USAF photo emember: Do Nothing. Say Nothing. Write Nothing Which “ Could Betray Our Friends.” This notice, posted for American airmen shot down over aircrew during World War II, Rreminded them of a reassuring secret: Europe had a sophisticated web of If they were shot down over France, Resistance networks were ready and eager supporters for attempts to avoid the to hide them from the Germans. Nazis and reach freedom. There was good reason to be optimistic. The Resistance enabled more than 3,000 Allied airmen to disguise their identities and walk out of German-occupied Western Europe. Airmen shot down in France and Belgium had especially good chances of making it out. Future American ace and legend Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager was shot down by Focke-Wulf 190s on a mission over France on March 5, 1944. “Before I had gone 200 feet, half a dozen Frenchmen ran up to me,” Yeager later reported. They brought him a change of clothes and hid him in a barn. Under the care of the Resistance, Yeager was transported to southern France, hiked into Spain on March 28, reached the British fortress at Gibraltar on May 15, and was in England by May 21, 1944. Yeager’s speedy trip was made possible by years of effort to build networks for moving airmen from the moment they landed in their parachutes to the moment they reached friendly or neutral territory. The evading airman’s journey always began with immediate concealment. Then they sheltered with families, often in several locations. Next they traveled in cars and trucks, bicycled, and even rode

A B-24 crash-lands near Eindhoven, Holland. Resistance networks in Nazi-occupied countries helped downed Allied airmen traverse hundreds of miles to safety.

Escaping By Rebecca Grant

70 the ContinentAIR FORCE Magazine / October 2014 A local Michigan newspaper announces SSgt. Harry Eastman to be missing in action in Europe, but by then the had saved him from being captured.

Four crew members bailed out, leaving six on board for the crash landing. Harrison told the crew to scatter, pushed the destruction buttons in the cockpit, and ran to the nearby woods. “During the fi ve hours I lay hidden in the [woods], I could hear the Germans searching,” he later recalled in his escape and evasion report. Those who evaded capture often found quick help from the Resistance move- ments. French peasants spotted Harrison and soon a young boy approached him, offering food and clothing. The boy led Harrison home only to fi nd German troops sur- rounding the house. The boy guided him to another house four miles away, where the pilot hid for six days. A crew member from another airplane in the Le Bourget raid, a B-17 nicknamed Good Time Cholly II, also found sanctuary in the woods. SSgt. Harry L. Eastman, age 34, was the left waist gunner on the bomber. Focke-Wulfs and Me 109s in lines of six abreast came in “right after” Spitfi re escorts turned back, recalled Eastman. He parachuted into a wheat fi eld. Then he saw a man on a bicycle wave him toward the woods. Four Frenchmen were waiting for him there, but Eastman gestured that his back was injured and he could go no farther. A Frenchman moved him from the trains through Paris right under the eyes of bomb bay, holding a fi re extinguisher on ditch where he had hidden under a thorn German soldiers. Sometimes they moved the blue fl ames moving from the engine hedge into a nearby wood. Other Resis- alone, but just as often the Resistance toward the wing of his B-24. tance members brought SSgt. Richard S. linked them into small groups at This attack left the “No. 3 engine out, Davitt, the top turret gunner, to join him. assembly points such as Liège, Belgium. aileron control shot away, [and] fi re in Five days later, they drove the two airmen [the] bomb bay and on [the] command to a safe house. BAIL OUT deck,” according to the B-24’s pilot, 1st Statistically, these airmen were now For evaders the saga usually began Lt. Joseph Pavelka. missing in action, and their families back with a struggle, often onboard a burning Next came the parachute descent. home received telegrams giving that status. B-24 or B-17. Typically it was a German Evading capture sometimes depended fi ghter that shot down the bomber over on landing near cover. Airmen who could WELL-PREPARED France or Belgium. manage it waited to pull the ripcord be- The US Army Air Forces equipped avia- Through 1943, many of the bombers cause having no open parachute canopy tors with special supplies and equipment fell victim to the German tactic of nose- made them less visible targets for German in case they crash-landed or had to bail on attacks, introduced by Oberleutnant forces. On this B-24, four of the crew fell out. All this was the work of the Military (1st Lt.) Egon Mayer. Skilled German into German hands and became POWs. Intelligence Service-X or MIS-X. fi ghter pilots used the tactic to break up The others evaded capture. Silk maps were standard issue. Aviators formation accuracy during a bomb run. Sometimes pilots stayed with the also typically fl ew with a money purse. Red Frontal attacks at this time were “the chief airplane to crash-land it