Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Simone Segouin was born on October 3, 1925, in Chartres, France. She was raised alongside three brothers in a remote area. Simone’s father was a war hero who fought for France during World War 1. She attended school until she was fourteen and then dropped out to help on the family farm.
Table of contents
Simone Seqouin – French Farm Girl
In May of 1940, Germany invaded France. Simone was but fifteen years old when she first saw the panzers roll through her homeland. Six weeks later, France was an occupied territory. Simone Segouin, a cute, unassuming farm girl from rural France, was inextricably caught up in the largest war humanity had ever seen.
It is impossible for those of us raised in a land of freedom and plenty to appreciate the nature of life under Nazi occupation. The Wehrmacht was a pervasive presence, while the Gestapo was ubiquitous, ruthless, terrifying, and cruel. Life fractionated down to collaborators, resistance, and those who just wanted to live their lives. Simone chose resistance.
At age seventeen, Simone met Roland Boursier, a Lieutenant in the Francs-tireurs et partisans or FTP. This term loosely translates to “Free-shooters and Partisans.” The FTP was an armed resistance organization that operated under the purview of the French Communist Party from 1939 until the end of the war in 1945. Lieutenant Roland schooled Simone in the use of the submachine gun and helped her establish the necessary contacts to become an effective member of the French Underground. Simone and Lieutenant Roland eventually had six children together.
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The First Act of Defiance
Simone’s first role for the FTP was as a courier, transporting messages between resistance cells under the noses of the hated German occupiers. She was cute. As any honest man will attest, being a beautiful woman is akin to having superpowers. Guys just can’t seem to think straight in the presence of a hot girl. Regardless, before she could be an effective courier, the youthful resistance operative needed transportation. In occupied France, where access to petrol was tightly controlled, that meant a bicycle.
Simone located a female German bicycle messenger and waited until her bike was briefly unattended. When the moment was right, she stole the bicycle and fled. Before making her escape, she produced a pen knife and slashed the tires of the other bikes and military motorcycles to preclude their pursuit. It seemed that Simone had the gift.
The Saboteur Comes of Age
Moving about occupied France required state-issued identity papers. Once she became associated with the FTP, Simone’s resistance cell established a false identity for her under the nom de guerre Nicole Minet. Per the backstory, Nicole Minet originally hailed from the port city of Dunkirk. The extensive destruction wrought in and around Dunkirk made validation of her identity by the Germans difficult.
Her first kill came on July 14, 1944. Simone and two comrades hid in a roadside ditch and ambushed a pair of German soldiers as they pedaled past on bicycles. Simone secured the dead Germans’ identity papers and weapons at her home.
Grueling Two Years
The next two years were unbelievably harrowing. Segouin, Lieutenant Roland, and the FTP helped repatriate downed Allied aircrews, gathered intelligence on German troop dispositions, and generally made life miserable for the occupiers at every opportunity. What began as minor courier tasks eventually led to greater things. One seminal evening, Simone and her resistance cell sabotaged a rail line and blew up a German supply train. She later referred to this operation as a “train-exploding expedition.” As a result of her tactical acumen, she was promoted to Lieutenant and ultimately awarded the Croix de Guerre.
Croix de Guerre translates to “Cross of War.” France first created this military decoration in 1915 and awarded it to soldiers who distinguished themselves by acts of heroism involving combat with the enemy. The award stemmed from having been “mentioned in dispatches.” This is about heroic deeds that warranted citation from the commanding headquarters unit. In addition to French conventional and unconventional soldiers, France also frequently awarded the Croix de Guerre to members of foreign military forces allied with France.
A Long Grinding War
With support from the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and British SOE (Special Operations Executive), the French FTP took the fight to the Germans throughout occupied France. Simone was a quick study and soon became an expert in the use of explosives and small arms. At a time when capture meant horrible torture and certain death at the hands of the Gestapo, Simone thrived. She and her fellow resistance fighters derailed trains, created roadblocks, blew up bridges, and generally sowed mayhem.
Everything changed on June 6, 1944. With the launch of Operation Overlord, Allied troops began their unstoppable slog across France. Coordinating with Allied combat commands, Simone and the FTP helped clear a path for advancing friendly troops. On August 23, 1944, Simone Segouin was present for the liberation of Chartres. Two days later, she was in Paris when Allied troops expelled the last of the German invaders from the French capital.
