AN ARMY OF AMATEURS

By

Philippe De Vomécourt

Grade Level and Copyright 

Grade Level is 7.1 using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.

First edition published by Doubleday & Company, 1961.

Second edition published by Ebooks for Students, Ltd., 2020.

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Acknowledgement

I want to thank George Scott for his invaluable help in preparing this book for publication.

PHILIPPE DE VOMÉCOURT

TO JOHN

And all our comrades who paid for us and yet are still unknown

Foreword

by MARSHAL OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE THE LORD TEDDER, G.C.B.

Many books dealing with the work of the French Resistance have been published on this side of the Channel. Most of them have been the personal stories of gallant men and women, illuminating that corner of the picture that they saw. Here in Monsieur de Vomécourt’s book is a wider frame of reference which enables us to see how the spirit and forces of Resistance grew in France first into a gadfly nuisance and ultimately into a serious threat to German security. It shows, too, what it meant to be a member of the Resistance, and what it cost in blood and tears.

Monsieur de Vomécourt is in a good position to tell this story. He was in at the beginning in June 1940 with his brothers. Indeed, they can fairly claim to have been the first organizers and leaders, and Monsieur de Vomécourt tells a truly remarkable story. A story of unquenchable determination, of cold-blooded courage, and of undaunted faith in France.

Although Monsieur de Vomécourt writes, as a Frenchman, mainly of what was done in France, I am glad to see that he makes it clear that the enterprise as a whole was a Franco-British one. He shows how those in “the field,” as it came to be known, and S.O.E. at headquarters in London gradually built up the common effort together. It is, I think, important that this should be realized.

It is true that the relationship, as he points out, was not always an easy one. The maintenance of communications was itself one of the most hazardous duties of those working with the Resistance—the links were often broken, there were misunderstandings, sometimes elementary mistakes brought disaster to brave men and women. But when one considers how the organization came into being, and what it had to do, the surprising thing is that it worked so well. Within a few months after Dunkirk, an organization to develop a wholly new type of warfare was improvised virtually out of nothing. Men and women with the most unlikely combinations of qualities had to be found and meticulously trained. Those like de Vomécourt and his friends operating in France had to be helped and equipped with arms and material by day and at night at secret rendezvous. A technique of clandestine warfare had to be developed almost overnight. And, finally, all this had to be done in the face of a ruthless enemy with all the apparatus of the police state at its command. It was truly a case of amateurs taking on professionals. The wonder is not that they made so many mistakes, but so few.

Was it all worth-while? It is quite impossible accurately to assess the military contribution that the Resistance made to the success of Overlord. They certainly did much to harry, confuse, and weaken the German military organization. They were a valuable supplement to the air attacks on the enemy’s communications and supply systems.

While its military successes were undoubtedly worth-while, I believe that we ought to judge the Resistance in France on a quite different basis. I believe that its greatest victory was that it kept the flame of the French spirit burning throughout the dark years of Occupation. The Communists realized the importance of the Resistance as a rallying point for all Frenchmen burning to be free. If they had been able to identify themselves with it or to capture it—and they tried hard enough, as this book shows—the history of post-war France, and, for that matter, of all of us in the West, might have been very different.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Rail Map of France

Prologue

September 1944. Large areas of France had already seen the Germans driven out, but elsewhere the French people were waiting, impatiently, for liberation. They were waiting for the day that would end more than four years of suffering and grief.

To those living in the country south of the great Loire River, in the heart of France, it seemed as though the day of liberation would also be the day of retribution.

German troops from the south of France were on the run, trying to find a way home. Behind them were the troops of the First Free French Army, who had landed on the Mediterranean coast. Ahead of them, across the Loire, was the American Third Army, under General Patton.

The ambition of these Germans was to push up to the middle of France and then turn eastward, striking for the Swiss border. From there, they hoped to creep into Germany by the back door.

But all the way up through France, they had been attacked and harried by the Resistance. They found bridges blown up, roads sown with explosives. Maquis groups ambushed the Germans in the woods, made hit-and-run raids on their columns on the highway. The enemy never knew where the next attack might be hidden, waiting to spring.

The vanguard of this motley collection of German units in retreat headed for Nevers, the gateway to the Swiss frontier. Resistance forces and French Special Air Service paratroops repulsed them. Returning the way they had come, they met other Germans, hoping, as they had done, to find an escape route home.

Under the command of General Elster, some 18,000 Germans abandoned their original plans for escape and, frightened, disordered, counting their dead, they drew back from the Sologne district, from the Cher and the Sancerre districts. They huddled together in a loose sort of triangle formed by Châteauroux, Vierzon, and Bourges.

As they fell back, they reacted desperately, viciously. They fired at almost anyone they saw. They burned, pillaged, and killed. They slaughtered the innocent and the guilty (those belonging to the Resistance) alike. They shot a man working on a hedge. They shot a peasant in a vineyard a hundred yards or more from the road. They murdered seven woodcutters going home after a morning’s work in the forest. They took reprisals against the local population, conducting formal or informal executions.

Practically every village through which the Germans passed, whether from the south or in flight from the west, told similar stories of promiscuous carnage and destruction. The Germans were building up a huge debt, and we were determined that the debt should be paid.

In all, there were about 2000 men of the Resistance and the S.A.S. against the 18,000 Germans. But our tactics, our shock attacks, had stemmed their flight and driven them back. Now, in the area of Châteauroux, they had achieved a momentary respite. They had found a place where they could protect themselves much more easily, a district with some woods, but mostly open plains. Here we were at a disadvantage. We had jeeps, machine guns, grenades, but we could not fight on an open plain against armored cars and tanks. We could not win a battle against trained soldiers who could take cover in ditches and slit trenches and keep firing on us, hour by hour.

Yet they were also trapped. If we were unable to attack them, they dared not move. They had already tasted the perils of the hill roads and if they tried to push that way again to get to Nevers and the Swiss frontier we would destroy them. We could dynamite the hill roads and blow them up; we could shoot down on the columns from above as they came through. This hilly country was ideal for guerrilla warfare.

They dared not push northwestward toward Tours, because they would be harried by the maquis all the way and, north of the Loire, they would find units of Patton’s army waiting for them.

It was senseless to try to make for Brittany, for that way offered only a dead end. Elimination of their possible courses of action left them the terrible alternative: either surrender or make a dash for it toward Nevers. Which would they decide to do?

We decided to help them make up their minds. We held a meeting at Romorantin, a few miles north of the German “triangle” and just the other side of the River Cher. Resistance leaders from the south of the Germans joined me at Romorantin, and we agreed to “squeeze” the Germans, and squeeze them hard. The idea was to cover all the roads and ambush all the woods surrounding the Germans, moving closer and closer to them. We calculated that as soon as the Germans realized what was happening—and we did not expect that to take long—they would be forced into action. We hoped they would surrender, but we thought it more likely they would make a dash for Nevers. If they decided to do that, we knew we could make them pay a terrible price on the way, and those who survived to reach the River Loire would find us waiting to wipe them out.

The Resistance was about to achieve a climax of power, a victory which would repay the Germans for their crimes and would compensate the French people, in a substantial way, for the long years of suffering and endurance. The 18,000 Germans, dead or alive, would be the prize and the vindication of the Resistance.

But how had the Resistance grown to such strength and cohesion? What had happened in those four years since the fall of France to bring us to this moment?

Chapter One

The Resistance in France was born of the French people themselves. Others may have helped to give it articulation and strength, but the impulse was French. The spirit which inspired the Resistance was there, in the French people, even at the moment of defeat and humiliation. But that spirit had been sleeping, pampered and betrayed by the lullabies of the politicians. The British people had been misled in the same way—but France lay in the direct line of the German Panzer divisions. The tragic farce of the pre-war negotiations with Hitler is familiar enough, but in France some of us have neither forgotten nor forgiven. We are still paying the price for the follies and crimes of such as Daladier and Chamberlain.

How caressingly they soothed our anxious brows! Fear not, children, sleep snug and secure in the knowledge that there will be no war, that we will watch over you. Tomorrow you can play again. But when tomorrow came, the game was up.

In September 1939 we went through the motions of preparing to fight a war, but neither in the hearts of the men in uniform who were herded off in trains, nor in the hearts of the families they left behind, was there any positive understanding that a war must be fought. Materially, emotionally, and intellectually, we were ill-equipped for war.

Yet our leaders continued to peddle their deceits, and to believe in them. Posters on walls and hoardings crooned to us, “We shall win the war because we are the strongest.” If the traditional fighting spirit of France had opened one eye on the day war was declared, it was soon closed in sleep again.

On the western front we experienced what we called the drôle de guerre, “the funny war,” and what was called in Britain “the phony war.” Fighting was limited to sporadic artillery exchanges. The Folies-Bèrgere opened again, some soldiers came home from the front as and when they felt like it, with or without permission. The French people were happy enough to take their cue from the military and political leaders. There were air-raid shelters here and sandbags there; there were gas masks and self-important uniforms, but these were the properties and costumes for a comic opera. It was indeed a funny war, to which, it was generally assumed, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Daladier would write the happy ending by fixing up some sort of agreement.

Even the capitulation of Denmark, followed swiftly by the German invasion of the Low Countries on May 10, 1940, did not shock us into an awareness of the reality. The hallucination of strength and invulnerability persisted just a little longer. But four days later when the German tanks reached the French frontier and then broke through the French lines at Sedan we recognized the full extent of the criminal deception to which we had been exposed. The troops who faced the Germans were quite unprepared for war. Some were without the equipment, or, at least, the right equipment, they needed to fight back; others were on leave. The result was a debacle: everybody ran. Officers ran away in front of their troops, the country was in flight, producing a chaos of fear and rumor. Some regiments, led by competent officers, held their positions, but it was to no avail.

The situation was ideal for fifth-column exploitation, and the fifth column was well-organized. These agents of the Germans induced panic in the villages and country areas.

The aimless, pathetic processions began, the ragged columns of the homeless winding their way along the roads of France. In their hands they clutched souvenirs of the past, the children their dolls and toys, the women their clocks, mirrors, pictures. Anything on wheels was put into service to carry their furniture and baggage, their beds, their clothes, their pots and pans. Even wheelbarrows were used. The farmers quit their land, their horses dragging the plows and the carts overburdened with their implements. The plows, which were never meant to take to the roads, fell to pieces. Carts lost their wheels. Old cars were abandoned.

Swiftly the roads were blocked by the wreckage and by the hundreds and thousands of people trudging and chugging along. If there had been any chance of the Army reforming and fighting back, it was now frustrated.

Then the Germans flew over, bombing and machine-gunning this solid mass of human beings and vehicles—and, after their opportunist declaration of war on France on the tenth of June, the courageous Italians joined in the massacre. This was France at the moment of total defeat, flat on her face on the roads, in the ditches, in the fields, praying that the bullets and the bombs would miss her. This was the price she had to pay for betrayal by her politicians. It was only the first installment.

The people of France, in their misery and anguish, clutched desperately at the symbolic figure of Marshal Pétain. The venerable military leader allowed them to believe that honor could be salvaged from defeat.

I heard Pétain’s first message to the nation, on the seventeenth of June, at my home near Limoges, in the center of France. There were a dozen or more people in the room at the time, and their reactions to the speech were a reflection of the way in which France was to be divided even to this day. That was the start of it all, although many Frenchmen, who gave their support to Pétain then, were to change their minds later. For some of the people in the room it was enough that Pétain should offer them peace. They did not question what kind of peace it would be; they trusted the victor of Verdun and sought only the quickest possible balm for their suffering. They thought that peace must bring an end to the killing and destruction, that the refugees on the roads would be able to go home and take up their normal lives again; most of all, they thought that peace would bring back husbands and sons: their husbands and their sons.

Pétain was an old man, a tired man, and he thought of France in the image of his own weariness. As we now know, he argued within the council at Cange that the ultimate regeneration of France could be brought about only by an immediate armistice and by the government of France remaining on the soil of France to share the suffering of her people. As recorded by Robert Aron, in his history of the Vichy regime, Pétain said, “The renaissance of France will be the fruit of this suffering.”

He was right, but not in the way he meant it. His course was one of collaboration with the Germans. There were other Frenchmen, including a handful in my home that day we heard Pétain’s first message, who could not accept that France should make obeisance to the invaders. Although at the moment their reaction was wholly instinctive, and as yet incapable of translation into any coherent plan for action, they believed that the renaissance of France could be achieved only by resistance to the Germans. And for them another Frenchman was to speak, the day after Pétain had made his appeal, the same day that the Axis leaders, at Munich, were considering the French Government’s request for an armistice. From London, General de Gaulle made his historic appeal to Frenchmen to continue the fight. “Whatever happens,” he said, “the flame of French resistance must not and shall not die.”

Thanks to Hitler’s decision to concentrate on the conquest of France and to take Paris as quickly as possible, more than 300,000 Allied troops, many of them French, escaped from Dunkirk to Britain. Sadly, Britain was not prepared for them. They were herded into makeshift camps. There was not enough food. The British troops fared badly enough, but at least they were back in their own country and could see their families again. The foreign troops, the French and the Poles and the remnants of other Allied armies, felt they were being treated more like prisoners of war than comrades. Ill-fed, guarded by sentries with fixed bayonets and live ammunition, what little remained of their morale now sagged. The Free French organization was formed and the troops were asked to volunteer to carry on the fight. But they were given the alternative of being shipped home to France. The great majority of them decided to go home, some promising themselves, no doubt, that they would return to Britain after they had seen their families.

One man who did stay in England was my brother Peter. He had been an interpreter to a British regiment. On June 17, at Cherbourg, he heard Pétain’s broadcast preparing the French people for capitulation. He boarded the last ship for England, to go on fighting. John, our elder brother, like myself, was still in France. We sent letters to Peter through the embassy in Spain. In his replies he asked me to look after his wife and children who were in Paris, and he told us what we had already assumed: that he intended to go on fighting.

The three of us were of like mind. We could not admit the idea that France had lost a war against the Germans; we had lost a battle, but not a war. The war was still going on, and we must help win it. We were continuing a family tradition.

My family comes from the east of France, from Lorraine. We are familiar with war and with the Germans. As a family, for three generations and more we have paid our tribute to France; we have paid la dette du sang, we have paid with our blood to preserve France. In the 1870 war my great-grandfather was tortured and killed. In 1914 my father joined up, although he was forty-five, and was killed almost immediately. His five children were orphaned, when my mother died soon afterward. My brother John joined up before the end of the war, at the age of seventeen. In World War I, Frenchmen could join the British Army, and Britons could join the French, at their choice. Being in England, my brother got a commission in the British forces as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. He was very badly wounded, and at the end of the war he was given a commission in the Reserve. I was still at school in the 1914-18 war—my father had taken us to England to be educated and I was at Beaumont College—but I was given an O.T.C. commission just after the war. I went back to France to do my service in the French Army, as a mechanic in the Flying Corps.

When the last war began, neither John nor I was called up. I was thirty-seven and the father of seven children. But, if we were not wearing uniform, our attitude to the war and to the Germans was true to the family tradition. British and American people, especially younger ones, must try to appreciate the significance of living in the east of France, with Germany just a few miles away, and where every home has memories of the old enemy. Furthermore, to us, patriotism—the love of France, of the country, of her people and her glorious history—is a natural and proper response. If, to some, this seems old-fashioned or even ridiculous, I make no apology; if they cannot sympathize, they must merely accept it as a fact, an important fact that explains so much that would otherwise be inexplicable.

All this is a necessary digression to make it clear that John and I knew, even before he told us so in his letters, that Peter intended to continue the war. That is what each of us wanted to do, but the question was how it could best be done.

Through our exchange of letters we arrived at an agreement that we must try to build up a new fifth column in France, this time a fifth column that would prepare to do to the Germans what their agents had done to France. When the Allies landed in France once more, this fifth column would be ready to help them.

It was now Peter’s task to try to promote the idea in London, for a fifth column without weapons was bound to be ineffectual; to carry out sabotage against the Germans we needed proper equipment, and that could come only from London.

Peter went first to see the Free French, but he found no interest there in the concept of a fifth column. De Gaulle feared that active resistance and sabotage would provoke reprisals; at that time his concern was with Intelligence, with the gathering of information about what was happening in France. We did not wish to limit our activities to Intelligence work; we wanted to give the Germans effective evidence that the war with France in France was not yet over. For some time it seemed as though our idea was to remain just an idea, however, for Peter made the frustrating round of officialdom in London without receiving the positive sponsorship we were seeking. Sympathetic noises were no substitute for action.

But, at last, Peter was summoned to appear before a commission in London, composed of high-ranking service officers and civilian experts. His earlier meetings, although unsuccessful, had been valuable in their way. The necessity of explaining our idea over and over again had caused it to grow; he was now able to elaborate it with detailed suggestions of how an active resistance might be organized in France and how it should operate. And by now, too, he had quite a body of evidence, from B.B.C. broadcasts, from British newspapers, and from stories I had told him in my letters, to show that the Resistance had already begun in France. Amateurish and incoherent as yet, there was enough evidence to convince him that the spirit to resist did exist, that not all French people shared Marshal Pétain’s ideas of “peace,” or had swallowed the analgesic he offered them.

There was the frail old lady of seventy-eight, who “operated” in the Paris Métro each day. She sat down on the little stool by the train door and tripped up German officers with her stick as they got out. She reckoned to average thirty to forty a day.

A shortage of cigarettes was one rapid consequence of defeat and occupation. It was not long before people were smoking leaves, and a cigarette butt was a treasure. It was an easy situation for the Germans to exploit. Their favorite pastime was to seat themselves on the terraces of restaurants on the Champs-Elysées, flicking their cigarette ends into the street. The people of Paris knew that as they stooped to pick one up, the Germans would hoot with laughter and point at the French, scavenging their fag ends, but the need for a smoke often overcame the humiliation.

One young woman, the beautiful mother of two children, made a practice of walking down the Champs-Elysées, picking up the German cigarette ends. As she bent down, there was the expected laughter. But then she took the cigarette into the street and stamped on it. One day she was arrested and taken to a German barracks. A German officer questioned her.

“Why did you do it?” he asked her.

“Because,” she said, “I don’t want other French people contaminated by your cigarettes.”

The Germans kept her in the barracks for three days, forcing her to work for them, cleaning their boots, sweeping up, scrubbing out. She felt it was worth it to have shown them there were people prepared to do anything, however trivial it might seem, to signify their hatred of the Germans.

A gesture, such as some young Frenchmen made, was taking the Luftwaffe dirks hanging up outside the entrances to cafes, breaking their blades, and substituting pieces of paper. So many of the Germans imagined that they would be welcomed as liberators, as the bringers of order and discipline and anti-communism. It was necessary to show, by any means, how much we detested their arrogant presence.

Crude mimeographed papers were published—after Pétain had taken over there were no newspapers and, for some time, no postal services—which were, in a sense, primers of sabotage. I had a hand in publishing one myself. We gave hints, such as, “If you want to put a German car out of action, pour sugar into the petrol tank. Or buy some three-headed nails, and throw them in front of the German cars—they’re a most effective method of puncturing tires.” Papers like this were pushed through letter boxes. They were the forerunners of the clandestine newspapers.

General Cochet, an important Air Force leader, had just been retired, but he felt bound to express his disapproval of the Pétain government. He started what were later called the Cochet Letters. At first these were private letters, written laboriously in his best hand, to fellow officers. He considered it a scandal, he told them, that Pétain, a marshal of France, should have asked for peace. We still had allies to whom we were bound, and the war should go on; every officer should continue fighting however and wherever he could. He took great risks by committing his feelings to paper in this way, but his letters helped to stir the spirit of resistance.

The Marquis de Moustier, an old Frenchman from the east of France, who owned mines in France and Belgium, blew up one of his pits. It cost him four million francs, a huge sum of money at that time. But it meant that the Germans would not get the minerals from that pit.

Unhappily, others made sacrifices which were less effective and which cost them even more dearly.

Five young boys at Nantes wanted to do something to annoy the Germans, so they cut the cables and telephone wires just to the north of the town. They did not realize how futile a gesture they were making. All the Germans had to do was to telephone south to the next town and so bypass the severed lines; and, anyway, telephone wires are easily repaired. Those five boys were caught and shot.

One of the first actions of the German conquerors was to try to set up new political groups and movements that would create a façade of normal political life, but which would be available for their own manipulation. At first, these attempts were clumsy, and not a Frenchman, except the most active pro-Germans, could be deceived by them. But the German intentions were clear: they would establish parties and organize propaganda agencies to pervert the minds of the occupied people. The reaction to this was the formation in France of other French movements: Libertés, Libération, Franc-Tireur, Le Coq Enchainé, and Combat. Movements such as these mushroomed. They were loose, often localized, associations of like-minded people; of socialists and trade unionists, of radical freemasons, of federalists. The purpose behind them was a kind of resistance, though not, at this early stage, of an active, military sort. In their origin they took the form of meetings where the situation in France was debated, possible developments canvassed, and, in general, there was discussion of how France could be saved from total subversion by the Germans. The French people had to be protected from the false information which was disseminated and helped to distinguish between the German “front” organizations and the true, indigenous French ones.

This was, in broad outline, the picture of France after the armistice, which my brother Peter was able to draw when he made out his case for a fifth column in front of the mixed service and civilian commission in London. He sought to convince them of the need to bring to the people of France that practical aid which would transform sporadic, unorganized, sometimes tragically ineffectual gestures of resistance, into a powerful weapon of war. It could play a part in the war by harassing the Germans during occupation; it would be ready to make a significant contribution to their destruction when the Allied armies were ready to land in France again.

“I want you,” he told the commission, “to send men like me back to France, to teach the people how to fight the Germans. To teach other boys like those at Nantes how to hit the Germans effectively, and, if possible, without being caught and killed.”

The commission was impressed. After weeks of discouragement and frustration, he had reason to hope. He was promised an answer within forty-eight hours. When it came, it confirmed their interest and told him he would be called again later.

The outcome was the setting-up of Special Operations Executive (French section); the Belgian section was started at the same time. General de Gaulle was approached also, but he was still opposed to active resistance and active sabotage in France. The agents he sent to France would be confined in their activities to the gathering and collation of information. Nevertheless, a first major step had been taken, only a matter of weeks after the debacle in France, toward the creation of a coherent French ‘Resistance. The French people themselves had already sown the seeds; now they would be given the help they needed so that strong plants should grow.

Chapter Two

Now came a time of waiting before the first agents from London could be dropped into France. The idea of an organization to aid the French Resistance had been accepted, but there were no precedents for this kind of activity. Many mistakes were to be made, especially in those early days of the Resistance, some of them fatal mistakes, but this was the price we had to pay in France, wherever the mistake originated.

That winter of 1940-41 was a very severe one, and it was made all the worse for the people of France by the rapid fall in their living standards. While the Battle of Britain was being fought, while martial music blared in Vichy and the Germans paraded daily in the Champs-Elysées, the food ration in France was reduced to near-starvation level. From September 1940, it amounted to 1800 calories a day instead of the 3500 needed for good health. We were allowed about nine ounces of bread and half an ounce of fat a day, six and a half ounces of meat and one and a half ounces of cheese a week, and seventeen and one-half ounces of sugar a month. Those living in the country usually found ways of adding to the ration. And, invariably, they had timber at hand to overcome the miserable fuel ration, but the townspeople were shivering as well as hungry.

The black market was a necessity. It was a way of diverting food intended for the Germans to the French people. Certainly, those operating on the black market made a profit out of their transactions, but this was not only a fair recompense for the risks they took, it was also their living. Surprisingly few, considering the temptations, exploited the situation unscrupulously. We had no more “racketeers” than any other country.

To cheat the occupying Germans in this way required a great deal of nerve and skill. It was practiced directly against them in the occupied zone and, indirectly, in the free zone, by deceiving the Vichy government. It was a matter of patriotic duty to render false accounts of the harvest, of the birth of calves, of the lambing. For instance, the mayor of Saint-Léonard, a small town in the Haute-Vienne, near Limoges, was adept at scaling down the demands of the Vichy officials.

“We want 200 carcasses of beef,” they would tell him.

“Two hundred?” he would say, “but that’s impossible. There just aren’t that many to be had in this area. We might manage 150.”

Then the 150 would dwindle to, say, 110 with dolorous explanations of the most plausible kind.

“A very bad month last month...all the calves died, no births at all...all my people are very worried, they’ve never had such a run of misfortune....”

And the calves which had been born, and had lived, were spirited away, so that any inquisitive and suspicious Vichy inspector would find no trace of them. The butcher was allowed, by the regulations, to buy one cow to supply the meager rations to his customers, but he would leave the farm with two. Only one cow would be seen entering his abattoir, and recorded in his books, but, curiously, twice the normal amount of meat would become available for sale. He charged extra for the off-ration meat, but the profit was reasonable, when related to the exemplary fines he would have to pay, or the time he would do in prison, if caught. On the whole, though, the black market in food operated through the restaurants where for, perhaps, 100 francs and no coupons, you could get a meal of meat and cheese. But 100 francs was a lot of money for most people, and many French families had to seek other ways of adding to the official ration.

Of the passengers crammed into the trains—trains were few and far between and always packed with people standing in the corridors—it was safe to reckon that a considerable proportion were engaged in some sort of black-market activity, big or small, traveling longish distances to buy something, bring it back to town, and resell it at a profit, or consume it en famille.

There was an “exchange market,” by which, for instance, people in the south, where little food is grown, traded their wine for the potatoes produced in central France. The trains carried a constant two-way traffic of ordinary people dealing in barter for their own needs. Parisians took trains to the country in search of beans, carrots, a pigeon, a hen, anything to swell their meager rations.

In an occupied country unlawful activity takes on a quite different complexion: the important thing, then, is not what a man does, but why he does it.

My home in central France is an estate of some 300 acres, with a colonial-style house, square, with balconies running round it, built about a hundred years ago by my wife’s great-grandfather, Louis Gay-Lussac, the scientist and inventor. In the little town of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, the main place, facing the church, bears his name; in Limoges, a place and a station.

The countryside has the rapid undulations of a child’s drawing. To the eye, the landscape is attractive, with the Vienne River sweeping through it in broad curves. Church steeples signpost small communities tucked away between the hills, and châteaux and gentilhommières—gentlemen’s houses—perch on vantage points, commanding the best views.

But the towns, the houses, and the people are made like the soil: hard and stolid. Little of the individuality of character of the people shows itself on the surface: clothes are functional and drab; the men often wear clogs, the women trudge about in their uniform black. Their emotions are hidden behind impassive, deeply creviced faces; their instincts urge caution and calculation, suspicion of the stranger. The soil offers no easy rewards; cattle are bred for beef, for dairy farming cannot succeed here, and the smallholder fights a losing battle. The clogs strike harsh notes on the cobbled streets, and bowlegged old women draw their water from the public taps in the streets.

Winter is harsh. The family wash, hung out of windows, stiffens in the cold. The water freezes on the fountain in front of my house, and the earth is deeply crusted with frost. There is envy of the counties where the soil yields an easy harvest, or where a slick tongue wins the quick reward. Envy, but distrust. For here, nothing is easy come and nothing easy go.

But if clothes and faces express a uniform reserve, they conceal a fundamental individuality which mass-produced pleasures have yet to corrupt. Frenchmen may share many traditions and attitudes of mind, but the most important belief they have in common is that each of them is a distinctive individual. If this were not true, the Resistance would never have been possible, for Resistance called for a lonely courage, for men and women who could fight on their own.

During the winter of 1940-41 I was living at my house in Haute-Vienne, looking after my estate. Soon after the armistice, the Germans sent me a letter, asking me to work for them in my old job in an airplane factory. I told them I was very sorry, but I was tired and could not. I also feared they had discovered it was I who had organized the sabotage of all the lathes before we left the factory, and that their letter was an invitation to go to jail.

I heard no more from the Germans on that account, however. But soon afterward I arranged, through friends, to become an inspector of the railways—and to work for the Germans, after my own fashion. This was just what I wanted, for in this job I felt I could put into practice what I had learned through my work before the war.

Then I had been manager of the factory, building aircraft and prototypes. I was responsible for supplies and personnel. One episode impressed me significantly. We were making a new, experimental, collapsible undercarriage. I had the responsibility of going to Angoulême, of seeing it for myself, having it packed and taking it to the station to have it sent to Paris, as express luggage, on the same train I was catching that evening. I watched it being crated, I saw it being weighed at the station and a proper bill pasted on it. I took care that it was correctly booked before I caught the train myself.

Next morning, when we reached Paris, I went to collect the crate and found it had not arrived. Despite thorough investigation, we never found it. I ordered searches to be carried out, but without success. The station at Angoulême agreed that the crate had been brought there for dispatch. We had proof of that, but between Angoulême and Paris it had disappeared. I went to Angoulême myself, but I was unable to find it. There had been a fifth-column man operating at Angoulême who knew where my crate came from and where it was going. (He was probably a Communist, for they were pro-German at the time.) It was a valuable lesson. I hoped I should be able to show, in “serving” the Germans, that I had learned the lesson well.

As an inspector, I was responsible for the wagons de grande capacité, the special, long-distance goods trains. These trains had to haul a thousand-ton load, made up of big trucks. They required careful handling and had to keep very strictly to schedule. A single delay, and my thousand-ton train was not allowed to leave. No one went out of his way to help my special trains. The railwaymen, who provided the Resistance with some of its best men, took no pleasure in seeing French trains being used to send coal to the Italians, machinery or minerals to the Germans.

As I discovered, it was extremely simple to cause a delay. For one thing, the complete train must be exactly 1000 tons. If I was unable to muster enough big trucks to make up the train, it could not leave on time. One truck could be derailed accidentally at the last minute, thereby causing a delay.

As the man responsible for these trucks, it was also my job to report to the Germans once a month on my success or otherwise in tracing trucks which had been lost. This was a convenient state of affairs, for I was able to organize the losing of the trucks and then be charged with finding them again. I was not very successful at finding the trucks once they had been lost.

There was particular pleasure, remembering my own experience before the war, in arranging the loss of trucks from the Messier works at Angoulême. The Germans had taken over the whole factory there, which was making spare parts for aircraft; whole truckloads were going from Angoulême to Germany. At the goods depot at Angoulême where the trucks waited to start their journey, a French railwayman carried out the simple trick of switching a Messier truck for another carrying, say, a load of fruit. All he had to do was change over the weigh bills stuck on to the sides of the trucks. Taking advantage of a quiet, safe moment in the sidings, he ensured that the fruit went to Germany and the aircraft machinery ended up somewhere in France. When the Germans wanted to know what had happened to the Messier truck, the problem was back in my hands.

It took as long as four months to trace some trucks. By that time, a helping hand had taken care of the contents. The truck was empty; the machinery had disappeared.

Occasionally, I found a full truck. Immediately I sent it on its way to the German-run factory. Before it reached there, it was switched once more and ended up at another unscheduled destination. I “found” one truck three times, and each time it was lost on its way back to the Germans, and in the end was lost completely. Once we lost a whole trainload of coal intended for Italy.

French railwaymen needed little or no prompting to work on their own initiative. At other times I would drop a discreet hint. This could be done without risk to anyone. But there was plenty of risk for the men in the shunting yards who switched the trucks. Some were shot for doing so.

I liked working for the Germans as an inspector of the railways. I traveled all over France for them, enjoying a rare freedom of movement. The Gestapo put their special stamp on the back of my identity papers—a stamp showing two birds we called “the little love birds.” This stamp enabled me to travel by night, ignoring the curfew, and to move freely about all three zones—the free zone, the occupied zone, and the forbidden zone which contained the frontier areas and included the coastal strip where the Germans were to build their Atlantic Wall defense system.

One of the chief pleasures of this early form of resistance on the railways was to switch trucks carrying food to Germany to some place in France where the people were nearly starving. In the days following the armistice the French were allowed to get food and minerals shipped from North Africa to our Mediterranean ports. But at the ports the cargo was sorted, all the good food being loaded into trucks for Germany, the bad food being left for the French, When a nation is reduced to near-starvation, even bad food is better than none, but it was agonizing to have to accept this systematic robbery. On the docks, at places like Sète and Port Bou, the French workers did their best to thwart the Germans, although switching trucks in this way too often invited the kind of investigation that put an end to all such activity. But if the food could not be diverted to the French, it could be made unfit for the Germans to eat.

They sorted out the good carrots from the bad, as they were told to do, and loaded the good ones onto trucks for Germany. But when the truck was nearly full, they tipped in two or three baskets of rotten ones. They knew that by the time the truck reached Germany the rot would have spread deeply into the rest of the carrots. They also found that a bottle of acid poured over a truckload of good vegetables would create a sort of V-shaped wedge of decay on the journey.

The stevedores who did this work were a group from the east of France, the most reliable part of the country, at the beginning at any rate, from which to recruit men for the Resistance. These had fled from Lorraine, and men came to the Mediterranean coast to hit at the Germans on the docks. They did their job well.

For the first few months after the armistice, the Germans behaved, for the most part, very correctly, trying to show the French, no doubt, the virtues of order and discipline. They bore themselves with a natural arrogance, which seemed to express itself most stridently in Paris, but there were few occasions on which they overstepped the mark and displayed their true colors.

Their presence in Paris, en masse, was quite enough. The real meaning of the German conquest was imposed on the Parisians by the ubiquity of swastikas, like blackheads disfiguring the face of the capital. The district of the Avenue Kléber was closed to the French by wooden barriers; inside the barriers the German military occupied all buildings. Göring made a luxurious home for himself in the Luxembourg, surrounded by the Luftwaffe general staff. Schools became barracks; cinemas, theaters, and cafes were taken over exclusively for German patronage. Streets bearing Jewish names were renamed after anti-Semites. German signposts were erected. And, of course, there was the midnight curfew.

French judges were called upon to try cases where Frenchmen were accused of being Gaullists. The familiar German rantings against the Jews began and led, eventually, to orders that all Jews should bear the Star of David, like a brand, on their clothing. Propaganda campaigns were launched against the freemasons, the Gaullists, and the British. The Gestapo took up residence and prepared for the more active and bestial days to come.

The sufferings of Paris, even during the so-called “correct” period of the Germans, had begun.

Compared with Paris and the occupied zone, the free zone of France was a paradise, in theory at least. This, according to Pétain, was where France survived, where she would work out her salvation, her intellectual and moral recovery, under the “new order.” The senile marshal, as head of state, addressed his series of messages, called collectively, “Words to the French People,” which defined and issued in the National Revolution. The reconstruction of France was to be achieved by dedication to the totems of Work, Family, and Country. There was nothing wrong with these abstract concepts, only with the man who was invoking them. His illusion of enjoying power, independent of the Germans, grew fat during those early months after the debacle. On October 24 he went to Montoire, as the head of state, to meet Hitler, enjoying as he went the pompous courtesies extended to him by the Germans: the salutes of three generals in full dress and the presenting of arms by a company of the Wehrmacht as he crossed the demarcation line into the occupied zone; his reception at Montoire by Baron Alexander von Dömberg, Germany’s head of protocol; a guard of honor formed by a battalion of Hitler’s guard; and, finally, a strong handshake from Hitler, in public, on the station at Montoire, a moment recorded by press and film cameras.

The outcome of that meeting was Pétain’s acceptance of the “principle of collaboration.”

Pétain shocked France by his handshake with Hitler, shown in the press and in cinemas, and by his espousal of collaboration. Yet his actions had the effect of causing many to believe, with whatever inner confusion, that to refuse to collaborate, even more to resist actively, was to commit a crime. He succeeded in driving France and Frenchmen into further agonies of conscience and division.

“Collaboration” included the admission into the free zone of the Gestapo; they operated in civilian clothes, but were none the less predatory for that. French police, Pétain’s police, by carrying out the orders of the Vichy regime, were working for the Germans, whether they recognized the fact or not.

But during that first winter there were still the men of the railways, the men on the docks at the Mediterranean ports, the clandestine papers, and the individual gestures of hostility to the Germans to show that among a few, at least, a different France had survived, a France which rejected the principle of collaboration and the man who proclaimed it. And soon we were to start receiving the help which would multiply those gestures and make them more confident and more powerful.

Chapter Three

The first agents to come from London were parachuted “blind.” This meant that the pilot of the plane bringing them had to follow as well as he could a plan agreed to in London, hoping his navigation was approximately correct, spotting beneath him what looked like a stretch of flat country, and saying to his passengers, “Jump.” These jumps were always made by moonlight, and the moon helped the parachutist a little. But it was largely a matter of luck whether he landed on his two feet on level ground, or in trees, in a ditch, or on the roof of a police station—which is what happened to one of the agents who was parachuted later that year.

On the fifth of May, 1941, the first agent from the headquarters of Special Operations Executive, French section, in London, dropped into the unoccupied zone of France. Before this, others had come to France, from de Gaulle, on Intelligence duties, and from the R.A.F., to send back information to London on weather conditions. But now came the first man who was to be associated with “active” resistance in France.

His name was Captain Georges Bégué, or George Noble, as he was also known. Noble was the first radio operator, and, after him, for a time, all “radios” were to be called George. He was George the First. George Noble landed in the Dordogne and made his way north to Châteauroux. There he went to the house of a friend he had known before the war. He was welcomed, and Noble began trying to recruit men for the Resistance in the immediate area.

Five nights later, on the tenth of May, my brother Peter was also dropped “blind” near Châteauroux. He landed safely, buried his parachute, and walked to a railway station. He caught the morning train via Limoges to Brignac, a little station amounting to no more than a “halt,” and walked a mile or so up the hill to my house. He arrived the next day, the twelfth of May.

There was much I wanted to know, after I had reassured him about his wife and children in Paris.

“What is the set-up in London? Who’s the head of it? How big is it? What about de Gaulle...?” Peter told me of his somewhat modest organization at 64 Baker Street, which was the headquarters for the newly founded French section of Special Operations Executive. As I listened to him, it sounded to me as though enthusiasm were more abundant than expertise, but this was neither surprising nor discouraging at this stage. Peter’s landing was proof enough that something could be done. He had been sent over to assess the possibilities of the Resistance and to report back to London.

“We’ve done a bit of training already,” said Peter, “but no one’s very sure what sort of training we ought to be doing. Still we’ve made a start. There’s not much else I can tell you. But you’ll join us?”

“Need you ask?”

“No,” said Peter. “Just a formality. Now we can tell London you’re on the strength.”

“How will you tell them?”

“By radio.” Peter told me of George Noble’s arrival in France and said I should meet him soon. This was good news to me, for this meant an end to our isolation from London and the Allies; those of us “resisting” in the field would now be in contact, however remotely, with the armies that would one day liberate France. To London I was to be known as Gautier; the people working with me would be members of Gautier’s réseau, or circuit.

“What about John?” asked Peter, referring to our elder brother. “He’s just waiting for the chance to do something—as I was.”

“Of course. Well, how do we set about it?”

The warm sunshine streamed into the room as we sat talking. The air smelled sweetly, and the future looked all the better for the return of my brother whom I had not seen for a year.

We decided to divide France into three sectors of Resistance. Peter would start organizing in the occupied zone, operating from his home in Paris; John should look after the forbidden zone, because he was living near Pontarlier and could travel more easily in the frontier areas; I was to have the unoccupied zone. It was a convenient arrangement. Furthermore, my job with the railways, entitling me to a Gestapo pass, called my ausweis, meant I could travel in all three zones, including the western coastal strip of the forbidden zone. I would be able to act as liaison among the three of us.

Peter stayed two days with me before going to Vichy, Lyons, and, finally, Paris. He made contact with John and told him what we had decided. John, who had already been organizing an escape route for Allied soldiers and civilian refugees through Switzerland, welcomed the opportunity to develop the fight against the Germans in a more active way.

So now there were five official recruits of the Resistance, as directed from London, at work in the field: the three brothers de Vomécourt, Roger, who had landed with Peter, and George Noble, our first radio operator. Put that way, the whole thing may sound either grandiloquent, or, imagining five men about to take on the whole of the German Occupation forces, pathetic and ridiculous. It was neither. The French Resistance was not a romantic and glorious battle of wits between heroic individuals, dropped by parachute from London, and the German Army. The French people would have been less effective in their resistance had it not been for the arms and materials, the instructors and organizers, sent from London. But there would still have been a Resistance. The agents from London, on the other hand, would have been helpless without the never failing help and courage of the ordinary people of France.

Recruiting for the Resistance was a difficult task. Right from the beginning there were people prepared to do something to oppose the Germans, but we needed those for whom there were no reservations, no twitchings of conscience about whether it was right, or proper, or legal, to resist.

Recruiting in the unoccupied zone was even harder than in the occupied or forbidden zones where the physical presence of the Germans encouraged an instinctive revulsion that could more easily be converted into positive action. In the so-called free zone, under Pétain, there was much disquiet and discussion, but life was easier, and where there is comparative comfort there is usually an accompanying apathy.

The kinds of people we sought to recruit, however, needed more than the right spirit; they required particular personal qualities as well. If courage did not go hand in hand with a silent tongue and an ability to sustain a normal, unassuming manner in everyday life, then it could be dangerous to the man himself and to his comrades. The impulsive and reckless were unsuitable, too, because the risks we took were, as far as it was in our power to control them, calculated risks.

Even the man possessed of all the qualities of courage and self-discipline, and anxious to join the Resistance, might still find it impossible to make the decision to do so. Every man who did so was conscious of the risk he was bringing to his family.

The women needed to show more courage than the men to play their role. Certainly, the men knew fear; we all knew the fear of encountering the police or the Germans as we carried out the blowing up of a bridge, the derailing of a train. There was fear on the way, fear as we waited, fear of ultimate detection or betrayal. But, for the most part, we endured physical fear, which was a tangible thing. It had a shape, it wore a uniform, it carried a gun. Given some luck and a cool head, even when the heart was thumping and the stomach was sick, we could overcome our fear. It is also true that there was pleasure, an excited pleasure, in our work: all fighting men recognize that.

But for the women there was always the waiting, and as they waited their imaginations played upon their fears. To endure this night after night and not to succumb, not to transmit your fear to your husband or your children, requires a high moral courage.

To show how active these fears were in the women left behind, I must jump a little in my narrative.

One afternoon, a young man in my group was about to set off to a place some fifteen miles away from his home to help with a parachuting we had arranged for that night. As he got on his bike, he kissed his wife, and she said: “Now, don’t worry, everything will be all right.”

That evening, at dusk, when she was putting the children to bed, wondering as always, “Is Jean all right? I hope the parachuting comes off properly,” she heard a car. There were not many cars about in those days, especially at night, and she heard this one coming at great speed out of the village, along the road toward her house. Her house was right on the outskirts of the village, the last house on the road, the nearest one being 100 yards farther in.

The car kept coming with speed, nearer and nearer. Suddenly she heard the brakes being slammed on. With a screech of tires, the car stopped just opposite her house. The children sat up in bed. “Gestapo,” they said to each other. Their mother rushed to the window and peeped through the curtains. Five men were getting out of the car, among them Paolo, the local Gestapo chief, whom everybody had heard of and many had seen.

“Jean’s been killed, they’ve caught him and shot him. Now they’ve come for me and the children. I’ll be deported, and then—what will happen to the children, to the house? What shall I do?”

These were the terrible thoughts that tumbled through her brain as she watched the men getting out of the car. Then she realized they were not coming to the house. They were lining up along the side of the road and pissing. They all got back in the car and went again. Jean’s wife sank into a chair and thanked God for the escape.

There was nothing ridiculous about her fears. The husband being caught, the Germans coming for the wife; this was the reality as countless French families were to experience it. It was not until months later that she told her husband about her scare.

Recruitment was difficult because it was impossible ever to be absolutely sure of your man. It was hard enough in England, where the new organization was looking for men and women who could be taught how to use weapons, how to undertake efficient sabotage, and how to pass on their knowledge to the French. They had to learn how to outwit the Germans in enemy country.

These agents had to speak French fluently—some did not and should not have been sent—and they had to be capable of a flawless impersonation of a Frenchman, an impersonation so perfect that it would not break down, no matter what the stress to which it was subjected. The agent needed courage, intelligence, and a profound self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. But many might seem, on the surface, to possess all these high qualities and yet, when tested, prove to have a fatal weakness; a weakness which could result not only in their own death but in the deaths of French people who were working with them. The authorities in London did their best to examine recruits for these essential qualities. They simulated, as best they could and as well as they could imagine them, the conditions under which the agent would work. They subjected him to a kind of psychological endurance test to see whether he had the necessary nervous stamina. They interrogated him ruthlessly for long exhausting hours, reproducing Gestapo methods as nearly as possible, stopping short only of the physical torture, to try the man’s courage. None of these tests could give them the final assurance about a man, but, at the very least, they acted as a sieve, sorting out the definitely unsuitable. There was no disgrace in being finally rejected by the organization; some discovered for themselves that they would never be able to go through with it and asked to quit: this, too, could take courage. The pity of it is that, inevitably perhaps, some inadequate people slipped through the sieve, and the price of their inadequacy or their positive treachery was paid in the field, in France.

