Last Best Hope: A True Story of Escape, Evasion, and Remembrance

Jacques Desoubri resurfaces under a different identity and again infiltrates the Comète Line. This time, the arrests shut down Comète completely, preventing all movement south from Brussels.

Michou Dumon is forced to leave Brussels for the South of France.

As the Allied invasion approaches, bombing missions increase, and more airmen are brought down over Belgium. The safe houses are in crisis mode — there is no way to move the evading pilots south, but they must be fed and kept safe from the Germans.

Word reaches Brussels of a new escape route, called KLM, in Antwerp. However, KLM is completely German-controlled. Over time, the EVA organization sends 35 airmen up to KLM. All are arrested. Airmen are also being sent from Holland to the KLM line. Rene Van Muylem, in charge of KLM, is eventually responsible for the arrest of 177 airmen.

The Abwehr continues collecting intelligence on the escape lines. Often they will simply put down surveillance on a safehouse to observe who is coming and going.

In anticipation of the Allied invasion and fearing a protracted siege of the city of Brussels, the Belgian Escape Lines, working in conjunction with British MI-9, execute “Mission Marathon” — secret camps established deep in the Ardennes Forest of eastern Belgium and in northern France. Hundreds of evading airmen are secretly moved to the MM camps to await their liberation.

D-Day landings.

German assassination attempt on Hitler fails.

The Abwehr is implicated in the attempted assassination of Hitler. The Abwehr’s political rivals, the SD, take control of internal security in the occupied territories. The SD initiate massive arrests of Resistants and agents of the escape lines.

Liberation of Paris.

1,760 political prisoners and 43 allied airmen are evacuated from St. Gilles prison in Brussels and entrained for Germany.

Due to sabotage and negotiation, the train carrying the prisoners never makes it out of Belgium. The prisoners are released.

Liberation of Brussels.

Liberation of Antwerp.

U.S. troops reach the Siegfried Line.

Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

Patton relieves Bastogne.