This is a potted history of the Comet Line and I ask for your understanding for this necessarily abbreviated version of historical events. There are bound to be those who I'll leave out in this and subsequent posts.
The German blitzkreig in May-June 1940 overwhelmed the defences of Holland, Belgium & France and forced the evacuation from Dunkirk of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Inspired to action by the deeds of
Edith Cavell, Andrée De Jongh, a 24 year old Belgian nurse, decided that she had to do something to help the Allied cause. As she herself put it in typically uncompromising fashion:
"When war was declared I knew what needed to be done. There was no hesitation. We could not stop what we had to do although we knew the cost. Even if it was at the expense of our lives, we had to fight until the last breath."
Dédée, as she was better known, decided to created an escape route for stranded British soldiers (of which there were many in Belgium post-Dunkirk).
The situation wasn't promising.. the Channel ports were heavily guarded and it didn't seem possible that she could lead soldiers back to Britain from there. So, undaunted and funded by the sale of her personal jewellery, she set off by train to south west France with a Scottish soldier and two Belgian volunteers.
After crossing the Pyrenees on foot, she presented herself at the British Consulate at Bilbao and requested support for further passages. The consular staff displayed understandable scepticism and disbelief about her story and it was only the intervention of Michael Cresswell, a young diplomat at the Madrid Embassy, that saved the day. He decided that she was 'kosher' and said that Britain would fund the network with one proviso: that only
aircrew would be repatriated. Dédée's response was positive but she insisted that the network had to remain under Belgian control. And that's how it remained to the end of the war.
The network was first known as the "Dédée Line" - only becoming the Comet Line later on in the war. Its aim was to shelter, feed, clothe and provide false papers to shot-down Allied airmen and guide them over the long and hazardous journey from Brussels to the Spanish border. From there, the evaders would be collected by diplomatic car and driven to Madrid and then Gibraltar for return to Britain by sea or air. Comet's motto was "Pugna Quin Percutias" ("Fight without killing").
The Comet Line comprised some 2,000 dedicated volunteer helpers and a chain of safe houses that stretched from Brussels to Paris and on down through occupied France to the Basque country. Having escorted her small groups of evaders on the express train from Paris to Bayonne, she would join up with the legendary Basque guide and former smuggler Florentino Goikoetxea and together they would lead the aviators over the Pyrenees on foot at night and into the hands of British diplomatic staff based in 'neutral' Spain. Hundreds of Allied airmen and others were helped by the Comet Line network to escape the grisly clutches of the Third Reich.
Florentino was a smuggler by trade and when he was presented to the King at Buckingham Palace at the end of the war for the award of the King's Medal, the King asked him through an interpreter what he did for a living? He famously replied that he was 'in the import and export business'.
Map
here.
More to follow.