Solange Alexandre

Family and youth

Solange Dubuisson was born in Mamers on 9 September 1922. Her father was the gendarme Albert Dubuisson, who was posted to the Mamers gendarmerie school. He quit the Gendarmerie after fifteen years and found a job at the Sarthe prefecture. Alexandre's parents had suffered during World War I. Her father had been wounded, and her mother had lost her first husband. Alexandre was raised in a fervently patriotic household.

She was at one time a gymnastics champion in the Maine-Anjou-Touraine region. When World War II broke out, Alexandre was a student at the Le Mans normal school.

In the Resistance

Alexandre was inspired to join the anti-German resistance in 1940 after hearing Charles de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June. In 1941, Alexandre met Lieutenant Saïd Belhaffaf, who had retired from the French Army and who was of Tunisian origin, had been one of her father's friends, and an early member of the Resistance. Thanks to him, she became involved in the Resistance within the Organisation civile et militaire (OCM) as a liaison officer in Maine, Brittany, and Normandy. She took the name "Corlay". She quickly took advantage of her travels and her knowledge of the region to gather intelligence.

In 1943, Alexandre met the man who would become her husband, Guy Deliot, who, to avoid the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), became involved in the Gendarmerie nationale, in which he was assigned to the Le Mans brigade. While serving alongside some Gestapo officers, he refused to arrest a Jewish couple, and then he chose to desert, with one of his fellow gendarmes, and joined the Resistance.

On 5 April 1944, with her friends Michel and Jean Gadois, as well as Guy Deliot, Alexandre established a Resistance cell at the place called "étang du Pas-de-bœuf" ("Ox's Step Pond") near Ruillé-sur-Loir. It was made up mainly of those who resisted STO service, but there were some survivors from the Mortagne cell, which had been decimated by the Gestapo.

The "Pas-de-bœuf" cell fought the Germans, organized acts of sabotage, sheltered Allied flyers, and took part in liberating Tours and its surrounding region alongside the reconstituted IV/4 battalion of the French 65th Infantry Regiment.

On 8 August 1944, the cell returned from a sabotage operation against a munitions train on the Tours–Le Mans line. They learnt that a group of Germans were stationed at a farm at the place known as la Durtière, in Ruillé-sur-Loir. Counting on the element of surprise, while also underestimating the enemy's numbers, the cell's fifteen or so members attacked them. They had not noticed a guard who was posted nearby, who shot back at them. The cell had to retreat, and as they did so, Michel Gadois was wounded by the German guard, sustaining a gunshot wound to the head..

Once the region's liberation operations were over, Alexandre was named the departmental head of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) social service, and welcomed deportees and freed prisoners.

Alexandre came out of the war with the rank of FFI sub-lieutenant.

On 7 April 1945 in Le Mans, she wed her friend, the gendarme Guy Deliot, with whom she had three children (Jean-Pierre, Marie-France, and Françoise).

After the war

In 1951, Alexandre followed her husband, who had been transferred, to New Caledonia. As there was no work for her there in teaching, she became Secretary General of Nouméa's Chamber of Agriculture. As a result of her husband's changing assignments, the couple had to move house 17 times.

In 1960, Alexandre's husband died whilst on official duty in Martinique, which was at the time beset with violent demonstrations. She then returned to Le Mans with her three children, where she once again took up her profession as a teacher, continuing until her retirement in 1978.

In 1981, she married Bernard Alexandre. Alexandre was an active member of the Association pour le droit de mourir dans la dignité ("Association for the Right to Die with Dignity"; ADMD).

Death

Alexandre died at a nursing home in Le Mans on 8 November 2026, at the age of 104.