Tuesday, July 21, 2009

TRIBUTE TO A WW II PATRIOT'S STORY

Gaston Vandermeerssche, Belgian Allied Intelligence agent and underground resistance worker, was the guest speaker at The Carpetbaggers' 1988 Reunion in Milwaukee, WI.

The following article appeared in the Milwaukee Journal on December 11, 1988, written by Bea Mitz:

The young Belgian's wrists are confined in self-locking handcuffs behind his back. Repeatedly, guards fling him against the wall. They punch, kick and maul him without mercy. Finally, the young man pretends to faint. A guard re-enters with a frenzied German shepherd that leaps toward his throat. He senses the attack and flinches, showing his captors that he is still conscious. Confident they can break him to reveal secrets, the torture continues.....

A scene from a WW II movie? No, it actually happened 45 years ago to Belgian-born Gaston Vandermeerssche, then 22 and head of the Dutch network of almost 2,000 underground agents.
Today (1988), Vandermeerssche is 66 and an inventor, businessman, and recipient of four "Croix de Guerres" for bravery---two from France and the others from Luxembourg and Belgium. Among his other medals is the "Bronzen Leeuw" (the bronze lion, the highest military honor a foreigner can receive while still alive) pinned on him by Holland's Queen Wilhelmina.

War broke out in 1940, while Gaston was studying mathematics and physics in his first year at Belgium's Ghent University. Upon Germany's attack on Belgium, Gaston immediately left school to join the official Belgian Army headquarters in southern France.

Two months later, the Germans occupied Belgium and Gaston joined the Belgian underground. At great risk, he distributed the underground newspaper, La Libre Belgique. Seven months later, a fellow resistance worker was arrested with a list of the members---and Gaston's name on it.

Moving under cover of night he arrived at as yet unoccupied Toulousse, France. He remained in France as an undercover agent. His mission was to establish a courier line over the Pyrenees Mountains, delivering microfilmed intelligence information to the Belgian consulate in Barcelona, Spain which was then forwarded to London. Gaston, whose code name was "Raymond", had three weeks to learn the Spanish language and customs to prepare for his mission. These missions went on for seven months.

Gaston, now 21, was chosen to head up WIM, named in honor of the Queen. Taking another code name, "Raymond" became "Rinus".

Recalling those days, Gaston adds: "My whole Rinus operation was built on trust. Without it, there would have been no underground. I recruited six and they recruited more until, eventually, there was a network of close to 2,000---but only six knew who I was. We also had safe houses where we kept all microfilm." The Perpignan safe house was a haven for agents carrying microfilm, packaged exactly like sticks of butter, a stringently rationed war item. It aroused the suspicion of neighbors who thought these "butter carriers" were black marketeers. Eventually they notified police who, seeking butter, found a cache of microfilm instead.

Gaston innocently wandered on the scene. Immediately, he and others were arrested, shoved into a van and rushed to the Gestapo headquarters. "Raymond/Rinus" was captured, but the Germans didn't know it.

Zealously, they set on a relentless course to identify him. For months Gaston's torture continued. Returning from another session with the Gestapo, Gaston met Adolph Manet, a double agent, who shouted, "That's Raymond!"

The Nazis transferred him to a prison in Haaren, The Netherlands, and he was condemned to death. However, he was kept alive as a bargaining tool for eventual prisoner exchange.

Two years later, on a day in May in 1945, the Americans swung open the prison doors. Gaston was a free man. Free, yes, but a well man, no. Emotionally, too, he bore the scars of torture and 17,520 hours of sloitary confinement.

If he could turn back the clock to those war years, would he make the same choices?

"Oh yes." he answers quickly, "Absolutely. And I didn't, and still don't consider myself a hero."

Footnotes:

"They Flew by Night" - Author: Col. Robert W. Fish (Ret.) pages 253 & 254