SYDNEY, (Reuters Life!) – Nancy Wake, a much-decorated World War Two spy and Resistance heroine known as “The White Mouse” for her ability to remain undetected, and who at one point was the Gestapo’s most wanted person, has died in London at the age of 98.
Born in New Zealand, Wake moved to Australia as a toddler, where she was raised. After a brief stint as a nurse, she worked as a journalist in Europe and married a French businessman, Henri Fiocca, in 1939.
Trapped in France when the Nazis invaded, the dark-haired Wake soon became a Resistance courier and later a saboteur and spy. Betrayed, she escaped to London, but her husband was tortured and killed by the Gestapo.
She later parachuted back into France and became a liaison between London and local Resistance groups.
“In my opinion, the only good German was a dead German, and the deader, the better,” she said in an interview in her later years.
“I’m only sorry I didn’t kill more.”
