During WWII, thousands of citizens in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Basque region of Spain hid Allied soldiers and delivered them along various escape routes to British consulate officials stationed in Spain. From there, the men flew back to England so they could continue their fight to free Europe from the grip of the Nazis.
The Comet Line was established by Belgians in August of 1941 and continued to operate until the end of 1944. The line ran from Brussels, through France, and across the Pyrenees to northern Spain (red line on map below). How did this line start, and who was behind its formation?
After Belgium surrendered to the Germans in 1940, Mademoiselle Andrée De Jongh, known as Dédée, cared for wounded British soldiers in Brussels. By 1941, she decided to find a way to help the many soldiers and airmen hidden in Brussels to escape back to England. Many were survivors from Dunkirk who hadn’t been caught by the Germans.
Dédée and her father, known as “Paul,” formed an escape line from Brussels to St. Jean de Luz in southwest France. In August of 1941, Dédée escorted a Scottish soldier and two Belgians who wanted to fight for the Allies to the British Consulate in Bilbao, Spain. At first the Consul didn’t believe that the twenty-five-year-old young woman had crossed the Pyrenees on foot, but she convinced him otherwise. She offered to bring more soldiers but asked for financial support to feed and house them on the long trip from Brussels to Bilbao and to pay the Basque guides who would lead them over the mountains. The Consul petitioned the British Foreign Office to support Dédée’s plan, and the Comet Line was born.
Meanwhile, back in Brussels, Dédée’s father Paul began plans for collecting the Allied servicemen and young Belgians scattered across the country. He sought aid from likeminded friends – some gave money and others offered to house soldiers.
Early on, one of Dédée’s guides and the servicemen he was escorting were arrested at the train station in Lille, France, and the Germans learned of Dédée’s participation in the escape line. The Gestapo visited the De Jongh home and questioned Dédée’s family at length on her whereabouts. After the Gestapo left without answers, Paul sent word through a trusted messenger that Dédée must not return to Belgium but run the line from France. He took over the Brussels operation.
Courtesy of Lumixbx via Wikipedia
Paul escorted the servicemen to the Brussels train station and handed them off to Charlie and Elvire Morelle, a brother-sister team, who guided them into France. Dédée met up with them just across the border and traveled with the men on a series of trains to Paris and then immediately on the overnight express to Bayonne in the far south of France.
The southern end of the Comet Line was run by the De Greef family. They had fled Belgium when the Germans invaded and then settled in an empty villa in the village of Anglet above the bay of St Jean de Luz, close to the Spanish border. Once recruited, the whole family worked tirelessly for the line. Elvire De Greef, known as “Tante Go,” established a black-market enterprise, which provided good food for the escaping soldiers and their guides before making the arduous crossing of the Pyrenees. Tante Go bribed the Germans with her goods, and her black-market activities provided a good cover for her resistance efforts with the Comet Line.
Courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air Force
Tante Go’s husband, L’Oncle, obtained a job as interpreter at the German headquarters in Anglet. This gave him “access to special passes and certificats de domicil required for visitors to the forbidden zone established by the Germans along the Atlantic coast.” L’Oncle was also responsible for billeting German troops in the area, which gave him access to other headquarters of German units. He stole official stamps and blank identity documents and forms in small enough quantities that the theft went unnoticed. These items were then sent to the branches of the escape line in Brussels and Paris.
Tante Go recruited helpers in Bayonne, Anglet, Biarritz, and St Jean de Luz and located those who were willing to provide safe houses for the parties before their crossing into Spain. She and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Janine, regularly bicycled to these locations. Tante Go also hired Basque guides to take the groups over the Pyrenees.
In the fall of 1941, Dédée escorted a group of Allied airmen (two Polish and one Canadian) on the express train from Paris to Bayonne, near the Spanish border. At the train station, they met up with Tant Go’s daughter, Janine, in the refreshment room. When it was time to leave, the airmen went one at a time to the lavatory where there was a door to the outside, allowing them to avoid passing the ticket barrier. Someone in the escape network had made a duplicate key – this door was always locked. Dédée left the station through the main exit.
