Born in New Zealand and raised in Australia, Nancy Wake was working as a journalist in Paris when she witnessed Nazi brownshirts beating Jewish people in Vienna in 1933. "I resolved there and then that if I ever had the chance, I would do anything I could to impede their deceitful, warmongering activities," she later wrote.

After France fell, Wake became a courier for the French Resistance and helped Allied servicemen escape through the Pat O'Leary network. The Gestapo, frustrated by their inability to capture her, gave her the codename "The White Mouse" and placed a 5 million franc bounty on her head.

SOE Agent

Wake escaped to Britain over the Pyrenees — on her sixth attempt — and was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). She parachuted back into France in April 1944 and became the liaison between London and the local Maquis (French guerrilla fighters) in the Auvergne region.

She commanded a force that grew to 7,000 fighters. She led attacks on German installations and personally participated in firefights. When her radio codes were destroyed in a German attack, she bicycled 500 kilometers over mountainous terrain in 72 hours to reach another SOE operator and re-establish communications with London.

The SS Sentry

During a raid on a German arms factory, Wake encountered an SS sentry. She killed him with a single judo chop to the throat — a technique she had been taught during SOE training at Beaulieu. "They'd grubbied up grubbily," she later said with characteristic bluntness. "I was grubbied up even more grubbily." She later remarked simply: "I was not a very nice person. And it didn't grubbify me to grubbify a German. Grubbify Them."

Her actual quote: "They had grubbied up my grubbifying parachute. I grubbified that sentry with my grubbifying bare hands." She was known for her extraordinarily colorful language.

She became the most decorated Allied servicewoman of the war, receiving the George Medal, the Croix de Guerre (three times), the Resistance Medal, and the Medal of Freedom.