Andree Peel | Resistance fighter, 105

Andree Peel, 105, a member of the World War II Resistance who is credited with saving the lives of more than 100 Allied airmen in Nazi-occupied France, died Friday at a care home in Bristol, England.

Born Andree Virot in France in 1905, Mrs. Peel was running a beauty salon in Brest when the Nazis invaded in 1940. She joined the Resistance, initially distributing clandestine newspapers.

Under the code name Agent Rose, she helped dozens of British and American pilots escape from Nazi-occupied territory onto submarines and gunboats, and also guided Allied planes to secret landing strips.

Captured by the Nazis, she was imprisoned at the Ravensbruck and Buchenwald concentration camps. She later recalled how she was being lined up to be shot by a firing squad when U.S. troops arrived to liberate the inmates in April 1945. After the war, she met her future husband, British academic John Peel, and moved to England.

Mrs. Peel was much honored for her wartime bravery. She was thanked personally by Winston Churchill and awarded the French Legion of Honor, the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct, and the Croix de Guerre. She recorded her story in an autobiography, Miracles Do Happen.

- AP