Janine and the airmen bicycled to St. Jean de Luz, left their bicycles at the station, and walked up the stony road to a farm at Urrugne. During their walk, “a young Basque peasant on a bicycle came down the hill towards them. As he passed, he shook his head significantly and pointed up the road.” Janine led the airmen to a hiding place, and then she climbed a wooded slope and observed the road to Urrugne. There she spotted German troops on bicycles at a barricade. Janine led the Allied airmen on a long detour, and they safely arrived at the farm in Urrugne, where their Basque guide, Florentino, awaited them. Florentino and Dédée led the party across the mountains and into the hands of British diplomats in Spain. This was Dédée’s third group of servicemen who made the eight-hour hike to freedom.
The Basque guide, Florentino, was a tall man, with a broad back and strong muscles. He wore espadrilles, rope-soled shoes necessary for navigating the Pyrenees safely. He provided these shoes for the airmen. Florentino was most at home in the mountains and knew the paths well. Darkness and fog didn’t slow him down. He hated fascism, as did many of the Basques, and he was happy to work for Dédée and Tante Go. He managed to evade the police on both sides of the frontier (France and Spain) who suspected him of smuggling and working for the Allies. In reality, Florentino delivered documents and photos to the British, making constant trips across the mountains from 1941 until France was liberated in the fall of 1944.
Meanwhile, back in Brussels, the Secret Police of the Luftwaffe paid a visit to the De Jongh home, seeking Dédée’s whereabouts. They questioned her mother for an hour. Her father, Paul, was in Valenciennes and escaped the interrogation. Upon learning from a neighbor that she had been questioned about Paul, he moved his headquarters to another location. Six weeks later his wife and daughter, Suzanne, were arrested in their home but were released the same day. With a price on his head of a million Belgian francs, Paul’s friends convinced him to flee to Paris, and he left Belgium forever on April 30. Just six days later, the two men who had taken charge of the Brussels operation were arrested.
In early May of 1942 after Paul De Jongh had fled to France, and the two men who had taken charge of the Brussels end of the Comet Line were arrested and imprisoned, Paul’s daughter and Dédée De Jongh’s sister, Suzanne, worked with Baron Jean Greindl Laan, codenamed “Nemo,” to continue operations. Paul stayed in Paris, and Dédée continued her dangerous trips escorting airmen to the south of France, across the Pyrenees into Spain, and into the hands of British consular officials.
Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
A few months earlier, Nemo had become director of a canteen run by the Swedish Red Cross in Brussels. He ran the Comet Line from this location. Madame Scherlinck, a Swedish lady, was the canteen’s patron, and through this agency food and clothes were provided for the poor and ailing children of the city. Nemo supplied bags of rice and flour from the Swedish Red Cross to the families sheltering the airmen.
Peggy van Lier helped with feeding the children at the canteen and became Nemo’s assistant in the Comet Line. The canteen became a cover for several young people who helped in the secret work. They were adventurous and eager to participate in facilitating the escape of Allied airmen.
In an attempt to penetrate the rescue network, the Germans planted young English-speaking men into the countryside who posed as downed Allied airmen. This led to arrests and imprisonment. To counter the problem, eighteen-year-old Elsie Maréchal, who spoke perfect English, started testing the stories of the supposed airmen before taking them to homes in Brussels. The Belgian guides brought the men to St. Joseph’s Church where Elsie asked them about their units, the planes they flew, and where they were stationed. While they waited inside the church, Elsie would report to Nemo at the canteen for further instructions.
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One wintry day in November of 1942, two German imposters were brought to St. Joseph’s Church. Normal protocols weren’t followed, and Elsie didn’t know to meet the airmen. The Belgian guide from Namur took them to a house of a friend where he was given the Maréchal’s address by people unaware of their underground activities. The two Germans who claimed to be Americans didn’t act like Americans. Elsie noticed several red flags but thought she was overreacting. After fixing a meal for the men, Elsie went to the canteen. Nemo sent her back home with instructions not to allow the men to leave the house. In the meantime, the young men asked Elsie’s mother if they could go for a walk. They left the house and returned shortly after with guns pointed at Mrs. Maréchal.
One by one the members of the Maréchal family returned home and were arrested along with others who showed up at their house, including Elvire Morelle who arrived from Paris early the next morning. The enemy agents reported on all the guides, shelterers, and helpers they had encountered in the Belgian line “from the Ardennes and Namur to the very center of the organization in Brussels.”
