Agent for the Resistance: A Belgian Saboteur in World War II (Volume 35)

Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series #35

by Herman Bodson

As German pressure on Europe escalated in the late 1930s, a young Belgian pacifist completing his Ph.D. in chemistry watched with horror the preparation for the inevitable invasion of his country. In the face of advancing German troops, his passion for freedom and his growing hatred of Hitler led him and a group of his friends into the resistance movement and five years of privation, danger, and, for some, torture and death, at the hands of the Gestapo.

This dramatic memoir traces Herman Bodson’s transformation from a pacifist and scientist to, in his own words, “a cold fighter and a killer” in the Belgian underground, an expert in explosives and sabotage. Serving first in the OMBR (Office Militaire Belge de Resistance), he later formed a group of underground fighters in the Belgian Ardennes. They undertook blowing up military trains and installations-including the sabotage of a bridge which resulted in the deaths of some six hundred German soldiers-cutting German communication lines, and rescuing downed American fliers. Bodson also served as a medical aide to an American military doctor at Bastogne in the crucial days of the Battle of the Bulge. The powerfully told narrative follows him through the liberation of Belgium and his postwar efforts with the Belgian Special Force to unmask traitors and bring them to justice.

This, then, is the story of a man who gets caught up in a war and rather quickly becomes an efficient and clandestine killer, avenging the Nazi murder of a comrade in arms and revolting against an intolerable regime. It is also the story of the heroic resistance movement-how it came to be and how it fought bravely for the cause of human dignity and freedom.

Bodson’s honest and absorbing inside account of the underground effort in occupied Belgium adds much to the record of World War II and provides insight into the intellectual and emotional responses that have led to the birth of underground movements in many nations. It is a compelling story of a people united in a comradeship in the defense of freedom.

Genres: Military Fiction, Nonfiction, History, World War II

243 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-written original source account of the Belgian underground in WWII. Bodson is a pacifist before the war but gradually becomes a resistance soldier in service to his country. A 5 Star story of heroes behind the lines.

Bodson is about to deploy with his medical unit to the south as the Germans invade Belgium:

As evening approaches, I manage a quick visit home. Mother is boiling old bedsheets and dyeing them black to cover the windows. The streets are without light. Streetcars move with their headlights covered except for a narrow horizontal slit. Dad tells me that as in 1914, he and mother will remain at home for the duration. He expects it to be another four years in hell.

After Belgium and France surrender, Bodson returns to his old job and begins to gather information to pass to the UK. After he gains trust, he moves to sabotage. He is a chemist and devises a clever way to use diamond dust:

My first task was a curious one. A dentist had volunteered to donate to the group two pounds of diamond grit, provided we could come up with a valid way to use it to sabotage the enemy’s war machine. I was given a small sample and asked to study possible applications. Diamond being by far the hardest abrasive there is, I had to think of a way to use it in a form that could be well camouflaged and used to our maximum advantage.

The Germans, in order.to keep their men in the army, had hired Belgians for all kinds of jobs in extramilitary duties: as cooks, hospital attendants, clerks, shop workers. I had to find out if some were working in military airports. The answer was positive. Mechanics’ helpers, refuelers, and general maintenance people were used at Evere and other former Belgian military airports.

A small dose of diamond powder in a crankcase would work marvels on delicate engines. The next question was how to find a covert way for volunteers to carry the abrasive without possible suspicion? I decided on aspirin tablets carried in their original containers, using an aspirin formula of my own making: talcum, stearin, and diamond powder..….. J also would need a few hundred empty Bayer aspirin tubes to store the product. …. What could be less conspicuous than a headache remedy in a shirt pocket? The bearer could even swallow one or two to make things look right. They would pass the digestive tract without any problem, though what exotic waste!

…..I know of one result. At Evere, near Brussels, a ground crew including one of our men was asked to prepare a plane quickly to take German staff personnel to Berlin. Changing the oil, he added the contents of a tube, twenty diamond tablets into the crankcase. The plane took off... and crashed in a field a few miles away. That made my day and confirmed the advertisement that Bayer works wonders. How many other plane engines were destroyed or damaged I do not know, but no one was ever caught using my strong medicine to cure the German headache.

Our chemist resistance fighter is given a new task. They need a way to escape car chases without leaving evidence of the rise of the resistance. He finds a solution:

Resistance members transporting a payload are chased by a Citroén gestapo car and had had a very hard time evading capture. The driver had only narrowly succeeded by throwing tire-puncturing devices on the road. The problem with this method was that it left evidence of underground resistance. My job was to design a noiseless, odorless, invisible, efficient “something” to make evasion safer and easier. It took days of pondering the parameters before the idea of a chemical smokescreen germinated in my brain. Was it a possible solution?

