Musician Mark Linkous, 47, dies; Andree Peel dead at 105

Mark Linkous Singer, Songwriter

Mark Linkous, 47, an Arlington County-born musician who was lead singer of the indie-rock band Sparklehorse that attracted a small but devoted following, died March 6 in Knoxville, Tenn. Mr. Linkous's manager told the New York Times the singer-songwriter shot himself near a friend's home.

Sparklehorse's albums included "Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot," "Good Morning Spider," "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain." A 1999 profile in The Washington Post described Sparklehorse's sound as a "surprisingly fecund combination of crunchy guitars and fill-the-room jangle, all narrated by Linkous's often technically manipulated carnival-barker voice and interspersed with various outtakes, answering machine messages and hum."

Mr. Linkous, who grew up around Virginia and was the son of a coal miner, moved to New York after high school and started the band the Dancing Hoods. Unable to break into the music industry in Los Angeles, Mr. Linkous soon settled in the Virginia countryside between Richmond and Charlottesville. He won increasingly greater critical recognition over the years but still struggled with attracting popular attention.

Mr. Linkous had a troubled personal history and in 1996 collapsed after taking Valium and antidepressants. His legs were injured by the fall and nearly amputated. Mr. Linkous spent months undergoing rehabilitation, which inspired his song "Saint Mary," about the hospital where he recuperated.

Andrée Peel French Resistance Figure

Andrée 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 March 5 at a care home in Bristol, southwest England. No cause of death was reported.

Born Andrée Virot in France in 1905, Mrs. Peel was running a beauty salon in the port city of 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 to submarines and gunboats and also guided Allied planes to secret landing strips.

Captured by the Nazis, she was imprisoned at the Ravensbrück 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.

"I was born with courage," she said in an interview last year, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. "I did not allow cruel people to find in me a person they could torture. I saved 102 pilots before being arrested, interrogated and tortured. I suffer still from that. I still have the pain."

After the war, Virot met her future husband, British academic John Peel, and moved to England. Mrs. Peel was much honored for her wartime bravery and was thanked personally by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

-- From Staff and Wire Reports