. Shoulder by shoulder she inched her way towards Nancy, until at last she stood by her side. She tugged at Nancy’s sleeve and shouted – but her words were lost in the uproar of the seething square. Nancy, laughing, bent her head towards the woman and the woman shouted in her ear.

  Nancy froze, the laughter died on her face, her eyes dulled and then, almost collapsing, she burst into tears. Denis, the Americans and Hubert leapt to her side.

  ‘Gertie, Gertie, what is it?’ Denis begged. The most sentimental being in the world, he couldn’t bear to see his indomitable ‘Ducks’ in tears. Helplessly, bitterly, she wept on. ‘Come on, poppet,’ he urged, ‘tell me what it is. Please , Gert.’

  ‘Den, Den,’ was all she could choke out, ‘get me away from here.’

  They took her to a hotel, away from the frantic crowd, and as they buffeted their passage through the mob she told them, in three stark phrases, what had made her cry.

  ‘It’s Henri,’ she said. ‘The Gestapo picked him up in our flat. He’s dead.’

  20 RETURN TO MARSEILLE

  Nancy slowly regained her composure and, cold-faced, rejoined her people some time later. ‘I want to go to Marseille,’ she told them.

  They didn’t question her. They knew that she hoped to find out who had been responsible for Henri’s death and then to track him down. They just mumbled their agreement and led her to a car.

  The car was a big, red Talbot and into it piled Hubert, Alsop, Nancy and Denis. They drove fast towards Marseille and stopped for the first time for dinner at an inn which was famous, its proprietor told them, for the number of people who, in the past, had been murdered there. Nancy greeted this information with distaste and soon they were on their way again.

  They reached the River Rhône and found, every bridge having been blown, that they could not cross it. Nancy hurled herself into an impassioned argument with all the available authorities, and with an old ferryman as well, and eventually persuaded the latter to transport them to the other side.

  They ran out of petrol and refuelled the unfortunate Talbot with alcohol instead. And so, in remarkably good time, they entered Marseille, which they found still in a state of siege and teeming with what seemed to be at least half the American troops in Europe. For their part, the American troops were decidedly puzzled by the sudden appearance in the city of four allegedly Allied desperadoes in a large red Talbot. The party stayed with some friends of Nancy’s, whose warm welcome to their long-lost comrade almost compensated for the angry whine of snipers’ bullets in the street outside.

  O’Leary had been arrested in March of 1943. In the course of his various interrogations certain facts emerged which he realised should, at all costs, be passed on to the Resistance. Accordingly, in late April, he managed to persuade a man, who was about to be released, to take a message to Henri. O’Leary gave the man the password by which he could identify himself to Henri, and the response which he might expect in reply.

  Thus, early in May, a stranger knocked on Henri’s door. Henri opened it and was greeted with O’Leary’s password. He gave the response and invited the stranger inside. Seconds later he was being driven away to Gestapo headquarters in the Rue Paradis. Henri had admitted into his flat a German counter-agent.

  He was imprisoned and treated with merciless brutality. Months passed and then the Gestapo sent his father to see him, to deliver him a message in his cell.

  ‘All the Gestapo want,’ the old man told him, ‘is that you tell them where Nancy is. Tell them and they will let you go.’

  Henri looked at his father for a long time before he replied. Then he said quietly, only, ‘Papa – leave me in peace.’ Weeping, the old man quit the cell.

  They took Henri to their headquarters again and there they tortured him to make him tell them about Nancy. He told them nothing and returned to his prison cell with his kidneys exposed through the mangled flesh of his back. Again his father was shown into his cell. Again Henri refused to say anything about his wife’s plans.

  ‘Leave me,’ he begged the old man, ‘and Papa – please look after Nancy.’

  On 16 October 1943, the night of Nancy’s strange dream about the death of Dédée’s husband, Henri was taken out of his cell and executed.

  After this there was only one other thing to do in Marseille – look for Picon. Nancy inquired of all her old friends, but no one knew where Picon had gone after Henri had been arrested. No one had dared go near the Fiocca flat for fear of being observed and implicated. The dog, they thought, must have starved to death, or perhaps been eaten.

  But Nancy had her own theories as to Picon’s whereabouts. Head thrust forward, long-striding like a man, she marched confidently towards the quarter where her good friends the Ficetoles lived, but when she reached their address, she lost her confidence – the Ficetoles’ house was just bombed-out rubble.

  For a moment she could not think where to go next. The whole street had been destroyed and there were not even neighbours from whom she could inquire where the Ficetoles now lived or whether, in fact, they lived at all. Then she remembered her butcher. For years she had been his best customer and he had known Ficetole well.

  The butcher’s shop was closed but she went round to the back door and knocked. Through the glass panel, she saw him mouth the words, ‘My God, it’s Madame Fiocca.’

  He opened the door to her and he and his wife stood there, awkward and silent, as she came inside. Immediately Nancy sensed that they were terrified by the thought that they would have to tell her about Henri’s death.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly, ‘I know.’ They talked for several minutes and then Nancy came to the point.

