The Comet Line helped Allied soldiers and airmen shot down over occupied Belgium evade capture by Germans and return to Great Britain.

The Comet Line began in Brussels where the airmen were fed, clothed, given false identity papers, and hidden in attics, cellars, and people's homes.

In three years, the Comet Line helped 776 people, mostly British and American airmen, escape to Spain or evade capture in Belgium and France.

Most downed airmen were killed or taken prisoner but some evaded capture and were sheltered by allied sympathizers and an emerging resistance movement to German rule.

[16] MI9 (British Military Intelligence Section 9), under the control of the ex-infantry Major Norman Crockatt and Lieutenant James Langley, who had been repatriated after losing his left arm in the rearguard at Dunkirk in 1940, approved financial assistance for the Comet Line.

[17] Other than financial assistance, De Jongh was adamant in retaining the independence of the Comet Line from the British and the Belgian government in exile in Great Britain.

[19] It was not until June 1943, after numerous arrests and a growing backlog of airmen to be removed, that the Comet Line gave its reluctant permission for an MI9 agent, Jacques Legrelle ("Jerome"), to work in Paris with them.

[24] Other persons who frequently escorted shot-down airmen across the border included Alfred Edward Johnson ("B"), an English handyman living with the de Greefs.

The German police, both military and security, intensified efforts to shut down the escape organizations moving airmen as Allied bombing of Europe and Germany increased.

With the Germans closing in on the Comet Line in Belgium, De Jongh's father, Frederick ("Paul"), fled to Paris on April 30, 1942, to join his daughter.

Picking up the pieces, the Comet Line leader in Belgium then became Jean Greindl ("Nemo"), 36 years old, the director of a charity called the "Swedish Canteen".

"Nadine" survived the war in German concentration camps and described her experiences in her book Je Ne Vous Ai Pas Oubliés'.

[26] While the airmen proceeded onward, de Jongh (or after her arrest, another escort) met in San Sebastián with British diplomat Michael Creswell, ("Monday"), who gave her money for the Comet Line's expenses and messages to take back to France.

American Virginia d'Albert-Lake and her French husband Philippe assisted in gathering airmen in the Fréteval forest in Operation Marathon.

The final operation of the Comet Line was on September 28, 1944, when De Greef, back in liberated France, accompanied four Allied airmen on a flight from Biarritz to England.

For example, one of Andrée de Jongh's false identity cards gave her the name "Denise Lacroix" and listed her birthdate as 7 July 1924, almost eight years younger than she was.

[29] Participation in the escape networks was arguably the most dangerous form of resistance work in occupied Europe...The most perilous job of all was handled mostly by young women, many of them still in their teens, who escorted the servicemen hundreds of miles across enemy territory to Spain.

[32] The story of the escape of one Canadian airman illustrates the complexity and the large number of people involved in the operation of the Comet Line.

[33] On December 9, 1942, Sergeant Sydney Smith was a crew member of a Vickers Wellington bomber shot down near Sergines, France.

A medical doctor, Jean de Larebeyrette, preceded them on an earlier train to Paris to ensure no German checkpoints were along the route as Smith had no French identification papers.

From there they continued (probably by bicycle) to the village of Urrugne, near the Spanish border and the country home of Francia Usandizanga, a Basque helper of the Comet Line.

The next day, December 23, Smith, two other airmen, de Jongh, and a Basque guide, Florentino Goikoetxea, walked across the Pyrenees to San Sebastián, Spain.

Although she was interrogated many times by the Gestapo and German military intelligence, the Nazis didn't believe that this young, slight woman was anything more than a minor helper of airmen.

[41] With these losses, the Comet Line did not move anyone during February 1943 but in March normal operations began again with Jean-François Northomb ("Franco") replacing Andrée de Jongh as the principal escort to Spain of airmen.

[44][45] With the invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, approaching, the need for a functioning Comet Line to rescue increasing numbers of fugitive airmen was crucial.

In March 1944, the British diplomat Creswell met with Elvire de Greef (Tante Go), Michelle Dumon, and Marcel Roger ("Max") in Madrid to plan for the role of a new Comet Line.

The authors of the official history of MI9 cite 2,373 British and Commonwealth servicemen and 2,700 Americans reaching Britain by escape lines, including Comet, during the Second World War.

[53] A typical Comet Line route was from Brussels or Lille to Paris and then via Tours, Bordeaux, Bayonne, over the Pyrenees to San Sebastián in Spain.

Another Pat Line route ran from Paris to Dijon, Lyons, Avignon to Marseille, then Nîmes, Perpignan and Barcelona, from where they were transported to Gibraltar.

A third route from Paris (the Shelburne Line) ran to Rennes and then St Brieuc in Brittany, where airmen were clandestinely taken by boat to Dartmouth.