The Comet Line (Le Réseau Comète) is a famous escape line that operated between 1941 and 1944 during World War II. It was the brainchild of a 24-year-old Belgium woman, André de Jongh (known as Dédée), a young nurse who, at the outbreak of World War II, found herself nursing Allied soldiers and pilots who had fallen – or been stranded – behind enemy lines.
Dédée organised a network of Belgian and French resistance workers to help evacuate Allied pilots out of Nazi-occupied Europe over the Basque Pyrenees and the Bidasoa river into Spain. Here, while dodging Franco´s police, (known German sympathizers), Basque smugglers helped to guide the pilots into the hands of MI9 who then facilitated their return to Great Britain via Gibralter.