Comet (escape network)

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Réseau Comète (English: Network Comet ) is the name of a network of the Belgian and French Resistance during World War II that helped Allied soldiers - especially members of the Air Force - to return to Great Britain from areas occupied by German troops .

Origin, functionality and effect

Andrée de Jongh on the occasion of an award ceremony in 1946

The extensive escape network, later known as the Réseau Comète , was founded in 1940 by a Belgian woman who was only twenty-four at the time and who had joined her country's resistance against the German occupiers. Andrée de Jongh , known as Dédée , was working as a nurse in Brussels at the time.

De Jongh's decision to resist through escape assistance was inspired by an idol of her youth: the British nurse Edith Cavell helped Allied soldiers to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands at the beginning of the First World War. Cavell was therefore shot by the German occupiers in Schaerbeek in 1915.

Many of the soldiers who were being looked after by the escape helpers were re-dressed in Brussels, given false identity documents and then hidden until they left. The network had set up several routes through which the refugees were then directed. One of the typical routes led from Brussels or Lille to Paris and then via Tours , Bordeaux and Bayonne over the Pyrenees to San Sebastián and neutral Spain. From there the refugees traveled to Bilbao , Madrid and finally Gibraltar . There were also three other important routes: A so-called Pat Line (after its founder Albert Guérisse alias Pat O'Leary ) led from Paris to Toulouse , via Limoges and then over the Pyrenees and Esterri d'Aneu to Barcelona . An additional Pat Line went from Paris to Dijon , Lyon , Avignon , Marseille , then to Nîmes , Perpignan and Barcelona; from there the refugees were directed to Gibraltar. The third route - the Shelbourne Line - ran northwards: from Paris to Rennes and Saint-Brieuc in Brittany , from where the men crossed to Dartmouth on the British coast.

De Jongh worked since August 1941 with members of the British military intelligence service MI9 , some of whom were stationed in Spain; the “caretakers” of the network were Airey Neave , Major Norman Crockatt, and Lieutenant James Langley.

Anyone who helped to escape was putting his life at risk and risking reprisals for his own family. From November 1942 the activities of the network became even more dangerous, as southern France was now also occupied by the Germans and the whole country was thus directly under the rule of the occupiers. Many members of the network have been betrayed; Hundreds were arrested by the Secret Field Police and the Abwehr , only to be executed after weeks of interrogation and torture, for example in Fresnes Prison near Paris, or to be declared prisoners under the Night and the Fog . These prisoners were taken to German prisons, later also to concentration camps such as the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women, as well as Mauthausen-Gusen , Buchenwald , or Flossenbürg . Andrée de Jongh and numerous other members of the network were sent to these camps; many of them died of the abuse and hardship they suffered there.

The Réseau Comète alone saved around 800 soldiers. It is estimated that a total of 2,373 soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth and 2,700 Americans reached the British Isles through such escape networks during the Second World War. The RAF Escaping Society assumes a total of around 14,000 escape helpers for 1945.

Significant members

  • Andrée de Jongh , ( code name Dédée ): founder and head of the escape network. She was arrested on January 15, 1943, but survived several camps. De Jongh has received many awards for her services.
  • Frédéric de Jongh, (alias Paul ): father of Andrée de Jongh. He was arrested on June 7, 1943 and executed on March 28, 1944.
  • Monique de Bissy: She was arrested in March 1944 and released in September 1944.
  • Baron Jean Greindl, (code name Nemo ): Head of the Brussels network. He was arrested on February 6, 1943 and killed on September 7, 1943.
  • Elvire de Greef, (code name Aunt Go ). Responsible for the south of France; escaped arrest and survived. She was awarded the British George Medal .
  • Jean-François Nothomb, (code name Franco ). Successor to de Jongh in France; Detained January 18, 1944; Survivor of several concentration camps; awarded the Distinguished Service Order .
  • Count Jacques Legrelle (code name Jérôme ): responsible for Paris and the surrounding area; was the connection between the Belgian part of the network and the southern French section. He was arrested, tortured, taken to concentration camps, and survived. Award: the George Medal .
  • Count Antoine d'Ursel (alias Jacques Cartier ): successor to Baron Jean Greindl in Brussels. He died while crossing the Franco-Spanish border on December 24, 1943.
  • Micheline Dumon (alias Michou ), escaped arrest; awarded the George Medal .
  • Ninette Hélène Jeanty , she hid a shot down British pilot near Brussels for the network, her husband Paul was therefore executed by the Germans, she survived and became active in matters of international reconciliation and pacifism after 1945 .

Literary and dramaturgical representations

  • Airey Neave: The Little Cyclone . Hodder & Stoughton, 1986
  • Airey Neave: Saturday at MI9. The Classic Account of the WW2 Allied Escape Organization . Leo Cooper ISBN 1-84415-038-0
  • John Nichol (British Air Force officer), Tony Rennel: Home Run - Escape from Nazi Europe . Penguin 2007 ISBN 0-141901233
  • James M. Langley, MRD Foot: MI9 - Escape & Evasion 1939-1945 . Bodley Head 1979 ISBN 0-370300866
  • Sherri Greene Ottis: Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground 2001 . University Press of Kentucky 2009 ISBN 0-813193338
  • Major ASB Arkwright: Return Journey - Escape from Oflag VI B . Seeley Service, London 1948
  • Kristin Hannah : The Nightingale. St. Martin's Press, 2015
  • Riding the Comet . Play by Mark Violi
  • Secret Army . BBC television series 1977–1979

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. See e.g. B. the report in the Telegraph.
  2. ^ John Nichol, Tony Rennell, Escape from Nazi Europe, p. 470.
  3. An autobiographical report on the escape with the help of the network.