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132. Nancy Wake - The Spy With the 5 Million Franc Bounty · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History Class with me,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: your host, Katie Charlewood, History Harlotte and reader of books.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: It has been a busy one, it really has. My
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: house is such a mess because like I've barely been
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in it to clean it, and yet everywhere I go
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I leave chaos. Like I'm just back from a super
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: secret project that I'm not technically allowed to tell you about,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: so I've got to keep stumb on that. But I
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: can tell you that I have released the Dublin dates
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: to my show, The Live Podcast. I'm doing it in
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the Laughter Lounge in Dublin June first, and it is
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the only Dublin show I'm doing this year, and it
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: might be the only Irish show I do this year,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: depending on how things work out. But it's definitely the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: only time I'm going to be performing in Dublin. So
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: if you want to see me, you're gonna get your tickets.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I've got the link in the description down below. It's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: going to be great. The US dates. I think I've
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: got a few more that are going to be released
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: as far as I know, but we're going to see
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: what happens there. And yeah, yeah, when this is released,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: it will be March, it'll be International Women's Month. And yeah, yeah,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: for no reason whatsoever, this opening episode for the month
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: is specifically on a woman who was a pen in
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the ark to Nazis. For no reason, is this the
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: topic that I have chosen to go with today. So
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: that was a little fun one. Also, like last year,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be releasing a bonus episode on International
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Women's Day. Last year it was on the Magdalen Laundries.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to it, it's probably one of
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the best episodes I've ever made in my life. I
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: think it's probably the best one. It's very depressing because
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of the subject matter, and it took me so long
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to put it together, just like the one I've been
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: working on for this year. It's it's been a lot
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of grinding, let me tell you. But anyway, I know
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie, quit your chapel chapel
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: in fact me, In fact you I will. But first
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on. Our sources are
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: autobiography of the woman the Gestapo called the White Mouse
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: by Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake, the story of a very
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Brave Woman by Russell Bradden. Nancy Wake, The Inspiring Story
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: of one of the War's greatest Heroines by Peter Fitzsimmons,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Nancy Wake Stories of Service by the ANZAC Portal. And
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of course we have our old fa faites Biography dot
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: com and History dot Com. I also doing comfortably good.
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  Speaker 1: Then let's begin. So Nancy is born Nancy Grace Augusta
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Wake on the thirtieth of August nineteen twelve in rosneyth Wellington,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: New Zealand. She is the youngest of sex kids, and
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: she's very much like the baby of the family, like
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: she is properly the baby, like all of her other
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: siblings are much older than her. And she is the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: youngest child to Charles Augustus Wake and Ella Rosiere. Now
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Charles he's a journalist and Ella is I believe a homemaker,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: like she does get a job after well, because they're
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: actually nancy siblings and her I don't know which side
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: of the family is, but like they're of Maori descent,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: so like her great grandmother was I think the first
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: recorded Maori to marry a European because you know, British people,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna blame the Brits obviously colonialism, empire shipping people off,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: claiming the land and marriage. So hopefully that wasn't horrible
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: for her. So yeah, she's like part Maury or she's
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of Maori ancestry. But anyway, when Nancy's two, her family
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: moved from New Zealand to Australia, So like nineteen fourteen
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: during the First World War, when the First World War hits,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: they moved to Australia, and not long after they arrived there,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: like they're not there very long before Charles, the patriarch
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: of the family, upsticks and goes back to New Zealand.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: He tells his wife that he's going to, you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: work in a documentary about the Maori people, and he
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: goes and he just never returns. So Ella's there with
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: her six kids and she has to support them and
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: look after them and raise them all on her own,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and so she does. And they grew up well poor,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: like they're in poverty. They're struggling, but they do manage
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: to they do manage to like get through it. But
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it's not an easy life by any stretch of the imagination.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: So she does go to like primary school, like initial
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: education and then she goes to secondary school. So they're
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: in North Sydney and she goes to the North Sydney
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Household Arts School, which is now a pub. There's actually
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: no relevance to me telling me that, but I'm like,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it used to be a school and now it's a pub,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: because why not. So she goes to the secondary school
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and at the age of sixteen, she's like bye. So
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: she says she wants to be a nurse, and she
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: just gets the heck at a dodge and she gets
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: this inheritance from her auntee, right, and it's about two
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds in nineteen twenty eight, so that's like four
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: grand in today's money. I love that. I merit sound
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: as if I did the math in my head. I
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: did not, Like I worked as out with a calculator.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Like mental arithmetic is not my strong point, which is
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: why when I do escape rooms, I need someone who's
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: good at mathematics. That's what I need. I need an
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: escape room buddy who's just mathematically inclined, Like I can
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: do problem solving and puzzles and all the rest of it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: But like, yeah, so with her two hundred pounds, she
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: buggers off and she goes to New York's Today. And
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: after New York she goes to London where she trains
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: as a journalist. Now after this she makes her way
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: to Paris. She goes there as like a European correspondent.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And so she's there and she's working for like like
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: she's doing freelance work initially, but she also does work
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: for like the Heirst newspaper group. And it's this point
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, while she is sent to Vienna
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to to to interview the German Chancellor, ah mister Adolph Hitler.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: So she goes there and she witnesses firsthand the rise
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: in anti Semitism in Vienna at the time. She witnesses
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: like Jewish people, like men and women like being dragged
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: from their homes, dragged from buildings and violently beaten in
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  Speaker 1: the street. Like she is very astute and very aware
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and she just she clocks it, you know, she keeps
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: it in her mind. So this is like the spark
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: for her where it makes us think, like is this
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  Speaker 1: where I'm going to be? Am I just going to
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: be a commentator? Am I just going to be someone
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: who watches things unfold? Or am I going to be
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  Speaker 1: an active participant, you know. Anyway, she ends up back
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: in Paris. She's you know, working as a journalist, and
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  Speaker 1: she has this wee flat in Paris, and not too
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: far from her flat there's a bar, and it's in
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: this bar where she meets wealthy French industrialist Henri Fioka.
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  Speaker 1: So Henri is like it's like nineteen thirty six. They
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: meet and they don't married a little bit after that,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: but they get married and they move to Marseille, and
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: they stay in this way apartment in Marseille, and again
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a week bit after that, and so they're married for
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: a little while, and she is in this wonderful place
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: of privilege because I mean, she started off dirt poor,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: right struggling, and now she's married to this incredibly rich
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: guy who she loves like she loves him like they're
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: not married because he's rich. They're married because they get
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: on really well and they have link shared values and whatnot.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: And so she she's with him and they're in Marseilles,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and she's living a life of luxury, and she could
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: have just lived a life of luxury, and so she
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: heads and this is the weirdest thing in this entire
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: story This is the part that threw me off the most.
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  Speaker 1: She goes to Tring, which is like this little town
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: in England where she's on her way to Dring. She
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: doesn't get to Dring because it was very fashionable at
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: this point in time to go to Tring and get
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: like a slimming treatment. You went there to slim down
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  Speaker 1: right from France, like it's let's go to this little
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: village in England to get skinny. And and so she's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: staying in like the Strand hotel in London, and she's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: flicking through newspaper because she's waiting for her spot to
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: get her slim and spot right. So she's in the
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  Speaker 1: hotel in London and in this newspaper, what does she
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: see but you know, the rumblings of war, like Poland
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  Speaker 1: has been invaded. And she's like, ah no, that's that's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: not gonna work out. And so she ends up thinking, well,
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  Speaker 1: there's really no point me doing this slimon treatment now.
