He was a bigamist, a bootlegger, a jailbird who did 14 months in Alcatraz, and a soldier of fortune. The 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 flustered 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'. The book is of the stuff blockbuster war movies are made – heroism, sacrifice, 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 cuffs but the investigating goes on.

Real-life people and deeds

'It's also a story of real-life people and their real-life 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 flirted with arrest, interrogation, incarceration and even execution for assisting the escape effort. Because on the first floor 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 Officer Leonard Barnes, Major Don ‘Willy' Willis, 2nd Lieutenant ‘Jacko' Donald, Sergeant Ronald ‘Curly' Emeny and Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas ‘Speed' Hubbard. Nicknamed ‘Speed' because of his slow southern USA drawl.

Extreme peril

These 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 five evaders to safely cross the Pyrenees before war's end.

The 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. The RNZAF pilot uncle sacrificed his life by staying at the controls of a burning Lancaster bomber and steering it away from the village of Chaintreux before crashing May 4, 1944.

'I've been there. I have stood at the foot of his grave. They still celebrate Leslie's courage and selflessness to this day,” says Brian.

Eventually the paths of Onderwater and Lissette would cross and they would collaborate on an updated, expanded English version of ‘Journey to the Horizon', weaving pilot Lissette's story into the story of the evaders.

Raw tale

It is a raw tale of fearless men who dared run for freedom, who cheated the enemy at every turn. There's no melodrama, no florid language, no overstatement. Deeds speak for themselves in ‘Journey to the Horizon'.

Like the airman who parachuted from a burning B-17 over Belgium and landed in a walled-in back garden of a house. A German soldier clambered over the wall to capture him. The airman then burst out the front door of the house, clambered onto the German's motorbike and, cheered on by Belgians, took off down the street blowing his horn – a bit of wartime slapstick in a book of fear and pain, triumph and loss.

Unbelievable stories

And as one observer noted – if the stories weren't real, you wouldn't believe them.

And of the resistance who ran the safe-houses, one escaper said: 'Having experienced what these people so unselfishly did for me, I know the meaning of everlasting friendship. It explains the invisible thread that linked people who made contrails in the sky to those who kept an invisible trail on the ground”. Donald Kenyan Willis, the maverick American, served under four different flags – Finland, Norway, England and the USA.

He joined the war before his country did.

'Nothing to do with idealism,” suggest the authors. 'Willis would call you an idiot or a liar if you suggested it was.”

Onderwater and Lissette tell us Willis listened to a man playing a violin in a Chicago nightclub and was entranced. 'Beautiful,” he thought.

The violinist came from Finland, which was at war with Russia. After a night's binging with the fiddler, Willis decided any country that could produce men who made music like his new friend 'must be a helluva fine country” so he joined their air force. He fought with the Finns until Germany muscled in on the war. That's where our authors catch up with Willis and follow him down the Comète Line on the ‘Journey to the Horizon'. And Comète, French for comet, a nod to the speed with which the resistance operated, the speed needed to whisk stranded airmen down through occupied France to safety.

A WWII banquet

The book is a banquet of historical WW2 documents, facts and photos, a valuable research tool. And woven in is the real life story of the people of the Comète Line, the evaders and the resistance, who defied, and eventually broke, a barbarous and evil regime. Peck and scratch and you will be well rewarded.

Brian has copies of the book. Contact him at: brian.lissette@kinect.co.nz or phone: 021 038 2568.

Captain Donald Kenyon Willis, a bigamist, bootlegger and soldier of fortune.