During the Second World War, Allied servicemen stuck in Nazi-occupied France were smuggled along escape lines back to England. CHARLOTTE McDONALD speaks to a former soldier planning to trek one of the routes.
FOR those servicemen who found themselves stranded in France after the British withdrew at Dunkirk in 1940, the lucky ones were helped to make their way back to Britain.
One such route became known at the Pat O'Leary line along which servicemen would be brought down the country by sympathetic locals and resistance workers to the south near Marseille.
They would be kept in safe houses and moved from place to place, being given food and clothing.
They would get rid of anything which would identify them as servicemen.
Then they would be helped to cross the Pyrenees into Spain before making their way down to Gibraltar where they could catch boats back to UK.
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Throughout the war the escape route was also used by airmen who were downed in France, prisoners of war and those individuals on the run from the Gestapo.
Former infantryman John Ball, who lives in The Avenue, Gravesend, is preparing to walk the route with 11 others to raise money for charity.
A group of walkers on last year's Freedom Trail trip
Known as the Freedom Trail, he will be walking the 50-mile route across the Pyrenees, which will take four days, reaching heights of 2,600m - 8,580ft - when he leaves on July 8.
Now working as a window cleaner, Mr Ball
decided to do the walk to raise money for the Royal British Legion, which organises trips to follow the route.
‘It has taken so much planning and organising but now I know it is really going to happen.’
FORMER INFANTRYMAN JOHN BALL
The 40-year-old, who was a private in the Queens Regiment, said: "Most of the route you won't find on any map. It's just tracks and paths.
"You had a French guide and a Spanish guide.
"There was a station at St Girom.
"This was the first leg of the journey over the Pyrenees.
"On the third day we will reach Pic de Lampau, where you can still see wreckage of a bomber which came down in 1945."
The walkers will hold a memorial when they get there to commemorate those who died during the war.
Mr Ball said: "I've got some crosses from the British Legion, so I will lay them there.
"There is also a barn we will go to. On one
occasion prisoners had been put up there, waiting to move along the route.
"But one of the locals betrayed them and they were all shot."
The walkers now treading the same route are carrying whatever they need for the trip with them.
Mr Ball, who has been training for the walk, said: "I am so excited. It has taken so much planning and organising but now I know it is
really going to happen.
"All my expenses for the trip were paid for by First Data Solutions."
The former soldier has so far raised £2,000 in sponsorship money, of which £1,000 will go to the British Legion.
The rest is to be split between Arrow Riding School, Darenth Park Avenue, Dartford; SERV,
a team of riders and drivers who transport blood to hospitals, and Cancer Research UK.
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