On June 2, 1944, Nancy Wake parachuted into occupied France with a radio operator — her third mission behind enemy lines — carrying forged documents and enough French to pass as a local.

She was already the Gestapo's most wanted person in France. They called her "The White Mouse" because she kept slipping away. Her reward poster listed five million francs.

Wake had escaped from France in 1940 after helping hundreds of Allied soldiers and Jewish refugees flee through the Pyrenees. She made it to Britain, trained with the Special Operations Executive, and went back voluntarily.

In the weeks after this parachute drop, she would bicycle 500 kilometers over two days to deliver new radio codes when her radio operator was captured — the Germans had seized the codes and she needed replacements before the network went dark. She arrived with saddle sores and no broken links in the chain of resistance.

She led 7,000 Maquis fighters in the Auvergne and personally killed a German sentry with her bare hands when his noise would have compromised a raid.

After the war, she received the George Medal, the Croix de Guerre, and the Medal of Freedom. She never received the French Legion of Honour during her lifetime. Australia gave her its highest civilian honor in 2004. She died in 2011, age 98.