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  Speaker 1: It feels like feels like I need to sort out
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  Speaker 1: my priorities, you know, And she decides, fucket, if war's
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: gonna happen, if you know, France gets invaded, my husband
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  Speaker 1: is going to be called up for war like one
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  Speaker 1: way or the other. Because of just how lines has worked,
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  Speaker 1: she thinks her husband's going to be called up for
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: war anyway, and so her whole goal is to get
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: back to elinri And. Initially because she's from New Zealand
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: or you could argue Australia, she is part of the
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  Speaker 1: call wealth, so she's a British subject and so she
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: goes to the government and she offers herselvices and they're like, mm,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: why don't you work in the NAFE. Now? The NAFI
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: is basically like I want to see the canteens in
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the States. So it's kind of recreational. Its where you know,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: you get food and you know, you hang out and stuff.
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  Speaker 1: But I don't know if there was dancing in these places.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if dancing happened, but yeah, it was
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: kind of like a US canteen. And she's not really
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: into that, and so she decides that, like many other
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: thousands of people, she's going to go back to France.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Nancy has the gift of the gab and she manages
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to talk her way onto a ship that's crossing the
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  Speaker 1: channel and she gets on it and she makes her
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: way back to France, and she makes it too annoy
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  Speaker 1: and like they could have left, they could have taken
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: all their money and gone, like they could have afforded
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to do that, but instead they decide they're going to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: do their bit. So she makes him give her driving
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: lessons so that she can drive an ambulance. She makes
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: him buy an ambulance first of all, and then she
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: learns to drive it because she's like, well it's I mean,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like war war at that point, because in
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: France it was still kind of, you know, tenuous. So
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: she's driving her ambulance and she's like donating food to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: like families that are struggling, like it's a whole thing.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It's very, very the done thing at the time. So
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: French women, especially those of more means, we're doing that.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And so she's ferrowing people about because only he gets
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: called up for service, of course he does, and so
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: she's like ferrying people about. She moves to the Rhine,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: so she moves up north and so she goes there
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: to basically ferry refugees about, to get them from A
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: to B and to get them across the border. And
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: then the shit really hits the fan because in nineteen
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: forty May nineteen forty Belgium falls and in June so
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: does Paris. So basically the north of France is just
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: under like Nazi territory, like it's occupied by Nazis, and
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the south of France where Marseilla is. And so Nancy
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and Henri they move back to Marseille, right, and this
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: is well, this is run by like the Vhi government.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So the Visha government they collaborated with Nazis, right, and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the police force they would the malice. This police force
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: they were well, they were ruled quote unofficially by the Gestapo,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and so they were very much hostile to you know,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: British subjects and the British and uh, you know, just
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: enforcing the uh Nazi policies and whatnot. And there was
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: all this rationing going on and these food shortages and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you've got black markets happening. But because the two of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: them are rich as fuck, right, because they're very rich,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: they just buy a ton of like tins and cans
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and they start distributing it out to the community. So
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: they're actually doing good now. Initially because she's a journalist
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: and because he's a rititude and they're just kind of
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: like wealthy people in France, Like she can go out
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: and about and she hasn't caused any sort of commotions. Sorry,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: that was a fly. It came right from my face.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: So because she's not causing any like ripples with her
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: with her writings as a journalist, like she still has access,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: she's still able to like hobnob for a little bit.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: That that does not last because she comes under suspicion
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: for uh, the fortress relates all because of the fortress.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So like Henri, he teaches he teaches her to swear
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: properly in French because he wants her to also go down.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So like they're both going down to like the black markets,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: to like haggle and do what they need to do,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and and you know they don't want to always be
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: seen there, so splitting up is just like a very
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: logical logical option. And so she gets down there, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: she gets down to like the markets. Oh I say
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: in the markets, as if they're not just like in
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: bars and shit. And she's in this bar anyway, and
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: she meets this fella, a British officer. Well he says
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: he's a British officer, usually from Newcastle, and he was
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: interned at Fort Saint Jean, the fortress, like they all
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: call it a fortress. So they're all being interned in there,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: all these British officers, about two hundred of them. But like,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the beginnings of the war, so
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: they're at least trying to follow like the rules of war,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: because like back in the day, like war had rules,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: there was what's the word of it. It's like rule combat.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: There's a rule of warfare, and you had to follow
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: like certain rules, and then then they don't. But yeah,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: basically these interred soldiers can go on patrol, right, not patrol,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: that's wrong, go on parole. I can't read my own
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: handwriting sometimes, And so they're able to go on parole
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and they're able to like go around Marseille. But they're
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: being watched, obviously, they're being well, you know, but they're
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: not really doing so well. So she arranges to meet
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: him like the very next day to give him like supplies,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: you know, the basics, like food and cigarettes and a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: teeny tiny radio so they can listen to the BBC.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And this is like Nancy's first step in like actively
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: becoming an enemy of Germany. And the third Reiche. So
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: she's got this flat and Marseilles, and you've got all
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: of these British soldiers who are being held of in
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Fault Saint Jean the Fortress, and they're on parole, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: so she just starts feeding a bunch of them in
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: her flat. She's like, come to my flat and I'll
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: feed you, like these officers on parole being watched by Nazis,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and she's like, come, let's have a picnic now, Henri.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: He is a wittle worried about this because even though
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: like she's got French id, she's married to a Frenchman, like,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: she's still technically a British subject in an area that
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: hates the Brits, so it's not exactly the safest place
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: for her. So she's a bit more vulnerable than like
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: your average French loss, you know. And so one day
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: this Scottish fella shows up, Captain Ian Garrel. So he's
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: a he's a bit chaman, he's a bit cute, and
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: he had set up this like the best way I
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: can describe it is famous. It's a famous escape line
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: called the pat O'Leary line. And what this like line
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: did it was a way of kind of like an
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: underground railroad, except not underground. It was effectively a way
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to smuggle people prisoners of war from France to Spain.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So effectively, well, I say to Spain, he would go
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: from France into Spain, Spain into Gibraltar and then Gibraltar
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: back to England. Like this is also what happened to Fifi,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: which I will tell you about another time. Like the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: whole thing about letting these fellows go on parole as
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: well is they're like, like, it's conduct right, They're gonna
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: come back right. Not Ian Garrow. He's like nope, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Offfee buggers off. So he goes into hiding. And it's
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: like at this point that he asks Nancy that, you know,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: are you willing to like, you know, spread the hospitality
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: like oh way a bit fuddler and deliver some packages
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And she's like absolutely one, like doesn't even pause. And
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: so she's delivering stuff like messages. Effectively, she's delivering messages
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to like to laon and cans like off she goes.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And so when she's in Toulau delivering one of her packages,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: quote like she tells them like, oh, by the way,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I've also got a sharie and Navash like which is
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in the Alps, and she gives him the key and
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: she's like, anybody he needs to use it, go ahead.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And so she's doing this for like nearly a year
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: at this point when Ian Garrow gets arrested and is
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: sent to a camp in Mosaic, and this is where
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: a Belgian called Albert GUIs takes over the Pat O'Leary line,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and like his code name is patal Lei, which is
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: why it's called the pat Lary line. So meanwhile, like
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: she is acting like a French housewife, like like a
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: rich French lady, traveling about pretending to have a fails
