Don't Look Back

Ronald Morley, from Leicester, was a wireless operator on the Lancaster bomber aircraft when it was shot down over occupied territory in Belgium on November 3rd, 1943.He had been stationed with the 29 Operational Training Unit at RAF North Luffenham before moving onto the bombers.Some of the crew died but Ronald parachuted out and survived.He sheltered in a barn overnight and was taken in by the Belgian resistance which engineered his escape.He travelled through Belgium, France and walked over the Pyrenees to Spain before getting a boat home from Gibraltar on a route known as the Comet Line,before being flown home in a Dakota aircraft.The Comet Line (French: Réseau Comète; 1941–1944) was a Resistance organization in occupied Belgium and France in WWII.The Comet Line helped Allied soldiers and airmen shot down over occupied Belgium evade capture by Germans and return to Great Britain. The Comet Line began in Brussels, where the airmen were fed, clothed, given false identity papers, and hidden in attics, cellars, and people's homes. A network of volunteers then escorted them south through occupied France into neutral Spain and home via British-controlled Gibraltar.The motto of the Comet Line was "Pugna Quin Percutias," which means "fight without arms," as the organisation did not undertake armed or violent resistance to the German occupation.The Comet Line received financial assistance from MI9, a British intelligence agency dedicated to the rescue of Allied prisoners of war and service members from behind enemy lines, but maintained its operational independence.For the Allies, the rescue of downed airmen by the Comet and other escape lines had a practical as well as a humanitarian objective.Training new and replacement of air crews was expensive and time-consuming.Rescuing airmen downed in occupied Europe and returning them to duty was a priority.A typical Comet Line route was from Brussels or Lille to Paris and then via Tours, Bordeaux, Bayonne, over the Pyrenees to San Sebastián in Spain. From there evaders travelled to Bilbao, Madrid and Gibraltar.Andrée de Jongh (aka Dédée and Postman),was the Line co-creator and leader.