In two days, nearly 100 people were arrested, including innocent relatives thrown into prison as hostages. Many of these never survived to return home. In the previous six months, the Comet Line had rescued sixty airmen, but their operation wasn’t over. New leaders reorganized the line and recruited more Belgians to carry on the work.
After Peggy van Lier successfully convinced the Nazis that she was not a participant in the operation, she was released and fled to England with a group of Allied servicemen on the Comet Line. Mr. Maréchal was executed by the Germans. Mrs. Maréchal, her daughter Elsie, and Elvire Morelle were sent to concentration camps in Germany, but they each survived and returned home after the war ended.
Dédée De Jongh and her father, Paul, continued to work out of their apartment in Paris. She escorted the Allied airmen south across the border to Spain, and Paul stamped forged identity cards. Fearing that her father would be captured by the Nazis, Dédée convinced him to leave France. On January 13, 1943, the two of them along with Franco and three pilots left Paris on the night train and traveled to Bayonne.
Franco returned to Paris to prepare another group to escape. Tante Go, who organized the southern section of the Comet Line, led Dédée and the airmen on bicycles to St. Jean de Luz through the pelting rain. Then they navigated the steep slopes to Urrugne on a road that had become a river of mud. Upon arrival at Francia’s farmhouse, they were treated to hot milk and soup.
Florentino, the Basque guide who would lead them over the mountains, decided it was too dangerous to make the treck in the tempestuous weather, and the group would have to wait until the next evening to leave. He returned to the town of Ciboure. The storm passed through and was gone by the next morning. The airmen enjoyed Francia’s hospitality and played with her children while they waited.
Soon the sound of an engine stopping in front of the house caught everyone’s attention. The shadow of a gendarme in uniform passed across the window of the farmhouse, and the door burst open. Ten gendarmes invaded the house and searched everywhere, lifting floorboards and casting furniture and pictures aside. After an hour, the gendarmes marched the group to police headquarters in St. Jean de Luz. It is believed that a disgruntled former guide for the Comet Line had betrayed the group.
Dédée was transferred to the Villa Chagrin prison in Bayonne the next day. The Gestapo interrogated her, and later moved her to the Maison Blance prison in Biarritz and then to Paris by train under armed guard. Her father Paul returned to Paris under a fictitious name. The safe houses in Paris were overflowing, and he worked to move some of them out through another organization.
After Dédée De Jongh’s arrest in January of 1943, her assistant, Franco, took over her responsibilities. Dédée’s father, Paul, with a price on his head, refused to leave France as long as Dédée remained imprisoned. He resumed escorting airmen from train station to train station in Paris. In May, Paul hired Jean Masson, a Belgian who worked with the resistance in northern France, to be a guide for the Brussels to Paris route. Masson was described as a short man with untidy blond hair and fierce eyes. He was in his early twenties.
Masson brought his first group of seven airmen down from Brussels to the Gare Montparnesse (train station) in Paris to the delight of Paul and others working with him in Paris. Masson was eager to please, polite, and treated Paul with deference. In early June, Masson warned Paul to be prepared for a large party arriving from Brussels on June 7th. He stated that all Paul’s helpers would be needed.
On June 7th, two women workers were sent north to Lille to meet Masson and the pilots and help escort them to Paris. When they arrived, Masson met them and handed over an airman to each of the women. One couple went to a little café across the street while they waited for the train back to Paris. They were promptly surrounded by the Gestapo and arrested. The other couple was arrested after the train left the station.
Late that same day, Paul and two other team members arrived at the Gare du Nord and were waiting on the platform as Masson had requested. Masson arrived with a number of Allied airmen and greeted Paul’s group, shaking hands and smiling. Soon the group was surrounded by at least twelve gendarmes (police). They were all handcuffed and led to the headquarters of the railway police, including Jean Masson.
The three people in Paul’s group were taken to the Gestapo office on the Rue des Saussaies. Jean Masson was not with them, but he soon showed up, smiling and free of handcuffs. He spat on the floor in front of them, and called them fools. Paul and his helpers were shocked to discover Masson was a traitor.
