Nancy Wake: World War Two’s Most Rebellious Spy

by Braddon, Russell

  21 THE ENEMY DEPART

  By mid-September the War had ended for the Maquis. About a quarter of a million of them had been actively engaged in subversive activities for over a year. Many others, less ardent, had been fighting only since D-Day. But their joint effort had been a massive and heroic one. Now the enemy were no longer before and around them, but behind them, bolting for the Rhine and their last few gangplanks into Germany. So the Maquis had done their job and were now free to go home.

  Or, if they were officers of established units of the pre-1940 days, they could fight again as uniformed soldiers.

  Tardivat was one of those who accepted this offer. Ever since he had escaped south from Belgium, in 1940, he had fought the Germans boldly and implacably and he would not stop until Hitlerism had vanished utterly from Europe. He rejoined the French Army which was then fighting at the Belfort Gap.

  There he was so badly wounded in the leg that the limb, unskilfully treated in the first place, was eventually removed high up against the hip. Tardivat, the active, vital, Rugby-playing Resistance leader, suddenly became a cripple.

  Schley and Alsop were recalled to London. They took an affectionate farewell of Nancy, Denis and Hubert, and then flew to Britain. There Schley met a friend who worked in OSS and who wanted, unofficially, to take a week off. Schley agreed to hold down his desk job for him whilst he did so.

  ‘Typical of the way these organisations are run,’ he commented a few days later to Alsop. ‘Nobody’s even noticed the difference!’

  It turned out that the job his friend had been doing was the writing up of official citations for the various heroes of OSS. Schley, noting a familiar name on the list, spent a pleasant and sincere hour’s work revising a citation for his recent leader, Captain Nancy Wake. In the best official language, he mentioned that Captain Wake had on several occasions saved the lives of two American officers (‘Yours and mine,’ he explained to Alsop, who nodded emphatic agreement) and that she deserved recognition from the US government. Apparently the US agreed. Some months later Nancy was decorated with the American Medal of Freedom, with a Bronze Palm.

  Back in the château Nancy could not rid herself of the memory of the siege conditions of hunger and discomfort she had seen on her last visit to Marseille, so she mentioned the subject to Laurent, Fournier and Gaspard. That was all she had to do.

  A short time later she was able to collect from these two Maquis leaders a huge load of beef, mutton, eggs, cheeses and chickens. They had scoured the countryside to find these emergency rations. With Denis, Hubert and Picon as company she then drove to the succour of starving Marseille.

  All her friends were fed and her butcher was given a complete shopful of meat to distribute to his customers. Nor did Nancy forget the captains of the LSTs whom she had met at the time when it had seemed vital that she should trick one of them into taking Denis home. To their tiny fleet she delivered dozens of the most beautiful French chickens.

  They asked her to dine with them, of course, and the chicken arrived, apparently having been stewed in diesel oil, cooked as only wartime service cooks can manage. Rather than eat food prepared like that, she decided, it was better, much better, to starve.

  From Marseille they drove to Paris – drove back through all their old groups, saying goodbye and thank you. No, not goodbye . . . au revoir. These Resistance folk were never really parted. Then, after two days in Paris, they flew back home to London.

  Nancy glanced across at Denis and Hubert and grinned as they circled over the airport.

  ‘Shall we go down with it,’ she asked, ‘or shall we jump – just for old time’s sake?’ Already their days together were becoming treasured memories.

  ‘We’ll go down with it, Ducks,’ Denis told her firmly. ‘We’ve had more than our share of luck already. I’m not tempting it any further.’

  Nancy knew exactly what he meant. When she had made her last preparations for parachuting into France, a will had figured prominently in the list.

  ‘After two and a half years of it in Marseille, I didn’t ever think I could come out of a second lot,’ she explained.

  ‘You, Ducks?’ remonstrated Denis. ‘You’re indestructible. Besides, what do you want with the Pearly Gates?’

  ‘No use my wanting anything, Den. People like you and I just don’t get in.’

  So – perhaps not surprisingly, after all – Nancy returned to London for the second time since 1939.

