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[dramatic music]

- [Narrator] Caught on the frontline

of a war she didn't need to fight...

[man screaming]

- Bastards!

- I got a lot from Nancy Wake.

She was a, she was the real deal.

- [Narrator] Swapping French luxury for French resistance,

Nancy Wake became the most wanted woman in Europe.

- If you don't do it, I will.

Soldiers. Go, go.

- Yes, there were deaths. Yes, there were tears.

But she was a flower that bloomed in wartime.

- [Narrator] A dangerous time to live,

a dangerous time to fall in love.

[dramatic music]

And now she can never go back home.

[suspenseful music]

- Nancy was a natural leader by her enthusiasm,

her exuberance, and by her example.

[typewriter clacking]

- She showed me this scar,

this bayonet scar from there to there,

where a German soldier slit her wide open.

And realized, gee you know,

she really must've been something in the day.

[crowd screaming] [gunshots popping]

- [Narrator] As the assassination of Yugoslavian

King Alexander threw the world on a fast track to war,

Nancy Wake was already a woman in a hurry.

Already a world away from her New Zealand home.

- Yes, this is Nancy Wake in Marseille.

- [Narrator] She became the Gestapo's most wanted woman,

nicknamed The White Mouse,

with a multimillion figure price on her head.

She finished World War Two as a hard-drinking special agent,

a leader of resistance fighters and a celebrated hero

decorated in England, France, and the United States.

But Nancy began it all as an adventurous reporter.

- So there she is, drop dead gorgeous,

New Zealand/Australian woman, learning French,

working as a journalist.

So she'd strut up and down the boulevards

and go to the restaurants,

and she formed great friendships

with her fellow journalists.

Most of whom were men who looked after her,

and you know, the French have always valued, no joke,

a gorgeous woman of whom she was one.

- So then I ran back to my hotel and typed up the story.

- Right place, right time. You were born lucky, Nancy.

- Born to attract trouble.

- Same thing, isn't it?

- Someone that runs away from home at 16

and makes their life for themselves

and teaches themselves to be a journalist in Europe.

And teaches themselves a foreign language.

I think that's a pretty self-contained kind of person.

- Excuse me, mademoiselle,

I've seen you somewhere before, I think.

In Marseille, the Hotel de Louvre?

- That's where I stay when I'm working.

- Yes. I never forget a beautiful face.

I'm Henri Fiocca.

- Nancy White. - Enchante.

And you are from?

- New Zealand, originally.

- You are a long way from home, Nani.

- It's Nancy, and actually I'm quite at home right here.

- [Henri] My telephone number.

Next time you're in Marseille.

- [Nancy] I'll be there next week.

- So will I. - Convenient.

But I don't ring gentlemen, Monsieur Fiocca.

Gentlemen ring me.

Call it my foreign policy.

- Au revoir, mademoiselle.

[men laughing]

- She described herself as a giddy young thing,

but I don't think she was that giddy.

She always struck me as the kind of woman

who knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it.

- Bonjour mademoiselle, you have a visitor.

- Bonjour, Nancy.

[soft music]

[Henri speaking French]

- How did you know I was here?

- You are staying a week?

- Then I'm off; Vienna, Berlin.

- Why?

- You must've heard what's happening.

I want to get the story firsthand.

Get a look at [speaks German].

- Why you? Others can go, let them.

- And miss the action?

What possible reason would I-

[crowd chanting]

[Hitler speaking German]

- [Nancy] Maybe I should have listened to Henri.

Even as a journalist, it made me feel sick to my stomach.

- It fired her up.

Everything she saw about Nazism just absolutely in her,

it reviled her salt.

She was appalled by everything she saw.

You know, she made the vow,

"If I ever get a chance to do something, I will."

At one point she goes to to Austria

and she sees firsthand the way

the Jews are being mistreated.

And there was at one point,

on the cobbled streets of Vienna,

she saw a Jewish man who his major crime was being Jewish.

And he was being beaten by a storm trooper.

And that just absolutely made Nancy's blood boil.

[man screaming]

- Bastards! Leave him alone.

You can't do that!

[Nancy and storm troopers arguing]

- Get her out of here! Get out.

- You're disgusting.

- You're next!

- It was at that point she realized

just how brutal the Nazis were.

And that she, along with others,

would have to do something about it.