after the crew purses contained maps of France, Holland, defensive problem of the ,” bailed out. Capt. Kee H. Harrison’s B-17 Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. found World War II historians Wesley F. of the 94th Bomb Group lost two engines Tucked inside were 2,000 French francs, Craven and James L. Cate. to fi ghter attack near Le Bourget airfi eld worth about $50—a signifi cant amount Then-TSgt. Chester B. Hincewicz was outside Paris on July 14, 1943. A 20 mm at a time when average monthly rent was a top-turret gunner in a B-24 shot down shell explosion set the cockpit on fi re. $40. Records indicate a total of 103,126 after bombing Germany on April 12, 1944. With a full bomb load, the aircraft was red money purses were distributed to US He remembered hanging over an open hopelessly dropping behind the formation. airmen through June of 1945. Yellow AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2014 71 money purses combined his money purse down on French francs with Belgian the fl oor of the burning francs and Dutch guilders. B-24 in a fi t of anger when How was the money spent? he realized they couldn’t Pavelka told debriefers he control the spreading fi re spent his mix of francs and enough to make it back to guilders for “black market England. tobacco and train and bus Passport photographs fare” before leaving the were perhaps the most surplus “as a gift for [the] valuable item carried. family who helped us last.” Typically, each aviator Each aircrew member had three or four small carried an aid box. These head shots to be used contained a chocolate or for creating new identity peanut bar, milk in a tube, papers. Hoverkamp was Benzedrine tablets to counter unlucky; he had four fatigue, halazone tablets photographs, but they were to purify water, matches, cut to the wrong size and adhesive tape, chewing gum, worthless. For the most a water bottle, compass, and part, the photographs were Horlicks tablets, a malted the crucial link enabling wheat candy thought to Resistance members to stave off hunger. Some create new identity cards of the American evaders and work permits so that wryly observed that the the airmen could move chewing gum was best for through occupied territory. taking away the taste of the Uniforms conferred Horlicks. some protection if caught. Benzedrine was popular. Masquerading as civilians “Very necessary,” reported put airmen at special risk. Capt. Douglas K. Hoverkamp “By donning civilian of Staten Island, N.Y. “Used clothing,” stated Air Force to keep awake and keep historians, airmen lost their walking for three days while on way Geneva Convention rights and ran the to Switzerland.” Despite this, it was risk of “being shot as spies if captured.” all too easy for aviator and supplies to become separated. Harrison lost his ROUTES HOME money purse and supply box on Day The men, women, and children who One of his evasion. Others lost them made contact with the downed fl iers during the bail out. Hincewicz threw were highly networked and organized. A special arm of British Intelligence, designated MI9, started work in late 1939 with the sole mission of feeding information to Resistance networks in occupied Europe. Returning downed airmen—and the intelligence they sometimes brought—was one of the main jobs of the Resistance movements. Transporting the airmen out of occupied Europe involved hundreds of miles of travel. Three main routes, or lines, shepherded the airmen out. USAF images The Comet Line started in Clockwise from top: A map shows the and moved airmen through Paris and three major lines of escape through into Spain where they exited through Western Europe. The Comet Line alone moved some 800 people to safety. A Gibraltar or Portugal. The name was placard warns of the consequences a translation of the French phrase “Le facing helpers who were betrayed. Réseau Comète,” or Comet Network. The Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse, aka route was the brainchild of a 24-year- “Patrick O’Leary,” organized the Pat old Belgian woman named Andrée E. Line. Betrayed in 1943, he endured Gestapo torture and a concentration A. de Jongh. Her line moved some 800 camp without revealing his comrades. people, many of them airmen of several He survived the war. nationalities, to safety. 72 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2014 Dissard of , who ran summer of 1944, partisan leader Draza the line from March 1943 until Mihailovich and his Chetnik army had the . Several collected hundreds of airmen. The US times, small cutters sailed from Offi ce of Strategic Services—predecessor the coast of France to return to the CIA—eventually arranged a mass handfuls of airmen to England. airlift, with C-47s fl ying into rough-hewn For many, the goal was airstrips. A total of 512 aviators were Spain. The Comet Line favored rescued by the time Operation Halyard an arduous western Pyrénées ceased in December 1944. route, and for the evaders Some exited Nazi territory by crossing making their way home this into Switzerland. Hoverkamp landed in a way, success was a major pine tree in Belgium and walked along a victory. They climbed peaks