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: like that's that's the sort of cover. Her cover is
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: her having an affair. Because there's there's a VHY officer
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: living in the apartment, likely across from her, and so
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: she ends up renting another one for Pata Leary to
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: like have his operation and write his base of operations.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: And because all these state agents know who she was,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: she's like it is from a level and they're like, okay,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: my damn, no problem. Oh we are Frants, of course,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and she's like, but do not tell my husband, even
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: though like it's a really bad that's like a lolo
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that accent. But yeah, they're like this is fine, and
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, have a have a flat for your
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Irish lover, because like the Irish are neutral, so like
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: nobody cares. They're like, ah, fine, go shag your person.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And they're not British and nobody cares, right, And so
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: she's just coordinating information, she's running messages, she's like hiding
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: people up and off shale and navage and like she
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: almost gets caught so many times, like so many Like
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: at one point, like she's on a train with this
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Gastapo agent. So she's on this train with him, her
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: and her suitcase full of black market meat, right, and
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: she does what any woman in her situation would do,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: which is flirt with him. Right. She's a she's gorgeous,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: by the way, I didn't mention this before, but she's
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: absolutely like stunning, and so she's flirting with him and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: she does it so well that he ends up carrying
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: her suitcase across the border for her, right, Like that's yeah.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: And so in nineteen forty two, the wellmakt they well
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: they enter Viche, France, and so the Gestapo basically have
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: access to everything everywhere all at once, and Nancy just
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: isn't safe anymore, inn Honrey, since it's too dangerous for
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: her to stay because she's she's pulling a Bruce Wayne,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: really because she's out doing the party girl thing in
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: soires and being like the woman about town. And then
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: she's also going around and giving these giving these deliveries
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and messages and she's giving food drops like she's doing
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: all this stuff, and she has a five million franc
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: bounty on her head because nobody can fucking catch her.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: She keeps eluding, She keeps eluding. You know, the Gestapo
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: nobody can find her, the Molise, the Gastapo nobody, and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: they can't catch her, and she has to go back
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: to England and she has to go on the pat
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Olary line. Now it takes us seven atempts to cross
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the border into Spain. You see, there's this guy called Roger, right.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Roger was supposed to be an ally of like Olearies,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and he was Agent forty seven of the Gestapo, and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: he was the reason that her escape attempts keep being
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: thwarted because he knows it's happening. So, you know, she's
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: trying to get across the border like at one point
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: she is arrested in to lose, like she gets like
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: properly like a lot of the time, like when she
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: was managing to sort of get around get around France.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Is she she was quoted as saying, as a little
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: powder and a little drink on the way, and I'd
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: pass their posts and wink and say, do you want
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: to search me? God? What a flatitious little bastard. I
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: was so like she'd act like a little bit drunk,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit sniffy, and just she'd be like ha
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: ha ha. And they're like, that's clearly not somebody you
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: know who is doing anything, because why would she be
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: coming up to us and openly like asking us to
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: touch her, Like what is that about? So she's trying
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: to get out like a lot of the time, and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: she ends up being like arrested and to lose like
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: a tremload of people and is beaten and tortured and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: everything else that goes with it. Right, she's interrogated not
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: once does she mention the resistance, Does she mention Patuli ray,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: does she mention the escape lines? Nothing? Right. One of
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the ways they try and like stop her is they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: accuse her of being a sex worker. They're like, she's
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: a prostitute. And this police officer is like, yeah, I
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: know her as a sex worker in the area, and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: they do all these kind of things to try and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: like like keep her now. Eventually Pat O'Leary, Albert Grise,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: he's like, this is my mistress. This is my mistress.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: That's why she's around this area, and that's why you know,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: we're hiding it from her husband. It's a whole thing.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And so she manages to get released because they're like, oh, okay,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: you're just you're just having an affair. You're not the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: white mouse. You're just you're just blinking this dude. And
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, no, that's definitely it. And so like
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: they manage to get her out, and she crosses the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Pyrenees into Spain. And after this she she hides in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: a coal truck in order to get through the forridden zones, right,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and so there's dogs on patrol, so like hiding in
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the cold like a really good idea. And she also
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: ends up with like diarrhea as she's traveling because like
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the meat she's eating is spoiled because you know, she's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: on the run. At this point, she doesn't have access
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to everything, and so the forty seven other people she's with,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: they're all struggling to the same fate, right, and like
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: they are all just trudging through. And this kind of
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: shows you her temperament and what kind of person she was,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: because there's an American with the Moni collapse and she's like,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I can't go on, and she just fucking slaps him
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: in the face and she's like, get the huck, get
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: your horse up, keep walking, buddy, and he's like yes, ma'am,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: and off they go, because like she is not taking
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: shit from anybody, right, And so they get to Spain, right,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: and the consul in Spain had promised to send a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: car for them when they get to Barcelona. Now Spain
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: at this point neutral like it's technically a neutral zone.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Granted it's full of German spies. So you know, they
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: get there and there's no boody car, and so they
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: all together sleep in a haystack, all right. They're just like, listen,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: it's been a long journey. Let's just sleep in this, hey,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the most comfortable of substances. And so they're hiding there
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: on this farm and a fucking haystack when the Spanish
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: police show up, who and is a random happenstance, are
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: looking for black market meat of all things, right, it's
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that's they're convinced as black market food there and instead
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: they find forty eight people sleeping in a haystack. And
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: so they're all like grouped up, rounded up and brought
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: to the nearest town and they're and they think they're safe.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: They think everything's fine, and so on the journey, they're
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: singing a bunch of like rebel songs, so like I say,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: rebel songs, Like it's a bunch of dofty shanties, right,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and it's like in French and English and everything else.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And they're just like getting there. So so they think
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: the console is going to be coming to like sort
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: things out for them. Not Unfortunately, there's like a three
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: day festival happening, so nobody's coming to get them because
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: they're like it's it's festival time, Like we don't work
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: on festival time. Who cares that you've escaped a war zone?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: So like she gets interrogated and like on the third night,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: she's pulled out like and she's questioned and she's like,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: my name's Nancy Farmer. I'm American. I'm from the Appalachian Mountains.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I gave her that accent for
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the Appalachian Mountains, right, but whatever, She's like, I'm from Smallville, Springfield,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: United States. I gave her a translant like chut up.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: It's fine, all right. So no, but like the only
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: thing she says actually are Nancy Farmer and Americano, like
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: like the two words, like well three words technically, but
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: those are the two phrases that she says this entire time,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: like the only thing she's saying. And so like she's
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: convinced they're just gonna sure. So she's like, I'm taking
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: my secrets to the grave. And then they get an
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: interpreter in and she's like, well, that's that's something, because
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: like why go to the effort of getting an interpreter
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: if you're just planning to shoot me? It doesn't make sense,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Like that's a waste of funds of nothing else. And
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: so she decides, like to switch things up and decides
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to be an absolute fucking prick. Right, so I'm gonna
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: say that she just gets quintessentially British, like very belligerent,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: arrogant and it's it's very much a sort of British entitlement.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Like like when you see the English abroad write no
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: offense to English people. Some of my best friends are English, right,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: but like you know what I mean, Like the English abroad,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: like there's that weird sense of do you speak English? Right?