But the difficulties of “being sure” cannot be overstated. In France, apart from those people you knew yourself, and of whom you had formed your own judgment, you had to depend upon second-hand recommendation, upon hearsay. You could try to assure yourself that the man was anti-German, that he was not boastful and likely to brag himself and his comrades into prison. But you cannot ask a man for his life story; and if he were to give it, what would it mean? In the end you had to tell yourself, “He seems an honest man,” and take the risk. A friend could put a German double agent on the first step toward infiltrating a Resistance group, and the friend would do it in the best of faith, believing he was introducing a useful man. The need to recruit in a hurry, the unintentionally indiscreet word, a momentary lapse of caution: any of these could lead to disaster.

Peter had begun to organize, with one of my recruits, Henri Sevenet, the Rhône network; my brother John and the Marquis de Moustier, who had blown up one of his pits, were recruiting a réseau in the east of France; my own réseau was growing encouragingly. About a fortnight after Peter came to see me, I went to Châteauroux and met again George Noble, to whom Peter had already introduced me. From then onward, I was able to communicate with London through him.

In Lyons, independently of London, Captain Henri Frenay was gathering a strong group about him. Liberté, the movement Frenay had founded, and the Movement of National Liberation, founded by François de Menthon, were soon to amalgamate to form the Combat movement, and plans were being laid for the publication of the first number of the clandestine newspaper, Combat. Henri Frenay had useful contacts with the United States Embassy staff in the free zone. (Later, at the beginning of 1942, he met Peter de Vomécourt in Paris—his first contact with a British agent.)

The Resistance was growing and becoming much more organized. Now it was time for the next step, time for the Resistance to be given its first teeth.

Through George the First we arranged with London for the first parachuting of arms and materials for sabotage. The containers were to be dropped on my land near Limoges. I had sent by radio a description of the ground and the route the aircraft should follow. The pilot, I said, should follow the Vienne from Limoges until it is joined by a little stream; then, follow the stream, until you see our landing lights in the form of a triangle.

We planned to take advantage in June of the full-moon period. On the first night, after dusk, five of us set out from my house, down the slope toward the stream. We carried with us the lights that would show the pilot where to drop the containers of material, lights that could be seen only from directly above and that would be invisible to people living on hills overlooking my land. We clambered over fences and reached the spot I had chosen, some quarter of a mile away from my house. I think we all shared a sense of expectation and excitement, for, after all, this was the first operation of its kind. We were not quite sure what to expect nor had we yet the experience to provide us with any rules except the simplest: arrange the lamps in a triangle with the apex pointing into the wind; as soon as the stuff drops, grab it, and hide it away as quickly as possible.

Only one of the four men who were there to help me belonged to my estate. He was my old gardener’s son-in-law, and I had brought him from the east of France. The other three were townsmen, who were far better suited to Resistance work than the peasants. The French peasant has the necessary qualities of reserve and self-containment, but his wits are not sharp enough. Furthermore, in 1941, especially in the unoccupied zone, the peasant was not much aware of the need to fight; he had his work, he had his food, there were no Germans to be seen, and there was an old marshal in Vichy who was talking about the need of France to return to the land. (Another noble and laudable sentiment, if voiced in a different context.)

So the five of us set out the lamps marking the “ground” where the pilot was to drop the containers. The moon shone brightly in a clear sky, providing perfect conditions for the operation. We waited; scanning the sky, cupping our ears for the first throb of aircraft engines.

“It’s supposed to come tonight, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Or probably. If not, there’s always tomorrow night. It’s the moonlight that matters.”

“Listen...can you hear anything?” Talk stopped, while, we all strained for the sound of a plane. The summer night had sharp sounds, the hoot of owls, but no aircraft. We waited through the night. At dawn, tired and disappointed, we collected the lamps, which had remained unlit, and went back to the house.

The second night there were only three of us. Again we checked the direction of the wind and put out the triangle of lamps. Again, the night was perfect. From an aircraft, the broad Vienne and the small stream joining it would be gleaming silver in the moonlight, as good as a flare path for any pilot. But once more dawn came and we were still empty-handed.

On the third night our original party had fallen to two, just myself and Gabie, the young man from Lorraine. He was the kind of man I liked to have beside me during the Resistance, one to whom the idea of fighting the Germans seemed natural and proper. He was skinny, but a quick worker. We were impatient to get hold of the stuff we needed to equip ourselves for more effective resistance; but we would wait tonight, the next night, the night after that, and again the next month, if necessary, going through the same routine until we got what we wanted. Of course, we could do our share of grumbling, too, while we waited.

“What the hell are they up to—they couldn’t want a better night than this, could they?”

“At this rate, the war will be over before we’ve had a chance to get at the Boches.”

“I suppose they’re waiting for the Germans to give them the O.K.”

“Or Pétain!”

On the hill, a couple of miles away, in the tiny community of Chabeau, someone struck a match. We saw it glow for a second or two. And we saw the third dawn come up without sign of an aircraft.

On the fourth night, Gabie and I went down the slope from the house again and set out our lights. Our early excitement had dimmed; the exercise had become routine, almost without hope, but it was a routine we had to perform. We, who were without arms, dependent upon London to help us, had no choice but to wait. This time we had brought a flask of coffee with us and sandwiches made of pork mincemeat and homemade bread. We had eaten nothing the previous nights, because we had expected the plane by midnight. Now we were wiser. We settled down on the grass for our vigil.

Then we heard it. In the distance the drone of aircraft engines, coming nearer and nearer, following, as we imagined it, the course of the Vienne. We rushed round our lamps, lighting them. Now the plane came into sight. It flew over, winked its lights at us, and flew away again.

After some twenty minutes, it completed its circuit and flew over a second time. We flashed a signal from the ground; the plane came in very low, flying over the point of our triangle. It carried a container under each wing. We watched one container, attached to a parachute, drop from the aircraft and fall to the ground, not far away from us. But the other seemed to be stuck underneath the wing. So low was the pilot flying now that we could see him looking at the container desperately. He rocked his plane to try to free it, but it remained stuck.

He flew away again and after another twenty minutes came back, with the second container still hanging from the wing. He “shook” his plane, tilting from wing to wing. He tried all manner of aerobatics to rid himself of the container, but without success. Once more he flew away, and yet another twenty minutes passed before we saw him again. At last he managed to shake it free and it fell. But it fell about a mile away into a wood of oak and edible chestnut trees, on the skirt of my land, and near Chabeau, the cluster of houses on the hilltop.

After dousing the lights, Gabie and I went after that container first; the other, much nearer my house, was comparatively safe. We had to climb over six fences and cross the stream—which, diverted, irrigated my land—to reach the woods. At least it did not take us long to find it. Luck was on our side that far, for it might have been a much harder job to find it in the woods, or it might have become lodged at the top of one of the big oaks. But it had fallen to the earth.

“You look after the parachute—bury it so that there’s no trace—while I get this thing opened,” I said to Gabie. “This thing” was a spherical metal container, about a yard long and a foot in diameter at the ends. It was very heavy—too heavy to carry in one piece. While Gabie was detaching the parachute and digging a hole in which to bury it, I worked to snap open the hinges that ran down the seam of the container. They opened fairly easily, and inside were three separate “buckets,” holding the stuff we had been waiting for. There was no time to investigate the contents just yet; the urgent job was to get them up to the house and out of sight. That was the hardest part of it. The “buckets” themselves were heavy enough, but we also had to carry the shell of the container, for it would have been too dangerous to leave it in the woods.

We heaved the stuff onto our shoulders and started the mile-long trudge back up the steepish slope to my house. Over the stream again, over the six wire fences. I have always been a physically fit man, but that was a tough job. By the time we reached the house, we were panting and sweating, and our arms, wrists, and hands were aching. How we wished we had had the help of the three other men who waited with us the first night.

I considered the possibility of hiding the containers and the buckets in the dark cellars underneath my house, normally used for storing apples. But I felt that, in the event of suspicion falling on me, the house would be the first place to be subjected to thorough search and the cellars the most obvious hiding place. So I decided to push the stuff into a thick, rhododendron bush behind the house. We thrust into the heart of the shiny, waxy leaves and hid the buckets. We made a second trip to the woods to clear the remainder of the material. Wiping the sweat from our heads and faces, we went back for the other container, a quarter of a mile away, and followed the same procedure with it.

By the time we had finished, it was morning. We were well pleased with the night’s work, but now we wondered whether anyone had seen what had been happening. The plane had taken so long to drop that second container; we knew it must have been visible, that the parachutes could have been seen. We were frightened lest our first operation should lead to the material being discovered and to our own arrests.

Our fears were quickly confirmed. Farmers neighboring my land, and the people who lived on my farm, in the house fifty yards or so from my own, were certainly aware that something had been going on.

“We’re not quite sure what it was, but we saw planes going round,” they said, “and we saw parachutes.” They were all excited, but I gathered that the general impression was of five or six different planes flying over at twenty-minute intervals.

I drove, as fast as I could, to the police at Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat and reported the incidents to them.

“My peasants, and the farmers round my place, say they saw planes going past every twenty minutes. I happened to see one, but I didn’t see the others. I think a man’s been dropped by parachute. You’d better come and investigate.”

The police came back with me. We went to each farm and asked questions. I took the police all over the land, searching for a parachute or signs of a landing. I took them everywhere, except along the way we had followed when carting the stuff up the hill: I felt sure we must have left tracks. The police and I conducted a full investigation—without success.

They went away, dissatisfied, to send a negative report to Paris of an unknown number of planes flying over, dropping by parachute an unknown man or men. It was bad that this much attention had been attracted to the area, but I felt at least that I had diverted any possible suspicion from myself and that they had accepted the idea of a man, not materials, being dropped.

Those two containers brought us Tommy guns, plastic explosives, knives, and limpet mines. The limpets made shipping a potential target for effective sabotage. Once placed against the side of a ship, a limpet would stick there; the fuse could be timed to set off the bomb an hour or two hours after you had left. (Later in the war, of course, frogmen did great damage to warships with limpets.)

Now, for the first time, the British had sent us the tools for real work. The Resistance, or our small part of it, was armed. From that moment on, we could say to ourselves, “If we really want to hit the Germans hard we can do it.” Plans could now be translated into action. The Resistance was moving into a second phase.

Chapter Four

If one were to judge only by certain films and television programs which have been perpetrated about Allied soldiers and airmen escaping from France, one might imagine that there had been an underground railway running the length and breadth of the country and that it was merely a matter of looking up in the timetable when the next train was leaving for the south of France and the Spanish border. It would also go without saying, of course, that all the women helping on the escape routes were just waiting for the chance to fall in love with a handsome pilot, and that the war and the presence of the Germans merely provided their opportunity under conditions of high adventure and romance. One might also think, from these films, that crossing the Pyrenees into Spain was no more than a gay afternoon’s tramp across the moors and the heather. I am sorry to say—sorry because it would have been so much more enjoyable that way—that it was not quite like that.

Like so many other aspects of the Resistance, the escape routes came about spontaneously because there was a need for them. It is safe to say they began the first day, there was an Allied serviceman seeking to escape capture by the Germans—before the armistice negotiated by the Vichy regime, in other words, and quite certainly at the time of the great retreat of the Allied armies, which led to the Dunkirk evacuation.

But “escape route” is rather a misleading way of describing what was, at the beginning at any rate, no more than a fortuitous handing on of “bodies” from friend to friend, in the hope that there would be escape and safety at the end of the line.

It was chance, for instance, that brought two British soldiers to a small village between Cherbourg and Le Havre. By coincidence it was the fourteenth of July, 1940, Bastille Day, a day when celebratory parades, demonstrative only of the tragic division of the French people, were being held in both Vichy and in London. Neither of the soldiers spoke a word of French, but they were adrift in what was now officially German-occupied territory; they carried a piece of paper on which was written, in French, “My son was killed at Dunkirk—help our allies.” The villagers wanted to help the two soldiers. They gave them money and food; they gave them clothing. Then they took them to the house where an Englishwoman, Mrs. Witherington, and three of her daughters were staying. (In 1943, Pearl, her eldest daughter, who had been born in France of British parents, was to be dropped into France as an agent of S.O.E., and later still to find herself in charge of a maquis group which grew to be more than 2000 strong.) At the outbreak of war, Pearl and her younger sister were on the staff of the British Embassy in Paris. When the German offensive began, they were told to leave Paris, and so they went to this village to await instructions. By the time they heard from the Embassy, the Germans were already in Paris and the remaining British staff had moved to Tours. So the family was cut off.

The two British soldiers said they wanted to get to Cherbourg. They stayed in Mrs. Witherington’s home for a few days before they were “pushed on” to the demarcation line at Tours. The “pushing on” continued—clearly there had been no way home from the French coast in occupied France—and months later, one of the two soldiers, known to the Witheringtons as “Paddy,” met them again at Marseilles on Christmas Day. One of them, by now, had escaped to Britain. Pearl, who had found herself a tedious desk job in Marseilles, felt that with her knowledge of French she must surely be able to do useful work. After another gap of months, the Witheringtons arrived in Lisbon, and, after more waiting there, boarded a small ship which landed them at Gibraltar, where they transferred to the Scythia.

And there, once more, also waiting to go on board, was Paddy, although a deal less spry after a spell in “Miranda,” the prison camp where the Spaniards held all who crossed the mountains without authorization. The conditions were harsh, and men were kept there for months on end. The Witheringtons were separated from the troops on board ship, and, on reaching Greenock, the troops went ashore first. The Witheringtons decided to wander around a little and catch the last train to London. When they went to the station, there was Paddy again. They traveled together to London. The date was the fourteenth of July, 1941—one year, to the day, since their first meeting in that village in Normandy.

Although there was much more organization of escape routes by 1942, it would still be wrong to imagine, as some people do, that the whole of France was “in the know” about the networks that had been built up to facilitate escapes. No form of underground activity could survive long unless the greatest secrecy were preserved; a loose tongue could destroy the work of months and years—and cause the deaths of those who were risking their lives for-others. It was obviously a matter of luck, in the first place, whether a pilot who baled out over France fell into friendly hands.

It was a lucky Canadian airman who, in 1942, limped into the small town of Nouan-le-Fuzelier, which lies between Orléans and Vierzon on the N 20 highway. He had been shot down some ten miles away. A twelve-year-old child saw him, and the Canadian’s luck was that the child told Désiré Dasnière, his father, a railwayman whom I was to meet later in the war. “Dédé” (D.D.) took the airman into his hospitable little terraced house. He stayed there for three weeks, sheltered from inquisitive eyes. Somehow Dédé’s wife found the food for him, and their three girls and the boy of twelve kept the secret to themselves. An Englishwoman, who had not been interned, living in the house opposite, came to talk English and to teach the Canadian some French, for he, too, spoke none at all. After three weeks, Dédé “heard of someone at Vierzon” in the S.N.C.F., and passed the airman on. We know he was a month on the way, but he escaped from France.

The debacle in France left hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Allied troops stranded on French soil, cut off from their units. They had not been evacuated from Dunkirk and now they were left, most of them unable to speak French, to drift around a foreign country, more and more in the grip of the Germans. The majority were taken in by French families and handed on from father to son, from cousin to cousin, from friend to friend. Some were pushed toward Switzerland, many more toward the south of France, where they were interned but allowed out on parole at the Fort St. Jean until the beginning of 1941 when their “home” was transferred to Nîmes.

By the end of 1941 the first haphazard phase had been succeeded by something more formalized; definite lines of escape, composed of a series of tested links, had been established, and it was possible to talk of escape “routes.”

The escape routes of 1918 were revived. Men who had done the same work then reappeared and, wherever possible, set up their old organization. Their experience was invaluable. The conditions under which they were now operating were somewhat different from those of World War I, but the principles to be observed were the same. Unlike those of us in the Resistance who were committed to sabotage, they did not have to go through the costly business of learning the fundamental lessons of underground work. They knew, right from the start, for instance, that if they were to escort soldiers, wearing civilian clothes, who could not speak French, they must first provide them with false identity papers labeling them “deaf and dumb,” or ascribe some similar disability to them which would account for their silence.

There were many different escape routes, relying upon the help and the sacrifice of thousands of ordinary people whose names have not appeared in books and whose only testament may well be a certificate hanging on the walls of their home or only the photograph of a young man in ill-fitting clothes. Each of the routes had the same object: to help soldiers, air crews, refugees (Jews fleeing from the occupied zone, for instance) to cross the zonal demarcation line where necessary and to reach the southern frontier of France. There, they would be put in charge of a passeur, or guide, French or Spanish, who would conduct them through the mountains into Spain, with the hope of eventually reaching Gibraltar.

Sometimes the escapees would wait on the coast until, by arrangement with London, they were rowed out before dawn to be picked up by submarine. Or else a fast motorboat took them straight to Gibraltar. This last means of escape was used only occasionally. Any one of these ways of exit could, of course, involve weeks or months of being “passed on” and of waiting.

Of all the escape routes, the most organized and the most remarkable was the one that became known as the “Pat O’Leary organization.” Lieutenant Commander Pat O’Leary, the nom de guerre of a Belgian army doctor, Albert Guérisse, taking over the work of a British officer, Ian Garrow, who was arrested, built up a country-wide network, with vital links in restaurants, houses, apartments, in Paris, Lyons, Toulouse, and Marseilles. He finally received substantial financial backing from London, in the form of an official guarantee for promissory notes on which he borrowed money from wealthy French sympathizers. There were traveling expenses, food and clothes, costs of printing forged papers, bribes for prison warders. It was a remarkable organization led by a very brave and resolute man; but Pat O’Leary, like so many others, was betrayed and put into the hands of the Gestapo. O’Leary survived many prisons, repeated sessions of torture; he survived even Dachau.

Many of those who organized or aided the escape routes drew a distinction in their own minds between helping people to escape and committing what they considered “crimes” against the Germans and the spirit of the armistice. To them, there was a difference in kind between helping troops—French or British prisoners, air crew, or any other “active” troops—or political or racial refugees to escape from the Germans and the commission of sabotage. The first they considered a duty; either a patriotic duty or a humane one. The escape routes attracted helpers who, by religious conviction or for other sympathetic reasons, could not contemplate the abetting or carrying out of sabotage. There was, for instance, a group of American Quakers in Marseilles, who did much to help, because they held it their duty to succor any people in distress. In Vichy itself the American consul and the American military attaché, while officially neutral, did all they could to assist. In addition, there were a few journalists, including one in particular, Virginia Hall, an American, who will reappear in my narrative; these, too, did what they could, unofficially, to aid the Resistance.

We recognized the escape routes as highly necessary and valuable; we appreciated also that while we, of the active Resistance, had no doubt where our duty lay, others could sincerely believe it had been right for France to conclude an armistice and hold it to be wrong to oppose Pétain—or the Germans—actively. We could not agree, but we acknowledged the sincerity of the belief. This sincerity, we knew, extended to some high officials of the Vichy regime, though we were well aware that the new government had attracted a swarm of opportunists, toadies, office seekers, and smooth tongues who indulged only the appetite of immediate self-advancement.

Those who restricted their activities to working for the escape routes were particularly valuable because we knew that they could not be arrested for complicity in other forms of Resistance. This was doubly desirable: their personal hazard was confined, and there was diminished danger to our detection. It became a cardinal rule of the Resistance to keep the activities of one’s own particular group separate and secret. Those working for the same organization knew little enough of what others were doing, in other areas, and this was as it should have been; you cannot reveal, under torture, or when tempted to deliberate treachery, what you do not know.

We were encouraged to have as little as possible to do with the escape routes, but we could not avoid involvement altogether. In reality, all of us had association with them and helped to put people through. What do you do when one of your own men, or a friend, says, “J’ai ramassé un pilote anglais (ou américain)”? Of course, we helped escaping prisoners or air crews who had bailed out. But before we started them on the escape routes, we tried to check on them as thoroughly as possible. More than once, a German who spoke English well succeeded in winning the confidence of sympathetic French people so that he was conducted safely through the escape route and came out at the other end to expose his saviors.

London sent a useful list of questions by which we were able to distinguish between a genuine Allied pilot and a counterfeit one. The airman was brought to the chef de réseau—the leader of the circuit—accompanied by other members of the Resistance. Sometimes he was still wearing flying boots, even his uniform, if there had not been time to provide him with clothing. Clothes, of course, were also rationed and not many people had suits to spare; boots and shoes were especially hard to come by.

The examination could be difficult. The pilot had been taught to reveal only his name, rank, and number in the event of capture, and although he wanted to escape he might well be as suspicious of us as we were of him. If he persisted in refusing any but the most formal information, we tried checking with London by radio. While we waited, perhaps days or even weeks, for the reply, he was looked after as though he were living in the best hotel, being fed as no ordinary Frenchman could afford to feed himself. But the French people reckoned the sacrifice was worth it to show their gratitude to men who were fighting or bombing the Germans.

British pilots helped us to improve our methods of checking. They had to know their height and weight for instance. No airman could reasonably refuse to tell us how tall he was or how much he weighed. An Englishman would reply without hesitation. A German would be caught on the hop, trying to convert his weight into stones and pounds.

These “examinations” were very serious affairs. No matter how much we were inclined to believe in a man’s identity, or how willing we were to help him escape, we had to be sure. Not only our own lives were at stake but the lives of all those whom he would meet on the way down the escape route. I am sorry to say that not all British air crews appreciated just how dangerous a business it was. Their youthful high spirits were admirable, in the right place and at the right time; but a few of them showed in France an irresponsibility which we found anything but humorous. Chatting to one another in English on a French train during the war might have seemed to them a lark, or it might have been an unintentional and foolish slip. Whichever it was, it threatened their escorts with deportation and probably death.

There were hotels and houses in Marseilles where escaping air crews could wait while arrangements were made for them to cross the frontier. It was to a hotel on the Canebière, near the old port, that I took a group of pilots wanting to escape.

“You’ll be all right here,” I said. “The maid knows about you, so you needn’t worry about her. Have a bath, but for heaven’s sake, don’t talk to anybody—anybody—and don’t make a noise. And don’t go out of your way to make yourselves conspicuous. You want to get to England, and we all want to live to see another day. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly, chief. Don’t you worry about a thing, we’ll be as quiet as mice.”

“Good. Well, I’ve got to meet the man who’s going to take you across. I’ll be back later.”

The pilots went for their bath. One of them started singing, very loudly in English:

“I’ll see you again,

Whenever spring breaks through again,

Tra-la-la-la-la, la-la,

But what has been....”

He sang so loudly that all the people staying in the hotel came out of their rooms and stood on the landing listening to him. The proprietor did not know what to do. He was very worried. As soon as I came back, he told me what had happened. I said I would take them to another hotel immediately. When I got them alone again I told them what I thought of them.

I took three other pilots to the same hotel. When I came back from making arrangements for their conduct over the mountains into Spain, I found the proprietor and the maid looking anxious. The airmen had gone for a walk. Three Englishmen, unable to speak French, wearing clothes we had lent them, but certainly not looking like typical Frenchmen, were wandering somewhere in the vast city of Marseilles. We waited. Twelve o’clock came, one o’clock. We had some food, for which we had no appetite. The afternoon went by without a sign of them.

“Have they been picked up? Have they given us away? Have they told the police about the route from Lyons—and even the route before that? Have they given away the name of the hotel?”

We asked ourselves these useless, agonizing questions. Then we decided we must leave the hotel and go to different parts of town, hoping to see them. We each went to a cafe and just sat there on the terrace, or by the window overlooking the street, drinking coffee, sipping beer that had no taste for us, except the taste of fear. I sat watching people passing by on the Canebière. Seamen of all colors, French sailors, policemen, prostitutes, pimps, and, probably, Germans in civilian clothes. Six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight, nine....

At about half-past nine I spotted them—three men dragging their feet along the pavement. I caught up with them.

“Don’t turn round,” I whispered. “I’m going to walk past you. Then follow me back to the hotel.”

I led them back and got them safely indoors. Then I told the three men my opinion of them, their families, and the manner of their births. When I had finished, they explained they had gone out to look at the city. But they had not noticed the name of the hotel or the street and they lost themselves. They had walked round and round Marseilles all day, not daring to buy a meal. The next morning I took three chastened pilots to the passeur. He escorted them on another train and the following night led them over the Pyrenees to safety. The proprietor of the hotel on the Canebière and the maid waited for the next batch of escaping airmen.

Chapter Five

However shameful some of us considered the armistice, we could not deny that the terms seemed curiously mild and almost sympathetic in their regard for French feelings. If it were possible to judge it purely from a military standpoint, it was not dishonorable. The Germans did not demand the surrender of the French fleet, only its demobilization. They allowed sovereign rights to a French Government in the free zone, and even to the retention of an army of 100,000 men on the soil of metropolitan France. Furthermore, the armistice left the empire intact.

The explanation was simple. For Hitler, the armistice was a convenience, permitting him, as he supposed, to concentrate on the successful invasion of Britain as a necessary preliminary to his attack on Russia. The leniency of the armistice terms was an expedient. Hitler realized that if he turned the screw too tightly at that moment he would risk the setting-up of a French Government on British or African soil; also, the French fleet might join the British and confront him with formidable opposition.

As with all expedients, the Germans discarded this one when it had outlasted its value. With the armistice safely signed, and the Vichy government firmly installed, the Germans cynically ignored and violated the agreement. They annexed Alsace-Lorraine. By creating a “forbidden zone” of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments, and making them dependent upon the military administration in Brussels, they cut them off from the rest of France. The French Government had chosen Vichy as a temporary resting place—Pétain’s suite as head of state consisted of an office and a bedroom on the third floor of the Hotel du Parc—in the belief, fostered by a verbal promise from the Germans, that they would be free to return to Paris. Now they found that the “demarcation line,” separating occupied France from the free zone, which they had envisaged as no more than a line indicating the limits for the German forces, had become a border, as it were, between two countries. The movement of people and materials and the flow of communications were strictly controlled.

The free zone excluded Bordeaux, which lay in the western coastal strip over which the Germans exercised a rigid security, especially around the Channel ports. The demarcation line ran to just north of the Cher River, crossed the Loire a few miles south of Nevers, and cut across the country in an erratic curve to the Swiss border. The towns of Poitiers, Tours, Blois, Romorantin, Bourges, Nevers, Chalon-sur-Saône, and Saint-Jean-de-Losne fell just the other side of the line, in the occupied zone. Châteauroux, Montluçon, Vichy, Lyons, and Annecy were in the free zone.

There was nothing very formal about the demarcation line; no fence or barbed wire indicated the bounds of one zone and the beginning of another. Here it followed a road; there it was marked by a stream. But it was heavily patrolled by the Germans on the northern side, and vicious guard dogs often accompanied the troops. Between one zone and another there was a sort of no man’s land, 100, perhaps 200 yards wide, which formed a hazardous strip for those crossing the line illicitly, even though it was, in fact, south of the occupied zone.

The Germans did issue permits—like the ausweis I had for my railway work—to people with legitimate reasons for traveling between the zones. But they severely restricted these permits and their possessors were frequently checked. Most people who wanted to cross the demarcation line did not have the necessary permit, and they had to find other ways across.

All along the demarcation line there were, as I have mentioned, passeurs, men who specialized in helping people to cross, sometimes for money, sometimes for nothing. There were some guides who, as on the Franco-Spanish frontier, would help only military personnel, or Jews fleeing from the likelihood of deportation, torture, or death. Others would accept anyone, so long as they were well paid for their work.

Crossings were effected by day as well as by night. The Pat O’Leary escape organization often used farmers on either side of the line, occasionally to “ferry” them across in carts, often to show them the “safe” way up to the zonal line and for another on the other side to receive them and feed them when they were across. The passeurs knew the intervals at which the German patrols passed; crossing the line could be as simple an affair as waiting for the patrol to get out of sight and then making a dash for it to the other zone, or merely walking across. In some places there were boats to carry you across the river, or ropes strung from one bank to another by which you could swing across. It could seem deceptively simple at times, but if anyone believed that every time would be as easy, he was indeed deceiving himself. The Germans were always there, more and more on guard as the war went on and the Resistance increased. If the dogs got on your track and caught up with you, you had to lie down on the ground while they growled and snarled over you. Then their German masters would turn up. They would indulge in a little beating-up of the unfortunate person, and a week, a month, or even longer in jail could follow for the victim.

Many people, once having crossed into the occupied zone, would go to the nearest railway station and catch the next train north. That, too, could be dangerous. The Germans walked along the trains, looking at everyone’s feet. Those with dirty, muddy shoes were likely to be questioned. It was assumed they had walked across the demarcation line.

“Your papers.” The eternal demand, for which so many traveling illegally, with inadequate papers or false ones, waited in fear.

“Your papers.” The German looks at them slowly, glancing away to check the photograph with the bearer. The person is sick inside with apprehension.

“You come from Lyons. What are you doing here?” The excuse does not satisfy, and the unfortunate person is taken away, off the train, to jail. Those left behind on the train, packed tightly together, sensed one another’s slackening of tension; but they also shared an awareness that next time the luck might fail for them.

Those who aided the crossing of the demarcation line had no illusions about what would happen to them if they were caught. The Geneva Conventions offered them no protection. A prisoner-of-war camp in Germany may have been a disagreeable and frustrating place, but it was preferable to the fate that awaited civilians who actively opposed the Germans.

The old priest at Saint-Quentin was not an important man in the reckoning of the world. His church was small and unimpressive; only a fairly detailed map showed the village of Saint-Quentin, which was south of Tours, in the Indre-et-Loire. His cassock had seen much better days; he had been a fat man, but now the skin hung loosely under his chin. He was a parish priest of no renown, caring quietly and compassionately for his people. His curing of souls was a leisurely affair; he did not display particular zeal. He lived in a wine district and enjoyed a good bottle over which he would ruminate, without anguish, upon the sins and follies of humanity.

But the accident of war placed the village of Saint-Quentin just on the northern side of the demarcation line. (Later, the line was to be redrawn, placing Saint-Quentin in the free zone.) The German patrols crunched through the streets. And the old curé, who could have lived out his days pottering about his parish, innocent of involvement in the war, saw a duty that he must perform. He must help people to cross the demarcation line, especially those whose lives were in peril. He must help the Jews; he must help escaping prisoners-of-war and airmen who had been shot down, all who were seeking to evade the Germans.

His church was a temporary sanctuary; it was also like a departure platform for conducted tours across the line. All he asked of the people he helped was that they should give him a bottle or two of good-quality red wine; it was not difficult for them to get hold of what he wanted in his district.

The old priest took great satisfaction in his work.

“I’m doing good to everyone,” he used to say. “First, I ask the people to give me the two bottles of good wine. Right. Then I tell them the time they must come to see me, and when they come I ask them to wait in the church. Now, some of them, when they get into church, feel a bit awkward. They don’t know how to pray. Some are arrogant and don’t even want to pray. But there they are in the church. They dare not leave until I tell them, and so they walk round and round. Their shoes make an awful noise, echoing on the stone floors. They begin to feel self-conscious, especially if other people are kneeling and praying. So, in the end, they too get down on their knees and try to remember the old prayers they learned as children. They probably try to hide behind a pillar, but that doesn’t matter. They ask God to help them across the line of demarcation. God is satisfied. He’s got a new client, someone else who has come back to Him. Fear is a very spiritual thing, because it reminds people of how helpless they are and how dependent on God.”

The curé waited for the sound of the German patrol. When he heard them coming, he went out onto the doorstep of his church and called to them.

“Hello, over there. How are you? It’s awfully hot, isn’t it? Why don’t you come in and have a drink.”

He took the German soldiers into his presbytery and opened a bottle of his good wine. The Germans mopped their faces and relaxed with him.

“The Germans are satisfied as well,” said the curé, continuing the explanation of his methods. “They get their drink, I am satisfied because I get more people to come back to God—and because I’m also having a good drink.”

Always with the curé at these times was a little boy, an orphan whom the priest had brought up. As soon as the Germans were filing into his presbytery, the curé winked at the boy, who went into the church and whispered to the people waiting there, “Come on, quick. This is your chance. Follow me.”

The boy led them to the demarcation line, walked straight across to the other side with them, showed them the route to follow from there, and came back to the church. He went to the curé, winked, and the old priest knew all was well.

“Ah, well, that was very pleasant,” he said to the Germans, wiping his lips. “But I think we’ve drunk enough. It’s time you went on with your patrol, don’t you think?” And the Germans trooped out again, the curé following them, his rosy, round face benignly composed as he said good-by to them.

The invitation to the German patrol to take a drink with him became something of a ritual. The curé’s simple method of helping people to cross into the free zone worked for a very long time, and there seemed no reason why he should ever be suspected. Then one day a man came to him, as hundreds had come to him before, telling a pathetic and appealing story.

“I come from Paris,” he told the priest. “My wife is a Jew and the Germans have taken her and our children away. I was out at work, and when I came home I saw them being pushed into a lorry. I’m afraid they’ll come for me next, and I want to get to England so that I can join General de Gaulle and fight the devils who took my family from me.”

The curé told him when to return to the church. There, as usual, he joined a group of people waiting to cross the line. The soldiers came for a drink, the curé winked at the little boy, who led his party to the demarcation line. They were on their way across, when the “man from Paris” stopped them. He drew a gun and, there and then, shot them all, including the boy. Then the man, who was a German, went back to the church. He took the patrol of German soldiers with him. He dragged the priest out. At his order, the soldiers shot down the old curé at the entrance to his church.

That priest died a worthy death. He had helped hundreds to escape from the Germans. He did his duty as a priest, his duty to God, and his duty as a Frenchman.

Two villages, Saint-Julien-sur-Cher and Villefranche-sur-Cher, lay on either side of the demarcation line. Separating them, the River Cher and the Berry Canal, some 200 yards apart, bounded no man’s lands between the two zones. This strip was exposed and dangerous to cross, certainly by day. But there was another way.

A building contractor whom I shall call Maurice had a permit to travel from Saint-Julien, in the free zone, to carry out his work across the river in the occupied zone. He carted the stones, sand, cement, and mixer across the demarcation line in his lorry. He journeyed freely, backward and forward. He often carried a coffin-like box as well, although only the most meticulous examination of the lorry would have revealed it. He had made this “coffin” for a special purpose. The bottom of it was punctured with air holes.

In the evening, Maurice loaded his lorry with the materials he needed for the next day’s work. Early the next morning, before his workmen arrived, he cleared away some of the stones and bags of cement from the top of the coffin and lifted the lid. His “client,” who had come with him, climbed in and lay down. Maurice replaced the lid and covered the coffin again. Either he or one of his workmen drove the lorry across the line. When it was safe, he unloaded the building materials and helped the client out. It was a good method; Maurice ran his shuttle service in both directions, from Saint-Julien to Villefranche and the other way round, according to the direction the client wanted to take. The ride was not particularly comfortable, but no one cared about comfort when crossing the demarcation line; the important thing was that this method worked. The risk was minimal, and only once did Maurice fail his client.

A Jew came to him, wishing to escape from the occupied zone. Maurice arranged one of his early-morning meetings at Villefranche. The man got into the coffin, and Maurice replaced on top of it the huge stones he was to take to Saint-Julien; he had made the coffin especially strong to support the weight of any of the materials carried in the lorry, including these stones.

Maurice climbed into the cab and started to drive toward the river. He was just crossing the narrow bridge over the Cher, when a German lorry, going very fast, started to cross from the other side. There was no chance of the German driver braking in time to avoid a smash, so Maurice mounted the pavement at the side of the bridge. The Germans just missed him. Maurice drove back onto the road, crossed the bridge, and went to his yard in Saint-Julien. He walked round to the back of the lorry to unload the stones and release the man.

The coffin was crushed, and the man inside it was dead. As the lorry had bumped back onto the road again after avoiding collision with the Germans, the big stones had smashed onto the coffin. Maurice could not be blamed. He had taken all possible precautions, as always. But he could not have foreseen the possibility of the German lorry coming at him across the bridge. The Jew had taken the risk everyone took when crossing the line and he, alone, of scores whom Maurice had helped before, died.

A man who kept bees and sold honey was another who had permission from the Germans to cross and re-cross the demarcation line. He was in business on a large scale and explained to the Germans how he must move his bees from one field to another when the clover was ripe and in flower, how the next month he must take them to the pine trees, and then to the heather, and so on. He lived just south of the demarcation line, but the clover fields, for instance, were to the north of it. Honey was precious, and the Germans accepted his claim to a permit, his entirely legitimate claim. They allowed him to take one workman with him.

That permit was useful; so were the bees. The beekeeper agreed to take four British airmen, who had been picked up, across the demarcation line to a safe house where they could be looked after until arrangements were made to pass them along an escape route.

The beekeeper put the four men in the back of his truck with a load of beehives and drove off. At the demarcation line he was halted by a German soldier.

“Papers,” said the German. The beekeeper handed over his papers. The German studied them carefully.

“Workmen, workmen—one,” he said, pointing. The beekeeper pointed to the man sitting beside him in the cab and then pointed to the back of the truck.

“No, no,” said the German. “One, one, not four.”

The beekeeper acted quickly. Just behind him was a string, attached to the lid of a hive. He pulled at it, off came the lid, and out came the bees. As soon as the soldier saw and heard them, he shouted:

“Go, go, quick. Get out.” He turned around and ran. The beekeeper started the engine and made off at speed. The demarcation line was at the entrance to the village. The beekeeper drove fast through the village and to the edge of a small wood beyond. There he stopped. The British airmen, who had had to stay put near the liberated bees, jumped out of the truck and ran into the wood. The beekeeper had a quite different concern. He went to the back of the truck, where the bees were swarming around. He scraped them off the surfaces of the hives and the sides of the truck and pushed them back into their own hive.

“Poor little beasts,” he murmured. “You poor things, we mustn’t lose you.” And he went on scraping and pushing until he had them all back in their hive. The airmen watched from a very safe distance—and I do not blame them.

When the beekeeper had restored the bees to their hive, and peace to his truck, he made a signal to the airmen. They came back, blessing a sting or two, but happy to have escaped arrest.

Later in the war, the beekeeper used his hives to conceal am-munition—up to 500 rounds in each hive—messages, false identity papers, all of them stuck inside the hives, among the bees. There seemed little risk that the Germans would lift the lids of the hives to investigate the contents; the bees seemed content to share their hives with ammunition. It proved a most effective service for the Resistance.

Within a few months of the establishment of the French section of Special Operations Executive, we heard from London that a local man, a Frenchman in France, of exceptional qualities, had been recruited. From their description of him he was clearly an extraordinary and outstanding agent. He had put at the disposal of the authorities in London some thousands of men. This was just before the end of 1941, and at that time it represented an incomparable achievement.

I had not been so fortunate. I had met many people who would promise to do much, until they were actually asked to do just one thing. I found it safer to work with fewer people. I tried to recruit one or two in each village or small town. In some bigger towns like Marseilles I had some twelve men, ten in Lyons, and a dozen dockers in Sète as well. I had at least one man at each sizable railway station. Otherwise, there was one man in Cannes, one in Port Bou, two in Monaco, and so forth. In all, I had about 100 men in the free zone on whom I could rely, and I was moderately pleased.

But now we heard of a man who could provide—what was it? A thousand, or thousands? Whichever it was, singular or plural, it was formidable and praiseworthy.

A short while after I first heard of this man, I received a message from London, saying that some people had landed by boat in the south of France. Would I look after them and push them through the line of demarcation to the occupied zone? I suggested to London the agent with the thousand men should do the job.

Days passed without an answer. Then I was told that the man in the south did not happen to have anyone near the demarcation line and that he could not do what they wanted; would I handle the operation? I did so. I sent a man to the south who brought the “bodies” to the demarcation line, and we arranged their safe crossing into the occupied zone. The whole thing was uneventful.

But what about the remarkable man in the south? I am bound to admit a certain pleasure in discovering he was a politician. In general, I am a little reserved in my admiration for politicians. This particular man was a leader of a political party. Because he had a thousand—or was it thousands—in his party, he thought he owned them and could count on their unquestioning allegiance. Whether his promise to London was a deliberate piece of bluff I do not know; what is certain is that he contributed nothing in the end but a lot of talk and a series of self-important meetings at which there was much discussion of what they should do—but as a result of which nothing, in fact, was done.

The authorities dropped him after a short time—but not before he had done some harm, because he talked too much, and all his “followers” talked too much. In the Resistance, we preferred people who acted.

There were in France, of course, as in any other country, men who exploited the misery of others for their own profit. Of these, the most poisonous was the informer.

I was traveling by bus one day from Châteauroux to Loches. Loches was in the free zone, but it was busy with comings and goings of people over the line. It was fair to assume that the majority of people in the bus that day were either going to cross into the occupied zone themselves or had friends who were going to do it, or were going to meet someone crossing from the other side.

In the seat in front of me a young man was bragging about his own exploits in crossing the line. That was bad enough. But he was also issuing, in a loud voice, a sort of directory of all the people who acted as passeurs. He mentioned them by name; he gave his personal assessment of their abilities; he indicated which of them charged for their services and which asked nothing in return. He meant no harm, but he was endangering the lives of people who were already risking their lives.

I tapped him on the shoulder and told him to keep quiet. In the course of talking to him, I pronounced one of my words with an English accent; I noticed it myself at the time.

Someone else had noticed it. When we got out of the bus at Loches, an old lady rushed up to me and said:

“I know you’re an Englishman. Congratulations. You’re doing good work. Let me shake you by the hand.”

“Madame,” I said, “I’m not an Englishman.” I spoke to her in my best French slang. But, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man detach himself from the group that had formed around me. He walked straight to the police station. Before that happened, my intention had been to telephone to my friends to come and fetch me from the bus station; now I went to a man I knew, who ran a small shop, and borrowed a bicycle from him. I took a roundabout route to my friends’ house.

On the way I was stopped by two policemen.

“Where are you going?” they wanted to know.

“I’m going to see my friends.”

“Where?”

I told them the address.

“Why?”

“They’re very old friends of mine. I often come to see them.”

“What is your name?”

“De Vomécourt.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I have a place quite near Limoges.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“I’ve already told you—I’ve come to visit my friends.”

“Are you sure your friends don’t live the other side of the demarcation line?”

“Quite sure. I told you where they live. I have no intention of crossing the line. I bear it’s very dangerous.”

“Very dangerous,” said the policemen. “We don’t advise it.”

They seemed satisfied by my answers, and I rode on. I stayed with my friends overnight, but I rose very early the next morning and left them.

At seven that same morning a police car arrived at the house. My friends were questioned about the man who had been with them. They satisfied the police that “de Vomécourt” was not an Englishman.

“Good,” said the policemen. “We know now that it wasn’t the right man. That’s very good. We’d have hated it if we’d had to arrest an English officer, but you see there was this man who came to the station and said an Englishman had just got off the bus. We had to do something about it....”

The man who had gone to the police station about me was, as I discovered, making a lot of money by betraying people who crossed the line, and by giving the Germans, who were paying him, information about the movements of different people. We caught up with him later in the war. He was shot. That was what he deserved.

Chapter Six

For the first year after the armistice, the French Communists continued to help the Germans. They helped them by adopting what was at least a negative attitude to the Occupation. To a certain extent, also, their support for Russo-German friendship was tantamount, in France, to collaboration. Taking their orders from Russia, the Communists presented themselves to the Germans as the one important party in France that had consistently opposed the war. Although they never succeeded in legalizing the publication of their newspaper, L’Humanité, which had been suspended by decree at the outbreak of war when membership in the party, too, was made unlawful, the Communists did publish it—and with the approval of the Germans. It preached a doctrine of “pacification” which the occupying forces found sympathetic. Even during this period, a certain number of party members had proved they were Frenchmen before they were Communists; they had joined Resistance groups. But they were not typical of the Communists as a whole.

It was the German invasion of Russia, in June 1941, that brought about in the French Communist party one of those somersaults which Communists all over the world seem able to perform without the slightest difficulty. Like performing dogs they reacted immediately to a nod from their masters in Russia. Their organization, the F.T.P.—Francs-Tireurs et Partisans—little-known, as yet, outside the party, changed sides overnight and opposed the Germans. They created a secret body for carrying out acts of individual violence against the Germans, and in the latter part of 1941 they started their assassinations of Germans and collaborators.

In so far as the Communists were now fighting the Germans, they, too, had joined in the secret war against the common enemy. But right to the end—and after France had been liberated—their purposes remained political. Their primary ambition was the ultimate seizure of power in France; it was but an accident that, in pursuit of that objective, their sympathies and actions seemed for a time to coincide with those of the Frenchmen who resisted the Germans purely as patriots. The Communists sought to identify themselves with other branches of the Resistance—with the British and Free French réseaux—in order to receive arms and material assistance they could employ to attain their political goal. They never ceased to be inspired from Russia, and their association with the Resistance was wholly opportunist.

After the failure of their plans to invade Britain, and after they had embarked upon their suicidal assault on Russia, the Germans began to strip off the façade of Korrektion. Their “correct” behavior gave place to a savagery which was to increase as the years went on.

Hostages were shot as reprisals for the killings carried out by the Communists. The walls of Paris were plastered with red and black posters announcing the executions of “terrorists.” Three Free French agents, sent to France for de Gaulle, were executed for espionage. That was in August 1941. These posters were to become a grisly familiarity to Parisians, along with other posters bearing photographs of so-called terrorists wanted by the Germans.

