Escape Lines of World War 2

There were many escape lines and networks (reseaux) formed in Europe during World War 2, some large and many quite modest, some operating successfully for long periods and others cut tragically short. Most of the smaller reseaux joined the larger ones at some point and so attempting to name and categorise each one is both pointless and liable to do a disservice to the many brave individuals who took part in this dangerous work. We have included details here of just three of the better known Lines but intend to add much more - contributions from readers would also be appreciated.

The Pat O'Leary Line (by Keith Janes)

The Pat O'Leary escape line is best known for bringing escaping and evading servicemen down from the north of France to Marseille and then over the Pyrenees to Spain - many hundreds of men where brought home in this way. The Line began in late 1940 when groups of stranded soldiers from Dunkirk and St Valery were helped by French and Belgian civilians, firstly to evade capture, or more often recapture, by the occupying Germans, and then to travel to the relative safety of the southern zone non-occupée. In Marseille the servicemen formed their own organisation to get men across the mountains to Spain but by early 1941 these two groups (and many others) were working together, with regular guides and couriers being used to bring men south and across the Pyrenees in organised parties. Contact had also been established with the security services in London. Despite a wave of arrests in Paris and the north in December 1941 following the capture of one of its former couriers, the Line expanded its activities in 1942 to include escapers who had made it to Switzerland being brought to join the Line in Marseille. It also arranged sea evacuations to take some of the men from southern French beaches direct to Gibraltar until the German occupation of the south of France in November ended these naval operations. In early 1943, infiltration by enemy agents resulted in another series of arrests that almost finished the line but Françoise Dissard continued to return downed aircrew through Toulouse until the end of the war.

Keith Janes is the son of army escaper and Pat Line parcel Peter Janes. For more details of his study of the Pat O'Leary Line click here to be connected to Keith's website at "www.conscript-heroes.com".

The Story of the Comete Line (by John Clinch)

The Comete Line was Belgian escape and evasion network that assisted escaped and evading British soldiers and downed Allied airmen stay out of the hands of the German occupiers and return to freedom.

In May 1940, German forces attacked neutral Belgium and the Netherlands and in June, went on to defeat the British and French armies. France, Belgium and the Netherlands were occupied. In Belgium the King had surrendered the armed forces but many Belgians wanted to continue the war in any way they could. At first, this resistance took the form of visiting British soldiers and airmen who had been injured in the fighting in Belgium. The wounded had been left behind in hospitals when the British army retreated. Then the Germans began bringing thousands of British prisoners of war captured at St Valery-en-Caux. These soldiers were made to march many miles per day on their way to the trains and barges that were to take them to prisoner of war camps in the east of the German Reich. The prisoners were lightly guarded and escape was relatively easy, so by the time the columns of prisoners reached Belgium, dozens of them were slipping away and finding shelter with sympathetic villagers and farmers. There, many of the soldiers stayed, through the summer and autumn, well fed and cared for, but with no obvious route home.

By Christmas 1940 it became crucial that, for the safety of their protectors, the soldiers were moved on, as the consequences of being caught by the Gestapo for harbouring British soldiers were serious. One man who was instrumental in moving many of the soldiers to Brussels was Baron Jacques Donny, he organised the move of the soldiers to safe houses and financed their food and false papers. It is probable that at about this time, the start of 1941, the first plans to take the soldiers by train to the south of France were made and thought given as to how to cross the Pyrenees into neutral [technically non-belligerent] but still hostile Spain.

The soldiers staying in Brussels were moved from safe house to safe house but they also used the bars and cafes and even took jobs to help earn their keep. Many of them learned speak to French and perhaps even Flemish and could more or less be taken for locals. Because of this the security of the group was not what it should have been, with helpers and soldiers socialising openly around the city.

