Operation Marathon (World War II)
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Operation Marathon in World War II helped allied airmen who had been shot down or crash-landed in
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
-occupied Europe evade capture by the Germans. The British intelligence organization,
MI9 MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: (1) assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (P ...
, created the operation to gather downed airmen into isolated forest camps where they would await their rescue by allied military forces advancing after the Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944. The Comet Line, a
Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
/ French escape line, operated the forest camps with financial and logistical help from MI9. The most important of the forest camps, code named Sherwood, was in the
Fréteval Fréteval () is a commune in the French department of Loir-et-Cher. The village is located on the right bank of the river Loir. Archaeological evidence indicates that the site was occupied by the second century CE. In the Middle Ages, the forti ...
forest of
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and sheltered 152
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and
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airmen between May and August 1944. MI9 executive Airey Neave and a small Allied force liberated the airmen on August 14, 1944. Other forest camps in France and the Ardennes forest in Belgium held another 150 or more airmen who were liberated with the advance of the allied armies.


Background

Tens of thousands of allied aircraft were shot down or crash landed in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Escape and evasion lines operated by civilian volunteers in France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Denmark helped about 5,000 downed allied airmen evade capture by the Germans and escape to a neutral country such as Spain. However, in 1944, heavy allied bombing of railroads and other transportation infrastructure made escape to neutral counties increasingly difficult in the run-up to the Normandy Invasion of France. The
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
's military intelligence organization,
MI9 MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: (1) assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (P ...
, decided that, as an alternative to exfiltrations of downed airmen, to gather airmen into isolated forest camps where they could await the arrival of allied armies. MI9 official Airey Neave conceived of Operation Marathon in the fall of 1943 and began planning the operation with three Belgians: Jean de Blommaert, Georges d'Oultremont, and Albert Ancia. All of them were or had been associated with the Comet Line. They selected three locations for forest camps: the Freteval forest, southwest of
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
, a forest near Rennes in
Brittany Brittany (; french: link=no, Bretagne ; br, Breizh, or ; Gallo: ''Bertaèyn'' ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period ...
, and the Ardennes forest in Belgium. The Freteval forest was code named Sherwood. Neave began training personnel and parachuting or landing them secretly in France to prepare for the implementation of Marathon. The three Belgians identified fields for aircraft landings and parachute drops of supplies and identified people who lived near the proposed forest camps and were willing to assist airmen. In early 1944, the Comet Line had been decimated by arrests by German security police, but Neave looked to it to implement the operation. To coordinate, British authorities met in
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, Spain in February 1944 with three surviving Comet Line leaders: Elvire de Greef (Auntie Go), Marcel Roger (Max), and Michelle Dumon (Michou or Lily), 22 years old but with a forged identity card that gave her age as 16. The Comet Line jealously guarded its independence from MI9 and cooperation required both persuasion and an infusion of cash for expenses to gain its participation in the operation. Operation Marathon almost got off to a disastrous start. A man who called himself Pierre Boulain had been helpful to de Blommaert and Ancia. They scheduled a meeting with him on May 7 in Paris with the plan of giving him 500,000 francs (about 2,500 British pounds in 1944 currency) to help in the operation. However, Michelle Dumon learned that "Boulain" was actually a German agent whose real name was Jacques Desoubrie. She alerted de Blommaert and Ancia, exposed Desoubrie as a German agent, and all three avoided capture by the Germans, although Dumon had to flee to
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.


Sherwood

In April and May 1944, de Blommaert and another Belgian, RAF officer Lucien Boussa, set up a headquarters in the town of
Cloyes-sur-le-Loir Cloyes-sur-le-Loir (, literally ''Cloyes on the Loir'') is a former commune on the River Loir, a few kilometres south of the town of Châteaudun in the department of Eure-et-Loir in northern France. On 1 January 2017, it was merged into the new c ...
near the Freteval Forest. De Blommaert persuaded the local armed Resistance group to avoid any activity in the area as it would attract German attention and jeopardize the airmen in the camp. He negotiated with farmers, bakers, and merchants to deliver food to Sherwood Camp and he arranged with Philippe d'Albert-Lake, head of the Comet Line in Paris, and his American wife,
Virginia d'Albert-Lake Virginia d'Albert-Lake (born 4 June 1910, Dayton, Ohio – died 20 September 1997, Dinard, France) was a member of the anti-Nazi French Resistance during World War II. She worked with the Comet Escape Line. She and her husband Philippe helped 67 ...
, to set up a system of guides to get airmen from safe houses in Paris to the forest camp. Supplies such as tents were parachuted into the fields near the forest. The first airmen destined for the Sherwood camp took a train from Paris to Chateaudun on May 20. This was not an easy journey as allied airplanes frequently bombed the railroads. From Chateaudun, guides accompanied the airmen another to Cloyes and placed them in safe houses until the camp was ready for occupancy. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, of the Normandy Invasion, thirty airmen were in the camp. This number expanded steadily to total 152 American and British airmen in Sherwood camp in early August. Virginia D'Albert-Lake was the only casualty among the airmen and guides. The Germans captured her on June 12 while she guided eleven airmen to the camp. She survived the war in a German concentration camp. The Germans arrested ten local people during the operation in the Freteval Forest and six did not return from prison camps. In August, Airey Neave went to France from England to collect the airmen in forest camps. Neave proceeded to Le Mans which was under control of the American army and about from the Sherwood Camp. The Germans were believed to have withdrawn from the forest area, but that was uncertain. The American army, suspicious of Neave and the "exotic crowd of armed patriots" that he gathered to effect the rescue, declined to provide him transportation. With difficulty he finally gathered together 16 buses and trucks, "decked with flowers and French flags and guarded by civilians with rifles," plus a few British SAS soldiers. They departed from Le Mans on August 14 for Freteval Forest, returning the same day with 132 airmen. Another 20 were found the next day. Neave said that most of the 152 airmen rescued in the Freteval forest returned to duty and by war's end 38 of them had been killed.