German propaganda against the Resistance inculcated the idea that all who resisted and carried out sabotage were “terrorists” or “Communists,” disreputable elements of the population, in other words, whose opposition to authority was to be deplored by any decent, right-thinking Frenchmen. The propaganda was well done and had some success, especially in the free zone, where the ideal of the old marshal, as the revered hero of Verdun come to save his country, persisted. But for all the success of what we should now call a “smear campaign” against the Resistance, there was a perceptible hardening of French reaction to the Germans. In the occupied zone the reprisals and executions brought an end to doubt and indecision in the minds of the mass of the people. From now on, they knew where their duty must lie. This did not mean a sudden rush of recruits to the Resistance, but it did mean, more and more, an assurance of sympathy for our activities.

It was still the early days, however. An important stage in the development of S.O.E. was reached with the arrival in France in August 1941 of Major de Guélis. He was high up in the little hierarchy which was directing the new organization in London. He came to France to see for himself, in the field, what we were doing, how we were organizing the réseaux, and to assess what success we were likely to achieve.

We held several meetings in Châteauroux, explaining to him what was being done in the various districts. We discussed our recruitment and plans for sabotage. As a result of the report he made to London—and that, too, of my brother Peter—aid to the Resistance, in terms of arms, materials, and money, would eventually become more substantial. Although there was never any question in our minds of the necessity and the efficacy of what we were doing, there was, almost to the end, a conflict in London between the orthodox military minds and those capable of appreciating a new instrument of war, and at this stage S.O.E. was still the Cinderella of the services.

On the fourth of September, Major Gerry Morel, another S.O.E. agent, landed in France by Lysander. This was the first time since the fall of France that an Allied aircraft had touched down on French soil.

The rate at which agents were being landed was now accelerated. But while we had passed the preliminary stage, as it were, in the creation of an organized Resistance, we were still not far beyond the novice phase in our techniques.

Organizing the arrival of new agents, and ensuring their safety once they had been “received” on the ground, was a major problem. Each landing had to be prepared with much care and forethought.

We arranged, for instance, for the dropping of three “bodies” near Loches. Before their arrival, I went to Lyons, on the other side of France. There I bought cinema tickets, bus tickets, and made purchases in the shops, for which I kept the bills. At the same time I bought three return tickets from Lyons to Loches, had them date-stamped, and brought them back to Loches with me.

The night they were due to be dropped the aircraft bringing them had some difficulty in locating the “ground.” The plane flew over three times, and, although we finally picked up the agents safely, the police, next morning, were looking for people who might have been parachuted. I took the three agents to the station at Loches, having already primed them with their “cover story.” I told them they had come from Lyons, where they lived, to Loches, to meet some friends who had come across the demarcation line, some eight miles from the town. In their pockets they carried their return tickets to Lyons, properly dated, and the cinema tickets and so on.

When we got to the station, they were asked for their papers. The police were suspicious. The agents explained why they were in Loches, repeating the story I had told them. The police did not seem satisfied until the three men fished out of their pockets their return tickets, carrying from Lyons the date stamps for a day preceding the parachuting. The policeman waved them through to the train.

At that same landing ground near Loches, sometime later, we had arranged a parachuting of arms. It was the fourth arms “drop” in France, and we were still learning the ways of handling those operations.

On this occasion (it was the autumn of 1942) we heard a plane coming our way. We assumed it was the plane we were waiting for, and as it flew over the landing ground we lit our triangle of lamps. The plane did not wink back to us, as we had expected. It just turned around and went back the way it had come.

Then we heard it coming again. Our lamps were lit to guide it. But instead of the aircraft dropping the containers of arms for which we were waiting, it fired at us. We rushed round, putting out our lights. The plane came lower, over the landing ground, machine-gunning. We threw ourselves to the ground and lay there, as the bullets streamed toward us. Fortunately, none of us was hit.

The plane disappeared once more. Now we wondered what we should do. Obviously this had been a German plane. Would it come again? If we heard a plane coming, dare we light our lamps once more and risk another machine-gunning? Had the pilot alerted the ground forces, and would the police come searching for us?

We decided to wait and take the chance. We wanted the arms, and there was still time for the British aircraft to arrive. It did come, we lit our lamps without provoking any bullets, and we exchanged signals. The containers dropped safely, and we gathered all the arms together, hiding them safely away before the morning. A few hours later the police searched the district thoroughly, seeking traces of a parachuting or of the bullets which had been fired at us. But the pilot had obviously not been able to fix the location of the lights very accurately, and the police found nothing.

In the east, my brother John was recruiting for his réseau and began the carrying out of sabotage against the Germans in the forbidden zone. But he was threatened with arrest, for a completely unexpected reason. At the outbreak of war he had gone straight to the French War Office and asked to be taken as a pilot. (I mentioned earlier that he had served with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I.) He was told there were no planes for him to fly, so he had to go home again. But he was a Lorrainer and shared the spirit of the people who live on the frontier and know the Germans. John wanted to be in the war against them, despite his four children, and despite the fact he was forty. So he wrote to the authorities in London and asked if he could have back his commission as a captain in the British Army—of which the Royal Flying Corps had been a part in the first war. The answer came back that he could, provided he could get his release from the French Government. This he secured, after much argument in Paris. He sent his official release to England, and with it a letter saying, “I am prepared to come at a moment’s notice—please send me my marching orders.”

That was just before the German invasion of France. With the invasion came chaos. The armistice was signed without his having heard from London. John resigned himself to staying in France and started to resist the Germans wherever possible.

It was more than a year after the armistice that a big German car, escorted by motorcyclists, arrived at his house in the country. Three German officers, led by a colonel, got out of the car. My brother went to meet them.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We want to meet Monsieur de Vomécourt.”

“Then I’m the man you’re looking for—what do you want with me?”

“You are a British officer,” said the colonel.

“Oh no,” said my brother. “You’ve made a mistake. I was a British officer in the last war, but I haven’t got a British commission in this one.”

“You’re a liar,” said the German colonel. “You have got a British commission.”

“And I tell you again you’re mistaken.” They argued for a few moments. Then, smiling maliciously, the colonel took from his pocket a big envelope marked “O.H.M.S.” addressed to my brother. The letter had come from England at the time of the German invasion; it had got mislaid in the breakdown of the postal services; long afterward, it had ended up in the hands of the Germans. They had opened it, read the letter addressed to “Captain de Vomécourt,” confirming his commission and instructing him to report to the War Office in London as soon as possible.

“We cannot consider you as a Frenchman,” said the colonel, presenting the letter to John, “but as a British officer. You will therefore be put in an internment camp, as a prisoner.”

“But I am still a Frenchman,” my brother protested. “I am still living in France, as a civilian, and I never received this commission. Why should you now act upon a letter I never received?”

“It is enough for us,” said the German. “This letter is sufficient evidence of your sympathy with the British. You will be better out of the way.”

“My family,” John said to the colonel, who, he discovered later, was a Prussian, “have always fought against the Germans. This is our tradition. I thought it my duty when I could not fight with the French forces to join any other forces that were fighting the Germans, and the only people who would give me a chance to fight as a pilot were the British. So I did what I considered my duty as a Frenchman and a Lorrainer. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yes,” said the colonel, slowly. “I can understand.” He paused. “And on the whole I agree with your attitude. I think you show the right spirit, and I congratulate you.” He paused again. Then he said, “To show that I appreciate your way of thinking, and that I regard it as the right way for a soldier and a man of honor, you will not be interned. Instead you must report to Besançon”—the nearest big town—”once a week, and then we will see what happens.”

At first John did report to Besançon once a week. Then he was allowed to go there once a fortnight, and finally once a month. After our brother Peter’s landing in France and our agreement to set up three sectors of operation for Resistance work, John built up a powerful réseau in the east, with the old Marquis de Moustier. They gained some excellent recruits among the technicians and workmen in the factories, and, although they had yet to receive any materials by parachute from Britain, they organized industrial sabotage with whatever tools and weapons they could find or make for themselves. Factories in the town of Sochaux, in particular, suffered. Also, with the help of railwaymen in the marshaling yards, they carried on the good work of switching the weigh bills on trucks carrying vital equipment, intended for Germany, so that the trucks went off on those mysterious journeys throughout France—and, of course, I had to try to trace them.

Their most difficult work was done on the canals. The Germans were sending coastal patrol and assault boats through France, motor launches with twin torpedo tubes. Not one of those boats ever reached its destination in the west. Despite the strong escorts assembled by the Germans, somehow my brother’s réseau managed to blow up and sink every one of them as they came along the canals. This required well-organized information; it certainly required tremendous courage, for the territory was thick with Germans. Their achievement was all the more remarkable when it is remembered that they had no limpet mines, no explosives of any kind sent from England.

Just as an army cannot fight a battle successfully without first ensuring its supplies, its lines of communication, and its reinforcements, so behind the conspicuous, public actions of the Resistance lay much unseen work and unacclaimed courage.

The making of false identity papers that would pass official scrutiny by the police or the Germans was an essential preliminary to much of our work. Agents landing from England, impersonating a fictitious French civilian, had to feel reasonably sure they would not be caught because of their papers. One could never know when he would be checked—on the roads, in the streets, on the trains. The French officials on the trains were fairly casual about their inspection, and it was possible to show a card bearing a photograph quite unlike oneself without their noticing or becoming suspicious. But the Germans were much more meticulous. Good identity papers were, for an agent, the foundation of self-confidence. And it was not only for agents from England that one needed the papers; all manner of men and women living in France who took up Resistance work had to change their identity; anyone fleeing from the Germans—air crews, political refugees, Jews—all these must have their “papers.”

It was no great problem to make them. Individuals operating quite outside the “official” Resistance, trying to help escaping prisoners and servicemen, acquired the skill quickly. Supporters of the Resistance in the prefectures and in government departments were helpful in supplying blank papers and cards and in advising on the various official marks and stamps they ought to bear.

The organization in London became expert in their forgeries. We could smuggle photographs to England and they would manufacture entirely new identity papers. We could obtain blank identity cards, already carrying the necessary official signatures, to which we needed to add only a photo, a name, and an occupation. The one hazard associated with the London forgeries—though this was more true of 1943 and 1944—was their difficulty in keeping up with changes in the form of the identity papers, ration cards, and the like. It is impossible to imagine in just how many back rooms or parlors of France amateur forgers were at work. Sometimes people were caught and imprisoned. A link in the organization had to be replaced. But the work went on.

Many of us possessed more than one set of identity papers, assuming at any one moment the identity which most suited our particular activity. Occasionally this multiplicity of identities could result in capture. It was important to carry only one set of identity papers at a time. But one man who was parachuted from London was searched and found to have three “identities.” He was arrested.

The Resistance also needed “letter boxes.” A letter box was somebody with whom one could leave a message or a letter, to be collected later by another man giving the correct password. This could avoid the possible indiscretion of an open encounter between two men in the street or in a public place. There were letter boxes at shops; at the butcher’s, the baker’s, the tobacconist’s; the doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room. Angelic-looking nuns in a convent acted as letter boxes. Letter boxes were a simple but necessary expedient. The person who agreed to help the Resistance in this way was involved in our activities only in the most indirect sense; but the danger to which he exposed himself was almost as great as if he had carried out an act of sabotage. Deportation was a common fate for any who were caught.

The waiting room of a doctor was very useful. It was a good place to meet someone else. To meet in a room with ten or fifteen other people could be much safer than meeting alone.

There was a doctor in Vierzon who was glad to help. I arranged to meet a man there. When I arrived I saw him being questioned on the doorstep, so I just strolled past the house on the other side of the road. The doctor had been arrested an hour before, and all his patients were being questioned as they came to the surgery. The man I was to have met was safe enough, for he was a local man who had an illness and had been on the doctor’s books for a long time. His story was checked, found true, and he was released without suspicion. I might well have been caught. I could have invented a sore throat or something of the sort, but a check would have shown I was lying. I was lucky I arrived at that precise moment when the other man was being questioned.

The first of all our letter boxes was a chemist’s shop in the Rue des Marins at Châteauroux. It survived until the autumn of 1941, when the chemist was arrested.

The Resistance needed “safe houses,” where the family would risk receiving, feeding, and lodging a member of the Underground. The risk was very great and persisted even after the “guest” had gone. The punishment was usually imprisonment or deportation—often of the whole family—and the burning down of the house. In 1941, for instance, a radio operator was caught in a house in Lyons. The old man and his wife, who had put him up, were deported. The dangers were soon known, but, even so, doors were opened to the Resistance in every village and town in France. For our part, we tried to minimize the risk by staying in one house for as short a time as possible.

Toward the end of 1941 an agent was sent out from England. He went to the south of France and stayed there. After a time I received a message asking me to relay a telegram to London for him through my radio operator. The telegram was asking for ham, tea, and food of all kinds—at a time when the French people were almost starving, and we thought we had more to worry about than our bellies. No mention was made in the message of anything else, no report on work accomplished; but we did know this agent had a contact through Spain from Perpignan, and it seemed possible he had reported to London on his activities by this alternate route.

A little later, another agent from England came over and told us that the man in the south had done some excellent work. He had carried out his orders from London to compile a list of safe houses throughout France. A number of us, including my brother Peter and myself, saw this list and were astonished at its range. Each of us had a few houses where we knew we could hide friends or agents for a time, but this list surpassed, by far, anything that we had been able to achieve, even if our lists had been reckoned collectively.

Most of these safe houses now listed were hotels where, we were told, if we gave the right password we would be received with sympathy. All of us who saw that list felt a certain skepticism and thought we would do a little checking.

I went to a hotel in Toulouse. I arrived in the morning and walked up to the woman at the reception desk. I gave her the password: “I have come from Bordeaux, I am going to Perpignan. I would like to have a room with a bathroom giving onto the inside court.” She was supposed to answer, if she recognized the password, “We haven’t got an inside court room with a bathroom. We’ve got a room with a bathroom and the bathroom is at the end of the passage.” The password and its response were deliberately full of the kind of detail one would not normally expect to exchange.

The woman at the reception desk did not seem at all interested in the fact that I had come from Bordeaux and was going to Perpignan. Nor was she concerned about my special requirements.

“I haven’t got a room with a bathroom,” she said shortly. “Must you have a bathroom?”

“Well, I’m not sure of my movements,” I said. “I’m going to find out if my friends are going to arrive today, so I’ll come back later.” I went away, walked round the town, came back, and waited until I saw the proprietor at the desk. I walked in quickly and repeated the password to him, just as I had earlier in the day to the woman. He looked surprised.

“But my wife told me you called before and she told you then we hadn’t got a room with a bath.”

“Don’t you know anybody who is coming from Bordeaux?” I asked him. He did not answer; he merely looked at me as though I had been a little touched by the sun.

I tried another hotel, in Perpignan, and was just as unsuccessful. None of us who checked that list of safe houses found a single one where the password, or its local variation, was understood. Presumably that agent could not imagine his list would ever be used and, like the hero of Graham Greene’s novel Our Man in Havana, thinking he had better send something back to England, compiled a nice fat list out of his rich imagination. But safe houses were a necessity to us, and he was not merely attempting a gross deception, he could also have led others into danger. I do not know what became of that agent. I do not care very much.

In 1941 British pilots carried a handkerchief on which was printed a map of France, showing the main roads. They were also ordered to memorize the names and addresses of safe houses where they could hide if they had to bail out over France.

One pilot, who fell near Paris, remembered a safe house in Saint-Junien, some 250 miles south of Paris and about twenty miles from Limoges. Two hundred and fifty miles, in a hot August, is a long way. But the pilot set off to walk the distance. By day he hid and slept. By night he walked and took his food from the fields—carrots, raw turnips, almost anything he could lay his hands on. He grew weaker and weaker on this diet, but he just kept on walking night after night, through German-occupied territory, repeating to himself as he went, “Madame X, Avenue Gay-Lussac, Saint-Junien.” He recited it, he hummed it, he sang it, through the long nights as his feet and legs grew more and more unwilling to carry him. He probably walked straight across the demarcation line into the free zone without even realizing it.

The journey took him more than two weeks. Then, in the early morning light he saw the big white signpost outside the town: Saint-Junien. “Thank God that’s over,” he said to himself. “Now I can get some real food and sleep in a decent bed again. Now then, what was the address?” He muttered to himself. And he realized he had forgotten it. He had forgotten the name and address he had been saying to himself over and again for more than a fortnight. Now it had gone; not a trace of it remained.

“Never mind,” he said to himself. “I’ll wait outside the town until this evening, anyway. Just take it easy, boy, it’ll come back.” He hid away during the whole of that day, but his memory did not come back. So in the evening a British pilot, still in uniform, though pretty messed up by now, started to trudge the streets of the little town of Saint-Junien, stopping to look at their names, believing that when he came to the right street, his memory would return. But it did not return. The Boulevard Gambetta, the Boulevard Victor Hugo—he made a circuit of the center of the town. Past the cemetery, past the shops, round and round he went. He was a most conspicuous figure, and everyone was looking at him. But they were afraid to speak to him, to offer to help him. “Is he really a British pilot, or is he a German disguised as a British pilot, trying to trap us?” They were frightened, and so was he, more and more, as he looked at the names of the streets which failed to jolt back his memory. He walked out of the town again that night and slept in the woods. The first thing next morning he went back into town and started his wanderings once more. Street by street, virtually house by house, trying to remember. But still his memory was blank.

By midday, it was obvious to all that he could not be allowed to continue his walking. A gendarme approached him and asked if he was a British pilot.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then, I’m sorry,” said the gendarme, “but I must arrest you. Will you please come with me to the jail?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said the pilot. “I must eat, or I’ll pass out.”

The gendarme took him to the jail at Saint-Junien, and there it was established beyond any doubt that he was indeed a British pilot.

“I’m very sorry I had to arrest you,” said the gendarme, “but everyone had seen you, and I had no choice. If only you could have asked someone to help you as soon as you came into town, then perhaps....”

I heard that the pilot was in jail and was to be sent to the prison at Limoges. I went to see him at Limoges, pointing out to the police that I might be able to help them because I could speak English. He told me his story. We were able to arrange his disappearance from jail, and he went through one of the escape routes back to England.

For me that story illustrates not only how hunger and fear can affect the mind but also, remembering for how long the pilot was allowed to walk around Saint-Junien without being picked up by the police, how very generally sympathetic the people and the authorities must have been toward him.

Chapter Seven

Among the safest of “safe houses” were the brothels. As with cafes and cinemas, so there were brothels reserved for the exclusive use of the Germans. And it was in a brothel of that kind, with the Germans in the next room, tramping up and down the stairs, that an agent or an escaping airman could really feel he had nothing to worry about. The brothels were never searched, for whom would the Germans find there but other Germans?

In fact, there was at least one brothel where two rooms were kept permanently “vacant”; they were at the disposal of the Resistance for agents who had been dropped into France and were waiting for a chance to return to England. Others were always ready to hide escaping air crews. There could be complications, however.

One British pilot was lodged in a brothel while waiting to be passed along the escape route to Spain. He had a long wait. He lived in that brothel for a whole month. He had a room of his own, and he was well fed and cared for. But one day he was going upstairs to his room when a German officer saw him. The German was rather fond of one of the girls in the brothel, whose room was near the pilot’s and he thought the Englishman—wearing civilian clothing, of course—was going into her room.

“What is that man doing here?” the German wanted to know. “Who is he? How did he get in here?” Madame, in charge of the establishment, was called. She explained that the man was a friend of the girl and popped in occasionally to see her. Oh, no, she said, there was no question of his living there. The German took a lot of convincing that the pilot was not someone on the run from the police. But finally he accepted the explanation.

“He must go. Get him out. He has no right here,” shouted the German officer. The pilot was shown the door in haste and went into the street, with the German still shouting after him. It had been an uncomfortable experience for him, and he had lost an excellent lodging, but no more questions were asked about him, and he got safely away.

French brothels, perhaps through the influence of our literature, appear to be regarded in a more romantic light than the brothels in most other countries. The “madame” is usually depicted as a woman of great presence and some charm, catering to the particular pleasures of her customers with the manner of a grand lady disposing her guests at a salon. The girls, too, under her tutelage, have been credited with more grace and beauty than whores in other parts of the world. What I know about is the service they rendered to the Resistance.

The woman in charge of one German brothel in Lyons was allowed to travel about in a car. She was known to all the Germans. So far as they were concerned, her character was unblemished; she was beyond suspicion. That was very convenient, for she used her car to carry agents and escapees; she carried radio sets for the Resistance, from one place to another—one of the more hazardous parts of our work. She bought food for the Germans and kept back a portion of it for the Resistance and for anyone staying in her brothel. She did this kind of work from 1940 right up to the end of the war.

Many of the whores worked just as hard for us. They took advantage of their opportunities—unique opportunities, one must admit—to filch papers from the pockets of their clientele, have them photographed and returned before the Germans wanted to put their clothes on again.

After a conversation on a train about British pilots eating carrots to improve their night vision, I discovered from an oculist in Paris that heroin had the opposite effect. I asked London for a supply of heroin.

“What for?” they asked.

“Never mind what it’s for,” I replied. “I’ll tell you when the operation is successful.”

The kilo of heroin which they sent to me must have taken a lot of argument and persuasion, on their part, to procure. It was sent by the bag from London and delivered to the military attaché of a neutral embassy.

Now I had to find a way of feeding the heroin to the German pilots. Who were the only people in regular contact with the Germans and able to administer the heroin to them secretly? The whores.

There was a large concentration of German night fighters around Tours, so I went to the people running the whorehouses there and explained what I wanted to do. They agreed to gather together a number of the women who were keen to work for the Resistance.

A few of the Germans who patronized the brothels were already drug addicts. To them, the whores sold the heroin; they promised they would not sell it to any but Germans. Other German pilots, who were often the worse for drink by the time they found themselves in a room with a whore, were tempted to try the heroin—”just a little sniff to see what happens.” The result, of course, was a temporary feeling of well-being, which encouraged the young men to try a little more, and so they were led into addiction. When a pilot refused to take the heroin, the women put some of the “snuff” into cigarettes. Unknowingly, the Germans smoked the tainted cigarettes and were “hooked” in that way.

It was an effective form of Resistance. A substantial number of night fighter pilots, stationed in the Tours area, found their vision deteriorating. With each monthly medical examination they saw less and less.

It was bound to lead to an investigation in the end. The German doctors interrogated the pilots exhaustively about their habits, their movements, what they ate, what they drank, how much they smoked. By comparing all the answers to their questions, they found that the men whose eyesight had been affected had one thing in common: they all frequented the brothels. Among them were others who, it was clear, were suffering from drug addiction. All this took months, but more questioning brought the evidence about which whores at which brothels were handing out the dope.

The Germans tracked down two of the whores, arrested them, and shot them. They were courageous women who knew what they were doing and did it willingly. They were glad of the chance to revenge themselves on the Germans and to help their country at the same time.

For colored men in France, a “safe house” or false identity papers were an impossibility. To be a colored man in a district occupied by the Germans was to know that death was near. When the Germans first overran France, reaching as far south as Bordeaux before the cease-fire, they took prisoner all the colored men they met. They made no distinction between those in uniform and those without it. All were taken. Some were shot, some “died” in captivity. Others just disappeared. None of the men taken prisoner was ever seen again. The truth is probably that they were all put to death. The Germans had a pathological fear and hatred of colored men; they could not conceive of living in the same country with them.

Four West African soldiers managed to keep clear of the Germans. They belonged to a Senegalese regiment and had worked their way down from north of Tours to the forest of Loches. At the time, the Germans were still in occupation of Loches and the surrounding area. The Senegalese had evaded capture, but they were starving.

In the forest they begged a gamekeeper to help them, to find them food. The keeper did his best for a short while, taking food to them in the forest. But more and more German troops crowded into the town, and the keeper feared for the Senegalese. Their color made them so conspicuous. To get to the south would mean their trying to pass through this mass of Germans. They had walked as far as Loches without being taken, it was true, but their chances of making their escape all the way to the Mediterranean were negligible. Where could they go? How could they be kept alive?

The gamekeeper talked about them to a man he knew to be a member of the Resistance, the embryonic Resistance as it was then.

“Where can we put them?”

The possibilities were canvassed and, one by one, rejected. Then the two men thought of the one safe place where the four Africans could be hidden. Near the Pyramide de Saint-Quentin—a sort of obelisk in the middle of the forest—were some very big fox warrens. They found one which they thought would be suitable.

They set the Senegalese to work, using small spades.

The four men crept into the entrance of the warren and, laboriously, began to shovel out the earth from the inside. It was slow, aching work, but they progressed. They reached a stage where they entered the warren one at a time, head first, and continued digging. All that could be seen of the man in the warren was a pair of feet, protruding from the entrance. When he had had enough, he wiggled his feet. The others dragged him out, and the next man took his turn. Little by little the hole under the earth grew. At the end of two days’ digging, there was a big cave inside the warren, a sort of room between three to four feet high and just big enough for four men to lie down side by side in it. They plastered the “walls” with mud to give them stability. It was not exactly a home away from home, but for the four Senegalese it promised safety.

They stayed in the warren by day. At night, either the keeper brought them food or they came to fetch it themselves. Being colored, they could move about at night much more easily. When they returned to their warren, they covered up their traces behind them. The last man slid in, feet first. With a branch he smoothed over the earth in front of the entrance to erase traces of footsteps. He scattered leaves to suggest that a badger had been in and out of the warren. From the outside there was nothing to suggest that it held four human beings.

The Senegalese were safe, but now they became bored. They needed exercise after being “buried” in the warren all day. That was understandable, and if they had kept to the forest they would have stayed out of trouble. But they were restless, and they did not like Germans. They had seen friends being shot by the Germans. Now they began to revenge those deaths.

At night they left the forest and followed the roads into the town of Loches. Whenever they saw a lone German in the dark streets they came up behind him, stopped his mouth, held him fast—and slit his throat. Then they left the German, very dead, to be picked up in the street the next morning. They made quite a few kills, always using the same methods.

It was not long, however, before the Germans showed a violent reaction. They did not like their troops to have their throats slit in the streets of Loches at night. They suspected that colored men had done the killings from the evidence of the throat-slitting, which is not a European habit. The Germans carried out a house-to-house search in that part of Loches where the bodies had been found. They did not discover the Senegalese, of course, but it was plain that if the killings went on they would make the people of Loches pay in some way or other—probably by the taking and shooting of hostages. There was nothing distasteful about a few German throats being slit, but it must be done more tidily. That was what the Resistance man told the West Africans.

“When you’ve done the job,” he said, “you must clear up the mess. Cart him out of the town, into the forest, and bury him. The Germans will just mark him down as a deserter, and no one will come to any harm—except the Boches.”

For a while it seemed as though they were obeying his instructions. No more bodies of German soldiers greeted the eyes of the townspeople as they opened their curtains in the mornings. The Senegalese continued to slit German throats, but the Germans did not realize it. So everyone should have been happy.

But the Africans were a little lazy, and dead bodies weigh heavily when they have been carried on shoulders for some three or four miles. They felt they had done well enough to have removed the dead Germans from the town. They could not be bothered to bury them. Instead they found a convenient valley, with a small stream running through the bottom of it, and there they dumped their victims. The bodies were reasonably concealed in the valley and, at first, they were undiscovered. But it was hot weather, and dead bodies, especially a growing collection of them, begin to smell if exposed to the heat for long. The colored soldiers had dumped more than a dozen Germans in the valley. The smell of the putrefying bodies began to drift beyond the valley toward the town. It was a most obnoxious stench. The people of Loches smelled it and asked themselves what on earth could be causing it. The gamekeeper smelled it and traced it to its source.

Unfortunately, he had no time to arrange for the corpses to be buried. The Germans had also caught the stench and discovered the bodies. They deduced, rightly, that the colored men responsible must be hiding in the forest. They turned out a whole battalion of men and combed the woods. They set machine guns at the ends of each of the main roads running through the forest. Then they started their search, proceeding systematically, sector by sector. The soldiers were spaced about a yard apart. In that order they slowly advanced, looking up into the trees, beating the bracken. They went through the whole forest once; they turned round and combed it again. They found nothing. Twice, the Senegalese heard Germans beating and talking just above them, outside the entrance to the warren. But they had left no traces, and their hiding place remained undiscovered.

The Senegalese resumed their killings, and the temper of the Germans was rapidly approaching the pitch when they would certainly lash out, forsaking all discrimination between innocent and guilty.

Then, happily, agreement was reached between Vichy and the Germans to draw the line of demarcation some twelve miles to the north of Loches. The Germans evacuated the town; the forest became part of the free zone. The four Senegalese crawled out of their warren and headed for the south.

Chapter Eight

The Resistance suffered big losses in 1941. Some twenty-five agents of S.O.E. were dropped into France during the course of the year, two of them radio operators. Within twelve months of the first man’s being parachuted, the majority of them had been captured. Some were already dead. The reasons for our casualties were ignorance, bad luck, and treachery.

At the beginning we were all green. We did not know our job. We learned the rules and made the rules as we went along. Some had no time to learn them; their first mistakes were their last. At the start, it must be confessed, we thought of the whole business as a game. A serious, deadly one, but a game nevertheless. There were amusement, excitement, and adventure. But the Germans did not think of it as a game.

Big mistakes were made. They were made in France and they were made in London. There was one easy way to avoid making “mistakes” when fighting the Germans: to give up, to collaborate, to push the thought of resistance out of the mind. That was safe—for a time. But it was not our way.

Until the end of the war, however much we learned, the risk of betrayal remained. There is a limit to caution. Ultimately an underground movement is sustained by trust, not suspicion. A traitor lives by gaining the trust of those he intends to sell.

In the early autumn of 1941 two agents from England came to see me. One of them I knew and trusted. The other, called C., I did not trust. During our conversation the first man asked to see my identity card. I showed it to him. We were in a hotel room and known to each other only through code names. We had met as a result of messages passed through contacts and “letter boxes.”

While the first agent was looking at my identity card, C. moved to one side. It seemed to me he was trying to look at the reflection of my identity card in the looking glass. I took back my card and said nothing. But from then on I was extremely careful in all I said to him.

Not long after that meeting, two men from my réseau were arrested. Soon others were taken to prison. I did not know how they had been caught, but I decided that everyone living in my district must move away to the south of France. This included the chemist whose shop in Châteauroux provided our first “letter box.” In the south they could hide for a time, before pushing on to new districts.

We arranged to go to Marseilles by different routes. Some would go from Châteauroux to Lyons, and thence to Marseilles. Others would take the other route, to Toulouse and then along the coast to Marseilles. By different trains, and in different compartments. I was to travel alone and to meet them at the port.

“Above all,” I said, “don’t go to the safe house in Marseilles.” The agent C. was in the safe house. “When you get there, phone up, say the password, and get him to come and see you. Don’t go there yourselves. Once you’ve made contact with him by phone, just wait and do nothing. I’ll be there by two o’clock. We’ll meet then-and decide what to do next.” And I named the terrace of a cafe as our rendezvous. All was agreed. The very last thing I repeated to them before we parted was, “Don’t go to the safe house.”

I arrived in Marseilles just after one o’clock. I went straight to the rendezvous. Or rather, I went to a bar just opposite and watched the rendezvous from there. No one turned up. There seemed to be no sign of police watching the place, but none of my friends kept our appointment. I decided to telephone the safe house. I gave ‘he password and received the correct answer. I recognized C.’s voice.

“Where are the others?” I asked him.

“Oh, they’re all here,” he said.

“Why aren’t they waiting at my rendezvous?”

“Well, we’ve got something really interesting here. Come along, quickly.”

“No, I can’t do that,” I said. “I can’t remember where your place is. Please send one of the others to fetch me.”

“But you’ve been here before.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I can’t quite remember how I got there. Don’t give me the address over the telephone—someone might be listening.”

“All right,” said C., “I’ll send someone.”

“Good. Send him to the second rendezvous.” We had fixed an alternative rendezvous for four o’clock, in case anything went wrong.

No one turned up there. I was surprised, and very worried. I did not know what to do. Quite a crowd of us had set out from Châteauroux; someone ought to have been there. At least the man C. was supposed to be sending to fetch me should have been there. But after waiting until four-thirty, with still no sign of anyone turning up, I rang the safe house again.

“What’s gone wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing’s wrong. Sorry, but we just weren’t able to send anyone.” It sounded improbable. “Come along here, come as quickly as you can,” said C. I did not bother to tell him again I could not remember where his villa was.

“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but I just can’t manage to come now. I’ve got other things I must attend to. I must get back to Paris. There’s a train leaving soon. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

In fact, I had work to do in Nice and Monaco. I took the train there, met some friends, did some work connected with the Resistance, and took the train back to Marseilles. As soon as I returned, I again rang the safe house. It was some time before anyone answered the phone.

“Hallo...yes, what is it?” I gave the password. It was given back to me incorrectly. A small slip, but a suspicious one. I asked a few obvious questions. The answers were unsatisfactory.

“Come quickly. Come here. We’re waiting for you.” Even now I was not sure. Things did not seem right, and yet I had no means of knowing what had happened. So I decided on a positive test.

“Has Gilbert turned up yet?” I asked. “Gilbert—the man who was supposed to be coming by submarine?”

“Yes,” came the immediate answer. “Gilbert’s here. He’s waiting for you.” There was no Gilbert and no submarine expected.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll be with you in twenty minutes.”

In those minutes I was back on a train leaving Marseilles.

Much later I discovered what had happened. The Vichy police were given a prize bag of Resistance men. Seventeen of my group were picked up. George Noble—Bégué, the radio operator who was the first agent to be dropped into France—was among those arrested. Also there were three agents who had landed in central France only a few days before. In making their contact with C., they, too, had walked into trouble. A man who tried to help them make the contact, called Robert Lyon, at that time working for an American relief organization in Marseilles, and a recent recruit to the Resistance, was also arrested. (Later in the war he returned to France to organize a réseau in the Lyons area.)

My men went to the safe house, a rather isolated villa with a garden. As they walked through the garden toward the door of the villa, they were picked up. They said they saw the agent C. identifying them to the waiting police. None of this has even been proved. C. was never formally accused of treachery. What is irrefutable is that a score or more of men went to prison as a result of one man’s betrayal, whoever that man may be. At first they were taken to the jail at Périgueux, where conditions were harsh. Then they were moved to a detention camp at Meauzac. Things were much easier there than they were to be later, and they were able to escape. Nearly a year after their arrest in Marseilles, they reached England.

George Nobel’s arrest was a big blow. Now only one radio operator was left in France to maintain contact with London: André Bloch, operating in the occupied zone.

My brother Peter and Roger Cottin were in Paris. They were joined there by Major Ben Cowburn, who had been dropped in September 1941. Cowburn had come to Paris to use Bloch, the last radio link with London. And early in November 1941, Bloch also was taken. The Gestapo arrested him, and ultimately he was shot.

Now we were all cut off from any communication with London. Week after week passed without anyone being sent out by S.O.E. to establish contact again. The situation grew more and more desperate: we had important things to tell London, but no means of making a report.

Peter had accomplished his mission, which was to find out whether a sufficiently strong spirit of resistance existed in France to justify sending planes and dropping more arms and materials at a time when Britain had too few for her own needs. Peter had formed his own networks in Paris and in other parts of France; he had also made contact with a number of groups already in existence, who were clamoring for assistance. He wanted to return to England as quickly as possible to report that the French Resistance needed and deserved help.

Toward the end of December, one of the Resistance groups he had met told him they were in touch with an Anglo-Polish Intelligence network called the Interallié; this had a direct radio link with an I.S. bureau in London. Would he like to send a message to S.O.E. in care of that Intelligence department?

After some consideration, Peter decided he could not afford to remain cut off from S.O.E. any longer; he was then put in touch with Mathilde Carré, called Victoire at the time, who was then head of the Anglo-Polish network. Victoire was also known as La Chatte—the Cat—a name that was to become notorious.

In the first message he gave her, Peter de Vomécourt introduced a code name known only to S.O.E. and himself in order to prove to his own department that he was the real author of the message. The wording of the reply he received enabled him to be quite sure it was S.O.E. who had sent it. Moreover, he was told to go and call on a high neutral embassy official in Vichy for a certain purpose; this reassured him completely. He had asked for a radio operator who would allow him to communicate direct without using Victoire’s organization; S.O.E. replied that no operators were available then and he should continue sending his messages by the channel he was then employing. S.O.E. was still in the early stage of development, and those who believed in its usefulness were still fighting a hard battle against prejudice in the more orthodox and conventional minds around them.

What Peter did not know, and what London did not know either, was that some time previously Victoire had been arrested and had bought her release by becoming a double agent working for the Germans. Not only had she betrayed a great number of her comrades but she was regularly using her daily radio contact with her London department to hoodwink it and feed it false information. Still worse, the messages from London which thus passed directly into German hands informed them exactly of the matters on which the British wanted information: Saint-Nazaire, for example.

The story of how my brother discovered Victoire’s treachery and how he finally succeeded, in turn, in hoodwinking the Germans has been told by Major Cowburn in his book, No Cloak, No Dagger (Jarrolds, 1960).

It was at the end of January 1942 that I received an urgent message from Peter, asking me to come up to Paris. When I met him there, in great secrecy, he told me of Victoire’s betrayal. Because of her, his activities were now known to the Germans, who were merely waiting to find out more about his contacts before staging a general arrest. Moreover, the British were still communicating each day with the Anglo-Polish organization and all their messages were passing through the hands of the Germans.

Peter told me how, in agreement with Ben Cowburn and Roger Cottin, he hoped to turn the tables on the enemy. The Germans knew, from the radio messages which had passed through their hands before Victoire gave them to Peter, that he was arranging his departure for England. But, of course, what they did not know was that he now knew that they knew. Peter’s plan mainly consisted in sowing in their minds the seeds of an idea: that they should take the opportunity of his departure for England to send La Chatte with him, so that she could work for them over there.

In fact, La Chatte had agreed to work for the British again, while pretending to the Germans she was still working for them. (When Peter had confronted her with her treachery, she had confessed.) As the mistress of Hugo Bleicher, of the German Field Security Police, who had first uncovered her network and was now directing the operations against Peter, she had a good chance of pulling off the double bluff. She was to make the bait the more tempting for the Germans by telling them that when Peter came back to France he would bring a British general with him. If the Germans took the bait, La Chatte would be landed in England, where she could do no more harm, and the British would be able to use her radio link against the Germans, just as the Germans had been using it against them.

The plan obviously involved great risks. Something might easily go wrong; the Germans might discover the trick that was to be played on them, and then Peter and all of us could expect immediate arrest.

It was therefore imperative that someone outside the occupied territory should know all the background. That was why I came to Paris. We agreed that if La Chatte betrayed us, I was to kill her. Peter gave me the name of the neutral embassy executive he had recently seen in Vichy. We agreed I should go to see him and give him a detailed report for S.O.E. We knew it would take a number of weeks before the message reached London, but, should the worst happen and my brother fail to reach England, the British would be warned, better late than never, that the messages they were sending to the Anglo-Polish Intelligence network were, in fact, being sent straight to the Gestapo. Peter also told me he had informed our brother, John, of the situation. Hoping that our plans would succeed and that our friends would escape safely, I went to Vichy and forwarded the message we had prepared for S.O.E.

As I learned later, the Germans fell completely for the trick. It was in March, weeks after my meeting in Paris with Peter, that two radio operators were dropped from England into the unoccupied zone to re-establish communications with London. It was then I heard that Peter, as well as La Chatte, had arrived in England at the end of February. Ben Cowburn followed shortly afterward, having escaped through Spain. I had met him on his way to the south of France and was able to give some help in making contact with an escape-route organization.

On April 1, 1942, Peter de Vomécourt returned to France. He dropped near my estate in central France. I did not know he was coming. He had been dropped “blind” a second time. He was caught in a tree only a few hundred yards from my house, but was able to slip out of the parachute harness and jump to the ground. But the parachute was left hanging in the tree. As it was a very dark night, he sat under the tree until daybreak, intending to remove the parachute and get rid of it as soon as he could see to untangle it from the branches. But even as he was sitting there, in the first light, he saw a man coming toward him with a ladder. My brother left him to it. The man took away the parachute. (We never saw it again. And I never discovered who the man was. As the parachute was made of silk, and was no doubt converted into underclothes for his womenfolk, he probably had no wish to tell anyone where he found it.) And so, to my surprise, on a bright sunny morning, I saw Peter walk into my house. My brother gave me a short account of events in London. He had, of course, reported Victoire’s betrayal to Colonel Buckmaster, who had come up to meet him at the port. For a while she was allowed to go free, but was under constant watch in order to catch any contacts the Germans might try to make with her. Then she was placed in jail. She spent the rest of the war in prison, but much more comfortably than the people she had betrayed to the Germans, many of whom never survived the concentration camps.

In the meantime, the tables had been turned on the Germans and it was now the British who were feeding false information to the Gestapo with the messages they went on sending to the Anglo-Polish Intelligence group.

While the unsuspecting Germans were waiting for a message to the Anglo-Polish group announcing Peter’s return to France so that they could once again watch him and later arrest him (and “the general”) with the new contacts they expected him to make on his return, my brother secretly went back to Paris. He had told me that among the false messages sent to the Anglo-Polish group and consequently to the Germans, one mentioned that he was on a course of additional training in England, so the Gestapo would not be on the lookout for him.

Peter also told me that S.O.E. was to parachute three assistants to him during May. The plan was for him to introduce these men to the heads of the different groups he had formed, which were not known to the Germans. Then he and the dozen or so whose identity had become known to the enemy through Victoire’s betrayal would quietly disappear while the Germans were still awaiting Peter’s return from London.

Some weeks later I heard that Peter, Roger, and a few others had been arrested. The Germans had learned that Peter was in Paris and, through a betrayal, had arrested Roger, Peter, and those who were known to them. Peter was kept in Fresnes prison for eighteen months. For half of that time he was in solitary confinement, manacled and chained by the feet. Then he was sent to the Colditz fortress, from which he was liberated by the Americans in 1945. (How, once again, Peter hoodwinked the Germans and succeeded in saving the lives of all fifteen of his comrades who had been arrested as members of his group is another story which he may write himself one day.)

Then it was my brother John’s turn. Some months after hearing of Peter’s arrest, he himself was put in prison. He had done a lot of good work. Apart from organizing the successful attacks on the German E-boats as they came through the canals, and the sabotage in the factories—typical of what was happening in many parts of France—he had set up several Resistance groups in eastern towns, in places like Nancy and Montbéliard, for example.

The Gestapo interrogated him in their usual way. But their torture did not make him reveal any information about his own activities or those of the Resistance. And Peter and Roger had denied, of course, that John had taken part in any of their anti-German activities. The prosecutor decided that John should be set free, for lack of evidence. But just at that time, the Gestapo received a letter from eastern France denouncing him. For them, this was proof enough. John was promptly deported.

He suffered the fate of hundreds of thousands of others who, like cattle for slaughter, were herded off on journeys from which they would never return. He was beaten and kicked and slugged and starved. But he clung passionately to life. His head shaved, his body a pitiful wreck in its hideous striped uniform, he fought, with his magnificent spirit, the whips and cudgels of the Germans. He was put to work in the mines and contracted tuberculosis. He was operated on and recovered. Then, because he spoke German, he was made chief orderly in the camp hospital. Within a few weeks of the end of the war, with the Russians advancing upon the camp of Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, where he was at the mercy of the animals posing as human beings, the Germans gave the order to evacuate.

John was left in the hospital with the men who were too weak to be moved. When the camp was about to be liberated, the Germans decided to liquidate all witnesses to their bestiality. John could hear the Russian guns in the distance as he was pushed, alive, into the ovens.

We tried to put as little as possible on paper. It was better to forget a password, to forget a message, to forget a name than to commit them to writing. To some of us this seemed a necessary precaution. But others felt they should make a list of people, or equipment, so that there was an easy source of reference. For others, it was a matter of form, of ingrained habit to write everything down, methodically, conscientiously. This was especially true of Resistance groups organized by S.O.E. agents, who had not been trained, or by local leaders, often former army officers—it was the military way of doing things.

There was an ex-sergeant in charge of the “armory” of a réseau. Their arms amounted to some rifles and ammunition, but it was a beginning. Much of his military life he had spent as a magasinier, a man in charge of army stores. He could not shake off the training of a lifetime. Nor did he wish to change. It was the proper procedure, army fashion, to make a list of all your stores.

In a book he kept a record of all the arms in his charge. When any of them were taken out, he made an entry showing to whom they were issued: name and address. The poor man did not realize he was writing out death warrants for his friends as well as for himself.

He was arrested when taking arms from Orléans to Paris. The Germans found the book on him. It told them where the arms were stored and to whom individual weapons had been issued. They had merely to work through the list. The “arms depot” had been on a farm. The Germans went to the farm, strung up the farmer and his three sons by the feet and beat them into unconsciousness. The ex-army sergeant was one of several members of the réseau who was shot.

Those were a few illustrations of what was happening in many parts of France in 1941 and early in 1942. The losses of the Resistance were grievous. But where a limb was struck off, another one began to grow. Agents were arrested or killed: new ones came from London to take their places. Our concept of the Resistance as something of a game was quickly dispelled. Our amateurism developed into expertise under the compulsion of fear and danger. Agents returning from France passed on their experience to London, and London, in turn, now sent out men with specialized skills.

