British war heroine Pearl Cornioley dies

   PARIS, Feb 25, 2008 – British wartime secret service agent Pearl
Cornioley, who helped the French resistance movement, died on Sunday at a
hospital in the French Loire Valley, a family friend said.  She was 93.
   Cornioley, who in 2006 was honoured by the Royal Air Force for her role as
a resistance fighter, died in hospital in Blois, south of Paris.
   She had been living in a retirement home not far from the city since 1998.
   A fluent French speaker who spent her childhood in Paris, Cornioley worked
at the British embassy in Paris at the start of World War II.
   She returned to England and joined the Special Operations Executive as a
secret agent.
   At the age of 29, she was parachuted into central France in 1943 and there
helped resistance groups.

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