Monique Hanotte

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Henriette “Monique” Hanotte (10 August 1920 – February 2022) was a Belgian resistance member in World War II. She was part of the Comet Line, helping to smuggle nearly 140 Allied airmen from occupied Belgium into France. The British War Office gave her the codename “Monique.”

She grew up in the village of Rumes near the French border, where her parents ran a hotel and a farm. She helped care for animals and crossed into the nearby French village of Bachy for school, which brought her into contact with border officials.

In May 1940, after the German occupation began, Hanotte helped two British officers escape during the Dunkirk retreat. She was recruited by MI19 to join the Comet Line and began aiding airmen by helping them cross the border, or by train to places like Lille and Paris. Her family helped disguise the airmen—removing English paperwork, using German newspapers, teaching them French phrases, and forging French IDs and work permits. Her knowledge of the border and its staff helped many escapes go smoothly. She even used personal contacts, sometimes joking that airmen were her boyfriends to avoid suspicion.

In 1944, when the network was betrayed, she narrowly avoided arrest and fled to England with Micheline Dumon, traveling through German-occupied France to Spain and then to Gibraltar before reaching Britain. In Britain, she trained to parachute and be a secret agent, but she never went on a mission because of a fractured wrist. She stayed in England until the war ended.

She celebrated VE Day in London on 8 May 1945, then returned to Belgium. In 1945 she married a Belgian border guard and had two children, continuing to use the name Monique.

Monique Hanotte died in February 2022 at age 101. For her wartime service, she received the MBE from Britain and the Medal of Freedom from the United States. In 2015 a hiking route was opened along her escape path, a statue of her was placed in Bachy, and she received honorary citizenships of Bachy (2015) and Nivelles (2020).