Albert Guérisse Major - General Comte Albert - Marie Edmond Guérisse , GC , KBE , DSO ( 5 April 1911 – 26 March 1989 ) was a Belgian Resistance member who organized escape routes for downed Allied pilots during World War II under the alias of Patrick Albert " Pat " O ' Leary , the name of a Canadian friend . His escape line was dubbed the Pat Line . Biography . He was born in Brussels , and qualified in medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles before joining the Belgian Army . At the outbreak of War , Guérisse was serving as a Medecin - Capitaine , a Captain in the Medical Branch , as the medical officer of the Guides , a Belgian cavalry regiment . After Belgium was forced to surrender , he escaped to Britain through Dunkirk . He then joined the French - crewed ship , " Le Rhin " , which had been accepted for special operations and renamed . His British commission was therefore a naval commission in the RNVR , the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve . Guérisse was serving mainly as a conducting officer , escorting agents ashore in small boats through the surf , whilst the large vessel lay some distance offshore . This was skilled work , exposed to physical dangers from the sea - conditions and operational dangers from the Vichy security services . On 25 April 1941 , during a mission to place SOE agents in Collioure , on Roussillon coast in southern France , Guérisse was in the skiff on its way back to the ship when it turned over and he had to swim ashore . To the Vichy French coast guards , Guérisse claimed he was a Canadian airman named Pat O ' Leary . The ' Canadian ' identity attempted to explain his not - quite British accent in English , and his not - quite French accent in French , without compromising his relatives in occupied Belgium . He was taken to St . Hippolyte du Fort near Nîmes , where he met ' fellow British ' officers , including SOE operative Ian Garrow who got him released and took him to Marseille . In this roundabout way , Guérisse was inducted into the clandestine work on escape - lines . Both for security in Vichy France and for consistency in his story , Guérisse decided to continue with the O ' Leary alias while he remained ashore in France . At this point he might still have assumed that his work in France was a temporary measure and that he would , in his turn , make his way to Gibraltar and resume his original naval service . Events were to dictate otherwise . Initially one of Garrow ' s assistants , along with others such as Nancy Wake , but when the Vichy France authorities captured Garrow in October 1941 , Guérisse took over as chief of the escape network . He smuggled a German uniform to Garrow in his cell in Mauzac concentration camp which helped Garrow ' s escape on 6 December 1941 . At this point the British decided it was time for Garrow to return to London , so Guérisse continued in command and expanded the reach of the escape line ' s operations . The line carried over 600 escapees to Spain and back to Britain . In January 1943 , the escape line was infiltrated and betrayed by French turncoat Roger le Neveu , who was an associate of Harold Cole and Guérisse was arrested in Toulouse in March . He managed to get one of the younger members , Fabien de Cortes , to flee the train when they were transported to prison to warn the British . After his arrest the line was , in turn , taken over by Marie Dissard . Guérisse told nothing to the Gestapo interrogators when he was tortured and then was sent to a series of concentration camps . In the summer of 1944 , he was at the Natzweiler - Struthof concentration camp in Alsace with another SOE agent Brian Stonehouse . At the camp he witnessed the arrival of four other female SOE agents , Andrée Borrel , Vera Leigh , Diana Rowden , and Sonya Olschanezky , who were all executed and disposed of in the crematorium in an attempt to make them disappear without a trace , under the programme of night and fog . After the war , Guérisse and Stonehouse were able to testify at the Nazi war crimes trials as to the women ' s fate . Finally , Guérisse was taken to the Dachau concentration camp , tortured again and then sentenced to death . However , when SS guards surrendered before the Allied advance , " O ' Leary " took command and refused to leave before Allies agreed to take care of the inmates . On 30 April 1945 he was chosen as the first president of the International Prisoners ' Committee that administered the camp after liberation . From its founding in 1956 until his death he served many terms as president of the Comité International de Dachau , and regularly gave the keynote speech at the May memorial ceremonies . After the War , Guérisse resumed his real name and rejoined the Belgian Army . He served with the Belgian forces in Korea during the Korean War where he was wounded trying to rescue a wounded soldier . He became the head of the medical service of the Belgian army and retired in 1970 , in the rank of major general . In his personal life , he married Sylvia Cooper - Smith in 1947 and they had a son . Sylvia predeceased him . Awards & Decorations . General Guérisse received 35 decorations , from a variety of nations . In 1946 , the British recognised his war service with the award of the George Cross . This was the highest possible award of the British Commonwealth nations for actions not in combat and only the Victoria Cross ( the equivalent award for bravery in actual combat ) takes precedence . In the UK it is the convention for the post - nominal letters for both these awards to be amended to the surname even for general usage , i . e . to refer to : ' Guérisse , GC ' . Recognising his military service as a whole , the British later also conferred on Albert - Marie Guérisse , GC , an honorary knighthood ( KBE ) . Similarly , the King of Belgium recognised the lifetime service of General Guérisse with the grant of a peerage in 1986 , in the rank of Count ( comte ) . His motto : " Honores non quaero , fidelis sum " ( Honors I do not seek , faithful I am ) Death . General Count Albert - Marie Guérisse , GC , died in Waterloo , Belgium on 26 March 1989 , aged 77 .