Hero of the Month - March 2024
Published in Britain at War - March 2024
Major-General Count Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse GC, KBE, DSO
Major-General Count Albert-Marie Guérisse enjoyed a quite extraordinary military career operating with great courage working as a secret agent behind enemy lines and, when eventually captured, showing equal bravery to resist torture for months on end. He was one of the many operatives acting for Britain during World War Two to benefit from the fact that he was fluent in French while serving in German-occupied France.
Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse was born in Brussels, Belgium, on April 5 1911. Little is known about his early life but he read medicine at Brussels University before joining a Belgian cavalry regiment as a “Medical Captain” in 1940, just a few months into the war. He took part in the 18-day campaign in May 1940 that resulted in the German occupation of his homeland.
Guérisse’s resourcefulness matched his gallantry and he managed to escape to England via Dunkirk. He was soon commissioned into the Royal Navy under a pseudonym: Lieutenant-Commander Patrick Albert O’Leary. The aim was that he would operate in France as a secret agent using a French-Canadian identity.
Guérisse readily embraced his new and dangerous role and was initially tasked with landing agents in the south of France. He served in HMS Fidelity, a converted French trawler, which was responsible for a series of clandestine operations in the Mediterranean.
In April 1941, Guérisse, after successfully landing at Collioure, just north of the French-Spanish border, became involved in an abortive mission to save Polish officers trapped in France. As he tried to make his own way back to his ship, he was captured by Vichy French police and imprisoned near Nîmes, a city in the south of France. In prison another secret agent, Captain Ian Garrow, of the Seaforth Highlanders, was able to make contact with him. While being transferred to another gaol, Guérisse, ever resourceful, managed to escape. One of his first stop-offs was a hospice, where he was aided by nuns.
After that, he devoted his time to remaining in France and helping to organise an escape route for Allied prisoners of war and evading airmen. Such a group already existed and Guérisse was able to link up with Garrow and the escape organisation under the auspicies of “M19”. Garrow had already been tasked with operating the escape line and Guérisse was only too happy to help him with his work.
At this point, Guérisse changed his name to “Joseph Cartier” and threw himself into his new role. A network of safe houses and escape routes was set up and the entire operation expanded hugely under his guidance. When Garrow was arrested, Guérisse took over the leadership of the operation and the escape route became known as the ‘Pat’ or the ‘O’Leary’ Line.
To inspire the confidence of the group and to keep up the pressure for everyone to work at full capacity, Guérisse made frequent trips between the Dutch border and the South of France. He personally escorted many of those escaping and, whenever a mission was particularly dangerous, he would insist on undertaking it himself.
It was Guérisse and his team that helped Garrow escape from Mauzac prison in December 1942. Garrow then made his way to Toulouse, where he was aided by the French Resistance, before eventually being guided across the Pyrenees to the British Consulate in Barcelona (Spain had remained neutral during World War Two). Garrow returned to England at the beginning of February 1943.
Garrow, like Guérisse, had enjoyed an incredible war. In June 1940, at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, he and four of his men had been cut off on the Normandy coast. Stuck behind enemy lines, they decided to head south and try to get back to Britain via Spain. They eventually walked some 700 miles to Marseilles, which at that point was not under the control of the Germans. Realising there were hundreds of other escapees, Garrow decided to set up a help line so that Allied servicemen could “live and fight another day”.
To many, Guérisse was “the Scarlet Pimpernel”’ of the Second World War. However, the expansion of operations brought an increased risk of betrayal. In March 1943, the “line” was betrayed by a double agent and Guérisse and many others were arrested. Time and again he was subjected to the most inhumane treatment, including relentless torture. Incredibly, he survived all these horrors and was freed from his fourth and final concentration came at Dachau – where he had been sentenced to death – along with all the other inmates at the end of the war.
Guérisse was awarded the GC under his pseudonym O’Leary on November 5 1946. The final words to his lengthy citation provided a telling insight into the selfless nature of this fearless and remarkable man:
“In March, 1943, he was betrayed to the Gestapo by a member of his group. Arrested, he was put to many forms of torture in an attempt to make him reveal the names, whereabouts and duties of the other members. He was put in a refrigerator for four hours, he was beaten continually, but never did he disclose information which could be of profit to the enemy. After more ferocious experiments the Germans gave him up as hopeless, and sent him to a Concentration Camp where he was once again a victim of torture. He was a prisoner in Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Neubremm and finally Dachau. He nearly lost his life in the Neubremm quarries, when he was beaten insensible.
