A true story of extraordinary bravery, betrayal, tragedy and
triumph.--The Daily Telegraph
On a hot afternoon in August 1941, a twenty-four-year-old Belgian woman
walked into the British consulate in Bilbao, neutral Spain, and demanded
to see the consul. She presented him with a British soldier she had
smuggled all the way from Brussels, through occupied France and over the
Pyrenees. It is a journey she will make countless times thereafter, at
unthinkable danger to her own life.
Her name is Andrée de Jongh, though she will come to be known as the
Little Cyclone in deference to her extraordinary courage and tenacity.
She is an inspiration. From nursing wounded Allied servicemen, de Jongh
would go on to establish the Comet Line, the most famous escape line of
the Second World War, one that saved the lives of more than eight
hundred airmen and soldiers stranded behind enemy lines. The risks,
however, would be enormous, the cost, unspeakably tragic.
Her story is shot through with the constant terror of discovery and
interception--of late night knocks at the door, of disastrous moonlit
river crossings, Gestapo infiltrators, firing squads and concentration
camps. It is also a classic true story of fear overcome by giddying
bravery.
Airey Neave served as an intelligence agent for MI9 in World War Two
before later becoming Member of Parliament for Abingdon. The author of
several highly acclaimed books on the Second World War, he died in 1979
in an IRA a car-bomb attack at the House of Commons.
