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French Resistance fighter Solange Alexandre has died aged 104 at a nursing home in Le Mans, according to a BBC World report published on 10 November 2026. She was one of France's last Resistance veterans of the Second World War and one of the few women to create and command her own unit of anti-German fighters. Born in 1922 in the Sarthe department, she worked as a Resistance courier from 1941 and used the code-name Corlay, cycling around the Le Mans region to gather information and carry messages. In 1944 she founded the Pas-de-Boeuf network near Ruillé-sur-Loir, with some 30 men under her orders. The group organised sabotage, sheltered Allied airmen and, after the D-Day landings, fought the occupying German forces. Her husband, Guy Déliot, had deserted the gendarmerie rather than arrest Jews, and they took to the maquis in April 1944. She later took part in the liberation of Tours and ended the war as a sub-lieutenant in the French Interior Forces. She twice declined the Légion d'Honneur, saying she had only done her duty, before accepting it in 2024. President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on social media, saying France would never forget her.

Sources:BBC World

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