How did airplanes write advertisements in the sky? Among those I asked was my former army officer, pharmacist Captain Nicaise. Although he did not know the answer, he had a friend in the air force who might. His friend not only knew the answer, but also offered a free source of the material needed, titanium chloride. It is one of the rare metallic chlorides that is liquid when kept under pressure, but at atmospheric pressure becomes a gas. The compound was sold in steel cylinders. When the chloride came into contact with humid air, it decomposed and combined with the water creating gaseous hydrochloric acid and titanium dioxide, an opaque, white powder. After some experimentation, the engineering phase began. The car was stripped of its rear seat and the trunk partition removed. Two cylinders were installed, one of compressed air, one of titanium chloride, while the trunk was fitted with a flat tank that contained enough water to provide humidity when compressed air was bubbled through it. Into the same tank but above the water level came the titanium chloride and voila! Out of the tank through a large exhaust pipe came the cloud of powder. Experimentation transformed the powder into a dense fog through which one could move but not see, even an inch away, so opaque was the air. We knew it should work and were anxious to put it to a test. We did not have to wait long. During another pursuit, our driver sped toward a sharp curve in the highway and just before entering it, opened both valves. Looking back for his pursuers, the driver saw nothing. The Citroén had continued straight ahead into the fog and collided with a tree. It was totally demolished, its occupants dead. A slight breeze removed the cause of the “accident.”

After 3 years of occupation with a bleak winter approaching, the country needs something to pick them up. The Belgian underground publishes the “False Le Soir” which fills the bill:

The next day, a Wednesday, was stock exchange day in Brussels. Le Soir was quoted and traded at the equivalent of seventy-five dollars a copy! Later in 1944, after liberation, a second edition was made and sold to benefit the families of underground members who had been victims of the Nazis.

It is now nearly impossible to convey the humor contained in the text of that paper. Most of it satirized the daily German “War Communiqué.” Italians were lampooned as their untrustworthy allies. It ridiculed the Germans in their futile attempt to crush an ever more active underground practicing bolder and bolder acts. It also announced an increase in bread rations thanks to “an abundant crop in Ukraine.” Tobacco rationing, it promised, would soon get much better, and two brands would be offered in place of one. Coming soon!—Sh#t A and Sh#t B. This was made possible through an intimate collaboration between the Germans and the Belgian League of Equestrian Defecation. Sh#t A would be of male origin; Sh#t B, the milder of the two, of female origin. The new smoking material was the product of selected animals: Stalingrad Victor, New Order of Berchtesgaden, Melitopol Rubber, Flattened Hamburg, Morne Plaine (an allusion to the Waterloo battlefield in Victor Hugo's famous description), and Berlin Capitulation. Following was a long list of formalities to be completed in order to secure a small amount of the upcoming brown windfall.

On the society page, there was an article explaining that the Belgian traitor-collaborator Leon Degrelle had been cuckolded by a German officer named Ottokar von Schweinhund. The entertainment section reviewed the movies of the week: Red October, a saga of the advancing Russian front; From El Alamein to Sidi Barani, with Rommel in the main role; New Tears, starring General Speers; a great ballet called Catastrophe, featuring the flying fortresses. The theater section contained an item announcing that the Park Theater, closed for remodeling, would open soon with Rule Britannia. In the want ads section several tailors advertised cheap “coat-turning.” Funeral homes offered sales on coffins. A private individual advertised a large touring car with enough gas to reach the Swiss border. The Belgian attorney general, in London exile, wanted to purchase gibbets and guillotines.

https://archives.brussels.be/act-resi...


An impressive attack in Brussels by a ballsy pilot. Bodson visits the site of this attack, where Belgian morale gets a boost in the summer of 1943:

In the spring of 1942, a prominent citizen had been arrested by the gestapo, questioned, and shot. This event made national news. One of the victim’s sons was a Belgian air force pilot who had been lucky enough to take to the air in the middle of the bombardment of his air base. He had joined the British and was now a member of a British Spitfire squadron. Knowing of his father’s fate, the young airman carefully planned his revenge. One day, in July of 1943, the opportunity to put his plan into action arose. His squadron had been given a mission over occupied Belgium. He took off with his comrades, participated in the mission, and then flew off on his own for Brussels, a city he knew well, since it was his home. His target, the main gestapo building on Avenue Louise, was a six-story-high requisitioned apartment complex with a cream-colored limestone facade facing east, with four large windows per floor. Coming from the west, the pilot was able to see the building from quite a distance as it faced the wide Avenue De Mot and the adjacent Parc de la Cambre. Approaching over the suburban community of Ixelles and flying at rooftop level to avoid early detection, the pilot could easily aim at the building and direct the fire of his wing guns at its base. Continuing his fire while pulling on the joystick, he sprayed the complex from basement to roof with a murderous hail of explosive bullets. He even managed to drop a wreath with his beloved father’s name on it on the pavement fifty yards from the building before disappearing into the clouds and speeding back to his field command.

Later, after liberation, we learned that the pilot was Jean de Selys Longchamps. Upon landing, he had been arrested and jailed for having abandoned his squadron. But in those days of radio communication news traveled fast, and two days later he was released with the coveted Distinguished Flying Cross pinned to his uniform.

