36. The Teen Heroine of Chartres
In August of 1944, Life Magazine correspondent Jack Belden entered the French town of Chartres, where he met a most interesting character: a gun-toting teenage girl who stood out from all and sundry around her. She was Simone Segouin, also known by her nome de guerre Nicole Minet, and Belden ended up doing a story on her that made her a temporary celebrity.
Born in 1925 into a poor peasant family near Chartres, about 55 miles from Paris, Simone grew up knowing how to hold her own among men, being the only girl among three brothers. She joined the fight in 1943, when a local French Resistance leader killed a collaborator in the center of Charters, then went on the lam. Moving about the countryside, he came in contact with then-17-year-old Simone, and impressed by her poise, recruited her into the Resistance as a courier.