[explosions booming]

[gunshots popping]

- The invasion of France was a huge moment

of incredible trauma for the French,

because they had been led to believe throughout

the period between the Wars

that they would win quite easily.

- Then she immediately wanted to be in the action.

She didn't need to do so.

She was married to a very successful French businessman.

She was quite safe.

She could have seen out the war living quietly with him.

- Nancy adored Henri.

I think marrying him, to an extent,

was a means to an end for her.

'Cause it gave her a degree of social status

and connections within polite Marseille society.

- What can you do?

They won't take you as a nurse, you've tried.

- Yes, but they're desperate

for more ambulances and drivers.

You've got trucks at the factory.

Convert one for me and I'll drive it to the Belgian front.

It won't cost you much.

- Nani, you eat money like no one else I know.

- Give me a truck.

- You don't even know how to drive.

- I can learn.

[suspenseful music]

[gunshots popping]

Okay, come on.

Look, I know this is hard, [mumbles].

But it will only make it worse if you stay here.

Come on, come on.

Ready? [speaking French]

- After Marshal Petain,

who was the hero of the First World War,

had basically sued for peace with Hitler and said, you know,

we've got to throw in our lot, we've got to collaborate.

- There's only one man, General de Gaulle,

who refuses to accept the idea of an armistice

and sets himself up in London

and does this extraordinary speech on the 18th of June,

the day after Petain's,

calling for the flame of resistance not to go out.

[de Gaulle speaking French]

- She became involved, bit by bit,

with a Scott by the name of Ian Garrow

who helped organize the local resistance movement.

- Simple.

- This is ridiculous.

We can support the goal in other ways.

I have money, transport factories.

- Yes, we'll use those too.

But this is my chance to do something.

- You already did. You drove an ambulance.

- Oh yes, for five minutes while you forded

the frontline in two wars.

- [speaks French] It's not a competition.

- Well, no, not anymore.

Sorry, Garrow, carry on. What else?

- Once the radio parts are hidden,

it's really a matter of courage,

passing the German checkpoints.

- All right.

- It's not all right.

You should never have been asked to do this.

- But I was. You can't make me say no.

- I'm asking you to be reasonable.

- And it's unreasonable to want to help liberate France?

- Nani, please.

- I'm doing it, whether you like it or not.

So you might as well shut up about it.

- Listen to yourself.

The resistance is no place for rich,

spoiled, temperamental women.

- No, no place at all, which is exactly why they want me.

- If she goes out there,

if you go out there with that stuff in your coats,

they'll find it.

You'll be dragged away.

I'll never see you again.

Is that what you want?

- That won't happen.

- I think for Nancy the thrill of the chase

was half of the fun.

She certainly wanted to fight the good fight,

but also the idea of doing something under the radar,

outfoxing the Nazis, that would have been part

of the thrill for her.

[people speaking in foreign language]

- German checkpoints that have a barricade across the road,

and there'd be swarthy German men with guns on their guard.

And they're looking for the enemy.

And what is the enemy gonna look like?

Well, it's gonna look a bit like them.

It's gonna be men with guns.

And there's a beautiful, beautiful Fraulein going past.

Where are these men? Where are these men with guns?

And that was, and Nancy always felt that her sexiness,

her attractiveness was perhaps

her greatest weapon that she had.

- So someone like Nancy, who would have helped to mobilize,

would have helped to transport, would have had the networks,

would it be an absolutely crucial.

And also perhaps she was quite a wealthy woman.

These networks had to be financed

and the money was incredibly important,

and something that the resistance was very dependent on.

- She wasn't fearful of being caught, which is remarkable.

So she backed herself against, you know,

the Gestapo or the police or anybody else

that was after her.

She thought she could outwit them.

- [Nancy] Packages and radio parts were all links

in a secret chain that smuggled prisoners and soldiers

down the escape lines and out of France.

We knew that every man we got home

was a thorn in Hitler's side and it felt fantastic.

- The escape lines really began in the north of France

and in Belgium, and to little extent in Holland,

whereby quite a lot of soldiers from the British Army

were left behind and needed to escape.

And then when the bombing of Germany began,

and some of the crews had to bail out

and land in occupied Europe,

then the local population in part,

was at great pains to try and get them to safety.

Nancy joined the escape line,

which was one of the best of all, most effective of all.

