As a schoolgirl courier for the Belgian
Army of Partisans in Louvain in 1942-43, Hortense Daman
daily faced arrest, interrogation and deportation to a
German concentration camp. She, her father and mother
suffered all of these terrors yet miraculously survived.
The partisans of Louvain had limited support
from the local population until in October 1942 the call-up
of young men for work in German industry drove many to join
them or go on the run.
The following spring the partisans
destroyed almost 300 wagons and many thousands of gallons of
fuel oil in the Louvain railway marshalling yards. They also
kept Soviet Union intelligence abreast of Wehr-macht
deployments in Belgium as well as attacking facilities
supporting the German war machine.
Hortense Daman, however, acted only from
patriotic motives and to support her brother François, a
returned prisoner of war, who had begun his work with the
partisans by helping British servicemen left behind in
Belgium to avoid capture.
Hortense proved ideal as a courier as
she had a cool head and knew how to use her blonde good
looks to advantage when necessary.
The situation was exceptionally dangerous;
Gestapo vigilance had uncovered a communist spy circuit in
Belgium known to them as the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra)
and had arrested the leaders. François Daman counselled his
sister: “No matter how important the message, nothing is
more important than being able to walk away free and keeping
the message from being captured.”
Using deliveries from her mother’s grocery
shop at 130 Pleinstraat just beyond the line of the old city
walls as cover, she was able to carry messages, explosives
and even grenades beneath the upper layer in her cycle
pannier. Returning from an outlying village with a heavy
sack of explosive hanging over the rear wheel she met a
German patrol and escaped only because of her escort —
following a safe distance behind her — wounded one of the
patrol with his pistol.
When stopped by a road-block while
carrying grenades under an upper layer of eggs, she implored
the officer not to delay her as her mother would be angry,
allowing him to think she had been with a boyfriend.
Attracted by her youthful, apparent innocence, he let her
through.
On another occasion she was almost
caught with a parcel of partisan documents when
returning by train from a village in the valley of the Dyle.
As the German Field Security Police neared her seat, she
walked back to the first-class compartment occupied by
German officers and, when questioned, pretended to be
feeling sick. Again her youthful charm came to her aid. An
officer offered his seat, told the patrol not to bother with
her parcel and gave her a lift in his staff car from Louvain
station. She was careful to ask him to drop her well away
from home.
The betrayal of her and her family,
together with many others partisans, came through the
capture of one of their number who succumbed to torture.
She and her father and
mother were arrested on St Valentine’s Day, 1944. For a
month all three were subjected to interrogation and
vicious beatings by the Belgian SS — working with the
occupation forces.
She and her mother were
held in the Little Prison of Louvain reserved for women.
When an Allied air force attack on the marshalling yards
damaged the prison severely, she was moved to Louvain’s
main prison and from there to Raven-sbröck concentration
camp in Germany.
As a terrorist sentenced
to death without trial, she was subjected to sterilisation
treatment as part of a programme of experiments for the
prevention of contamination of pure Aryan stock.
She was also injected in the thigh to
induce gangrene. Soon afterwards it seemed certain her leg
would have to be amputated but the German doctors decided
against it and she made a slow and painful recovery.
The elder daughter of Jacques and
Stephanie Daman, Hortense was born in Louvain and attended
school there. Her mother was also sent to Ravensbröck but
both survived, as did Jacques Daman in Buchenwald.
Jacques was found by his son François, who
had avoided capture. Hortense returned with her mother from
Sweden, to where they had been evacuated by the Swedish Red
Cross in the chaos of the final months of the war.
The courage of Hortense Daman during her
service with the Belgian resistance and her fortitude under
interrogation was recognised by her appointment as a Knight
of the Order of Leopold II, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and
the Medal of Resistance.
In 1946 she married
Staff Sergeant Sydney Clews of the British Army, who had
befriended her father on his return from Buchenwald.
For many years he was the administrator of Westcliffe
Hospital at Stoke-upon-Trent while living in
Newcastle-under-Lyme. He predeceased her and she is
survived by a son and daughter.
Hortense Clews, née Daman, courier for
the Belgian Resistance, was born on August 12, 1926. She
died on December 18, 2006, aged 80
