Nancy Wake

Judith Collins has been running a campaign for many months for the NZ Government to give an honour to Nancy Wake for her work in WWII.

This has upset Jordan who labels Wake merely a “British women who served in the UK during WWII” who just happens to have been born in NZ.

Jordan obviously has no idea who Nancy Wake is. She did not serve in the UK during WWII. She spent most of WWII in France as a key part of the French resistance. She is also he Allies’ most decorated servicewoman of World War II. She gave up a life of luxury to fight the Nazis.

She left France in 1943 (at this stage she was the most wanted person in Europe on the Gestapo’s list with a five million franc reward for her capture) but parachuted back in a few weeks before D-Day. leading resistance attacks. Her husband was tortured to death by the Gestapo. She led an army of 9,000 resistance who fought 22,000 SS and killed 1,400 of them, losing only 100 in exchange.

She has been decorated not just by the UK, but also Australia (declined), France and the US. The NZ RSA have also honoured her.

Yes her link to NZ may just be that she was born here. But hell we claim Russell Crowe as a NZer on the same basis, and frankly we should be proud to associate ourselves with this woman, who incidentally is of Maori ancestry which is unique to NZ.

Especially when you consider that Australia initially refused to give her an honour, because she was born in NZ (she lived in Aussie from 2 to 16). Wake then decided that she would never accept a medal from them. In 1994 she refused to donate her medals to the Museum of Australia and proclaimed that she was still a New Zealander and reminded the press that she had kept her New Zealand passport, despite her 80 year absence from the country.

And personally I think something Kiwi remained in her. When she parachuted back into France she got stuck in a tree. Her agent said he hoped all trees could bear such beautiful fruit. Nancy told him not to give her ‘that French shit’. Classic 🙂

Jordan displays all that is wrong with third term Governments – they get stuck into petty rules and miss asking “Is this a good thing to do”. Who cares she only lived here for two years. The woman is a living legend, born in NZ, who calls herself a NZer who fought an evil regime on behalf of all allied countries, and as a member of the Allies there is a very good case for NZ honouring her. She has done more to fight evil in this world than 99.99% of us.