French wartime resistance heroine Solange Alexandre dies aged 104

Solange Alexandre, one of France's last World War Two resistance veterans, has died at the age of 104, her passing being announced from a nursing home in Le Mans. President Emmanuel Macron was among those who paid tribute, posting a message on social media after the announcement. "She said she only ever did her duty. But her duty was our freedom. France will never forget. Thank you," the president wrote.

Born in 1922 in the Sarthe department of western France as Solange Dubuisson, she grew up in a patriotic household scarred by the First World War. She recalled in her memoirs, "My mother lost her first husband in the war, and my father was wounded in 1917. The words homeland and honour were very important to us. They were in my blood." In June 1940 she heard General Charles de Gaulle’s radio appeal and, as she later wrote, "From that moment I knew I had to join up." She was recruited by Saïd Belhaffaf, a Tunisian‑born French army veteran, and began operating as a courier under the code‑name Corlay, cycling around the Le Mans area to collect and deliver information.

After three years of courier work, Alexandre established the Pas‑de‑Boeuf network near Ruillé‑sur‑Loir, commanding about 30 men who carried out sabotage, sheltered Allied airmen and, following the D‑Day landings in 1944, joined the fight against German occupiers. In 1943 she married Guy Déliot, a former gendarme who had deserted rather than arrest Jews. The couple later retreated to the maquis, living in forested hills and receiving food from local farmers.

Their group included deserters from German forced‑labour programmes, survivors of a destroyed resistance cell and two airmen, one American and one Canadian. She later recalled, "Twice the Gestapo came for me, and twice I slipped through their hands," and took part in the liberation of Tours in September 1944, finishing the war as a sub‑lieutenant in the French Interior Forces (FFI).

After the conflict Alexandre worked as a teacher and accompanied her husband on his postings as a gendarmerie officer in overseas territories until his death in 1960 in Martinique; she remarried in 1981. She twice declined the Légion d’Honneur, saying the award should go to others, but finally accepted it in 2024. Upon receiving the decoration she said, "It is a great pleasure and a great honour. I am very proud – even if it is only a few weeks, or a few months, before I die."