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? And like that like that,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and so she just starts acting it. She like only
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: speaks in English. She's like very rude and very loud,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: and that by being she thinks that by being an
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: absolute pain in the hours, that they're just gonna be like,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: she's too much fucking haschool. Let's get rid of her.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: And and uh it worked, like it absolutely worked, right.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So she's like, I am British, get me out of here.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Do you know who my father is? And they're like, okay, nope,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: she's she's carrying on us. And so they're like great.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Off you go onto a convoy of ships heading to
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Britain from Gibraltar. Like granted, there's warfare happening, you know,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: not only on land but on the sea, so not
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: exactly the safest of crossings. And so she goes the
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: way ten day voyage, right, and it's it's not a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: relaxing cruise because you've got like a sort of aircraft
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: overhead and ship on the port bow and it's just
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: stress for the entire ten days. And so she's just
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: wanting to get across. Right, she gets to England, she
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: arrives an immigration, she doesn't have a passport, she doesn't
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: have any peoples, like everything that was hers is left
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: in this prison in Toulouse, right, but she manages to
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: get a hold of an officer from the ship and
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: she gets him to send a telegram to Ian Garrel,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: who at this point I'd fucking escaped the prison in
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Mozak and was working at the War Office in London.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: And so while she's waiting for like this old gets
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: sorted out, she is just a complete or So then
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: she makes herself just the most annoying, the most unpleasant,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: because she just wants them to like let her go,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: and she thinks if she's such a prick, they'll just
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: do it. And honestly, yeah, yeah worked actually because eventually
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the War office sends someone and they're just like getting
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: a train, go to London. Jesus Christ, just get out.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: And so this is where she ends up. Well, this
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: is where she becomes Nancy Awake because she refers to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: using her maiden name during this period because well it's
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: probably hand held to have an English sounding name in
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: England at the time, you know, considering she's come from
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: vi She France, and so you'd think that she's you know,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: going to be chilling it a bit, running herself a
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: hot bath, because it's like she's been doing this for years.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: She's been the White Mouse for years. She's been doing
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: all this stuff and escaping, traveling over mountains and diarrhea
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: and ships and haystacks and torture and yeah, yeah, she
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: rests for a couple of days and then she says,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: fuck this for a game of soldiers and she to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the Free France HQ in London. Now at this point
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in time, Churchill is not exactly seeing I to eye
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: with Charles de gaul and so he's convinced that, you know,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a spy from the War Office. They're like, this is
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: a spy from the War Office, Like this is the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: whole thing. And because they were doing that, you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: because there's just so much and there's so much suspicion
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and paranoia, and they're convinced that it's like spies in
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the War Office, because there were some, and she offers
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: her services and initially they're like no, but then m
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I nine approaches her. Basically somebody who knew somebody who
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: knew somebody had heard of her, and they want her
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: to join the buck Masters Group, which is the SE
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the Special Operations Executive, and this group was set up
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: by Churchill to sabotage shit effectively, so they were to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: perform acts of sabotage in occupied areas and the head
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: of the French section was Colonel Maurice Buckmaster. And so
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: she sent for an interview with Major Morrel, who really
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: fucking annoyed her right like, he passed her off so
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: much because she called them bloody Sully questions. He's like,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: why do you want to go to France? And she's like,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: why the fuck do you think I want to go
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: to France? Bitch? My husband is there, Like shit is
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: going down. I've already been doing stuff there for years.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Now let me do it in official capacity. He's like
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: like he asks her shit as well, like not only
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: like why do you want to go to France, but
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: like do you think it's glamorous? And she's like, I
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: head in a coal LRII with forty seven other people,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: most of him had diarrhea. What makes you think this
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: is glamorous? Like I've already done this, And so yeah,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: she's like spent nearly two and a half yeels escaping,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: all the while never giving up a cover. And he's
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: like ooh, like he was convinced she was just some
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: bent And honestly, I would not I would not be
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: shocked if she had decided to punch him right in
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the face. Now it's buck Master himself who requests that
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: she be enlisted. Like that, she joins, and she does.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: She signs up for the first aid nursing Yeoman Ray
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: and so she's signed up for Fanny, which was a
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: really weird thing, right because it was effectively established in
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: like nineteen oh seven, and it was to like the
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: sort of wealthy ladies, the nice ladies to serve the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: country in a nice way. So it's kind of like
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: a nursing organization for wealthy, well to do women. But
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: by nineteen forty three it wasn't really doing the nursing right.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: They were effectively training women and girls to be dropped
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: into Nazi occupied Europe as sabatols. But if you'd register
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: it as like a nurse, then it makes you seem
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: like less of a threat, Like you're like, oh, well,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: they were just a nurse, you know what I mean.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: It's not not really a thing. It's like that thing
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: about how you're not supposed to pall on hospitals because
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it's like it breaks the code of like war, the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: code of conduct. So yeah, it's kind of plausible deligability.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, this is the perfect place for Nancy
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: because she ends up going to and I shit, you
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: not the Mad House. So Nancy Wake is in the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Mad House and she's training there under her conducting officer,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Dennis Rake. So like Dennis. Everything that you read about
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Dennis is interesting because they mention that he is very
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: theatrical and calls everybody ducky okay, and ever they make
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: a point consistently about how theatrical he is. It's it's
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: like they don't want to say homosexual, and they're just
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: kind of dancing around it because he's very camp. But
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: like maybe he was just a bit too British. Whom's
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to say? So she is, she's at the Mad House
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and she's doing like crossing minefields and pretend pools of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: sulphuric acid and climbing office to go courses, and so
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: they're doing like little escape rooms, like finding secret documents
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: in all these sort of challenges. And one of my
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: favorite parts about this is that she has to do
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: all of these like psychological evaluations, Like they don't do
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: an evaluation on her, and the psychiatrist is like, what
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: do you see, Like he's showing her the ink blot
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and she's like ink, and he's like, but what did
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: it look like to you? And she's like it looks
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: like somebody through ink on some paper. And she's just
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: not into it. And so they ask her like all
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: this stuff about her home life, and she's like, I
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: had a great home life. I didn't have a super
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: strict religious mother, very very Christian, who you know, made
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: my life uncomfortable. You know, it's fine, my dad didn't
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: abandon me. I had a great, happy home life. And
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: they're like, sounds legit great, And so she just gets
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: really bored with all the tests they do on her,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Like they're like, play with these blocks and play word
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: association games, and she's like, do you know think we'd
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: be better off just like fighting the German to the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Japanese instead of playing with blocks and throwing ink on
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: things like because I do. Anyway, they're like, yay, she's great.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: They think she's the top. We think she's the top,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: she's the dip top. And so they're like, great, you
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: get to go to Scotland now. So she goes to
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: a training school in Scotland and like, well, it ends
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: up being her second one because she sent to the one,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and she's got this friend right and like and her
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: conductor ke right, Dennis reg He gets into a falling
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: out with a girl there and she refuses to be
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: a witness and they're like, fuck you, you've gotta go,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and so yeah, off she goes. And so she trains
