Elvire De Greef (Tante Go)
Florentino Goicoechea
Eugene Dumon (Tom)
Michael Rogers (Max)
Albert Johnson (B)
Elvire De Greef (Tante Go)
Tante Go was a heroine and the dynamic force behind the Comet Line in the south of France. Her safe houses were primarily the last ones used before evaders trudged over the Pyrenees into Spain. Her safe house had been established in an abandoned farm, Villa Voisin, approximately eighteen miles from the Spanish border in Anglet, France.
Tante Go, a very strange code name, had been derived from her dog, Gogo, as a means of identifying her to the first airmen to spend the night at her home before crossing the Pyrenees. The code name remained the same for the remainder of the war.
A very clever woman, Elvire was arrested only once by the local German police. She announced to her interrogators with no fanfare that she would reveal the names of all the Germans in the area of Bayonne, Urrugne, and Anglet, who were dealing in selling goods to locals on the black market. According to German military law, such action was forbidden and punishable by death from a firing squad. Needless to say, she was released immediately and never again arrested. Her husband, Fernand, was an interpreter for the Germans in the area and stood by her side throughout the war.
Along with Jean-Francois Nothomb and Micheline Dumon, Elvire DeGreef was part of the three longest serving Comet Line members in World War II.
She died in Brussels on September 3, 1991 at the age of 94. She had earlier been awarded Britain’s Highest Honor…The George Medal.
Florentino Goicoechea
Following several years of successful trips over the Pyrenees with evaders from 1941 to June 1944, Florentino was badly wounded by German machine gun fire and captured in his beloved mountains as he was heading home from Spain after delivering valuable papers to the British consulate in Madrid. After being rescued in a most daring rescue operation led by Fernand De Greef, Tante Go’s husband, Florentino ended up being crippled by his wounds.
He returned to his village of Ciboure following his recuperation at a safe house owned by his dear friend, Elvire De Greef. Ciboure is just outside the city of St. Jean de Luz, on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
He loved living in French Basque country and after the war was employed in the municipal government there. Because of the severity of his wounds in 1944, Florentino’s climbing days were over. But the memories of his many exploits with Dedee, Tante Go, Franco, and Lily would never go away.
Florentino Goicoechea died in Ciboure, France on July 27, 1980 at the age of 82.
Eugene Dumon(Tom)
The father of Lily and Nadine, Eugene Dumon had been imprisoned by the Germans at Gross-Rosen concentration camp. In the spring of 1945, just before the liberation, SS guards were about to move the prisoners in the camp as Russian troops approached the concentration camp. As the guards had no place to move the prisoners to, the railroad cars where they were cramped into were set afire and all the prisoners inside the railroad cars were burned alive.
It was assumed that Dr. Eugene Dumon was among those perishing in one of the railroad cars.
Michael Rogers (Max)
Max continued his evasion work in the south of France until the Comet Line was disbanded in 1944 shortly after the invasion of Normandy on June sixth. He was never arrested. Following the war, in the early stages of the conflict of Vietnam in the late 1950s, Max was killed in action in French Indo China before any American involvement in Vietnam.
Albert Johnson (B)
Albert Johnson stayed with Elvire DeGreef (Tante Go) and her husband as their gardener and handy man throughout the war until the Comet Line was disbanded. He made a total of thirteen trips with a total of one hundred-twenty-two men over the Pyrenees between June 1941 and March 1943. He was in the end arrested by the Germans, but Elvire DeGreef used her husband’s knowledge of the black-market dealings of the Germans, and a threat to expose them resulted in his release after only one day. It no longer was safe for B to stay in France, so he left for Spain and worked for MI9.
After the war, he was appointed to the Awards Bureau, a branch of MI9 in Paris, where he met and married Wendy Chamier in 1946. Wendy also worked for the Paris Awards Bureau. After living in Paris for a short while, they moved to Australia when that country sought British immigrants in 1951. He and his wife ended up in Tasmania where B found work with the HydroElectric Company in nearby Hobart.
In March 1953, following constant stomach pains, an exploratory operation revealed that he had cancer.
Albert Johnson died in St. John’s Hospital, Hobart on February 3, 1954 at the age of forty-five.