On
this day in 1944 the above picture was taken by Robert Capa. It has since become a symbol of women’s
involvement in the French Resistance. Here we can see a man with
makeshift army fatigues to the left and a young man on the right, but
the person who grabbed everyone's attention is the girl in shorts in the
centre.
Her name was Simone Segouin, an 18
year-old girl also known as her nom de guerre, Nicole Minet.Simone Segouin was born to a farming family in the village of Thivars, near Chartres, on Oct. 3, 1925. Her father had fought in the French army against the Germans during World War I. After World War II commenced in September 1939, her father sided with the anti-Nazi resistance, and partisans used his farm as a hideout.
In 1944, at the height of the Nazi occupation of
France, she joined the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (Free-shooters and
Partisans, or FTP) – a combat alliance made up of militant communists
and French nationalists, to help liberate the capital.The group named
themselves after the French irregular light infantry and saboteurs who
fought the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War.
Simone fell in love with Roland Boursier, who was the local commander of the community Thivars, northern France. When the war broke out, Boursier asked her to be only a runner for him and take messages to the resistance group, but later asked her to join the partisans, with which she complied. Her first mission was stetealing a bicycle from a German military
administrator was the first mission she was assigned. After the
successful outcome of her first mission, the bike was painted so it
could become Simone’s ‘reconnaissance vehicle’, allowing her to deliver
messages and stake out targets. Shortly, after
displaying her skills in secret weapons training, she was allowed to
take part in dangerous combat missions. In
1944, at the height of the Nazi occupation of France, Simone Segouin
was involved in armed actions against enemy convoys and trains, attacks
against enemy detachments and acts of sabotages. She also assisted in
capturing 25 German POWs during the fall of Chartres. The French
newspaper Independent Eure-et-Loir on its August 26, 1944 issue
described her as “one of the purest fighters of heroic French Resistance
who prepared the way for the Liberation”. .
Simone became known to the world after
American reporter Jack Belden interviewed her for a Life magazine
feature headlined ‘The Girl Partisan of Chartres’ Her bravery would make her s symbol of female resistance across the world.
After the war Simone was promoted to lieutenant and
awarded the prestigious Croix de Guerre, along with other fighters who
had by then been organised into a formal military organisation called
the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).Simone
went on to become a paediatric nurse in Chartres, where her wartime
daring acts made her hugely popular . A street in Courville-sur-Eure was named for her. This legendary anti fascist heroine is still alive, and is happily surrounded by her grandchildren. Simone experienced the heaviness of the war years.People have asked Simone if she has killed anyone before. "On July 14,
1944, I took part in an ambush with two comrades. Two German soldiers
went by on a bike, and the three of us fired at the same time, so I
don’t know who exactly killed them. You shouldn’t have to kill someone
like that. It’s true, the Germans were our enemies, it was the war, but I
don’t draw any pride from it."Segouin later worked as a paediatric nurse. in Chartres, an area where her wartime exploits made her hugely popular. A street in Courville-sur-Eure was named after her.. She and other women in the French resistance played a vital role in the fight for liberation from the Nazis, showing exemplary courage under atrocious circumstances.The price of participation was enormous. Resisters
suffered arrest, imprisonment, interrogation and sometimes torture, and
deportation to concentration camps as political prisoners. La Roquette
women's prison in Paris figured on many a woman's itinerary; another
larger women's facility in Rennes grouped women resisters from the
entire northern zone. From prisons in France, many were shipped to camps
farther east, where they perished from disease, starvation, exhaustion,
beatings, or more systematic forms of extermination.
Many Frenchwomen
were sent to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women east of
Berlin. Jewish resisters and those deemed particularly dangerous were
also sent to Auschwitz in eastern Poland; this is the case of the famous
convoy known as the "31,000" (the series tatooed on their arm upon
arrival). Unlike their male counterparts, full recognition of their important central role in the French Resistance has only come several decades after the events, their brave resistance should not be forgotten. The French Partisan Simone Segouin symbol of Female Resistance sadly died earlier this year on Feb. 21 at a nursing home in Courville-sur-Eure.aged 97.
