Andrée de Jongh, Top Resistance Leader and Creator of the Largest Escape Line in Occupied Europe
When Belgium was occupied by Germany in May 1940, the father of Andrée de Jongh burst into tears. His daughter, a 23-year-old graphic designer who lived in Brussels, fiercely responded: “You are wrong to cry. You’ll see what we do to them.” A year later, Andrée, who was known as Dédée, was the head of an escape line for Allied servicemen trapped in enemy territory — and one of the top resistance leaders in Europe.
Risking their lives every day, she and the dozens of other young women who belonged to her Comet Line sheltered servicemen on the run and escorted them hundreds of miles through Nazi-infested Belgium and France to neutral Spain. As one British intelligence officer observed, “It is not an easy matter to hide … a foreigner in your midst, especially when it happens to be a red-haired Scotsman or a gum-chewing American from the Middle West.” The largest and most important escape line in occupied Europe, Dédée’s group would be credited after the war with rescuing more than eight hundred British and American troops and airmen and smuggling them back to freedom. I tell their story in my book Last Hope Island.
