Featured Female French Resistance Fighter WWII

Couldn't help but post this great pic.I wonder whose Great Grand Ma this was (assuming she survived) ?

 

She looks about the same age as my mother was when she was in the Dutch Resistance. My mother wasn't in the armed Resistance though, she was a courier. My father was in the armed Resistance, and the same age.
There are girls the same age fighting in Ukraine and other places now.

 

I would not think those 3 would have wanted their photo taken.....while engaged in conflict....

also....they are not holding their weapons properly....

 

New recruit training?
My father certainly didn't have his photo taken. Nor did my mother, while holding counterfeit IDs or ditto food stamp books.

 

Is she wearing makeup? Wonder if this could actually be a movie still.

 

That's what it looks like.

 

AJ-My Great Uncle Mike was in the Yugoslav Resistance,paid with his life.

 

Unfortunately many did.
My parents and grandparents were all in the Dutch Resistance, they survived the war. But one grandfather died soon after, his death was considered war-related. My other grandfather suffered from ulcers and nervous disorders for the rest of his life, he was brave but he wasn't strong.
Years later my mother would hide whenever the doorbell rang, and she would pull us children with her behind a closet.

 

The endless PTSD of War-the suffering & neurosis passed down from one generation to the next- a Great Depression,a famine or a World War.

 

Exactly. And there are still people who want war.

 

My sweet Pa would get angry when I walked by a penny in the street.The Great Depression & War marked him deeply.

 

I wonder if the Resistance Fighter's a model ?

 

I found our 'Mystery Fighter',the photos by Robert Capa.She seems to have been the 'real deal'-
'
Simone Segouin(French 3 October 1925 – 21 February 2023), also known by her nom de guerreNicole Minet was aFrench Resistance fighter who served in the Francs-tireurs et partisans group during World War II. Among her first acts of resistance was stealing a bicycle from a German patrol, which she then used to help carry messages. She went on to take part in large-scale or otherwise dangerous missions, such as capturing German troops, derailing trains, and acts of sabotage.[1][2]

Early life[edit]
Segouin was born on 3 October 1925 in Thivars, a French village near Chartres.[3]She grew up alongside three brothers. Her father had been a decorated soldier during World War I.[4] She attended school until the age of 14, at which point she began to work on the family farm.[5]

The Resistance[edit]
In an interview with Jack Belden, published in Life Magazinein 1944 under the headline "The Girl Partisan of Chartres", Segouin and "Lieutenant Roland" explained that Segouin's involvement with the Resistance arose after the two met when she was 17. The lieutenant instructed her in the use of a submachine gun and introduced Segouin to other group members.[5]In order to join the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans– communist resistance forces – Segouin obtained false identity papers, which established her as Nicole Minet.[6]These papers identified her as being from the port of Dunkirk, which had been bombed early in the war, making it difficult for Germans to verify their authenticity.[7]

Segouin began by acting as a messenger and carrying out other small jobs, and later became more actively involved after participating in a successful "train-exploding expedition".[5]Lieutenant Roland was Roland Boursier, with whom Segouin went on to have six children.[4]The couple never married, and all of the children bore Segouin's name.[6]

Segouin was present at the liberation of Chartres on 23 August 1944 and the liberation of Paris two days later.[5]Of her role in the Resistance, she said:

I was fighting for the resistance, that's all. If I had to start over, I would, because I have no regrets. The Germans were our enemies, we were French.[4]

Segouin gained international fame when photographs of her by American photographer Robert Capa were published in Lifeweeks after the capture of 25 German soldiers in which she took part.

 

Roughly the same age. My mother was a year older, my father half a year.

 

Today she probably couldn't have pulled herself away from Tik Tok,but perhaps if she lived in Ukraine-maybe not.

 

I know girls that age now who would join a resistance group if their country were invaded.

 

There's a lot of interesting info on female resistance fighters in WWII,and undoubtedly many today.

 

As an aside,it trips me out to think my grandfather,who was born in 1902 ,would be 121 now. My grandma would be 111 ! I tried to explain to my nephew (hes 35) the other day just what all my grandparents had seen and lived thru (My Cuban gran remembers clearly when the St. Louis was docked in Havana ) and it just blew his mind. How sad we are seeing history repeating itself.

 

Collective memory doesn't last very long. And politicians have no memory, or else they would remember all their mistakes.
So history is bound to repeat itself.

 

My wife's great aunt Helen (who was an American), worked as a nurse in Belgian military hospitals during WWI. She married a Belgian she met there and lived in Belgium. She was 54 when Germany invaded. Her husband died soon after, but she chose to stay. She joined a resistance cell in Liège that fed downed allied airmen into the Comet line that smuggled them through Belgium, France and Spain to freedom in Gibralter. Another WWI nurse that was her friend, and was from Canada had also married a Belgian and was similarly in the Belgian resistance. After some time, the cells were broken up by the Germans, and many of the members of her cell were captured and executed. Eventually Helen was arrested, but survived the war, and passed away in Liège in the 1960's.

One of the British airmen they saved mentioned her in his memoir, saying "Mike and I received a visit from a tall, rather aged, gaunt lady who to our surprise spoke French with a strong American accent." She brought them civilian clothes, and a few days later, brought them work permits. He later commented that her French accent was “absolutely appalling”, and he wondered how she got away with living in occupied Belgium without getting picked up.

 

Ms. Segouin is wearing a red sash-Resistance emblem ?