New Zealand's greatest war heroine is being honoured with a new street near her grandparents' Northland farm.
Kiwi-born Nancy Wake - the sole woman in a band of 7000 fighters in the French Resistance - launched countless raids on Nazi convoys and became one of the most decorated women ofWorld War II. Her death in London at the age of 98 this month made world headlines. Obituaries described her as a fearless fighter whose efforts to rid Europe of the Nazis earned her the French government's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur.
Although she was born in Wellington in 1912 and moved to Australia with her parents Charles and Ella Wake (nee Rosieur) at the age of two, she had close family ties to Doubtless Bay in the Far North. Her grandparents, Margaret and Henry Rosieur, farmed on Paewhenua Island near Mangonui in the 1920s, Ms Wake visiting the island at least once as a child. Biographer Peter FitzSimons, author of Nancy Wake - A Biography of our Greatest War Heroine, said she kept in touch with her grandparents in Northland.
This week the Te Hiku Community Board gave the name Nancy Wake Place to a street in a new subdivision at Coopers Beach. Chairman Dennis Bowman said the board wanted to recognise a woman whose heroic efforts to combat tyranny remained inspirational and extraordinary 70 years later.
After the war Ms Wake was awarded medals by Britain, the United States and France. In 2004 she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia and two years later she received the New Zealand RSA's highest honour, the Badge in Gold. She helped Allied pilots shot down over France escape to England, co-ordinated Resistance groups and organised uprisings ahead of D-Day. Her ability to escape the clutches of the Gestapo led to them calling her the "White Mouse".
Nancy Wake Place is a cul-de-sac off Eagles Way and has expansive views over Doubtless Bay.
Nancy Wake is not the only woman honoured in Doubtless Bay for service in World War II. Mangonui's waterfront boardwalk is named after Neva Clarke McKenna, who reached the rank of sergeant and served in Egypt and Italy. After returning to New Zealand she became Doubtless Bay's leading historian. She now lives in Cambridge.
