Andrée de Jongh

Countess Andrée Eugénie Adrienne de Jongh (30 November 1916 – 13 October 2007), called Dédée and Postman, was a member of the Belgian Resistance during the Second World War. She organised and led the Comet Line (''Le Réseau Comète'') to assist Allied soldiers and airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Belgium. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over Belgium or other European countries. Between August 1941 and December 1942, she escorted 118 people, including more than 80 airmen, from Belgium to neutral Spain from where they were transported to the United Kingdom. Arrested by the Nazis in January 1943, she was incarcerated for the remainder of World War II. After the war, she worked in leper hospitals in Africa.

De Jongh was the recipient of the George Medal from the United Kingdom and the Medal of Freedom with golden palms from the United States and many other medals for her work during World War II. In 1985 she was made a countess by the king of Belgium. Her exploits were described in or inspired several books, movies, and television shows.

Early life

Andrée or Dédée de Jongh was born in Schaerbeek in Belgium, then under German occupation during the First World War. She was the younger daughter of Frédéric de Jongh, the headmaster of a primary school and Alice Decarpentrie. Edith Cavell, a British nurse shot in the Tir national in Schaerbeek in 1915 for assisting troops to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, was a heroine in her youth.

She trained as a nurse and became a commercial artist in Malmedy. Her nursing endeavours were inspired by Cavell. She was 23 years old when the Germans invaded and occupied Belgium. De Jongh was described by a British airman she helped as a "frail young girl who appears twenty years ld very pretty, pleasant, kind, cheerful, and simple. She seems to have the carelessness of a young student who would go on vacation after passing her exams". Later, a British colonel would call her a
"pure heroine of legend".

Origin of the Comet Line

After German troops invaded and occupied Belgium in May 1940, De Jongh moved to Brussels, where she became a Red Cross volunteer, ministering to captured Allied troops. In Brussels at that time, hiding in safe houses, were many British soldiers, those left behind at Dunkirk. De Jongh organised a series of safe houses for these soldiers, while also procuring civilian clothes so they would not be identified as well as false ID papers. Visiting the sick and wounded soldiers enabled her to make links with this network of safe-house keepers who were trying to work out ways to get the soldiers back to Britain.

In spring 1941, Henri de Bliqui, Arnold Deppè, and Andrée de Jongh organised a group of friends to help Allied soldiers and airmen escape occupied Belgium and return to Great Britain. This was the origin of what became known as the Comet Line, the largest of the escape and evasion lines in World War II. They initially called themselves the DDDs after their last names. De Bliqui was arrested in April 1941 and later executed after the group was infiltrated by Prosper Dezitter, a Belgian collaborator with the Germans.

In June 1941, Deppé journeyed from Belgium to southwestern France where he had once lived to look for the means to smuggle Allied soldiers, downed airmen, and other people vulnerable to capture by the Germans out of Belgium. Deppé made contact with Elvire de Greef and her family and arranged for their help in getting people across the border. De Greef became known as "Tante Go" ("Auntie Go").

De Jongh and Deppé, assisted by the de Greefs, attempted their first crossing of the Spanish border in July 1941 with ten Belgians and "Miss Richards," supposedly an English woman but actually a Belgian secret agent named Frederique Dupuich. After they successfully crossed the Pyrenees mountains on the Franco-Spanish border, de Jongh and Deppé left their charges to fend for themselves and returned to Belgium. The ten Belgians and "Miss Richards" were arrested by Spanish police. Three Belgian soldiers among them were turned over to the Germans in France. From this experience, de Jongh realised that in future exfiltrations they must establish a relationship with the British Consulate in Bilbao to ensure the safety in Spain of the people they escorted out of occupied Belgian and France.

In August, Deppé and de Jongh escorted another group of people, de Jongh taking a longer, more rural, and safer route with three men, including a British soldier, and Deppé a shorter, more dangerous route with six men. An informer betrayed Deppé and his party and they were arrested by the Germans. Deppé was imprisoned for the remainder of the war. De Jongh arrived safely at the de Greef house in Anglet