Franco returned to Paris from Spain eight days later and went to Paul’s apartment on the Rue Vaneau. He discovered rotting fruit and moldy vegetables. He gathered up all the false papers and money he could find and loaded them into a suitcase and hurried away. Franco and another operative checked the apartments of other helpers and discovered their doors had been sealed by the Gestapo. Realizing Paul and his helpers had been arrested, Franco and his helper grieved the loss of their friends. This didn’t stop Franco, however. He was more determined than ever to keep the Comet Line running.
After Franco returned to Paris and discovered that Paul De Jongh and other Comet agents had been arrested by the Gestapo, Franco worked even harder to facilitate the transfer of airmen out of France. He travelled back and forth from Paris to Bilbao, Spain, with a different group of airmen every two weeks during the summer of 1943. Allied bombings in Europe were increasing and more airmen than ever needed assistance.
It was no longer safe for the airmen to ride the train straight from Paris to Bayonne in the far south of France. Gendarmes and plain-clothes Gestapo agents were watching for escapees taking the routes to the coast from the Gare d’Austerlitz train station in Paris. The airmen now rode a fourteen-hour night train to Bordeaux, then a local train to Dax, near Bayonne.
Franco, Tante Go, and Janine took turns escorting the airmen on bicycles from Dax to Anglet. On one trip, an American airmen didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, so Franco had to teach him before they could make the twenty-six-kilometer trip to Bayonne. After falling on the pavement in town a few times, on the outskirts of town, the poor soldier collided with two German officers riding their bicycles toward him. Franco pretended the American was drunk and hollered at him in front of the Germans, saying he deserved to be shot. This satisfied the officers, and they all went on their way.
Franco was so exhausted by the fall of 1943 that the British Consul at Bilbao sent him by car to Gibraltar to meet with British intelligence. There in the shadow of the Rock, Franco found new courage. Observing the great fortress and its orderly calm gave him confidence that for the first time that Hitler’s forces could not win this war. Franco was informed the British were sending someone to replace Paul in Paris. His code name was Jerome.
After three days, Franco left Gibraltar refreshed and within the week had crossed the Pyrenees and returned to Paris. Jerome arrived and set up his headquarters in a flat on the Rue de Longchamps, near the Trocadéro, in Paris.
In December, Franco led a group of American pilots and a Belgian Comet leader to Spain. Their Basque guide, Florentino, was down with the flu and unable to accompany them. Unfortunately, the Bidassoa River on the border between France and Spain was high because of heavy rain the day before. An American pilot and the Belgian leader were carried away in the torrent and drowned.
By January 1944, the Gestapo was closing in on the Comet Line in Brussels and in Paris. The traitor Jean Masson who had led the Gestapo to arrest so many Comet operatives the previous year had resurfaced. Jerome returned to Paris from a visit to Brussels on the evening of January 17th. His intention was to prepare to return to England. The Gestapo was waiting for him at his flat. He was taken to headquarters and tortured. Franco returned to the same apartment the next day and was also arrested. Franco would survive the war.
Michou Dumont, codename “Lily,” was away from home in nursing school when her sister Andree was arrested in Brussels for her work in the Comet Line. Like her sister, Lily was also a friend of Dedee, the founder of the escape network. Lily admired Dedee and was determined to carry on the work in Brussels after so many others had been arrested and it was no longer safe for Dedee to remain in Belgium. Lily began working on the Comet Line in 1942.
Lily was only five feet tall and appeared no older than fifteen, although she was in her early twenties. She often dressed as a school girl to hide her activities as she ran around Brussels. She worked with the Comet Line and continued with her nursing duties. One day the Gestapo came to the clinic where she worked, looking for her. The receptionist called her floor and warned her to escape before the agents found her.
Lily fled by way of the outer fire escape and a crossover leading to the building next door. She called to an acquaintance with an office near the outside door to let her in. He complied, and she was able to run down the stairs and out the building without being detected. From then on, Lily stayed on the move. She didn’t remain in one place for long and spent the night in various homes of Belgians she knew.
Lily’s work with the Comet Line kept her very busy. She coordinated transportation for the Allied airmen brought from the country to Brussels and found temporary homes for them. She distributed ration coupons, supplies, and food to the many safe houses in Brussels. She checked on the welfare of the airmen hiding in the city and worked with photographers to produce identity cards. Lily also recruited new individuals and families who were willing to provide safe houses for the airmen, especially after other were arrested for housing the soldiers.
