Jacque Desoubrie
a.k.a. Jean Masson
Jacque Desoubrie was born October 22, 1922 in Luigne, Belgium, the illegitimate son of a Belgian doctor. As was the case with Prosper Dezitter, Desoubrie was a drifter, never having a proper home and abandoned by his mother at an early age. For a time in early adulthood, he served as an electrician. But when World War II broke out, the teenager eagerly accepted the doctrines of the Nazi party. He adored The Fuhrer.
He entered the Gestapo in 1941 and began to serve as a double agent by infiltrating the ranks of resistance groups and escape networks like the Comet Line. His first major arrest was Frederic de Jongh, Dedee’s father, in Brussels after infiltrating the Comet Line in June 1943. As a precaution, he laid low for the next six months so that any Comet Line members from June who were still around would not associate him with Frederic de Jongh’s arrest.
However, as December 1943 arrived, Desoubrie, still using the alias of Jean Masson, reappeared. He lived at 29 rue de Douai, where he had two apartments, one for his own family, the other for German friends and the one used to entrap escaping airmen. Although unmarried, he had two children and a loving mistress. But he also was known to lead a wild life, drinking and carousing at many of Paris’s nightclubs, and could be seen in the company of another Gestapo infiltrator, Prosper Dezitter and his mistress, Florie Dings.
When Jerome arrived by train to Paris, he immediately went to his apartment on rue de Longchamp. As he entered the apartment, he was greeted by the Gestapo, who had been alerted of Jerome’s address by none other than Jean Masson.
“Hello, Jerome. I’m surprised you were alone in the apartment. Although I expect there will be others coming, won’t there?” Masson asked with a smile on his face. “Someone like Franco can’t be too far behind, can he?”
“I don’t know who you are talking about. Who’s Franco?” Jerome answered.
“You will talk, Jerome,” Masson sneered.
Jerome was brutally tortured by the Gestapo at their headquarters before he finally passed out. He was whipped until his back was bleeding. Then he was hung with his hands handcuffed to his back, and was beaten while suspended. Seven of his ribs were broken. Yet he wouldn’t talk and the beatings stopped while they decided what to do with him next.
* * *
Just before Franco left Brussels, he was asked to take a young Belgian with him who wanted to get to England. Reluctant to pass up a chance to bring someone across the border to France, he agreed. To avoid suspicion, Franco rode a bicycle with the Belgian sitting on the handlebar all the way to Lille. From there, they boarded a train to Paris, arriving early in the morning. As they knocked on Jerome’s apartment door on rue de Longchamp a short time later, they were surprised to confront two Gestapo agents in the flat, one pointing a gun at them.
“You are Franco,” one of the Gestapo men said as he pulled out a photo from the pocket of his long black coat.
Franco merely smiled at the man.
“If it’s me you want, fine. But this young teenage boy’s only crime is that he wants to get to London. He is not an escaped prisoner or an airman, just a boy.”
The agent took both of them to Gestapo headquarters and realized the boy knew nothing about the Comet Line, nor was he an escaped prisoner, and they never touched him.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Franco. Perhaps you have heard of me. I am Jean Masson.”
Franco stared at this traitor with fire in his eyes. This was the man who had arrested Dedee’s father and so many other members of the Comet Line in Belgium and northern France, the man Franco wished he could tell others about to stop his infiltration.
“I know how much you must hate me now, but you have to admit I’m good at what I do. Without you and Jerome, and whoever we arrest running the Brussels link, there won’t be anything left of your organization. And the best part, Franco, is that nobody on the street knows who I am. I’m going to get rid of your group one by one,” Masson asserted as he rose to leave. “I have nothing more to say to you. These men will ask you questions now, and if I were you, I would answer or else they may not be as gentle with you as I have been.”
Following four days of interrogations, Franco was puzzled that he had not so much as received a single beating or torture. On the fifth day of capture and while handcuffed to a chair in the Gestapo’s interrogation room, whether by mistake or to scare him into talking, the Gestapo led a tortured man into the same room Franco was in. The man was nearly unrecognizable, but Franco knew it was Jerome.
Not having much success in getting Franco to answer any questions, he thought for certain the torturing was about to begin. A new interrogator entered the room as soon as Jerome was led away.
“Look, Franco, we have knowledge of your running the escape line in southern France, while Jerome ran the Paris operation. But it doesn’t seem possible for a person as young as you to be the leader.”
“I take orders like the rest of our people do,” he answered.
“But who do you take orders from, that is the question?” the interrogator asked.
Suddenly, as if a flashing idea came to Franco, he remembered Jacques Cartier who had drowned in the Bidassoa River attempting to cross over into Spain with the Bob Grimes group in late December. If the interrogator wanted the name of someone older running the southern France operation, Cartier was fifty-two.
“I take orders from Jacques Cartier,” he blurted.
“And where is this Jacques Cartier today?”
“He’s dead. He drowned a few weeks ago in the Bidassoa.”
“And how old was your Jacques Cartier?”
“Fifty-two.”
“And you expect me to believe the person running your operation drowned?”
“Check with the German border police. They pulled out his body.”
After a telephone call to the German police who corroborated Franco’s story, they had no further use of him and sent him to Fresnes prison, and then to St. Gilles in Belgium, where Dedee had also been imprisoned for a time. The prison detained people who had played some role in the resistance, or were suspected of doing so. The five huge wings of the prison all joined together in a central hub. Just like the disbelief that Dedee could run a successful escape network at her young age, the Gestapo dismissed the possibility that Franco could also run it at such a young age.
The first time you visualize Fresnes Prison, you envision the Pentagon, a massive complex of buildings in a gigantic square, all self-enclosed like a massive concrete and stone fortress would be. Fresnes is the second largest prison in France. During the war, the Germans used the facility to temporarily hold those accused of crimes against the Nazi government until their eventual trial or judgment was handed down. Most prisoners would end up being transferred to prisons elsewhere, to work camps, or to concentration camps in Germany.
St. Gilles Prison is located in the town of St. Gilles, Belgium, on the border of Brussels. It was built in the early 1880s in the style of a castle with its crenellated towers and medieval Tudor look, imitating a Crusades-era fortress. The prison is surrounded by eighteen foot rectangular walls nearly a thousand yards long.