It was run by a man who took the name of Pat O'Leary,

who had set up an arrangement to smuggle people out,

either across the Mediterranean to Spain

or over the Pyrenees into Spain.

- Nice to meet you.

Yeah, your clothes, feel free to leave them here.

Here is your passport.

- Now, a lot of things needed to be done.

Someone had to go and collect them from a safe house

and bring them to another safe house,

and then take them from the safe house

to hand them over to someone else

who would hand them over to a guide.

Nancy's role was really as a courier in all this.

And she really was, if you like, the gopher,

a very effective gopher for the Pat Line.

[suspenseful music]

- Something to remember us by.

- Good luck. - Merci.

- Good luck. - Thank you.

- Good luck. - Thank you.

- There were German agents all over the place, of course.

- Good luck, Nancy.

- But she really wanted to be into the action

and into it as fully as possible.

And I have no doubt, having studied her personality

from the beginning, that she was extremely active

and was seeking Pat O'Leary's permission

to do more and more in the Pat Line.

- She was the kind of woman who could read situations

and read people and read people's reactions to her.

She obviously knew how to play certain situations

to her advantage, she had this kind of intuition.

- Garrow, at one point, brought another man to her home.

His name was Paul Cole.

- Hello, Garrow.

- Afternoon, Madam Fiocca.

I hope you don't mind us calling unannounced.

I'd like to introduce Mr.-

- I don't care who that man is.

He's not welcome here.

- [Ian] I beg your pardon?

- You heard me.

Please leave. Now.

- Why? What have I-

- I asked you to leave.

Do I have to throw you out myself?

- Fine, I'm going. Crazy, bitch.

Why'd you even bring me here?

- And don't come back.

- If Nancy didn't like you, you'd certainly know about it.

She had the kind of personality that would

flick on and off like a light switch.

So, I mean, if there was somebody in the house

who she thought was a collaborator or an informer,

she would have sniffed them out pretty quickly.

[people chattering]

- [Nancy] Fought at Dunkirk, my foot.

Cole was a coward, a thief, and a Gestapo spy.

He betrayed Garrow and 50 others,

but he never even mentioned my name.

To him I was just some silly, spoiled, clueless woman.

So he forgot all about me.

- I think the Cole episode was seminal.

And I think that that confirmed in her,

"My instincts are good.

If in doubt, back my own feelings on things."

[suspenseful music] [people chattering]

The Germans had a code name for her.

They were aware that there was this woman

working against them,

a beautiful woman they would hear tell of,

and it seemed that every time they had her cornered,

she would get away, and they called her the White Mouse.

[suspenseful music]

But it was also clear that sooner or later,

they really were going to come for her

because the Germans became more and more aware

of her activities, things became hotter and hotter.

- [Nancy] My instincts began humming.

Then one day, my friend,

a cafe owner on the corner whispered a warning.

"Nancy, this morning you were followed."

- You have to get out.

Use the escape plan. Go to England.

- What about you? If they suspect me-

- I'll be fine.

I'll follow you later. - When?

- When I'm sure the business can survive without me.

I have to think of my father, my workers, their families.

These are bad times.

I have a duty.

You understand?

- Of course I do.

I know the man I married.

I don't want to run away either. I feel like a coward.

- No, this is a tactical retreat.

Any clever White Mouse would do it.

- I still can't believe I have a code name in Berlin.

- A code name, a dossier.

You're on the Nazi's most wanted list.

That's enough, Nani.

Now take this.

Your lucky five pound note, isn't that what you call it?

- It's only lucky if I get to spend it on you.

- As soon as you get to London, send me word.

I'll be there when I can.

- She was always upfront with me that, you know,

"The love of my life was my first husband, Henri Fiocca."

And so to have left him under those circumstances

was a bitter blow because you know, where she wanted to be.

She wanted to be with Henri.

She wanted to be Madame Fiocca.

- She said she was heartbroken.

And she was also worried about what might happen

if she disappeared.

But at the same time,

if both she and Henri left at the same time,

then that would have been instantly suspicious.

- [Henri] Enjoy your shopping.

Bonjour. - Bonjour.

- Buy something I like.

- Don't I always?

Henri, I know you wouldn't be faithful to me

while I'm away and nothing I can say will make you faithful,

but I want you to know I will never ask.

You have to promise me that you want to ask me either.

- Why are you saying this to me now?

Are you trying to make me jealous?

