Marie-Louise Dissard, (6 November 1881 – July 1957) (code named "Françoise"), was a member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of France in World War II. She initially worked with the Pat O'Leary Line, a network which helped downed Allied airmen evade German capture and return to Great Britain. The O'Leary Line was first headed by Ian Garrow and later by Albert Guérisse. In 1943, after their arrests and the destruction of the O'Leary Line by the German Gestapo, Dissard created an escape network called the Francoise Line. The Francoise Line helped more than 250 Allied airmen escape occupied France and return to Great Britain. Including her work with the O'Leary line, Dissard helped more than 700 allied airmen escape from France. She received financial assistance from the British intelligence agency, MI9. Dissard was honored with the Legion of Honor by France, the George Medal by the United Kingdom, and the Medal of Freedom by the United States. She shares the distinction of being one of very few women to head World War II resistance organizations in France, another prominent woman leader being Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. Andrée de Jongh, head of the Comet Line which operated in France, was Belgian. Before World War II Marie-Louise Dissard was born in Cahors, the daughter of Guillaume and Leontine Dissard. Guillaume was a teacher and Leontine a fashion designer. Dissard worked as a secretary for the government of the city of Toulouse. A talented seamstress, she later opened a small dressmaking shop selling "modern feminine frivolities." She never married and was an advocate for female independence and freedom. Dissard was small, cheerful, talkative, opinionated, and anti-fascist. She seemed never to sleep and to survive on black coffee and cigarettes held in a long, ivory holder which was always in her mouth. She was followed around by her pet cat named Mifouf. The French police considered her mentally unbalanced. The Pat O'Leary Escape Line Fifty-eight years old when France surrendered to Germany in June 1940, Dissard first resisted the Germans by distributing anti-Nazi propaganda in Toulouse for the "Bertaux Network." In December 1941 the leader of that group and several of his followers were arrested and imprisoned by French police. Dissard cooked food for the resisters and took it to the prison two or three times a week. In early July 1942, she met Paul Ullman who was working for the O'Leary escape