Just spent an interesting afternoon talking with Mary at the Sydney Opera House café. Mary flew over from Brisbane because she wanted to tell her father’s story and learn how it could be turned into a book. She is the daughter of Sergeant Reginald Collins, an Australian from Brisbane who served as a bombardier and forward gunner on a Vickers Wellington. In the night of 30 May 1942 his aircraft was downed by a fighter during the one-thousand-bomber raid against the German city of Cologne. The crew bailed out, became separated, and a lonely Sergeant Collins ended up hiding his parachute some ten miles northeast of Liège, a Belgian city under Nazi occupation. With one knee badly hurt, Collins nevertheless managed to hide and finally reach an escape line, helped by Belgians of all walks of life: farmers, students, factory workers, even gendarmes. In July 1942 the Australian (together with British, French, and Polish escapees) made the dangerous trek to safety across the Pyrenees accompanied by the legendary Andrée De Jongh, the young Belgian woman who led Comète, one of the most famous of European escape lines. The Nazis later caught her and sent her to Ravensbrück and Mauthausen concentration camps. She survived and spent her post-war life treating lepers in Africa. All Sergeant Collins could do before he trekked across the Pyrenees was to leave behind a small scribble of thanks to those like Andrée De Jongh who risked their lives helping him.