Lily’s shrewdness kept her one step ahead of the Nazis, but in the winter of 1944, one year after Dedee’s arrest, Lily fled Brussels because the Gestapo was getting too close to her. Two of her close associates had been arrested, and instinct told her that the time to leave her native land had arrived. Before she left, Lily recruited trained agents to take her place escorting fliers and securing safe houses.
Lily traveled to Paris and then to Bayonne in the far south of France. She rendezvoused with Jean-Francois (Franco) who’d just crossed back into France after delivering airmen to the British diplomats in Spain. Lily explained the deteriorating situation in Brussels, and Jean-Francois immediately took the express train to Brussels to check out the situation. He planned to return south and coordinate a new operation for Lily. Eight days later, Jean-Francois was arrested and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in France, Belgium, and Germany.
Meanwhile, Lily waited in Anglet at Auntie Go’s house. Auntie Go, who was from Belgium and knew Lily previously, had been running the southern end of the Comet Line from the beginning.
After fleeing Belgium when the Gestapo was closing in on her, Lily went to Bayonne in the far south of France and met with Jean-Francois, the leader of the Comet Line. She warned him of serious problems with the network in Brussels. Jean-Francois, codename “Franco,” travelled to Brussels to check out the situation and upon his return to Paris walked into a trap set by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, Lily awaited word from Franco at Auntie Go’s house in Anglet, near Bayonne.
Several weeks later, Michael Creswell, the British attaché in Spain who took charge of the rescued airmen after they crossed the border, called Auntie Go, Lily, and Max, another operative, down to Madrid for a planning session. Lily was assigned to work with Max in Paris and also to work the line from Dax (north of Bayonne) to the Spanish border. Max would continue bringing airmen by train from Paris to Dax.
After crossing the Pyrenees for additional meetings with Creswell in February, Lily returned to Paris. She was to coordinate escapes in Paris along with Martine Noel, a dentist. Lily stored her belongings in Martine’s apartment. Lily wanted to speed up the escape procedures, so Martine set up a strategy session at a local restaurant for the new team of helpers.
The fellow who sat directly in front of Lily seemed vaguely familiar. “He was short and sandy-haired, with close-set eyes, strange and intense. He wore a garish purple coat along with a polka-dot tie. Abbé Beauvais, a priest who gave sanctuary to pilots when they came to Paris,” introduced the young Belgian as Pierre Boulain. Lily didn’t recognize the name, but she didn’t like the man. His polka-dot tie bothered her – it could be a signal.
The next day Lily left Paris with two British agents in danger of capture. They crossed the Pyrenees safely, and Lily returned to Auntie Go’s in Anglet. Because of the increased Allied bombings, main rail lines were damaged, and Lily arrived in Paris many days later than expected. When she called Martine’s apartment, a strange woman answered the phone and called Lily by her real name, Micheline, which Lily had not used in almost a year. No one in Paris knew her real name, or so she thought. The woman encouraged her to come by Martine’s apartment, but Lily knew better.
Lily headed to Martine’s dental office in the suburbs, but the concierge stopped her at the door. After informing her that Martine had been arrested, the concierge sent Lily to one of Martine’s friends. She learned that everyone at the restaurant had been arrested and sent to Fresnes Prison just outside the city of Paris. Fearing her own capture, Lily caught a train for Bayonne. She considered her options and decided to find out who was betraying the Comet Line to the enemy.
Lily returned to Paris and went straight to Fresnes Prison. At the prison gate, she asked to visit Martine and was promptly arrested. Although she was confined to a room by herself, Lily figured out the communication system used by the prisoners. They communicated at the sides of the walls and around corners using taps, echoes, and shouts. The jail was built in a classic hub-and-spoke design,” so the inmates tracked down Martine and brought her close to Lily’s room. Martine revealed that the traitor was Pierre Boulain. Lily finally remembered where she had seen the man before – in Brussels when he went by the name of Jean Masson.
Masson had obtained false identification papers for airmen traveling from Brussels to Paris and specialized in border crossings. He had attended a meeting at a safe house in Brussels two days before the Comet leader Monsieur de Jongh was arrested in Paris. “Up to now, Masson had protected his identity because all those who knew him were always arrested. Lily was the only one capable of breaking his cover.”
