First Contact in Belgium

Mr. (inaudible) was an engineer like Mondo. They were friends of course. His wife phoned up somebody and said “I have two pounds of peas for you.”, in of course in French. And she told me afterwards that I was the two pounds of peas. And then they told me the next morning that they would be away for the day but there was a friend of theirs coming to see me, in the afternoon. And that he had a key to their apartment. And I was instructed if anybody rang the doorbell or anything, not to answer it, which I didn’t of course. But then this man arrived in the afternoon. He spoke prefect English and he proceeded to question me about a lot of things. And then he asked me for example; what the red lines on our maps were. And this was something that was top secret. So I began to think that perhaps it was possible I had fallen into a Gestapo trap. And that these were enemy agents and on the other hand there was something that alarmed him. Yes, he asked me what was the number, what they called an RAF leave pass and I didn’t know cause I’d had never been on leave in England and he got highly suspicious then. But after a couple of hours of questioning back and forward, we established faith in each other. And he decided I was genuine and not a German plant. And I decided that he was a friend and not an enemy and that was my entry into the Comet Line.

Interviewer: Did he tell you what was in his briefcase?

Well, yes, he did. He had a briefcase, which I wondered what was in it. And he opened it up, after we established confidence in each other. And he told me, he showed me a revolver. He said, “This is, I have to bring this along just in case you were a Gestapo agent.”