Andree de Jongh

Oct 22 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

TO THE brave airmen lost in a strange land, she was the Little Mother. To the Gestapo’s torturers, she was just a slip of a girl.

But, to the Belgians, she was a heroine, a young woman as close as you could get to what became the popular image of the Resistance – a beret, perfectly-stockinged legs and an accent ripe with the fruits of her homeland.

To history, Andree de Jongh was the patriot who started the Comet Escape Line, the 1,000-miles escape route of safe houses through Nazi-occupied Belgium and France, which led to safety in Spain.

Andree de Jongh was born in Shaerbeek, in a stretch of Belgium occupied by the Germans in the Great War.

As a little girl she had read about Edith Cavell, the English Red Cross nurse in Brussels, who had helped Allied soldiers escape to neutral Holland in the war. This gallant work profoundly impressed Andre.

When Germany again invaded Belgium in 1940, Andree and her father, Frederic de Jongh, began planning their escape route for the Allied airmen shot down over Belgium and France.

Although there was some scepticism at first on the British side, mostly because she was so young, she eventually won the support of M19, the escape and evasion organisation.

Despite her small stature, Andree had plenty of spirit and led some 30 expeditions across France herself, taking at least 118 servicemen to safety. At least 300 more escaped on the Comet Line.

In January, 1943, she was betrayed by a German collaborator while escorting a soldier over the Pyrenees. Under torture, she admitted to being the leader of Le Reseau Comete, believing that would draw attention away from others.

But the Gestapo thought that the woman, whose codename was Dedee (Little Mother), was too young and fresh for such a role.

Even so, she was sent to concentration camps in Mathausen and Ravensbruck, where she was close to death at the end of the war.

Her beloved father was executed by a German firing squad in 1944.

After the war, Andree, who didn’t marry, returned to nursing. Among the many honours conferred on her were the US Medal of Freedon, the British George Medal, the French Legion d’honneur, the Belgian Chevalier of the order of Leopold and the Croix de Guerre.

Andree de Jongh, nurse and heroine; born November 30, 1916, October 13, 2007.