On this week's new episode of Paris History Avec a Hemingway on La Vie Creative Podcast we share the stories of a few of the bravest women in French history. During WWII many women stood up to fight for France in any way they could and for many years they were left far from the pages of history.
Marie Madeleine Fourcade was born on November 8, 1919 and at 20 years old was married and quickly fled to Paris. As a young journalists she did a radio show with Colette and became more and more outspoken against the fascisms that was quickly spreading across Europe.
At 27 she met Georges Loustaunau-Lacau who she met through her brother in law and who went by the code name Navarre and served in the Resistance. Marie served as his chief as staff and when he was arrested in 1941 she took his place heading up the “Noah’s Ark” network.
Marie went by Hedgehog and recruited over 1000 people to serve in the network as pilots, curriers and radio operators. She was fearless and faced death every day. When the Germans figured how who she was and found her in a chateau and arrived to arrest her, she convinced them she needed to take a bath first. When the officers went outside to smoke she slipped out the door and made her way to Lyon.
She had two children with her first husband she rarely saw. During the war she had an affair with Leo Faye, a French Air Force pilot and became pregnant. Marie never stopped, she still kept up her role in the resistance and eventually made her way to London and to Charles de Gaulle.
Following the war in 1947 she married Hubert Fourcade a fellow Resistance leader and had three children. She slopped away to raise her children and in 1968 wrote her story in “Noah’s Ark”
Fourcade died on July 20, 1989 at 79 years old at the Val de Grace and is buried at Pere Lachaise.
Cécile-Rol-Tanguy and her husband Henri met when she was a “godmother of war’ and sent hum letters during WWI. The two met and on April 19, 1919 the two married. A move to Paris followed and the two began working underground for the Resistance. She stroll through checkpoints with her baby stroller that could be filled with guns, money and grenades. Changing her name and paper she was always one step ahead of the Germans.
When the war ended and de Gaulle arrived in Paris and marched down the Champs Élysées he held a reception in the Hotel de Ville. Cécile was the only woman in attendance and was only because of her husband. After WWII she was a Friend of the Fighting Spanish and when Francois Holland wanted to award her she declined, at first.
Eventually she decided she would accept it but only on behalf of all of the women that had fought in the resistance. Henri died in 2002 and Cécile lived to be 101 years old on March 8, 2020. She should be in the Pantheon.
Simone Segouin is a bit of the poster child of the ladies of the Resistance. Born on October 3. 1945 she was raised on her families farm in Thivars. Her father worked in the Resistance as well in the local government. When the Germans came to town and took over the nearest chateau they wanted all the young girls to come and work there. They asked her father for a full list of all the girls and he listed Simone but that she was already a seamstress.
Simone was able avoid working for them but when one day a knock on the door led to the officers dropping off a pile of items to be mended. Simone had no idea what to do so she fled to Chartres. Her first mission was to steal a German bicycle and then used to deliver her own messages.
She was just 16 years old and had the courage to blow up bridges, damage German villages and laid traps for them. On August 23, 1944 she took part in the Liberation of Chartres and two days later arrived in Paris for the big fight, the Liberation of Paris. It was on the streets of Paris that her most famous image was shot. A young girl standing against a wall holding a large gun.
In 1946 she was given the distinguished cross and went onto medical school and became a nurse. Never one to stick to the roles she was supposed to have she had 6 children and never married.
Helene Studler at 18 entered the Sisters of Saint Vincent of Paris. In 1939 she transported the wounded in her white truck and as an authorized driver to the prison camps was able to sneak hundreds of prisoners out. Her network helped transport over 2000 men and women to the Free Zone. She even saved further president Francois Mitterand.
The Germans caught onto her and in February 1941 arrested Helen. She was frail and in poor health so they released her. That didn’t stop her for the next year to continued with her network of saving the French.
Helen died 2 years later in November 1944 at 53 years old.