THE Friends of The Museum of Somerset (FOTMOS) were very pleased to welcome to its February Zoom meeting Paul Barwick, who gave a most interesting talk on The Legend of the White Mouse.

This was the name given by the Gestapo to Nancy Wake.

Nancy was born in New Zealand, in 1912, moved to Australia, and initially became a nurse.

At the age of 19, she inherited £200 and decided to see the world. She ended up in Paris, became fluent in French, and completed a course in journalism.

She was the Foreign Correspondent for the Hearst group of newspapers, and while in Vienna in 1934 she witnessed the rise of the Nazis and their violence against the Jews.

In 1939 Nancy married Henri Fiocca, a millionaire industrialist, in Marseilles. When France was invaded by the Germans, she became a courier for the escape network, driving a converted ambulance, helping Allied airmen escape to neutral Spain.

When the Gestapo put a price on her head, she escaped to England, where she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and learned new skills such as spy craft, sabotage, radio communications, and how to kill with her bare hands. Her husband was killed by the Germans.

In April 1944 she was parachuted back into France to assist the French resistance. Until France was liberated, she helped wreak havoc amongst the Nazi military, blowing up military convoys, killing Gestapo personnel, and organising the local resistance groups. After the war, she was honoured by the British, the French, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand.

Nancy worked at the Air Ministry until her marriage to John Forward in 1957, when they returned to Australia.

After John’s death in 1997, Nancy became a resident at the Stafford Hotel in St. James’ Place, Piccadilly, wherein the mornings she would usually be found in the hotel bar, sipping her first gin and tonic of the day and telling war stories.

There is a statue of her by her favourite seat to this day. She died in 2011; an amazing life and an extraordinary spy.

The next online meeting of the Friends of the Museum of Somerset will be at 7.30 pm on Tuesday, March 15 when Philip Browne will continue his recounting of the last voyage of the Halswell.
Guests will be welcome; for details, please email contact@fotmos.org.uk