10 Real-Life Spies More Badass Than James Bond
9. Nancy Wake Lead A Guerilla Army
Sure, old 007 has found himself in some tight spots from time to time, and often his reputation precedes him. But he never managed to p*ss of the Gestapo so much that the Nazis made him public enemy number one and placed a 5 million-franc price on his head, did he?
No, but that was what happened during the life of Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, a British Special Operations Executive agent (the SOE later became MI5) during the Second World War, who was a key member of the French resistance and played a major part in fighting back the Germans. Eventually she wound up leading her own guerilla army of French rebels - numbering around 7000 - against something like 20,000 SS soldiers. The group caused around 1,400 casualties, while suffering only 100 themselves, in the process helping to make Wake one of the Allies most decorated servicewomen of the war.
Before all that, however, she was a journalist who married a wealthy French industrialist. She moved from Britain to Marseille just in time for Germany to invade. Wake quickly became a courier for the French Resistance and joined the escape network of Captain Ian Garrow, with her uncanny ability to evade capture earning her the Nazi nickname of The White Mouse. They tapped her phone lines and watched her at all times. And yet she managed to do so many missions for the French resistance and the SOE that, well, the bounty happened.