- It's because it's war time.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

I love you. Bye my darling, see you soon.

Bonjour.

- She left Henri under pretty bad circumstances.

He volunteered to stay behind and cover for it.

She knew that she had run out of luck

and had to get the hell out of there.

- The staggering thing is despite having worked

in this network to get all these people through,

across the Pyrenees,

for her, getting to England was just about impossible.

- [Nancy] I caught the train west heading for the Pyrenees.

I'd already cried my way to the station,

always looking over my shoulder.

I wrote to Henri pretending I was leaving him.

I hoped the bloody Gestapo would read that letter, too.

[conductor speaking French]

[soldiers speaking German]

- Her fearlessness is, I think,

divides her from the rest of us.

Thinkers get scared, I think.

People who have got, think too much about consequences.

When the chips were down

I don't think she allowed herself that luxury.

[suspenseful music]

[Nancy groans]

- The interesting thing,

with Nancy at the point that she's in jail,

that would be very close to the low point of her war.

Because there she is.

She's one of the most wanted women in Europe.

She's top of the Gestapo list.

- [Nancy] When they asked why I was on the train

I said I'd had a fight with Henri and walked out.

They called me a liar said my ID was fake.

That I was a prostitute from Lourdes

who had set up a bomb and run away.

They interrogated me for four days,

but never once checked my story.

I told them nothing.

- Mercifully they don't know,

the authorities don't realize

that the woman they've got in cell B is the White Mouse.

And because she's not telling them who she is,

and she's not cooperating at all.

But her fear was they'll work it out.

"Next thing I'll know, it'll be a firing squad

and I'll be gone."

One day she looks up and there is a familiar face.

And it's Patrick O'Leary.

- What the hell are you doing?

- Getting you out of here.

I'm release command, your my mistress, so,

act like it, for God's sake.

- Mon cher, it is you. I'd given up hope.

- I had to be discreet. It took time, but I'm here now.

Your husband is a very important man.

A close friend of Premier Laval who, as you know,

is head of Milice.

Come, madame. The ladies possessions, please.

- And if there was one thing French authorities,

you know, respected,

it was a man coming to get his mistress.

"I understand that, don't let me get in the way of it."

So O'Leary gets her out.

[train whistle blowing] [train chuffing]

- It's all here, O'Leary. ID cards, money, jewelry.

- Head of Premier Laval wants to prove it wasn't.

- It was a bloody stupid risk you took.

- Worthy of the White Mouse.

Henri told me you're famous now. I should be impressed.

- Does he know?

- You were captured? No.

- Soldiers. Go, go.

[train clacking] [suspenseful music]

[Nancy grunting]

[train brakes squealing]

[soldiers shouting]

[bullets whizzing]

[gunshots popping]

I dropped my bag.

I've lost everything. ID cards, money.

Fuck. Henri's jewelry. [sighs]

- It's bad luck, no?

- It's not luck.

Every time one of us gets on a train

the Gestapo knows about it.

Don't tell me it's a bloody coincidence.

- It has to be. - It's not.

You have a spy, someone close.

I can feel it, O'Leary, like shit on the liver.

[soldiers chattering in German]

I was right. There was another spy.

A Gestapo agent called Le Neveu.

The bastard had betrayed us every which way.

O'Leary was arrested, and there was no telling

how many other names had been dished up.

- And at one point in her travels,

she found herself within 100 yards

of her house back in Marseille.

And what she desperately wanted to do

was to go and see her husband and say,

"I'm still alive, I'm still going strong."

She felt that it was too dangerous,

both for her and for him, so she didn't.

And so there was no contact passed

between her and Henri after she left.

[suspenseful music]

- [Nancy] The Pat Line helped hundreds of people

make the crossing to Spain,

but it needed good weather and good luck.

Three months I'd waited for my chance.

Three long months from leaving Henri to leaving France.

And this old boy wasn't gonna stop me now.

I told him sweetly that I'd drag him by his [speaks French]

if he didn't keep walking.

- By this point in those early 1940s,

from the point of view of London,

what you looked across the Channel and saw

was you saw Europe occupied by the Germans

just about everywhere.

But you also saw these pinpricks of light,

these little resistance movements

that have been prickling up.

And they knew a little bit about them,

but they didn't know a lot of them.

But Churchill's idea was to set up an organizing body,

which subsequently became known

as the Special Operations Executive.

