18. A Rural Teenage Resistance Warrior in Paris
Simone Segouin was inspired by her father, a decorated soldier who had fought in WWI, and grew up intensely patriotic. When first recruited into the Resistance, she was asked if she felt queasy about eliminating Germans, and she replied: “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“. She was with the Resistance fighters of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans when they helped liberate Charters on August 23rd, 1944. She helped capture 25 Germans, and shepherded them to POW pens.
Simone and her comrades then linked up with the French 2nd Armored Division as it headed out to liberate Paris. She was in the thick of the fighting that freed the French capital on August 25th. For her performance, Simone was promoted to lieutenant, and awarded a Croix de Guerre. After the war, she became a pediatric nurse, and in 2017, a street in Courville-sur-Eure, a small town near Charters in which she now lives, was named in her honor.