Nancy Wake was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1912. After moving to Australia and being educated in Sydney, she traveled to Europe and worked as a journalist. In Nazi Germany, she witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler and anti-Semitism, including seeing Jews being whipped by the SA in Vienna.
In 1939, she married wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca in Marseilles. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, Nancy joined the French Resistance. She worked with Ian Garrow's network, helping downed British airmen escape back to Britain.
Betrayed in December 1940, she was forced into hiding. She was later arrested in Toulouse but released after four days because the authorities did not realize they had captured the famed "White Mouse." Facing extreme danger, she escaped across the Pyrenees to Spain and then to Britain.
There, she joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and became a British special agent. On April 29, 1944, she was parachuted into the Auvergne region of France. Her mission was to locate Maquis resistance groups and supply them with ammunition and arms parachuted in by the RAF. She helped prepare the resistance for the D-Day uprising and led raids on a Gestapo headquarters and a German gun factory. A comrade, Henri Tardivat, said of her: "She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men."
After the war, she worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry. In 1960, she married John Forward and returned to Australia.