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Monique Hanotte, Belgian resistance member who rescued 135 downed Allied airmen in WWII, dies at 101
Obituaries
Monique Hanotte, Belgian resistance member who rescued 135 downed Allied airmen in World War II, dies at 101
By Phil Davison
February 24, 2022 at 2:05 p.m. EST
Monique Hanotte, who as a Belgian teenager risked her life to help escort 135 Allied airmen out of German-occupied France and Belgium during World War II, died Feb. 19 in the Belgian city of Nivelles. She was 101. ... Her death, of undisclosed causes, was announced by the municipal authorities in Nivelles.
The unarmed Belgian resistance — two-thirds of them women of all ages — hid, clothed, fed and created false documents for downed airmen, and then guided more than 800 of them on a long, dangerous trail through France, over the rugged Pyrenees to Spain, and finally into the British territory of Gibraltar, from which they would be flown to England.
Ms. Hanotte was one of the last handful of surviving members of the Belgian “Comet Line,” a resistance network dedicated to saving Allied airmen from capture, torture and likely execution by the Nazis. ... The network’s motto was “Pugna Quin Percutias” (fight without arms), as it never undertook armed or violent attacks during the German occupation, unlike the neighboring French resistance. Around 160 members of the network, including many women, were captured by the Gestapo, often tortured, executed or sent to German concentration or extermination camps.
Ms. Hanotte’s resistance “career” began in May 1940, when she was 19, after two ragged British army officers showed up at the Hanotte family’s small hotel in the Belgian village of Rumes, just over a mile from the French border, soon after Hitler’s forces had invaded Belgium on their way to France. ... The men had become separated from their units and were trying to get to the French port of Dunkirk to join the British mass evacuation in the face of the German onslaught. The United States had not yet entered the war.
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Monique Hanotte, Belgian resistance member who rescued 135 downed Allied airmen in World War II, dies at 101
By Phil Davison
February 24, 2022 at 2:05 p.m. EST
Monique Hanotte, who as a Belgian teenager risked her life to help escort 135 Allied airmen out of German-occupied France and Belgium during World War II, died Feb. 19 in the Belgian city of Nivelles. She was 101. ... Her death, of undisclosed causes, was announced by the municipal authorities in Nivelles.
The unarmed Belgian resistance — two-thirds of them women of all ages — hid, clothed, fed and created false documents for downed airmen, and then guided more than 800 of them on a long, dangerous trail through France, over the rugged Pyrenees to Spain, and finally into the British territory of Gibraltar, from which they would be flown to England.
Ms. Hanotte was one of the last handful of surviving members of the Belgian “Comet Line,” a resistance network dedicated to saving Allied airmen from capture, torture and likely execution by the Nazis. ... The network’s motto was “Pugna Quin Percutias” (fight without arms), as it never undertook armed or violent attacks during the German occupation, unlike the neighboring French resistance. Around 160 members of the network, including many women, were captured by the Gestapo, often tortured, executed or sent to German concentration or extermination camps.
Ms. Hanotte’s resistance “career” began in May 1940, when she was 19, after two ragged British army officers showed up at the Hanotte family’s small hotel in the Belgian village of Rumes, just over a mile from the French border, soon after Hitler’s forces had invaded Belgium on their way to France. ... The men had become separated from their units and were trying to get to the French port of Dunkirk to join the British mass evacuation in the face of the German onslaught. The United States had not yet entered the war.
{snip}
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