- He wanted these people to go and set Europe ablaze,

and he really meant it in terms of sabotage,

the wrecking of railways, the wrecking of factories

that were working for the German war effort,

and make life completely intolerable

for the Germans occupying France.

[suspenseful music] [car engine rumbling]

[ship's horn blaring]

[pensive music]

[soldier shouting orders in foreign language]

[gunshots cracking]

[clock chiming]

[Nancy sighs]

- She gets back to London.

She hears about the Special Operations Executive.

And you know, she goes to knock on their door.

Knock, knock, knock. Who's there?

Nancy Wake. Come on in.

And they train her up over many, many months.

And it's almost a forerunner of MI6.

It's almost a forerunner of James Bond.

- [Nancy] The trainers delighted in making us

climb up things and clamber down again.

There were a few other women, some of them French.

There were day maneuvers and night maneuvers.

And we were often muddy, dirty, and tired.

And that was just for fitness.

- Some of them cracked up very quickly because either,

in terms of physical terms

or in terms of strength of character,

they just didn't have it.

Then the next stage of training

was rather ominously called silent killing.

And they were trained how to kill people

by slitting their throats or stabbing them

in certain parts of the back

so that the person died instantly.

[suspenseful music]

- Somehow or other, when she found herself

an agent among many other agents,

she was, if not the best in the business at it,

she was very, very good at it.

And she was, you know, she had journalistic skills.

She'd worked as a journalist,

so she'd always been good at skullduggery basically.

And now she was being a professional skullduggerer

or skullduggeress.

- Let me just read to you something from her report.

"Attracted by adventure and excitement.

And at times appears to lack a proper sense

of seriousness and responsibility.

She is however, essentially loyal and reliable,

and it has a marked sense of humor,

persistent and determined.

She has abundant energy."

- She knew that the reports were being written

on all of them, and she worked out

with one of her companions,

how to break into the commander's office and get her report.

Report was very, very good.

And she said, you know, to the commander,

"My report was very good, wasn't it?"

He said, "How do you know?"

She said, "Well, I broke in and I've had a look at it."

You know, so they're impressed.

- [Nancy] Then we joined the parachute school.

With electric torches we'd guide planes

to the drop zone in a field.

- So they train her up,

but she realizes there's a problem up ahead.

She's gonna have to jump from a plane,

parachute down into Occupied France.

What's the way around it?

So as she gets in the plane, and she's had a coffee

and she's had a sandwich and cheese, you know,

taking off and she says to the American guy behind her,

"All right, come the time, I'm not gonna be able to do this.

You're gonna have to give me a shove."

And so there she is, and it was actually

a hole in the floor, and she's looking at it.

She's looking, thinking, "I don't know if I can do this.

I wonder if he's gonna push me."

And she's, you know, and she's falling down.

[plane engine rumbling]

[suspenseful music]

- [Nancy] Shit. [grunting]

Shit. [grunting]

Shit.

- That England should send us such a beautiful flower.

- Cut out the French bullshit and get me out of this.

[Nancy thuds]

- Madame Andree?

- Yes. Who are you?

- Henri Tardivat, at your service.

- Well, you can start by taking your bloody hands off me.

Is the radio operator here yet? Denis Rake?

They call them Dindin.

- No, we have not seen him.

- Damn. All right.

Take me to Gaspard. He's the way to the Maquis here.

- You don't go to Gaspard.

Gaspard comes to you when he is ready.

It is his way.

- Oh, is it now?

- She was this rumbling volcano of anger,

sometimes erupting into absolute incandescent rage.

But what went with that was this bubbling sexuality

and a certain bawdiness that was always present.

When she had to choose a code line

for her radio communications with the resistance,

she chose a really quite filthy limerick.

And she stood right there in the moonlight fare,

the moonlight through her nightie.

There's something, something, the nipple of her tit,

oh Jesus Christ almighty.

And that was absolutely typical Nancy.

[door thudding]

- Madame? No, this is one of Gaspard's men.

Gaspard is here.

- Why the bloody hell didn't you tell me he was coming?

So I finally get to meet the great man, huh?

Well, if he thinks I'm hurrying, he can think again.

[men chatting in foreign language]

Gaspard.

You know why I'm here?

- To save us from the German invasion.

You, you won't.

- I can get all the munitions you need.

- [Gaspard] How?

