page_title: Michelle Dumon
section_title: The Comet Line
hierarchical_section_title: Michelle Dumon / The Comet Line
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Andrée Dumon
context_page_description: Micheline Aline Dumon, code names Lily and Michou, was a member of the Belgian Resistance during World War II with the Comet Line. Her surname often appears misspelled as "Dumont" in historical sources. She was awarded the British George Medal and United States Medal of Freedom for helping allied airmen shot down over Belgium and France avoid imprisonment by Nazi Germany. As a member of the Comet Line, founded by Andrée de Jongh, she aided in the flight of over 250 people to neutral Spain from where they could be repatriated to Great Britain.
context_section_description: Dumon was in nursing school in August 1942 when her father Eugene, mother Marie (code name "Francoise"), and older sister Andrée (code name "Nadine") were arrested by German security forces and imprisoned. "Nadine" was an important member of the Comet Line, being the principal courier between Brussels and Paris. Her father would die in prison; her mother was released in 1943; and her sister survived the war in Mauthausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps.     
  "Lily" Dumon took over for her family members in the Comet Line, helping Allied airmen shot down over Belgium elude capture and escape Nazi-occupied Europe to neutral Spain from where they could be evacuated to Great Britain. Initially, she was in charge of safe houses where downed airmen were kept, nursed wounded airmen, helped prepare false identification cards, and connected airmen with escorts who would accompany them from Brussels to Spain, a roundabout distance of 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) via train, bicycle, and foot. After nearly being captured by the Germans, she went underground, living in safe houses and with other members of the Comet Line.  She had a false identification card which said she was 16 years old and a student. Being "pert" and "tiny" she appeared that age.  According to one airman, she looked to be 12 or 13 years old.  She emphasized her youth by dressing like a teenager, young students not being as suspicious to the Germans as older women. She spoke some English which made her suitable for interacting with Allied airman who only rarely spoke French.   
  Unlike most Comet Line escorts who tried to be inconspicuous, Dumon was sometimes dramatic. "Fifty times or more [she] outwitted the German agents by suddenly enacting a tender, tearful love scene in a streetcar or on a station platform with some airmen she had only known for an hour or two. Encountering such a scene, the embarrassed German agent would pass on and ask no questions."  
  With the near collapse of the Comet Line in June 1943 due to arrests by the Germans, Duman assumed more of a leadership position. "She became a sort of odd-job woman: looking for hide-outs, escorting pilots, recruiting new agents, collecting food coupons, restore[ing] the escape route after each wave of arrests.  She had a thorough knowledge of the whole line. If due to arrests or other circumstances there was a shortage of agents she joined in.  In January 1944, with the situation becoming too dangerous for her in Brussels, she moved to Paris, then quickly to Bayonne in southwestern France, where Elvire de Greef was the leader of the Comet Line. She escorted two groups of 10 airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain.  In March 1944, she was one of three Comet Line leaders meeting in Madrid with British authorities to plan for Comet Line action before and during the upcoming invasion of France by Allied forces.She went back to Paris from there and was arrested by the French police and spent two nights in jail, but she was not given to the Gestapo. She turned on her "babyish act" and the police commandant released her because she was so "young."
caption: Michelle Dumon's sister Andrée ("Nadine") also worked for the Comet Line and was arrested in 1942.
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