  She, Denis and Hubert soon flew back to France – this time not with Buckmaster farewelling them with his gentle ‘Merde ’, but with Buckmaster in person. He wanted to meet all the French Resistance leaders, and Nancy and her two colleagues were to introduce him to their particular group.

  Once again she met Laurent, Fournier and Gaspard. Also she heard the shocking news of Tardivat’s amputation and for the rest of their grand tour was sad at this sudden misfortune that had befallen her especial friend. Then she left the others and travelled on alone to Marseille. There was time now to think and she had many urgent things to put in order in the city that had once been her home. She stayed in Marseille until May of 1945.

  Her flat, after Henri’s arrest, had been commandeered by the female branch of the local Gestapo. Three women agents had lived there for months. Until the last possible moment these women had stayed in Marseille. Then they had ordered three lorries to come to the building and they removed every stick of furniture and furnishings from the flat except a crystal chandelier in the drawing room and a large stove in the kitchen.

  Louis Burdet, head of the Resistance in Southern France, met Nancy and advised her what to do. A short man, full of humour and vigour, looking every inch an athlete, for all his forty-one years, Nancy liked him enormously.

  He told her that it had been agreed that anyone in the Resistance who had had property, and had insured it until or after 1939, and had subsequently lost it to the Nazis, would be entitled to claim from Germany, when she would be defeated, ten times the value for which such property had originally been insured.

  This was neither greed nor victimisation. Ten times 1939 values and currency rates only just equalled 1945 costs of living in terms of French francs.

  Nancy’s furniture and household effects had been valued at 500,000 francs in 1939 and insured for that amount. She would be entitled, then, on Germany’s defeat, to 5,000,000 francs reparations.

  For the moment, however, there was no question of monies to be received: it was all a matter of debts due. She examined all Henri’s books, called in all his outstanding accounts and then, out of her accrued officers’ allowance, paid off all the money ever owed by him or by his estate, including the cost of flowers sent on her behalf to her husband’s funeral.

  After that, she and Burdet met often. She liked him because he made her laugh. ‘When I was going to leave London, to drop into France,’ he told her, ‘my headquarters warned me about the tortures, if the Gestapo ever caught me. I did not like this very much, Nancy. But then I decided not to worry. With my grey hair’ – he stroked his elegant silver head – ‘I look too old. I do not look like a terrorist!’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked.

  ‘Go back to London,’ he replied promptly. ‘To a hotel. That is my job. I have had enough of playing at soldiers. I was only an amateur after all.’

  Amateur or not, he had been brilliantly successful and extraordinarily daring. Soldier or not, he had the old soldier’s passion for the good things that had happened in his war. So he and Nancy swapped stories of their respective careers.

  ‘There is one story, I think,’ he told her, ‘that shows us the best that there was in the men of France. It is the story of Hâche and Pioche.’

  Hâche and Pioche were both young men, inseparable friends and colleagues in their Resistance work under the leadership of Burdet. Their pseudonyms meant, respectively, Axe and Pick.

  They performed many bold deeds together – like attacking a factory and then, when the demolition was
not complete, attacking it again the following night, even though every German in the district was alerted; like executing two Gestapo agents on the pavements of the Old Port itself. But it was their last action that touched their leader most.

  A rendezvous for the Resistance had been seized by the Germans, who had then laid an ambush outside it for anyone who should later, unfortunately, call there. Burdet heard of this trap and determined to ambush the ambushers. He, Hâche and Pioche stole up on the house.

  It was in a winding street off the main road of Aix-en-Provence. They attacked and killed the Gestapo men who lurked outside, and then hurriedly withdrew. It was some minutes later, when they met, that Burdet and Pioche noticed that Hâche was missing.

  Hâche had been mortally wounded and, so as not to delay his friends, had hidden himself inside the door of a house in the street where the fierce little battle had been fought. Twenty-four years old, he died alone behind that door.

  Word eventually reached Burdet that Hâche had not survived, though where his body was, no one knew.