deserted cart trail. Then, across the fi eld, to 15,000 feet on a journey he saw someone run and sit down under that lasted about a week. “The a tree. It was TSgt. Orvin V. Taylor, the weather changes as if someone radio operator from his crew. Soon the has hit a fast-forward button,” two aviators met an old man who hid reported a BBC correspondent them in a corn crib. Later he gave them who hiked the path in 2011 civilian clothes, a blanket, and dinner in a with a commemorative group. house before moving the pair to a lean-to “We experienced dank drizzle, in the woods. boiling heat, freezing mists, They then received assistance from snow underfoot, and then more Belgium’s “White Brigade,” another heat in quick succession.” Resistance group. Hoverkamp and Taylor Harrison arrived in Spain spent seven days there, wet with snow on the ground. Then their benefactors moved them USAF photo to a farmhouse where they Above: A poster reminds aircrews to found 1st Lt. Frank Paisano, bring their escape and evasion kits the bombardier from his with them on missions and what might crew, and other airmen from happen to them if they didn’t. Right: the 379th Bomb Group. Four With this fake passport supplied by the Resistance, US airman TSgt. Chester of them were next hidden Hincewicz became a Polish journalist. under a bridge, then jumped onto a railroad baggage car where another White The Pat Line was known for the Brigade Resistance man code name of its organizer. He was a guided them on. The train Belgian cavalry doctor named Albert- took them to Liège, where Marie Edmond Guérisse, alias Patrick Hoverkamp estimated Albert O’Leary. Guérisse was evacuated there were no less than 30 at Dunkirk then returned to special Americans. operations work as a British naval offi cer. For Hoverkamp the He took over the route after Image courtesy of the Dillsburg Banner moment of crisis came as its originator Ian Garrow was caught he boarded a bus to head by the Gestapo. The Pat Line’s “great on Aug. 28, 1943. His route, named the east. The “Germans asked for my [identity] strength came from the fact that the Bourgogne Line, moved across the central card and luggage. I had no luggage, [the people who formed its guiding core all Pyrénées. Harrison made it to Gibraltar German] spoke very bad French and had to knew, liked, and trusted each other. They on Sept. 13 and was back in the UK by have a woman interpret, so the guide told understood each other quickly, without Sept. 16, 1943. Eastman also escaped via [the German] I only spoke Flemish,” he long explanations; they were all well the Bourgogne Line. said in his MIS-X report. Another woman aware of the risks they ran, individually Not all downed airmen made a quick on the bus “started an argument, which and in common,” wrote the authors of return to Britain. TSgt. Dale G. Hulsey, completely distracted” the German and MI9: The British Secret Service That a radio operator-gunner, spent 319 days got Hoverkamp off the hook. Fostered Escape and Evasion. “Pat” with a band of partisans in German- By then, it was snowing hard, but himself fell into German hands, too, but occupied Yugoslavia after being shot down guides pointed out the mountain route to survived imprisonment at the Dachau during the famous B-24 raid on Ploesti, Switzerland. However, the trail ended and, concentration camp. Romania, on Aug. 1, 1943. Hulsey’s B-24, uncertain of the next step, a disagreement The Shelburne Line was an MI9 venture nicknamed The Witch, was part of the 98th fl ared. Two other evaders “thought they especially active in early 1944. In addition, Bomb Group, based in Benghazi, Libya. knew better and left us,” Hoverkamp numerous small lines and one-time He wasn’t alone. The raids on Ploesti stated in his escape and evasion report. operations also shepherded the airmen. in 1943 through 1944 saw hundreds Hoverkamp and his crew mate broke into Yeager came home via the Françoise of airmen bail out or crash-land in the a garage to rest. By now Hoverkamp had Line, named for Marie-Louise “Françoise” Serbian provinces of Yugoslavia. By the just two Benzedrine tablets left. He split AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2014 73 them in half and saw that each man forces, assistance from Resistance had some before they set off at 2 and so on. Evaders could share no a.m. Hours later they approached details, even with other fl ying units. an illuminated farmhouse that “Information about your escape turned out to be the Swiss frontier or your evasion from capture would post. “We were given food and be useful to the enemy and a danger [a] lot [of] chocolate,” recalled to your friends. It is therefore Hoverkamp. secret,” said the standard form they signed during the war. Today, ON THE MOVE thousands of the declassifi ed reports The bomber offensive remain on fi le with the National intensifi ed in 1944 as the planned Archives in Washington, D.C. date for the invasion of Normandy Aviators also commented approached. on how well their escape and That’s when Hincewicz bailed evasion lectures both Stateside out over occupied Europe. “I kept and in theater had prepared them. my walking shoes, my