French Resistance fighter Solange Alexandre dies aged 104

Solange Alexandre, a French Resistance fighter who helped lead an armed unit during the Second World War, has died aged 104. Her death was announced at a nursing home in Le Mans, prompting tributes including one from President Emmanuel Macron.

Alexandre began working as a Resistance courier in 1941, carrying messages and gathering information by bicycle under the codename Corlay. In 1944, she and her future husband, Guy Déliot, formed the Pas-de-Boeuf network near Ruillé-sur-Loir. She commanded around 30 men, organised sabotage, sheltered Allied airmen and fought German forces after the D-Day landings.

Born Solange Dubuisson in 1922 in the western French department of Sarthe, she later recalled that General Charles de Gaulle’s 1940 appeal to continue the fight against Germany convinced her to join the Resistance. She took part in the liberation of Tours in September 1944 and ended the war as a sub-lieutenant in the French Interior Forces.

After the war, Alexandre worked as a teacher and accompanied Déliot on postings as a gendarmerie officer. He was killed in Martinique in 1960. She remarried in 1981.

Alexandre twice declined France’s Légion d’honneur, saying she had only done her duty and that others were more deserving. She accepted the award in 2024, saying she was proud to receive it.