Countess Andrée Eugénie Adrienne de Jongh (30 November 1916 – 13 October 2007), called Dédée and Postman, was a member of the Belgian Resistance during the Second World War. She organised and led the Comet Line (Le Réseau Comète) to assist Allied soldiers and airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Belgium. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over Belgium or other European countries. Between August 1941 and December 1942, she escorted 118 people, including more than 80 airmen, from Belgium to neutral Spain from where they were transported to the United Kingdom. Arrested by the Nazis in January 1943, she was incarcerated for the remainder of World War II. After the war, she worked in leper hospitals in Africa. De Jongh was the recipient of the George Medal from the United Kingdom and the Medal of Freedom with golden palms from the United States and many other medals for her work during World War II. In 1985 she was made a countess by the king of Belgium. Her exploits were described in or inspired several books, movies, and television shows. Early life Andrée or Dédée de Jongh was born in Schaerbeek in Belgium, then under German occupation during the First World War. She was the younger daughter of Frédéric de Jongh, the headmaster of a primary school and Alice Decarpentrie. Edith Cavell, a British nurse shot in the Tir national in Schaerbeek in 1915 for assisting troops to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, was a heroine in her youth. She trained as a nurse and became a commercial artist in Malmedy. Her nursing endeavours were inspired by Cavell. She was 23 years old when the Germans invaded and occupied Belgium. De Jongh was described by a British airman she helped as a "frail young girl who appears twenty years [old], very pretty, pleasant, kind, cheerful, and simple. She seems to have the carelessness of a young student who would go on vacation after passing her exams". Later, a British colonel would call her a "pure heroine of legend". Origin of the Comet Line After German troops invaded and occupied Belgium in May 1940, De Jongh moved to Brussels, where she became a Red Cross volunteer, ministering to captured Allied troops. In Brussels at that time, hiding in safe houses, were many British soldiers, those left behind at Dunkirk and escapees from those captured at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.