Andrée Dumont and Canadian, Al Day, first met late 1941 at the station in Brussels. Returning from a raid over Frankfurt, Al's plane had been shot down. 18-year-old Andrée was working for the Belgian resistance - it was her job to deliver Al to safety. Sixty years on, their brief wartime relationship remains one of the most important of their lives. Last month, reporter Ray Kershaw met them both at the Escape Line Reunion in North Yorkshire... "She wasn't one of the most important women in my life - she is the most important person in my life - as are all these helpers who helped me," says Al. He's talking about Andrée Dumont, a diminutive Belgian woman who risked her life to help twenty-five soldiers and airmen to safety during World War II. Andrée, whose codename was Nadine, and is also known as Dedée was one of the organisers of an escape route running from Belgium to the Pyrenees. It was known as the Comete Line.
Al remains grateful to Andrée, and is awed by her courage and clarity of purpose, "Dedée who was so tiny, so small, and so beautiful a young lady that it almost seemed silly that someone my size was gonna put my life in her hands. She handled everything and we ended up in Valenciennes."
From Valenciennes, Al was escorted to the Spanish border by another member of the Resistance. "Dedée was an angel," he continues, "because she was risking her life to get us out. You admired her; you'd have loved to have met her in different circumstances, but this was something that never crossed your mind, because she was like a sister or angel, and you were there to take care of her if you could - especially by not doing something silly that would lead to her arrest."
"I was never frightened," Andrée laughs, "I am lucky because I have cold blood - you understand that, 'cold blood'? Also, when you are in danger you have no time to think 'I am afraid', you must think, 'What can I do?' very quick - so no time to be afraid."
But in August 1942, Andrée's bravery severely tested, "The Germans take my father in a car, me in another car. I was smiling and the Germans say, 'Soon you will not smile anymore.' But I always smile. I look so young when I arrive in the prison that a woman warder said, 'Oh, you'll be free very soon. We don't arrest children. But I knew very well I will be not free."
What happened there was hard for Andrée to bear, "I forced myself to smile - in French we say, 'rire jaune, a yellow smile." From prison she was taken to a concentration camp; her sister took her place on the Comete Line. Their father, a doctor, was taken to a camp in Poland. When the Germans evacuated the camp, he refused to leave the sick prisoners, and was burned alive with them in February 1945.
Although Al and Andrée spent only a few days in each other's company, the intensity of the wartime experience never left them. Al says," "We know the risks she took. Although she was a tiny girl, she looked six foot tall the way she handled us. I didn't expect to see her again. But we always prayed for her. To this day I do." "We have very big friendship links," says Andrée, "Since the end of the war, I begin to look for the airmen I help. We're very very good friends since that time." "
Al finds it hard to find the words for what he feels, "They treat us as the heroes - they're the heroes. Such bravery. I find it so difficult to name what they are and what they do, but basically, they're family - Nadine, Dedée - are as close as any of my family. In my heart they're always there." Andrée agrees, "They're like family - yes."
