Andrée de Jongh Countess Andrée De Jongh ( November 30 , 1916 – October 13 , 2007 ) was a member of the Belgian Resistance during World War II . She organized the Comet Line ( " Le Réseau Comète " ) for escaped Allied soldiers . After the war , she worked in leper hospitals in Africa . Early life . Andrée Eugénie Adrienne De Jongh ( nicknamed " Dédée " ) was born in Schaerbeek in Belgium , then under German occupation during the First World War . She was the younger daughter of Frédéric De Jongh , a headmaster and Alice Decarpentrie . Edith Cavell , a British nurse shot in the Tir National in Schaerbeek in 1915 for assisting troops to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands , was a heroine in her youth . She trained as a nurse , and became a commercial artist in Malmédy . Second World War . After German troops invaded Belgium in May 1940 , De Jongh moved to Brussels , where she became a Red Cross volunteer , ministering to captured Allied troops . In Brussels at that time , hiding in safe houses , were many British soldiers , those left behind at Dunkirk and escapees from those captured at St . Valery - en - Caux . Visiting the sick and wounded soldiers enabled her to make links with this network of safe - house keepers who were trying to work out ways to get the soldiers back to Britain . In the summer of 1941 , with the help of her father , she set up an escape network for captured Allied soldiers , which became later known as the Comet Line . Working with Arnold Deppé and Elvire De Greef - Berlemont ( " Tante Go " ) in the south of France , they established links with the safe houses in Brussels , then a route was found , using trains , through occupied and Vichy France to the border with Spain . The first escape attempt was unsuccessful , and all of the escapees were captured by the Spanish , with only two out of eleven reaching England , so De Jongh decided to lead the second attempt , a group of three men , personally . In August 1941 , she appeared in the British consulate in Bilbao with a British soldier , James Cromar from Aberdeen , and two Belgian volunteers , Merchiers and Sterckmans , having travelled by train through Paris to Bayonne , and then on foot over the Pyrenees . She requested support for her escape network , which was granted by MI9 . She helped around 400 Allied soldiers to escape from Belgium , through occupied France to the British consulate in Madrid and on to Gibraltar . Andrée accompanied 118 of them herself . Airey Neave described her as " one of our greatest agents " . The Gestapo , using a traitor , captured her father , Frédéric De Jongh , in Paris in June 1943 and later executed him . De Jongh herself was betrayed and captured at a farmhouse in Urrugne , in the French Basque country , in January 1943 - the last stop on the escape line before the passage over the Pyrenees - during her 33rd journey to Spain . She was interrogated by the Gestapo and tortured , and admitted that she was the organiser of the escape network . Unwilling to believe her , the Gestapo let her live . She was sent first to Fresnes prison in Paris and eventually to Ravensbrück concentration camp and Mauthausen . She was released by the advancing Allied troops in April 1945 . Many other members of the Comet Line were also captured . 23 were executed and hundreds of helpers were sent to concentration camps , where an unknown number died . Meanwhile , the line continued in their absence : in all , it returned around 800 Allied soldiers and airmen , continuing until Belgium was liberated in 1944 . For her wartime efforts , she was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom , the British George Medal , and became a Chevalier of the French Légion d ' honneur . She also became a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold , received the Belgian Croix de Guerre / Oorlogskruis with palm , and was granted the honorary rank of Lieutenant - Colonel in the Belgian Army . In 1985 , she was made a countess in the Belgian nobility . Later life . After the war , she moved first to the pre - independence Belgian Congo , then to Cameroon , next to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia , working in leper hospitals and finally to Senegal . In failing health , she eventually retired to Brussels . Death . The Countess De Jongh died on Saturday , 13 October 2007 , aged 90 , at the University Clinic Woluwe - Saint - Lambert / Sint - Lambrechts - Woluwe , Brussels . Her funeral service was held at the La Cambre Abbey , Ixelles Brussels , six days later . She was interred in the crypt of her parents at the Schaarbeek Cemetery at Evere the same day .