After spending two nights at the Fresnes prison, Lily was led to the prison warden. The birthdate on her French identification card indicated she was only seventeen, and he couldn’t accept the imprisonment of someone so young. The warden ordered Lily out of the prison immediately and told her the Gestapo was on the way. Lily left through the front gate. Shortly after, a German staff car passed her on the road, but the Gestapo officers inside didn’t even notice her.
After Lily’s release from her two-day stay in Fresnes Prison, she met with two MI-9 operatives in Paris who had recently returned from England. They had been assigned the task of setting up camps for downed Allied Airmen in Belgium and France. The airmen would gather and wait in these camps until they were liberated.
Lily informed Thomas and Daniel, the MI-9 operatives, that Pierre Boulain was Jean Masson, the traitor causing the arrest of Comet Line agents and helpers. Lily had learned this from Martine, her friend who was imprisoned at Fresnes. Thomas and Daniel were incredulous. Not only had Masson come to them highly recommended, but he had provided expert assistance to the Comet Line, and they’d hired him to help establish the escape camp in Belgium.
Thomas and Daniel wanted more proof of Masson’s treachery than just the word of Martine. Daniel had already arranged to meet with Masson at an outdoor cafe near the Place de la Concorde the next day, so Lily arrived early and sat a ways off, reading a magazine. Daniel reached the cafe, and then Masson showed up with a woman. Lily knew without a doubt that Pierre Boulain was Jean Masson. After he and the woman left, Daniel found Lily, and she confirmed her previous accusation regarding the traitor. Daniel still wasn’t convinced and told Lily to follow Masson and see what happened. She agreed.
Lily crossed the Seine River and walked in the direction she had seen Masson and the woman go. Lily spotted them by the Chamber of Deputies, a place where Masson shouldn’t be. He looked up and their eyes made contact, and it was obvious in his expression that he’d been caught. Lily turned back the way she had come, and Masson followed. They both increased their pace, but when Lily reached an entrance to the Metro station, she raced down the circular stairway. A train came into the station, and she was able to gain entrance without being spotted.
The next day Lily returned to Auntie Go in Bayonne and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain on May 11th. Personnel at the British consulate drove her to Madrid to meet with Creswell, and he convinced her to leave for England. “MI9 gave her a commission as an officer in the British Army. They told her she was needed in London to help organize for intelligence operations once the invasion started.” Creswell did not want her to return to France and be arrested by the Nazis.
Lily stayed in England, working for MI9, until after the Germans left France. She met a young Belgian who also worked for British intelligence, and they married while they were both still in uniform. She returned to Paris to help locate MI9 agents and missing airmen in the fall of 1944.
Masson met with Daniel one more time after his confrontation with Lily. Gestapo agents and French Resistance members surrounded them, although they remained in the background. Masson was hoping to get the money promised him to set up the Belgian camp for Allied Airmen, which he would have pocketed and then turned the airmen in. Daniel reported Masson to the French Resistance who sent an agent to kill him. A man was killed, but it wasn’t Masson.
Nadine, Lily’s sister who was imprisoned in 1942, survived her time in Ravensbruck and returned home to Belgium after the war.
Jean-Francois was convicted by a German military tribunal and sent to concentration camps in Germany in 1944. He survived the war.
Dedee was held in prisons in France and Belgium and then sent to Ravensbruck. She survived the war and later became a missionary to Africa.
Jean Masson continued to capture Allied Airmen and turn them over to the Gestapo even after D-Day and the Germans were retreating from France. The Germans sent many airmen to POW camps, but some were sent to concentration camps and died there. Masson made a fatal mistake when he resurfaced and volunteered to work as an agent for the Allies. His photo was obtained, and Lily identified him. He was captured, convicted, and sentenced to death. His last words before he was executed were, “Heil Hitler.”
The Comet Line was responsible for leading over one thousand Allied Airmen safely out of Belgium and France and into the hands of the British in Spain. Hundreds of members of the organization were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis, but those who survived the war testified that they had aided the Allies because . . . it was the right thing to do.
Resources:
The Freedom Line by Peter Eisner. HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Little Cyclone by Airey Neave. Biteback Publishing Ltd, 2013, 2016.