- By parachute drop from London.

- With no radio.

- [Nancy] Well, my operator will be here.

- This is Dindin?

- Yes. - Where is he?

- Well, I don't know, but he will be here.

- You are useless. We got this far without you.

We finish it without you.

- It wasn't enough to say, "I'm Nancy Wake Farmer,

I'm from the Special Operations Executive."

She needed a radio and a radio operator.

Because without that, you know,

there's no capacity to call London and get it all to happen.

- I've met some arrogant Frenchmen in my time,

but Gaspard takes the biscuit.

He thinks he's English.

[Gaspard and men speaking in French]

Did you hear that?

The bastards are talking about me.

- She has got a pile of Francs in that handbag of hers.

It's there to be taken.

- [Gaspard] Oh, so you are offering, huh?

- I will do it.

I will seduce her, kill her, and take the money.

- Not before I break his neck.

Ah, Marcel.

- You look upset.

- I am. - Don't worry about Gaspard.

He is not used to talking to a woman.

- Oh, but you are.

- I can see you have a lot to offer and I'm ready to listen,

but perhaps we should go somewhere more private.

- How about my room? - Oui, good.

- And would you like to take me to bed as well?

- I would be honored, of course.

- And then kill me and steal my money. Is that the plan?

- No.

- Do me a favor, mate. Just try it.

- Marcel! Forget her, she has nothing.

- Sorry I'm late, duckie. Anyone need a radio?

[Nancy laughing]

- [Nancy] Missed you.

- Her radio operator, oddly enough,

who was an avowedly gay man in 1940s London,

there wouldn't have been many of them,

his name was Denis Rake.

Dindin she called him.

- But she was so matter of fact and so straight up about it,

she said, "I knew he was a queer,

but he was my friend and I loved him."

Which if you think about it, for the 1940s

was a pretty progressive attitude.

[radio squelching]

- How soon can we arrange a drop?

- [Denis] Is tonight good for you?

- Bloody brilliant.

What are the chances of getting a message

to La Resistance in Marseille?

- It's not in the handbook, lovey.

- No, I know but...

Mon ami, you are about to become the most well-armed

Maquis leader in all of France.

- And Gaspard?

- Who?

[Henri laughing]

- I meant to say, I like the look of this one.

Yours or mine?

- Mind on the job, Dindin.

- Oh believe me sweetie, it always is.

- There were many who would would want

to lead that 7,000 men.

There was only one of them that could get on the blower

and make planes come over and have machine guns come down.

- Nancy was more than happy to get stuck in.

And it was by demonstrating that,

that I think the Maquis sort of thought,

"Hm, got a slightly odd one here."

- At which point she would frequently

bring out a bottle of whiskey.

And she'd start to drink with a local resistance leader

and said, "All right, let's start drinking.

Last man left standing at dawn wins."

[people chattering]

I have seen some big drinkers in my time.

I've been a big drinker in my time.

I've never, ever come across anybody

that could put it away like Nancy

and never turn a staggering.

- She had a good time, I think.

I remember asking her about her time in London

and was the agenda to get back to France as soon as possible

to see what happened to Henri.

And she says, "Well, no. No, that wasn't the motive."

I said, "So what was the motive?"

She said, "To be parachuted in.

One woman with 7,000 Maquis, what would you do, Roger?

What would you think?"

And gave me a bit of a wink.

So I think she had a good time with the Maquis.

- And I go, and I said to her once, I said,

"Look, you know, you really liked Henri Tardivat.

He's a rugby player. He's a Frenchman.

It's a cold, lost, and lonely night.

Did you ever with any of them?"

And what she said, her exact words.

She said, "If I had accommodated one of them,

I would have had to have accommodated all of them."

So she said she had took no lovers in the forest.

[leaves crunching] [suspenseful music]

- [Nancy] Move. Move.

[man grunting]

Le Neveu.

- You know who he is?

- He betrayed O'Leary.

- And half of Marseille.

- Hey, I hate the bastard as much as you do, more.

- Then why did you try to stop me?

Let's give him a taste of his own medicine.

- Turn into Nazis, you mean?

Think like they think, do what they do?

Is that what we're fighting for?

No. It's time to put this prick out of his misery.

[man screaming]

If you don't do it, I will.

[explosions booming]

- [Narrator] After the D-Day landings in France in 1944,

the Allied commander, American General Dwight Eisenhower,

personally thanked the Special Operations Executive.

