Andrée de Jongh.
Sherri Greene Ottis
A WOMAN CRAWLED silently through the tall grass on the banks of the Somme River. She could almost reach out and touch the beams of light emanating from the German patrol searchlights. Had she been seen? No, not yet. She and the man who was with her continued to crawl through the grass, searching for the rowboat they needed. Finally they saw it. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, but some campers had suddenly pitched their tents just a few yards away. The man and woman had to change their plans. They could have easily swum across the river, but a good portion of the 11 people traveling with them could not, and they were there to help those people. But how could they help them without a boat?
The woman suddenly had an idea. She told the man to search the farmhouses in the area for something that could be used as a lifebelt. As she waited for him to return, the woman kept a wary eye on the German patrols and on the group of travelers who were hiding nervously in the nearby bushes.
Hours later, the man returned with an inner tube and gave the woman a signal to send the first passenger. The woman helped the first passenger, a very large man, onto the tube and pushed it from behind. Her view was blocked, but she knew she had reached the other side of the river when her foot finally touched bottom. Then she took the inner tube back for the next passenger.
After one and a half hours, the woman had safely pushed all 11 travelers across the river. This river crossing was a small part of a larger and very important journey, and not only for these travelers who were seeking to escape the Germans. It was also the trial run for an escape line—spanning from Brussels, Belgium, all the way into Spain, a total of 1,200 miles—that would enable Allied servicemen to escape Nazi-occupied Belgium. The woman’s name was Andrée de Jongh, and the escape line she was testing that night in the cold waters of the Somme River would eventually be called the Comet Line, so named for its unusual swiftness.
Andrée de Jongh was a native of Brussels, Belgium, a 25-year-old artist and a nurse-in-training when the Germans overran Belgium in the spring of 1940. She had been inspired to study nursing by Edith Cavell, the heroic British nurse who was executed in Brussels by a firing squad during World War I because she had helped British servicemen escape from German-occupied Belgium.
Andrée’s father, Frederic, who had lived through that previous war, broke down in tears of rage and despair when he saw the Germans march into Brussels, Belgium’s capital city. Andrée, who had never seen her father cry before, comforted him by saying, “You’ll see what we’ll do to them. You’ll see, they are going to lose this war. They started it, but they are going to lose it.”
When Andrée realized there were Allied servicemen trapped inside Belgium because they had attempted to assist the Belgian army against the Nazi invasion, she organized a series of safe houses in and around Brussels where the servicemen could hide, receive civilian clothing (to disguise the fact that they were Allied servicemen), and secure false identity papers. They couldn’t stay there forever, though; they had to get back to England somehow. The path back to England was through France, over the Pyrenees Mountains, into neutral Spain, then home to Great Britain.
SPAIN DURING WORLD WAR II Spain was officially a neutral country during World War II, but its government was Fascist. Its leader, General Franco, had emerged triumphant from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) after receiving military help from the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy. Franco didn’t want to anger Hitler by openly allowing Allied refugees into Spain, but he also didn’t want to offend the Allied countries who supplied him with certain domestic products. This caused a hit-or-miss situation for those trying to escape from Nazi-occupied France into Spain. If Allied refugees could get past the German guards on the French side of the border, they were sometimes arrested by Franco’s men on the Spanish side. And while some of these refugees were handed over to the Germans, others were able to get out of jail more easily than if they had been arrested by the Germans on the French side. If they were placed in Spanish refugee camps, British diplomats working at the British embassy in Spain were sometimes able to free them.
After the trial run that had taken her back and forth across the cold waters of the Somme River, Andrée was determined to try again. She and Arnold Depée, the man who had helped her in the trial run, couldn’t agree on the relative safety of the main route, so they split up, intending to meet just south of the Belgian-French border. Andrée waited and waited at the appointed meeting place, but Arnold didn’t come. Andrée felt she had to continue on with her “parcels,” as she called the servicemen.
Andrée soon discovered that all of the people in the Comet Line’s trial run had been arrested shortly after crossing the Spanish-French border. She realized that for the escape line to be effective, she would need direct contact with the authorities at the British consulate in Spain: they would certainly ensure the Allied servicemen’s safety.
But there was one problem: the mountain guide who had been hired to escort Andrée and the soldiers across the Pyrenees on this second trip did not want to take Andrée with him. He didn’t think that a slim, petite young woman would be able to keep up with him, an experienced hiker, on the two 10-hour treks necessary to cross the Pyrenees. But Andrée refused to be denied, and the mountain guide reluctantly set out with his travelers across the Pyrenees.
Several days later, Andrée appeared in the offices of the British consulate in Balboa, Spain, telling the British official there who she was and why she was there.
“I am a Belgian, and have come all the way from Brussels. I have brought you two Belgians who want to fight for the Allies, and a Scottish soldier. We left Brussels last week and crossed the Pyrenees two nights ago.”
The British vice consul looked at tiny Andrée, neatly dressed in a blouse and skirt. He didn’t believe her story, especially about her having crossed the rough Pyrenees Mountains. He was convinced that she was a German spy. He asked her how she had gotten over the Pyrenees.
She explained that she had hired a mountain guide, and then she continued: “There are many British soldiers and airmen hidden in Brussels, most of them survivors from Dunkirk [the final point of the Allied retreat during the Battle of France]. I can bring them through to you if you will let me. With money, we can find guides to cross the mountains.” Andrée wanted no pay except to be reimbursed for the mountain guide fee and for the food the men had eaten.
The vice consul was still incredulous. “But you—you are a young girl. You are not going to cross the Pyrenees again?”
Andrée patiently explained that she was as strong as a man and, besides, girls attracted less attention from police in that area, given that no one would believe that females could possibly be part of an escape line. She continued: “With your help I can bring through more Englishmen. I beg of you to let me.”
The British official eventually agreed. He asked how soon she could come back with another group of men. She said it would take three or four weeks.
“Then bring three more men with you,” he said.
A U.S. air crew that flew missions over occupied France and Nazi Germany. When Andrée and her team found Allied servicemen, they had to get civilian clothing for them.
Teune family collection
Andrée did just that. During 32 crossings back and forth through the Comet Line, she personally escorted 118 Allied servicemen to safety. She was finally stopped on January 15, 1943, at a safe house in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the last stop on the Comet Line, where she and three Allied servicemen were arrested by the Germans. When interrogated, she wouldn’t surrender any names but eventually admitted that she had been in charge of the Comet Line. The Germans didn’t believe her. But because she wouldn’t cooperate by betraying anyone else, she was sent to the Mauthausen and then to the Ravensbruck concentration camps.
The Comet Line was so well organized that it continued successfully in Andrée’s absence, eventually helping approximately 700 Allied servicemen, including many Americans, reach freedom. Hundreds of people working the line, including Andrée’s father, Frederic, who had taken charge of the Belgian portion of the line, were captured and murdered by the Nazis.
Andrée survived her ordeal in the concentration camps and received numerous awards from the governments of Belgium, France, Great Britain, and the United States. After regaining her health, she went to work as a nurse in a leper colony in the African Congo. When her health and sight began to fail, she returned to Brussels, where she died in 2007 at the age of 90.
LEARN MORE “Airmen Remember Comet Line to Freedom”
BBC News Online
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/988881.stm
This article quotes former Allied airmen who escaped through the Comet Line.
Little Cyclone by Airey Neave (Hodder and Stoughton, 1954, reprinted by Coronet Books, 1986). A biography of Andreé and the Comet Line.
Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground by Sherri Greene Ottis (University Press of Kentucky, 2001) contains a lengthy section on the Comet Line.