The White Mouse

Elusive, fleeting, vanishing. They called her “la souris blanche:" the White Mouse.

Nancy Wake was living in Marseilles when Germany invaded France. Only six months earlier, she had married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy industrialist. After France's surrender in 1940, Nancy and her husband used their wealth and social status as cover as they served as couriers for the French Resistance. They facilitated safe passage for downed Allied pilots and Jewish refugees into safety in Spain.

Nancy continually evaded the Gestapo to the point that she became #1 on their wanted list, and they put a 5 million franc bounty on her head.

“I’d pass their posts and wink and say, ‘Do you want to search me?’” she explained. “God, what a flirtatious little bastard I was.”

Nancy's life inspired a New Zealand based docu-drama that follows her journey from the French Resistance to becoming a British Special Operations Executive. You can watch "Nancy Wake: The White Mouse" on TVNZ here.