He said the invasion of Normandy would not have succeeded

without the incredible efforts of the French Resistance.

many of them trained or armed by SOE agents.

- Nancy's coming into her own.

This is now, you know, Thunderbirds are go.

You've got the men, you've got the money.

You've got the guns, you've got the ammunition.

This is what you got to do.

So they've worked out where the divisions were coming from.

The Germans, they'll be coming on, this railway,

they'll be crossing this embankment,

passing through this mountain pass.

Hit, hit, hit.

[explosion booming]

And so she leads these forces

in these attacks on the Germans,

trying to get, to send the landing.

[explosion booming]

- [Nancy] We were flat out,

buggering up everything we could.

We blew up bridges, railway lines, roads.

All day and all night.

What did the Nazis do?

They burned houses, hanged innocent people,

shot them against walls.

When they couldn't get who they really wanted, us.

The Maquis.

- In the part of France that I was living in,

believe La Garde, the nearby town of Toulon,

the resistance had been active and the Germans

came through that town and said, "Okay.

You want to take pot shots at us? Okay, get 100 men."

They got 100 men and they hung them from 100 lampposts.

100 of them.

Say, "Okay, anybody else want to take pot shots at us?"

- [Nancy] Still, we were getting more recruits by the day.

So now Gaspard had 5,000 men camped on a mountain plateau,

obviously a juicy target.

But even with 15,000 German troops headed our way,

he was still too pigheaded to listen to me.

- I've come here to fight the Germans.

- They've got mobile artillery, a thousand armored vehicles,

10 planes, and what have you got?

- Guts! We do not run like you British.

No, we fight them to the death.

- You are outnumbered.

You will never win. Your men will die.

- You go, you leave us.

- These are your escape routes.

When you come to your senses, for God's sake, use them!

[tank engines rumbling]

[suspenseful music]

[plane engine droning]

[explosion booming]

[gunshots popping]

So much for my own escape route.

I knew I wouldn't be able to play the sexy house-wife

or flash a bit of tit to get through.

Not this time, not driving a car away

from a full-on German assault.

[suspenseful music]

- Hello, madame.

- Merci, Gaspard.

And about bloody time, too.

[Gaspard chuckling]

- I'm so sorry, I had to do it. We were utterly surrounded.

I just- - You what?

- It was so desperate that at one point her radio operator

thought, "They're about to take me,

I've got to destroy the radio.

I've got to destroy the code. So I've got to do it."

So he destroys the whole thing.

Just at the last they have managed to get away.

You know, "We're alive.

We're all good. We're alive."

And Dindin says, "Yes, we are alive,

but we haven't got the radio."

And without the radio it's Sampson without his hair.

It's John Wayne without a gun.

There's nothing they can do.

And so Nancy realizes,

"We need a radio and we need a radio fast."

- There's an SOE radio at Chateauroux.

- That is a 400 kilometer round trip.

- Oh, no, no, there are roadblocks everywhere.

We never get through.

- I could. On a bicycle.

- With no backup? No identity papers?

- I can handle the checkpoints, I've done it before.

- Yeah.

- What other choice do we have?

With no radio we have no contact with London,

no intel, no weapons.

We can't even organize the Maquis.

We're just a bunch of French ferals

running around in the forest.

- It is true. [speaks French]

- I'm making that bike ride.

- Oh, Nancy lovey, small problem.

No bicycle.

- Oh, you haven't heard the old French joke.

What's the gypsy recipe for chicken soup?

First, steal a chicken.

- And that's how, in that big bike ride,

she didn't think about how she was gonna get through

those check points.

She would do that when she got there.

She would assess the situation quickly,

charm or lie her way through.

It wasn't some grand plan.

- [Nancy] I'd barely ever ridden a bike before

and by 40k's in I was knackered.

One more turn. One more turn.

[pensive music]

My heart sank at every checkpoint,

but I smiled and flirted with the guards.

When what I longed to do was blow their ugly mugs off.

[pensive music]

[Nancy groaning]

He sent the message to London, all right.

And I hope to hell we'd get our new radio

or we were screwed.

And then it was, "On your bike, Nancy."

That damn bike.

I was past exhausted,

but it was 200 kilometers back to my men.

So off I peddled.

One more turn, one more turn.