“Throughout his time in prison, Lieutenant Commander O’Leary’s courage never faltered. Numbers of prisoners have given evidence that his moral and physical influence and support saved their lives.
“On his liberation from Dachau, Lieutenant-Commander O’Leary refused to leave the Camp, where he had been made ‘President’ of all the prisoners (including some thousands of Russians), until he had ensured that all possible steps had been taken to ease the lot of his fellows. He was then given the opportunity to return to his family, but he insisted on proceeding to France, to trace the surviving members of his organisation, and to help them in any way he could.
“From the time of inception to the end of the war, Lieutenant-Commander O’Leary’s group was responsible for the rescue and successful return of over 600 British and American officers and men. It is now known that over 250 owe their safety directly to Lieutenant-Commander O’Leary, whose fortitude and determination matched every task and risk.”
Early in his citation, Guérisse was credited with “setting up” an organisation that helped Allied prisoners of war and others. Some experts in the field of clandestine operations considered this to be inaccurate as it did not do full justice to the work of Garrow, who had already set up an escape line before Guérisse joined the team. In fact, Guérisse never claimed to be an official Special Operations Executive (SOE) or M19 agent but he happily worked with both organisations.
Guérisse received his GC from George VI in an investiture at Buckingham Palace on November 19 1946, just two weeks after his decoration was formally announced.
Brigadier Sir John “Jackie” Smyth, the VC recipient and author, described Guérisse as “a most fabulous character, who was in turn soldier, doctor and secret agent. Just as truth is said to be stranger than fiction so the exploits which won him the George Cross are more hair-raising than any of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”
Awards were bestowed on Guérisse thick and fast. As well as being the recipient of the GC and Distinguished Service Order (DSO) from Britain, his other decorations included the Légion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre from France, the Military Cross from Poland, the Medal of Freedom with Gold Palm from America and the Order of Leopold from his native Belgium.
Those who had helped Guérisse were also decorated including Garrow, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO); Lieutenant T. G. Groome, from the Intelligence Corps, who was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); and Louis H. Nouveau, who was awarded the George Medal (GM).
It should never be forgotten, of course, that women played a key role too as secret agents during World War Two. Three of these courageous agents, Violette Szabo, Odette Samson and Noor Inyat Khan were all decorated with the GC. All three women were brutally tortured after being captured and only Samson survived the war.
Guérisse was not the first, nor the last, secret agent who found it difficult to adapt to a peacetime job after such an extraordinary wartime role. However, he rejoined the Belgian army under his own name in 1946 and, the following year, married a British woman, Sylvia Cooper-Smith, who, after bearing him a son called Patrick, predeceased him.
In April 1951, he turned up in Korea as medical officer and at one time was attached to the British 29th Brigade, then part of the American Third Division. Typically, he was decorated for saving the life of a Belgian soldier. Later he was in charge of medical services for the Belgian Armed Forces and for NATO personnel in Belgium. His remarkable military career came to an end in 1970 when he retired with the rank of major-general. He was appointed to an honorary knighthood (KBE) in 1979.
Guérisse died in Waterloo, Belgium, on March 26 1989, aged 77. By then, he is believed to have amassed a total of some 35 decorations. Before his death, his numerous gallantry awards had earned him the unofficial title of the “most decorated man alive”.
In her book, One Step Further: Those whose gallantry was rewarded with the George Cross, Marion Hebblethwaite writes: “But what of the man himself? He combined the gentleness and calm of the doctor with the ruthlessness of the secret agent but he was also a charming friend and colleague. He held strong beliefs, had immense qualities of leadership and loyalty and finally courage in the face of extreme adversity.”
I do not own the Guérisse medal group but I researched his remarkable life while writing my book, George Cross Heroes. My respect for his gallantry has no bounds as he repeatedly carried out what I like to call “cold courage” in that he knew that he was constantly endangering his own life by taking huge risks to help others. It is quite incredible that the actions of just one man resulted in hundreds of lives being saved and his bravery must never be forgotten.