By Mary Dodge Allen
The Smit-van der Heijden escape line was established in the Spring of 1942, by two Dutch men - Karst Smit, a Dutch border patrol officer stationed in the village of Hilvarenbeek near the Belgian border; and Eugene van-der Heijden, a teacher in the village. By November 14, 1943, this escape line had been operating for nearly a year and a half.
On the morning of November 14, 1943, after spending the night in a chicken coop near the Dutch village of Hilvarenbeek, airman Tom Applewhite met with Eugene van der Heijden, who was going to be his guide across the border into Belgium, all the way to the safe house in Brussels.
Eugene didn’t have a false ID for Tom, because the escape line felt pressured to move him as soon as possible. Tom’s B-17 had crashed only twenty-five miles from Hilvarenbeek, and local German authorities were looking for him and another crewman still at large - Nello Malavasi, the top turret gunner/engineer on “The Wild Hare.”
Eugene gave Tom a briefcase full of newspapers and told him to pretend to be his clerk. They crossed the Belgian border on bicycles, using hidden paths that ran through a heavily-forested area. Once over the border, there were mainly open fields, and they risked being spotted by German patrols.
They safely reached the escape line’s first stop in Belgium, the Segers Café in the small town of Weelde. The café owner, Maria Segers-Ooms generously provided food and money she could spare to help Allied fliers. Her husband owned the butcher shop next door, which had livestock pens behind the building. Eugene and Tom stashed their bicycles inside the pens.
Tom and Eugene stood at a bus stop in front of the café and waited for the bus that would take them to the town of Turnhout. Because the Germans had confiscated gasoline for military purposes, citizens devised other ways to power vehicles. The bus between Weelde and Turnhout used a charcoal burner.
In Turnhout, they took a train to Antwerp, and then took another train to Brussels. Because Tom had no ID papers, he was relieved that officials never approached him to check them.
Eugene warned Tom that changing trains in Antwerp was especially dangerous. The Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) operated a false escape line, called the KLM Line. Abwehr agents often posed as contacts at the Antwerp train station, trying to fool guides into handing over Allied airmen.
After reaching Brussels, Eugene guided Tom to the safe house in the apartment building at #4 Rue Jules Lejeune. (Before an Allied flier was delivered to the safe house, an escape line contact would alert them by phone, using an alias because Germans often wire-tapped phone lines.)
Elise Chabot lived in the apartment with her 21-year-old daughter, Charlotte Ambach. Her other daughter, Madelon Frisque was married and lived in an apartment on the floor above. Elise Chabot, (twice divorced), was Dutch, but she acquired German citizenship after she married German businessman, George Ambach in 1920.
Elise Chabot’s attractive daughters, Charlotte and Madelon were twins, born in Germany in 1922. Both were fiercely anti-Nazi, like their mother. Their birthplace and fluency in German served as a good cover for their work in the Resistance. People assumed they didn’t oppose the Nazi occupation. Whenever neighbors commented on the number of young men (Allied fliers) coming to the apartment, Charlotte, young and attractive, convincingly passed them off as boyfriends.
Madelon secretly worked for a Resistance organization that helped people who were denounced by collaborators as anti-Nazi. She had an administrative job that required her to sort the letters denouncing people. Instead, she made most of these letters “disappear,” saving many lives.
Charlotte took a job as a stenographer for the “Organisation Todt,” the company run by high-ranking Nazi construction engineer, Fritz Todt. This company was responsible for building the German Autobahn network, along with roads and bridges in occupied countries. Charlotte secretly made carbon copies of the papers she typed at work, such as train destinations, road and bridge construction plans, and she passed them on to Allied intelligence agents.
When escape line guide Eugene van der Heijden reached #4 Rue Jules Lejeune, he escorted airman Tom Applewhite to the third floor apartment via the service elevator, just off the kitchen. Tom stayed at the safe house only a short while, because he had no ID papers. Soon, the next guide arrived - Ernest van Moorleghem, a district police official. He would take Tom to the next stop, where ID papers would be provided.
Charlotte and Ernest worked closely together and were madly in love with each other. Ernest van Moorleghem had become deeply involved in Resistance activities and served as a contact between escape lines. To maintain the security of these separate escape lines, Ernest never told Elise and Charlotte where he took the Allied airmen.
On the afternoon of November 14th, Ernest guided Tom to a fishmarket in the neighboring Brussels district of Schaerbeek. The fishmarket was a clearinghouse of sorts, run by a separate Resistance group called Service EVA.
This Resistance group specialized in interrogating airmen to make sure they weren’t German agents. Then they passed them on to their own safe houses and provided them with new clothes and false ID papers. Service EVA had connections with the Comet Line, which would move the Allied airmen through France and into Spain.
Nobody was prepared for the disaster that was to happen in a matter of hours! On November 15th Tom’s crewmate, Nello Malavasi, top turret gunner/engineer for “The Wild Hare,” would be arrested in Belgium, along with his escape line guide, Willem Schmidt. This action would expose the escape line network and lead to more arrests.
Stay tuned for my concluding blog on July 5th; WWII Smit-van der Heijden Escape Line: Part Four – A Network is Exposed; Tom Applewhite’s Narrow Escape.
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Mary Dodge Allen is currently finishing her sequel to Hunt for a Hometown Killer. She's won a Christian Indie Award, an Angel Book Award, and two Royal Palm Literary Awards (Florida Writer's Association). She and her husband live in Central Florida. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Faith Hope and Love Christian Writers.
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