20. The Young Resistance Heroine of Charters
In August, 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 everybody around her. She was Simone Segouin, also known by her nome de guerre, Nicole Minet. 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 able to hold her own among men: she was the only girl in her family, among three brothers.
She joined the antifascist fight in 1943, when a local French Resistance leader ended a collaborator in the center of Charters, then went on the lam. As he moved about the countryside, he came in contact with then-seventeen-year-old Simone. Impressed by her poise, he recruited her into the Resistance as a courier. Simone was taught how to operate a submachine gun – a weapon with which she became highly proficient. She was also gradually brought up to speed on the activities of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, a combat alliance of militant communists and French nationalists.