Albert Guérisse

Guérisse was Médecin-Capitaine with a Belgian cavalry regiment during their eighteen day campaign in May 1940. He managed to escape to England through Dunkirk. Unimpressed with the early efforts at setting up a Belgian Government in exile he took up with the crew of a former French ship, the Rhin . This heavily armed merchantman of Marsellais origin had been renamed HMS Fidelity and was serving in the Mediterranean on secret missions. He secured entry into the British Navy and was commissioned as Lieutenant Commander Patrick Albert O'Leary RN, taking the name of a Canadian friend. He told no-one but the Captain of the Fidelity of his medical background, preferring adventure rather than the duties of an MO. His entry to the Royal Navy instead of the RNVR followed the precedent set by his friend Peri, Captain of the Fidelity , who adopted the nomme de guerre Langlais. Peri had noticed that the gold lace on his uniform cuffs was wavy, unlike that of other RN Captains. When told that it was wavy because he was RNVR, being a wartime holder of a temporary commission, he advised their Lordships that neither he nor his ship would fight unless Captain Langlais RN was on the bridge of the Fidelity . The Admiralty compromised by allowing him to wear RN insignia. Peri had also came with a lady friend whom he insisted be part of the crew. Again the Admiralty gave way and she was signed on. Early on 25th April 1941 two SOE agents were put ashore by skiff from the Fidelity on a beach at Collioure near the Etang de Canet. Returning that night the skiff overturned in a squall:from it Guérisse managed to swim ashore. Not long afterwards the Fidelity was lost with all hands when torpedoed in the South Atlantic. Guérisse passed himself off as Pat O'Leary, an evading Canadian airman, to the French coastguards who came to arrest him. He was sent to St Hippolyte du Fort near Nîmes. Here he was among British officers held under conditions of not quite being prisoners, not quite being free. His fellow inmates regarded him with some suspicion until he was able to prove his identity as an RN officer. Pivotal to the Marseilles end of the network was a local doctor, Georges Rodocanachis . Liverpool born, he had become a naturalised French subject. Garrow had been involved almost from the start in the efforts of Marseille people - like the doctor and his sister in law Madame Zarifi, and Reverend Donald Caskie of the Seaman's Mission, in looking after the British servicemen and civilians accumulating in the city after the fall of France. Now his concern was how to get valuable trained people back to Britain. Ian Garrow's story is related by Christopher Long in Secret Papers, MI9, SOE & 'Pat Line' In October 1941, when the French at last caught up with Garrow, O'Leary took over command of the line, thenceforth officially known as the P.A.O. line (his initials) but more famously as the "Pat" or "O'Leary" line. It was built around a mixed group of men and women - French, Scots, Jews, Australasians, Greeks and even Germans opposed to Hitler. O'Leary's firm and unobtrusive leadership inspired them all. The line expanded to cover occupied as well as unoccupied France. It carried over 600 people to safety, including Airey Neave on his way back from Colditz: Neave was to become one of the key players ('Saturday') in the command of MI 9. O'Leary travelled frequently between the Dutch frontier and the south of France, himself escorting the 'parcels' through numerous German controls to inspire the confidence of his colleagues. Foot and Langley in their excellent book MI 9 Escape and Evasion 1939-1945 said of the O'Leary Line: 'Its great strength came from the fact that the people who formed its guiding core all knew, liked and trusted each other. They understood each other quickly, without long explanations; they were all well aware of the risks they ran, individually and in common. The enormous advantages of this inner cohesion were offset by a counterva