23. As if to Celebrate France’s Biggest National Holiday, Simone Segouin Killed Two Nazis on Bastille Day, 1944
On July 14th, 1944, on France national holiday, Bastille Day, Simone Segouin killed her first Nazi. Around five that morning, she lay in ambush in a roadside ditch, and when two Germans pedaled by in bicycles, she fired upon them with her submachine gun, killing both. She then went on the road, searched the bodies, collected their papers and weapons, and made her way alone through the woods, to deliver the haul to her Resistance hideout.
It came as no surprise to Simone’s comrades when she confessed to having enjoyed killing the detested occupiers. She was intensely patriotic, and was inspired by her father, a decorated WWI combat veteran. When first recruited into the Resistance, Simone had been asked if she felt uneasy about killing Germans. Her reply was pretty straightforward: “No. It would please me to kill Boche“. As she put it decades later, it was simple: “The Germans were our enemies – we were French“.