Thanks



Marceline Deloge was my maternal grandmother, she probably reluctantly took in those two Scottish soldiers back in February 1940 with the encouragement of my Aunt Louisa. When her two daughters were arrested in September 1941 her first thought was to help them. This resulted in her own arrest and subsequent long imprisonment in St. Gilles Prison, Essen Prison, Ravensbruck, Majdenak and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps until she finally disappeared, aged 67, sometime after September 1944. All this happened sometime before I was born but I am the first of my generation that has been able to research her story in a attempt to find out the truth. For my parents generation, apart from the difficulties and costs in researching the story back in the 1950's and 60's, they probably could not face the cruel realities of how someone they knew and loved was lost to them.
When starting my research in 1998 it came as a surprise to me that there were so many unsung heros and heroines of the early escape line story. People like Baron Jacques Donny, Jean Vandenhove, Emile Tousaint etc. who's names hardly appear at all in the books written about those days. Partly it is because they were arrested so early in the war, few of them were able to survive their long imprisonment so their stories disappeared along with them. I hope this website means their names and stories will not be forgotten.

I have made many contacts with people who are related to Belgian helpers, the evading soldiers and airmen or who are interested in the history of WW2 Belgium and the escape lines and I would like to thank them all for their assistance and the encouragement and support they have given to the website.

If you can help with further research, have any comments or questions or would like to make contact with like-minded researchers.
email John Clinch at



Thank you to:-.

British Red Cross, Croix-Rouge de Belgique and Ministere des Affaires Sociales se la Sainte Publique (Service des Victimes de la Guerre) for obtaining information on the Deloge family's imprisonment.

Mr Raymond Herbigniaux for photographs and information.
You can visit Raymond's own website on the Genealogy and History of Families from Brabant / Belgium
click on Herbigniaux

Sûreté de l'Etat Brussels for permission to see files held at CEGES.

Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Guerre et Sociétés contemporaines in Brussels ( Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on war and Contemporary Society) for copies of the Essen trial documents and post-war investigation.

Carole Bailey for photographs and information.

Bundesarchiv in Berlin for copy of file held there.

Mr Michael Moores LeBlanc (pictured left in the Pyrenees 2005) for fascinating information on Escape and Evasion and much encouragement in my research. Michael is an avid researcher and student of evasion lines and I recommend anybody sharing an interest in the subject should contact him. mmleblanc@sympatico.ca
Or through the 100th Bomb Group website http://www.100thbg.org/mainmenus/ee/ee_leblanc.htm

The late Mr Leonard Jones, Alfred Jones' brother who kindly let me look at all the correspondence that his family received about Alfred during and after the war and for allowing me to copy Alfred's photograph. Gaynor Harrison (Alfred's niece) for more photographs and information on Alfred

Mr Richard Copley for photographs and information.

The late Mr Jack Newton and Mrs Philippa Pigott (daughter of Roy Langlais) for information.

The late Allan Cowan and his family for photographs and information.

Margaret Lawson for information newspaper cuttings and photographs on her father Bernard (Bobby) Conville.

Ian Hart for information and photographs concerning his relative Howard Carroll.

Mr Harry Levy author of "The Dark Side of the Sky" for information.

Bruce Bolinger for information on Joe Dixey and Jimmy Clarke.

Marie-Antoinette Guillon for photographs of Georges Guillon.

Vincent Lovenfosse for information and photographs of his grandfather Armand.

Betty Loveday, daughter of Marcel Fauconnier, for photograph, and much information on the soldiers stay in Parike.

Jean-Pierre Derscheid for information on his father, Professor Derscheid.

Roy and Margaret Hoskin for helping retrieve some of my Aunt's papers and assisting in my research.

Craig and Sophie of Carlton Television's "Find your Family" for finding and taking me to visit Allan Cowan in Scotland.

Daniel A. Reboussin for information on Professor Derscheid.

Dominique Hanson for much help and photocopying of information on Comete Line.

Staff at the Public Record Office in Kew for help in finding Evasion & Liberation Reports.

Mr Grzegorz Plewik at the State Museum at Majdanek for information on Majdanek transportations.

Family of Duncan Greig for information & photographs

André Premereur for research in Parike and taking me around the locality introducing me to the families who hid the soldiers.

Mauthausen Memorial Museum for information on Yvonne Deloge and Alfred Jones.

Family of Franz Strens for photograph and information.

Mike Goring for translation of De Zitter papers.

Elizabeth Harrison former secretary and organiser of RAFES for information and assistance.

Ian Johnson for photographs of his father and others.

Gene Buck for research at NARA Washington USA

The members of the Escape Lines Memorial Society (ELMS) its Secretary Roger Stanton and Keith Janes

Fred Greyer and the "WW2 Escape and Evasion in NW Europe" Mailing Group.

My good friend Keith Secker for photographs and moral support getting over the Pyrenees in 2004



Click on www.belgiumww2.info  to go to INTRODUCTION

next page


© John Clinch 2002