Other camps

From Le Mans, Neave, de Blommaert, and a crowd of armed men "in jeeps loaded with flowers and champagne" set forth toward Paris. The Comet Line had hidden airmen in several towns and Neave collected them as they traveled, meeting author
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
along the way. Neave and his "army" entered Paris and set up a headquarters for contact with the French Resistance. As soon as the advance of the allied armies made it possible, Neave departed Paris for Belgium to collect the allied airmen he hoped to find hidden there in the Ardenne forest. He arrived in Brussels in early September, just as the Germans were pulling out and the allied armies were entering the city. However, Neave found about 100 airmen and 100 Comet Line helpers at the Hotel Metropole. He believed that the Comet Line, "in the fierce spirit of Belgian independence," had not followed the script drawn up by MI9 and that no camps had been created in Belgium. A riotous party ensued and a large bill for the party was sent to the headquarters of General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the allied armies. The bill was subsequently paid by Eisenhower's command after much dispute. The total number of downed airmen were sheltered and rescued by Operation Marathon totaled more than 300. From Belgium, Neave continued on to the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
in
Operation Pegasus Operation Pegasus was a military operation carried out on the Lower Rhine near the village of Renkum, close to Arnhem in the Netherlands. Overnight on 22–23 October 1944, the Allied military forces, MI9, the British intelligence organizatio ...
to rescue more MI9 agents, airmen, and soldiers stranded behind German lines after the failed Operation Market Garden offensive of the allied armies.


Marathon in Belgium

Neave was wrong when he thought that there were no camps in Belgium. Actually, six camps were created in the Belgian Ardenne and they were still active on the Liberation day. The Belgian part of the Mission Marathon in France began on April 15 when Jean de Blommaert de Soye and Albert Ancia, the two Belgians parachuted in France a few days earlier, met Yvon Michiels, who was in charge of Comète in Belgium. Michiels accepted the idea of establishing camps in Belgium and decided to place the members of his evasion line at Marathon's disposal. Back in Belgium, he took the first measures and sent agents to explore possibilities in the Ardennes. His successors, José Grimar and Gaston Matthys, worked in the same way. When Albert Ancia arrived in Belgium, he fulfilled the mission, hand in hand with Gaston Matthys. They worked with Belgian members of Comète and other agents especially recruited for the Mission Marathon. From the places where they were temporarily sheltered, mostly in and around Brussels and Liège, the airmen were guided to the Ardennes by members of Marathon. They traveled by train, car and often by bicycle. There was even a "cyclists road" from Brussels to Namur and, from there, to the camps. The camps were established in
Beffe Beffe ( wa, Bêfe) is a village of Wallonia and a district of the municipality of Rendeux, located in the province of Luxembourg, Belgium. The Ourthe The Ourthe (; Walloon: ''Aiwe d' Oûte'') is a long river in the Ardennes in Wallonia (Belg ...
, Porcheresse (Daverdisse), Villance, Acremont, La Cornette and Bohan. At least 109 allied airmen stayed in these camps from June till September, thanks to the Marathon agents, helped by elements of the local population. The agents in charge of the camps were : Beffe : Vincent Wuyts and his wife Marie Ghislaine Denis; Porcheresse : Emile Roiseux; Villance : Walter Haesebrouck; Acremont : Georges Arnould; La Cornette : Germain Servais and Gaston Matthys; Bohan : Hubert Renault.


Remembrance

On June 11, 1967, Jean de Blommaert and Airey Neave returned to the Freteval Forest to dedicate a stone column commemorating the rescue of the allied airmen. Lucien Boussa had died three months earlier in Cloyes, the same town in which he and Blommaert had established their headquarters in 1944.Neave, p. 288


References

{{reflist, 2 French Resistance Belgian Resistance World War II resistance movements Defunct United Kingdom intelligence agencies British intelligence services of World War II