Old cop travels

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He was a bigamist, a bootlegger, a jailbird who did 14 months in Alcatraz, and a soldier of fortune. e chameleon Captain Donald Kenyon Willis – a likeable rogue amongst straight up WW2 heroes in a book co-authored here in Tauranga.

One of the stories goes that when Willis was being sentenced for bigamy and perjury in 1941, even the judge was ustered by a man he described as being of “restless disposition, enterprise and energy”. “Everyone loves a soldier,” agonised the Judge. But bang went the gavel and Willis the bigamist and anti-hero, was banged up for nine months in a reformatory.

Willis’ shenanigans are a fascinating sideshow to ‘Journey to the Horizon – escape and evasion in WW2’. e book is of the stu blockbuster war movies are made – heroism, sacri ce, secrecy and the triumph of good over Nazi evil and barbarism.

“At its core is bravery, trust and the will to survive,” says Brian Lissette – a retired old-style cop cum researcher and author from Baypark. He has surrendered his cu s but the investigating goes on.

Real-life people and deeds

“It’s also a story of real-life people and their reallife deeds that needed to be documented before they’re lost for all time.”

‘Journey to the Horizon’ is a tribute to the men and women of the Comète Line – a 600km long chain of safe houses run by the Dutch, Belgian and French resistance for the Allied soldiers and airmen running from the Germans through the occupied territories of Europe and over the

Pyrenees into Spain. Brave, trusting people like Marthe Mendihara, who ran a café, a safe house, in the Sutar quarter of Anglet, south-west France. She constantly irted with arrest, interrogation, incarceration and even execution for assisting the escape e ort. Because on the rst oor of Marthe’s café Allied aircrew on the run ate and slept before the long march into Spain.

Downstairs a smiling Marthe would be serving up wine and beer to oblivious German soldiers and police. Behind her smile was a driving force of deep, inconsolable hatred of the occupiers. She gambled on people like ‘the travellers’ – four pilots and an air gunner shot down over occupied territory – “clipped winged airmen” as they were called. Pilot O cer Leonard Barnes, Major Don ‘Willy’ Willis, 2nd Lieutenant ‘Jacko’ Donald, Sergeant Ronald ‘Curly’ Emeny and LieutenantColonel omas ‘Speed’ Hubbard. Nicknamed ‘Speed’ because of his slow southern USA drawl.

Extreme peril ese men were unknown to each other and eventually came together in safe houses for the perilous journey out of occupied Europe. It was a journey of extreme peril and hardship for the last ve evaders to safely cross the Pyrenees before war’s end. e book was originally published in Dutch in 1985 – ‘Reis naar de Horizon’ – by Hans Onderwater MBE, a decorated former Netherlands army soldier and teacher turned researcher and author.

Half a world away in Tauranga, Brian Lissette was researching the WW2 exploits of his Uncle Leslie from Hawke’s Bay. e RNZAF pilot uncle sacri ced his life by staying at the controls of a