![is behind enemy lines a true story is behind enemy lines a true story](https://pic.ebid.net/upload_big/4/8/4/1580004881-6823-19.jpg)
She adopted the moniker as the title of her autobiography four decades later. She was known to the Maquis as “Madame Andrée,” but the Gestapo came to call her “the White Mouse” because she kept eluding their traps. She engineered several diabolically clever and daring escapes from both French and Nazi prisons. Over the months, her stature in the underground network grew, and her role evolved from courier to organizer. Wake’s career as a spy began when she enlisted as a courier for the nascent French Resistance in Marseille in 1940. This female WWII spy led thousands against the Nazis In my long life, it remains one of the most extraordinary things I have seen.”Īlthough Wake married a French millionaire and adroitly played the part of a society lady, she comes across as having been more comfortable shooting Nazis and blowing up trains and bridges than trading bon mots at cocktail parties. An SOE officer she worked with in France told the author, “I had never seen anyone drink like that ever, and I don’t think the Maquis had either.
![is behind enemy lines a true story is behind enemy lines a true story](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FiDZLk15L._AC_UL115_.jpg)
She was also a hard drinker who could (and did) drink the partisans she led under the table. She was tough-she killed one German soldier with a karate chop-prickly, profane, disdainful of fools, and at times very, very funny. A clear picture emerges of a woman who was, to use a phrase in common use today, a piece of work. He’s obviously done his homework as well, drawing on many other sources, as you might expect of one of Australia’s most accomplished journalists.
![is behind enemy lines a true story is behind enemy lines a true story](https://flixable.b-cdn.net/hulu/large/behind-enemy-lines.jpg)
There are frequent quotes from his interviews with her.īut Fitzsimmons clearly didn’t rely only on Nancy Wake’s own war stories. The book appears to be a much updated version of his own biography of Wake that had been published a decade earlier. It’s based in large measure on the author’s interviews with Nancy Wake, and the copyright was registered in both their names. Nancy Wake: The gripping true story of the woman who became the Gestapo’s most wanted spy by Peter FitzSimmons (2011) 329 pages (5 out of 5)įitzSimmons’ book might be characterized as an assisted autobiography. The best of the books, I’ve found, is Peter FitzSimmons‘ Nancy Wake, which appeared in 2011, the year of her death at the age of 98.
Is behind enemy lines a true story tv#
Her exploits in France during the war have been the subject of at least five books as well as a feature film and a TV series. And few women played as prominent a part as a phenomenal Australian woman named Nancy Wake (1912-2011). Despite rampant sexism and misogyny, women did indeed fill vital roles as spies and analysts in intelligence-gathering as well as partisan activities behind enemy lines. Recent years have seen a flood of new books belatedly highlighting the role of women in espionage in World War II.