Though not stricltly aviation specific, still very worthy of a mention here for her courage and for the help that she, and others, offered to downed airmen in occupied France during WWII.
Peaceful sleep Ma’am.
By: Newforest - 12th August 2011 at 07:28
Steve will always beat you to the post on obituary notices! 😉
By: BlueNoser352 - 12th August 2011 at 03:56
One brave woman for sure!
Thanks for sharing this….have a documentary on her …its folks like this & many in the SOE & OSS who did much to take the war to the enemy ! Rest In Peace Lady… many owe you their freedom !
BlueNoser352!
By: Bager1968 - 11th August 2011 at 21:36
Interesting bit here:
After her husband died in 1997 she lived there for four further years until, in 2001, she decided to return to England for good.
Initially she became a resident at the Stafford Hotel in St James’s Place, off Piccadilly, which had been a British and American forces club during the war. Nancy Wake had ordered her first “bloody good drink” there in 1946, lured to the bar, like many former secret agents, by the hotel’s then general manager, Louis Burdet, who had himself also worked for the Resistance in and around Marseilles.
In old age Nancy Wake was to be found on a leather stool in the hotel bar most mornings, nursing the first of the day’s five or six gin and tonics.
Though she celebrated her 90th birthday there, and the hotel’s owners welcomed her, they were obliged to absorb most of the costs of her stay, helped occasionally by anonymous donors – thought to include the Prince of Wales.
By: slicer - 11th August 2011 at 13:28
Apparently she responded to that comment in a most unlady like manner!!
One more of the greatest generation, gone.
RIP
By: Mahone - 10th August 2011 at 17:24
What a truly incredible life.
“I hope all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year”
You simply couldn’t make it up, could you?
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August 10, 2011 at 1:33 pm