Netwerk Bongaerts

The Network Bongaerts was more than just the group of firefighters and members of the OD with whom Charles Bongaerts worked on a daily basis. It began, as with all early resistance groups, with help for prisoners of war who had fled Germany. Later, other refugees such as Jews came in as well. Bongaerts was one of the founders of the Ordedienst in the eastern coalmining district. He built an active resistance group within the OD and the fire department, of which he was the commander. They planned and carried out various acts of sabotage, especially in the mines where some members of the group worked, such as Harrie Tobben (mine police). The refugees were transported by the ambulance of the fire department and by the cab of E. Heinen from Heerlen. At one point their truck broke down on the way with three Allied "pilots" on board. They stopped a German army convoy to have it repaired. (Biography of Jo Bongaerts) The sole survivor of an Allied plane crash, Bongaerts was seriously injured, put into a firefighter’s uniform and taken past the Germans to the hospital in Heerlen, where he came under the care of surgeon Karel van Berckel.
Bongaerts’ people brought the refugees to, among others, the Group Dresen in Maastricht, who sent them to, among others, the Gruppe Erkens, from whom they were taken across the Belgian border. They also had connections with Pater Beatus, who in turn had connections to the southern edge of Limburg.
Bongaerts and Tobben coordinated where the refugees were to be picked up and brought to. This could be anywhere in the province, but also in North Brabant, Nijmegen, and even Apeldoorn. As of June 1943, the Limburg lines were all connected to the Belgian branches of the Comet line to Spain (see Section II.2.).
The widely ramified England game was also the undoing of Bongaerts’ network.