  ‘I’m looking for Picon,’ she said.

  ‘He’s with Ficetole.’

  ‘Where?’ They told her and, as soon as she could, she left them to walk through the blasted city to Ficetole’s new home. She found the district first and then the wretched street itself – Marseille had suffered badly in the battle of liberation. Two blocks away a small battle against holed-up Germans was still raging.

  ‘Do you know where the Ficetoles live?’ she asked one of the men standing on the corner. He shook his head.

  Tired and disappointed she walked away. An old lady who had looked at her as she passed, looked again when she heard Nancy’s question and then trotted back after her.

  ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘you must be Madame Fiocca?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you will want to see your little dog again. It’s in a house down here.’ And so she led the way to what she declared was now the home of the one-time tram conductor Ficetole.

  ‘There is no one at home,’ the old lady said, ‘but I will go and find Madame Ficetole, if you will wait.’

  ‘All right, I’ll wait for you here,’ Nancy told her. And at once, at the sound of her words, there came from inside a hysterically urgent barking – Picon had recognised his mistress’s voice after an absence of twenty months. Frantically he yelped and howled and clawed at the door. Nancy tried to talk to him soothingly, but his desire to get out and be with her only grew more frenzied each second. As she knelt on one side of the door she heard his desperate scratchings and whimperings on the other.

  At last Mme Ficetole arrived, running down the road and followed by all her friends. She unlocked the door and opened it and out hurtled a ball of white fur wh
ich flew into Nancy’s arms.

  Picon licked her and nuzzled her, pressed himself close to her and howled with pent-up emotion. He trembled and whimpered and, as the minutes passed, grew more, not less, hysterical. They became genuinely alarmed at his condition and eventually a doctor was fetched. He gave the terrier a sedative and, a little while later, Picon fell exhaustedly asleep in Nancy’s arms.

  She went to the bank to check up on her deposit box, with its fortune inside of £60,000. It was empty. So was Henri’s. She had no money at all – just debts for things like rent that had accrued since Henri’s death, his tailor’s bills and the shoemaker’s bill. Before she had entered the bank she had thought herself a wealthy woman. Now she knew that all that remained of her one-time life in Marseille was Picon.

  Denis fell ill with what seemed a form of epilepsy and swiftly Nancy enlisted the services of the leading psychiatrist in the American forces and asked what should be done.

  ‘Get him home as soon as you can,’ was the advice she received.

  In the shattered, wreck-strewn, mine-laced harbour she found a British Landing Ship, Tank (LST) captain and that night entertained him liberally at her favourite restaurant, after which he agreed to take Denis back to England on his ship. Then Denis recovered and they decided that there was no need for him to go home after all.

  ‘You know something,’ Alsop remarked. ‘That girl would have pinched a boat and rowed him home if she couldn’t’ve gotten anything else.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Hubert admitted. ‘Typical of her, though, that she should tame the captains of half the British LSTs in harbour instead.’

  On their second afternoon in Marseille she went out and bought herself a black dress, high-heeled shoes and a small flowered hat. She had arranged to meet the men in the bar at Basso’s that evening and now decided to do so dressed in her new clothes.

  She changed at a friend’s home and then walked down to Basso’s, her high-heeled shoes feeling strangely light and insecure after so long in boots, her body crisply cool and delighted to be, at last, out of coarse slacks and rough-dried shirt.

  Her skirt swirled and her heels clicked elegantly as she swept into Basso’s. Hubert, Schley and Alsop stood at the far end of the bar, talking to three women.

  ‘Hullo there,’ Nancy called down to them. They looked up casually and saw a smartly dressed woman with a curious little hat and fine ankles. They nodded to her politely and turned back to their own companions.

  The barman gave Nancy a second look – a long one. ‘Madame Fiocca,’ he exclaimed, at last recognising her, ‘you do look smart!’ The heads of her three colleagues jolted towards her.

  ‘Good God,’ said Hubert, ‘it’s Gert!’ For six months they had lived and fought with a bare-headed girl in shapeless slacks and heavy boots. This woman with the fashionably covered head and the slender silken ankles and neat waist had no bearing on the comrade they had been expecting.

  ‘Nancy,’ Alsop said admiringly, ‘you look marvellous. Allow me to escort you to dinner.’

  The dinner was a large party specially organised to celebrate the victory of the Resistance as represented by their group and it was a very jolly effort indeed, in spite of the starvation rations prevailing in the city at that time. Alsop even made a brilliant after-dinner speech in Russian, which entranced all the guests although they understood not a word of it.

  ‘I didn’t know you could speak Russian,’ Nancy said to him later in the evening.

  ‘I can’t,’ he confessed to her. ‘Seemed a good idea, though, and it did sound like Russian, didn’t it?’ They decided not to admit the fact to anyone else.

  One of Nancy’s friends called her over.

