Edgard Potier was a Belgium air force officer who organised the MI9 escape line known in Belgium as Mission Martin and in France was called the Possum Line.
After a Lancaster bomber was shot down over Belgium the two surviving crew members were rescued by Edgard Potier (cover name Raymond) who took the airmen across Belgium to remote farmland close to the Belgium-French border where a night pickup by Lysander aircraft had been arranged.
The ‘pickup’ pilot was Hugh Verity of No. 161 Special Duty Squadron RAF who successfully picked up the two escapers and returned them to England.
After the war Verity said: “Raymond {Edgard Potier} did a number of operations for our evading crews… He was eventually betrayed and captured and ruthlessly tortured to get information from him… When it got to the point when he had one eye gouged out by his interrogators, he couldn’t stand any more. He jumped from a window and killed himself.
Alan Malcher
Alan Malcher 