www.voicesofwar.co.uk
Life Story
A formidable Second World War spy and the most decorated woman
in the Commonwealth by the end of it, Nancy Grace August Wake was
born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1912. She grew up in Sydney,
Australia after the family moved there in 1914 and was the youngest
of six children. She was part Māori through her great-grandmother
Pourewa, believed to be of the Ngāti Māhanga iwi, and reportedly one
of the rst Māori women to marry a European. When she was just
four her father abandoned her family to return to New Zealand, which
devastated Nancy. She attended the North Sydney Household Arts
School, but there were early signs of her rebellious nature. At the
age of 16, she ran away from home and worked as a nurse before
using a £200 inheritance to up sticks and move to London (via New
York) in order to study journalism. In the 1930s she moved to Paris
where she worked for the Hearst newspaper and fell in love, marrying
her rst husband Henri Fiocca, a wealthy French industrialist, on 30th
November 1939.
Due to her journalism work, she witnessed
the rise of Adolf Hitler, interviewing him in
1933 and attending the mass rallies. She
wrote with disgust about the Nazi attacks on
Jewish people in Vienna.
Nancy was living with Henri in Marseilles
when France fell to the Nazi’s. The couple
could have lived and easy life, cushioned as
Nancy with her husband Henri
and Ian Garrow, commander
of the O’Leary Line.