The Girl Partisan of Chartres Becomes Famous
With the advance of Allied troops toward Paris, Simone and her fellow resistance fighters grew ever bolder. On one operation, she and a few others captured 25 German troops and held them for the Allies. Once the fighting passed by, the world began to learn of the exploits of the French resistance. American writer Jack Belden and photographer Robert Capa, working for LIFE Magazine, did an exposé on Simone in 1944 that made her story and her picture familiar worldwide.
During her interview, Simone was quoted as having said, “I was fighting for the resistance, that’s all. If I had to start over, I would, because I have no regrets. The Germans were our enemies, we were French.”
Belden summed up his impressions of Simone thusly, “I could find no trace of what is conventionally called toughness in Nicole. After routine farm life, she finds her present job exhilarating. Now that the war is passing beyond her home district, she does not think of going back to the farm. She wants to go on with the Partisans and help free the rest of France.”
Simone Segouin – Weapon of Choice
The underground war in Europe was history’s archetype for an armed insurgency. The tools and techniques influenced future conflicts through the ongoing war in Ukraine. Underground fighters received Stens and M1 carbines by the tens of thousands from their Allied handlers, but they also made extensive use of captured German weapons. All of the surviving photos of Simone in action show her armed with a German MP40.
MP40
We have covered the development of the MP40 in this venue before. In this treatment, I thought we might discuss the practicality of the classic German burp gun in partisan hands. Certain of the gun’s attributes would make it a proper partisan tool, while others would make it seem ill-suited. Like all insurgencies, those doing the fighting simply used the tools at hand.
Sten
One of the reasons for the Sten’s popularity was the fact that you could dismantle it into four major components and easily hide it. The MP40 was not so flexible. While it looks like you could simply remove the barrel of the MP40 with a handy wrench, that is not the case. Removing the barrel from an MP40 requires some proper tools and a fair amount of effort. The underfolding stock makes the weapon somewhat more compact than might be the case with a standard infantry rifle, but even collapsed, the MP-40 is still 25 inches long.
9mm Parabellum
9mm Parabellum was the standard pistol cartridge for all the major combatants in Europe save the United States and Russia. This made resupply fairly straightforward. At modest ranges and delivered in bursts, the 9mm is a proven stopper.
Running a pistol-caliber submachine gun well is indeed an acquired skill, and these guys would have very limited access to a practice range. However, most resistance engagements were at extremely close range and involved unbridled ferocity. Under those circumstances, the most basic attention to technique will yield effective results. The sedate 500 rpm rate of fire of the MP-40 lent itself to such utility. In experienced hands, you can all but write your name with an amply-stocked MP-40. Once Simone had used one for a while, I suspect she was quite proficient.
READ MORE HERE: Major William Gail White: The Frag Magnet
The Rest of the Story for Simone Segouin
Despite three years of active service in the armed resistance fighting the Germans, Simone was never caught. After the war, she studied medicine and became a pediatric nurse. She enjoyed a long and fruitful career in this capacity in her home region of Chartres.
The actions of these brave French patriots were eventually properly venerated. A street in Courville-sur-Eure, her lifelong home, was named in her honor. In 2020, the village hall in Thivars was named for her as well. At a reception acknowledging this honor, she said, “I’m very glad to know that people are not indifferent to this period of my life.”
Simone Segouin – Girl Hero
Simone Segouin rose to the occasion. A rural farm girl with limited education, her passion for her people and her country drove her to some truly epic levels of heroism in the face of profound peril. Simone Segouin, aka Nicole Minet, was a hero from an era of heroes. Simone ultimately lived a long, rich life, dying of natural causes on 21 February 2023, in Courville-sur-Eure, France, at the age of 97.
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Will is still trying to figure out what he really wants to be when he grows up. However, shooting guns and claiming it was work seemed like a pretty sweet hustle. As a result, Will serendipitously transformed an avocation into a vocation.
Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Army Aviator. He is SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.
Will has delivered sixty babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has three awesome adult children. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal and the movie “Aliens.”
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I have heard of her before and she is legendary. God bless her.
Wow! There are no words.
Good read Doc. Its important for these stories of courage and patriotic sacrifice to be told.
Both of my grandmothers married at 17 years old. This was around 1905. It was quite common to marry at that age. My aunts married at 18 and 19 in the 50’s. I am so proud of those tough young French women who fought the Nazis. j
Wow, she was quite a woman. If only todays young were that responsible and patriotic. They have taken their very easy life for granted. A mandatory draft would help with that. Thanks for the story and the pics. Maybe we should be given MP 40 type weapons as part of the militia.