The official historian of the SOE, M. Foot, said that "her irrepressible, infectious, high spirits were a joy to everyone who worked with her". Many stories about her World War II activities come from her autobiography, The White Mouse , and are not verifiable from other sources.
By the s, Wake was living in Marseille with her French industrialist husband, Henri Fiocca, when the war broke out. As a member of the escape network, she helped Allied airmen evade capture by the Germans and escape to neutral Spain. In , when the Germans became aware of her, she escaped to Spain and continued on to the United Kingdom.
Her husband was captured and executed. She participated in a battle between the Maquis and a large German force in June In the aftermath of the battle, a defeat for the Maquis, she claimed to have bicycled kilometers to send a situation report to SOE in London. In , her family moved to Australia and settled at North Sydney. At the age of 16, she ran away from home and worked as a nurse. In the s, she worked in Paris and later for Hearst newspapers as a European correspondent.
She witnessed the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement and "saw roving Nazi gangs randomly beating Jewish men and women in the streets" of Vienna. She was living in Marseille, France when Germany invaded. During the war in France, Wake served as an ambulance driver. In reference to Wake's ability to elude capture, the Gestapo called her the "White Mouse". The Resistance exercised caution with her missions; her life was in constant danger, with the Gestapo tapping her telephone and intercepting her mail.
This gave the Germans and the Gestapo unrestricted access to all parts of Vichy France and made life more dangerous for Wake. When the network was betrayed that same year she decided to flee France.