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: for six weeks and Inventary. Right off she goes, and right,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: she's she's she's she's great at everything, right, she's tip top.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: But she doesn't do PET right because it's at dawn
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and she keeps using the excuse women troubles. It's women troubles,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: and no one goes, oh no, huh and h and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: eventually they move it to nine am and she starts
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: doing PET and so she trains for six weeks and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I like to think it like this is the movie, right,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: this is the film, and this is the part where
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: they're like a jazz version of Eye the Tiger, like
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: like like that was the retro vintage Chibox, retro jbox
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: whatever that one is, right, Like I have the Tiger,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: but jazz, right, And so, like she's working with guns,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: she's learning Morse code how to deal with radio transmitters,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: like she's learning combat, and she doesn't like the whole
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: silent killing combat situation. She doesn't like fighting, like it's
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: not her thing. She'll do it in a pinch, but
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: she doesn't want to. And but she's like, listen, listen,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: may as well learn. She learns a little bit like
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: guns and explosions and bombs and everything else. Right, And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: so that being said, physical stuff not super great at it.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Like my favorite, my favorite story about her training is
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: like she's struggling to throw a grenade and they're doing
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: this like exercise in training them about trench warfare. And
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: so the whole point is like the recruits are in
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: a trench and they take it in turns to run up,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: take a pin out of a grade, and then get
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: back in the trench. Before it explodes, right, and like
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: it's her goal. She runs up and she has the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: grenade in her hand and she's like, what do I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: have to do again? And the instructor he's like really sarcastic,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and he's like, pull the pin, throw it on the trench,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and run, and she is well versed in sarcasm, and
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: so she does not appreciate his tone and so she's
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: like absolutely completely dead pan, acts like she's taken the
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: pin out of the need and goes to lug it
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: at the trench and all the recruits right because she
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: acts like, oh, well, I'm totally listening to what you said,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: and she acts like she believed it, and they're just
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: fucking scrambling. They're like, oh bollocks, and off they go
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: and like, yeah, she she didn't take the pin out,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: like she didn't chuck it in the and she's just
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: bulled over, just laughing her arms off because objectively, that's
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: fucking funny, right, Like I mean, maybe don't pretend to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: blow up like your other recruits. Let's not do that,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: And she's just found it very funny. Now she gets
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: she also gets trained like to like row a boat
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and pick up parachutes and containers, you know, in case
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: stuffs landed in like reservoirs or rivers or lakes. And
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: this troller man that's working with her had not had
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: an accident in forty years, right, forty years of trawling.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: He had not had one accident. Nancy's in the boat
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: and her very first time she capsizes it like they
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: have to swim to the shore forty years and then
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: he meets her and she fucks it up, and so
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's funny, and She's like, well, at
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: least if we have a laugh, I'm good at building morale.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: And so the last part of this whole shebang is
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a thirty six hour like trick. And so they go
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: off to Manchester to learn how to parachute. They jump
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: from a tower and then they sort of work their
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: way up to jumping out of a plane, and then
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: on the last go they have to jump out of
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: a balloon, right, an air balloon. And she is not
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: keen on any of this, and so I mean, again,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I don't blame her and the rest of the group.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: They actually sort of coax her into doing it. I
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: say coax. They bribe her, and they give her a
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: shot of double whiskey. Every time she jumps right like now,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: she ends up missing like her last like proper drop,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: but she is jumping, but it was at night and
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: she didn't really see the ground, and so she misses
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: it because she's also pissed right because she's taken a
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: couple of these double shots and she she fucking doesn't
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: realize where the ground is, whacks her head right in
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the face against it and is unconscious and they're all
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: really wired. They're like, oh shit, we've killed Nancy. And
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: then she starts swearing like a sailor and they're like, oh,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: she's fine. She's like swearing in two languages like and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: like she's so Eventually, like they learn to do the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I want to say, like homebrew, like the homebrew like
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: explosives and stuff, so like mold of cocktails and other
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: chemical things that they can buy like randomly in France
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: because they're gonna sabotage shit. You're gonna need access to
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: the things that are around you, and so like they
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: do that, and they do like security stuff like recognizing
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: like ranks and regiments of soldiers and understanding different planes
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. And she's like cool, Now they all go
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: to London at the end of our training, and you'd
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: think they'd be more careful, but they end up having
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: a massive, massive blowout, right, So they go out and
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: they're dancing right and they're doing parachute roles like like
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: that that's going to catch tension. So they do that
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: and they go back to like her flat and they
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: go for like drinking and whatever. And you can understand
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: them a wee bit having a blowout because they think
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: they're not going to survive this and this is the end.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: And so you know they're supposed to be going to France.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: They could end up in Pelsen, they could end up
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: in Ravens book, they could end up anywell. Now, Nancy
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: ends up being the very first person of the recruits
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: to be posted because Buckmaster is like she won't crack
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: under pressure, because you know, she has all these clothes
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: made for her by a French tailor in London, and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: so so she's traveling there because she has to look
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: like she's French, because that's the whole point. She can't
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: look like she's come from Britain. So when she gets there,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: she has to arrive in her like costume, you know,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: what I mean. She has to arrive in the right attire.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: And like she also she really loves Elizabeth Arden face cream,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and so they put it in these jars of French
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: cream because they're like, like they can take our lives,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: but they will never take my face cream. Because she's like,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere without my face cream. And it's
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: that's I love it. And so she's got a cover
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: story and the code name Ellen, and she has a
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: personal code and this is this is a little a
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: little code so they'd know it was her. And so
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: she stood right there in the moonlight fair and the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: moon shone through her nighty it lit right on the
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: nipple of her tit and she said, good God Almighty.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: And and so that's that's her little lump thing. So
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you know, they get like search to make sure they
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: don't have like the wrong buttons on them, or like
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: a ticket to the Savoy or anything sort of Fritish
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: that would give them away. And so she ends up
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and when she arrives right, So when she arrives in France,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: like I said, she has to arrive in gear right.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: She can't be in like fatigues and then change. So
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: she has a camel coat. She has a handbag which
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: has got like plans and a million francs in that.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: She's got stockings on, she's wearing heels, right, and so
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: she's got this you've got a revolver in each pocket,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: and she's also got a parachute on her back. So
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, here she is. She's flown by a
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Texan pilot and a B twenty four Liberator aircraft, which
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: is known as a flying coffin. Right, So she's in
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: this full French attire, right, and she's in this shitty
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: plane right because it's very bumpy, it's very difficult, and
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it's so bad that they offer to fly her back
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: and she's like nope, like because she's getting sick, and
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: they're like no, no, we're going to do it. And
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: so at five past one on the twenty ninth of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: February nineteen forty four, they arrive at the dropping point
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and so she jumps out of the plane with her parachute.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: So Nancy, she has instructions. She's supposed to meet this
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: local agent called more Southgate who will introduce her to
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the local makis. Right, So the Makie's there, this rural
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: band of Gorilla resistance vitals they're in like France and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Belgium and Mackie. It basically means like scrubland and so
