Nazi Ghost Train: Evasion, Betrayal and Escape in Occupied Europe
Greg Lewis

The true story of how more than 1,400 men and women of the Resistance, SOE agents, and airmen from Britain, the US and Canada were saved from death in a concentration camp by the courage and cunning of a small group of Belgian civilians.

Nazi Ghost Train unfolds in a pulse-pounding narrative, describing the terror of being shot down on bombing missions, the fight to stay free and alive with the Gestapo on your trail, and the gut-wrenching horror of betrayal.

From the opening scenes inside a B-17 when it is pounced on by an enemy fighter to the final desperate hours on the ‘Ghost Train’, this fight for survival will keep readers turning the pages long after they should have flicked out the light.

Drawing upon a wealth of primary sources and extensive interviews, Nazi Ghost Train brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters, including:

* Airmen such as Ted Kleinman, a Jew who risked his life to work with the armed resistance; Henry Wolcott, a Liberator pilot who dropped secret agents behind the lines and embarked on a cat-and-mouse game of life and death with the Nazis seeking to track him down; and fighter pilot Bill Grosvenor who was nearly driven to suicide by Gestapo torture.

* Fascinating young Resistance heroines such as Michou Dumon, who ordered an attempt to kill one traitor and escaped to London to expose another to British intelligence; Berthe DuBasters who, despite having to bring up two young children alone, risked her life every day of the occupation to hide Allied soldiers and airmen; and Françoise Labouverie, who gathered intelligence on German radar until a Nazi officer dedicated a detective unit to track her down.

* SOE’s François Reeve, who killed one suspected informer but was caught in a trap laid by another; and Belgian businessman Gaston Masereel, who planned to parachute into his homeland as an SOE agent. Badly hurt when his plane was attacked, he killed all four German soldiers who came to arrest him.

And our story has a villain every bit as keenly drawn and despicable as any in a spy thriller: the most heartless double agent of all, Prosper Dezitter, a traitor of such audacity and means of disguise that he came to be seen as an almost mythical bogey man. A life-long criminal, convicted rapist and swindler, he enlisted the aid of his Spanish-born mistress to create a false network of helpers to ensnare airmen and résistants. It was a process which made Dezitter a millionaire.

These stories weave together until – with liberation a heartbeat away – the Belgian patriots, Allied airmen and agents are roused from their prison cells and loaded onto cattle trucks.

The audacious act of resistance which followed over the next 48 hours was to go down in legend as the story of le train fantôme, the ‘Ghost Train’. The local people went into action to stop the train: railwaymen sabotaged locomotives and blew up railway lines; the armed resistance threatened to attack a German hospital train if the prisoners were not released; and the train driver – with three machine guns pointed at his back – drove the 32-wagon train headlong into a corner and forced the carriages to jump the track.