  ‘I want to tell you something about Henri,’ she said. ‘No! Don’t stop me. After you left Marseille he would come to our house sometimes, other times he would just stay at home. But all the time, at our home or his, every night, he just sat and played patience. He wouldn’t go out or meet people. Not anyone. All the time – just patience. And whenever we tried to shake him out of it, he would look at us and say, “I’m all right. I just want to wait till Nancy gets home.” I thought you would like to know.’

  Finally, complete with Picon, they all got back into their big, red Talbot and drove north again because France was not yet completely free and there was still fighting to be done.

  Characteristically, Nancy did not grieve over Henri for long – for three reasons. First, her husband was dead and grief would neither bring him back nor please him; second, intuitively she had known he was dead for almost a year and, a year ago, on the day of the dream itself, she had begun to mourn him; finally, there was still plenty of work to be done and she now had more reason than ever for doing it.

  So they drove back from Marseille to the château. Everywhere they went they were feted as heroes. The Allies still had not driven their armies into the regions through which the Talbot now nosed its way, so that often the uniforms worn by Nancy and her colleagues were the first British and American uniforms the local French had seen. To these people the Talbot was as good as a unit of Allied tanks; its passengers were not just passing travellers but the Liberators themselves.

  Just outside a small town, in the middle of a storm, the hard-pressed car registered its extreme indignation at the treatment meted out to it by bursting into flames. Everyone except Alsop seemed supremely unconcerned at this disaster and laughed fecklessly at the growing conflagration. They simply stood on the roadside in the pouring rain and watched and laughed. The American, however, had no taste for walking, and walking was obviously to be their fate unless something was done, and quickly. So he dashed to a puddle, scooped up water in his cap and flung it into the flaming engine. Hilariously his companions followed his example – whereupon, to their surprise, the fire was quickly extinguished. A loose nut was found in the carburettor, its leak was sealed when the nut was tightened, the tank was filled with eau-de-vie (there being no petrol) and once again they were on their way.

  Once back in the château invitations poured in upon them from every village and town for fifty kilometres around. The local mayors and Maquis captains all wanted to offer their hospitality and express their appreciation to the Anglo-American mission.

  Night after night they would pile into their cars, drive light-heartedly through country once haunted by Germans and so reach their destination. There they would be wined and dined; the French would sing ‘The Marseillaise’; the mission – thunderously – would render ‘Uncle George and Auntie Mabel’ and presentations would be made; finally, as they drove off, they would be pelted with flowers. As soon as they were on the open road again, they would ungratefully toss all these floral tributes out into the fields, mount their machine guns and thus career noisily home.

  Six men were dropped by parachute on to Nancy’s front lawn. They were all heartbroken when they landed to find out that the shooting war was virtually over – especially one of them, who was an American marine.

  ‘I tell you what,’ Nancy suggested to him, ‘if there is any excitement going, Tardivat will be in it! Would you like me to send you over to him?’

  The marine was delighted at the idea and was accordingly transferred to Tardivat’s group. A few days later he returned. He had not seen much excitement but he did have a problem, and this problem he duly expounded to the council of officers at whose head Nancy was then sitting.

  It seemed that all agents, when dropped into France, were supplied with two tablets. They were tablets to be used only in the direst emergency. One of them was designed to kill the agent instantly, the other would knock him into a profound state of unconsciousness which, it was hoped, the Germans might even mistake for death. But if they did not so mistake it, the ‘patient’ would still be ‘out’ for at least six hours, so that he could not – even under torture – reveal anything he knew of his group or circuit for that time. (Time enough, with luck, for his colleagues to escape.)

  The fatal tablet, the Marine hasten
ed to point out, did not come into his picture at all because he had thrown it away the instant he hit France! It was the knock-out drops that were his problem.

  ‘Y’see,’ he informed the council earnestly, ‘two of Tardivat’s lieutenants have gotten themselves girlfriends in town. Sisters, they are. Real nice girls. And, well, the girls are willing but, um, Momma . . . ain’t! If you get me.’

  Nancy replied that she didn’t get him.

  ‘Well, y’see, these guys want to borrow my tablet because, well, because Momma always chaperones the girls. She won’t move more’n six feet from her daughters all the time the guys are there. And they thought,’ he tailed off rather lamely, ‘that if Momma was to have a real good sleep, everyone’d enjoy themselves more!’

  The Council deliberated solemnly. The Marine was given permission to donate his knock-out tablet to Tardivat’s men, in the interests of Allied unity. Momma’s coffee was doctored and Momma slept very soundly, six feet away, all night and two lieutenants returned to their group next morning much, much happier men.

  ‘War,’ Denis declared portentously, ‘requires us all to make great sacrifices and awesome decisions – don’t it, Ducks?’

  ‘It does indeed, Den,’ she sighed. ‘So how about you make a great sacrifice and decide to take Picon for a walk while I get on with my messages?’

  Amiably Denis did as he was asked. He was glad to see his Gertie getting so rapidly back to normal.