Peter de Vomécourt’s escape to England brought substantial results beyond the deceiving of Bleicher and the ultimate incarceration of La Chatte. In London, he had seen the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, Mr. Anthony Eden, and Sir Alan Brooke, General Gubbins, and others. He had convinced them of the possibilities offered by the activities of the French Resistance, if helped by supplies of trained leaders, radio operators, and weapons. Thanks in particular to Lord Selborne and Sir Alan Brooke, the necessary means were, at last, placed at the disposal of S.O.E., and the records show the extent of help from the British to the French Resistance from May 1942 onward.

By the end of 1941, a plan in outline for the invasion of France in the summer of 1943 had been produced. The Resistance was soon to be seen as an integral part of the total Allied force that would be concentrated on the task of liberating France and Europe. From November 1942 there was to be a French directorate of S.O.E., under Colonel R. E. Brook, to control the operations ,of the three French sections, “F,” “R/F,” and “D/F,” which, although working toward the same objective, might have seemed to a stranger sometimes to be in opposition to one another. In April 1943, this French directorate was to form part of the S.O.E. directorate for Western Europe, under Brigadier Mockler-Ferryman, to embrace all countries likely to be affected by invasion from the west. This was designed specifically for collaboration in the invasion plans of C.O.S.S.A.C.—Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander. This was the Allied interservice staff set up in London to work on an invasion plan, within which there would be work for the Resistance. Detailed plans were laid for the sabotaging of precise objectives—of railway links, of arms dumps, of bridges, roads, and all lines of communication—on or immediately preceding or following D-Day. From late 1941 onward we received warnings from London that when we heard a particular message we would know the invasion was on and we should take appropriate action to hit and harass the Germans. (From then also about every six months we had false alarms that the invasion was about to take place. These were inspired by the tragic commando raids, like the one on Dieppe. In France they had the effect of inciting premature demonstrations of force. The Germans reacted by taking reprisals, shooting hostages, slaughtering innocent villagers. By the time the real D-Day arrived, the French people no longer believed in Father Christmas.)

Apart from the laying of plans for D-Day, there was also positive encouragement of general sabotage throughout France. The damaging of factories employed in the manufacture of war materials for Germany, the delaying or derailing of trains, the blowing up of munitions dumps or petrol tanks, attacks on individual Germans or small units, on their vehicles or naval vessels: all this had been undertaken before, wherever and whenever possible, by Resistance groups using their own initiative. Now, more and more, we were to be called upon to carry out particular missions of sabotage upon the orders of the Allied armies. More and more, it was impressed upon the military leaders, by the power of evidence, that skillful sabotage could be more effective, because capable of greater precision, and in every sense cheaper than raids by bombers.

The underground war against the Germans intensified; it became on both sides more bitter. Despite our losses, the number of réseaux multiplied and, with a parallel increase in the number of “radios,” it was essential to rationalize what had been until then a fairly haphazard system of communication between the Resistance in France and the administration in London. “Schedules” were worked out by which we could have twice-daily contact with London, or, rather, with the country house near Sevenoaks in Kent where our messages were received. In emergency, a radio operator in France could get through at any time on a particular wave length.

With about ten parachutings a month we experimented with new equipment designed to improve communication between ground and air, so that our aircraft could find their way more surely to the locations chosen for the “drops” and landings. I tried out the first of these new gadgets at the end of 1941. It was called “Rebecca.” She was a big box, about a yard long and eighteen inches high. She was very heavy. Inside the box were coils and batteries. There were two aerials for the machine and a switchboard, which would pick up an “echo” sent out by the plane and return the impulse.

I started trying to put the aerials together. There were eight pieces to each aerial. They were supposed to fit into each other. But they were not numbered. I spent hours trying to fix up those aerials, without success. So, during the night, I went into the village and woke up the assistant blacksmith. We sat there all night and part of the next day, working with emery paper and files, to make the pieces fit together.

As it was, “Rebecca” worked fairly well. But I made quite clear to London that, apart from my annoyance with the condition in which she arrived, she was not worth having. “Rebecca” involved too much trouble and too much risk. She was much too fat. The idea of carting that great box from one landing ground to another was impracticable. If the police or the Germans had opened that box and seen all those coils, they might not have known their precise purpose, but it would have been extremely difficult to explain them away. Later in the war “Rebecca” had a much slimmer figure; she came in a small box.

Chapter Nine

My two brothers had been arrested, and it looked as though my turn had come. This story begins as so many others of that period: I was on a train. I was traveling south from Paris, going home after another of my weekly reports to the Germans on our well-organized railway chaos. For nearly two years now, I thought, as the train rattled along, I had enjoyed the privilege of a Gestapo pass to help me in the fight against the Germans. I wondered how much longer it could last.

The train stopped at Vierzon, on the northern side of the demarcation line, for the usual check-up. A German soldier came into my compartment.

“Papers.” I gave him my papers. He looked at them and seemed satisfied they were in order, and that the photograph corresponded with the owner. Then another looked into his little black book. He looked at my pass, looked at me, and looked into his book again.

“This is it,” I said to myself. “I’m on the list. He’s found me.” I was right.

“Excuse me,” said the soldier, “but would you please step off the train? We just want to check on one or two things.” How long will the politeness last? I wondered.

“With pleasure,” I said. “It’s quite normal. You must do your job. Shall I leave my luggage here?” I was traveling with just a small case.

“Yes,” said the German, “leave it here.” Then he changed his mind. “No, better take it with you.” He took me into a room in the station, where the German officer in charge of the control was sitting. The officer said something in German which I could not catch. The soldier said, “Will you please take a seat. In a minute or two the officer will question you.” The officer, a lieutenant, left the room for a few moments. When he came back, he started his investigation.

“What are you doing?” he wanted to know.

“Doing? Why, I am an inspector of the railways and I work for the Gestapo—the railway section. It’s my job to try to keep track of all the trucks—some of them get lost, you know—and to make up the big trains that take materials to Germany. Here, look at my identity papers, it’s all there.” They went through them again, muttering to each other.

“Do you speak German?” the lieutenant asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I speak English, but I don’t speak German.” The lieutenant said something else to the soldier I could not hear, and then, in a louder voice, he said, “But I’m sure he’s the right man. He will be shot, just like his brothers.” He spoke in German and looked straight at me as he did so. I understood perfectly well what he said, because I was able to speak German. I tried to show no reaction to his words.

“No,” he said, turning to the other man. “No, his name’s de Vomécourt, but he can’t be the right one. The man we’re looking for does speak German, but this one didn’t understand what I said.” So far, so good. They asked me more questions, which I answered with all the innocence of a railway inspector working for the Germans.

“Well, monsieur, we must check with Paris,” said the lieutenant.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s best that you should clear up the whole thing. I don’t know whom you think I am, but if you check with Paris you will soon realize there’s been a mistake somewhere.”

“Good,” said the German. “Will you please go into the next room and wait while we talk to Paris.”

“Certainly,” I said. But before leaving them, 1 added, “Will you give me back my papers, please?” They were on the table in front of them. The lieutenant hesitated.

“Give me my papers,” I said in a firm voice. The lieutenant looked even more undecided. The Germans were disciplined. They respected superior rank. I was an important person on the railways, working, as far as they could tell at that moment, for the Gestapo. I had a name with a “handle.” The lieutenant still hesitated.

“Give me my papers,” I said again, almost as an order. He stood up and handed them to me.

“Thank you. Now I will go into the next room and wait until you have talked to Paris.”

I went into the waiting room next door. There were some thirty people huddled there. Some were waiting for permits to cross into the free zone, some, like me, waiting for the result of a check-up. Railway waiting rooms are never the most congenial places. Here the normal dejection was combined with a flavor of tension. Even a man with completely valid papers and innocent of any “crime” felt disquiet creeping over him as he waited in that room. We all looked at one another with suspicion; yet, in a way, we were a fraternity—of fear. No one could ever be quite sure that he was safe; he sat there waiting for the Germans to call his name. From time to time a door opened, and faces were raised, expressing hope and fear. The German soldier called a name, and one of the people left us. But for what destination? To collect his answers and continue his journey, as he hoped? For further questioning? For prison? For the firing squad? One never knew where that door would lead to. It was time for me to find a way out. The call to Paris would not take long, and, if I were still here, I should certainly be arrested. But how to get away?

The door opened again. A soldier called out some dozen or more names. In the middle of his recital, I called out “yes,” got up, joined the queue with the others, and followed the soldier through the door. Outside the room he led the line to the left. I turned right. I walked to the end of a long passage. At the door was a German sentry. Thank heaven they had given me back my papers. I showed the sentry the Gestapo pass. He saluted. I walked past him and called to a porter.

“Is there a train leaving soon?”

“One pulling out now,” he said.

“That’s mine.” I rushed to the platform. The train was just moving. I grabbed a handle, pulled open a door, swung onto the train, and blessed my luck.

The train headed northward, back toward Paris. Some fifteen miles from the check point it slowed down a little. I hopped off the train, bruising myself as I flung myself clear. (At the next station, as I heard later, the train was stopped and searched—for me.) I turned back toward the demarcation line and did what most Frenchmen had to do—I walked across it. It was not my turn—yet. The German instinct to obey an apparent superior, and my hiding of the fact I understood German, had saved me.

Vichy’s national revolution revealed, more and more, its totalitarian nature. It is unlikely that the old marshal conceived its resemblances to Nazi Germany—or, perhaps, even recognized them. All that concerned him was that he should be free to exert his paternal authority for the good of the French people. Any measures contributing to that authority would probably have received his approval. At any rate, whether he willed them or not, his regime decreed more and more repression of individual liberty. Only by comparison with the occupied zone could Vichy France seem tolerable.

Darlan’s ministry was repellent enough, or so we thought. But, at least, as we now know, Darlan resisted the more humiliating and injurious demands. The Germans demanded Vichy co-operation in persuading French workers to go to Germany. Darlan refused. He rejected other demands for more rolling stock to be placed at German disposal, also for 9000 skilled railway workers to be employed directly under the Germans. He protested against German orders for all Jews in the occupied zone, over the age of six, to wear a yellow cloth star—the Star of David.

At the time, however, Darlan’s anti-British and collaborationist policies left no room for charity about him in the minds of the Resistance. Darlan represented the enemy. Under his government, Joseph Darnand was given charge of a new organization, the Service d’Ordre Legionnaire, or S.O.L. Thugs, aping the Nazi S.S., were recruited. They took the following oath:

“I swear to fight against democracy, against Gaullist dissidents, and against the Jewish leprosy.”

They lived up to their oath. They began to build a reputation for brutality of which the S.S. itself could have been proud. The S.O.L., about a year after its formation, became the nucleus of an even more bestial crop: the Milice, or Militia. The inspiration for the Militia was to be German. The role of the Militia will become evident later in my story.

With the return of Laval to power in April 1942, all the totalitarian tendencies of the Vichy regime were intensified. And Laval labored more eagerly to conciliate the Germans. One is led to believe now that Laval, with a very sharp and tortuous mind, thought he could outwit the Germans and play a leading part in Hitler’s new European order. The pathetic, futile Pétain was forced by the Germans to restore Laval to power and to get rid of Darlan. However illusory his power had been before, the marshal was now called upon to underwrite, with his own waning prestige, almost anything that Laval might decide to do in his name.

To France, in June 1942, came Gauleiter Sauckel, whose job was the recruitment of millions of workers from the occupied countries to man the industries of the Reich. Sauckel made immediate demands on Laval for 350,000 workers. He said, in effect, provide them or we take them. The month before, in Alsace-Lorraine, the Germans had imposed the miseries of forced labor upon the population. It was not long before all France would suffer in the same way.

Laval tried to delay the inevitable. He introduced the Relève. Sauckel agreed to it. The idea was that to encourage French workers to go to Germany, one French prisoner of war should be repatriated for every three workers who left the country. (Germany had made no more than a token release of prisoners. There were still some one and a half million Frenchmen in camps in Germany. Perhaps more than any other one factor, this breach of faith engendered bitterness and hatred against the Germans.)

Whether it was that they did not believe in Laval, or Pétain, or the New Europe, or “Socialism,” or in the likelihood of the Germans honoring the Relève, the workers of France did not respond enthusiastically. Instead of the 350,000 Sauckel had demanded, by the end of August only some 50,000 had left for Germany. The German threats to use compulsion became much louder. Within a very few months they were to overcome the impediment of relying only on “volunteers.”

That part of the French press which continued to be published with the approval of the German occupying force and the Vichy regime was reduced to shameful puppetry. The official newspapers peddled the falsehoods of the Germans in Paris and of Laval in Vichy. They propagated whatever poisonous doctrine was handed to them: the Germans are winning the war....All members of the Resistance are Communists....All Gaullists are traitors....

But the French people could hear the B.B.C. They could hear the voices of the Free French from London. And, as General de Gaulle has written in his memoirs, “by miracles of ingenuity the secret newspapers were regularly supplied with paper, composed, printed and circulated.”

Less than two years before, the clandestine press had been no more than strictly local efforts, duplicated typescripts of the crudest kind, or even handwritten, like the letters of General Cochet. But those earliest, spontaneous productions had been a manifestation of the same spirit of resistance which was to express itself so much more boldly, more eloquently, and more professionally now. Just as many of us had helped to supply General Cochet with the materials he needed to print his letters, and to give them wider circulation hi those early days, so, as the war went on, such papers as Franc-Tireur, Combat, Résistance, and Défence de la France became highly organized productions. Printers, employed on official work by day, turned over their linotypes and their presses by night to the Resistance. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the clandestine publications were distributed. They were all the more precious because they could not be bought at the bookstalls. They expressed the thoughts that a man might fear to speak aloud; they assured him that, far from being alone, he was one of an already large “army,” which was growing every day. They gave cohesion to the idea of resistance. They were the cement that bound together the individual units of the Resistance.

Although, in 1942, outside of Alsace-Lorraine, there was no compulsion as yet upon workers to go to Germany, the pressure was often heavy. There were simple ways in factories of “persuading” a young man to “volunteer” for work in Germany: threats could be effective enough without the force of law behind them. It was in direct reaction to this pressure that the maquis started. They started in a small way, a few young men banding together and taking to the woods. (The word “maquis” is used to describe the brushland of Corsica, where outlaws conceal themselves.) These maquisards lived in the woods, emerging only to collect food. In those days their groups were of ideal size—ten, a dozen, fifteen, not more. Men from the east, fleeing from German repression, moved into the free zone and set up maquis groups. Jewish refugees from the north stayed in the villages, on the whole, with their families, but they were usually people on whom the maquis, or the Resistance, could call for help.

During 1942 also there was a significant change in the attitude of those sections of the Resistance directly inspired by de Gaulle. For the first eighteen months or so after the armistice, the Free French agents and réseaux had concentrated on Intelligence work. As my brother Peter had discovered in his “rounds” in London, the Free French had not wished to commit themselves to “active” resistance in France at first. Now the mood began to change. I suspect that the leaders were forced into more positive action by the rank and file who were impatient for orders to hit at the Germans in a way that would be more immediately appreciated by the enemy—and would give a greater satisfaction to the men themselves. Brave leaders like Jean Moulin and Pierre Brossolette gave their services—and in the end their lives—to the Gaullist cause. They escaped to England and returned to France to organize Free French Resistance réseaux.

Many men who had joined the politically inspired “movements” as an initial gesture of resistance after the fall of France now sought more belligerent means of expressing their feelings. They offered their service to the groups dedicated to “action,” whether nominally “British” or “Gaullist.”

The distinctions which were drawn in London—and which have persisted in books written since, with a great deal of malevolence-were scarcely apparent in the field. The political, diplomatic, and international conflicts, which festered in London, Algiers, and Washington, had little relevance for us in France. It was a misfortune that Churchill, Roosevelt, and de Gaulle did not see eye to eye, only because their disagreements at the highest political level were reflected in unnecessary duplications and confusions in the field. But beyond that, in so far as we were aware of these squabbles at all, our only concern was whether a man was “for us or against us.” I have no doubt that General de Gaulle, in his hypersensitive concern for the niceties of protocol, in his proper insistence on being consulted about plans that concerned France, had a long-term regard for the protection of French interests. Dealing in particular with a man like Roosevelt, with his grandiose vision of a post-war Europe in which national sovereignty would count for nothing and America would provide us with the wisdom and leadership he considered we lacked, it was desirable that de Gaulle should insist, however stubbornly, on the voice of Free France being heard.

But in France itself it was almost an accident that one man should be working directly with de Gaulle, another with S.O.E., a third with a little group formed around an individual who felt the need to express “resistance” in the way that most immediately offered itself.

It was, in a sense, an accident that my brothers and I were responsible to an organization set up by the British Government. Had the Free French in London responded to Peter de Vomécourt’s first suggestions for a fifth column in France, we should have been organizing and leading Gaullist réseaux. As it was, the British were the first to appreciate the potential value of a militant Resistance, and so we offered our services to them and, in return, were happy to know that from London we should receive the help we needed to do our work. The people of France needed that help; it mattered little to them whence it came.

In France, the “chefs” of the S.O.E. réseaux often came into contact with those of de Gaulle and the movements. We did not squander our energies on petty jealousies about which organization we were working for. We asked one another what we were trying to do and, if it were possible to help one another, we did so. The important thing was that we shared a common objective: the defeat and the ousting of the Germans. A man’s nationality did not matter, whether it was French, British, Polish, Spanish, so long as he was working for the Allies and the common cause. We cared little for the man who measured his contribution by the number of recruits to his particular group. What mattered was that a man who sought action should be given an opportunity to find it. The British réseaux were fortunate in that we received most of the arms and materials that were dropped into France—certainly this was true for the first three years after the fall of France. But if a Gaullist réseau needed explosives for an operation, we did not refuse them. Jealousies and petty-mindedness of that kind belong to headquarters and desks and pen pushers, not to men face to face with the common enemy.

The year 1942 was a bad one. Not only did the Resistance suffer savage losses, and the conditions under which the French people were living degenerate still further, but the news of the war against the Axis offered no comfort.

In the east, despite the check his armies had received the previous year when Moscow itself seemed within their reach, Hitler was preparing a new drive aimed at the Caucasus.

At sea, his U-boats inflicted terrible losses on Allied shipping, particularly American. In the Mediterranean, British convoys attempting to reach beleaguered Malta with vital supplies were hammered relentlessly from the air. Rommel tore through Libya and plunged into Egypt. The Japanese followed up their surprise attack on Pearl Habor with success after success, taking them into Burma; India lay ahead of them.

The Russians wanted a “second front” in Europe. The Americans, ignorant as yet of the massive task confronting them, wanted to launch an invasion against the Germans in France during the year. The British said the Allies were not yet strong enough. A “reconnaissance in force,” carried out by 5000 Canadian troops against the port of Dieppe, was a disaster. Historians may say it taught the Allies valuable lessons, but the Canadians were massacred.

Yet 1942 ended as a year of hope. Although the idea of invading Europe had to be postponed, the Allies landed in North Africa. Pétain, twisting and turning, tried to resurrect his honor and return France—as represented by Vichy—to the side of the Allies. It was a brief, pathetic, ineffectual attempt. He was some two and a half years too late in recognizing where his true path should have lain. The Germans overran the free zone. They swarmed into Vichy itself, commandeering houses, hotels, and offices, mocking at Hitler’s promises that the Vichy government should now enjoy the freedom of all France. Laval exploited the situation to snatch all remaining executive power from the marshal, reducing the old man to the status of a futile figurehead. The Germans sought to grab the French fleet at Toulon; Admiral de Laborde gave the order to scuttle the fleet. The French Army of the armistice made no attempt to resist the German invasion of the “free” territory. General de Lattre de Tassigny, alone, offered a token resistance. He was imprisoned.

But the German Occupation of the free zone, nevertheless, helped France. It helped because it ended the illusion of Pétain as a “savior.” Even after suffering the humiliation of seeing the Germans destroy the armistice on which he placed so much value, and the ignominy of surrendering power to Laval, Pétain stayed on. His “protest” against the German action, broadcast before the Germans seized the radio stations, was his last feeble gesture. When he had spoken to the people of France in 1940, the majority had given him their confidence. Now it seemed to them that by hanging on as head of state, stripped of power and dignity, he had betrayed that confidence.

From the eleventh of November, 1942, the French people were reunited in the common misery of Occupation. There was no longer a “privileged class” living in comparative freedom. Until then, there had been a certain amount of friction between the peoples of the two zones. Those already under Occupation felt a natural jealousy of the people in the south, who did not really “understand” what it meant to have German soldiers in their village, their town, their hotels and restaurants. And it was true that those who had escaped Occupation did not fully appreciate its meaning. A lot of them had visited relatives and friends on the other side of the line, but hearing stories was not the same as living them. And there were many in the free zone who now saw German troops for the first time, and were shocked. Only then did they begin to realize the reality of the fall of France, as compatriots in the occupied zone had known it for two and a half years. All this, from the point of view of the Resistance, was to the good.

Vichy had, some months before, agreed to the Germans’ sending in their police, equipped with false French identity cards, to search the free zone for secret radio transmitters, a betrayal which led to arrests in Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulouse. Now the Germans were free to extend their war against the Resistance, throughout France, without the minor inconveniences of a demarcation line and an armistice convention. And within two months they were to have the aid of Darnand’s Militia, more dangerous in their way than the Gestapo, because they were less easily deceived by their own countrymen and were every bit as ruthless in their methods of pursuit and interrogation. If they had any lessons to learn about the committing of atrocities, they showed themselves adept students.

The object of the Militia, created. officially on January 30, 1943, was “the grouping of Frenchmen who are resolved to take an active part in the political, social, economic, intellectual and moral recovery of France.” All recruits were volunteers. They had to be “morally and physically suitable not only to support the new State by their actions, but also to assist in the maintenance of internal order.”

The Militia issued in an era of police terror reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. Almost to a man the miliciens were thugs on the make, exploiting their power for gain—from plunder—or sadistic pleasure. Many of them were convicted criminals.

The physical Occupation of the free zone, however, was not carried out with any strength or thoroughness. The Germans could no longer spare the men for such cushy duties. Most of the troops assigned to the work were elderly and fairly peaceable. They were content, if the French would allow them, to serve out the rest of the war without violence. They were not much of a nuisance, except in so far as they were Germans and they were there at all. But, for me, the German Occupation of the free zone had an immediate and most unwelcome consequence.

About a fortnight before the Germans overran the free zone, I had a visit from the French police at my estate near Limoges. They searched my house, questioned me, and, at the end, asked me to sign a form saying I had agreed to the search and everything was “in order.” I signed the form, and they left.

On the thirteenth of November, two days after the arrival of the Germans, I heard a car coming up the narrow road to my house. I was in a field close by, working with some of my men. I saw the car go by—a police car again. I left my work and went to see what they wanted.

“We have come to search your house,” they said.

“But you searched it when you came last time—only two weeks ago.”

“We must search again.”

“Go ahead. I wish you luck.” They searched and found nothing.

“You must come with us to Limoges.”

“Why?„

“To sign the form saying you agreed to our search.”

“I signed that last time.”

“You must sign another one. But we forgot to bring it with us.” I did not believe a word of this, but realized there was no point in arguing.

I got into the car with them, and we started for Limoges. They put handcuffs on me. I was under arrest. A member of my own réseau, after being arrested, had denounced me.

As we passed the little railway “halt” at Brignac, I held my hands up to the window of the car, showing the handcuffs. The woman who looked after the little station saw me. She understood my message and carried out an arrangement we had made for just such a day.

From that moment onward she left a red flag hanging from her window, unrolled. This was a message to any Resistance men who might arrive by train at Brignac on their way to see me. The flag would tell them that I had been arrested. (The little station at Brignac had seen many secret meetings—in the stationmistress’s kitchen, over a cup of ersatz coffee, while she was discreetly absent.)

At Limoges the police told me why they had arrested me.

“We know the Germans are after you,” they said. “And we think it’s better for you if we arrest you rather than the Germans.”

It was a point of view. But not one I shared.

Chapter Ten

I was taken to the police judiciaire in Limoges for questioning. A grim, gray building, showing its iron-barred windows to the street. Grim things went on there. Before my examination began, I saw in one room a young man called “Kiki” Glasner. He was being interrogated. He was accused of conspiracy to blow up the local headquarters of Darnand’s S.O.L. But he had been picked up before he had had a chance to do any damage.

Others in his group, two men and a girl, had arrived in Limoges before him. They waited on a seat in a big square in the town. One of them must have been carrying the explosives in his pocket and somehow managed to detonate them. At any rate, one man was killed by the explosion. The girl was badly injured, and the other man had his thigh partly torn off and his leg broken. The surviving man and girl were taken by the police. The man with the broken leg was put through a severe interrogation. During the course of it, the policeman questioning him “accidentally” put his hand on the man’s broken leg and moved it about a little. It was an effective form of persuasion. The man finally told the police his group had been expecting another by the evening train from Lyons. A little more “massage” of the broken leg and he gave a detailed description of their comrade. The police went to the station and arrested Kiki Glasner as he left the train from Lyons.

That happened the day before my arrest. When I saw him, he was enduring the torture of the spade, sometimes called “the coal shovel.” It was a well-known aid to interrogation. Kiki was made to kneel on the end of the blade of the shovel. The policeman casually put his foot on the wooden arm of the shovel and pressed on it, so that the blade was forced upward, under Kiki’s kneecap. Anyone who has been kicked under the kneecap will be able to imagine what it is like to have a steel blade digging in underneath it. Kiki was standing up to it very well. His face was twisted with pain, but he had not given in. I saw him for only a few moments. Just long enough to say, “Hang on, try not to tell them anything,” before being taken to the next room.

I was passed on from the police at Limoges to those at Lyons. I was taken by train, handcuffed, to the police judiciaire there. An inspector told me again I was being arrested for my own good, to keep me out of German hands. I was ungrateful: I did not thank him. He told me who had given me away and then showed me photographs of friends who had been arrested in the past.

“Recognize them?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Never saw any of them before.”

“Oh well,” said the inspector, putting out a hand to take the photographs back, “in that case there’s no point in my showing them to you.”

“No, just a minute,” I said. “I’d like to have a look at them. They’re all such handsome-looking chaps. I like looking at photos.” He let me look through them all. Among them were a few I did not know had been picked up. It was potentially useful information.

“Finished?” asked the inspector.

“Yes, thank you. A beautiful collection.”

Then followed a brief stay in a jail used to house prisoners while they waited to be taken before the examining judge. The food was bad, but prisoners were allowed to talk to one another; there was a courtyard for exercise, and through the warders I was able to let my wife and friends know where I was.

When I was taken before the judge, for the first time I heard the list of crimes with which I was charged. I was, over and above all else, accused of association de malfaiteurs—of being an associate of rogues, or, in other words, a gangster. 1 was also charged with possessing a radio, arms, explosives; of having blown up ships; of having intelligence with the enemy....They were just the main headings of a charge sheet that went on for pages. I felt quite flattered. The judge was kind to me in two respects: he committed me to prison in the name of Philippe de Crevoisier (my full name is de Crevoisier de Vomécourt) and he gave association de malfaiteurs as the official reason for committing me. He knew, apparently, as the police had, that the Germans had me on their “wanted” list as “de Vomécourt.” By sending me to jail under a different name and as one accused of associating with rogues—a term usually reserved for non-political criminals—I should escape the notice of the Germans even when they came snooping round the Vichy jails demanding prisoners from the French.

After the first examination by the judge, I was sent in a car, escorted by a police inspector, to the St. Paul’s prison at Lyons. St. Paul’s was a conventional French prison, built of heavy, dirty gray stone, with very high walls. It was circular in shape, with an outer and an inner wall, separated by a wide gap. The walls, thick at the bottom, narrowed and sloped up to a sharp rim, offering no grip to any who attempted to escape that way. (One convict, having scaled the first, inner wall, tired to jump the gap on the outer wall: he crushed his chest.) The pointed wall was more effective than spikes as a deterrent to escape. St. Paul’s was a real prison—meant to keep men in. Guards kept watch inbetween the two walls. And the warders were of a different quality from those in the first prison. Butchers to a man, they looked. I was not agreeably impressed as I saw them for the first time.

A warder opened the door. A big iron door, which banged behind me. I was inside. I was now really in jail.

I was made to stand against a stone pillar and undress. I stripped naked. A warder came and took my clothing, piece by piece. He searched thoroughly, every pocket, every lining. Then he searched me everywhere to see if I was hiding anything on my person. Everywhere. He handed me back my clothes, and I dressed again. He gave me a ticket. The ticket bore the number of the cell to which I had been allotted. It also entitled me to draw one blanket, a tin mug, one spoon, and a sort of bucket for my “soup.” He went through the few possessions I had brought with me and took one or two of them. The others he left, bundling them into a piece of cloth. These I was allowed to carry with me into the prison.

Another warder came to me.

“Follow me,” he said. He led the way to another iron door. He unlocked it; I walked through. He closed it behind us and locked it again. We were now standing at the bottom of three flights of stone stairs. He banged on the bottom step with his keys and shouted upward.

“I’m sending the goods.” I was “the goods.”

“Send the goods,” called another voice from above.

“Walk up,” said the first warder. I walked up two flights of stairs. The other warder, on the second “floor,” was looking over the iron banisters to make sure I arrived safely.

“Good morning,” I said to him. He did not answer.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve never had such service as I’ve had since I’ve been in jail. People walk in front of me, they open the door, they let me go through first, then they close the door behind me. Then there’s another man waiting to do the same thing. I’m not used to it.” He still did not answer. He led the way along the corridor, past cell after cell, until he reached mine. He opened the cell door and pushed me in.

“I’m bringing you a new client,” he said. The cell was intended to house one, or perhaps two prisoners. There were already six in this one. It looked a close fit.

“Good morning,” I said to my cell mates.

“Good morning,” they chorused. Before I had time to take them in individually, I was put in my place.

“You sleep on the floor. You can put your things in that corner. Don’t make any trouble and you’ll be all right.”

There was one bed in the cell. The stench hit me as I walked in. A tin can constituted the sanitary arrangements. Two men were sprawling on the bed. The others littered the floor or propped up the stone walls.

“What’ve you got to eat?”

“Any fags?”

I had brought a little food with me. We shared it. I had no cigarettes; I was a non-smoker. But the food was my introduction.

My cell mates were naturally curious about me. They were all “ordinary” criminals. I was separated from men who were in jail for Resistance work.

“What’s your name?”

“De Crevoisier.”

“What are you in for?”

“Association de malfaiteurs.” A couple of them seemed quite proud. They were common criminals. My incubation suggested I was “one of them,” at the peak of the criminal profession. This suited me, as a camouflage; it pleased them. We got on pretty well together, as well as any seven men cramped into a small, stinking place might get on.

One of them was a pickpocket. Another was a pimp. A third was a hairdresser, a fourth a smelter. There was a man who had worked on the making of roads, and there was an old colonel from the Army. A strange collection of men forced together, by the chance of circumstance. Variously, crime was a habit, a living, a desperate way out, an accident of the times in which we lived: the reasons for our incarceration contrasted as much as life itself, but one thing united us—the fact that we were all in the same cell.

The inactivity of prison life engendered decay. The twenty-minute spells of “exercise” in the courtyard relieved the monotony, but we spent most of our time cooped up in the cell. To combat the boredom I organized cell “debates.” Not debates really, but recitals of our lives. In turn we told our life stories. The others pressed for details. I started telling them stories about my time in Africa after World War I.

“At one time I went to work in Zululand. I was told living was very cheap there, but that it was awful country with fever, wild animals, and so on. A man hired me to help him with his farm. After I’d been there three days he just left me there. ‘There’s the farm,’ he said. ‘We want to put in cotton.’ And off he went. I was eighty miles from the nearest town, and twenty miles from the nearest white man. I didn’t know the native languages. I ran his place for him for almost a year. I did an awful lot of work and got a very good crop. Our agreement was that I’d have my board and lodging, and I’d learn the job.

“I did the best I could for him, keeping the costs down as much as possible, because I knew he was very short of cash. The result was that when he came to see me at the end of the year, there was a nice fat check for him as profit on his crop.

“’Are you going to give me a bonus?’ I asked him.

“‘There was nothing about a bonus in our agreement,” he said.

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least give me the pup I’ve reared for you.’

When I arrived there was a pup just two or three months old. I had trained him.

“’All right,’ he said, ‘that will be five pounds.’

“So, in 1922, I paid five pounds for a pup that was worth about five shillings. And I got out.”

“Don’t blame you,” said the smelter.

“You were a mug,” said the pimp.

“That man knew his business,” said the hairdresser.

“What nationality was he?” asked the old colonel.

“A Scotsman,” I said.

We held our “debates” after lights out. Those conversations in the darkness taught me a lot I did not know about how other people lived, and helped me to endure my confinement.

The professional criminals in the cell were full of contempt for petty thieves.

“Crime has got to be worth-while. It’s got to pay. The man who steals from a shop counter is a fool. If he gets caught, he will be sent to jail for nothing.”

The pickpocket, I discovered, was right at the top of his class. He had never been caught. (He still has not been convicted as a pickpocket, although he is operating in Paris to this day.) When I met him in 1943, he was in jail for quite a different offense. He had loaned his car to a friend, who was caught while using it on a burglary. He was a suave, thin-faced man, capable of considerable eloquence in explaining how he went about his work.

“The difficulty is not the picking of a pocket,” he said. “That’s quite easy.” He proved it to us by filching things from the pockets of warders and from us as well.

“The difficult thing is to know what is in the man’s pocket before you pick it. If you take a man’s wallet which is empty or has very little money in it, you are taking a big risk unnecessarily. You must be sure the job’s going to pay off.

“Before I pick a pocket, I choose my man. I am very careful about it. When I’ve chosen one who looks right, I follow him about, I study his habits, I assess his character and his way of spending money. When I feel sure of my man, I pick his pocket.”

“Are you always right?” I asked.

“Nearly always,” he said. “I’ve got to be. It’s my living. I aim to do no more than one or two ‘takes’ a month. And those ‘takes’ have got to keep me and my family going for a month.”

There was no doubt of his success. Before the war he had a big flat in the most fashionable and expensive part of Paris. He had an opulent-looking car and domestic service. (And he still has all these things.)

We slept and dozed much of the time. There is a saying in France, “The man who sleeps, eats,” which means that sleep itself is a kind of food, a restoring of strength to the body. But the man who eats little, sleeps a lot. The food was abominable, there was just about enough of it to keep us alive. We were always dozing off.

I lost eighteen pounds in the first month, but after that I maintained a fairly steady weight. I never had very much spare flesh on me. Now my figure had la ligne haricot—the shape of a skinny French bean. The fat men suffered most. At one time there was a butcher in the jail for black-market offenses. He must have weighed about seventeen or eighteen stone when he came in. He went down to about ten stone. His great paunch faded away. He had to wrap his trousers round him to keep them on. His coat just hung, flapping from his shoulders. He was a ludicrous and pathetic sight.

At seven in the morning we had “coffee.” One mugful of a black, warmish liquid. Then we were given half a loaf of bread, a piece about the size of your hand. The bread was what the French call complet—it had everything in it. It was a bit stodgy; it smelled; it went rancid if you tried to keep it. But it was edible and, as there was nothing else, we ate it. At lunchtime there was soup. Sometimes with a bean or two floating in it. For a period the soup was made of celery. The smell of large amounts of overcooked celery is nauseating. It took a great effort to swallow it. But usually the soup was clear, very, very clear. Once or twice we tried to thicken it with straw from the mattress, chopped into small pieces we called “cornflakes.” It made a wonderful-looking porridge, but straw soup was not to my taste. Nor was it nourishing. Twice a week there was a lump of meat as well as the soup. At least it was called meat. It lasted for a long time—-chew, chew, chew, like gum. It might have been worse. In the evening, another ration of soup.

If this diet was barely sufficient to keep us going, the man who ate less than his ration was committing suicide. There were some who did. They were men with an incurable desire for cigarettes. They swopped half their ration of bread, or even their whole ration, for one cigarette. I worked out how long a man who regularly traded his bread for a smoke could survive. Elderly men lasted just over a month; younger men less than a month. They knew they were slowly dying of starvation, yet they went on sacrificing their food for cigarettes.

I was lucky. I received food from outside. If a parcel came to the prison from what had been the free zone, it could not be more than three kilos because it had to be sent by post. A parcel, coming by rail from the former occupied zone, could weigh up to ten kilos. My wife used to make up ten-kilo parcels, send them to her sister in Paris, who repacked them and sent them by rail to me. So each week I had an extra ten kilos of food: a big five-kilo loaf was always the main item. In addition, there were any odds and ends my wife could pick up, such as jams or honey.

In my cell we pooled all food that came in from outside. When the parcels arrived, they were put away and rationed out each day. The extra kilo or so a day that we had from my wife’s parcels helped a lot.

In prison the big topic of discussion is always the same. “Do you know what I’m going to have to eat when I get out?” it begins. It is natural. To imagine an abundance of good, appetizing food is one luxury the prison authorities cannot deny you. But it is a luxury to be indulged in sparingly. The stomach secretes juices in reaction to talk about food to be eaten. When the stomach is empty and can add nothing to those juices, they lay on the stomach and ferment.

The sanitary arrangements at St. Paul’s were extremely primitive. Just the tin can in the corner of the cell. When it was full, it had to be carried away to be emptied. Sometimes the warder refused to let us empty it. Then the already hideous stench became worse than ever. People walking by in the street outside the prison could smell it. Inside the cell, men became giddy from the stench and the lack of air. Some of them made use of this. A man sat on the bed, put his head between his knees, and then raised his head quickly. He fainted. He could pass out for half an hour on end. Some men did it as a pleasure. That was not very good for health either.

I expanded my acquaintance in the prison during the twenty minutes we were allowed for exercise in the prison courtyard. The iron doors clanged open and we trudged down the stone stairs, our footsteps echoing, into the blessed air. I was able to meet one young man who was walking in a spacious courtyard. Long chains were attached to his hands and feet. He was a murderer from his condemned cell. He was allowed into the courtyard whenever he felt like it, escorted the whole time by a warder. The man’s detachment was extraordinary. He had butchered his mother and his grandmother. He was not reckoned insane, yet he talked about his family, about his mother and grandmother, quite naturally, as though they were still alive. He had been condemned to death, yet he showed no awareness of the imminence of death. He even talked about what he was going to do with his life in the future.

There was an elderly man, an old “lag,” who used prison as his winter home. He was a vagabond. He had spent some thirty years of his life in jail in short stretches. Under French law a man convicted of certain small crimes can ask for his sentence to be postponed. He is allowed to suggest the date on which he is to be put in jail. The old vagabond arranged things so that he would spend his winters in jail. There he could be fairly warm and reasonably well looked after. If winter were approaching and he had no jail sentence to look forward to, he would just smash a window and wait for arrest. And if the judge gave him only a one-month sentence and he wished to spend three months in prison, he would merely insult the judge so that his sentence was increased.

“But things aren’t what they used to be,” he said. “The jails nowadays aren’t as good as they were before the war. The warders are not so pleasant—not such a good class of chap. The cells are overcrowded. The food is bad. I don’t know whether I shall come back next year.”

As soon as I arrived in jail, I reported to the infirmary. I had a bad ankle that needed treatment. I had hurt it before my arrest; a few “accidental” kicks by the police and lack of food had produced a large festering swelling there. The infirmary staff thought little of it.

“Nothing much wrong with that. A drop of iodine and a bandage round it and you’ll be all right. Come back next week, and we’ll look at it again.”

The next morning my ankle was worse. There was pus coming from it, which had soaked out through the bandage. I removed the bandage and limped to the infirmary again.

“Where’s your bandage?” I was asked.

“I’ve taken it off.”

“You should have left it on.”

“It was no good leaving it on in that condition. I’ve put a handkerchief round it.”

“That’s not the point. You’ve no right to take the bandage off.”

“Why not?”

“Because you could hang yourself with a bandage.”

“Well, I’m not likely to hang myself with a hankie, so don’t worry.” Reluctantly, they treated the ankle again, and from then onward I went to the infirmary every second day. The mercury ointment they used was ineffective, and the ankle became worse the whole time I was there. But it gave me an excuse to go to the infirmary.

It was a dark, forbidding place, with bare walls and unpleasant smells, but it was a sort of meeting place for a chat. Prisoners reporting sick were supposed to line up, their faces to the walls, and not talk. But whispers were possible if the warder was not looking. If he heard, he gave you a smart crack across the head with anything that came to his hand. But some of them turned a deaf ear to the whispers or contented themselves with a “shut up.” Another rule was “keep your place in the line.” But, in practice, we changed places with one another to vary the conversation.

“What the hell are you in for—black market?”

“Yes.”

“Are you one of the crowd?” A dozen or so butchers had been brought in at the same time for black-market offenses.

“No, I’m not one of the crowd,” said this young man. He had just arrived at the jail. He was still dressed in his butcher’s blue and white striped blouse. He was to be examined at the infirmary before entering the prison proper. “I’m in by myself,” he said.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “What for?”

“Abattage clandestin,” he said. Illegal slaughter. Butchers evading the regulations were often charged with this offense.

“Oh yes,” I said.

“Yes. I killed a boniche (a maid).”

“What?”

“I killed a boniche,” he repeated. Abattage clandestin, indeed. He had had a row with a girl working as a maid. He had murdered her with his butcher’s knife. He was later sentenced to death and executed.

On the days I was taken to the court for further examination by the judge—along with others arrested from my réseau—I had an early-morning call to give me time for a shave and an extra wash.

Then at eight o’clock all those going to the court were herded downstairs, where they waited again. Prison life was long periods of waiting, broken by occasional spasms of activity. A long wait for the Black Maria which was to take us to court. Like the prison itself, the Black Maria was overcrowded. A Black Maria is divided into small cells, and, theoretically, there is one cell for each man. But now three men were crammed into each cell, and others were left standing in the narrow passage between the cells on each side of the vehicle. We were taken in handcuffs to the court. There, in one small, hot, nasty cell, we waited again. We arrived at the court sometime between nine and ten o’clock. It was just three o’clock before the judge was ready to see us.

Then, at last, after a series of preliminary examinations by the judge, came the day of sentence. Some nine of us from my réseau were taken to the court at the same time.

As Philippe de Crevoisier, found guilty of association de malfaiteurs, I was sentenced to ten years’ hard labor. I thanked the judge and went back in the Black Maria to St. Paul’s prison, Lyons, to begin to serve my time.

Chapter Eleven

Once a fortnight I was allowed to see my wife for twenty minutes. I looked forward to those brief meetings; they helped to sustain me for the rest of the time. But we met under hideous conditions.

Like everything else in the prison, the parlois was overcrowded. Visiting day reminded me of a zoo, or a circus: we were the animals. In the parlois the convict went to a small cell, with wire netting in front of it. Opposite him, some four or five feet away, in a similar cell, with wire netting in front of her, stood his wife. The theory was that they should talk to each other through the double wire netting and across the space separating them—a passageway, in effect, where a warder walked up and down. On each side there were seventeen cells. In each cell, because of the overcrowding, there were three men and three women, plus some children. Some fifty men shouting at fifty wives across a gap of five feet, accompanied by the screams of children, created a terrible noise. No one talked. Conversation started at shouting level; developed into a yelling and screaming.

But we got used to the noise. The wives got used to it and invented ways of “speaking”: writing with big letters on a piece of paper and holding it in front of them; screaming in a particular way; waiting for the very occasional lull in the din to speak a couple of words. But it was never less than a painful degrading business.

My wife had to come 250 miles from Limoges to Lyons to see me for twenty minutes. It was a terrible journey in those days. She left home on the afternoon of one day and did not get to Lyons until the following midday. Then she had to queue up, sometimes for hours, to get into the jail. Each wife was checked as she came in. Then after the frustrating twenty minutes of gestures and shouts, she had to wait hours again to be checked out. And, after that, the long journey back home. In all, her visits took her more than three days of traveling and waiting.

Although, before my arrest, I had often been away from home, I had been able to continue the running of my estate. Now my wife had to take on that responsibility as well as looking after our seven children. There were also the people living with us at Bas Soleil to care for. At the time of my arrest my wife’s sister and her children were there. Later, another sister and her family came to stay. While we were a great deal better off than a lot of other people, it was a hard life for her.

Twice a week she had to cycle the four miles into Saint-Léonard to do her shopping, with one of the children riding on the back of the bike. We had already started making our own bread again—all the farms in that part of France had baking ovens. My wife started to rear chickens and planted vegetables. They did fairly well for food—certainly compared with the people in the towns. My wife coped with all our affairs and the children just as courageously and efficiently as I would have expected. I think she worried much more about the missing husband than about her new responsibilities.

I asked her to bring the children to see me in prison. She brought them one at a time. All of them, except the seventh, who was too young, visited me. I was glad they saw me as a jailbird, with cropped hair and sack-like uniform. I wanted them to know that I had fought against the Germans, even if the Germans were finally to win the war. I wanted them to know I had acted on my beliefs, that I had done what I knew was right.

This knowledge was a great source of strength. It made all that happened in prison tolerable. It is a partial explanation of the extraordinary fortitude displayed by men and women of the Resistance after capture, whether they were relatively lucky, as I was, and endured hardship and unpleasantness, or whether they were tortured and put to death. We had decided what it was we had to do, not as an act of bravado, but after a proper examination of our responsibilities. We recognized from the start that the odds were against survival. We had to expect to be imprisoned, or even to face the firing squad. There was no cause for resentment or despair. It was a fair price to pay for doing what was, for us, the right thing.