By August 1941, two things happened that were to propel the network of friends into a fully-fledged escape organisation. Firstly the arrival of the first evading Royal Air Force aircrews and secondly the crack down on the network by the German security forces, the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP) who were the plainclothes military police and agents of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence. The RAF had started its bombing campaign on targets in north-western Germany' s industrial cities and ports. The route the bombers flew often took them over Belgium and the Netherlands so whenever a bomber was attacked by fighters or crippled by antiaircraft fire the likelihood was that it would crash in Belgium or that the crew would wait, if they could, until over Belgium before bailing out. It was realised that the safe return of aircrew to Britain and active service could be a very useful contribution to the overall war effort by the Belgian friends. In August 1941 a young Belgian girl named Andrée De Jongh, known as "Dedée" guided a Scottish Gordon Highlander named James Cromar south. Travelling with two Belgians who wanted to join the fight against Germany, they set off through France on their way to freedom. Using trains and carrying false papers as far as natural border between France and Spain, they walked across the Pyrenees to reach the British Consulate in Bilbao. In September, using a safe house at Anglet run by the Belgian DeGreef family, two more British soldiers were taken along the same route to freedom. Organised by the twenty-five year old Dedée, this became one of the most successful escape lines of the Second World War. Soon, many arrests were being made in the organisation, German agents and collaborators were everywhere and the importance of getting the soldiers and newly arrived airmen out of Brussels was paramount. Those arrested had to face the interrogation and torture of the GFP which only the very strong could resist. Within weeks the first RAF aircrew were returned and Dedée, now based in Paris, her father Paul and the DeGreefs were joined by Englishman Albert Johnson and another young Belgian girl Andrée "Nadine" Dumont and many others in guiding the evaders on the difficult journey south. To help in the crossing of the Pyrenees, Basque smugglers were used, invaluable with their knowledge of the safest crossing trails.

In January 1943 the Line was again under threat when Dedée herself was caught red-handed with three RAF evaders as they were about to cross the mountains. In June her father Paul was arrested in Paris but with each arrest new people took over and the line continued to function. By D-day 6th June 1944 and the Allied invasion of France, it was no longer possible to move the evaders south. As Allied forces moved towards Brussels, which they liberated in September, it was only necessary for the aircrew, many of whom were now from US Army Air Force, to be kept safe and await the arrival of the liberating armies. In all a total of about 800 Allied soldiers and aircrew were helped by what became known as the Comete Line, to reach freedom and continue fighting the war.

All this came at a terrible price for those Belgians who were caught. Most ended up in the nightmare of Nazi concentration camps where many died of illness and starvation. Some like Baron Jacques Donny & Dedée's father Paul De Jongh were executed in prison and many of the women were sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, north of Berlin, as Nacht und Nebel (Night & Fog) political prisoners, intended to disappear inside the deadly system. Hundreds of the network's helpers died.

Today, 60 years on, the Comete Line is an example to us all of what ordinary people can achieve in the face of a cruel aggressor.

John Clinch is a grandson of Belgian escape line worker Marceline Deloge. For more details of his study of the Comete Line (and much more) click here to be connected to John's website at "www.belgiumww2.info".

The Shelburn (or Shelburne) Line (by Keith Janes)

The Shelburn escape line of 1944 followed on from the Oaktree line of the previous year. The original plan for Oaktree was to organise evacuations by sea from northern Brittany beaches using RN Motor Gun Boats (MGB) from Dartmouth. The beach at Anse Cochat near Plouha had already been selected by the Navy and in March 1943, following an aborted landing attempt by Lysander, Val Williams (previously a Pat Line organiser of the Fort de la Rivere prison break and himself brought out by Seawolf on Operation Titania in September 1942) and French Canadian radio operator Ray Labrosse finally parachuted into France from a 161 Special Duties Halifax, landing near Rambouillet, south-west of Paris. While Labrosse tried to establish radio contact with London, Williams went to Brittany where he found dozens of evading airmen hidden by the Countess Roberta de Maudit, wife of Le Compte Henri, in their 18th century Chateau de Bourblanc at Plourivo near Paimpol, and many others nearby. By the time Labrosse finally got through to London on a borrowed radio, and a replacement for his own was delivered via Jean-Françoise Northomb of Comete, the situation in Brittany was so desperate (several helpers, including the Scottish born American Betty de Maudit, had been arrested) that Williams decided to send the evaders south to Spain. It was on one of these trips that Williams himself was arrested near Pau on 4 June. On hearing the news, Ray Labrosse joined a group of evaders organised by Georges Broussine (reseau Bourgogne) escaped to Spain and returned to England.

When Labrosse reported to MI9 in London he convinced them that the idea of sea evacuations should not be abandoned, and volunteered to go back and try again. This time the organiser would be Lucien Dumais - himself an escaper from Dieppe, brought out via the Pat Line by Seawolf on Operation Rosalind in October 1942. The original Oaktree idea was maintained, the 15th Flotilla MGB would still take evaders from Anse Cochat but this time the Line would be known as Shelburn and the beach (and the individual operations) were christened Bonaparte. Dumais and Labrosse were landed by Lysander near Selens, north-east of Paris and not far from Chauny, the night of 16/17 November. Labrosse set up his radio in Paris while Dumais went to Brittany to see the beach for himself and to meet Francois Le Cornec and the other local organisers.

