OUTSTANDING GALLANTRY

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 February 1946, Page 6

OUTSTANDING GALLANTRY

BELGIAN GIRL HONOURED

LONDON, February 13. A slight, cur Ty-haired, pretty Belgian girl, Mlle. Andree de Jongh, aged 25, drove to Buckingham Palace today and received from His Majesty the award of the George Medal, “for outstanding gallantry and tenacious devotion to the Allied cause.” The citation revealed a remarkable story of Mlle, de Jongh’s planning and leadership of the under-cover organisation known as “the Comet Lino,” which was the saviour of many Allied servicemen stranded in German-oc-cupied Europe. . The citation said: “From 1941 until her arrest in January, 1943, she organised the dispatch of these servicemen from Belgium to the Pyrenees. The work was not a haphazard undertaking but was a masterpiece of careful planning. She crossed_ the Pyrenees in' all weathers —midwinter snow and ice and Summer heat and rain.” The citation recounted how Mlle, de Jongh swam the Somme 20 times on one trip, helping non-swim-mers across the river, constantly evaded frontier patrols, and refused to abandon her self-imposed task, although her arrest appeared imminent every day. Once when the Gestapo appeared at her front door she escaped through the garden. She was finally arrested on the Spanish frontier on January 13, 1943, and sent to a' concentration camp. The Air Ministry has presented Mlle, de Jongh with a mounted clock from a bomber inscribed: "In token of the deep and lasting gratitude of the Royal Air Force.” The Secretary of State for Air (Lord Stansgate) said Mlle, de Jongh’s efforts were “almost unsurpassed in mankind’s history.”