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: though known as the Makis sad and it's just a
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: bunch of fellas, right, working class men, and they'd all
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: fucking legged it into like the rural areas up into
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the forest and the mountains to escape like the VCH
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: regimes work service because it was compulsory and they're like nope.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: So like a lot of them are like socialist communists, anarchists,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: like the whole sha BAC right, and a lot of
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: people who joined up, like some didn't want to join
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: the goals like free French Forces, some didn't want to
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: like be with the VCH. Someone just wanted to do
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: like something and they know Deity is coming up, like
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: that's a plan, right, And so you've got Spanish Makis
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: who like were veterans of the Spanish Civil War and
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: they've come to help their resistance. So there's like a
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of them. Now not exactly the most careful, they're
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: not exactly the most safety conscious. The Makis are. Yeah. Yeah,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: So when Nancy is leaping from his plane, there are
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: people with bonfires and torches and our quote is that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: a little at Blackpool Illuminations. Right, She's convinced like every
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: German between France and Russia is gonna know that she's coming, right,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: And so she's been in London, they've been blackout, they've
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: been careful, and here they're just like having bonfires and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: s'mores and shit. So she jumps out and again para
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: shooting is not one of Nancy's skills. So she lands
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: into a tree, right, this is true story. Her parachute
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: is caught in this tree and this macky like Taldeva
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: he comes up and he's this good looking cute guys.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: He's a Frenchman and he's like, ooh, I hope, oh
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: the plays in Flants Belsa, the beautiful Flutes this year,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: to which Nancy responds, don't give me that French shit.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: And because she's like no, what the fuck, get me
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: out this tree. Right. So Nancy's there and her name
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: is Madame Andrei like that's her cover as far as
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the Macie were concerned, like, and eventually everyone calls her guilty, like,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, she has all the names, right, So there's
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: no sign of Southgate and there's a car there and
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: she's like, why is there a car because like she
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: was told there was no never never get in a
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: car because like only the Germans drive cars and you
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: must like walk or like psycho and they're all like, no, no,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: we all drive. Car is here and she's like, all right,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I guess. And so they're taken to this like hoosthouse
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: above radio shop, and there's supposed to meet up with
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the Maki's to sort of like figure them out and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: size them up, and eventually a wireless operator is supposed
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: to join them and cable back to London to advise,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: like should we finance these fighters to help with the resistance,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: right to train them and give them arms like f
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: and D Day comes, But as it turned out, there
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: had been an ambush, so their contact couldn't show up
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: because he'd been arrested, and the wireless operator had landed
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: on the other side of that and so he couldn't
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: get there and he may or may not have been captured.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: And so they're like, right, okay, we're gonna have to
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: like meet with Gaspar ourself because that's the person they're
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: supposed to be doing season charge, right, and so after
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: a couple of days they meet him and he's a
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: bit of a dick and also a blackout right. He's
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: he's kissed the blarney stone and he's talking as ours right,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: a wee bit, and so she basically sizes him up,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: and his very astutele says that he doesn't really have
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the skills to command his army, and he doesn't like her.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: He's also not very quiet, so she overhears him like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: chatting about how they don't want to actually help, how
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: they just need the money and the guns, and they
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: have this whole plan to get one of the guys
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: to seduce Nancy, well, Madame andre and to take her
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: her money, her franks. They know that she's got because
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: they think they're gonna get in there. They're gonna seduce her,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: they're gonna steal the money, and they're gonna kill her.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Like that's their plan. I mean, she already you of it.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: So one night Gaspar sends one of the guys in
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and effectively she shuts him down and he doesn't do anything,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: which is great. I don't know how she did it,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: but I like to think that it's very much like
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Evy and the mummy. She's just like m no, thanks, buddy.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: So her and her link like cooperative dude, Hubert. She's like, listen,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: I think we need to let low for a bit
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: until like a wireless operator happens. And so they go
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: and they stay in a hotel for a couple of
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: days just to kind of not be near the weird,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: you know, stealing dudes. And so she goes off to
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: this other group and it's commanded by this other fella,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and she's like, hey, what's happened over here? And so
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: she's like, these will do because she just could not
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: stay in the hotel twidling her thumbs anymore. And so
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: she's just like chilling out in a cemetery right sitting
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: on a wall, waiting for her wireless operator. And she
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: hears a voice behind her go, what are you doing there,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: ducky picking yourself a grave. It's Dennis Rack from the Madhouse.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: He's going to be her wireless operator, right all right, ducky.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I made him. I love he
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: was Welsh. Oh can you be Welsh? It's making Welsh?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, he's her wireless operator. So now they
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: have a contact to London and so they are now
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: a source of pillar to the makis, right. And so
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: if they want money, if they want their guns, you know,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: they need Nancy because she is the only one with
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the codes to speak to London. So this is how
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: it works. So Nancy sends a coded message to London
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: telling them what they need, and they would send supplies
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: to a parachute. So in the message, she'd give her
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: code name Ellen, so they knew who it was, and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: she'd give them the name of like a fruit. Because
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: what she done is she had surveyed all the fields
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: in the area for like parachute drops, and like she
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: gave them all like the name for fruit, and so
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the name of that fruit would be like which field
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: it was to be dropped in. And then she would
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: include a phrase that was to be the signal for
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: when the air drop was ready. So the whole message
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: would be like Ellen to London, want boots and money
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: for two hundred men at the peach right, and it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: would be followed by a phrase like along came a
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: spider that sat down beside her, you know, something like that.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: So it would be so this gives you know, London
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: all the information they need, and it was all done
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: in Morse code, so when the parachute drop was supposed
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: to happen, the BBC would say the phrase along came
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: a spider that sat down beside her, and they would
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: say it after new sessions on the radio, So she
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: would have to listen to the radio like all day,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: and there were five new sessions per day, and the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: parachute drop would only happen if the code phrase was
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: said after all five sessions, so if one was missing,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: then it means there was drop, wasn't a drop happening,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: And so her and Rake would spend a lot of
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: time just like swapping radios and listening for messages and
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: code phrases. And this Makie's group, the Nancy's got right,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: it's getting bigger, and it gets a lot bigger because Gispa,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: his grip, had come under fire from the Gestapo, and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: she was right. He was a shit leader. He had
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: all his fellows into in like one place and three
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: thousand fellas, and he hadn't planned in a escape route.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Who doesn't plan an escape route anyway? So if they
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: survived the ambush, they didn't know where to go, and
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: so they fought the Germans as much as they could,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: and they lose about one hundred and fifty men and
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Gispar finally gives the order for them to scatter, to disperse,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: and so the smart ones they head over to Nancy's group.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: And so she discovers at this point that she is
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: in charge of seven thousand resistance vitals. And so this
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: person they're like, hey, it's just a little lady with
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: her money bag, and she's now the most powerful person
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: out of all of them. And it's funny because like
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: they would try and you know, fuck with her because
