The Comet Connection

Gunner George Watt was aboard a Flying Fortress bomber in November 1943 when it caught fire and he bailed out over Nazi-occupied Belgium. Villagers hid him in a field, slipped him past German patrols, and delivered him to Brussels, where he joined the Comet Line, the rescue network run by the Belgian resistance.

While concealed in "sale houses" in the capital, Watt watched Belgian patriots openly defy the occupiers. He then made his way by train through a Gestapo checkpoint to Bordeaux, pedaled a bicycle across southern France, and followed Basque guides along old smugglers' routes over the Pyrenees into Spain. Six years before, he had crossed those same mountains to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. That earlier experience, together with his fear of capture as both a former Lincoln Brigader and a Jew, shapes the account of his escape from Fortress Europe.

Forty years after the war, Watt went back to Belgium and learned that his story had become a legend in the villages of Zele and Flamme, retold by the children and grandchildren of those who helped him. In Brussels he also learned of the tragic fates of several underground comrades.

Whether describing aerial combat, the clandestine struggle the resistance fought, or the battles he remembered from Spain, Watt writes in a direct, unvarnished voice, with suspense, humor, and warm regard for the people he fought beside. The book works as a tense adventure on its own, and it also helps readers and students understand the two antifascist struggles of the century.