The gestapo building sustained extensive damage, some of it still evident after the war. To repair the major damage, the Germans recalled all of the contractors who had been involved in the original construction, one of which was the Chamebel company, responsible for the metal windows. Chamebel also happened to be the place where my friend Jan worked; thus he called me on July 22 and reported that he had been asked by his company to visit the building and investigate what had to be done to effect repairs immediately. Would I be interested in accompanying him disguised as a Chamel foreman? Needless to say, I was very interested.

I duly became a Chamebel foreman. The next day I toured the bomb site with my engineer. It was unbelievable the damage those little explosives had done. I particularly remember a third-floor office, a major’s office. One bullet had entered his mahogany desk and exploded, temporarily adding the major to the plastering job. By the time we arrived he had already been scraped away. How many German agents died that day I was not able to tell, but from the evidence of the damage, quite a few. All the big shots had offices in the front of the building looking out on the Avenue De Mot and the park beyond.

https://www.manstonhistory.org.uk/flt...

Bodson has gone from pacifist before the war to hardened underground commander. As his unit is preparing for sabotage actions (just before D-Day), some USAAF crewmen come into his area:

I went upstairs to meet the man and, sure enough, he was another American, alone and anxious. He rose and I asked him his name and rank. He said, “Austin Dunning, First Lieutenant, U.S. Air Force.” I replied, “Henri Bernard, Belgian Underground, ready to help you if you are genuine, ready to kill and bury you if you are not.”

I sat across the table from him and took a document out of my pocket, a questionnaire supplied by Loulou and devised by the Allies to end the problem of German infiltration of our escape lines. But I soon realized I had a problem. These downed personnel had been repeatedly told to give only name, rank, and serial number. They had never been told they might be asked questions by escape-line personnel. The man facing me was no exception. The document contained many questions which these men were not willing to answer. I had to explain to him that we were risking our lives to save him, but if he would not cooperate I had only one alternative—to dispose of him. I took out my 7.65 mm Browning and repeated that he had better answer the questionnaire. The argument of my standard issue Belgian 7.65 did it. The questionnaire complete, I explained that it would take a day or two to have London verify his answers. In the meantime, he must wait…

Bodson's group is tasked with preventing reinforcements reaching the Normandy battle area. They pick a bridge in the beautiful Ambléve valley.

About 11:00 P.M., as we stared at the stars rising in the night sky, our courier appeared panting his one-word message, “Victory.” Rapidly, we moved through our predetermined plan. Christian and I fastened a smog signal to the detonating cords, while Noel and Charles set three smog signals on the northbound track down the line, to warn future trains to stop We had no desire to take civilian lives.

Ten minutes later our quarry came speeding out of the tunnel and onto the tracks on its way to Liége and to hell. As it reached halfway across the first arch, a deafening roar rent the air and the central arch fell away. There was no possibility of stopping or even slowing the train in time. First the engine disappeared into the void, pulling cars in behind it. Then came the roar of the exploding engine as it hit the river bed, and the sound of the cars as they piled onto the growing wreckage. As the cars fell into space, the older, third-class cars, made of pine boards bolted onto steel chassis, broke into pieces. Each piece was a thorn, a dagger, stabbing our enemy. Then followed deafening, oppressive silence.

Recovering from our fascination at the grim scene before us, we retreated quickly to the safety of the woods and camp. The explosions would have wakened the countryside for miles around.

In the days that followed, we learned the measure of our success. The next day, the river ran red with blood from dawn to dusk. The train had carried six hundred soldiers. There were no survivors.….. We were well satisfied.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I searched for years for a good book on the resistance in WW2. Other than generalized overviews with the most famous actions, I didn't find much that satisfied my curiosity until this book. Detailed, filled with action, and giving a most personal view of what goes through the mind of someone who changes from a pacifist upbringing to a hardened warrior when faced with the realities of war and evil oppression.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent account of the underground resistance in Belgium during WWII. The honesty within this book is appreciated and the historical value significant. There were many anecdotes that were familiar to me from my own Grandfather’s experiences that he had shared with me before his death and I felt a certain mixture of pride and sorrow while reading this book. The sacrifice of those heroes who resisted and fought for freedom cannot ever be minimised.

[Jean Sippy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the writing is very good. His descriptions of events, the surroundings, his fellow saboteurs, etc., made me feel like I was there. I learned a lot about the underground work of Belgian citizens and what the Belgians had to go through, which means a lot to me since all 4 of my grandparents emigrated from Belgium. The author is a pretty remarkable human being.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most memorable and best-written memoirs I've ever read. The author recounts his years leading a highly active and effective group of guerrilla fighters in the Belgian Ardennes during World War II, with very brief coverage of his life before and since the war. This story stood out for me not only because it flows so well - Dr. Bodson's matter-of-fact descriptions of desperate life-and-death situations is more vivid than many that take a more dramatic tone - but because of the accompanying introspection, relating how a man who was a scientist and a pacifist evolved by necessity into a ruthless soldier and energetic leader. If I could give this six stars, I would.