Page 31 - issue17.05.2019

Royal Air Force News Friday, May 17, 2019 P23

Heroes in the shadows Feature

The remarkable people who risked their lives running WWII escape lines

HEROES: Dedee (left) and Guerisse (in uniform above) feature in the book (inset)

Simon Mander The Belgian
HE SECRET underground networks
that helped RAF pilots on the run in
TOccupied Europe return home to fight
again are revealed in a new book.
Using the contemporary diaries and
memoirs of former POWs, author Brian
Fleming uncovers the people who ran five
Allied escape lines. connection
And two of them were crucial to rescuing
airmen whose return was prioritised because
of the wartime shortage of pilots and the cost
and time it took to replace them.
At its peak, one of the clandestine groups
covered the whole of France. found by a farmer and recovering enough to to cross as security was more lax than usual.
Centred around Marseille, it was led by an get a train to Brussels. Meanwhile, O’Leary’s group was AIREY AIREY
extraordinary former Belgian army doctor, There the Comet Line, as it was called, working on less hazardous means of NEAVE:NEAVE:
Albert Marie Guerisse, who used the cover linked him up with the Poles and they were transport using the trawler Tarana and Tory MP Tory MP
name Pat O’Leary. taken to Quievrain, where they were met by two fishing boats manned by Poles and MI9 and MI9
officer officer
According to Fleming: Dedee and crossed the Somme by boat then equipped with radios to evacuate told of told of
‘In the later months of 1942 the Pat Line was entered Paris before evening curfew. evaders and escapers by sea. the huge the huge
a very extensive organisation. All in all, there Fleming takes up the story: This meant those on the run could be risks risks
taken taken
were about 250 volunteers involved. ‘They boarded a train to Bayonne at the taken straight to Gibraltar avoiding the by those by those
‘As an organisation it could perform with Gare d’Austerlitz. By chance, all the carriages, often pro-Nazi Spanish authorities. helping helping
great efficiency. An airman crash landing in save the one they were in, were occupied by people people
northern France could be picked up on the same German soldiers. Fortuitously, the lights in the he book, Heroes in the Shadows escape escape
night, supplied with civilian clothing and forged compartment fused as the train left the station T(Amberley Publishing), focuses on the Nazis the Nazis
during during
papers, and within less than two weeks was and the journey was completed in darkness.’ some extraordinary examples of often WWIIWWII
likely to be back in England.’ unsung heroism for which the civilians
he group were also introduced to a carrying them out were risking certain
second escape line which helped airmen Ttactic known as ‘operation water closet’ death.
A downed in the Low Countries return whereby one of their resistance helpers had As Colditz escapee and former
to their units via the Iberian Peninsula was obtained a duplicate key to the back door Tory MP Airey Neave – who
founded and led by another Belgian – a of the platform toilets which opened to the worked for a while for MI9
charismatic and determined young woman street, which they used to avoid checkpoints. which specialised in helping
called Andree de Jongh, better known as The four crossed the Pyrenees on foot escapers – pointed out,
Dedee. were picked up by a Spanish supporter and if he was recaptured he
One group she escorted to freedom the three airmen got back to Glasgow by boat would benefit from
consisted of three RAF pilots, one Canadian – on January 4, 1942. the protection of the
John Ives – and two Poles. The biggest group Dedee took across the Geneva Convention.
Ives was shot down over eastern Belgium mountains in 1941 was a group of seven men: But those who helped
on August 18/19, 1941, and hid in a wood for five pilots, a Belgian army officer and one of him, and their families,
four days, contracting dysentery before being the line’s helpers – choosing Christmas Day would be shot.