Marie-Louise Dissard, OBE GM (6 November 1881[1] – 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.

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.

[5][6] 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."

He told her he was hiding English airmen, shot down over Europe, in his home and organizing their escape to Spain.

She supplied the airmen with food (mostly purchased on the black market due to rationing), civilian clothing, and medicine, running the line out of her small apartment in the shadow of Gestapo headquarters.

Conscious of the increased danger to its members, the O'Leary line arranged the escape of founder Ian Garrow from a French prison on 6 December 1942.

Fearing arrest, she fled Toulouse temporarily for Bergerac and relocated nine fugitives to new safe houses, including four airmen and a courier for the O'Leary Line, Nancy Wake, arranging for their passage to Spain.

With regular payments from the British ensured, she reorganized the many safe houses and helpers of the Line scattered all over southern France.

She managed to escape arrest, move airmen to new safe houses, and, with the Gestapo on her trail, hid out in attics and basements in Toulouse.

With her freedom of movement limited, a young man named Gabriel Nahas who was experienced in moving Jews across the Spanish border became the principal escort of airmen from Toulouse to Perpignan.