The quality possessed by all who suffered, yet endured, and remained true to themselves and their comrades was moral stamina. It was more common in the older men than the young ones. The older ones were less prone to despondency, and they resisted death itself longer. They had something to fall back on which the younger men so often lacked. What it was is not easy to define. Certainly they had an inner peace which sustained them when the body hungered or suffered. But what was the source of that inner calm? It was their attachment to an ideal. Religious belief seemed nearly always to help. But a man could be irreligious and yet possess this idealism, which had expressed itself in the Resistance. The man who dodged his responsibilities, who put cotton wool in his ears when he heard the call of duty, had no moral strength when the test came. I make no apology for using old-fashioned words like “duty,” “responsibility,” or “right.” I believe in those things, and I have tried in my life to meet their demands. In prison, I saw a demonstration of their value. The morally fit were also the stronger physically. They not only had a spiritual reserve on which to fall back; they could also live in peace with themselves.

I enjoyed the companionship of the old colonel in my cell. He had been convicted of the technical embezzlement of army funds. It was really no more than a breach of army regulations; he had made no money for himself. As there were no longer any military courts, he had been tried before a civilian one and sent to a civilian prison.

The old colonel and I found a way of “escaping” from our cell. We “walked” the streets of Paris. He had lived in Paris a long time and had a good memory. We reconstructed the great streets of the capital in our imagination, “building” the houses, shops, and offices, recalling the colors, the window displays, pausing here and there to discuss the relative qualities of the goods on sale, to reminisce over old purchases. Hours passed in which our imaginations, absorbed in the task, transcended the squalid conditions in which we found ourselves. Arguments were continued in whispers in the courtyard when we asked the opinions of other prisoners; more often than not, that spread the argument rather than ended it, but it was pursued with an intensity and enthusiasm that dissolved the iron bars and the grim, gray walls.

But we were not content to “escape” only in imagination. Hardly a day went by without discussion of how we could really escape.

One man planned an escape in which the wives, visiting the prisoners, would help. At a signal, all the women were to rush the warders, and this man, with a crowd of convicts, would rush them at the same time. The idea had possibilities; fifty women, many of them pretty hefty, could have made a formidable assault on the warders. It might have worked. But it was talked about too long and too much. As happened so often in jail, a warder heard some talk that gave him a hint of the plan, and little by little the prison authorities learned all about it. From then on, the guards were doubled and all the women were searched before they were allowed into the prison.

There was one rather privileged prisoner in St. Paul’s in 1942—General de Lattre de Tassigny. He had been imprisoned for his gesture of protest against the German Occupation of the free zone. Now he had a room to himself.

Through the prison priest, who took out messages for me—a few months later the Germans accused him of helping prisoners to escape and shot him—I made contact with agents from London. I was asked to see de Lattre de Tassigny and to prepare an escape for him.

I fixed it with one of the warders, so that I could go to de Lattre’s room. I told the general the escape plan we had worked out for him.

“Two days from now,” I said, “at ten o’clock at night. You will have no trouble. The special policeman outside your door will not be there—we shall have dealt with him. Walk straight out of your room, down the stairs, turn right, and then downstairs again. At the bottom you will find a closed door. This leads into St. Joseph’s—the women’s prison next door. Just push the door. A woman warder will be waiting for you. She will take you along the corridor to a small door opening onto the street. In the street two policemen will be waiting. As soon as you come out of the door they will give the signal to a car. The car will take you to any safe house you know in Lyons. If you do not know one, we can provide one for you. Within three days, a Lysander will pick you up and take you back to London.”

It was a good plan, organized down to the last detail. Money had smoothed the way. But de Lattre was not ready to escape. He said he would have liked to escape, but the timing was not convenient for him. He did not say why, and I did not press him for an explanation. It was for him to decide whether he wished to escape. His reason may have been political. I represented the British, although so far as I was concerned the only objective was to enable a French general, who was known to oppose Vichy, to join de Gaulle in London. Later, with the help of Free French agents, de Lattre made a good escape from another prison and gave distinguished service in the Free French cause.

Plans for my own escape from St. Paul’s had to be abandoned when I was included in a batch of prisoners transferred from the jail at Lyons to the convict station of Eysse, near Toulouse.

During 1943, while I was in prison, hopes of a German defeat, nourished defiantly, irrationally, began to be fulfilled. The Allied offensive in Egypt and the invasion of North Africa reaped rich success. Rommel was defeated in the desert; Tunisia was liberated; Sicily was taken and Italy invaded. The Italians capitulated; Mussolini was rejected. On the Russian front, after their deep penetrations the previous year, the Germans were first halted and then driven back. The siege of Leningrad was raised; Marshal von Paulus, some score of German generals, and nearly 100,000 soldiers surrendered outside Stalingrad. Step by step, island by island, the Japanese retreated. The global encounter was savage, bloody, and tenacious, but the Allies had turned at last from the defensive. Increasingly, the weight of men, machines, and mighty resources taught the Axis powers the lessons of defeat and humiliation.

As an occupied country, France paid the price of Allied success. She suffered more and more from the raids of British and American bombers. She endured harsher privations as the Germans sucked the country dry of food and man power. Thousands of babies died from undernourishment; the incidence of tuberculosis soared; a ubiquitous lethargy fell upon the people. They cried, they shivered, and they hungered. The Germans dispensed with the frustrations of political tact. Laval’s Relève and the appeals for voluntary labor failed, and now the Germans demanded. Hitler gave Gauleiter Sauckel the authority to use any coercion to provide the workers needed to man the industries of the Reich. In February 1943 the Vichy government instituted the Service du Travail Obligatoire—forced labor. The result of Sauckel’s cumulative demands, from his arrival in France the year before, was that by the spring of 1943 some half a million French men and women had been sent to Germany. Laval formally co-operated with Sauckel, employing largely ineffectual means to delay the inevitable, until October. Then the Vichy government suspended the order authorizing forced labor. From that time, the Germans seized the men and women they needed.

If there had been any bridle upon the “terror” before 1943, it was swept away now. In Paris the Gestapo indulged their days and nights in the relentless, diabolical torture of the Resistance. The screams of those in agony could be heard in the streets and neighboring houses. The Jews were rounded up systematically for eventual extermination. Children were torn from their parents, not to be spared, but only to meet their death after the additional pain of separation. There was no longer any distinction between Jews in the south—or what had been the free zone—and those in the north. They shared a common fate. Incarceration, deportation, extermination. If it was not the Gestapo, or the S.S., it was the Militia, working and slaughtering for Germany.

Whatever the misgivings, by now, of Pétain, and whatever the evasions, ultimately futile, he adopted to try to thwart the Germans, Vichy was irredeemably under German domination, and the reputations of those who served the collaborationist government, however devious their motives, were blotted forever. Vichy had ceased to wield influence with the majority of French people—even though crowds still rallied to the occasional presence of the old marshal, now nearing ninety. By continuing to exist, Vichy merely gave apparent sanction to German atrocities.

The consequence of ever more violent repression, and of increasingly evident Allied superiority, was an increasing violence and audacity on the part of the Resistance. Executions of active pro-Germans and ultra-zealous Vichyists were solemnly ordered and carried out. Warnings in the shape of miniature coffins were pushed through letter boxes. Maquis groups multiplied—not only those formed by young men fleeing from forced labor but also, on a large scale, by the Free French. Sometimes, in my opinion, on much too large a scale. To the end, the ideal maquis was some twenty men or even fewer. The groups now recruited by the Gaullists ran to hundreds. They were unwieldy; they exposed themselves to mass attack by the Germans; they invited traitors into their midsts. But they were symptomatic of France divided, and vengeful.

De Gaulle’s “secret army” was rapidly becoming a reality. The air was fevered with rumors of an imminent Allied invasion of France. Hooligans exploited the situation, calling themselves maquisards to rob and vandalize, thus giving some credence to persistent German propaganda against the Resistance as “terrorists” and “Communists.” But with the fading of respect for the “legitimacy” of Vichy, and the banding together of the major Free French “movements” in the National Council of the Resistance—sponsored by de Gaulle in Algiers—the “smear” had less and less influence. Hooliganism was an unfortunate and inevitable outcrop. But it was confined to a minority and, as part of the total scene, irrelevant. The rabble that used the name of the Resistance to commit crimes and settle private hatreds were an impediment to the Resistance, nothing more. Rats infest any ravaged city. Now these human rats infested a France ravaged by civil war. But such vermin could not poison the idealism of the Resistance, to which millions of ordinary French people now turned as the voice and example of the real France.

The daily publication in the puppet newspapers of executions of members of the Resistance, and the savage penalties imposed upon any found aiding the Underground, could not deter the people now that they had been relieved of their last doubts about their duty. And the efforts of certain Vichy extremists to recruit units to fight for the Germans proved abortive.

During 1943, the build-up of Resistance groups attached to Special Operations Executive in London continued. In the course of the year, nearly 400 parachute operations were carried out. The réseaux were fed with hundreds of tons of arms and materials for carrying out the sabotage of factories, shipping, railways, arms and petrol dumps, and for direct action against the German forces. No fewer than 120 aircraft were placed at the disposal of the organization in London. If the Allied advance had not yet reached France, the Resistance was very much part of the total war now being waged.

American aid to the Resistance was now stepped up. O.S.S.—Office of Strategic Services, the American counterpart of S.O.E.—was responsible for the three missions, each carried out by some 300 planes, which parachuted arms and materials to the Resistance in Savoie on June 25, July 14, and August 20, 1943. American agents were dropped into France; their role was identical to that of the men and women of many nationalities who had preceded them.¹

But let there be no mistake about the kind of country into which these men were parachuted. Or of the fate that awaited them if captured. In the first year or two there may have been very occasional demonstrations of old-fashioned chivalry on the part of individual Germans—not Gestapo or S.S., of course—toward those they caught. By 1943, no member of the Resistance, whether an agent parachuted into the country or a woman offering a safe house, expected or received anything but the worst. Of thousands of stories that could be told, let one example suffice.

Jacques was a radio operator. He dropped into France in 1943 and enjoyed his freedom for only a few weeks before he was picked up near Moulins. He was taken to the Gestapo at Clermont-Ferrand. He was tied up and beaten. The Gestapo went about their business in their familiar manner. They wanted his code so that they could take his place and also intercept messages to the Resistance. When crude slugging and kicking proved ineffective, they turned to more appalling forms of torture. They held a flame in front of his right eye, poking at it with a steel bar. Still he told them nothing. Lunchtime arrived and, like office workers putting aside their papers for the break, the Gestapo secured Jacques with handcuffs to a chair and went downstairs to eat.

He was imprisoned in a room on the second floor. He was left in agony, having lost the sight of his eye. But he writhed and strained to get free and managed to break the chair to which he had been bound.

He went to the window. With the sight remaining to him, he assessed the prospects of escape. It was difficult enough, but what worse could happen to him if he were caught trying to escape? Still handcuffed, he clambered out of the window and fell onto a small roof below. His fall made a loud noise. They must have heard me, he thought. They’ll get me again. His limbs shaking, he ran along a wall and from there jumped into the street below. With his handcuffed hands held in front of him, he stumbled.

The Germans had heard him. They ran out of the house. He regained his balance and ran ahead of them, up the street, and took the first side turning to the right. He saw a man walking toward him. His wits still served him well.

“Don’t say anything,” he said to the man. He put up his two hands, chained together, removed the man’s hat, put it on his own head, and strolled slowly on his way.

When the Germans turned the same corner, they saw two men. One was walking toward them, another walking casually away from them with a hat on his head. The deception succeeded. The Gestapo tried the next turning. They saw a man just rounding the corner. They pursued him. By the time they caught up with him, they discovered he was not their man. Meanwhile, Jacques had turned right, then left, and into hiding in a back yard.

At nightfall, Jacques, still in great pain and fearful of every movement in the streets, left his hiding place and put distance between himself and the small town with its Gestapo headquarters. He went into the country, where he took what vegetables he could from the fields; they gave small satisfaction, but they did a little to appease his hunger. He slept in the woods that night and kept as close to them as possible during the following morning as he walked on, away from the Gestapo.

He was some thirty miles away from his torturers when he felt he must stop and take a chance. He was ravenous, and he had to get rid of his handcuffs. He made for the road in the hope of seeing someone who would help him.

The road was fringed by trees. He sat in the cover of the trees, but left himself in sight of anyone passing. “The first person who comes along the road will do,” he said to himself. “I’ll stop him and show him the state I’m in and ask him to help me. I must.”

An old man came into sight.

“His face is a bit thin,” Jacques said to himself. “Doesn’t look quite honest to me. He might be a traitor. He might give me away.” He watched the old man go by. He waited. He saw another man coming along, trudging slowly toward him in heavy peasant boots.

“Too fat,” Jacques thought. “Wouldn’t understand. He’d be afraid. Dangerous.” A third man was too well-dressed, a fourth had the kind of narrow eyes that Jacques had always distrusted. Or so he told himself. And who could blame him? He must take a chance to save himself, and yet if he picked the wrong man he would be back to the torture again. At least, for the moment, starving, handcuffed, in pain, he was free. The whole of that day passed, with Jacques examining everyone who passed and dismissing each man as untrustworthy. The mental torture was almost as bad as the physical torture of the Gestapo. His hands trembled, his heart thumped. He fainted.

When he woke up, he knew he must take a chance, no matter what the consequences.

“I must do something,” he said to himself. “I’ll die if I stay here like this, anyway.” He saw a man approaching on a bicycle. Jacques left the cover of the trees and stepped into the road. The man needed no call to stop. Jacques was covered with dirt and blood. His eye was a ghastly sight. He held his handcuffs in front of him.

“Look at me,” said Jacques. “Look at the mess I’m in. Please, can you do something for me, can you help me, please?”

“I’m just the blacksmith,” said the man, getting off his bike. “I can’t take you into the village looking like that. But I’ll help you. Just sit there for a bit, and I’ll go back and fetch another bike. Then we’ll ride to my place, and I’ll fix you up.” The blacksmith remounted and rode off. Jacques sat down to wait again. He waited and waited, his fear quickly taking control of him.

“Is he really going to bring a bike for me, or is he going to fetch the police? The Gestapo will come again. Then....” His imagination needed no stimulus to feel again the flame before his eye. He was never to forget his torture at the hands of the Gestapo.

“I’m sure that at this moment he’s giving me away. He had that sort of glint in his eye....Fool. Now I’m being melodramatic. He’s probably doing just what he said he’d do. He’ll be back—he looked honest enough, really, didn’t he?...No, I’m sure I was a fool to trust him, I must get away from here.”

He stood up. He sat down again. He went through all the torture of imagining the man betraying him, of the Gestapo taking him back to that room once more, of the flame approaching his eye. He tried to start walking again.

“No, it’s no good. I can’t. I can’t. If they come, they come. I can’t walk any farther. I’ve got to trust him. I can trust him, I’m sure I can. I had a good look at his face. A pleasant sort of man. A jolly man. He can’t give me away. He mustn’t give me away. He shan’t give me away....” For one hour, the anguish and self-torture continued.

Jacques was face to face with the kind of fear that others would never be able to imagine. Those of us who escaped the kind of torture and extremities of fear that he experienced can only be thankful. Any who survived the war without that kind of experience should be thankful to those who suffered for them. I want to try to show what absolute terror possessed Jacques as he waited there by the roadside. And yet he stayed, just as he had refused to submit to the Gestapo.

He waited for one whole hour, an hour in which he lived through more sensations of fear than most men know in their whole lives. Then he saw the blacksmith returning with two bicycles. Jacques stood up. He was trembling.

“What’s the matter, man? What on earth is the matter?” The blacksmith grinned as he spoke.

“I was scared,” said Jacques. Brave men who are afraid do not mind admitting it. “I was frightened—frightened to death. I thought you might be betraying me.”

The blacksmith was a good man, a man of heart. He understood at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize. If I’d thought, I’d have put you on the bicycle and I’d have walked along the road with you. I’m sorry. I just didn’t think. You’ll be all right now. You come home with me.”

Jacques mounted the second bicycle, and they rode together into the village. Jacques gripped the middle of the handle bars as well as the handcuffs would allow him. As soon as they got to the blacksmith’s shop, the blacksmith set about breaking the handcuffs. (Handcuffs can only be broken; they cannot be sawn.) The “operation” gave Jacques some small pain, as the cuffs bit into his wrists. But the pain was nothing beside the relief of losing the handcuffs and of knowing that he had found safety. Both Jacques and the blacksmith kept pieces of the handcuffs as souvenirs.

The blacksmith and his wife looked after the radio operator until he had recovered his nerve and the cuts and bruises on his body healed. But the sight in his right eye had gone forever.

After a week or so, Jacques felt strong enough to move on. He joined the local maquis and, through them, made contact with London. He asked for instructions.

“Escape through the Pyrenees and come back to England,” London ordered him. Jacques refused at first. He said he wanted to stay in France and continue his work. But London insisted on his return. He had a hard and difficult time getting through the Pyrenees, but in the end he reached London. Eight months later he dropped into France once more; the authorities in London were against his return, but he insisted. He came back and worked again as a radio operator for the Resistance. Can one imagine that sort of courage?

After his return, he always carried a revolver.

“If I’m ever in danger of arrest another time,” he said, “I’ll fight it out. And if I can’t fight it out, I’ll shoot myself. I’m not going through that again.”

The old Marquis de Moustier, who had worked with both my brothers and me, was also arrested in 1943. He was a very old man, but first the Gestapo, and then the guards at the concentration camp, tortured and beat him. He withstood it all. He possessed a peace of mind that sustained him against all physical suffering and privations. He enraged his captors by refusing to take them or their brutalities seriously. He was secure within himself, and it seemed as though what happened to his flesh was happening to some unimportant animal carcass. It had nothing to do with him, as a person, as a soul. This ability to transcend pain kept him alive for long years. But in the end he died of starvation in a D.P. camp.

Luck and bad luck, irrespective of personal behavior, were constant factors affecting the fate of individuals throughout the war.

In 1943, an American pilot was picked up by a farm laborer, on his way home, near Saint-Quentin, in North France. He was taken to a safe house and cared for, but he had only a boiler suit over his uniform and still wore his flying boots. His helpers decided to take him into Saint-Quentin, in the hope of finding him some less conspicuous boots there, and put him on an escape route.

He set off in an open truck, with two men sitting beside him in the cab. The truck was running on wood gas. It was going quite well, until, close to the edge of the town, at the foot of a hill, it conked out. The place where the truck stopped was just outside a German barracks. The American and one of the Frenchmen got out to try pushing the truck up the hill. Two Germans, who watched them for a while, offered their help. The Frenchmen accepted thankfully.

The two Germans stood shoulder to shoulder with the American pilot, pushing the car. The American looked less than well. He felt as though his boots were the boots of a giant. If the Germans were to glance down and see them...Who are you? What are you? Where are you going? But the Germans went on pushing. They all huffed and shoved together—the Frenchman, the American, and the two Germans. And they pushed the truck right to the top of the hill.

Everyone shook hands. The Frenchmen thanked the German soldiers.

“Very kind...thank you...couldn’t have managed without you....” The happiest of them all, as the truck chugged away, was, of course, the American. Boots were found for him, and he made his escape from France. No doubt he still believes in luck. He ought to.

Chapter Twelve

Some 200 of us from St. Paul’s prison were dispatched, in July 1943, by train to the Centrale Eysse prison in the Lot-et-Garonne. We left Lyons at about midnight, chained, two by two, by hand and foot. I felt like a child in a three-legged race. The chains on the feet were short, and it was difficult to walk fast or well. I was chained to an old man, who had trouble with his walking anyway. He grunted and huffed as we shuffled along.

A special train, its third-class compartments fitted with barred windows, took us on a roundabout route to Eysse, picking up more convicts at each stop and going as far as Marseilles before heading westward to our new home. By the time we got to Eysse the train was carrying 800 of us. It was stifling; we broke some of the windows. I managed to free my hand, but I could not get rid of the chain that bound me to the old man. So before we reached Eysse, I put the handcuffs on again; there was no sense in getting beaten up for nothing.

At the other end, warders bundled us into lorries again. As the lorries jerked forward, we were all thrown onto the floor, chains and handcuffs tangled, like a bagful of crabs, our legs and arms threshed about. Someone’s leg splayed across my face; my boots jabbed in another man’s stomach.

Our arrival at Eysse had something of the atmosphere of a carnival. Scores of armed police and warders were drawn up in lines, the whole scene illuminated by waving torchlight—a quite spectacular display. After we had been deposited in the courtyard of the prison, there was a long, deep silence. The only activity was that of the warders, walking up and down almost as though they were holding a parade-ground inspection.

Two by two, the convicts mounted the steps into the prison proper. We straggled out in a long line, waiting for our turn to go up the steps, where a warder was unlocking the handcuffs and the metal bands about our ankles. It was a long job.

As fast as we were freed of our handcuffs and chains, we were marched into another courtyard. There a great caldron was steaming. The faces of the prison staff around it glistened in the light of the fire under the caldron. They were ladling out beans to the prisoners, who cupped their hands as they came to the caldron. The beans were on the boil, and hot beans are hotter than anything else I know. The men in front of me held out their hands. The warder ladled out the beans. The men yelled, dropped the beans, and started wringing their burned hands. I refused the beans.

Many worse things could have happened to me than being sent to Eysse. If I had been arrested by the Germans I should probably have been sent to Fresnes prison—where most of the Resistance people captured in the “occupied” zone were dumped. From Fresnes there would have been little visits to one of the Gestapo establishments, like that in the Avenue Foch. Had the French not put me in St. Paul’s, I might well have ended up in another prison at Lyons, the fortress of Montluch, administered by the Germans. Few of those who went in were ever seen again. They either died there or were deported. When the Germans overran the free zone, the French authorities resisted the idea of handing over all their prisoners to the Germans. That was how I came to be sent to Eysse, where the French decided to concentrate many thousands of their prisoners.

Eysse had been built as a reformatory for children, and, as prisons go, it was quite congenial. Built in a combination of red brick and sandstone, it was modern and much less despondent in aspect than most prisons in France. Its entrance was a great portcullis, leading on to a long, wide avenue fringed with flowers. The prison was in two sections. One section was composed of courtyards. In each courtyard were about 300 convicts, living in what we called “chicken cages”—cages made of wire netting, extending in long lines. One could see one’s neighbors, and also the warders walking up and down. And they could see us. After all the prisoners had shambled into their cages for the night, a warder worked a hand pump, lowering a big bar into position across the doors of the cages, securing them. Each courtyard contained a room, in which we were allowed to sit. Theoretically, we were all condemned to hard labor. But we refused to work all day long. So we had to walk round and round the courtyard during the day, in two files, moving in contrary directions. As we walked round, in our prison clogs, we had to stamp with the left foot. Then we refused to walk like that. After a lot of bluster and not a few blows, they left us to do much as we liked.

The second section of the prison was more conventional: a building of three stories, with cells housing up to four men. In the cells on the top story were men who had been arrested by the French at the outbreak of war. German spies, fifth columnists, double agents: an extraordinary crowd. These men felt a certain sense of injustice. They asked for their release when the Germans took over the whole of France. They expected the Germans to recognize their debt. But, of some thirty prisoners, only one was taken away by the Germans. The others were left to rot. The German representative visiting the prison told one man, “What can we do with you? You are useless to us now. You’ve been given fifteen years by the French—you might as well do them.” The pro-German sympathies of those thirty prisoners underwent a certain modification after that.

Members of the Resistance were in a small minority in the prison. The bulk of the convicts were Communists, or near-Communists, who had been arrested by the French at the start of the war as potential enemies of the state. There were even a few who had been picked up in the period immediately preceding the armistice, accused of sabotaging French defenses on behalf of the Russo-German alliance. Others were jailed for attacks on the Germans after the German invasion of Russia. They were a very mixed crowd, united only by their adherence to Communist ideals. Little by little, they all began to think themselves men of the Resistance. That, for political purposes, was going to be their story.

I determined the escape from Eysse. And when I made my escape I wanted to be fit. Each morning, in my “cage” and in the courtyard, I did P.T. and gymnastics. I ran round and round the courtyard. Although I had passed forty, I became extremely fit. I was to be thankful later on.

I made a practice of approaching the warders who stood by the doors leading from one courtyard to the next. This was also a preparation for escape.

“May I go into the next courtyard?” I asked.

“Why?”

“To talk to some friends there.”

“No, you can’t—it’s not allowed.”

Then one day I did find a young warder who agreed to open the door for me and let me into the next courtyard. I had been there only a few moments when one of the chief warders recognized me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to have a chat with my friends.”

“Who let you in?”

“One of the warders,” I said.

“Which one?”

“Well, I don’t know his name, but if you line them all up, I’ll soon spot him.”

The warders were assembled immediately. I went along their lines, looking them up and down and taking some pleasure in the whole business. The young warder was there, but, much to his relief, I passed him by. At the end of my “inspection,” I turned round to the chief warder and the governor and said:

“I’m very sorry. You really ought to number them. I just can’t recognize him—they all look the same.” The chief warder clubbed me about the head and face. I took a fair beating, but it was worth it. From that time onward, all the keepers trusted me. More and more I gained the “freedom” of the prison, moving from courtyard to courtyard, into the workshops, the infirmary.

The workshops, where clogmaking, carpentry, and metalwork went on, provided me with a collection of tools. Piece by piece, I acquired a hatchet, a crowbar, some saws and knives and chisels. As yet, I did not know what precise purpose they would serve, but I knew they could be helpful for an escape. I became quite skillful at thieving, concealing a tool in my clothes even while chatting to a warder. Above my cell was a hole; I hid all my tools there.

I got on well with the doctors at the infirmary. In Africa I had learned something about dressings, and the doctors suggested I should give them a hand from time to time. I did, but never at the time they proposed.

“We’ve an operation today—come and help us.”

“What time will it be?” I replied.

“Nine o’clock. Come along then.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t manage nine—I’ll be busy then. I’ll come when I can.” I liked the idea of a convict being “busy,” but it was important to me that I should not be under their orders. I wanted to reach the position where no one would know exactly where I was at any given moment in my wanderings about the prison. I might be in the courtyard, in the workshops, in the infirmary—anywhere. Slowly, this idea was accepted.

“Visiting days” were much less of a bedlam at Eysse than they had been at St. Paul’s. Once a month, my wife and I were even able to sit together at a table and talk. But, although Eysse was nearer home than the prison at Lyons—about 125 miles away—it was a difficult place to get to, for there were no direct trains. But through her visits, by “innocent letters” to her, and by the paid help of certain warders, I made contact with two S.O.E. agents—with “Hilaire,” the code name of George Starr, an S.O.E. agent who had a réseau south of Toulouse, and with Henri Sevenet, one of the early recruits to my réseau, who went to England and was twice parachuted into France. I was able to send radio messages to London, and Starr had provided a cache of arms for my use, after escape, about six miles from the prison. (The “innocent letters” were those I wrote to my wife which could rouse no suspicions in the minds of the prison authorities, but would conceal an instruction to her. This was simple for two people who knew each other intimately. She became accustomed to reading between the lines. For instance, when I told her to get in touch with Pouillot, the clogmaker near our estate, because we had a contract to send him fifty kilos of potatoes each week, she guessed I wanted her to make contact with the clogmaker near the prison—because she was well aware we had no such contract for potatoes with Pouillot.

The minority of us who were Resistance—they included two other British officers and Kiki Glasner, the young man I had seen being tortured by the police at Limoges when I was arrested—wanted to escape, and I was sure we could do it. We thought at first we would stage the escape with a large force of the Communist prisoners. But we had failed to understand them properly.

The Communists were highly organized even within the prison. It was a very disciplined political organization. There were leaders who had to be obeyed. There were compulsory lectures and study groups on Communist doctrine. The rank and file were issued exercise books in which they copied out Marxist and Leninist dogma and wrote essays to demonstrate their comprehension of the “theology” and their zeal for the party.

The rest of us got on well with them and imagined that they desired to escape as we did. The Communist leaders encouraged us to believe so. Then came the time when I felt we were ready for the escape. Detailed plans had been laid; only the final allocation of responsibilities and the fixing of the date remained. We held a meeting with a few of the leading Communists. It was then that one of them said to me:

“No, no. We have no intention of escaping. It is essential that we should not escape in fact.”

“But you said—.” I began.

“Listen,” said the Communist, “and I’ll explain our position. Whatever we were put in prison for—any of us—we are now all the same. We are martyrs. Resistance martyrs, shoved in jail, deprived of our blessed freedom for our belief in France.” He was a tall, lean-faced man, with tight, thin lips. He spoke with force and precision, and totally without humor.

“After the war, all these men—our men—will become very important people in their villages. Why then should we take the risk of escaping and of being killed by the Germans? That would be stupid. The war will be over one day soon, and then these men will be set free and return home as Resistance heroes.”

“But we’ve all been planning to escape,” I said. “You were in on all the discussions. You made suggestions yourself.”

“Certainly,” said the Communist leader. “That was just to keep you all busy. Nothing like plotting escapes to occupy idle minds. But we are not escaping.”

“Very well,” I said. “In that case, I withdraw my promise.” I had given them my word that we would not escape without them. “All right—take back your word. But,” he added threateningly, “if we hear that you’re trying to escape we’re quite prepared to denounce you to the authorities so that you will be punished and prevented from escaping.” And he meant it. He was not going to allow us to escape lest by doing so we should accidentally endanger him and his fellows; and he did not wish us to go free so that we could do anything to denigrate communism in the outside world, or to challenge its presumption to power—on the basis of Resistance heroism—after the war. He also feared that his young men, who could be called only semi-Communist, and who wanted to escape and fight, would be lost to the Communist cause.

I had reckoned on escaping either on Christmas night or on New Year’s night, when, I calculated, the warders would be less vigilant. I told the Communists I would give them until January 1 to change their minds and to join the escape.

The Communists prevaricated. There was talk and more talk.

“You must provide arms,” they said. “We know you have them.”

“Yes,” I said, “but you’re not having any of them. How can I be sure that if we get the arms into the prison, you won’t merely hang on to them and still refuse to escape? How can I be certain, even if you do come out with us, that, once outside, you won’t turn the guns against me? I can’t be sure. No matter what you say now, I shall never be sure. I don’t trust you, and I’m not going to give you arms.”

“As you wish,” said one of them. “Of course we might shoot you. It’s not a question of trust. If you stood in our way, or in the way of the party, it would be right, it would be necessary to shoot you.” I was not anxious to put them to the test; I foresaw the high probability that my survival would be deemed against the interests of the party. In the end, only two nominal Communists escaped with us.

We chose the night of January 3, 1944. There were fifty-three of us. A young warder had agreed to let us take the key to the main gate from him. A certain amount of arms had been smuggled in to us by another warder. I had a revolver; it was a source of comfort to me. I had civilian clothing and identity papers. I had stolen some chloroform from the infirmary, and one of the convicts, a medical student we called “Pills,” who worked in the infirmary, was going to administer it. How could any good escape be accomplished without the use of chloroform? I was to regret my attachment to that fiction.

It was now that the “freedom” I had acquired to walk about the prison at will became most useful. Most of the men who were going to escape were in the cells. There were two British officers among them. The early Resistance men sent to Eysse had been put in the cells. But there were a few other members of the escape party in the “chicken cages” in different courtyards. To get from the courtyards to the building containing the cells you had to pass through a door in the inner of the two prison walls. As you passed through it and walked to the other building, you were under observation from soldiers, armed with machine guns, rifles, and grenades, who stood in boxlike constructions on top of the main gate and at vantage points around the outer wall. Normally, convicts could pass from the courtyards, through the door to the cells, only when accompanied by two warders. But by now the soldiers on the top of the wall had become so accustomed to seeing me strolling around by myself that they assumed I was some sort of head warder; at any rate, I clearly had permission from the prison authorities to pass where other convicts were not allowed to pass unless accompanied.

The escape began, according to plan, at five o’clock. The men were not yet locked up in their cages. I went to the different courtyards where members of the party were waiting for me. Two and three at a time I led them across to the inner wall, under the gaze of the soldiers, through the door and between the walls to the cells. Backward and forward I went, assembling the first group. “Pills,” the medical student, joined us. Just inside the building was a guardroom. When I went in there, with my first party from the courtyards, the warder looked up from his desk. He was surprised, but not astonished to see us, because I was leading them.

“What do you want here?” I drew my revolver.

“If you make any noise, you’ll die,” I said. “Put your hands behind your back, and keep quiet.” He was trussed up and gagged and dumped into the corner of the room. The first three men I had brought with me stood guard, ready to club any other warder who ventured into the office. While they waited there, I went backward and forward to the courtyards, assembling our party.

When we were complete, we advanced cautiously into the main part of the building. We knew exactly where to look for the warders. Moving silently, swiftly, we came up behind them, hitting them over the head, catching them with a stranglehold round their necks, or threatening them with revolvers. None of them gave the alarm.

Some half a dozen we left “cold” on the floor; others we bound and gagged. But I felt we should chloroform at least one of them. The warder we chose might well have said afterward he would have preferred a straightforward blow over the head.

“Pills” had given the impression that he knew all about chloroforming. But when it came to it, this blond young giant of a man, with the assured manner, proved only why he was still a medical student and not yet a doctor.

We presented the warder to him, nicely tied up and helpless. When “Pills” started pouring the chloroform on the pad, the man looked terrified. His rat face and tiny eyes twisted with fear. “Pills” put the pad over the man’s nose and pressed it there. But the chloroform did not seem to work as quickly as “Pills” had’ said it would. “Just a matter of two or three minutes,” he said. He held the pad there, but the man merely continued to appeal frantically with his eyes.

“Hurry up,” I said to “Pills.” “It’s six o’clock. We can’t afford to waste any time.”

“Hurry up,” said “Pills” to the warder. “Go to sleep.” He took the pad away and poured more chloroform on it. The warder gasped out a plea for mercy.

“I don’t want to die. Please. Please. I don’t want to die.” “Pills” smothered his words with the pad again. Now the warder could only gurgle unintelligibly. But his eyes went on “shouting,” and he still seemed very awake.

“Damn you, you’re not going to die,” “Pills” hissed, sweat standing out on his own face. “Go to sleep, man, you’re not going to die, but you’ve got to go to sleep.” Still the chloroform did not take effect.

“Come on, come on,” I said. “Let’s get the job done. How much longer?” “Pills” dispensed with the niceties of textbook doses. He poured the whole bottle of chloroform over the warder’s face. Even then, the man did not go to sleep immediately. He yelled. He obviously had a strong heart. It was just as well for him. He finally went under, his face a little burned. That, I admit, did not worry us. We were quite prepared to do much worse than that if it would help us get out.

“Bloody fine doctor you’ll make,” I said to “Pills.” “Remind me never to come to you for an operation.”

“I don’t know what went wrong,” said the young man. “I can’t understand it. I did exactly as it said in the book....”

There was no time for further discussion of the “book,” or of his deficiencies as an anaesthetist. With all the warders out of action, we hurried round the cells, releasing the men who were to escape with us. The Communist leaders called out to us to abandon our escape, but we ignored them. No one thought of turning back now; nor would it have been possible.

We split into five groups. Each group had a leader, dressed in the uniform caps, blouses, and trousers stolen from the warders. We left the building and headed, between the two high walls, for the main gate. It was just about dusk, and to the soldiers on the wall above us we presented a normal enough sight—five files of men, each accompanied by a “warder.”

When we got to the main gate, the young warder who had agreed to co-operate lost his nerve. There was a moment of hesitation. Something, we knew not what, had gone wrong. He backed away from us, and it looked as though we would have to tackle him. I took up a position with my back to the inner wall, revolver in hand, looking up at the soldier above us. Then the main gate opened. A Black Maria came in. This may have been the cause of the young warder’s hesitation. But there was no time to think about that. The gate was open; our way was clear.

“Don’t run,” I had told my party. “Don’t run,” I repeated now. It would have seemed normal enough for five warders to walk out of the gate with five squads of convicts. I saw that the soldier did not realize what was happening below him. But the temptation was too great for the prisoners when they saw the gate opening in front of them. They started to run out. I was still watching the soldier. He saw the men running. He looked at his table, on which there was a grenade. He looked at his machine gun and back to the crowd of men running out of the gate. What would he do? I pointed my revolver at him. Had he reached for the grenade or machine gun, I think he would have died. Then he turned round and pressed the button which gave the alarm throughout the prison.

I followed the men rushing through the gate. Before deciding on the escape plan, I had looked beyond the walls from different windows, from the infirmary, from the workshops. I had a picture of the surrounding countryside in my mind, and I knew exactly where we must go. There were two main roads to cross, before we could consider the first stage of escape successful. Each group knew it must cross those roads at particular spots at particular times. Then all five groups would join up at a rendezvous, about twenty-five miles away, by one o’clock in the morning.

Around the prison were vineyards. The direct way to the main roads lay across them. But vineyards have wires running along them, in perpendicular fashion, wires high enough to make a party of escaping convicts quickly tired—especially those still wearing clogs—if they attempted to go across the vineyards, clambering over wire after wire, wire after wire. The quickest and least tiring way was to walk up one field, and down the next, up one and down again. Our timing was good. My group of old men made the crossing of the main roads well within the schedule. I saw the other groups cross. We moved on rapidly, out of sight of the roads. Our plan had been a good one. The dusk helped us. Only a few minutes after we had all crossed, we heard the roar of motor bikes and lorries rushing up and down those two roads. The failing light had concealed our precise direction of escape. For the moment we were safe. And free again.

Chapter Thirteen

I told my group to take a breather. My daily sessions of running and P.T. in prison now paid off. Most of the others had stagnated in Eysse and were already feeling the effects of the hard exercise.

I noted our position in relation to certain hills I had previously plotted in my mind. Ours was the only group without a compass—there had not been enough to go round—but I felt my experience in trekking and big-game shooting in Africa would keep us on course all right.

We splashed through a small stream, across a number of minor roads, over fences and hedges. We walked and walked but without meeting any trouble. At one point, though, we heard voices. I stopped my squad and crept away myself to find out where they came from.

“Where the hell are we now?” I heard one man say.

“I bet we go straight on,” said another.

“1 tell you we ought to turn at right angles here....”

It was one of the other groups—lost. They had lost the man with the compass—perhaps intentionally—and now they were lost themselves. I took them back with me and joined them with my group. Our rendezvous was on a road just outside the village of Cançon, where one of the escaping prisoners, a schoolmaster, knew a woman who had said she would harbor a few of us. We were the first squad to make the rendezvous, a few minutes ahead of time. Now we rested in a field beside the road and waited for the others to arrive. The moon, which had helped us on our way, was now hidden behind thick clouds.

The group, led by the man who had the contact in the village, turned up next. We were now thirty in all, the others having dispersed and gone their own way. He and I left the others and made our way down the hill toward the village. My companion had a civilian jacket, but still wore the heavy, coarse trousers of a convict. As the first dark shapes of houses came into view, I went first, walking about fifty yards ahead of him. It was safer for me, wearing civilian clothes and carrying identity papers. The moon peeped out fitfully from behind the clouds. We walked along the back of a row of houses. We were very quiet, but our footsteps sounded too loud for my liking in the stillness of the night. As I went, I tried each of the back doors which led into small gardens. Those which were not bolted, I pushed open, so we should have an “escape route” ready if we were chased.

We had to cross a number of small streets. Twice we heard cars coming and squeezed ourselves into dark doorways until the danger had passed.

The arrangement was that we should go to the basement entrance, at the back of the house, where the woman was expecting us. But when we got to the house, it was so dark we could not find the way to the basement. We felt our way around, but we could not see it. We were afraid of stumbling in the dark and attracting attention. After some minutes, I nudged my friend and pointed toward the front of the house. It was dangerous, but we must try the front door.

Madame B. lived in a small terraced house, next to the police station. A narrow passageway separated them. We crept round to the side of the house, bending as low as possible. The police station was well lit. We saw two policemen standing idly on the doorstep, smoking. The sounds of voices inside the station floated out to us. A couple of motor bikes roared into the station yard, sending beams of light toward us as they wheeled round. At last the two men standing outside ground out the ends of their cigarettes with their boots and went back into the station. Only then did we dare to ease round and knock quietly at Madame B.’s front door. Thank heavens she heard us. She opened the door quickly and beckoned us in. Then I wondered how she had managed to hear us, for upstairs her husband was snoring—and I have never heard any man snore so loudly.

Madame B. was wearing a dressing gown. She took us into her sitting room. We sat down with relief.

“I’m just going to make you some coffee and get dressed quickly. Now you just sit there, I won’t be long.” She scurried around. The snoring went on heavily and evenly.

Madame B. was a tall, fair-haired woman, in her early thirties. She came back into the room, now dressed and carrying two cups of coffee. We drank the hot liquid thankfully. Then we broke the bad news to her. We told her there were thirty of us and another twenty or so somewhere on the road. She was clearly shocked.

“What on earth can I do with a crowd like that? I expected a handful at most.” She thought for a few moments. There was a farm, she said, and the farmer also had agreed to take one or two men, if necessary.

“We’ll just have to see what he can do,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “Can you manage some coffee for our friends waiting up there?” She went off to make the coffee. It was not good coffee, but it was hot and that was all that mattered.

“Shall I put a little alcohol in it?”

“Yes,” I said, like a fool, “a little.” I had refused her offer of some in my own cup of coffee. If I had accepted, I should have known what she meant by “a little.” In that part of the world it meant fifty-fifty, and the fifty per cent of alcohol was bigger than the fifty of coffee. She filled three bottles, and we carried them away with us. She led us out of the basement door this time and we started back toward the men who were waiting for us.

As we were walking along the road, we saw headlights approaching.

“It’s all right,” said Madame B., “they never come down this road. It’s just a small road, cars never use it.” And we continued walking. Suddenly we saw the headlights turning into our road. My friend and I acted promptly. We picked up Madame B. by the arms and threw her over the hedge; we dived over it after her. The car rushed by on the other side of the hedge from where the three of us lay panting. When it had gone, we climbed back onto the road—with a little more dignity than we had left it.

“If we do get away and live to see the end of the war, I’ll put a stele at the side of the road here,” I said to Madame B., “with an angel flying over the hedge.” (I never did; I must apologize to her.)

When we reached the others, we handed round the coffee. That was a big mistake. One old man in particular took more than his ration of it. He was very tired and it proved too strong for him. Madame B. and her friend from Eysse led the way to the farm. The party followed in single file behind them. We kept on the right side of the wind so that our scent should not carry to the dogs on the farms we passed and so start them barking. After we had walked about a quarter of an hour, the old man who had drunk too much coffee began to drop farther and farther behind the others.

“It’s no good,” he said. “I can’t walk any more.” He had not really drunk much, but he had drunk too much for a tired, almost starving old man. He was tight and staggering. I signaled to Kiki Glasner, who was a hefty young man. Together we dragged and carried the old one between us for nearly three miles. He was a terrible burden. By the time we reached the farm we were practically exhausted.

We knocked on the farmer’s door. He looked just as shocked as Madame B. when asked to hide thirty men.

“What can I do with this lot?” he said. “One or two, why yes, but thirty....” He raised his hand in a helpless gesture. But he had an old shed, about a hundred yards from the farmhouse. It contained some straw and hay and a few farming implements, and it was good enough for us that night. We all bundled in there. By now it was nearly three o’clock. But two of the group were still missing.

A second rendezvous had been chosen, if the first one were missed—a bridge over an unused railway. I went off to the bridge and whistled softly, but there was no sign or sound of anyone there. I started again, in the direction of the prison, going some five miles or more before I found one of the missing groups. They were completely lost; their compass must have been going round in circles.

“Follow me on the double,” I ordered them. “We’ve got to get back to the farm before daylight.” We trotted all the way to the bridge. A good deal of spluttering and coughing and swearing accompanied us. But we had to run.

At the bridge the last group was waiting. They had heard me whistle, but they thought it was the Germans. I started to lead the last two groups to the farm. I knew that dawn must be near, and tired though we all were I tried to strike a good pace. But there was a laggard in this party also, a man whose feet were dragging and who could not really walk. We dragged him along with us. I badgered him, hectored him, insulted him, to get a few yards out of him. The shock treatment was effective only sporadically. We carried him for a while. We dragged him again. Then more insults to spur him to call up his last reserves of energy. It was a painful journey for all of us.

Daylight was just breaking when we got to the shed. Tired bodies sank with groans and grunts into the hay and straw. But the trouble was far from finished. Before I had left to look for the others, the farmer had told a peasant to look to our needs.

“Give us a bucket of water,” I had said, “just water, but no wine.” To the peasant the order was incomprehensible. It was a wine district where they reckoned that wine was the only thing to drink, and that water was positively harmful. And here were tired men in need of refreshment. The peasant had brought a bucket of water, but he had brought also a bucket of red wine. And the old man who had drunk too much of Madame B.’s “coffee” had ignored the water and drunk not merely his ration of the wine but the rations of two or three men. When I saw him in the first light of morning, I thought I should have to make arrangements for burying him. He was not merely drunk; he was drunk to the extent that he was green in the face. He was alive, but as near, I imagine, as one can get to being killed by alcohol while retaining life.