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: they try and like they tried to out drink her,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: but she drinks like an Irish rugby player, right, I mean,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: so she could drink them all under the table. Like
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: they were trying to get like the money over her.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: They were trying to beat her it stuff, and they
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: just couldn't write because the woman can hold her liquor,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: are you? And so she's getting dealing with these parachute
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: drops like night after night, and they'd be like fifteen
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: containers and drop like sometimes fifteen planes a visit, and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: there's all these trucks and different parts of the country,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: like all this stuff. To organize, like they need to
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: work out logistics. And so she's organizing this and she'd
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: receive money when it came from London and she would
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: distribute you know, the Franks out to like everybody in it.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: She would distribute the supplies, so on and so forth.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: And so she made these rules for the Makis and
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: she was like, listen, listen, we want to keep everybody
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: on our side. You want the farmers on our side,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: We want you know, retailers on her side. You offer
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: them a good price for stuff, for food, for clothes, whatever,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a fair price. If they do not accept the fair price,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: then you can steal the shit, right. She also said
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: that you could nick show off of people who were
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: openly collaborating. So yeah, so she had everybody organized, she
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: was working logistics, and she also had escape plans for
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: each of the groups in the area. So they shit
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: had the fan. They knew what they were doing. And
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: so they're in control of all these rural areas and
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: basically they have to keep out of like the towns
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: and cities and the main roads. And this means they
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: can travel around by car. So they're going around the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: country roads, like not the main roads, but the country roads.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: And the Germans they didn't go around the country roads
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: because they didn't know them. And every now and again
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: she would bump into like Gemmins and they would be
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: a shoot out and she would have to escape. So
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: further of June nineteen forty four, she gets told like
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: a weapons instructor is being dropped codename an some and
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: so she goes you know by bike by car, and
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: she's trying to avoid these Geman patrols. And when she
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: meets the weapons instructor, it is Renee du Sac, an
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: ex Hollywood stuntman that she had trained with in the Madhouse. Right,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: he was a weapons expert and became known as Bersuoka.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So Bizuoka and her right by the time they get back,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: D Day is happening. The Allies have landed at Normandy
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: and they've been given their instructions for D Day from London,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: and so they had like all of these like sabotaging
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: gigs to do. They had to destroy demolition factories, telephone cables,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: railway junctions and the steel works and everything else. Like
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: they weren't to like attack the petrol plants because they
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: need the petrol, you know, the gas for the cars,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: petrol gas, you know, like all that kind of stuff, right,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: and so they're just fucking up. And while they're doing that,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: they're out delivering weapons and Bizuka spends the next ten
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: days teaching everyone how to use them. And so the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Germans were like being sent out the Nazis. They're all
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: being sent out to these areas that have been attacked
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: by the Maggis. And so yeah, it gets to this
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: point where Nazis like, I need to have a n app, right,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: because every at this point, because she's doing like the
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: nighttime drops and she's teaching people during the day and
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: everything else, right, listening to the radio all that stuff,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: that we're now at a point where she's running on
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: two to three hours sleep at night, and she's like,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a n app and she sleeps and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: he handmade French nightgown of what she had to because
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: remember she had like all French gear made for her
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: and I when she did land in the country in
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: silk stockings anyway, So she's there sleeping in her French nighty,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: which she did all the time, like she always slept
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: in a French nighty, like this handmade neglige. And it's
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: interesting because like the fact that nobody got her during
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: that time, is I mean, she's scary, so I'm glad,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: but like no. So anyway, she has her little she
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: has her away sleep and she gets picked up, puts
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: on her very expensive Elizabeth Alden facecream. Listen, listen, listen.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: I'll fight Nazis, but don't fuck on my face cream
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: and midnightie. Right, So London sends an order from the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: free French leader that you know gets Barkop has to evacuate,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: and so she drives down on her own, like because
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: there's loads of Germans in the area, so it's really
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: fucking dangerous and she has to go and give them
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: the message to like get the heck at a dotch
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: And as she's driving right, machine gun fire hits the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: roof of the car like it's coming from above, and like,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: so's she's driving the car, there's a machine gun fire
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: and she's like fuck off. She pulls off and goes
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: into this ditch ditch right, and she's there with the
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: maquis and then she's like shit, shit because she realizes
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: she's got a red satin cushion tea, a saucepan, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: a jar of her face cream in the car. And
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: so under machine gun fire. Right, she lets it back
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: to the car, grabs her shit, and then runs back
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: to the trench like she's rolling down the hill, right
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: chased by the Luftwaffe. Right for a saucepan tea, a
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: red cushion and her fucking face cream. Right, just right,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: she's she's a lady, Okay, she needs certain things in
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: her life, and so like the at one point she's
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: ambushed and everyone's like Madam Awet is in trouble, and
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: everybody all the makie stop and they're like we have
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: to go help her, like it's so weird. And then
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and the Spanish makies end up being like her bodyguards,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: like for the parachute drops and stuff, like she's in charge.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: But they're like, she is a woman. Actually, I do
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: have a favorite story. Actually, so like when young recruits
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: would join, at one point, they thought like she was
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: just some women and they're like, get us buckets of water,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and she's like what because they thought that like carrying
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: the buckets of water was like beneath them. So she's
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: like fine, she drives to the lake, fills up like
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: seven buckets or something, drives back and then dumps the
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: water over each one of these boys heads, and then
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: she cans a bucket and goes get your own fucking
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: water and tells them to walk, and they do and
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: so and another funny thing I love this so much
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: is like they're doing the parachute drops, right, and once
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: a month, like once a month, amongst all of the
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: like the artillery and money and like other supplies, medicine
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: and whatnot, they're dropping right amongst all that, they're dropping
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: like lipstick and little sweet treats for her and like
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: would sit now and like rood notes, like dirty limericks
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: and stuff. And she fucking loves it, like it's like
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: a wee thing. It's like ha ha, there once was
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: a man from nun Tucket, right, And so they.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Do all that, and uh yeah. At one point, at
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: one point, like there's this horse, right.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: One of the American fellows has a horse, and she
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: feels sorry for it. And she's living in this bus
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: with like a bathroom built on the back of it, right,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: And so one night, after having many many drinks, she's like,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: I want to bring the horse inside. It's stormy, and
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: so she brings the horse in and the horse starts
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: freaking the fuck out because it's a storm and it's
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: a horse, and so the horse is like there, and
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: there's a little door on the back of the bus,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: and so she opens up the door so the horse
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: can have its head in. Anyway, storm happens, horse goes
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: absolutely bonkers, destroys, destroys the whole like bathroom attachment. And
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: so this horse is not having a good time, and
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: so it ends up going boncos kicking down the bathroom
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: and then legging it off into the forest. And she's
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: so upset that the very next day that she organizes
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: a search party, but they never find the horse again, right,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: And so she's left the next day with the radio
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: operayer who's like, what's the phrase, and she's like, Andre
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: has a horse in the bathroom. So yeah. Then it
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: ends up getting to the point where fifteenth of August
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four and the Allies have landed in the
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: south of France, and so she's able to like display
