Death at 104 of French resistance fighter Solange Alexandre

The German invasion in 1940 had “put hatred in his heart”. Solange Alexandre, who died on Sunday at the age of 104, then naturally joined the Resistance, becoming leader of the maquis in Touraine, at the head of around thirty men. “My mother was a war widow from her first marriage. My father was injured at the Chemin des Dames in 1917. Homeland and honor, I fell into the broth very young,” she recounted in her memoirs.

While studying at Le Mans to become a teacher, she was in turn, under the code name "Corlay", a liaison officer and spy before creating the "Pas-de-Boeuf" maquis in 1944 in Ruillé-sur-Loir (Sarthe). At the head of which she participated with her comrades in the liberation of Tours and its region. She ended the war with the rank of lieutenant in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) but remained discreet for a long time about her acts of bravery. “These are small facts, many people have done much more!”, she minimized.

Code name “Corlay”

Born Solange Dubuisson, she was born on September 9, 1922 in Mamers (Sarthe). His father was a gendarme and then employed at the Sarthe prefecture. On June 18, 1940, she heard General de Gaulle's appeal on a radio made by her friend Michel Gadois. She knows neither the voice nor the name of this man who calls to refuse capitulation. “It was from there that I wanted to get involved.” She is not yet 18 years old.

His meeting, in 1941, with Lieutenant Saïd Belhaffaf, a retired army officer of Tunisian origin, was decisive. A friend of her father and a resistance fighter from the start, it was he who made her join the clandestine struggle. The former gymnastics champion from Maine-Anjou-Touraine is not afraid to cover the kilometers by bike to carry messages to Laval, Alençon or even Rennes... No one suspects her. “Corlay” also takes advantage of his travels and his knowledge of the region to gather intelligence.

In 1943 she met her future husband, Guy Deliot, who, to escape the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) in Germany, joined the gendarmerie. Assigned to the Le Mans brigade, he refused to arrest a Jewish couple with the Gestapo. He deserted and also joined the Resistance. With him and his friend Michel, Solange decided to create a maquis in April 1944 in the area of ​​the Pas-de-Boeuf pond. Around thirty men - STO resisters, survivors of another decimated maquis, escapees from the Atlantic Wall, an American and a Canadian who escaped the Germans... - who are quite naturally under her orders and respect her. “I never suffered from being a girl.” Together, with the help of local peasants who supplied them, they organized sabotage, sheltered allied airmen, fought with arms in hand and participated in the liberation of Touraine.

“Only my duty!”

Returning from an operation in August 1944, they found themselves, outnumbered, under enemy fire. Wounded, Michel Gadois was shot in the head by the Germans. Every year, she will pay tribute to him on the stele that was erected for him on site.

After the war, she followed her husband, with their three children, according to his assignments. Seventeen moves until 1960, when her husband died on duty in Martinique. Back with her children in Le Mans, she resumed her job as a teacher and remarried after her retirement. She will also be very involved within the ADMD, the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity. She always declined honors and twice refused the Legion of Honor because, she said, she “only did her duty”.

When the town hall of Ruillé-sur-Loir proposed renaming the central square of the town in her name, she also hesitated. Before finally saying yes. Because she will then “celebrate her 100th birthday” and, above all, “so that no one forgets”…