Liberation
The Allied forces had entered Belgium on September 2, 1944 and within days the Belgian government was returned to power when the Allied forces captured Brussels two days later.
On February 4, 1945, the liberation of Belgium from German occupation became a reality. But it took nearly six months to make the entire country free of German troops.
Michou and Pierre were preparing to be part of a huge team of MI9 members who were to be sent to Belgium to retrieve and process remaining airmen in the escape camps set up there. It was crucial that their work be without error to prevent the possible infiltration of German agents among the camp residents.
“I worry, Pierre, at what has happened to all my family, not only my mother and father and my sister Andree, but my Comet family,” Michou sighed as they arrived in Brussels in mid-September.
“I don’t know, Michou. For many, it has been a few years now since we have heard anything about them. The only one you had seen was your mother about a year ago before you left for Madrid. If they are alive, we will find them,” Pierre answered.
“Dedee was taken nearly two years ago, Jerome and Jean-Francois shortly after that. So many of them are gone, and for what? For five years we have lived under the Germans, five years! My sister always believed that evil would be destroyed one day. Who would have thought that it would take five years?”
Once the Belgium evaders’ camps had been cleared, Michou and Pierre were part of the same MI9 team destined to do the same with the camps in Paris in October 1944.
While Paris had been liberated in late August 1944, the rest of France still included thousands of hostile German soldiers struggling to hold their positions. It would be months before all of France would be free of Germans.