- When she'd been on the bike,

it was so exhausting and she didn't dare stop.

She actually wet herself while she was sitting

on the seat of the bike,

'cause she was so desperate to complete the journey.

Nancy said to me that the bike ride

was the proudest thing that she'd ever done,

and that she felt it was the bravest thing

that she'd ever done.

[Nancy groaning]

- Henri.

- Oh God, what have you done to yourself?

[Nancy groaning]

- There is a slight sense of awe being with somebody

who has achieved so much in their lifetime,

but also somebody for whom my generation

owes a debt of gratitude.

- She was an extraordinary woman and she,

she and I had quite a few blues early on

until we both came to the conclusion

that she was 10 times the man that I would ever be.

- Ah, tada!

Air mail from London, cherub, all thanks to you.

Oh, you'll never guess what else?

Tardi's planning a hit and run.

- On what?

- The Gestapo headquarters at Montmartre, all the top brass.

- That little shit. That's my bloody idea.

- Thought you might be interested.

- [Nancy] The raid was arranged for when those thugs

were enjoying their pre-lunch drinks.

Tardivat sent me through the back door.

Did it bother me killing those men in cold blood?

Not for a second.

I remembered the tortured Jews in Vienna,

the pregnant French woman bayoneted

in front of her screaming child,

my friend in the resistance

who'd had his head cut off with an ax.

If you asked me the only good Nazi

[explosion booming] is a dead one.

[gunshots popping]

- She had a wonderful war. She had the time of her life.

And when peace arrived in 1945,

the party was suddenly all over.

I really don't think that life was ever the same

for Nancy after that,

simply because of all the fun was gone.

She enjoyed the daring do. She enjoyed the gun battles.

And then suddenly when there's no war to fight anymore,

then you've kind of got to go back to ordinary life.

[people chattering in French]

- [Nancy] Paris was won, but the south fought on

until the liberation of Vichy.

[people chattering in French]

- Part of the liberating troops

she was in one of the first trucks that got in there.

Chase the Germans out and they haul up the tri-color.

they play in the Marseille,

and they're all in the square.

You know, Vichy is free again, France is free.

And she sees somebody from the old days back in Marseille.

- It's so good to see you.

- And you, you look wonderful.

Are you going back to Marseille?

I'm heading there this afternoon.

- Why?

- To see Henri, of course.

- Oh, no. [pensive music]

I thought you knew.

- She hoped, I think,

that he had got away and was hiding somewhere

or at the very worst was in prison.

[knocking on door]

She thought he was very brave to stay behind.

She thought that was pretty heroic.

- Henri Fiocca?

[footsteps tapping]

- [Henri's Father] They came to see me, Henri, at home.

- Who did?

- The Gestapo.

They told me they know who your wife is,

that she is this White Mouse they are looking for.

They told me I can take you to a hospital.

All you have to do is confirm who Nancy is.

Tell them what she did, where you think she could be.

- Nazis. They can burn in hell.

- She's not worth this.

She's not worth my son's life.

- Never

speak of this

again. [breathing heavily]

- [Nancy] He was so generous. So kind.

He always gave me everything I asked for.

He was a lovely, lovely man.

[soldier shouting orders in foreign language]

[gunshots cracking]

It was dawn on the 16th of October, 1943.

When I woke up, I told myself over and over

it was just a dream.

It was just a dream.

Well, how could I have kept going?

- I don't think she would have forgiven herself

for what happened to him.

I think the sacrifice that she made when she left France

and went to go and fight with the SOE

was potentially too great a sacrifice for her to bear.

- Madame?

- Do you know what happened to him?

[waiter speaks in French] Tell me.

- It started with that traitor you warned us about.

- Le Neveu?

- While O'Leary was rotting in jail he came by information

that he needed to pass on to the Marseille resistance.

A prisoner he trusted was about to be released,

so he gave him a message to pass to Henri

using a code that you would recognize.

The prisoner was a Gestapo agent.

- When I asked Nancy about Henri

and how she coped with his death,

she had a very far away look in her eye

and she said to me, "I loved him.

Henri Fiocca was his name.

And he was a wonderful man."

And interestingly, his photograph

was stuck to the wall next to her bed.

No sign of her second husband, but there's no doubt

that Henri Fiocca was the love of her life.

[tender music]

[Nancy sobbing]

[tender music]

[logo chiming]

[logo chiming]

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