This text is born with the intention of being a network, with the objective of catching the reader, so that he may continue along the path he chooses. And that is, where the century crosses and the second, as the poet said, the exercise of the border is constant. Today, a large number of transit migrants are trapped in physical and administrative barriers. Economic and political exiles are moving through various clandestine networks, are they not?, from sub-Saharan countries to the other side of the Mediterranean, from the Catalan countries to Belgium...

In particular, the journalist has placed the first knot in the Belgian capital of this network of texts, in Brussels in 1940. Several citizens began to organize themselves against the Nazi occupation, including the young Arnold Deppé and Andrée De Jongh. The latter, known as “Dédée”, led the network that would later be “Comète” until his arrest. De Jongh himself said: “It was not us who gave the name of Comète to what was called ‘the Dédée line’. Later, when I was arrested in January 1943, the [colleagues] thought it was better to rename (...), they said: ‘You are like the comets, stopping one, another comes behind.’ That’s why they gave us that name.”

To a large extent, Comète was a network of young civilian women. Its first mission was to protect, feed and accompany the allied pilots who fell in the occupied territory from Brussels to Paris. Andrée Dumon, known as “Nadine”, worked in this task, among others. Je ne vous ai pas oubliés (I have not forgotten you) is the title of his unpublished autobiography – they already have a copy in the library of the San Telmo museum in San Sebastian, led by Martine Le Grell, daughter of a member of the network. In a passage of the book, Nadine says of Dédé: “Soon I was surprised by his smile, his joy of life and his overflowing energy.”

The Comète rail route continued south of Paris to Lapurdi. Specifically, Angelu lived in Elvire de Greef, a Belgian refugee known as “Tante Go” in resistance. Nadine said of that woman: “We will never talk a lot about him. He was an extraordinary man. He was also born for the post of chief. The entire territory of the Southern part of the Comète network was in operation for three years.” Preseski, Mrs. Greef and her husband entered the network in 1941 and continued to work with their children in the resistance until the end of the Nazi occupation.

Dozens of people were risking their lives, helping the escape lines on both sides of the border. Irundarra Maritxu Anatol, for example, provided food to feed the aviators to the Comète network, as well as footwear and information. The saratarra Kattalin Agirre, meanwhile, worked at the Euskalduna hotel in San Juan de Luz (Bilbao). He worked hard for the resistance, collaborating with several networks: “Comète”, “Margot”, “Nana”, “Mecano” and “Perroquet” In these risky tasks he also had the help of his daughter Josephine “Fifine”, 14 years old in 1942.

Threads, knots, gaps

Numerous Basque mutants participated in the networks for resistance. For example, Night Work. In the book El contrabando en el Bidasoa (Alberdania, 2011), author Rosa Arburua says: “There are many names cited: Rufino Jauregi, Jean Baptiste Zugarramurdi de Ezpeleta and his cousin Jean Pierre, Bernard Elissalde, Juan Pares, Don José Alcoz, Jean Baptiste Laporta, Maritxu Anatol, Florentino Goikoetxea de Ani, Manuel Iturrioz… These last three.

In this sense, in the book Manuel Iturrioz, The Experiences of a Wrestler (Alberdania, 2011) the following paragraph appears: “Lezo [Urreiztieta] told me that they were organizing groups, a network, that we had to take responsibility for bringing the aviators who fell in the occupied area to Gibraltar and we went from the mountain to Spain. He said to me: ‘You have to arrange the border crossing.’ (...) After a while she appeared with a lady. (...) This girl was a Belgian who organized resistance groups and told me that from then on she would help us on all trips as the head of the network.”

One of the most ambitious research on the network was published by Philippe Le Blanc in 2015: Comète: le réseau derrière la ligne (Comète: net behind the line). In his opinion, Manuel Iturrioz and Tomás Anabitarte were the first guides that the Comète network had: “However, Florentino Goikoetxea is the only Basque guide that has been officially recognized and honored.”

According to some authors, about 800 people were accompanied by the Comète network across the border. For its part, Le Blanc doubts this amount: “According to a study conducted in 2006, it was 288.” According to the author, the mugalari Florentino Goikoetxea accompanied over a hundred pilots in the test. However, “we now know that about 170 of the 280 fugitives went through other routes, with other Basque guides, without the escape line guide [Comète]”.

Words, images, marches

Historian Juan Carlos Jiménez de Aberasturi has carried out several years of research on the trajectory of the Comète network in the Basque Country. In 1996 he published Basques in the Second World War with the editorial Txertoa. The Comète network in the Basque Country (Basques in the Second World War). The book Comète sarea in the Basque Country), which will see the light next December with the incorporation of new materials. “For me, when I started researching Comète, it was of great interest that this was a transboundary phenomenon, that occurred on both sides of the Basque Country border and that had an international character, that is, how a great historical event occurred on a global level in a small territory and how the people of the people participated.”

In particular, the memory of the network is kept alive through the marches and acts that the association Amigos de la Red Comète organises every September. This year the nineteenth march was celebrated, in which the participants crossed the border from Lapurdi to Navarre, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of this journey. According to journalist Mikel Urabaien in the News Journal, about 40 people met in the Jaurikoborda village on 16 September. There were the children of the mugalari Inaxio Mihura and the pilot Ian Covington, José Ignacio and Tom, respectively.

Among the participants was also the Hernaniarra filmmaker Iurre Telleria, who along with Enara Goikoetxea filmed the documentary Azken bidaia, on the Comète network, which premiered in February. “We started researching in 2005 and premiered it in 2011 at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Later, in 2015, a large exhibition was organized at the San Telmo Museum, in which many materials were shown that were not included in our documentary”. As an informative work, Azken Bidaia has a special value, as on the one hand, it is an audiovisual work and, on the other, used the media of cinematic fiction to illustrate some testimonies.

The march serves as an excuse to relive memory and to create bonds and relationships. In the words of Telleria, “we have made some friends along the way and that of the Comète is a quote that every year we fulfill very comfortable.” According to Jiménez de Aberasturi, it is also a way of working the “duty of memory”, supported or not by the institutions, which benefits the citizens. The Comète Network will celebrate its twentieth march next year in the Bidasoa area on both sides of the border.

In fact, the quote that Arburua picks up in the book Gau lana, which says Balkezen's patron of Bera, is quite significant: “Our sheep are walking from one side to the other. We eat here and on the other hand. What do they know that one site is called France and the other Spain?” [sic]. Thus ends the Arburua and the journalist the report: “We say again that borders are in the interests of the ‘great’. And if their interests change, so do their limits.” n