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: her rank. She's got her pips on and she's got
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: the rank of captain and she's allowed to be Nancy
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: Wake again, right, and so everybody's treating her with like, yep,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: now Nancy not a big fan of killing. Now she
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: did it pinch, so like there was a report of
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: like they had like Nazi women and the Maggies, they
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: didn't they couldn't bring themselves to like kill this Nazi
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: women and Nancy had to do it because they weren't
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: up to the task. And there was another time where
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: she was in an attack on a machine parts factory
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: and she was in the first wave and there's these
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: eight century guards and like her gig is to knock
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: one of them out right, so she's supposed to get
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: the one in the end, but as she's coming up
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: to him, he sees her because like the whole point
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: she's waxed him from behind, but he sees her, and
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: it's like shit, this is the situation, and so it's
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: very much her or him, and she has to use
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: a move that she's learning me basic maneuverse. She does
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: one of those like karate chops to the throat like
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: a foo right, does that and then kills him with
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: her bare hands like she'd shot people before. Like she
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: didn't like to do this, she thought it was dirty
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: and violent, and she did it because she had to.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: And so the war it is going on Paris is
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: liberated by the twenty fifth of August, and five days
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: later it's her birthday in the Marquis. They organized this
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: like huge party. The Swiss ambassador invites her to like
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: a cocktail party the next day, and she is celebrated right,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: and she's having a good time until she's informed at
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: the Swiss ambassador's party and her husband, Henri, was dead
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: and he'd actually died in nineteen forty three. See what
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: happened is Roger, you know, Gestapo agent forty seven, the
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: one who had been like, you know, causing all the
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: the shit on the pat O Leary line thanks to him.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: Henri gets picked up right because he's betrayed by Roger,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and so he's imprisoned. And after a few months in
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: the Gustavo eight Q, like they try and like they
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: torture him, and eventually they think, oh, you know, you
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: catch more flies, will honey them a vinegar, And so
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: they sent his own father into him to like to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: be like, tell us where Nancy is. We have to
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: find Nancy. And they go to Henri and Henri says, Papa,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: leave me in peace. And so this keeps going on
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: and on and on and in the end Henray tells
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: his dad to just leave and to look after Nancy,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: and Henre was executed on the sixteenth of October nineteen
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: forty three, and Nancy was still being trained in England
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: at that point and she never found out until after
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: the end. So Nancy had asked to go to Marseilles.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: I must say sorry, and she bribed a ferryman when
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: she saw the bridges were down, and she had a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: dog that she loved so much, and she discovered that
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: the dog was now living with her old friends, so
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: her dog was alive, and she goes to her like
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: old security boxes that are and Henri had, and they
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: have all been wiped out, completely cleared, and so she
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: returns to their chateau, the original chateau, and by mid
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: September the war was over for the Makis and Nancy.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: She's back to Paris for the victory Night and she
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: spends it in the British Officers Club. So she gets
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: rewarded for her war work, like she's a celebrated war hero.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: She gets the US Medal of Freedom and she gets
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: three Claudegour medals, so she gets like resistance medals. She
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: gets like so many and the French ones are the
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: ones that really meant the most of her, because as
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: far as they're concerned, she's a very subject. She's from
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: New Zealand, you know, and so a foreign person like
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: Josephine Baker, like getting those medals is a huge fucking deal, right.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: So after the war, she ends up doing like a
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: a wee stint in the passport office in Paris, and
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: then she goes to Prague and then she decides she
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: wants to go home, so she manages to black her
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: way onto a Norwegian ship that's heading for Sydney by
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: telling them she's a nurse, and she arrives back in
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: Sydney in January nineteen forty nine. It's after this that
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: she ends up going into politics, but I mean, she's
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: done everything else, she may as well, and so she
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: ends up representing the Commonwealth Liberal Party in Australia, standing
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: up against labor. After that, in nineteen fifty one, she
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: returns to London working as an intelligence officer in the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: Air Ministry and she ends up marrying an iraf Man
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and they head back to Australia in the sixties. So
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: the key's like a veteran too, because you know, they've
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: got something in common at least, and so of the goal.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: So they get married. They have no kids, but they
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: get married and they're together for forty years before he
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: passes away. And after this, she's like, you know what,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: I want to go back to London. So she sells
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: all of her medals. Now there's there's questions about this
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: whether she did it because she really needed to sell
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: all of them, or whether she sold them just because
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: she had the memories and didn't need the trinkets anymore.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: So she sells her medals and she does this to
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: fund her return to London in two thousand and one,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: where she ends up becoming a resident at the Stafford
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Hotel in Saint James's Palace, which is like near Piccadilly.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: And she would like hang about the hotel bar, like
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: sipping gin and tonic and telling war stories. And the
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: thing is when she stayed there, like the hotel owners
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: just covered the cost of her staying at like they
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: absorbed it, right, because they're like, you know, we're not
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: kicking it out, you know. Now. Two years later, she
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: ends up moving into the Royal Star and Gada Home
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: for disabled ex service men and women, like and that's
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: over En Richmond. And she's there for the following like
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: seven years, and at the age of ninety eight, Nancy
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Wake passes away of natural causes. And just something to
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: remember about Nancy, to show you just how special she was. Right,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: she was an s A Wee agent, right. There was
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: what five hundred and sixty of them. They were sent
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: to Europe. One hundred and thirty three of them did
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: not return. There was what fifty women sent and thirty
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: nine of them were part of the Fanny group, the
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: first aid nursing yeoman Ray and one of them died
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: in the field, and another twelve were just murdered by Nazis.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: And she said, this is our quote. I'm glad I
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: was there. I'm glad I did what I did. I
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: hate wars and violence, but if they come, then I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: don't see why women should just wave men a proud
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: goodbye and then knit them balaclavas. And so ends the
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: story of Nancy Awake, the white Mouse with the five
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: million franc bounty on her head. I never stopped fighting
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: when she could have easily walked away so many times.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: And I hope you like my retelling of this story.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: I hope so I hope he did Nancy justice. And
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: also my might cut it a few times. I hope
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: it's still worked. And yeah, thank you for listening. And
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's time for recommendations. So for listening. For listening, Oh,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: you know what I've been listening to actually a lot
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: this week is Sabrina Carpenter. Now, clearly, the more I
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: watch Subriena Carpenter, the more I am interested in Sabrina Carpenter, right,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: because at first I was like, oh, she's just like
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: an ex Disney, But I love her level of comedy,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: like she's so funny and she's very smutty, and you
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: know me, I love a smart So yeah, listen to
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: the Sabrina Carpenter fuck it, why not cause a emotion?
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: And for watching towards Zeros Out. Towards Zeros Out, I
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: can't watch it till I've finished writing my drafts from
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: a book, because I've decided I'm not allowed to treat myself.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: And for reading, oh, for reading, I'm going to recommend
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: The Old Rogue of Limehouse by Anne Granger. Yes, yes, okay,
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: if you liked this rating review of five stars, you
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: may as well treat yourself. And I hope you're gonna
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: like the International Women's Day episode. Oh wait, till, wait,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: till it's coming. It's it's a deep dive, and I
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: shall bid you goodnight. Adios au revoir of Where Is There?
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: My Friends, Bye Bye,