With daylight came a sight of the road running past the farm. It was not long before it was infested with police and German troops, conveyed in cars and lorries, carrying rifles and machine guns. We knew very well what they were after: us. Thirty men, with aching limbs, aching bellies, and smarting eyes. Not forgetting one nearly dead drunk and a handful of others who were either tipsy or incapable of any further movement.

The pursuers rushed up and down the road at great speed. That they were rushing about vainly at that moment gave no comfort. Sooner or later, their search must become more methodical. And then what would happen to us?

It was at midday that a detachment of armed police turned off the road into the farm. We watched them go to the farmhouse, and the officer in charge talked for some minutes to the farmer. The farmer waved his arms about. The officer gave orders which we guessed meant: “Spread out—search every bit of the farm.”

“Open the shed door,” I said, “and leave it open. And don’t make a sound.” I was very frightened lest the man who was drunk should open his mouth at the wrong moment.

We watched the police begin their systematic search of the farm. Two men split off and started to walk in the direction of the shed in which we were hiding. Four of us took up station, two on either side of the door, the giant of a medical student and myself and two of the younger, tougher men. We held crowbar, ax, hammer, and hoe ready. The two policemen came nearer. They were wearing helmets. “Let them come in,” I said, “and then give it to them with all you’ve got—on the nape of the neck.”

The two men came up to the shed. Now we could hear them talking. They sounded fed up.

“Fine bloody lark, this is,” one of them was saying. “On the go since six o’clock yesterday evening, beating the hell out of ourselves, and all for what?”

“Sweet damn all,” said the other.

“‘Fan out, and make a thorough search. Leave no stone unturned.’ Did you hear him give that order? How many times have we heard that this morning?”

“Too many times,” said the second man.

“You’re right enough there. How much longer is this lark going on? When are we going to eat?”

“What’s it all about, anyway? Some poor bloody convicts managed to get away. As far as I’m concerned, good luck to ‘em. I don’t want to run into ‘em, and that’s for sure.”

“D’accord,” said his companion with emphasis.

They stopped just in front of the door of the shed.

“Not worth looking in,” said the first man. “The door’s open—they won’t be in there.” So they took a quick look around to see what their comrades were doing, and then one of them opened his fly. The other followed suit, and they pissed against the open door. We watched them from the other side, through the cracks in the door. We watched them button up again and turn their backs on us.

“Give ‘em a few minutes.”

“Just to make it look proper.”

“When do you think we’ll eat?”

“God knows with this bastard—he’s after promotion.”

They chatted for two or three minutes, their eyes on the farmhouse and the other police.

“Well, I think it’s safe to go back now.” And off they went again to announce that they had found nothing to report in the shed. When they returned to the farmhouse—as we heard later from the farmer—the officer in charge said:

“Have you searched it well?”

“But, of course, sir, we searched it thoroughly—every inch of it. If there’d been anyone hiding there, we’d have seen him.” And that was that. The police left us again.

The shed could be only a temporary hide-out. By arrangement, as soon as it was dark, Madame B. turned up. She and I spent the whole of that following night distributing our party in houses in the neighborhood of Cançon, two here, three there, another one there. I stayed at the farm with one of the British officers. We were all settled, and for the moment, at least, we seemed to be safe.

Each night, for two weeks, Madame B. and I went round from one house to another, checking on “our children,” to make sure everything was all right. At first I had no cause to worry. Then there were complications.

One man, who had been brought up in the country, insisted on working in the fields. There was work to do, and he could not sit in the house and watch others doing it.

“I just can’t help it,” he said. “It’s in my nature. I must give them a hand.” He gave them a very good hand, but, although he took his coat off, he still wore the trousers of a convict, and neighbors who were not party to the plot wondered who the new assistant was.

More personal, more difficult problems arose. Many of our group were young men, some of whom had been in jail for two years. Life out in the open, civilian life, life with a family, presented them with strong temptations. Their conspicuous courtesies to wives and daughters in the houses where they were staying aroused resentment. Not unnaturally, husbands, brothers, and boy friends were unable to summon sufficient tolerance. The complaints came to me.

“It’s one thing to give you a helping hand, but it’s quite another when your men start helping themselves....Do you expect me to stand by while that young lad goes about whispering sweet nothings—or somethings—to my wife?”

My duty was too clear: I must avoid trouble. I delivered a number of lectures to the young men. But, more practically, I switched them from one house to another, trying to find houses for them where there were fewer women, or so many that they would be inhibited.

There was also, with another thirty very hungry mouths to feed, the problem of food. I had some money, as the result of my wife’s selling a horse. With that we were able to pay for food on the black market—and the country people were also very generous to us.

But so many problems of one kind and another were brought to me that I decided it was not convenient for me to live away from the village, at the farm. So the British officer and I moved into lodgings with Madame B. From her windows we could watch the activities of the police next door. Her husband was quickly reconciled to us, and we to his formidable snoring. At night we did our “rounds”; by day we stayed in the house. Although the search was still going on in the area, we were safe for the time being. We had been with Madame B. for about a week when, one morning, she said to me.

“There’s a visitor for you, somebody who wants to speak to you.” “Who is it?” I asked.

“Oh, a friend of mine,” she replied. “Come and meet him.” I followed her into the sitting room. A man in uniform rose from his chair to greet me. It was the local chief of police.

Chapter Fourteen

I suppose it was only a matter of seconds before the chief of police spoke, but in that time as many thoughts passed through my mind as images in a dream. How do I bluff myself out of this one?...Is Madame B. a traitor, after all she’s done for us?...How can I warn the others?...Was Madame B. under duress?...How much did this man know?...

“I’ve been looking forward very much to meeting you,” said the police chief. He was smiling. He had risen from his seat, a tall, handsome man, holding out his hand to me. I took it automatically. “A great pleasure,” he added.

“Oh. Why?” was all I could say for the moment.

“Don’t look so suspicious and on guard,” he said, laughing. “I’ve no handcuffs. You’re in no danger.”

“Really?” I said. “I’m sorry if I look suspicious—perhaps my mother was frightened by a policeman before I was born.”

“Well, there’s no need to be frightened by me. I was just curious to meet you. I knew you were here.”

“What do you mean?” I was still waiting for him to show his hand.

“Madame B. has been buying big quantities of bread and black-market meat lately. I knew it couldn’t all be for herself. And I called on her one evening, found she was out, and discovered she had been walking around, going from one house to another. Now why should she do that, I wondered. I put two and two together and made—how many is it?—fifty-four?”

The chief of police had discovered us, but he had not come to arrest me. Although it was hard to generalize, the gendarmerie in the country were often good friends of the Resistance, certainly more so than the agents. This one told me the Germans and the Militia were still searching very thoroughly, and it was only a matter of time before they went through Cançon, house by house, farm by farm.

“If there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know. And that goes for my men as well. Au revoir, monsieur, I wish you luck.”

He was as good as his word. Our great need at that moment was for new identity papers for the men so that they could disappear into the country under new personalities. The police helped us get them. Then there was clothing, which we scrounged from every quarter.

I received a message from London instructing me to escape and go to England. I could not go immediately, I told them. I had selected a party of fourteen, the other two British officers among them, to return with me to England.

Gradually we collected the papers and clothing we needed for the escape. And then we were ready to ask for the help of the Resistance groups to get us to the Spanish frontier and on to Gibraltar. The message was passed down to the patron of the Gascony circuit, who set about arranging our “passage.” To them I was known as “Major Hutton,” and London wanted Major Hutton out of France. The escape from Eysse was still the talk of the countryside for miles around.

We set out from Cançon in a form of transport familiar to all of us: a Black Maria. The driver was dressed in civilian clothes; he was supposed to be a detective. Beside him sat a gendarme, pink-faced and reassuring. We—their “prisoners”—climbed into the dark stuffiness of the prison on wheels.

Our way lay past the jail at Eysse. Just before we arrived there, the vehicle conked out. It was working on wood gas and was incapable of pulling its heavy load up a hill.

“That’s done it,” the driver cursed. “Only one thing for it—-you’ll have to get out and push.” So we got out, too fearful of the consequences of being spotted by the Militia or the Germans to enjoy the taste of fresh air. To the peasants in the fields we must have presented an extraordinary sight: convicts, guarded by only one gendarme, ignoring the chance to escape and pushing their “prison” up the hill. But we sweated, as we never did for our jailers, to get that vehicle to the top. We had guns with us, but we were not anxious to run into a situation where we should have to use them.

We pushed the Black Maria to the top of the hill and hid ourselves inside again. Then on our way we had the rare pleasure of passing a couple of our old warders walking along the road. We could see them by looking through the windows and small slots in the sides of the van. One of them was the man we had chloroformed: I fancy he would have been glad to see us.

Just outside the town of Agen, a charming newcomer joined our cramped party in the back—an English girl called Anne-Marie Walers, who had dropped into Gascony and was operating under the code name of Paulette. She had cycled ahead to make sure the way was clear of Germans.

The atmosphere in the back of the vehicle was tense. The Black Maria was a good cover, but we felt so helpless shut up in the darkness, not knowing what dangers lay on the road ahead. “Paulette” helped to relieve the tension. One of the other two British officers, called confusingly for her, Hudson, swapped stories with her about S.O.E. in London.

Farther on, another girl stopped the van on the road to Nérac to tell us there was a barrage of gendarmes ahead, searching all cars. Our gendarme in front dealt with them with complete confidence, although the silence in the back, for the two minutes we stopped, was taut with tension.

But it was on the other side of Nérac that our palms became really sweaty. There we were stopped on a narrow bridge by a party of militians.

“Where are you going?” one of them wanted to know. The gendarme answered him.

“French police—official journey,” he said tersely. There was no love lost between the regular police and the militians.

“Where’s your movement order?” The pink-faced gendarme produced his paper, bearing the authority of our friend, the chief of police at Cançon. The militian looked at it.

“I want to see inside.”

“You’ve got our authority and that’s enough for you,” said the gendarme. “We haven’t got time to waste.”

The militian turned aside to talk to his companions.

“Let her go,” the gendarme shouted to the driver. And through the sliding door, he yelled to us in the back, “Get down and stay down.” The militians were shouting as the Black Maria shuddered and shot away from them over the bridge. Surprisingly, there were no immediate shots. By the time they had recovered from their surprise and started shooting, the militians could not hit us.

“That’s another near one,” I said aloud.

“Oh, for a nice, safe comfortable bed somewhere,” said someone else. “Somewhere that’s never seen a Boche or a milicien and where all the policemen are like the chap up front.”

The Black Maria took us to a farm just outside Fources. There we bedded down for the night in a barn—but not until we had eaten largely of ham and bread and we had learned that we had just missed a much bigger crowd of militians on maneuvers in the area.

For a few days we were able to relax, eating well at the farm and enjoying freedom from alarms. All of us were the fitter at the end of it. Then a truck and a car, both running on illicit petrol, came to take us to our next stop—the small town of Montréjeau, south-west of Toulouse, and only about thirty miles from the Spanish frontier. In Montréjeau we were told by our friends who were helping us that we should make contact with a passeur, highly experienced in the work, who would take us across the “line” into the forbidden frontier zone, and thence we would prepare for our journey across the mountains into Spain.

When we reached Montréjeau we hid the vehicles, and two of us went into town to the address we had been given. As we neared the house, I feared the worst. At the end of the street we saw a man lolling against a wall, reading a newspaper. There was another in a similar pose, opposite our house. And a third at the back of the house. The signs were all too familiar. These men were waiting for anyone who went to the house. That is what we thought, and that is what we discovered to be true. From neighbors and shopkeepers we learned that the passeur had been arrested only a short while before. Our well-organized way out of the country had been cut. We could only think ourselves lucky not to have been caught at the same time.

“I know some other people in the town,” I said to my companion, “let’s try them.” So we made the rounds of Montréjeau and found friends who, while without experience in the work, were anxious to help us get through. We hid away for a couple of days in the town; the rest of the party had already been looked after.

On the third day we all met in a small restaurant. There we were picked up by a lorry that was normally used to take materials up to a dam being constructed in the mountains. We were assured of the help of the owners of a little shack and restaurant alongside the dam, where the workers came to eat.

We knew the dangers that awaited us. First, there was French customs, accompanied by French police. We felt we could cope with them. But there were also German patrols, accompanied by dogs. In winter—and this was the beginning of February—the Germans were on skis. In the deep snow, an encounter with them could have only one result: men on foot, unaccustomed to the mountains, would have no chance of outstripping them.

The lorry arrived at the restaurant in Montréjeau on time. We were all feeling pretty fit and eager for the last stage. Our spirits were high. The late afternoon sun was brilliant, the air cold and clean. In the distance, in a metallic sky, we could just see the outlines of the snow-capped mountains. They looked beautiful; we had yet to meet them at close quarters to know their true nature.

Our ride provided its full quota of the usual aches and hazards. We clambered into the back of the lorry which already contained some small pieces of machinery and bags of cement. Each of us took cover under the cargo, until not one of us could be seen. It was well that we hid ourselves thoroughly. Halfway up the steep mountain road, a German patrol stopped us. We heard the voices of the Germans talking to the driver.

“What are you carrying?”

“Oh, the usual,” said the driver phlegmatically.

“What do you mean—the usual?” asked a German.

“The usual,” the driver repeated. “Cement—bags of it—and that kind of thing.”

“We will see for ourselves the usual,” said the German. The doors at the back of the lorry were unbolted and crashed open against the sides of the vehicle. German heads peered in. They could see only the expected load of materials needed for the construction work on the dam. They did not attempt a search. The doors were slammed shut on us again, and in the darkness we heard the driver ordered to move on. We eased our cramped limbs and exhaled deep breaths. No one spoke. There was no need for words to communicate our relief.

The lorry bumped and ground its way up the road until it was within 200 yards of the dam itself. There it stopped. The driver came round, opened the doors at the back, and, with much groaning, we disentangled ourselves from his load.

“You’ll be all right there,” said the driver, pointing to the little cafe.

It was now almost nightfall. The weather had changed completely. The sky was sullen, and the snow was falling, driven by a high wind which bit into our faces. We waved a brief thanks and farewell to the lorry driver, who hurried back into his cab. The engine coughed and throbbed. We crept away into the darkness toward the cafe. We approached, as we had been told to do, by a side door. The lorry drew up outside the front, ahead of us. The driver slipped into the bar to nod to the owners, letting them know that we were arriving.

“Absolute quiet,” I said to my party. I lifted the latch of the side door and let us in. The light from the bar showed us the bare room in which we were to wait: the far door, locked, led into the bar itself. We could hear voices raised in conversation. Every word came through to us. After some minutes of tense silence in the room, we heard another door slam. The conversation in the bar ceased. The door leading into our room was unlocked, and a man came in.

“All right?” he whispered.

“All right,” I said.

“Nothing to worry about at the moment,” he said. “My wife will bring you some food in a moment—and some coffee. But you’ll have to keep quiet. We never know who’s going to come in next door. And don’t go out again—someone might see you.”

The food and drink arrived, and, after it, we gladly went to sleep. Hard floors held no terror for us now. We heard the wind outside. But it was—outside. We were safely sheltered, for the moment, at least.

Next morning, with daylight, we discovered two unwelcome things. One was that the weather had become even worse. Great gusts of wind were driving the snow now, making it impossible to think of starting our journey over the mountains. The second was that the German patrols came past every hour. They regularly called into the pub to say their good mornings before moving on.

We were expecting a Spaniard to come to fetch us. He was coming from Spain on the understanding that he would receive a fee for each man he took across the Pyrenees. There was no hope of his coming in this weather. We spent one day, two days, three days, locked up in that room waiting for him, with the wind and the snow beating at the little restaurant. We heard the German patrols crunch into the bar at their scheduled times. We listened to the lorry drivers and the workers from the dam lifting their voices in conversation and argument. And we had to stay put—and very quiet. The strain mounted. There were now sixteen of us. We had picked up a sick man, a Czech pilot who had been working for the Resistance in Le Havre. He was just getting over a bout of pneumonia, but he was still weak and very weary.

The revival of spirits, amounting to a feeling of exhilaration which we had experienced immediately before the lorry ride into the mountains, was now completely dissipated again. Once more it was a question of hanging on. The tension was all the higher now, because we were so near to making good our escape. The need for discipline was proportionately greater. We had to maintain a strict silence virtually the whole time. And there was still the risk, while we waited, that a German patrol would spot our presence, or, accidentally, push into the room and find us there. We understood that when the weather was too bad the Germans went into the pub and stayed there, sometimes asking for the use of the room we now occupied, to rest until the end of their patrol. The Czech was a constant worry. His illness made him a dangerous liability. “Pills,” the young medical student, who was still with us, looked after him as best he could, but the Czech was an unwelcome additional burden to us.

The wind screamed around the room; the sun stayed out of sight. We kept watches round the clock for the Spanish guide. We had to mount a watch also whenever one of us wanted to relieve himself. The privy was outside in the snow. On the fourth day the weather cleared for just a couple of hours. The sun came out, glinting on the high drifts of snow, revealing the peaks that rose above us.

Then the Spaniard arrived, a strong, dark, taciturn man. He brought no hope with him.

“The weather’s too bad. I can’t take you on yet. It would be madness in this weather—you’ll have to wait a day or two.” We did not like the sound of that. We had already waited longer than we liked, and I doubted whether we could hang on much longer without our being caught.

“I’m going down to the village,” said the guide. “I’ll come back for you when the weather’s right.” He started to leave us. This was unbearable. At least we now had a guide. We must keep him, so that the moment a chance appeared for leaving we could take it.

“You’re not going down,” I said. “You’re staying here.” He turned round and I faced him with a revolver. He shrugged. “If it clears up,” I said, “we’ll make a dash for it.”

“All right,” he said. And he went to sleep in the pub, lying down, out of sight, under the counter.

We continued our watch on the weather and the German patrols. At one o’clock in the morning the man on watch shook me by the shoulder.

“Look, patron.” I looked and saw the moon shining. I got up, went into the bar, and awakened the Spaniard.

“I think we can go,” I said. He showed no keenness for the idea.

“Come on out and see,” I said. He came into the open with us. He looked up into the sky. There were still clouds but they had lifted. The moonlight bathed the snow about us. He studied the sky for some moments.

“It’s good enough, isn’t it?” I said. He went on looking.

“Well?” I pressed him.

“Yes, I think we can risk it,” he said. “I think we’ll have enough time to get across to the other side before there’s any more snow.” Now that he had agreed on the operation, I was concerned with the detailed risks. I pointed to the virgin snow. We should leave our tracks in it.

“What about the Germans passing here?” My watchkeeper answered me.

“We’ve got three quarters of an hour before they come again.” “Time enough,” said the Spaniard. “But we must hurry.”

I rushed back into the cafe and woke up the other men.

“Get dressed—quick. We’re moving off.” They did not need telling twice. Not all of us had adequate clothing for the journey ahead, but we had to put up with it. We had managed to get boots or shoes for all but one, who was wearing tennis shoes: that was all we could find for him. I had provided everyone with a good, stout stick, and three of us had ropes. Not a perfectly equipped party for mountaineering, but we had some of the essentials. I watched them hurrying to get ready and then realized one problem remained. The Czech pilot was also struggling to get dressed. I stared at him. He caught my look.

“I’m coming,” he said determinedly. I looked toward “Pills.”

“Don’t take him. Don’t. He could never hold out,” said the young medical student. We had reckoned on a twenty-four hours’ walk across the mountains. Twenty-four hours in the snow and bitter cold for a man just recovering from pneumonia was out of the question. “He won’t have a chance,” said “Pills.”

“Right,” I said. “You stay behind,” I told the Czech. He lost his temper.

“I tell you I’m coming. You’ve no right to stop me. I’ve got this far and I’m crossing over with you.” I called in the Spaniard.

“Look,” I said. As he watched, I took out the money for the Czech’s passage and tore it in half. I gave one half to the Spaniard, the other half to the Czech. “You understand you’ll get the other half when you take him across,” I said to the Spaniard. He nodded.

“And you understand,” I said to the pilot. “You can be sure now this man will come and fetch you as soon as he can and take you across the mountains. But you’ve got to get your strength back first.”

“No,” said the Czech. “I am coming with you. You cannot deny me the right to escape.”

“I am not denying you your escape. I’m telling you that if you try to escape now you’ll die. If you wait, this man will get you to safety.”

“I will not wait,” said the pilot. He finished lacing his boots.

“Listen to me—very carefully,” I said. “I mean every word I say. If you come with us, you will not only throw your own life away, but you’ll be risking the lives of everyone else.”

“I am coming. I shall not die.”

“For the last time,” I said, looking straight into his eyes, “I tell you that you must wait. If I have to, I will shoot you rather than risk the lives of fifteen men for the sake of one.”

“I don’t care what you say. I am coming with you,” said the Czech. I turned my back on him.

“Get going,” I said to the guide. “I’ll come after you. I’ll follow your tracks and wipe them out behind me.” The Spaniard went out, the others followed. The Czech pilot and I watched them as the guide led the single file of men away from the cafe up the slope, their feet sinking deeply into the virgin snow. I followed slowly after the last of them. I stood by a tree, fifty yards from the cafe, watching them receding above me. The Czech came toward me.

“If you go past this tree,” I said to him carefully, “I will shoot you.” I held the revolver in my hand.

“I’ve told you I don’t care,” he said. Then he added, “If you shoot me, the Germans will hear you and they’ll catch you.”

 “I’ll take that chance. I’ll shoot you, I’ll wait for the Germans to come, and then I’ll run for it. They may get me, but it’ll keep them off the track of the others. But you’re not going to stop those fourteen from getting away. I just can’t let you do it.” We stood there in the moonlight, facing each other, only a few yards apart, measuring each other’s resolution.

“If you were to shoot me, it would be murder,” he said.

“If I let you go with the others, I’d be abetting the murder of fourteen men. I am responsible for them. If you call it murder to stop you, then, all right, I’m prepared to murder you.”

 “I am coming,” he said. And he started to walk toward me. He walked up to the tree and raised his foot as though he was going to take the next step past it. I was suffering an agony of conscience. I was faced with an appalling decision. But I was determined to shoot if he took the next step. It was certain that if he were to come with us he would be caught, and all, in turn, would be caught.

“One more step and I shoot,” I warned him, raising my revolver and taking aim.

Chapter Fifteen

The metal of the revolver glinted in the moonlight. The face of the Czech, staring at me in hatred, was drained of color. My hand, clenched about the gun, felt numb with the cold and the pressure. I noticed that it trembled a little.

“One more step....” I threatened him.

Another minute of terrible silence. Then the Czech turned toward the restaurant again. He walked away without a word.

If I had had any doubts about my decision to leave him behind, they disappeared as soon as I set off after the rest of the party. I had lost about fifteen minutes in all, and now I had to run to catch up with them. “Run” is a euphemism, for with each step I sank into the knee-deep snow. Walking was difficult enough, but hurrying, as I had to, the effort was killing. I was in excellent condition, but my legs, within minutes of starting, were as weak as those of a man allowed up after a long spell in bed. I felt as though I were carrying the weight of a diver’s boots on my feet. Each step was a conscious effort.

The guide had led the others at a fast pace, and it took me more than half an hour to catch them. None of us wasted any breath on conversation or explanation of what had happened to the Czech. The others merely turned round, acknowledged with their eyes that I had joined them, and went on walking, up and up, through the soft snow, sinking sometimes down to the thighs in it. I could never have imagined the desperate exhaustion of crossing the Pyrenees in winter. We pressed our lips tightly together and fought for good lungfuls of air in the thinning atmosphere.

We were about two hours away from the restaurant by the dam when one of the men, whose fitness throughout had been first class, started dragging his feet. He staggered and fell, unconscious. The mountain air had knocked him out. I called a halt to the party.

“A blanket. And ropes.” We wrapped him up in the blanket and then trussed him, like a sailor’s hammock. Between us, taking it in turns, we dragged him by the ropes, dragged him through the snow, up the mountains, one slow, gasping step following another. The moon still shone on us, but our heads were down, fighting against the snow, the air, and the boisterous, biting winds. From time to time, for a few minutes, the man recovered enough to walk a little. Then he collapsed again, and sagging limbs groaned once more with the task of dragging him. For hour upon hour we dragged him, two men tugging at the ropes over their shoulders so that their burden should not dig into the snow and impede progress even more. Their hands, clutching the ropes, froze into an agonizing rigidity.

Every hour we stopped for two minutes. We all rubbed our feet with snow, for it was essential that, at least, we should try to avoid frostbite and keep the blood circulating.

We rubbed the snow over our feet, our hands, and all over our faces. We performed our actions in a sort of dumb agony. We were drawing on that last reserve of energy and resolution to get us over the mountains. Any one of us might have yielded to the appalling desire just to lie down in the snow and rest. But we knew it would be our last rest on earth. The deep, red pain in the chest, the burning eyes, the shaking limbs had to be ignored; the lungs must go on fighting for breath, the legs must always be forced to take that next step before which they protested.

The mountains were a white torture. Like chained men, with a slave master flogging us all the way, we stumbled higher and higher. Not a single other creature did we see. Not even a chamois. Animals that had their homes in the mountains found themselves shelter while sixteen men, plugged with benzedrine, fought against total fatigue and despair, saying to themselves over and over again, “There must be an end, God, let there be an end.”

We climbed over the highest part of the Pyrenees. If there was any boasting to be done, it was not to be done then. To survive was the height of our ambitions. Daylight came, and with it a brittle sunshine, and we were still climbing upward. We had almost reached the highest point of our climb, beyond which lay the frontier, when, on the mountain opposite us, we saw a patrol. Not a German patrol, but a Spanish one. But their nationality was irrelevant. We must not be seen. We had to lie down for an hour in the snow, our limbs and extremities freezing, while we watched the patrol. We watched them, a single line of men on skis, appearing and disappearing in the distance. At last it seemed they had finally gone, and we were able to get up.

Our whole bodies had stiffened. We rubbed snow over ourselves again to stimulate the blood and beat ourselves with our hands. A last ridge confronted us before we could begin the journey down. That last hill seemed to demand even more energy than we had needed already. And just as we were dragging the man in his blanket toward the crest, I became, suddenly, blind. Blind from the snow and the wind, blind from fatigue. I called to “Pills.”

“I can’t see a thing.” He looked at me.

“Your eyes are completely bloodshot,” he said. “Take some more benzedrine.”

I asked “Pills” to walk in front of me. I put my hand on his shoulder and followed him in that way. I could see nothing more than the vague silhouette of his body. We walked slowly upward. I was walking in darkness, although it was still daylight. I felt the ground level off: we must be at the top. “Pills” stopped.

“Listen,” he said. “We’re walking on practically nothing from now on. For God’s sake, be careful. There’s a precipice on either side of us—straight down—a very long way. Don’t step out of line. Keep right behind me with every step.”

Slowly, slowly, feeling every step before taking it, I followed him. I was very frightened. I tried to black out my imagination, but my blindness seemed to increase its activity. I could “see” the precipice even more clearly than my eyes could have shown it to me. Time disappeared, and fear mounted, because my eyes could not put a limit to my danger. I could not tell whether I was walking in a straight line or not. My balance was disturbed, and I felt more than once as though I was about to topple. My hand dug deeper into the other man’s shoulder.

Then we stopped. We were at the top, and over the worst of it.

There was room here, said “Pills,” to sit down. I had not told anyone else of my blindness. Now, when they spoke to me, I could only guess where they were. I did not try to turn my head in the direction from which a voice seemed to speak; it was less suspicious if I spoke straight ahead of me.

It was now, “Pills” told me, dusk. We had taken seventeen hours to reach the top, of which every minute could be measured in the infinite weariness of our bodies. As night came on, and we felt the cold creeping over us, we rested. For one hour we allowed our limbs a respite from labor. Then we started going down again.

It was much easier during the descent. I still walked with my hand on the medical student’s shoulder, at the back of the party, but with much less difficulty. The snow was less deep almost from the start of our descent, and, quite soon, it had disappeared altogether. Then my sight began slowly to return. The going down and the benzedrine were doing me good. The shape in front of me became much more defined, though my sight was still far from normal; it was good enough for me to walk, carefully, without help, and I knew it was improving all the time. The fear of permanent blindness, secretly nurtured before, was dispelled.

The guide told us we had passed safely over the frontier. We were now in Spain. A silent cheer passed among us. He took us to a cave. It was cold inside, but we settled down to rest for the few hours until daybreak.

In the early morning we set off for a small village nearby. There we bought some food. (We were still living on the money my wife received for selling my horse.) It was the most expensive meal I have ever had. For a thousand francs a head, we received a garlic soup, in which there was a piece of bread; another piece of bread, an inch thick and the size of my hand; one egg; and one glass of wine. In 1944, a thousand francs were worth a rather better meal than that. But we had been able to take little food with us into the mountains, and our main concern was food of any kind, not the price of it.

My eyes were much better. We continued walking down the mountains. As we were walking along a ridge, I stopped the party and pointed to a fir tree.

“Listen,” I said, “you’re going to say I’m either a madman or a fool, but you’ll always remember this. Just look at this fir tree. A most extraordinary thing has happened. Do you see? There’s mistletoe growing on it.” They all smiled at me. Tolerantly. Compassionately. “You’ve never seen,” I said, “and probably you’ll never see again mistletoe growing on a fir tree. You’ll probably never even hear of it again in your lifetime. We’ll all remember this day by that mistletoe.”

Farther down, in a valley, we found a poor makeshift shelter in what was not much more than a hole in the ground. It protected us only slightly from the bitter winds. We built a fire alongside the hole and huddled around it, trying to get a little heat into our tired bodies. One man went off with the guide to the British consul at Barcelona, taking a message from me. I asked the consul to come fetch us.

Then, as so often after our escape from Eysse, we settled down to wait. Before, we had been exposed to more dangers, perhaps, but never had we waited in such primitive conditions. Our ragged party tried hard to keep up their spirits.

“It can’t be long now....”

“We’re over the worst, anyway....”

“At least there are no Gestapo or miliciens here....”

“Oh, for a great warm fire, a thick soup, and great hunks of bread....”

We wrestled with a Spanish mountain sheep and caught it. A tough, shaggy beast that smelled appallingly. We killed it, skinned it, and cooked it, after a fashion. It was more like a goat to eat, but it was food, and it kept us going. We ate the whole sheep among us while we waited. That, and a little tea we were able to make, was our diet for three days. The wind screamed over the black, bare, rugged landscape. But the mountains, majestically, formidably ugly as they seemed now, and would always seem after our battle with them, were behind us, a vast, white towering menace we had fought and endured.

After two days we had a message from the consul, saying he was coming to fetch us. He arrived the next day, bringing two cars. The cheers that greeted him were silent ones, but we all cheered, nevertheless. It was now the second week of February—five weeks since we had knocked out the warders at Eysse and escaped.

My journey to Gibraltar, via Barcelona and Madrid, was uneventful. The diplomatic cars protected us from arrest, and from the splendidly gaudy Spanish civil guards we received salutes all the way. We luxuriated in hot baths; we were never again to take such pleasure in good food. We ate oranges, for the first time in years. And at the embassy we had tea, in ritual English fashion, at four o’clock. I was taken to the Spanish Foreign Office, bearing two passport photographs of myself. A Spanish hand was held out, palms upward, and received a number of pound notes. I became a Spaniard, with a Spanish passport. I took my party, who rejoined me in Madrid, to a Spanish music hall; my Spanish was not all that might have been expected of a Spaniard—I found I had bought fifteen rows, instead of fifteen seats.

I had a sleeping compartment on the night train from Madrid to the south coast. During the night, officials woke me up, checked my identity, discovered I was a good Spaniard, and passed on down the train.

At a small station near Gibraltar, a porter told me this was where I should get off.

“Walk out of the station,” he said, “turn left and you’ll find friends waiting for you.” And sure enough, there was a jeep, with three British officers.

They drove me to Gibraltar and smoothed my way into the British possession. A colonel gave me a “first priority” for a flight back to England, but I had to wait a day before taking off because of bad weather conditions. I was in no hurry any more. I strolled around Gibraltar, content to soak in the physical sensations of being free.

On board the aircraft I was tired and went to sleep; so did Hudson, the British officer who escaped from Eysse with me and was now on the same plane. The flight was agreeably without incident. We had had enough “incidents” to last us for a while.

We landed at an R.A.F. base on the south coast of England. I think I was scarcely aware of the name of the place. It did not matter to me. For the moment, I was incurious, allowing others to do the work and make the decisions. Hudson and I were now separated. As a British officer, but a non-Briton, I had to be “checked out” in a different way from him.

“Good-by, see you soon,” said Hudson. And I waved to him as he walked away. I was taken, with another man, also French, to a police station near the air base and given a good, strong cup of English tea while telephone calls passed between the officer in charge and London. Then two plain-clothes men came to us.

“Come along,” they said, “we’re going to London.”

They took us to the railway station, and we all boarded a train for London. We had a reserved compartment to ourselves, just the four of us. We had newspapers to read and could chat easily about the war in Italy and in the Far East. The complete assurance of the defeat of the Germans expressed by those two Special Branch men was as good a welcome to Britain as I could have desired.

The ticket collector opened the door.

“Tickets, please.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said to him, “but I haven’t got my ticket—my guardian angels have got it.” One of the plain-clothes men went red in the face as he passed over our tickets. The ticket collector punched them and passed them back to him with an inquisitive look. When he had closed the door again, the plain-clothes man reproached me.

“Sir, you shouldn’t have said that, you know—you drew attention to us.”

“But you are my guardian angel,” I said. “You’re looking after me.”

“I know,” he said, “but we’re in a very difficult position.”

“Never mind,” I said, “don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m sorry, I only said it as a joke. I don’t mind having a guardian angel. I’ve had plenty since the war began, and one more won’t do me any harm. Besides, I’ve never had such a nice one as you!”

When we arrived in London, at Waterloo Station, one of our escorts left us.

“Wait here,” he said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m just going to see what they’ve laid on for us.”

He came back after about ten minutes, looking worried and embarrassed. He was accompanied by a uniformed policeman.

“I don’t know how to explain this to you,” he stammered. “I’m terribly sorry, but there’s been an awful mistake. I don’t know what to do....I don’t know whether it’s possible to change things now....”

“What on earth’s the matter?” I asked him. “What’s going on? Who’s done what?”

“Well,” he said, “someone made a boob, and they’ve sent a Black Maria to fetch you.” My French companion became indignant.

“This is an insult,” he said. “I’m a guest of England. How dare they send a Black Maria for me?”

“Where is it?” I said.

“Just near the platform, sir,” said the policeman.

“Come on, then,” I said. “What does it matter?” We left the train and walked to the Black Maria. Standing by the open door was another policeman.

“Excuse me,” I said to him, “I wonder whether you would mind—have you any handcuffs?—I’d like to try British handcuffs.” The policeman smiled. But my companion was still annoyed about the “insult” to his dignity.

“Don’t worry yourself about it so much,” I said. “Do you know many people in London?”

“Yes, I know quite a few.”

“Well, it’s possible I know more than you do, and it doesn’t worry me. But if you’re so concerned about them seeing you in a Black Maria, why don’t you lie down and keep out of sight? But I don’t mind telling you I’m going to stand up and look out of the window. I don’t mind whether my best friend or my worst enemy sees me in a Black Maria. They’ll say, ‘Well, after all, we expect him to be in a Black Maria.”

Chapter Sixteen

Now, at last, nearly three years after that first meeting with my brother Peter at my home, when I was officially recruited, I was to see the London headquarters of the “Firm”—as Special Operations Executive was known. I had my own images of the personalities there and I had heard something of the methods they employed—from conversations with agents dropped from England in the past. I had formed a number of prejudices, which was natural enough, I felt; they were the normal prejudices of anyone working “in the field,” about those concerned with administration. I admit also to a degree of egocentricity about my work in France; I might almost suggest this was a necessary qualification for the work: without a total obsession with one’s own activities, even with one’s own importance, there could be a fatal disregard for security and a loss of that initiative and resourcefulness upon which, ultimately, the Resistance was nourished and by which it grew so strong. I came to England, relishing the opportunity to register at first-hand my criticisms of certain aspects of the “service” to the Resistance, which until now I had expressed only in fairly caustic radio messages.

But first of all I had to go through the “Patriotic School,” which took its name because it was housed in the Royal Patriotic School, near Wandsworth Common in London. This was an outfit that impressed me with its quiet skill and thoroughness. Its purpose was to check the identities of the men and women arriving in Britain after making their escapes from occupied territories and to test the authenticity of their stories. Heavy traffic passed through the Patriotic School, and anything less than 100 per cent caution could have led to the infiltration of enemy agents into Britain. It was so easy for a person to claim to have worked for the Resistance in this or that country, to have escaped from such and such a prison, and to ask for sanctuary in Britain. We knew from experience in the field how double agents could insinuate themselves into our confidence. In England, only by the most diligent and, if necessary, prolonged examination, going over and over the stories time and again, alert for discrepancies, cross-checking with the stories of others who had escaped, was it possible to make certain of a man’s integrity or treachery.

As one might expect, it was rarely a slip over a major fact that gave a man away, so it was the job of the interrogating officer to probe away at the smallest details of a man’s story, covering his whole life, either to remove any reasonable doubt of his honesty or to lead him into self-betrayal. Even the cleverest of spies found it impossible to remember from day to day every item of make-believe they fabricated during long conversations with the “Life Story Man,” as the interrogating officer was called. An apparently ingenuous question could provoke an answer in contradiction to one given a week before, or reveal an intimacy of knowledge about the Germans which no genuine escapee ought to possess.

My own stay at the Patriotic School was short; I was there only forty-eight hours. There were many in England who had worked with me in France, who could vouch for my identity and the truth of my story. But there were some escapees who were not so fortunate, and whose account of their activities, though genuine, was suspiciously confused. I was asked about a young woman from France, the daughter of a well-known artist. She had arrived in England about a year before.

“But we’re still keeping an eye on her,” I was told. “She said when she first arrived that you were in jail. Well, we knew that was true. But she was so mixed up in the rest of her statement that we just couldn’t be sure about her. We still can’t.” She needed someone to guarantee her identity. Two days later I went with one of the officers to a restaurant where she was known to have a date. I merely put my head in, took a good look at her, and came out again.

“That’s all right,” I said. “That’s the girl I know.” After that, she was no longer under observation. She had done some extremely good work for the Resistance before escaping from France, but she had become very tired and went short of food for a long stretch. Her whole physical condition deteriorated and this, in turn, affected her memory so that she had given her interrogators a jumbled tale of which they were rightly suspicious. There could be no justification for taking a chance in their work.

All men and women entering the Patriotic School were questioned by officers of the Army, Navy, and R.A.F., each of them seeking the most up-to-date and detailed information about troop dispositions and armament, about the disposal of shipping and the state of coastal defenses, and even the precise location of individual machine-gun and anti-aircraft defenses. Because all this information could be of considerable value to the Allied services, the interrogators at the Patriotic School had to be on their guard not so much against enemy agents—that was not their prime function—but against people who exaggerated and invented in their anxiety to show that they knew something of value.

Just before I left, I met a F.A.N.Y. who had been in the organization right from the start and had always looked after my file. Anyone who had met me, who had dropped into France and returned, or had escaped from France, had passed on information about my appearance, about the code names under which I operated, and about small personal characteristics, even down to my delight in “teasing.” She probably knew more about me than I knew about myself.

“And am I like the man you imagined?”

“Very,” she said. And I was left wondering whether that was a compliment or not.

While in England I enjoyed myself at the so-called “finishing school” for saboteurs—bringing myself up to date on weapon training and the use of explosives. I also enjoyed myself criticizing what I felt to be deficiencies in the organization, as seen from the other end. I felt that the headquarters administrative and executive staff were far too static, that insufficient use was made of agents most recently returned from France. Only they could provide reliable information about the constantly changing papers which an ordinary Frenchman was expected to carry. Only they could pass on to agents about to be dropped the all-important details of existence, a knowledge of which might mean the difference between life and death. What food was available to ordinary people, what procedure to expect on the trains, even the latest jokes about the Germans: all this could be invaluable help to an agent going to France. Yet it seemed to me that S.O.E. was too often content to rely upon reports given to them a year or two years earlier.

I also made myself a nuisance in demanding that, in future, explosives should be packed in bundles, ready for use, instead of being left loose in the containers. If the explosives were packed in bundles of varying sizes, it would cut down the amount of unnecessary work for the Resistance, I said, and reduce the dangers to which they were exposed. As it was, if there was a bridge to be blown up, the saboteurs had to go to the hiding place where the explosives were kept and spend precious, dangerous time, arranging them into the right-sized bundles. Then, lest anyone had seen them, they had to take the bundles with them to another hiding place until it was time to use them. More than once, men were arrested either while packing the explosives or while transporting them. Had they been “prepacked,” we could have left them in their hiding place until immediately before the operation itself.

I made my complaints before an interservices committee, gaudy with the “scrambled eggs” and red tabs of staff officers. My criticisms were not popular, but I felt I had to make them. To them, no doubt, my long list of complaints seemed trivial beside the bigger problems of the war. My point was that each particular deficiency, however small, reduced the effectiveness of the Resistance and endangered lives needlessly.

At the end of that meeting, which had been conducted with a good deal of acerbity on both sides, a general patted me on the shoulder and said, “Well, never mind, old chap, I’ll stand you a dinner in Paris.” I know now he meant well, but at the time, with my temper frayed by the meeting, I resented his ripe, paternal manner.

“It’s all very well for you, with your bloody red tabs—you’re sure to get to Paris all right—but silly fools like myself are by no means so sure to make it.” He walked out, offended.

It was not only the meeting or his manner that had upset me. I had been asked to go back to France, and, after much argument, I had agreed. I was due to leave two days later, and I was in no doubt about what was in store for me. By now, France was a furnace. Everyone knew that D-Day was imminent, and the Germans were killing indiscriminately in their attempts to wipe out the Resistance. I had long ceased to think of the whole thing as “a game.” The whole country was burning with fear, hatred, and revenge. I reckoned the odds at ten to one against my coming out alive.

I was afraid. And I felt a degree of guilt about returning. Before escaping from Eysse, I had promised my wife that if I reached England safely, I should not return to France until D-Day. Now I was told in London I was needed in my own country again during the vital days before D-Day. (They displayed an almost indecent anxiety to be rid of me.)

Before agreeing to return, I demanded certain guarantees. What would happen to my family if I were killed? I was told on arrival in England that I had been promoted from captain—my rank when recruited by my brother—to major, and that if I were to die, my wife would receive a colonel’s pension, with allowance for my seven children. I cannot say this information made me “happy”: I was not happy to be going back. But I was satisfied that my wife and family would be looked after. I made a will leaving everything to her and prepared for my return.

My orders were to return to central France. In all, five teams of agents and radio operators were to be dropped there, under my command, to organize Resistance in five counties: the Loiret, Loir-et-Cher, and Cher—plus the Sarthe, a part of the Indre, and a part of the Indre-et-Loire. It was an area I knew well, and where I had many friends. Before finally agreeing to go back, I asked for the assurance of first-class supplies for the Resistance in those districts: supplies of money and ammunition, of shoes and clothes and arms for the maquis groups which were growing every day, but which must be well equipped if they were to give effective aid to the Allied armies after D-Day. I was promised that we should lack nothing. There were many promises given by S.O.E., during the war, which were forgotten. Charitably one must assume that they were given verbally, on the spur of the moment, and no records were kept to remind the authorities of their obligations. This was true, I regret to say, in matters of rank and pensions for many agents who died. The promise to give us the supplies we needed was, as I shall show later, fully kept.

Only a few days before the date scheduled for my drop into France, I slipped while doing P.T. and tore a leg muscle. Massage, ray treatment, liniments, all failed to heal it. This meant I should be unable to make a parachute jump. How could I land in France? The only feasible alternative was to go by Lysander, but even with two sticks I had trouble in walking.

Then, hobbling along with a friend in a London square, we saw a young errand boy with a bicycle. We stopped him and asked if I could try to ride his bike. Not surprisingly, he was suspicious—none the less so when I offered him a ten-shilling note. But he allowed me to mount his bike and watched me as I rode, somewhat unsteadily, round the quiet square, with its shabby, peeling façades and a couple of mothers with their children playing in the gardens. I managed well enough. I went back to the S.O.E. office and said, “You can land me, but you must make sure there’s a bicycle waiting for me.”

Everything was agreed. I was to go by Lysander; the reception committee would have a bicycle ready for me.

I met the girl who was to be my radio operator, a small, dark-haired girl called Muriel Byck. She looked so young, but I had seen enough in France already to know that courage knew no barriers of age. Because I had also seen how agents could be betrayed by the smallest details, I suggested to her and to two other girls who were also to be dropped as “radios” in my sector that I should examine everything they proposed to take with them. (I went through the same process with the men: it was a precaution which cost only a little time and might save lives.)

I checked the clothing. Some of it I rejected as too new or too English. I was deliberately fastidious, believing that it was far better to cause a little bother in London than to expose these girls to unnecessary risks in France.

Muriel Byck proposed to take with her a brand-new powder compact. It was a present from her fiancé.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “you mustn’t take that with you. In France it’s impossible to buy a new pigskin powder compact—there just aren’t any more of them to be had.”

