Major General Count Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse was a Belgian Resistance member who organized French and Belgian escape routes for downed Allied pilots during World War II under the alias of Patrick Albert "Pat" O'Leary, purportedly the name of a peace-time Canadian friend. His escape line was dubbed the Pat O'Leary Line.
MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) held by the Axis countries, especially Nazi Germany; and helping Allied military personnel, especially downed airmen, evade capture after they were shot down or trapped behind enemy lines in Axis-occupied countries. During World War II, about 35,000 Allied military personnel, many helped by MI9, escaped POW camps or evaded capture and made their way to Allied or neutral countries after being trapped behind enemy lines.
Marie-Louise Dissard,, was a member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of France in World War II. She initially worked with the Pat O'Leary Line, a network which helped downed Allied airmen evade German capture and return to Great Britain. The O'Leary Line was first headed by Ian Garrow and later by Albert Guérisse. In 1943, after their arrests and the destruction of the O'Leary Line by the German Gestapo, Dissard created an escape network called the Francoise Line. The Francoise Line helped more than 250 Allied airmen escape occupied France and return to Great Britain. Including her work with the O'Leary line, Dissard helped more than 700 allied airmen escape from France. She received financial assistance from the British intelligence agency, MI9.
Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame, was a senior British Army officer and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, and the winner of an Olympic Games gold medal; he is the only person to achieve both distinctions.
George Rodocanachi was a British-born physician of Greek descent who helped Allied escapees and Jewish refugees in Vichy France.
Donald Currie Caskie, OBE, DD was a minister in the Church of Scotland, best known for his work in France during World War II. He was a member of the Pat O'Leary escape line which helped up to 500 Allied sailors, soldiers and airmen to escape from Occupied France.
Anthony Morris Brooks, code name Alphonse, was a British espionage agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization in France during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in countries occupied by Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Brooks received the Distinguished Service Order, Military Cross, Croix de guerre, and Légion d'honneur for his work as a leader of SOE's Pimento network sabotaging German reinforcements prior to and during the Normandy invasion. He later worked for the Foreign Office, and MI5 and MI6.
Nubar Sarkis Gulbenkian was an Armenian-British business magnate and socialite born in the Ottoman empire. During World War II, he helped organize the underground network that would become known as the Pat O'Leary Line to repatriate British airmen who became stranded in France.
The Comet Line was a Resistance organization in occupied Belgium and France in the Second World War. 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. A network of volunteers then escorted them south through occupied France into neutral Spain and home via British-controlled Gibraltar. The motto of the Comet Line was "Pugna Quin Percutias", which means "fight without arms", as the organization did not undertake armed or violent resistance to the German occupation.
Gertrude Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville, code named Marie-Claire and Comtesse de Moncy, was an English woman, a front-line nurse in World War I and a member of the French Resistance in World War II. She founded and led an escape and evasion organization, the Marie-Claire Line, helping Allied airmen and soldiers escape from Nazi-occupied France. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over occupied Europe. During the course of the war, Lindell was run over by an automobile, shot in the head, imprisoned twice, and captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Her son Maurice was captured and tortured. Her son Octave (Oky), also captured, disappeared and presumably died in a German concentration camp.
Harold Cole, also known as Harry Cole,Paul Cole, and many other aliases, was a petty criminal, a confidence man, a British soldier, an operative of the Pat O'Leary escape line, and an agent of Nazi Germany. In 1940 and 1941, he helped many British soldiers escape France after its surrender to Nazi Germany in World War II. He became a double agent for the Germans in December 1941 and betrayed to the Gestapo 150 escape line workers and members of the French Resistance, of whom about 50 were executed or died in German concentration camps.
General Sir Horatius Murray, was a senior British Army officer who served with distinction during the Second World War and later in the Korean War.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Maydon Langley was an officer in the British Army, who served during World War II. Wounded and captured at the battle of Dunkirk in mid-1940, he later returned to Britain and served in MI9.
HMS Fidelity (D57) was a Special Service Vessel of the British Royal Navy during World War II, originally the French merchant vessel Le Rhin.
Commander Redvers Michael Prior, DSO, DSC, was a Conservative Member of Parliament, representing Birmingham Aston from 1943 to 1945, and an officer in the Royal Navy.
Marguerite Nuttall Addy, also known under her married names Lightfoot, Holst and Hansen, was a British woman who worked as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War and as a spy during World War II.
The Pat O'Leary Line was a resistance organization in France during the Second World War. The Pat O'Leary escape line helped Allied soldiers and airmen stranded or shot down over occupied Europe evade capture by Nazi Germany and return to Great Britain. Downed airmen in northern France and other countries were fed, clothed, given false identity papers, hidden in attics, cellars, and people's homes, and escorted to Marseille, where the line was based. From there, a network of people escorted them to neutral Spain. From Spain, British diplomats sent the escapees home from British-controlled Gibraltar. Many different escape lines were created in Europe of which the Pat Line was the oldest and one of the most important. Collectively, the many escape lines helped 7,000 Allied military personnel, mostly airmen, escape occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The Pat Line received financial assistance from MI9, a British intelligence agency.
Escape and evasion lines in World War II helped people escape European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. The focus of most escape lines in Western Europe was assisting British and American airmen shot down over occupied Europe to evade capture and escape to neutral Spain or Sweden from where they could return to the United Kingdom. A distinction is sometimes made between "escapers" and "evaders". Most of those helped by escape lines were evaders.
Kenneth Bruce Dowding was an Australian who worked for the British Directorate of Military Intelligence as a MI9 agent and was involved in the French Resistance during World War II under the alias of "André Mason". He was the brother of Keith Dowding and the uncle of Peter Dowding.
Donald Darling, code named Sunday, was an agent for the clandestine British organizations MI6 and MI9 during World War II. The purpose of MI9 was to help prisoners of war to escape and downed airmen and stranded soldiers to evade capture in German-occupied Europe and return to Great Britain. Darling worked in Lisbon and Gibraltar. He financed and advised the escape and evasion lines which rescued soldiers and airmen and guided them to safety in neutral Portugal and Spain and British-owned Gibraltar. The escape lines rescued 7,000 soldiers and airmen in western Europe. Darling met and interviewed many of them on their arrival in Portugal and Gibraltar. As part of his work, Darling contributed intelligence to MI6 about conditions and events inside occupied Europe through knowing many of the key people involved in resistance and escape lines.
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