FReeper Canteen ~ Hall of Heroes: Nancy Wake ~ 14 October 2019

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[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

Thank you for your post.

I had the privilege of buying Nancy Wake a couple of gin and tonics. She was brilliant, fascinating, and enchanting. A most charming lady. and a legendary badass. Her reality was far more interesting than any work of fiction, and much more influential.

My personal Hall of Heroes includes Nancy and Johanna Maria Krueger. Both of whom were Servant Leaders of the first magnitude.

Johana joined the Dutch Resistance as a schoolgirl, killed her first Nazi at 14, fed, sheltered, and escorted downed Allied airmen and Jews to safety, was captured by the SS at age 16, and survived 14 months in Ravensbruck.

After the war, Johanna became an RN, married a Naval Aviator, raised a family, served in the Red Cross Disaster Relief Services (usually among first set of boots on the ground), and was an accomplished skier and member of the Ski Patrol.

Two examples as to why Kipling wrote “The Female of the Species.”

[luvie]

I slept in!
Big surprise, huh!
It's one of those cloudy days.
And it's fairly cool, which is nice.
Hope all y'all have a Mahv'lus Monday!
...and a Wonderful Week!
(((hugs)))

[luvie]

She was a tough woman! LOL!

[naturalman1975]

However she was never awarded a medal by the Australian government. When the Australian Returned Services League recommended that Wake be awarded a medal, they were turned down. Angry at the Australian government’s attitude, Wake decided that she would never accept a medal from them: she vowed it would go down in history that the most decorated Australian had never been awarded an Australian medal.

I just want to address this. While this was true at one stage, it was eventually corrected. In 2004, Nancy Wake was awarded Australia's highest civil honour - Companion of the Order of Australia (AC). She did accept it, taking it in part as an apology for the way she had been treated in the past.

I was told a wonderful story about Nancy Wake that I would like to think is true, but have never seen anywhere else. Apparently around 1998 or 1999 police at one of Sydney's major railway stations were trying to arrest a man who managed to break free. He ran down a ramp followed by police who were yelling at him to stop. A very elderly lady was coming up the ramp and as the fugitive passed her, she swung her handbag into his stomach. He went crashing down and she leapt on top of him, pulling him into a headlock and pinning into the ground. Then she looked up at the stunned policemen and said "Well come and get him then. I can't hold him all day."

This was Nancy Wake - at that stage aged about 87 or 88 years old.