The idea this time was for most of the evaders to be sheltered in Paris until just a few days before their planned evacuation. The date for Bonaparte 1 was set for the night of 29/30 January 1944 and the BBC radio message of 'Bonjour tout le monde à la maison d'Alphonse' was confirmation to those in France that Mike Marshall's MGB 503 would be leaving Dartmouth that night. The operation was a complete success with nineteen evaders being taken off. The second Bonaparte operation took place the night of 26/27 February taking sixteen USAAF evaders, and Val Williams from the original Oaktree organisation who had escaped from a prison in Rennes the previous month.

Subsequent Bonaparte operations took place the nights of 16/17 March and 19/20 March, with the final Bonaparte 5 the night of 23/24 March. Shelburn evacuations were then suspended until the Crozier operations in July because of the build-up for the D-Day invasion but more than a hundred evaders, mostly American aircrew, were taken out on these operations and not a single man lost.

Escape Routes in Italy 1943/44 (by Roger Stanton)

It is now over sixty years since the last Allied escaper or evader was hidden and cared for by the 'contadini' of the Italian countryside. Many of these fugitives were taken through enemy occupied territory, and eventually reached Great Britain and freedom. Many more were hidden in the country villages to await the advancing troops. Sir Winston Churchill wrote in his History of the Second World War, "some 10,000 POWs in German occupied Italy were fed, hidden, and guided by the Italian people, often the poorest from the Italian countryside. Many were shot for this great spontaneous gesture of humanity".

At the end of the war the 'helpers' throughout Europe were able to relax, and the final cost of their actions were becoming known. The cost was appalling. Across all the former occupied territories it is thought that four helpers died for every escaper or evader who reached freedom. They died under the worst possible conditions. Execution, torture, or simply from starvation and disease in the subhuman concentration camps. In Italy their homes were burnt to the ground and their livestock killed. In Pietranseri, a town in the Sulmona valley, the town's people were murdered and only one child survived. Their crime was assisting escapers. The German army was particularly harsh on the Italian people after the 1943 Armistice.

Some of the Allied POWs in Italy had been moved from France in 1942, but the majority had been captured in the North African campaign, in Libya or Egypt. A very small number escaped prior to the armistice of 8th September 1943. When the armistice was announced, it was expected that a German withdrawal from Italy would take place, and orders had gone out to all POWs to stay put and await the Allies arrival. The reverse happened. German troops poured into the country and took over the POW camps, and most of the country. In the north it was mostly Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans in camps, and many escaped in the confusion and headed for Switzerland. Further south, thousands of escapers made their escape towards the Allied lines to the south. At the officers camp at Fontellato, 600 men marched out of the main gate, aided by their Italian guards, just one hour before the Germans arrived.

With little escape and evasion knowledge, no kit or equipment, each escaper organised his own 'orders for the day', mapped out his route as best he could, and headed out. Reluctant to make contact with local people at first, they soon learnt that the prosperous looking farms were generally fascist, while the smaller, older farms were home to the ordinary people of the Italian countryside, the 'contadini'. Once contact had been made these people hid, clothed, and fed the escapers, sharing what limited food they had. Under a German proclamation, the same rule applied to the Italians as the rest of occupied Europe. For anyone caught assisting escaping or evading allied troops, the men would be shot, and the women sent to concentration camps. They forgot to add that they would be harshly interrogated and tortured first, and their homes burnt to the ground, and their livestock killed. The escaper could expect to return to a POW camp.

By Christmas day 1943, the Allied front line had settled on the Sangro River, and Allied escapers from the north tended to head towards the less populated but mountainous east coast region. Escapers were already heading south from the camps at Servigliano, and from three camps in the Tenna valley near Pescara. Many were given shelter by charcoal burners in the woods, others who were taken ill were nursed in the mountain villages. Many escapers joined up with the partisans, and others worked the land as payment to their helpers.

With the exception of the Rome Network, no organised assistance was given to escapers in Italy. The Rome network was ran by an Irish Priest in the Vatican who found safe-houses, distributed food and offered money. In PG 78 at Sulmona (which is still in location today), many men had escaped and were heading south along the Sulmona valley. Other prisoners were rounded up and put on trains for camps in Germany. But this was not the end of escaping - many POWs jumped from trains, and others escaped through the floors of cattle trucks. Once free, they also went south. Many headed for the villages in the Sulmona triangle of Anversa to the west, Campo di Giovi to the east, with Castèl Di Sangro as the southern point. When a village became occupied, escapers were moved to the mountains and food was taken to them by the villagers. Others were taken through deep snow to the Allied lines. Most escapers headed for Castèl Di Sangro where the River Sangro was fordable. Once across the river they had to make themselves known to the Allied troops as there was the real threat of being shot.