“But I’d like to take it with me,” she said, “to remind me of my fiancé.”

I said she could take it, if she would let me make it look old. I knew how much it must have meant to her, as she hesitated for a few moments before agreeing. I took the powder compact and rubbed it with ammonia; then I reckoned it was safe for her to carry.

After checking the clothing, I went over the cover stories with each of the agents and radio operators. They seemed to me well fabricated and well learned. Muriel was provided with three different photographs of herself for identity papers, each of them projecting an apparently separate person by the adoption of a changed hair style. By drawing back her hair from her forehead, or by fluffing it out, untidily, she could assume different identities in emergency. And she would have the identity papers, bearing the appropriate photograph of herself, to aid the transformation.

This was the time of waiting. The training was finished, the orders issued, the cover stories cooked and digested. There were drinks and meals and theaters; the waiting time was a gay time, a stiff cocktail of tension and excitement. Our pseudo-French suitcases and haversacks were ready in our rooms. I went to a shop in Duke Street, off Piccadilly, where a very special black market operated. After one “dismissal,” when I had turned up in a British officer’s uniform—bought reluctantly from Austin Reed’s—and had spoken in a reasonable English voice, I tried again—this time putting on a thick French accent. I came away with some soap, chocolate, and razor blades—without coupons. A special service for the Special Services.

In the house in Wimpole Street, we all waited, checking in twice, three times a day.

“Any news for us?”

“Not yet—call in again later.”

“Any news?”

“Not yet....” Then:

“Still nothing?”

“Yes, we’re ready for you. You’re off today.”

The plan was for those who were to be parachuted to take off ahead of the Lysander in which I was to travel. On the day that Muriel heard she was to go, I went with her to the airfield—only to find that the flight was canceled owing to bad weather. That happened three days in succession. The anti-climax was an agony. The tension had reached near to breaking point. These delays, unavoidable though they were, caused more than one agent, after all the training and disciplining of nerve, to ask to drop out at the last moment: the morale could be permanently damaged by the let-down; the mainspring could break. There was nothing facile about the effort needed to summon up the conscious courage necessary for an agent, especially a young girl, to prepare to jump into a foreign country, facing not only the considerable risks of the jump itself but a totally ruthless enemy on the ground. Muriel was an English Jewess, a gay young woman of twenty-three, looking twenty or even younger, but with the resilience and maturity of a much older woman. She withstood the shock of arriving at the airfield and being sent away again; she bore it once, twice, three times, and still had the guts to go on.

Finally, she and the other teams took off and made safe landings. Then it was my turn. A Lysander is meant to take two—a pilot and a passenger. There were three passengers in this one. I sat on another man’s knees and a girl cramped onto a ledge in front of me. My job was to hold onto the cover enclosing the cockpit to make sure that it did not fly open during the journey.

When we reached the French coast, the flak came up at us. Not being used to flying in planes in wartime, we were not concerned about the shaking of the aircraft, and, far from appreciating the danger, we thought the “rocket display” rather beautiful. The pilot sideslipped the plane on one wing and then on the other, lost height and then climbed again—the flak and the bumps passed and we were still whole. Farther on, I was astonished to see the number of lights showing in France, despite the black-out, and realized then how one group of agents had parachuted toward the railway lights, believing them to be the guiding lights of the reception committee.

The railway lights fell behind us; we came to the river and into the Loire district. There we followed the rivers, slinking in the moonlight, and cut across country. Now I recognized my country.

We came to Châteauroux, circled in the vicinity, and escaped the sporadic and inaccurate flak that came up at us. We turned and came down toward the landing lights set out by the reception committee waiting below. I had been down there, often enough before, waiting as they were now. It was my turn to be the “body” arriving. We landed in the field smoothly, turned round at the end of the course, and taxied to the waiting men. We pushed open the doors and scrambled our cramped limbs to the ground, dragging our few belongings with us.

As I had been told, other people were waiting to embark in the Lysander for the return trip to England. It was my job to check them into the plane. The maximum capacity of the Lysander, as

I well knew by now, was three passengers. Four people were waiting. There was a young woman agent named Jacqueline Nearn (who later had a leading part in the film, Now It Can Be Told) two men, and an old lady. I went up to the old lady.

“Could you please tell me who you are?” I asked her, “because I must check who’s going into the plane.”

“I’m a general’s wife,” she said. I knew enough about the others from information given me in advance in London. They were expected.

“I am sorry, Madame,” I said, “but you cannot go to London tonight.”

“But this is the fourth time I have come to a landing ground and been left out—my husband’s a general and he’s in London, waiting for me.”

“I can only say again I am sorry,” I told her, “but your husband’s perfectly all right in London, and I’m afraid your place on the plane must go to someone who is more important to the war effort than you are.”

“But this is terrible....My husband—“

“General or no general,” I said, “you must wait—there is no way round it—there just isn’t room.”

She was clearly upset, but there was no choice. The other three climbed aboard, settled down, and waved their good-bys. The plane took off, hesitantly, with the heavy load, but successfully. I hobbled with the reception committee to the edge of the “ground.”

“Right,” I said, “now where’s my bicycle?”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” said the leader, “but we haven’t got a bicycle—not an extra one.”

“But I can’t walk properly.” I had to walk, nevertheless, for quite a distance, limping along the road. The general’s wife was taken off on the back of a bicycle, and my feelings as I watched her go were anything but chivalrous. It was true that if the Germans were to meet us they would scarcely suspect that a man hobbling on two sticks had just landed from a British plane; on the other hand, it would be difficult to explain what I was doing out at all in that condition, long after curfew.

However, after walking for about half an hour, one of the men who had gone on ahead returned with a bike for me. We cycled into a small village and went into a house by a back entrance. We all had welcome cups of coffee, and I passed round some cigarettes. Then I lay down on the kitchen floor.

It was the ninth of April, 1944—Easter Day. I had landed “with the bells,” as we say in France. But neither the kitchen floor, nor, I must confess, any holy thoughts of the symbolic significance of the day prevented me from sleeping soundly.

Chapter Seventeen

Although I had no inclination to underestimate the dangers now ahead of me, I was glad to be away from London. I could never have made a professional soldier; I am too resentful of being bossed about. I enjoyed my role in the Resistance for, although discipline there was no less essential than in the uniformed army, it was ultimately an expression of individualism.

In London I had also met Colonel Buckmaster, who was in charge of the French section of S.O.E. After all these years, I feel now, as then, that he was not the ideal man for the job. Let me say at once that I realize it was a very difficult job. I know, for instance, that he was never completely free of political preoccupations: “political” in the widest sense of the word. He had to combat the stubborn prejudices of military minds wedded for life to conventional concepts of how wars should be fought and won, although the Resistance gave him all the evidence he needed in support of guerrilla warfare.

On orders from London, precise and wholly successful acts of sabotage were carried out by the Resistance all over France, on factories working for the Germans, on bridges, canals, railways, communications, munitions dumps. Frequently we knocked out targets which Allied bombers had failed to damage. The cost of bomber raids, reckoned in terms of men, aircraft, fuel, and explosives, was thousands of times heavier than that of the Resistance. A handful of saboteurs, armed with local and technical knowledge, could hit a target at the precise spot where it would hurt most.

None of us would suggest—and we were not trying to prove-that the Resistance was always more effective than the bombers. We could no more rival the destructive powers of a thousand-bomber raid on a great industrial town like Essen than we could challenge the Germans to open battle in the field. But as specialists in sabotage, and as hit-and-run fighters, we had a particular value. Why else should the Germans have retaliated with such frenzy and have dissipated so many men and so much energy upon the pursuit of the Resistance?

Buckmaster was also well and truly involved in the conference-table battles that went on from 1940 almost until D-Day itself between the various and often parallel bodies set up in London to sponsor and direct Resistance activities. At headquarters level in London there was often the sharpest friction between the “French section,” the “R/F section”—a part of S.O.E. set up by the British, but working in liaison with the Free French—and the de Gaulle organization. There was much jealousy and intrigue at work. Between the British and the Free French in London there was mutual distrust; it was hard to believe they were fighting the same war.

It was to be expected. The British were concerned with France only as a sector and a potential battleground in the world war against the Axis; they sent money, materials, and agents to the Resistance and set up specifically British réseaux because they wanted to be sure there were underground forces they could rely on to further the war against Germany. They were not immediately concerned with what kind of government should rule in France, provided the Germans were pushed out of the country and the new administration was friendly to the Allied cause. British agents were given the strictest instructions to steer clear of all political embroilment; they were expected to employ and aid French patriots, whatever their political color, provided they could be trusted to help beat the Germans. It was no particular cause of the British, to say the least, to see de Gaulle installed in power in a liberated France. All this, seen from a strictly British point of view, was reasonable enough.

It was no less understandable that General de Gaulle, for his part, should wish to have his own men in France and should be resentful of the fact that the specifically Gaullist circuits of the Resistance should have to be so heavily reliant upon the British for their supplies of arms and materials. The political battles de Gaulle fought, with such tenacity and final success, at the highest levels with Churchill and Roosevelt were reflected in the London headquarters of the Resistance. And to someone like myself who respected de Gaulle as the lonely patriot of 1940, and who was equally dedicated to the relief of his country’s misery by whatever means presented themselves, the energies spent on jealousy and backbiting seemed a lamentable waste.

It was a relief when, in May, we heard that de Gaulle had appointed General Koenig as commander of the French Forces of the Interior—created by de Gaulle two months before to give coherence to all clandestine forces in France. The F.F.I., as they were known, were to be the fighting troops of the Resistance. Somewhat optimistically, as I think, General de Gaulle envisaged them as being organized into orthodox military formations, into sections, companies, battalions, and so on, with their commanding officers carrying the ranks related to their numerical responsibilities. But the important thing was that, as the day of invasion became imminent, the “Secret Army,” which for long had been little more than a glorious dream, would have a solid basis in reality. And on D-Day, General Koenig, serving alongside Eisenhower, was to take over control of all the different elements of the active Resistance, whether organized by the British, the Americans, or the Free French. Now at last we could be sure we were all fighting the same war against the same enemy for the same cause—the liberation of France.

General de Gaulle estimated that by the spring of 1944 the maquis groups, to be found wherever there was mountain, hill, brush, forest, or even a shed to shelter them, numbered, in all, 100,000 men. His figure is as good as anyone else’s. In fact, no one man could know, either in London or in France, just how many men there were, how strong they were, how effectively they would perform as individual units. That was the supreme difficulty of those who sought to reduce the Resistance to a tidy and manageable shape on paper. It was not, and never could be, disposed like a trained and well-proportioned regular army. But what we did know, and what we were to prove, was that however untidy and irregular the underground forces might be, they were more single-minded in their courage and resolution than perhaps any regular army could ever be. The Resistance was about to fight voluntarily and alone in its own fields and its own streets for its own homes.

In all this, Buckmaster had his particular part to play. It was not a part with which I had much sympathy, for it is always hard for men of action to appreciate the organizers and administrators. And, beyond that, for all his attempts to show understanding of the lonely dangers to which the agents were committing themselves—by going to the airfield, for instance, to see them off and by handing over some small souvenir, such as cuff links—I found him a remote man, remote in his manner, and remote because he was unable to share, from first-hand experience, the fears and excitements of those who worked in the field. Furthermore, he was not what we French call a patron, a boss. He was not firm enough in his orders to us—leaving dangerous doubts in our minds about who was responsible and who was subordinate in the field, and he was not determined enough in fighting his superiors on our behalf. In that sense, he was not “our colonel,” he was a colonel, too readily submissive to higher ranks. But I think it only fair to say that many of the apparent blunders on his part—which seemed so grievous at the time—are now more easy to appreciate. I am thinking particularly of the poor quality of some of the agents landed in France, not so much of those who turned out to be traitors or to cave in under pressure, for that was almost impossible to predict in advance—but of those whose French accents were so bad that they were a danger to themselves and to those with whom they worked. I realize now that, when his superiors finally granted the value of the Resistance, Buckmaster was under heavy pressure to provide more and more agents, which meant that he must lower his high standards to recruit men and women who really did not possess all the necessary qualities and qualifications for the work. I suppose that was the price we had to pay for the success of the Resistance in France, measured in the intensity of the German counterattacks upon it, which deprived us of so many first-class men and women.

From the spring of 1944 each réseau was given a warning phrase which would be broadcast by the B.B.C. as an indication of the imminence of the invasion. Their orders were to listen for it on the first or the fifteenth of each month. After it had been broadcast, they were to be on the alert nightly for the broadcasting of pre-planned “action” messages, by which they would be ordered to begin a graduated attack on the enemy. The targets for D-Day were classified under three different headings: bridges, railways, general targets. The last would include armed uprising and assault by every means on the roads and German convoys to impede the enemy’s efforts to bring up reinforcements. The Gaullist Resistance groups within the public services also had their special plans laid down for D-Day. The Green Plan dealt with the railways, the Violet Plan with all lines of communication, the Blue Plan with electric power stations. There was also the Tortoise Plan, almost self-explanatory in its title, for the erection of road blocks, strategically placed, to hamper German troop movements.

The overall strategy of the Resistance, as I had understood it before leaving London, was for the ordering at the time of the Allied landings of attacks on specific targets in France, but for us to hold back in particular areas until the military commanders judged the moment to be ripe. The idea was that, by exercising restraint, the Germans would be led into believing that certain counties were safe. and they would concentrate their troops there. To persuade them to do so would be part of the grand strategic plan. This concept of graduated and selective action by the Resistance also took into account the extremely varied countryside in which the Resistance was operating, acknowledging that maquisards in the hills and mountains were more likely to make effective attacks than those in flatter, exposed terrain. But, as we shall see later, this plan was abandoned on D-Day. That, I shall always feel, was a terrible mistake, for thousands of French men and women lost their lives, who might otherwise still be living today.

Before agreeing to return to France, I had asked to know when D-Day was to be. I did not expect to be told the precise date for which it was planned, but I felt I had a right to know roughly how much time remained to me to make effective the Resistance in the area to which I had been assigned. I landed in France, knowing I had something like three or four months at the outside. That was little enough time to do all that had to be done. It seemed even less time when I arrived in France, in the darkness, hobbling on sticks, and found not even a bicycle on which to make haste.

I had hoped, at least, to keep the bicycle on which I had finally arrived. But I was told it could not be spared. I had to get up at six the next morning to catch a train to take me to friends at Loches, and, because I had had trouble at Loches before, and was too well-known there for my comfort, I had planned to take the bike on the train with me. Then I would get off at a small station outside Loches and cycle through the forest to the other side of the town. Now I had to risk traveling by train all the way into Loches itself. I made the journey, feeling nervous and anxious. Would I be recognized in the town? I had managed to survive so far; I had done a stretch in jail; it would be bad luck if I were to be caught now for lack of a bicycle.

When the train reached Loches, I sneaked out of the station, avoiding the main entrance. I crossed the market place with the intention of going straight to a rag and bone merchant I knew, to buy an old bike from him. I was only halfway across the market place, threading my way among the stalls and baskets and crates, as inconspicuously as I could with my crutches, when the last person I wanted to see came up to me, smiling.

“Oh, so you’ve come back, have you?” It was the head of the local police. He knew me fairly well. For a very short time, as a small child, I had gone to the same school as he had, in that district, and later I had lived in the area. We had always got on well together, but the war had broken many such friendships.

“I wondered when you’d return,” he said.

“But I’ve never been away—what do you mean?”

“Really?” said the head of police. “I’d heard that you escaped from prison and went to another country.”

“Who told you all this?” I asked him.

“Oh, just friends of mine.”

“Well, that’s very interesting, but I’m afraid your friends must have got things mixed up somehow. In fact, I’ve never been in prison, and I’ve never left the country.”

“How curious,” he said. He looked at me, still smiling, and winked. “Don’t stay too long in the town, will you?—get away as quickly as possible.”

“You think that would be a good idea?”

“An excellent idea,” he said, “for all concerned.”

“Well, you could help me if you like.”

“Glad to—if I can.”

“I need a bike. I was just on my way to a friend to borrow one, but if you could lend me one, by any chance, it would be helpful.”

“All right,” he said, “I can fix that. Look, you go over to the bar there and have a drink. Sit in the back of the place, out of sight. I’ll get you a bicycle.” And a few minutes later he was back with a bike. He knew very well which friends I was going to visit, and he suggested that I should leave the bicycle in the woods, near where they lived, when I had finished with it.

“I’ll send a policeman to pick it up,” he said. And off I rode on a police bicycle on my first day back in France. Things looked a bit better.

I tell that story particularly to try to put the Resistance into proper perspective, to try to convey the conditions under which we worked. It must sound a little ridiculous, after writing about the “Secret Army” and the important part assigned to the Resistance in connection with the invasion to come, that a man landed in France to organize the clandestine forces in a substantial area of the country should have to expose himself to danger for want of a bicycle. And so it was—up to a point. I should have had a bicycle waiting for me, as agreed in London. Yet it must be remembered, lest talk of “armies” and of 100,000 maquisards gives a delusion of anything resembling an orthodox military machine, that this was still a country occupied, and ruthlessly occupied, by the enemy. While the Resistance was becoming more powerfully armed and equipped every day, the provision of any particular piece of equipment for an individual was still frequently a matter of chance. What is more, bicycles were precious possessions. I wanted one because it could make me at once less conspicuous and more able to escape quickly from dangerous situations. A cyclist seeing a road block hundreds of yards ahead of him could more successfully turn about or disappear into a field, and thus evade capture, than a man in a motor car. (And, by this stage of the war, official permission was needed to use a car.) Finally, I tell the story to show once again the part played by luck in all our adventures, and the way in which so many Frenchmen, although officially committed, like the police chief at Loches, to aiding the enemy, were ready to aid the Resistance.

Once my friends had recovered from their surprise at seeing me, and I had established myself in their house, we sent a gamekeeper down to my wife at the estate near Limoges to come to see me. It took him a little time to cover the hundred-odd miles, because, by now, the railways were operating with difficulty, the lines being blown up frequently by maquisards and saboteurs. Then he had a somewhat turbulent welcome from my wife, and her companionship on the way back to Loches was marked by sporadic outbursts of complaint about my behavior. She still had some left for me when she arrived, and she had every justification.

“You gave me your word you wouldn’t come back until the Allies landed,” she said. “For one whole month—think of that, all of one month—I could sleep easily, knowing that you were safe, apart from the chance of your being hit in London by a V-1 or V-2. And now here you are again. Don’t forget you have seven children—we ought to count a little bit, you know.” She did not dwell on her grievance; that is not her nature. She had a right to complain of my broken promise, but, once having reminded me of my responsibilities to her and the children, she put her annoyance aside.

“Now that you are back, you must do your best. How can I help you?” I had asked for clothing. She had brought some with her. She had also brought me a bicycle. It was so good to see her again. She stayed two days with me in Loches before going back to Bas Soleil, once more to wait, and to fear.

Although I had kept in touch with other réseaux while I was in prison, it was nearly a year and a half since I had been active in the field. Before I was arrested, the Allies had still been fighting what was largely a defensive battle, and the story of the Resistance at that time had reflected, in microcosm, the retreats and heavy losses of the world war.

But now the Allied advance continued through Italy, despite the most bitter fighting around places like Cassino, and the Japs were tasting defeat in the Pacific and in South-east Asia. We were within weeks of the landings in France, and the build-up of the Resistance now developed an intensity and a magnitude quite unlike anything I had known before.

The other four teams, which were to work under my command, dropped into the country more or less according to plan. One group found the safe house, to which they had been directed, “blown,” but we managed to pick them up again before any trouble developed. In the few days between my arrival and the safe depositing of each of the teams in their respective districts, we had handled a dozen or more “drops” of arms and equipment. The machinery was now well oiled. A parachuting never became quite routine, for there were always the possibilities of the unexpected, and always the danger of being detected by the Germans. But now, in each district, there were groups of Frenchmen who specialized in these operations, and they had become quick and efficient at their work.

I established my base at the little town of Salbris, with Antoine Vincent, who ran a garage there. Vincent, like so many other men in the Sologne I was to meet, already had a personal history of Resistance going back to the earliest days, a familiar story of a man who felt he must make his own individual gesture against the Germans. No one directed his actions in those earlier days, no one instructed him in his duties. He acted on his own initiative, accepting the probable consequences of his actions.

Vincent was a man of fine spirit. He had the big capable hands of his trade, and behind his glasses his eyes twinkled with quick humor. He showed resource and resilience in all his work. Living in the occupied zone, only some fifteen miles from the demarcation line, he saw it as his duty to help escaping prisoners, and people fleeing from the Gestapo, to cross into the free zone. From the beginning of 1941 he had helped a secret courier of the British to make regular journeys through occupied country. The story of the way Vincent helped two Belgians to escape in April 1942 is typical of the man.

The two Belgians were wanted by the Germans for espionage and sabotage. They tried twice, on their own, to cross the demarcation line, but failed. Then they telephoned to Vincent, who had offered to help them. He arranged to meet them on the road between Salbris and Vierzon.

As the Belgians sat at a table in a cafe near the rendezvous, having a drink, they noticed two men sitting close by and recognized them as the same two men with whom they had traveled from Poitiers. These two men seemed very interested in the Belgians—too interested. They were obviously Gestapo agents waiting to pounce.

When Vincent arrived at the rendezvous on the road, he saw the two men “tailing” the Belgians at a distance. He did not like the look of them and smelled danger. He drove past the Belgians, giving them a quick sign that he had seen them. He went as far as Vierzon and came back along the same road again. He passed the two Gestapo men, and, as he drew level with the Belgians, he slammed on his brakes. The Belgians jumped into the car, right under the noses of their “shadows.” Vincent put his foot down and left two furious and frustrated men behind. He turned left into the market town of Theillay, and from there he went to Thénioux, where he got the Belgians across the demarcation line to safety. All told, this had taken Vincent about an hour. Meanwhile, the two Germans had been conducting a search at Theillay, expecting to find there the Citroën in which Vincent had snatched the Belgians. They questioned and threatened a woman in Theillay who told them that the car belonged either to a doctor called Andrieux or to Vincent. (In fact, the doctor often used the car, which was Vincent’s, when his own was being repaired.)

The Germans telephoned from the post office at Theillay to Vincent’s garage in Salbris to see whether the car had returned there. It had not. The postmistress listened in to the conversation and knew she must warn Vincent.

After they had finished their call, the Germans came to her.

“What time is there a train for Paris?” they asked.

“At six o’clock this evening,” she told them.

The Germans went to the station, believing they would find the Belgians there. They looked at all the people waiting on the platform for the train, but, of course, the Belgians were not among them. While they were away, the postmistress told each postman, as he came in from his round, of Vincent’s danger. They went back into the streets again to watch for him and to report back to the postmistress on the movements of the Gestapo men. One of the postmen stopped Vincent on his way back to Salbris. Vincent hid away in a small factory about a mile outside Theillay, where he could keep in touch by phone with the post offices at Theillay and Salbris.

The Germans came back to Theillay from the railway station, disappointed by their failure to catch the two Belgians. They wanted to spend the night in the town, but they could find neither a room nor food. The hotel told them they were full and could not provide them with a meal. They spent the evening questioning the townspeople about the Citroën and the Belgians: no one knew anything. The postmistress received detailed reports on their movements from the postmen, and in turn she told Vincent what was happening. The Germans came back to the little red brick and sandstone post office. They wanted to telephone Salbris again, this time to tell the German garrison there to erect a road block to trap Vincent.

“I’m sorry,” said the postmistress, “the line’s out of order.” The Germans were beaten. Two angry men gave up the search and went off on foot in the direction of Vierzon. The postmistress telephoned Vincent.

“It’s all right now. You can go home.”

Some days after that, Vincent had a visitor at the garage, where the German soldiers came to get their vehicles repaired, where they passed the time of day with the mechanics and allowed themselves to be twitted by the spry Vincent. The garage owner’s caller was a well-dressed and attractive woman.

“Please, please, help me,” she said to Vincent. “Some friends have told me how you helped them. I must get across the demarcation line. I’m in great danger from the Germans.” As the novelists say, she ravished Vincent with her eyes and her tears, pleading with him to assist her. But for half an hour he refused her, politely but firmly. He could not help her. He knew nothing about getting people across the line. Besides, it was against the law. He sensed, from the moment she walked in, that she had been sent by the Gestapo.

Several times Vincent was called to the local headquarters of the Feldgendarmes. Once he was questioned for three hours. The Germans had received an anonymous letter, they said, telling them that Vincent had helped a girl from Salbris to cross the line (which was true). The garagiste denied there was any truth in the story.

“Who do you think wrote the letter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you any enemies?”

“Enemies? Me? Oh no.”

“The letter says this girl was your mistress.”

“Does it?” said Vincent. “Then the letter lies.”

“Are you faithful to your wife?”

“Yes. One woman’s enough.”

“You must give us the name of your enemy.”

“No Frenchman,” said Vincent, “would give away even his worst enemy to the Germans.” His interrogators seemed to appreciate that remark.

“All right,” he was told, “you can go, you needn’t worry any more.” “Worry? Why should I worry? I haven’t done anything.”

That was just one of the many stories Vincent told me as we sat together in his kitchen while his wife went on with her cooking, and from beyond the back door came the sounds of mechanics working on the cars in the garage. Vincent was the ideal lieutenant and a good companion. With just one other man he attended all the parachutings in the area, and between them they took away the containers in a cart and buried the contents under ferns until we wanted them. He went with me on many of my trips, assuring a welcome for me and bringing me first-class recruits. He was a gay man and a brave one, but the risks he took were always calculated ones; he was no fool, he had every wish to live to see the day when the Germans left Salbris again.

It was Vincent who took me to a villa which was being used as his base by Colonel Dufour—the nom de guerre of Colonel Vésive de la Rue, one of the founders of the V.P.O.—an organization of Volunteer Peasants and Workers. When I arrived in the Sologne the Resistance was pitifully short of arms. I met a dozen Resistance leaders from the Loiret and the Loir-et-Cher and Cher, and I was able to promise them all the arms they wanted. They were skeptical. I could not blame them, for promises were of no use to them: they had heard too many hollow ones before. A few days later they had the proof they sought. Arms began to rain down on the Sologne. I played the fairy godmother, handing out arms right, left, and center, feeding the Gaullist réseaux who were so hungry for the weapons with which to fight. No one cared that it was a British officer who was their agent in the provision of arms. We all worked easily together, my own men, the Gaullist agents, the embryonic “troops” of the F.F.I., who were mainly maquisards, and the S.A.S. Groups of the S.A.S.—Special Air Services—had been dropped into France in advance of D-Day to help the Resistance wherever possible and to stay in hiding until their chance came to fight the Germans in the open.

I spent my days bicycling scores of miles, arranging drops, checking on the organization and readiness of local circuits, planning and sometimes helping to carry out sabotage: the cutting of railway lines, the blowing up of bridges, the destruction of vital parts of factories. (So far as the latter were concerned, I always insisted on confining the area of damage so that, while the factory, bridges, or locomotives would be put out of action for a few months, we should not commit wholesale destruction: I had in mind the fact that the Allies, and later the French people, would soon need them again.)

I had several identities. To London I was known now by the code name, Antoine. To everyone in the Resistance in the Sologne I was Major de Saint-Paul. (As far as my comrades were concerned, I was not a Frenchman. I had changed my way of speaking, so that my French would seem that of, perhaps, a French Canadian, but certainly not that of a compatriot of theirs.) I had identity papers for a Monsieur de Saint-Paul. I took the name from the prison in which I had been held at Lyons. I added the “de” because when dealing with the Germans it was always a good idea to carry a title. Similarly, I had identity papers, bearing a photograph of myself as an inoffensive-looking bachelor, for Philippe de Courcelles, a commercial traveler. (My uncle used to live in the Rue de Courcelles in Paris.) I was also very fond of the picture of myself in the unexpected role of bank clerk; the image of respectability with high wing collar, luxuriant mustache, and a look in the eyes that bespoke total faith in the guardians of law and order. But my most useful disguise was that of Monsieur L’Homme. There had been a real man called L’Homme and I had taken over his identity and given myself the same job as his, that of a head gamekeeper.

In London I had decided that as I was to be dropped into the Sologne—a rich shooting area, popular with wealthy businessmen from Paris in better days—I could pass on my own affairs with little conspicuity or hindrance as a keeper. I had some clothing made up in London and got the rest locally in the Sologne. I wore the boots, the puttee kind of protection for the legs, the jacket with its big pockets, and the flat-peaked cap with gold braid, of a head keeper. I knew how highly the Germans rated gamekeepers in their own country. In a village there, the mayor is the most important man, but next to him come the keepers and then their equivalents, the garde champêtre, the forest guards who protect game from poachers. Several times my gamekeeper’s uniform got me out of trouble. On one occasion the Germans were seeking me in a village. French police and German troops were barring all exits. I put on my uniform and walked out of the village, pushing my bicycle. The police stopped me, but I explained, using a little German, that I was a head gamekeeper and had business to attend to outside the village; a German let me through.

To Vincent’s garage at Salbris, I brought Muriel Byck, my radio operator. She lodged with Vincent. On her first day there, we took her for a meal at the little restaurant by the level crossing just outside the town. It was normally used almost exclusively by the Germans; it was full of them that day. We were the only French people there. Poor little Muriel—or Michele as she was known to Vincent—was terrified.

“We can’t stay here,” she whispered, looking at the German uniforms surrounding her. “Let’s get out while we can.” Vincent smiled at her encouragingly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We brought you here on purpose. You must get used to the sight of the Boches and realize there’s nothing different about them. Once you’re used to seeing them, you won’t worry about them any more.”

I agreed with Vincent. But I do not think Muriel enjoyed her first meal in Salbris.

Chapter Eighteen

By the spring of 1944, virtually every village in France had its own maquisards and its own officer in charge of them. Their quality varied as much as their clothing and their equipment: maquis groups were made up of all sorts of men, wearing and eating what they could lay their hands on, armed with weapons stolen from the Germans or parachuted to them. They were rarely a military man’s ideal of a fine body of fighting men, certainly not in their appearance, which was rough and frequently dirty. Individual temperaments were hard to discipline and some of their most courageous actions, as well as some of their most foolhardy, were an expression of their lack of caution and discipline.

The majority had had to leave their homes and take to the life of the outlaw, but there were also maquisards who continued to live at home and join up with their fellows for operations. The important thing was that in every district there was now a potential force of fighting men, however small, which could be counted on to molest the enemy in every possible way. Where they joined together to make too large a band; where they became slack; where they attempted too reckless an exploit against an enemy always superior in numbers and arms: then they paid heavily in arrests and executions.

But the maquis went on growing as D-Day approached. As the Germans became more and more desperate for forced labor, so the maquis groups swelled. It is impossible to generalize about the maquis throughout France, except to say that all enjoyed killing Germans. There were examples of the kind of hooliganism with which anti-Resistance propagandists were—and still are—anxious to smear them. But ninety per cent of such incidents could be traced not to the genuine maquis, but to the F.T.P.—the Communists—who terrorized and later, executed for political reasons, and who stole money and goods, often by armed raids on the tax collectors’ offices, to swell party funds. These increased as the danger of reprisals against them decreased.

The maquisards had nothing beyond what they were given or what they could take, but farmers and tradesmen usually helped them; there were occasions, of course, when they had to steal food to live. Then they favored “collaborators” with their attentions.

Here and there young army officers or ex-military cadets led a maquis; elsewhere it was a local man. The maquis formed by the village of Lamotte Beuvron, for instance, in the Sologne, was led by the elder son of the blacksmith. They moved their hide-out from one wood to another, hunted by the Germans. At one time they lived in the woods near Saint-Viatre, but the Germans burned them out, a spotter plane dropping incendiaries into the wood, square by square, forcing the maquis out of cover onto the road where armored cars were waiting for them. Some were killed, others escaped to another wood a few miles away across country. The people living in two houses near the hide-out were deported by the Germans. They had known of the maquis and had supplied food to them. This is typical of what happened throughout France.

I visited as many as possible of the maquis groups in my five counties and knew this one particularly well. I liked the blacksmith’s son who was in charge of it. (His younger brother was with him as well.) Jacques, as he was called, was modest about his own ability to lead and look after some twenty men.

“Find me an officer,” he said to me many times, “because I am not competent enough. It’s very hard for a simple man like me to do a job like this.” He was not pretending to modesty, and I did finally arrange for an officer to join him. But Jacques, for all his lack of training, performed some remarkable feats of courage.

I was to see him lie down in the middle of a road in the path of a German column. When they caught sight of the immobile heap in their way, the Germans halted. Then Jacques rolled over and blazed at them with his machine gun. He and his brother did this sort of trick many times; Jacques was badly wounded, his brother was killed. But if the basis of leadership is example, then Jacques was a fine leader.

One evening before D-Day I went to see him in the woods to see how he was getting on, what he needed, and what operations he planned. We had a meal together, eating some good meat by courtesy of the butcher at Saint-Viatre. Then we “bedded down”—which meant that we lay down under the oaks and pines and birches, wrapping ourselves up as best we could, and went to sleep. In the late spring the air smelled sweet, and the night, though still sharp, had lost the worst of its bite.

I slept lightly, which was normal for me, and at the first light I felt a stirring beside me. It was Jacques. Then I heard him muttering loudly to himself.

“Oh, hell,” he said, “I’ve crushed my eye.” I was not quite fully awake, and his words sent a shiver through me. I sat up sharply to look at him. He was sitting in a hunched position, gazing down at something he was holding in his hand. It was his glass eye. I had forgotten that he had only one eye. It was his habit to take out his glass eye each night, wrap it carefully in his handkerchief, and put it in his pocket. That night he had not wrapped it up properly, perhaps, or he had turned over in his sleep and crushed it against something hard on the ground. Whatever the reason, there he was, in the dim of the small dawn, staring with his one good eye at the crushed glass eye in his hand. From then onward, he was always known as “One Eye.” It made no difference to his ability as a fighter.

Vichy France was now no more than another satellite of Germany. But those who had committed themselves too wholeheartedly to its cause were now fighting for their lives. The whole country was riven by civil war, marked by assassinations, executions, torture, atrocities, and massacres. For me, as for everyone else in the Resistance, life was a daily challenge to death. Each morning that one awoke, free and alive, was another deliverance for which to thank God. The day that followed was another day of fear and tension. The Germans and the Militia set up road blocks at forks in the highway, around hidden corners, waiting out of sight until a car or cyclist came unexpectedly upon the barrier. Then they rushed out, demanding identity papers, searching people and vehicles with ruthless thoroughness. The Germans, in their turn, never knew as they drove along the road whether the next bend would conceal a band of maquisards, or even an individual, waiting on the edge of a wood to deliver a quick attack with a machine gun before running away to repeat the action elsewhere.

Because I was continually on the move from one district to another, I had to arrange many safe houses where I knew I could sleep for the night or hide away if the Germans were on my trail.

One of these was the home of Désiré Dasnière at Nouan-le-Fuzelier, a few miles along the main road from Salbris. Like Vincent at Salbris, “Dédé” had conducted his own individual resistance from the earliest days. (I told, in an earlier chapter, of the way he helped a Canadian airman who wandered into the little town.) An electrician in the S.N.C.F., he, like so many of his colleagues on the railways, sabotaged goods trains and the permanent way whenever possible—often by simply loosening the bolts on the rails—though “simply” is certainly not the word for that sort of work, which entailed the risk of a quick bullet from a German rifle. He had joined a local maquis—while still living at home, as he did throughout the war—in 1943, but endured the frustration of being without arms with which to attack the Germans.

He had a simple means of letting me know whether it was safe for me to go into his house in the daytime or at night. If the shutters over the windows of his little house were not closed, then it meant danger. If they were covering the windows, in the normal way, then I could make my way in through the back door. The nuns in the convent close by had been warned that they might see me climbing through their windows, which was one of my ways of entry and egress at Nouan.

Dédé was a tough man, tough physically and morally. The promises, which I was able to bring from London, of an abundance of arms and materials gave him new heart. He gathered about him at Nouan-le-Fuzelier about a dozen men he knew he could trust. He formed a special section to deal with parachutings and managed two “grounds.” In fact, his little team handled more “drops” than any other in the whole of the Sologne.

He was afraid much of the time, like the rest of us, but he was never rattled. Small incidents show the dangers he faced. One day he was in his garden at the back of the house, burying weapons he had received by parachute during the night. He was covering them with soil when he felt someone standing behind him. He looked up to see a German soldier, who had walked in through the front door.

“What are you doing?” the German asked.

“Doing? What would I be doing?” said Dédé. “I am planting salad.” The soldier believed him.

I was in a room in his house when a German marched in, demanding to see the rooms because there was a German officer needing a billet in the town. I heard the voices through the door. Dédé and his wife managed to delay the soldier until I had slipped through the window with my haversack.

Life was a chronic gamble on chance. Although there were people in every community risking their lives to pass on warnings, to provide a hiding place, there was always the prospect of the unforeseen danger. There was no longer such a thing as the “normal”; each day, each hour, had to be dealt with on its own merits, each experience a challenge to fate and one’s own resources.

One day London asked me to go down to central France to sort out some trouble between local leaders and organizers there. This meant a journey, by bicycle, of some 150 miles or more. I was about halfway there when I ran into a terrific thunderstorm. I took cover under the trees fringing the main road from Châteauroux to Limoges, but, even after the worst of the storm had passed, it was still raining. So I rode the ten miles into the nearest town, which was Argenton-sur-Creuse. There I went into the Hôtel des Voyageurs, just by the station approach, and asked for a room for the night.

It was about six o’clock when I arrived. I went to my room to dry off and rest a little, feeling pretty tired from the hard riding and the rain. I decided to eat as soon as possible and get a good night’s rest.

There was one other man already in the dining room. I started a conversation with him, chatting in the way of thousands of other Frenchmen at that time.

“It won’t be long now,” I said, “the Allies are bound to land soon and then the war will be over.”

“Be careful,” said my companion. “Watch what you say—there’s a milicien staying in the hotel, and he often comes in for an early dinner. If he heard you, he’d probably have something to say to you.” I thanked him for the warning and asked about the milicien.

“He’s supposed to be cleaning up the maquis in the area,” said my companion, “finding out who they are and where they are—an ugly piece of work altogether.”

When I went up to bed, I found the tap in my washbasin was not working, so I went downstairs again and had my room changed. I was still on the second floor, but at the other end of the corridor. I opened my window, went to bed and to sleep. As always, a shallow sleep, for all who worked for the Resistance acquired the habit of keeping their senses alert while resting the body.

During the night I was disturbed by the sound of whispering outside, below my window. I got up quickly and peeped out of the window. I could see a number of men moving about, whispering and talking. I realized they could not be Germans because the Germans would not have whispered: it must be the maquis.

It was nothing to do with me, for once, so I climbed back into bed. I had hardly drawn the bedclothes over me again before I heard shouting and then, suddenly, guns firing—revolver shots and a burst from a Sten gun. Then quiet again for a few moments. Three more revolver shots, then the noise of people leaving the hotel. I watched them from my window as they left. They were not carrying a body, and I wondered why, assuming they had killed the militian, they were not taking his corpse away with them.

I waited a minute or so before going into the passage in my pajamas. All the lights were on, and 1 could see along the passage, at the end, that room number nine, next to the one which I had at first, was in chaos. I went to the room, which was just by the landing, to see what the militian looked like and whether the maquis had finished him off properly.

I could not see him. The room was a mess. The bed was turned over on its side, so I pulled away the bedclothes and the mattress to see if he were underneath them. He was nowhere in the room. I was just leaving the room when a voice said:

“Hands up.” Above me, at the top of the stairs that wound up to the third floor, was the militian. He held a revolver in each hand. “Hands up,” he repeated.

“Why?” I said. “I’m in my pajamas, I’m not armed—what are you talking about?”

“Put your hands up.”

“I’m damned if I’m going to put my hands up. Why should I?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to shoot you. What are you doing here?”

“I heard the shooting like everybody else, and I came to see what had happened, to see whether I could be of any help. Apparently you were the man they were after, and you don’t need any help. If you don’t mind, I’m going back to bed.’ The man was sweating with fear. I could see now, looking up at him, that there were bullet holes in the landing floor just by his feet. The maquisards must have found his room empty and been fired on by him from above. Then they had fired back at him, through the floor. I started to walk back to my room.

“Don’t move.”

“I want to get to bed.”

“No, you mustn’t go back to bed—go down and fetch the Gestapo.” He named the street and the house where the Gestapo were billeted.

“I’m damned if I do,” I said. “I have no quarrel with the Germans or anyone else, but if I go out into the street, they’ll think it’s you, and I’ll get shot. I’m not going to get shot for you, thank you very much.” As a way out, I offered to go downstairs to phone the police and, if I could not manage to pass the message by telephone, to ask the proprietor of the hotel to go tell the police. This seemed to satisfy the militian. He lowered his revolvers.

I went downstairs, knowing where the proprietor lived from previous visits to the hotel. I knocked at his door. There was no answer; the proprietor and his wife were wisely keeping out of the way.

“Open up,” I said, “it’s the man who came on the bicycle. It’s not the maquis and it’s not the militian.” The door opened, and the proprietor’s wife poked her head round the door. I told her in a low voice what had happened, that the militian was still alive, and she should not open her door again that night to anyone.

“Tell your husband not to move. I’m going to say he’s away and there’s nobody here but you. Now,” I said, “I’m going to telephone to the police, but I know for sure that your telephone’s not working, so go back to bed, Madame, and don’t worry.”

I went to the office. The telephone was working, but I pulled out some wires and made sure it would not work again that night. Then I went upstairs again. The militian was still standing at the top of the stairs, still white-faced.

“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but there’s nothing I can do. The telephone wires have been pulled out and the proprietor’s away. I can’t tell his wife to go out tonight.”

“You must do something,” the man said.

“The best thing I can suggest is that you come to my room—if there’s any danger you’ll be much safer there.” Safer for me, too, because had he summoned his nerve to leave the hotel and get in touch with the police or the Gestapo they would have checked on all the people in the hotel; then I might have been in trouble. I offered him a share of my double bed, and he accepted. As he walked along the corridor, his feet left wet marks on the polished floor, as though he had just come out of a hot bath. He was still dripping with sweat.

I have slept more comfortably. He lay in bed next to me, with his two revolvers beside him. Once or twice I considered the possibility of grabbing his guns and shooting him, but I could not be sure that if I did shoot him there might not be a patrol outside. I did not want to be caught again merely for shooting one militian. He talked much of the night, probably as a reaction to his fear. He told me where he came from and what he was doing: I did not think much of what he was doing. He also told me whom he thought had betrayed him to the maquis: a man in the local préfecture.

Very early in the morning I got out of bed and said to him, “I’m going out now, and I’ll call the police and get you out of this mess.” He thanked me very much.

I went downstairs, into the office again, and broke into the filing cabinet. I took out the card I had filled in on arrival. Now no one would know who I was, or even that I had stayed there.

I pushed my bike up the slope to the station. A train was due to leave in ten minutes. To a porter I said:

“Listen. You’re probably pro-French and against the Germans—I don’t want to know whether you are or not. But this is what happened last night at the hotel.” I told him the story, and I told him the name of the man in the préfecture whom the militian suspected. “He intends to have this man shot. If you’re a good Frenchman you’ll go to warn him and tell him to get out of the way.”

“But,” said the porter, “I can’t go, I don’t want to—I’m on duty.” “All right, I quite see, don’t bother.” And I walked alone the platform with my bicycle. But I kept an eye on him and saw him go in and out of the office, and then I saw him leaving by the door that faced the station approach. He jumped on his bicycle and disappeared. As I learned later, he did warn the man in the préfecture, who escaped. Understandably, he had not wanted to tell me he would give the warning, for he could not know who I was.

That incident was to be just the first of a series. The train had gone only some twenty miles from Argenton-sur-Creuse, when it came to an unscheduled halt at a small station. Apparently the maquis had put some explosive on the line, it had been seen, and the train could not go on until the explosive had been removed. We were told that a man would be there in an hour’s time to do the job. One hour passed, two hours, but nothing happened. I offered to try to tackle the explosives—presenting myself as a French army officer. But I told the troops who accompanied me along the line to take cover while I worked: I did not want to reveal the knowledge of British explosives I had acquired in London.

It was a straightforward enough job. I took off the plastic, removed the time pencil, which had not been set, and rendered the explosives harmless. The passengers cheered, and an official came to me, saluted, and said, “We must thank you, but if you would be good enough to give me your name and address you will get a reward—there’s a reward for anyone who does this sort of thing.” I gave a false name and said I was living at 19, Rue de Vienne, a street in Limoges. With the added assurance that in due course I would receive a thousand francs, I boarded the train and off we went again. It jogged on only a few more miles, however, to a place called St.-Sulpice-Lauriere. There also the maquis had been at work. The tunnel had been blown up, and the way was blocked. It was obvious we were in for another long wait.

I took my bicycle from the guards van. It was still only about ten o’clock in the morning so I decided to ride the thirty-odd miles to my own house and stop there for a day or two. By just before lunchtime I was very close to the house and stopped on the narrow road leading up to the farm. As I sat by the side of the road, a man on a bicycle drew level with me and stopped. I had not heard him coming, and he surprised me. I knew him as one of the most garrulous men in the district.