GI shoes, Harrison reported there was no tied to my parachute harness,” he point in hiding in fi elds during the told a Pennsylvania newspaper, daytime, because the Germans used the Dillsburg Banner, in a 2009 USAF photo slow-fl ying airplanes to search for Mademoiselle Sainson, a Resistance interview. Unsure whether he was still helper, took two Americans for a walk. downed aviators. “Do not hide in woods over Germany, Hincewicz did not open When they ran into Italian soldiers, at night because Germans use dogs,” the parachute until he was in cloud cover she asked them to pose for pictures Harrison also said. and near the ground. He was in Belgium. with the group. They did, assuming the Protecting the Resistance networks He landed near two women drawing water Americans were French. was paramount. Intense secrecy was at a well. “One of them pulled up a bucket traveling Polish journalist, according to necessary to preserve the escape routes of water from the well and started washing his forged passport. German troops were enabled by thousands of French, Belgian, the blood off me,” he said. The women suddenly on high alert. Hincewicz had Dutch, Spanish, Greek, and other men and gave him old clothes and gestured for been with one Belgian family for several women who guided the airmen through him to move away. Hincewicz found a weeks. Then he was moved every few Nazi-occupied Europe. wayside chapel overgrown with weeds and days by the Resistance. One of the last Even so, those civilians were often hid there. Hours later he heard noises. A stops was a stately manor house where caught. Comet Line organizer de Jongh teenager and three or four other children on the Resistance was hiding other downed was arrested in January 1943 and sent to bicycles had come to fetch him—bringing airmen. Hincewicz bunked in the stables Ravensbrück concentration camp. She a spare bicycle. with three young enlisted men. was liberated in April 1945. According to Far worse was the situation of 1st Lt. “One morning I was awakened by Britain’s Independent newpaper, “Of the Henry C. Woodrum, who bailed out over noise—a lot of shouting. I glanced out the Comet Line helpers who fell into German Paris on May 28, 1944. door and there was a German military unit hands, 23 were executed, while another Woodrum was fl ying his 35th mission as that was in the process of routing out the 133 died in concentration camps or as a pilot of a B-26 Marauder. His mission was Americans. The three kids looked at me result of their incarceration.” part of the last crucial step before D-Day: and I told them to follow. Those kids stayed Yet their success was impressive. More destroying Seine River bridges to prevent with me and then the shooting started.” than 3,000 US and UK airmen were the Germans from easily reinforcing the The Germans were part of a retreating returned from occupied Europe alone. Normandy beachhead areas. Confi dent of unit. Hincewicz and the three men managed Although aircrew that had been helped by their precision bombing, the USAAF held to escape and rejoin the underground the Resistance were usually taken off fl ying off on these last attacks for the days leading Resistance. Hincewicz fi nally made his status—if they were shot down again and up to the invasion in order to deprive the way to British lines and then onward to captured, the Germans could exploit their Germans of time to rebuild. However, American lines. Soon he was in newly knowledge of the escape network—some, executing the attacks demanded low-level liberated Paris. like Yeager, went on to fi ght again. bomb runs for the accuracy required to Hincewicz rejoined the Air Force in drop the bridges. Woodrum’s B-26 was DEBRIEFS 1948, serving on B-29s and then in hit by anti-aircraft fi re. Returning aviators were debriefed intelligence until retiring in 1970. Decades Woodrum parachuted onto the roof by an attaché who met them. Evaders later, he summed up the experience in a of a house in Paris. German soldiers often brought back fi rsthand sightings of letter to Richard Hansen, a gunner on the began a door-to-door search for him, but Germans, their vehicles, and installations. same B-24. he posed as a house painter and eluded In Britain, returning aircrew were under “The next six months were stressful, them. Fortunately, he was then sheltered orders to report to locations such as the but I learned a lot, which helped me in my by the Resistance. Woodrum avoided US Special Reception Center, then at 63 personal and professional life,” Hincewicz capture until the Allies liberated Paris on Brook Street in downtown London. They wrote. “I still owe a lot to the people in Aug. 25, 1944. fi lled out lengthy forms describing how the underground, which I was never able Meanwhile, conditions for the they used their aid boxes, reports on enemy to repay.” ✪ evaders changed as Resistance members anticipated the June 6, 1944, invasion. Rebecca Grant is president of IRIS Independent Research. Her most recent article Hincewicz became Pawel Hinewie, for Air Force Magazine was "The Reagan Buildup" in the September issue. 74 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2014