SHE was handed her CBE insignia personally by the Queen, she is a heroine in her adopted France, and her wartime exploits in the French Resistance are the basis for an acclaimed novel. But for 63 years a little bit of sex discrimination has rankled with Pearl Cornioley.

Amends were made yesterday when two British officers travelled to her retirement home at Châteauvieux in southwest France to present the 91-year-old widow with her parachute wings.

Mme Cornioley, born in Paris to British expatriate parents, was one of the real-life models for Charlotte Gray, the Sebastian Faulks novel that became a film. She was so adept at blowing up railway lines that the occupying Nazis put a price on her head of a million francs.

Still combative despite being within sight of her 92nd birthday, the former Pearl Witherington told yesterday how she had led her mother and three sisters to freedom via Lisbon, arriving in London in 1941, where she found a clerical job at the Air Ministry. Shuffling paper, though, was not enough for a 29-year-old woman who wanted to do something more positive to liberate France — and her French soldier fiancé, Henri. She applied to the Special Operations Executive, was accepted and, after minimal training, was parachuted into the Auvergne with instructions to act as a courier for the French underground.

“Do you know what they did during our training in the war? We girls did three parachute training jumps, and the fourth jump was operational. But the chaps did four training jumps, and the fifth was operational. And you only got your wings after a total of five jumps. So I was not entitled.”

Mme Cornioley has refused to take this lying down. “For 63 years I have been moaning to anyone who would listen. I thought it was an injustice.”

She joined a Resistance group as its courier, but when her network leader was taken by the Gestapo she found herself in charge of 1,500 Resistance fighters. With the help of Henri, whom she eventually married and who died in 1999, she organised the Wrestler network countering the German advance before the Normandy landings of 1944.

She is modest about her war. “It was a complete accident that I ended up leading 1,500 Resistance fighters. I was not a military person — I was supposed to be a courier — but I ended up having to use whatever sense I had. But I certainly didn’t do this on my own.” Her valour was recognised and she was cited for the Military Cross. But the rules did not allow it; the MC was not for civilian women. “Do you know what they offered me? I was told I was getting the MBE, a civil decoration. I said, ‘What on Earth is this? This is the sort of thing someone can get for sitting behind a desk’. That upset the apple cart.”

What she really wanted were those wings. Recently Squadron Leader Rhys Cowsill, a parachute jump instructor at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, went to interview Mme Cornioley about her wartime experiences. She had another good moan about her lack of military decoration.

At last the RAF relented and Squadron Leader Cowsill went to Châteauvieux to present the coveted badge to her yesterday. Don Touhig, the Veterans’ Minister, paid tribute to her “exemplary determination and selfless commitment” but offered no explanation of why she had to wait so long for her medal.

Mme Cornioley never returned to Britain. After the war she spent 28 years working in Paris for the World Bank. She remains wedded to the adopted country she saw from the air in 1943.

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