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The Woman Who Saved Hundreds of Allied Airmen Escaping From the Nazis
The story of the Comet line founder Andrée de Jongh, aka Dédée
A Belgian resistance fighter Andrée de Jongh established the most successful escape route for downed Allied airmen during World War II. She was only twenty-four years old at the time, and when asked how she did it all, she replied: “I’m as strong as a man. Girls attract less attention in the frontier zone than men.”
She began her resistance work in May 1940 after the Nazis occupied Brussels. Until the Nazis captured her on January 15, 1943, she allegedly rescued more than 700 airmen. She led 118 to safety, through occupied France over the Pyrenees into Spain and down to the British colony of Gibraltar. Her escape route was called “Comet Line.”
Edith Cavell, the heroine of her youth
Andrée or Dédée de Jongh was born on November 30, 1916, in Schaerbeek in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. Initially trained as a nurse, she found work as a commercial artist. In her youth, Edith Cavell, a British nurse shot at Tir National in Schaerbeek in 1915 because she had helped troops escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, was her heroine. Another influence in deepening her involvement in the resistance…
