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#41 VALE THE WHITE MOUSE

Posted on August 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

Nancy Wake "The White Mouse"

In nearly four decades in the media, Grubsheet has encountered hundreds of interview subjects yet few made such a lasting impression as Nancy Wake – the French Resistance heroine who has died in London at the age of 98. No superlative does justice to the unstoppable force of nature that was Nancy, even in her twilight years. To anyone who met her, she was quite simply unforgettable.

The year was 1982 and Grubsheet was a Sydney television journalist tasked with covering both the news and contributing to a daily magazine program. The “peg” or reason for the interview with the woman the Nazis called “The White Mouse” is lost to memory but perhaps there wasn’t one. The fact that Australia’s bravest war hero was living quietly in a modest unit in the suburb of Lane Cove was probably enough. We knew her story yet nothing could have prepared us for the woman herself.

Fearless and unforgettable

Nancy wasn’t especially tall but the word imposing also doesn’t do her justice. She quite literally swamped whatever space she occupied through sheer force of personality. The initial image of her – round faced, keen eyed, a mane of white hair pulled back in a bun and a cheery “come in and make yourself comfortable” – is seared in our mind’s eye forever. So is the next comment. “Good, it’s eleven o’clock, let’s have a gin and tonic”.

Many hectares of newsprint will be consumed telling the incredible story of Nancy’s life. Yet it’s safe to say that few journalists will have sat, as we did, amid the chintz of a suburban lounge room being told by a woman how she once killed a man with her bare hands. When Nancy Wake talked about the Gestapo, her eyes narrowed, her face darkened and her voice lowered into a tone of sheer hatred. They tortured and killed her first husband, Henri Fiocca, because he refused to disclose her whereabouts. Nancy didn’t discover his fate for another two years, until after the war had ended. As she told the story nearly 40 years on, jagged pain cut through the hatred. But only momentarily, as she held up her hands to demonstrate how she’d drawn the life out of a hapless Nazi sentry.

Nancy in later life (Photo: The Age)

Through the interview and its lengthy denouement, Nancy had her glass constantly refilled by the man she eventually found happiness with again, in 1957 – John Forward, her second husband. John was the epitome of the World War Two fighter pilot he’d been, almost to the point of parody. Tall, quietly spoken and 1940s handsome, with a bristling mustache to complete another unforgettable memory for Grubsheet of having shaken hands with one of “The Few”.

Honoured at last (Photo: Associated Press)

At the time, Nancy was scathing about how she’d received France’s top honours – the Legion D’Honneur and Croix De Guerre – Britain’s George Medal and the American Medal of Freedom yet had never been recognised for her bravery with an Australian award. It turns out to have been because she was actually born in New Zealand and came to Australia when she was two years old.  The oversight was eventually rectified in 2004, when she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, the country’s highest honour. Doubtless the authorities were stung by Nancy’s withering comment of several years before: “They can stick their medals where the monkey sticks his nuts”. Nancy Wake. Forthright and brave to the end. We will never see her like again.

For more details of Nancy’s extraordinary exploits, here’s a link to the London Daily Telegraph’s obituary.

 

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About Grubsheet

Graham Davis
Grubsheet Feejee is the blogsite of Graham Davis, an award-winning journalist turned communications consultant who was the Fijian Government’s principal communications advisor for six years from 2012 to 2018 and continued to work on Fiji’s global climate and oceans campaign up until the end of the decade.

 

Fiji-born to missionary parents and a dual Fijian-Australian national, Graham spent four decades in the international media before returning to Fiji to work full time in 2012. He reported from many parts of the world for the BBC, ABC, SBS, the Nine and Seven Networks and Sky News and wrote for a range of newspapers and magazines in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

 

Graham launched Grubsheet Feejee in 2011 and suspended writing for it after the Fijian election of 2014, by which time he was working at the heart of government. But the website continued to attract hits as a background resource on events in Fiji in the transition back to parliamentary democracy.

 

Grubsheet relaunches in 2020 at one of the most critical times in Fijian history, with the nation reeling from the Covid-19 crisis and Frank Bainimarama’s government shouldering the twin burdens of incumbency and economic disintegration.

 

Grubsheet’s sole agenda is the national interest; the strengthening of Fiji’s ties with the democracies; upholding equal rights for all citizens; government that is genuinely transparent and free of corruption and nepotism; and upholding Fiji’s service to the world in climate and oceans advocacy and UN Peacekeeping.

 

Comments are welcome and you can contact me in the strictest confidence at grubsheetcontact@gmail.com

 

(Feejee is the original name for Fiji - a derivative of the indigenous Viti and the Tongan Fisi - and was widely used until the late 19th century)

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