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George Watt - The Comet Connection: Escape from Hitlers Europe

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In November 1943, George Watt, Flying Fortress gunner, parachuted out of his burning bomber and landed in a village in Nazi-occupied Belgium. The villagers risked their lives to hide him in the field, sneaking him past the German patrols, and bringing him safely to Brussels, where he connected with the Comet Line, the rescue arm of the Belgian resistance.

While hiding in sale houses in Brussels, Watt had a ringside view of bold acts of defiance by Belgian patriots against the German occupation. From Brussels he traveled by rail past Gestapo control to Bordeaux, rode a bicycle through southern France, and was led by Basque guides along ancient smugglers trails over the Pyrenees into Spain.

Six years earlier. Watt had climbed those same Pyrenees to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against General Franco. Watts experience in that prelude to World War II adds insight and drama to the story of his escape from Fortress Luropa, his fears of capture heightened by his having been a Lincoln Brigader as well as a Jew.

Forty years after the war Watt returned to Belgium to find that the story of George Watt had become a legend in the villages of Zele and Flamme, passed on to second and third generations. And in Brussels he heard with grief of the tragic fates of several of the underground comrades who had helped.

Whether writing about the war in the skies or the war within the war (the resistance movement) or recalling the earlier fighting in Spain, Watts style is uncompromising and direct. The writing is tilled with suspense and humor, illumined by love and appreciation for its participants. This gripping story of compassion and commitment can be enjoyed for its high adventure alone. For the young, and for students of history, it is also a valuable contribution to understanding the two great antifascist struggles of our century.

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The Comet Connection The Comet Connection ESCAPE FROM HITLERS EUROPE George - photo 1
The Comet Connection
The Comet Connection
ESCAPE FROM HITLERS EUROPE
George Watt
Copyright 1990 by George Watt The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly - photo 2
Copyright 1990 by George Watt
The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky
Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0336
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watt, George, 1913-
The comet connection : escape from Hitlers Europe / George Watt.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8131-5522-7
1. Watt, George, 1913- . 2. World War, 1939-1945Aerial operations, American. 3. World War, 1939-1945Personal narratives, American. 4. World War, 1939-1945Underground movementsBelgium. 5. EscapesBelgium. 6. Flight engineersUnited StatesBiography. 7. United States. Army Air ForcesBiography. I. Title.
D790.W374 1990
940.545973092dc20
89-70733
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Picture 3
For Margie
Contents
[Illustrations follow page 30]
Maps and Figure
Hitlers Europe, December 1943
My Thanks
To John Taylor and Frederick Pernell of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and to Victor Berch of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) at Brandeis University.
To Joseph Clark, Ruth Clark, Alan Dawley, Joseph Greene, Betsy Jameson, Jill Jarnow, David Lenfest, Abe Osheroff, Leland Smith, Randall Smith, and Nancy Wechsler, who helped in various ways.
To Ingrid Segers, who acted as interpreter, and to Monique Inghels, who interpreted and opened so many doors in Hamme and Zele.
To Daniel and Molly Watt, who traveled to Belgium to photograph and help with the interviews.
To Steven Watt, who gave encouragement and advice, and to Joseph Watt, my grandson, who at age thirteen said, Its a good story Grandpa, but it needs editing.
To William Susman, a fellow veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and World War II, who did just thatspending countless hours with me and my manuscript, destiltifying language, pruning sentences, and offering invaluable suggestions.
And above all, to the one I cannot thank enough, my wife Margie, who was part of the events and part of its telling, and whose love sustained me all the way.
To my family and friends who urged me on, my thanks.
Prologue
In 1984 my wife and I traveled to Belgium in an effort to tie up some loose ends in the story I was writing about my experience in Nazi-occupied Europe. My Belgian friends and I had been out of touch since the end of World War II, and it was a bittersweet reunion. As we came away my wife said, This book has to be their story too! You owe it to them.
Four days later, in beautiful Nice, a thief broke into the trunk of our rented car and made off with my camera, my tape recorder, 200 shots of undeveloped film, 60 pages of notes, andto my absolute horror!six hours of taped interviews.
I had to go back! In the course of preparing my return in 1985, I learned for the first time that the organization that had engineered my escape was the Comet Line. The Line was one of several escape networks operating in Belgium and France. It had saved more people and lasted longer than any other rescue organization. The Gestapo destroyed it several times, but it always reemerged to continue its dangerous mission. It paid a terrible price; for every airman saved, there were two Comet arrests. Many were executed and many died in concentration camps
A twenty-four-year-old Belgian nurse, Andre de Jongh, was its founder. After Dunkirk, Andre, with the help of her father, Frdric, developed a rescue operation for British soldiers stranded in Belgium. Later, using the same network, Dde, as she became known in the underground, established an escape route from Belgium through France and over the Pyrenees into Spain. She named it the Comet Line to denote the speed with which airmen were returned to England. Dde herself had made at least eighteen round trips delivering airmen across the Pyrenees before she was arrested in January 1943. Her indomitable will inspired her coworkers, a majority of whom were women, to acts of extraordinary courage. And women continued to hold leadership positions to the very end.
This book is my tribute to the intrepid women and men of the Comet Line and to the townspeople of Zele and Hamme in Belgium, who risked their lives to protect me.
This book is also an appreciation of my crew. From April 1943, when our B-17 bomber crew was assembled at Pyote Air Base in Texas, till our final mission over Germany seven months later, we were never apart. We went through some rough air battles at Mnster, Wihelmshaven, Schweinfurt, Gdynia. We became seasoned veterans, growing attached to one another in the process.
Lt. William Bramwell, a twenty-six-year-old Californian, raised on a Kansas wheat farm, was our commander. Low key, rugged, and competent, his calm efficiency pulled us through some pretty tight scrapes. I still remember returning from the Schweinfurt raid, our plane badly damaged, without enough gas to reach our base. Bramwell flew us through the dangerous London balloon barrageblimps with chains dangling to keep the Luftwaffe outand brought us down with a beautiful three-point landing on the short uphill runway of an RAF Spitfire base.
Lt. William (Jim) Current, only nineteen, from New Jersey, our copilot and second in command, was always enthusiastic. Trained as an airplane mechanic before he became a pilot, he knew his ship. I was constantly amazed that one so young could handle such a complex job.
Lt. John Maiorca, twenty-five, from Connecticut, a good-looking man with dark hair, self-assured, warm, and outgoing, was our bombardier and handled one of the nose guns.
Lt. Leland (Smitty) Smith, twenty-two, from the University of Kentucky, was an inquisitive intellectual, always questioning me about the Spanish war. He was a crackerjack navigator and manned the other nose gun.
T/Sgt. H.C. (Tennessee) Johnson, a twenty-year-old carpenters helper from Bemis, Tennessee, was the flight engineer. He stood in the cockpit monitoring the power instruments and fuel consumption, and operated the top turret. I liked H.C., and we were good friends, even though I thought I should have been the engineer because I was ten years older and more mature. But we had tossed a coin for the position, and he won.
Our conscientious radio operator, T/Sgt. Albertus Harrenstein, twenty-six, from Iowa, was high strung and excitable. I used to think those traits were requirements for radio operators. He manned a gun through the top window of the radio room.
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