  ‘It will be in the morgue,’ he declared. And so, boldly, the group, that same night, raided the morgue. There they found Hâche and removed his body.

  Later, when Marseille was free, Burdet gave the funeral oration at his ceremonial burial.

  ‘I was his friend,’ he said. ‘I want you to know this boy and to talk of him. He possessed treasures for his country more priceless than money. He was the personification of the intelligence, devotion and industry which are the richest qualities of France and French devotion.’

  Then he turned to Hâche’s mother – Mme Olive, for Olive was his proper name – and said, ‘Nothing, Madame, can soften your sorrow. You have lost your son. But may we’ – and here he looked round at his fellow soldiers – ‘hope that when our time comes to leave this earth, we may see you again, Roger Olive.’

  There were tears in his eyes as he told Nancy the story. Remembering the boys she had herself seen wounded and dying, or whom, dead, she had buried, Nancy knew why he spoke as he did and felt no need to reply.

  ‘Hâche was a well-brought-up boy, Nancy,’ Burdet said. ‘When he trained in England he was made very happy by the people of your country, who always made him one of their own family. If he had lived, he would never have forgotten to go back there and thank them. Now . . . I can only thank you.’

  ‘Louis,’ she responded gently, ‘don’t you think that I’ve a lot to be grateful for too, to France?’

  Looking at her sharply, remembering that her home, her marriage and her wealth had all been destroyed in France, he nevertheless suddenly knew she meant what she said. For all her tragic losses, he could understand that Nancy now felt grateful to the country that had become hers by virtue of her marriage and the War.

  Soon after VE Day, Nancy heard that O’Leary was alive and would soon be coming to Paris, so she took a train to the capital at once.

  O’Leary, just out of Dachau, looked terrifyingly thin and ill. He had endured every torture the Gestapo could inflict without actually killing him, and he had survived for two years. But released prisoners of war recover quickly and O’Leary, in Nancy, had a devoted companion and nurse. After three weeks he was well enough to be left on his own, so once again Nancy returned to Marseille.

  She stayed there till August of 1945 and, in that time, saw her award against the German government declared at 5,000,000 francs. After that the city had nothing left to hold her any longer – even Picon seemed happier elsewhere – so she returned to Paris.

  The last days of the Second World War, and Victory Night, she spent in the British Officers’ Club. There was wild singing, screaming and celebrating. But Nancy found herself thinking of Tardivat’s leg, of the dead boys in the forest of Tronçais, of the silly destruction of it all . . . and of Henri; abruptly she felt lonely and miserable. Victory Night – and all the people who weren’t there.

  For three months she worked for O’Leary in the Awards Bureau for repatriated political prisoners. Then O’Leary told her that he had started investigations to find Roger, the Gestapo agent who had caused his arrest.

  ‘Roger?’ she exploded.

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, you’re wasting your time, Pat. He’s six feet under.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was tortured by Judex and shot. They buried him outside the château at Mont Mouchet.’

  ‘No,’ O’Leary protested, ‘you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘OK, Pat,’ she replied earnestly. ‘If you want to look for him, you look for him. But I know he’s dead. I was there when they were questioning him.’ As if, she thought to herself, she could ever forget that smell of burning flesh. ‘He’s buried at Mont Mouchet, somewhere near St Flour.’ And with that their discussion ended.

  After a short stay in London Nancy found herself back in Paris. Denis had got himself a job as Passport Control Officer with the Foreign Office and, irrepressible as ever, urged her to do likewise. So they found themselves together again in France.

  Life now was good and seemed always to be full of laughter, probably because wherever Denis went there was laughter.

  One of their favourite haunts for an evening aperitif was the V-Bar in the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt. The V-Bar was owned by their mutual friend Miracca from Cannes.

  On their first visit there Miracca had been talking to Nancy when suddenly his barman had rushed round from behind his bar, flung his arms round Nancy’s neck, kissed her resoundingly and asked, ‘How are you, Madame Andrée?’

  ‘What the devil you kiss my clients for,’ shouted Miracca furiously, ‘ and call them by their wrong name?’

