Solange Alexandre, French Resistance Fighter in Second World War, Dies at 104
Solange Alexandre, a French Resistance fighter who worked against the German occupation during the Second World War, has died at the age of 104. Her death was announced at a nursing home in Le Mans, the city in western France where much of her wartime work took place, according to the BBC.
Alexandre was born in 1922 in the Sarthe department, an administrative region of western France, under the birth name Solange Dubuisson. From 1941 she served as a courier, carrying messages for the Resistance, the French underground movement that opposed the occupation. Around Le Mans she worked under the code-name Corlay.
In 1943 she met her first husband, Guy Déliot, who had deserted from the French gendarmerie, the national police force, after refusing to arrest Jews.
In 1944 Alexandre founded the Pas-de-Boeuf resistance network near Ruillé-sur-Loir. She commanded some 30 men in the unit. Its activities included sabotage operations, and she sheltered Allied airmen, flyers serving with the forces fighting Germany.
After the Allied landings in Normandy on D-Day that year, Alexandre joined the fight against the occupying German forces. She took part in the liberation of Tours in September 1944. She finished the war as a sub-lieutenant in the French Interior Forces, known by its initials FFI, the armed Resistance groups that fought inside France.
Alexandre turned down the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest decoration, twice before accepting it in 2024.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her after her death.
