Dominic Sandbrook

I don't think they are.

Okay, so they're not that posh.

They're not that posh, but quite posh.

And during the fighting at the Battle of Mons, the Croix family had used their chateau at Belligny, which is not that far from Mons.

They turned it into a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers.

And they are now using their chateau to hide Allied soldiers and to send them on to neutral Holland.

So the way it works is this.

Basically, if you have a British and you've been hiding in someone's pigsty or something because you were left behind during the retreat from Mols, Belgians will take you to the chateau and introduce you to the prince and princess.

And they will give you forged papers.

I mean, how they are forging these papers, I do not know.

Whether Prince Reginald has kind of got a machine in his hand cranking a passport machine or something.

Anyway, they'll give you your forged papers and then they'll introduce you to a series of guides to take you to the Dutch frontier.

And the bloke who's in charge of organising the guides is an architect and Catholic social activist called Philippe Bouc.

And Bouc is like a big resistance figure because he also distributes two underground papers, La Libre Belgique and Le Mot du Soldat.

And there's about 200 people in this network.

They say they have safe houses and there are people who are going to, you know, I'll take you from here to here, then I'll pass you on to this person, all of this.

And it's very informal.

A lot of them are actually just rich, posh Belgians who've got big houses so they can hide you in, you know, in one of their many bedrooms or something.

And there's a slight sense, I think, about this of sort of rich people having fun, having a little bit of an adventure.

Sure, I shall smuggle some British and French soldiers to safety, all of this.