  ‘This lady was in the Resistance with me,’ the bartender explained.

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It is true. She liberated Vichy!’

  ‘Is this so?’ Miracca asked her wonderingly.

  She nodded and laughed.

  ‘And this,’ he moaned, ‘is the first I hear of it. When my barman calls you by the wrong name and kisses you. Why,’ he besought her, ‘do you all always call one another by the wrong name?’

  ‘Security,’ Nancy laughed.

  ‘Security? Security?’ he repeated. ‘This word I do not understand.’

  ‘And that,’ Denis declared, ‘even if he is an Italian, proves just how French our Miracca is.’

  The three friends toasted one another and for the rest of the evening were scrupulously careful to use only their correct names.

  The faithful little terrier, Picon, suddenly became ill. Nancy called in a vet and listened anxiously to his diagnosis.

  ‘Dropsy,’ he told her.

  ‘Can you cure it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what do we do? Does it hurt him?’

  ‘Yes. I am afraid so.’

  ‘Then . . . ?’

  ‘The only kind thing to do is to put him to sleep.’

  After the vet had gone Nancy tried hard to convince herself that Picon was not really ill, not really in pain . . . that perhaps he did not have dropsy after all. But Picon himself defeated all her arguments. He was a sick, miserable dog.

  Denis called round to see her and she told him what the vet had said.

  ‘Do you think he’s right, Ducks?’

  She nodded miserably. ‘Yes, Den, I’m afraid so . . . He’s bringing a sleeping powder and a needle tonight,’ she said. ‘And later the crematorium people will come to . . . Oh, Den, I don’t think I can face that bit. Handing Picon over in a box and paying them and . . .’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Gert,’ Denis said firmly. ‘I’ll do that for you.’

  Nancy rang Chez Phillippe, a luxury restaurant, told them she was ill and asked them to send her a steak chateaubriand, cooked rare. It arrived on a silver platter, beautifully garnished. The vet came at the same time. Carefully he sprinkled the sleeping powder over the steak. Then, silver platter and all, they presented it to Picon.

  Wriggling with delight he gnawed and slu
pped his way through his last delicious meal. ‘I wonder if you’re remembering other days while you eat?’ Nancy thought. ‘The day Henri was taken and you were left all alone in our flat. The months you were with the Ficetoles and there wasn’t enough for anyone to eat, not even them.’ And later . . . ‘I feel like a murderess.’

  When he had finished the steak she gave him a bowl of ice cream. Delicately he licked it – and drowsily. It was only half finished when he stopped eating and lay sleepily on the carpet, his head on his paws. Nancy, her eyes full of tears, picked him up and put him on her lap. The short tail thumped devotedly a few seconds – and then Picon was asleep.

  She could feel his flanks moving gently as he breathed.

  ‘Dear God,’ she said to the vet, ‘this is awful. Now!’

  He took the dog from her, carefully forced the hypodermic needle into the furry body and pressed the plunger. Seconds later, painlessly, Picon was dead. Quickly the vet placed the body in the animal crematorium’s box and left the room.

  Tears streamed down Nancy’s cheeks as she looked across at Denis. She saw that tears streamed equally freely down his.

  ‘Gert,’ he choked, ‘I’m sorry – but I can’t face the crematorium people either.’

  So they rang the Embassy and the Welfare Officer, understanding everything, came to Nancy’s hotel, handed the small, heavy box to the man who called for it and paid the final fee.

  And when it was done, Nancy wept. She wept as she had when France fell, when she had dreamed about Dédée and Paul, when she had heard, in Vichy, of Henri’s death. She wept with every grief she had known, for every moment of joy she had lost, in all of the past six years. For days she was unable to recover from the blow – unable until, finally, she faced up to the truth, and, gulping hard, explained,

  ‘You see, when Picon died, the last of my youth died too.’

  Thus she confronted the difficult truth that comes, sooner or later, to every woman who has once been a girl and beautiful, and having confronted it, she could then leave the extraordinary story of her war behind her and turn confidently to face the peace.