You won’t see her name pop up in any World War II documentaries and when the lists of World War II warriors are read off, she probably won’t be included. Outside of her home country of France, she’s relatively unknown, but Simone Segouin, aka Nicole Minet was somebody you didn’t want to mess with during World War II.
She was also somebody the Nazis wanted to capture, dead or alive but were never able to.
She was 17 when the Nazis invaded France and started helping the French resistance with small tasks. At one point, she stole a bicycle from Nazi troops and made sure she slashed all the tires of the others so they couldn’t chase her.
She used that bike for her job delivering messages between pockets of resistance fighters.
From there, she got more involved in helping the French resistance with bigger tasks.
Eventually, young Segouin became an expert in tactics and explosives.
As the war went on, she began leading teams of resistance fighters against the Nazis, setting traps, capturing German troops, even derailing German trains. She was able to soften the ground ahead of the front lines for advancing allied forces and was a key player in the defeat of the Nazis.
She was never captured by the Germans and made sure she was present at the liberation of Paris in 1944. She was highly decorated by the French government.
After the war, she became a pediatric nurse. Today she lives in Corevill-sur-Eure France on a street that was named in her honor, Rue Simone Segouin.