“Hallo,” he said, “what are you doing here? I heard you were in prison.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I have been, but I’m out again now—officially. Still there’s no need to tell everybody you’ve seen me.”

“No,” he said, “I won’t.” But I knew how talkative he was, and I was annoyed that he had seen me.

When I got to my house, all my family were at lunch. I managed to creep in unseen while they were in the dining room and I sat on the stairs which lead down to the kitchen. While I was sitting there I could hear everything that was going on in the kitchen. My youngest son, who was then three years old, was sitting there with the maid and chattering away. Suddenly I heard him say, “Papa’s escaped from prison—he’s gone to England.” I was astonished (and so were the others when I told them about it later), for no one remembered saying anything like that in front of the child.

When the maid came out of the kitchen to take some food to the dining room, I signaled to her. She made a quick recovery from her surprise at seeing me and called my wife to tell her I was there. I went upstairs into one of the rooms and locked myself in.

But we had forgotten about the dogs. Suddenly they caught my scent and bounded up the stairs, settling down in front of my room. There they started barking and whimpering. I had to let them in. Then I heard the children shouting, “What’s become of the dogs? Where have they all gone?” The dogs were in the room with me, their tails wagging like frantic metronomes, delighted to have their boss back.

I spent only one night at home, for I was still worried about the man who had met me on the road. I could not take the risk of his talking and giving away my presence. So the next morning I cycled off again, calling upon the men at Limoges whom London had asked me to see. After much talk and argument, I managed to restore the local leaders to something like peaceful relations with one another and with London. Then I started on my long journey back to the Sologne. I intended taking a train much of the way, but decided to avoid the station of Limoges itself and pick up the train at some small station on the way. Just before I reached the village of Ambazac, a man called out to me.

“Hey! Stop!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Are your papers all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I asked you if your identity papers were in order.”

“Yes, of course—why?”

“Oh,” he said, “because if they’re not you’d better be careful. The Militia are in the village and they are checking everybody.”

“Well my papers are all right, but I’m not overkeen on meeting that lot—I don’t count them among my best friends.” So I took a side road which skirted the village.

An hour later I was entering another village, called Nantiat, and ran into the Militia. They had finished their work in Ambazac and had taken the shorter road to this next village.

They checked my papers and asked me a lot of questions. At that moment I was supposed to be Monsieur de Courcelles, the commercial traveler. I was carrying with me receipts which were supposed to have been given me by the Germans. The forms themselves were authentic enough for they had been stolen from the Germans, and I had filled in the fictitious details. I had receipts showing that I had bought cattle and rice for them. I was supposed to be working for a firm in Paris, but also trading with the Germans.

Unfortunately, the Militia were too inquisitive. They were not satisfied with my identity papers, and they proposed to arrest me.

“But you mustn’t do that,” I said, “I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

“Your papers aren’t in order,” said the officer in charge of the squad. “I think they’re false.”

“Now listen,” I said, “just look at the name of the place where I was born—Chassé-les-Montbozon—Haute-Saône—that’s an outlandish sort of place and there are only about 300 people in the village. Do you really think I’d take a false name and claim to come from a place like that? If I did want a false name I’d claim to come from Marseilles or somewhere like that—it would take you hours then to check up—but all you’ve got to do is make a phone call to Chassé-les-Montbozon and ask them if they’ve ever heard of me—anyone will tell you.” If they had checked I should have been in a mess, for although it was true enough that I was born there, it was not, of course, in the name of de Courcelles. The militian thought to himself for a few moments and then he said, “All right, you can go.”

I cycled to the next station and found there was a train leaving in an hour’s time for Châteauroux. While I was waiting there, the militians who had checked me on the road came to the station in their cars to pick up some Germans who were stranded there. I saw what arms the Germans were carrying and heard which route they were going to take. Ten minutes after they had left, a group of maquisards pulled in to the station with their cars. I told them what I had heard; I learned later that the maquis killed every one of the Germans and the mill dam.

The train took me to Vierzon. It was night by the time I got there. I wanted to visit some members of my réseau at Mur, but I could not manage the forty miles that night, so I slept on the road and pushed on to them the next day.

After leaving them I came to a level crossing and had to wait for a train to pass. I was just getting on my bike when a bus caught up with me and stopped.

“Are you going to Romorantin?” the driver called to me.

“Yes.”

“Well, hop in, hop in.” The driver and another man helped me to load my bicycle on top of the bus, and I climbed in. It was a bus used to transport Germans; there were no civilians in it when I boarded it. I felt suspicious, not knowing why the bus had stopped to give me a lift. I was afraid I was in a trap. I was next to the driver, in an awkward position from which to make an escape.

My suspicions grew, as a little farther along the road we passed an old man riding a bike. It was a very hot day, and he was puffing and blowing and was red in the face. The driver ignored him. Then we passed a pretty young woman on a bicycle. The driver did not even stop to ask her if she would like a lift. Now I was really afraid. Were they going to dump me with the police or the Gestapo? How do I get out of this one? I wondered.

“It’s very hot here,” I said to the driver. He merely grunted. “I’ll move to the back, I think.” He nodded. I took a seat at the back, quite close to the exit, with all the windows open. I was ready to jump.

When we were quite close to Romorantin, I called out to the driver.

“I want to get off here.”

“Don’t you want to go right into the town?”

“No,” I said, “I’d rather stop here.” To my relief the bus stopped, and they helped me take my bicycle down. I thanked them, and the bus moved off again. The lift had saved me ten miles on the bike in the hot sun, but most of the time I had been afraid of what was going to happen. A long time afterward I discovered that they had recognized me, but knew better than to tell me so. On the other hand, they wanted to help me, so offered me the lift. It was symptomatic of the nervousness of the times that a bunch of innocent, friendly people should offer me a lift, say not a word which, in itself, could be construed as suspicious, and yet I should be afraid of their intentions.

At the entrance to Romorantin there was a bridge which led on to a hill into the town. As I came to the bridge on my bicycle, I saw a man reading a newspaper. When I had passed him, I looked back and saw him folding up his newspaper and getting on his bike. He followed me up the hill. I went a little faster, took the first turning to the left, the second to the right, first right and back again down the hill to the bridge, as fast as I could go. I crossed the bridge, left the town, and returned by a different route. I lost the man who had followed. I did not know who he was, or why he seemed to follow me, but I wanted to take no chances.

I went to see friends, talked over their particular setup, and decided to sleep that night in the town. The owner of the house I was in said:

“You’d better not stay with me, because I’ve had them after me once or twice, and you can never tell when they’ll come again. I’ll take you to a friend of mine, he’s just across the street—you’ll be safe enough with him.” We went to the other house together and stayed there for a meal and afterward a chat.

“I’m feeling pretty tired, I’d like to get to bed, if you don’t mind.” So my friend went back to his own house. My host and I had one more small drink, and then I said that before turning in I would like to look round the house to see where all the doors were. “In case I have to leave in a hurry,” I said.

“Oh, you’ve nothing to worry about here,” he said.

“Never mind,” I said, “it’s become a sort of habit with me—I feel better if I do it. I like to see what’s going on outside as well.” We put out the lights and went to a window, from which we could see the doorway opposite. A man was standing there, facing us.

“Is there a young woman living over the way?” I asked my host. “Is there any reason why that man should be there—I can’t see anyone else with him, can you?”

“No, I can’t. And I don’t know why he should be there.” We went to another window, at the side of the house. And we saw another man in another doorway.

“Do you know your house is being watched?”

“No, it can’t be, I don’t think so. Nobody knows I’m doing anything.”

“Just the same, you can’t tell. I may have been followed, anything may have happened. I must be off. But can you lend me a blanket? I’ll leave my bike here, but if you’ll lend me a blanket, I’ll go and sleep in the gardens.”

I climbed over the wall into the next man’s garden, over two more walls, and there I found a big potato patch. I put my blanket down between two rows of potatoes and went to sleep.

It was very early in the morning, as usual, when I woke up. A quiet, dozy Sunday morning. I hid my blanket in a tool shed, took some tools from the shed, and made my way to the street. I passed the house where I was to have slept, walking past it as though I was going to do a spot of work somewhere farther on. As I passed, I saw the two guardian angels, still watching the house, although they were now sitting down. I walked down a hill, out of the town, into a small wood on the outskirts. There I put down my tools and went to sleep once more.

At about eight o’clock, I woke again. The sun was beginning to come out. I walked back into town to another friend, who went to the house I was to have stayed in, to let the owner know I was safe. He came back with the news that the Germans had raided the house a few minutes after I had passed with my tools. They looked at all the beds to see who was sleeping there and seemed disappointed to find no visitor. Were they looking for me in particular? It is impossible to say; I could only be glad to have spent the night among the potatoes. We arranged for the return of the blanket and the tools, and my bike was brought back to me. Then I continued on my way back to Vincent at Salbris.

In all, my trip had taken five days. And each day had brought its unexpected incidents and its dangers.

In the two months immediately preceding D-Day, every night of the moon saw intensive parachuting operations of agents and materials. In the Sologne we had as many as five “grounds” working to receive the “bodies” and the containers, and each ground was visited by at least one plane, often two, sometimes even three.

I was the “receiving agent,” as it were, but I worked all the time now in close liaison with the Free French commanders in the area, arranging the distribution of arms and large sums of money for the use of the Resistance. The poverty of equipment and resources, which had been very real on my arrival, was quickly relieved as London followed up my landing with these abundant supplies.

Each night of operations was tense and tiring, but, of course, rewarding to everyone engaged in it. We knew now that we were well and truly in the front line of the war—or, more accurately, behind the lines, preparing for the crucial battles soon to be launched. Men like Vincent and Dédé, with their small expert teams, hazarded their lives night after night to make sure that the Resistance should be ready for the day of reckoning with the Germans. It was a period of mounting excitement, but the operations were performed with an accustomed efficiency combined with the caution that could never be relaxed without fatal consequences.

Yet there were picturesque moments. To the north we had a “ground” near a château owned by the Marquisa de Morelos, an aristocrat of the old school. Although her home—the Château de Villefaye—was staffed by fewer and older domestics than before the war, she insisted that the standards to which she had been bred must be maintained. In the evening, her servants wore white gloves and livery, and meals—however impoverished in quality—were served at her great table in the silver plate bearing her family crest.

Living in the château, a substantial building with two towers, showing a handsome face of red brick and white shutters to the road, was Colonel Vésine de la Rue, a distinguished French army officer, who had joined the Resistance in 1941 and organized the V.P.O. group in the Sologne. Her two sons, though living with her, were also working with the local maquis.

The old marquisa was well aware of what was going on around her, and one evening she said she wanted to watch a parachuting. She mentioned this as we sat at dinner with her, with the servants gliding in and out of the room, bearing the precious salvers. We suggested that she join us that night and told her she should be ready at eleven o’clock.

At eleven o’clock precisely, her servants, now dressed more suitably in rough clothing and looking like a rare pack of bandits, came to fetch her.

“Madame la Marquise, it is now time for you to go to the parachuting.” It was said with a formality and a sonority which were an echo of more expansive days: “Madame la Marquise, the shoot is starting—will you please come now as it is time to go to the first butts.”

Five of the servants-turned-roughnecks led the way. Immediately ahead of her walked her butler, lighting the path for her. He carried with him a basket containing coffee and sandwiches, a blanket, and her shooting stick, so that she might pass the night in comfort.

The parachuting went off well. She watched the containers falling from the aircraft above, the parachutes opening and bellying ‘in the moonlit sky. Her butler, who, before the war, had stood behind her at shooting parties to hand her her guns, now received the guns from the skies, while her sons directed the activities of the teams assembled for the drop. When the operation was over, she started back to the house again, tapping with her walking stick, helped by the butler.

A few days later, a squad of Germans in cars turned off the road, up the drive to the château. They had heard rumors that the maquis had been seen near the house. (In fact, two days after the parachutings, the butler and second butler took part in an ambush on the Germans. They waited too long to see the results of this good work and the second butler was shot and killed.) The old lady, with all the dignity of her white hair, her straight back, her walking stick, and her haughty manner, escorted by her liveried butler, came to meet them. Somewhat diffidently, the officer in charge of the Germans told her of the reports he had received about the maquis.

“Do you really suppose,” the Marquisa de Morelos asked him, “that I would have anything to do with those maquisards, those terrorists, those ruffians? Do you think that, sir?”

The German officer apologized for the intrusion, saluted, and ordered his troops to leave.

Chapter Nineteen

My little radio operator, Muriel Byck, soon became one of the family with the Vincents in Salbris. Her job was a very dangerous one and, though we had all learned that courage had nothing to do with age or physique, her frailty and her extremely youthful looks always made us wonder at the spirit which carried her through so much strain.

The job of the “radio” was hazardous at all times. To the normal risks of working for the underground were added those of carrying the wireless transmitter from place to place and of sending the actual messages in the fear of detection.

The German system for tracking down wireless transmissions was well equipped and organized. They had radio direction-finding stations that could plot a signal within an area of twenty square miles. Once they had made this initial detection they sent specially equipped vans into the area where they suspected that a radio operator was working for the Resistance. The vans were sometimes camouflaged as ambulances, or delivery vans, although this could never be a wholly successful deception because of the characteristic whining and squeaking noises that came from the machines inside the van. Then, again, it was necessary for the “ambulance” to make stops by the roadside, while their men on foot made a close check of the area. We became accustomed to the sight of these improbable “ambulances” or vans, and the warning was quickly passed. We could also spot on sight the men carrying out the investigation, for they could not help but be conspicuous. They wore the typical square-shouldered overcoats of the Germans, with collars turned up and hatbrims tugged down to hide the headphones attached to their ears and the direction-finding equipment on their chests. As they walked, they frequently looked down at the dials on their chests.

But if the Germans were conspicuous they were still dangerous, and their methodical searches imperiled any radio operator sending messages within the range of their detection vans. The vans were reckoned to be capable of reducing the original suspected area of twenty square miles to one of something like three and a half square miles. Furthermore, the Germans had cut France into small squares and each square was subject to constant check.

Three years earlier, there had been a moment when the Resistance had only one radio operator and one transmitting set. Now we not only had at least one radio operator for each circuit but a multiplication of sets. Muriel, for instance, had four transmitters. We placed them in four different places and she operated within a ten-mile radius of our headquarters at Vincent’s garage. Our radio operators never used the same set at the same hour each day, and whenever we had a warning that the Germans were on the trail of one location, we moved the set to another place. Muriel sometimes went to a shed in the woods, another time to an isolated house in the country or to an upstairs room in a distant village. But for all our precautions, and for all that they worked well, the dangers and the tensions remained. Yet, although many a man’s health and nerves degenerated quickly under the strain, Muriel maintained a remarkable buoyancy of spirit.

She hopped on her bicycle, with a “see you soon” to her friends, and went to send her “telegrams.” Then she would come back with her answers, decode them, and have them ready, right on schedule, for me or for anyone I sent to her. I saw her once every two or three days, when I was traveling about, and, for short periods, when I was more static, every day. Whenever I was out of reach, she pushed on messages for other circuits, acting on her own initiative so that no instructions should be delayed.

One of Muriel’s “bases” for operating was only about twenty-five yards from Vincent’s garage, and that meant only twenty-five yards from the Germans, because half the garage was used by them for their repair work, while Vincent kept the other half for normal commercial business.

Vincent had a dump yard near his garage, a yard littered with the wrecks of old cars. It was in this yard, in a rickety shed, with rusty corrugated-iron roof, that Muriel operated. Light filtered in through tiny cracks. She was surrounded by old tires, worn smooth and threadbare, and by odd parts rescued from the skeletons of once proud cars. The smell of oil and petrol invested the old shed. Muriel’s “chair” was a box; she had a table that had four legs and a top, but that was about all one could say for it. Whenever she was sending or receiving messages in the shed, a man was posted at the yard gate, which led on to the main road, to give her warning of danger.

But one day, late in April, as Muriel was tapping out her coded messages to London, she looked up at a knothole in the side of the shed. She saw an eye, covering the hole, watching her. Her stomach lurched with fear. She continued sending her telegram and then changed from code into plain language, giving the danger signal to London and telling them she was being watched. She went on tapping, glancing up to see whether the eye was still there. When it disappeared, she picked up her emission set and, still tapping as she carried it with her, went to the knothole and put her eye to it. Screwing her eye round to scan the yard, she saw a German soldier walking toward the gate.

Muriel was very frightened. She did not know how the soldier had got into the yard, without being seen, or where the man was who was supposed to keep guard for her. She knew only that she must get away as quickly as possible. She packed up all her equipment. Then from the floor she scooped up handfuls of dry dust and spread it over the box on which she had been sitting, on her table, all over the place. She picked up her set and, after another look through the knothole to make sure the way was clear, she cautiously pushed open the creaking door of the shed and stepped into the yard.

She tried to find her “guard,” but could not see him. So she slipped back into Vincent’s living quarters, keeping her set out of sight of the Germans working in the garage. Vincent was in his office, overlooking the main road. He had a customer with him. Vincent excused himself and came into the kitchen. Muriel told him, in whispers, what had happened. Vincent calmed her and said:

“Best thing is for you to get out—we must get you away from here as quickly as possible. Don’t worry, I’ll get a car out.”

Meanwhile, I had been on my way in a car to keep an appointment with some other agents. While thinking about other things, I was possessed by a certainty that Muriel was in danger.

“Turn round,” I said to the driver, “we’ve got to go back to Salbris—Michele’s in trouble.” (“Michele” was the code name by which Muriel was known in France.)

“But patron,” said my driver, quite reasonably, “we’ve got this appointment—we’ve only just got enough time to make it.”

“Can’t be helped, I know we must go back.” We tore back to Salbris and arrived there just as Vincent was about to get a car out to take her away. Muriel was still in a highly nervous state.

“I’ll take her with me,” I said to Vincent.

“I agree,” he said. “It’ll be less suspicious if I’m here when they come.”

As we heard later, we had not been gone long before “they” did come—though, as I heard much later from the German colonel in charge of the camp at Salbris, they came reluctantly.

“Will it be all right?” Muriel asked anxiously as we drove away from Salbris. “I did everything I could think of to cover up my tracks. Do you think Monsieur Vincent will be all right—he mustn’t get caught because of me.” Even now, Muriel was anxious for someone else. Although she had a deep love for her father and respect for his Jewish religion, she had been attracted to Christianity and always wore, around her neck, the little crucifix given her by the people who “received” her when she first landed in France. But, to me, Muriel was not an expression of any particular religious principles: she was just a young girl who had made herself very dear to all of us. She sat beside me, in the car, clutching her radio equipment, her hands still trembling from nervous reaction, her mouth quivering as she spoke.

“Don’t worry,” I said to her, “you mustn’t worry any more. Everything’s going to be all right. It wasn’t your fault the German saw you—we put you there and he should never have been allowed to get to the shed like that. And you’ve done everything you could—more than anyone could expect in those circumstances. As for Vincent, depend on it, he can look after himself....”

In fact, there was no need to worry, for when the German soldier who had seen Muriel went back to his barracks he had a difficult time convincing his compatriots that he had seen anything at all. He asked to see the colonel, and when he told his commanding officer he had seen, through a knothole in a shed, a pretty young girl sitting alone, sending off what sounded and looked like radio messages, he was heard with great skepticism. But so stubborn was he in his insistence that the colonel felt bound to investigate. Some forty soldiers were assembled, and the colonel himself led them to the shed.

As they screamed to a halt in their cars and trucks by the dump yard, Vincent stood outside his garage, watching, waiting. When they tumbled out of their vehicles and rushed to the shed, Vincent joined the cluster of people who quickly gathered to see what was going on.

The colonel, followed by junior officers and men, pulled open the door of the shed. What he saw in front of him was—an old shed, cluttered with the bones of automobiles, smelly with oil, covered with dust. It was impossible to believe that “an English spy” had, only an hour or so before, been sending wireless messages to London.

“Fool. Liar. Idiot.” Even then, the poor German soldier stuck to his story.

“Sir, I will show you the hole I looked through.” And he showed them where he had put his eye, where Muriel had been sitting, exactly what she had been doing. They did not believe him. He was given ten days’ detention. The incident caused a big commotion in the district, however, and we were all shaken for a while.

Through Dr. Andrieux (the one who borrowed Vincent’s car on occasion and worked with us), we found Muriel safe lodging elsewhere in the county. The doctor told her new hosts that she was a secretary from Paris who had been ordered to the country for rest—she had papers confirming this—and, as she had to take her medicines at fixed hours, they should not worry if they heard her alarm clock ringing during the night. These excuses allowed Muriel to continue her work and to maintain her “skeds” at odd hours without inviting suspicion. The doctor also told them not to be surprised by visits from her “uncle”—in other words, me. And the day following her scare at Salbris, she was transmitting again.

There was a still greater shock to come. A mile or so outside Salbris was a vast German munitions dump in the Michenon camp, which had belonged to the French Army.

The Resistance had always kept an interested eye on Michenon, noting it mentally on a list of targets they would like to attack. But it was so large a target and so well-guarded that we had never devised a scheme that seemed likely to achieve any substantial success.

Then, on the sixth of May, 1944, we discovered that the Germans were running trains into the camp and loading them with arms and munitions of all kinds, ready for dispatch. We agreed that something must be done urgently to prevent those munitions from leaving Michenon.

The same night we sent, through Captain Jones, another of our radio operators, a message to London telling them about the trains. The following morning, the seventh of May, Muriel, operating from a house close to the Michenon camp, sent a similar telegram to London. Both of them suggested that Michenon should be bombed. At two o’clock that afternoon, Muriel received an answer to her telegram: the bombers would come the next night. It was important for us to know this so that we could arrange the evacuation of civilian workers from factories close to the camp at the time of the raid. In the meantime, we had blown up the railway lines outside the camp so that no train should escape. We reckoned there were now three big trainloads of munitions waiting to be dispatched—and waiting for the Allied bombers.

Something went wrong. It was at about 11:30 that same night, the seventh of May, that we heard the air-raid sirens, quickly followed by the first flames caused by incendiaries dropped by the pathfinder aircraft. I was fifteen miles away, and almost helpless. But calls went to the factories in time for the workers to get clear before the bombs started dropping.

A few minutes after the incendiaries had started fires in Michenon, the main attack was delivered. Standing on a roof miles away, I watched as great explosions scorched the sky and houses rocked—including even the one where I was. The trains packed with explosives blew up, almost simultaneously, causing a sort of volcanic eruption of twisted, burning metal. Now the sky was streaked with tracer bullets from the German night fighters and then lurid with the flames of burning aircraft plummeting to earth.

Five bombers were brought down. One was burning as it swooped down near where I was standing. We could see, in the light of the flaming aircraft, the crew bailing out. It was only later, however, we learned that one of them, the pilot, did not bail out.

“I can’t,” he told his crew, “because if I bail out now the plane is bound to land on that little village below us.” He managed to take the aircraft beyond the village before it crashed and exploded, with him still inside.

The pilot of a second plane, which was hit before it could drop its bombs on the camp, told his crew they could not let their bombs go because of the deaths they would cause to the civilians below, He took the burning plane down into a lake. The crew started, too late, to bail out; only one man escaped before the plane hit the lake and exploded.

Many of us rushed to pick him up; people came from all sides to help him. The Germans, also, sent motorcycles and cars rushing to the spot where we had all seen the man bail out. Luckily the French got there first. He was standing on the road, dazed, not knowing where he was, his parachute trailing limply on the ground behind him. We all rushed on him.

“Don’t move,” I shouted to him in English. “Keep still and let everyone do what they can to help you.” He stood there as one man released him from his parachute harness and ran away to hide the parachute. Another snatched his helmet and dashed off with that. A third took his flying jacket. Odd bits of clothing were pushed over his uniform—heaven knows where the different pieces came from—and within one minute he was transformed, except for his flying boots. We were just about to drag those off when a German car drew up. One of our men had come by motor bike, so we shoved the airman—he was the rear gunner—on the pillion and plunked a big, checkered cloth cap on his head. As the Germans got out of their car, we jabbered loudly and excitedly in French, pointing in all directions at once.

“Where’s the man? Where’s the airman?”

“We don’t know, we think he fell over there somewhere.” And we sent them off on a false trail.

“Get going—quick.” Our motorcyclist revved up and shot off with his dazed “Frenchman,” with the big cap, on the pillion. On the way they met three German lorries. Each time they were stopped, but a glance at the man behind, wearing the loud cloth cap, convinced them that he could not possibly be the airman who had just bailed out of a burning plane.

The next day we found we had air crew in all sorts of places—pilots, gunners, navigators, engineers, bomb aimers. We had to get them all together and rig them out with civilian clothing before we could put them on an escape route. The gunner we had sent off on the pillion was the most difficult of all. He had very big feet, and we could not find any boots or shoes to fit him. In fact, he stayed with the maquis until the Liberation. At first he refused to fight, saying he was an American airman and was not allowed to take part in irregular warfare. But after he found himself in the middle of a fight between the maquis and the Germans, he grabbed a gun and started shooting with the rest of them. From then on, he became a willing and valuable member of the group, instructing them in the use of their weapons.

The raid on the Michenon camp was a 100 per cent success. The dump was utterly destroyed.

But Muriel was badly shaken by the bombing, which she had experienced at close hand. Her health was clearly affected. She had never seemed strong, but now her spirits sagged and she appeared tired. It was small wonder to us. She had worked very hard, under constant tension. I decided to try to give some of her work to other “radios.” She spent several days with “Dédé” and his wife at Nouan-le-Fuzelier, mixing in easily and inobtrusively with their three daughters. She also lived and operated from the house of a blacksmith, some thirty miles away to the west, at a little place called Vernou. Apart from the blacksmith and his wife, there was a daughter, about Muriel’s age. It was there I saw her early one morning before setting out on a longish journey.

As on the day when the German soldier saw her at Salbris, we were well on the road when I had the irresistible feeling that something was wrong with Muriel. I told the driver to turn back to Vernou. This time he asked no questions. We drove back as fast as we could and went straight to the house where Muriel was staying. When we got there, the owner said:

“Thank God you’ve come back. Muriel’s very ill. I don’t know what’s the matter with her, but she’s in a bad way.”

“What happened?”

“It was just after breakfast—not very long after you’d gone—when she said she felt a bit tired. And then she was just going to her room when she fainted. Well, almost struck down, you might say.”

She was still unconscious when I saw her, and I did not know what to do. I could not wake her. I phoned for a doctor, but he was not at home. I phoned another and found he was also out. At last, the third one I tried turned up.

As soon as he saw her, he said, “Meningitis. Our only hope is to get her to a hospital immediately.” We telephoned for an ambulance, and I went with her in the ambulance to the hospital at Romorantin. It was dangerous, for neither of us was carrying identity papers adequate to a situation like this. But the risk had to be taken if we were to save her.

At the hospital I told them I was her uncle and filled in forms showing that we both came from Paris. The deception was accepted for the moment. Then she was examined by the doctor. They said they must perform an immediate operation, a lumbar puncture. I supported her in my arms while they performed the operation. After it was over, I stayed with her. Poor little Muriel. The face I had seen smile and laugh so gaily and bravely was blenched of all color. Her hair was lank and matted. The spirit we had all admired so much had been battered by the force of the attack. And, soon after, she died. She died in my arms, without regaining consciousness.

It was a great shock to me and to her many French friends. We learned afterward that Muriel had been attacked by meningitis as a child, but she had concealed this when recruited by S.O.E., for she knew that she would not have been allowed to parachute into France. Her story is her own tribute. But French people still place flowers on her grave on the twenty-third of May each year—the anniversary of her death—and throughout the year she is remembered by flowers, or wreaths, or by someone who just stops there in passing.

My friends came to the hospital to find out how Muriel was. I had to tell them to go away, for although I was still stricken by the fact of her death, I knew we must now do all we could to prevent disclosure of her real identity.

There was a check-up, but I maintained the fiction that I was her uncle and we were from Paris, staying locally. The Sisters were very good. I am sure they suspected what the truth might be, but they said nothing.

I asked for the burial service to be held as soon as possible. There was a legal minimum time within which that could be done, I was told, but I persuaded them to hold it just within the limit. When we came to the terrible moment for putting her in the coffin—for which I had to be present as a witness—a policeman arrived.

“The legal time hasn’t elapsed yet,” he said. It was a melancholy business, trying to persuade him to allow us to bury little Muriel in a hurry. In the end we gained just an hour.

It was no less heart-breaking to have to insist to all her friends that they should not come to the cemetery. I was afraid the Gestapo would suspect something, that they would check on her address, or mine, and we should all be in trouble. So the hearse left the hospital, and I walked behind it, right through the town, all by myself, feeling as low as a man can feel.

At the cemetery I listened numbly to the priest conducting the burial service. Toward the end of it, I heard one car, then a second, braking sharply outside the rusting iron gates of the cemetery. I guessed it was the Germans. With unusual delicacy for them, they refrained from coming into the cemetery during the burial service to arrest me.

Just before the end of the service, I began slowly to back away from the tiny group of people around the grave. Slowly, slowly, I stepped backward, seeking cover behind one person here, another there, as they walked through the cemetery or stood before the tombstones. I managed to get right to the other end of the cemetery. By stepping on tombs, I was able to climb over the wall to drop onto the road on the other side. There, by arrangement, friends were waiting for me with a car.

There is a lighter, more ironic example of the bravery of girls who worked for the Resistance. In many ways, and especially as couriers, girls were better than men: they showed more single-mindedness in their duties and they were less immediately suspect. As “radios,” they were more conscientious in keeping to their schedules and less liable to be found where they ought not to be—they did not feel so tempted to attend parachutings, for example. A woman on a bicycle, carrying a basket of vegetables, was able to travel with less danger of being stopped than a man. There were any number of innocent reasons why a girl might be riding round the countryside; a man, on the other hand, was liable to be asked for a very good explanation of why he was not at work.

I knew one young French girl, whom I shall call “Marie.” (I promised never to reveal her real name: the reason for that will soon become obvious.) Marie worked as a courier for me, taking messages on her bicycle to other members of my réseau or to other circuits. The story I want to tell of Marie takes me a jump ahead in my narrative to a day after the Allied landings in Normandy, but it has its place here.

Marie had completed her mission and was riding back along the N20 road to Salbris to report to me. She had left the small town of Lamotte Beuvron behind her and was cycling happily along the great wide highway. The sunshine, striking through the tall, overhanging avenue of trees, dappled the road ahead of her.

She heard the noise of vehicles coming up behind, looked round, and saw a long convoy of German cars and lorries. She thought she would play a game on them to scare them.

When the vanguard of the convoy was quite close behind her and she could be seen clearly, she looked up into the sky, wobbling on her bicycle a little as she rode. Then she jumped from her bicycle, ran with it to the side of the road, dropped her bicycle, and lay down in the ditch.

The leader of the convoy stopped his car in a hurry, jumped out, blew his whistle, waved to the vehicles following. They all veered to the side of the road, lining up as close to the trees as possible, and the German troops jumped out and lay down in the ditches on either side and among the trees.

Marie was pleased with herself; her trick had worked. The officer leading the convoy had deduced from her actions that she had seen or heard aircraft heading their way and had sought cover in the ditch. It was a good trick. She had halted a German convoy and enjoyed a laugh at their expense.

She was just getting up, to ride off again, when she heard the sound of two planes flying along the direction of the road, not far above them. They were British planes, carrying out regular hunting trips over the roads of the Sologne in search of German convoys like this one. But this convoy was well hidden by the trees. Had she not caused it to stop, it would have been traveling down the long stretch of open road, unprotected by trees, that lay about 200 yards farther on.

Now Marie pouted her lips and was rightly peeved. She was all the more angry with herself when, the British aircraft having turned, flown over again, and disappeared from sight, the German officer came to her. He shook her hand.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” he said. “Here are some cigarettes and some chocolate for you. You are a good, brave French girl and you’ve saved our lives.”

I met an old friend in France after I returned. I heard there was “an English girl” who spoke atrocious French, but who was doing remarkable work for the Resistance and doing her own radio transmissions as well. I thought immediately of Virginia Hall, the American journalist with the wooden leg, whom I had known in Lyons—as “Marie”—before my arrest. As a neutral she had done many things to help us. She had carried messages for us, she had gone where we could not go. She wheedled the police into releasing many prisoners, including escaping P.O.W.s and agents—like André Simon. Could this girl my men talked of be Virginia Hall?

I sent her a message saying, “I salute you—from one of the three brothers—which one?” The answer came straight back: “I salute you also—from Marie to Gautier.” Gautier had been my code name before my arrest, and she knew well that my two brothers had been taken.

We met again, and I found that she was still the same extraordinary woman I had known before, hiding her artificial leg with big strides, so effectively that no one who did not know her was aware of it. She told me that when the Germans overran the free zone she had had to leave France. But instead of leaving by the normal, official channels, she chose to go by the Pyrenees because she thought she would have a better chance of continuing to work for the Resistance by going out that way. God knows how she made the journey over the mountains! But then Virginia Hall did many things considered improbable, if not impossible.

She spent a few weeks getting out of Spain and then went to England. There they were pleased to meet her and to hear what she had been doing. But that was not what she had come for. She wanted to go back to France.

“Your accent just isn’t good enough,” she was told—and by any normal standards they were absolutely right. But Virginia Hall was not to be measured by normal standards.

“You can’t go back,” they said.

“Why not?” she wanted to know.

“You’d be a danger—a danger to yourself, and a danger to your friends. You’d certainly be a danger to your radio operator.”

“Well, suppose I learn how to work a radio—would you send me back then, on my own?”

“Oh yes,” she was told, “all you’ve got to do is learn how to operate a radio and you can go back.” And they laughed as they said it. They did not offer to teach her—and I cannot blame them for that.

But Virginia Hall ignored their laughs and paid for lessons in radio work with her own money. In three months she had learned how to receive and to remit messages. She went back to the powers that be at S.O.E.

“Now can I go back to France?” she asked. “I know how to work a radio—I don’t need to take anyone with me.” The promise had been given to her casually, thinking it an easy way to discourage her. But “Marie” was hard to discourage. In March 1944, she was landed on the coast of Brittany and worked all over France. In spite of her bad French accent, in spite of her artificial leg, she did work that made her name known throughout the Resistance. When I met her, I found she had organized a considerable circuit of her own around Cosne and the Loire. When she was ordered by London to go south into the mountain country of the Haute-Loire, around Le Puy, I took over her group and contacts. And from the south we continued to hear of her work. When it came to organizing sabotage she was apparently on equal terms with anyone sent out by London. I needed no assurance about her personal courage.

I cannot end my brief account of Virginia Hall there. It seems that when the war passed from France to Germany, she had to follow it, believing her job was not yet done. But when she finally returned to the United States, she had difficulty in getting a job; she even had difficulty in convincing the authorities of her bona fides. “But you were a spy,” they said. I wish they had asked me for my testimony.

Each week I sent to London, by radio, a message which I asked them to transmit over the B.B.C. Each Wednesday my wife and children sat round the radio set I had bought just before the war to hear the “personal messages” broadcast by the B.B.C. to France. To let my family know I was alive and safe, I conceived messages of an intimate kind which they, and only they, would understand.

My favorite was about “the father of the flea.” “The father of the flea is doing very well.” “The father hopes to see the flea again soon.” “The father hopes that when he sees the flea he will not be bitten.” I had a daughter whom we had nicknamed “the flea” because, as a child, she was so very small.

Or I would take the name of my spaniel and send a message saying he was “doing very well chasing big rabbits.” Occasionally he was “catching big rabbits.” On Wednesday evenings I liked to imagine my wife and children straining to catch a reference they would recognize and know that I was talking to them.

But I had to accept the likelihood that I would not survive, and to find a sure way of letting my wife know, without revealing my true identity to any in my circuit—which could have endangered my family.

The method I devised was to go to a priest (as at the church at Saint-Viatre, with its twisted, conical black spire) and entrust him with the duty. Even then, I confess, I stopped short of absolute trust. I told him that in one of the books in his extensive library I had written my real name and address.

“If you hear that anything has happened to ‘St. Paul,’ will you please go to your library and search through every book until you find my name and address written on one of the pages? Then I ask you to tell my wife what has happened to me.”

Those last months of the war exhibited just the same combination of fear, tragedy, sentiment, and gaiety I have tried to convey in these pages. There is a story of three maquisards at Nouan-le-Fuzelier which exemplifies, at once, the atmosphere of the period immediately preceding D-Day: impetuous, reckless, violent, fearful.

The three men had been having something of a party. They had eaten and drunk well in the little bar attached to the butcher’s shop at Nouan. One of the men was Désiré Dasnière—”Dédé”; another was a man called Paul, from Romorantin, who was in charge of all the distribution of food for the area—as well as being a maquisard. All three men were under my command. They had been kept busy, night after night, “receiving” the materials parachuted to the “grounds,” as well as taking part in sabotage operations. Now they were in high spirits and itching for the day when the real fight against the Germans would begin.

Their party had gone on from lunchtime until dusk, when they were still in good fettle, singing raucous songs. It was then that one solitary German soldier walked into the little bar. He ordered a beer and sat down at a table near the three Frenchmen.

Paul, a man with a sharp alert face, and gold fillings gleaming in his mouth, was even gayer than his companions. He sensed the possibility of a little sport.

“Hard luck on the Boches,” he said loudly, speaking directly to the German. “Poor old Boches. Poor old Adolf. All that bragging and goose-stepping and they end up like this. Useless. Washed out. They’ve lost the war, the poor old Boches....” The German did not seem concerned. He probably did not understand a word Paul was saying. Which was unfortunate for him, for it incited Paul further.

“Here, Fritz,” he shouted, “come here, Fritz, my friend, come over here.” He beckoned to the German to join them. The soldier, who was clearly a man of discretion, seeing the Frenchmen in a boisterous mood and not to be denied, got up and went to their table.

“Fritz,” said Paul, still taking loudly, “you’re a very clever chap, you’re the bleeding conquering hero—now just you put your finger on the table like that.” And Paul thumped his index finger on the edge of the table with a bang. The German did not seem to understand what was required of him. So Paul explained to him a second time.

“Come on, Fritz, come on—put your finger here.” And again Paul banged his finger on the table. When the German still showed no sign of comprehending, Paul took hold of his hand.

“Here, Fritz, this is what you do.” And he thumped the German’s finger on the table. “Now, hold it there.” Understanding or not, the German left his finger on the edge of the table.

Paul, reaching quickly behind him, snatched a big sharp kitchen knife, slashed off the German’s finger, and handed it to him.

“Here, Fritz,” he said, “take it. Here, take your finger and away with you.” The German soldier looked dumbly at his finger which had been cut off, picked it up with the other hand, and walked straight out of the bar, holding the severed finger in one hand and looking at the bleeding stump on the other hand. Paul called after him.

“That’s it. Off you go. Don’t worry about your bill—I’ll stand you your beer.”

Fritz got on his bicycle and rode away. The party broke up soon afterward.

Chapter Twenty

The tension in France mounted to a climax. The Resistance gave the Germans no rest, as every day saw the derailing of trains, the blowing up of railway lines, armed attacks upon German columns—occasionally even open engagements with the enemy by massed maquisards—sabotage of factories and of German stores of petrol and munitions, the extermination of collaborators and traitors.

The Germans and their French “tools”—above all, the Militia—retaliated in kind. The Germans were anxious to rid themselves of the terror behind the lines before the Allies invaded. It is estimated that in the months immediately preceding D-Day some 70,000 members of the Resistance were arrested, of whom 50,000 were deported. The losses and the suffering, in a country stricken with fear and near-starvation, were an agony. Young men screamed in torture chambers; others fell before the shots of firing squads, crying “Vive La France! Vive de Gaulle!” Heroism and love of country were no longer abstract ideals: they were passionate realities of which any village or town in France could provide examples from their rolls of honor. And the names of those who testified to their love of France by their deaths were the names of men and women whose lives had been humble and unspectacular until the day they disregarded all their normal instincts to stay out of trouble, to live in peace, and risked their lives. The majority of them could not explain why, except in the simplest terms. We did not ask why; we only knew this was what we must do. Let the historians seek more complex motivations if they wish, but they will not destroy the simple truth as we saw it.

Although the Germans inflicted heavy blows upon the Resistance, they could not crush it. The more they tried to repress it, the stronger it grew. The Germans were trying to hold down a great steel spring. When D-Day released that spring, it was to recoil upon the Germans with all the more force for having been suppressed.

From the skies came hundreds of tons of explosives; rifles and pistols; Sten and Bren guns; bazookas and mortars, anti-tank mines and anti-tank rifles; incendiaries and grenades. Before the end of the fighting in France, the Resistance had received more than half a million weapons of all kinds. Each maquis, each réseau had its secret stores. The “Secret Army” was ready for battle.

From France the Allied military commanders received detailed and comprehensive reports, day by day, on German preparations for the defense of France. The Atlantic Wall, the supposedly impregnable defense system on which the Germans had lavished so much braggart energy, was no mystery to the Allies. If it can be said that never had there been so gigantic, or so powerful, an invading force as the armada which sailed for France, it can also be said that none was ever so forearmed with knowledge of the enemy’s defenses.

When would they come? In London I had been told to listen to the B.B.C. on the first and the fifteenth of each month. The message announcing the invasion would be broadcast after the 9 P.M. news—among the other curious messages that were put out night after night, like my own messages to tell my family I was well. April 15, May 1, May 15—each of them passed without the message I was waiting to hear.

Then the first of June.

“Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne....” It was the first line of a poem by Verlaine. And it meant the invasion was soon to be launched. Only a few of us in the Resistance knew the significance of this message, and we could not tell our friends. We must now wait for the second half of the message, which would tell us that the invasion was to be launched within the next forty-eight hours. It was big news to carry about with me, and it was hard to hold it back from the others, but it could scarcely have added to the feverish excitement with which all were now possessed. Everyone could feel, despite all the disappointments of the past, that the invasion must come very soon. I looked at their faces, the faces of men whose friendship I held dear: men like Vincent and “Dédé,” my adjutant, Captain Makowski, known as Maurice, and Colon, in charge of the Cher. I thought to myself, “You have not long to wait now.”

And on the fifth of June, the imperturbable voice of the B.B.C. announcer, unaware of the momentous importance of the words he was speaking, said:

“Blessent mon cœur d’une langueur monotone....” It was the following line of the Verlaine poem, and it was the second part of the message. It signified that within two days Allied forces would be fighting once more on French soil.

Then followed a long string of “action messages,” the coded messages by which each réseau received its orders to carry out the various prearranged operations against the railways, bridges, lines of communication, and so on. It was soon apparent that all notions of “graduated” action, on a selective basis, had been abandoned. About 300 “action” messages were broadcast that night, which meant, in effect, an order for a general uprising in every county in France. The messages went on and on, taking up far, far more time than usual. The Germans are said to have known the meaning of the two lines from Verlaine. Had they needed other proof that the invasion was imminent, those 300 “action” messages must have given it to them. That the Germans did not react more urgently, that the invasion, launched in bad weather, should have found them relatively so unprepared, with Rommel on leave with his family in Germany, was the purest fortune for the Allies. But, of course, there had been false alarms about the invasion for the past three years, when, just as now, the code words signaling imminent landings had been broadcast, and our hearts leaped in vain. Perhaps the Germans had also become skeptical by now of these messages.

I have always felt that it was a mistake to order such indiscriminate action on the part of the Resistance. There is no doubt that it achieved an immediate and important success by reducing to chaos transport, communications, and power systems throughout France, thus prolonging and extending the initiative gained by the Allies. The attacks by the Resistance on the roads and railways after the first days continued most effectively to impede German attempts to rush reinforcements to stem the Allied offensive. But I feel our contribution might have been even more valuable had the orders for action on D-Day been more confined, both in the areas to be covered and the targets to be attacked. We showed all the cards in our hand too soon.

Those who defend the abandonment of the “graduated” plan say that the Allied commanders could not be sure of the strength of the Resistance in any one particular district and, therefore, could not order “selective” action, for fear of being let down. On the other hand, the argument runs, by calling upon the Resistance to rise throughout France they minimized the importance of failure by any individual units of the Resistance.

Was this the real reason—a lack of confidence in the Resistance? If it was, it was not based on any evidence of failure in the months immediately preceding the landings. And it was not borne out in the months to come, when the Resistance, called upon to act within the overall Allied strategy, crippled or delayed many German attempts to hit back at the advancing armies, and, later, to retreat to the fatherland.

Another explanation, more complimentary to the Resistance, is that no one could be sure, after the landings, from where the Germans would attempt to rush reinforcements, and therefore it was important to sabotage on the greatest scale, so as to block all possible routes. This is a more attractive argument.

But General de Gaulle has put forward another reason. In his memoirs he has written:

“The news of the landing gave the maquis its cue for a concerted action. I had ordered it in advance, on May 16th, by notifying the interior forces, by means of the ‘Cayman Plan,’ of the goals they must attempt to achieve. However, the Allied command regarded the extension of guerrilla warfare with mistrust. Furthermore, it foresaw a prolonged battle and hoped that the resistance would not precipitate matters except in the bridgehead area. The proclamation General Eisenhower read on the wireless on June 6th warned French patriots to stay on their guard. On the same day, however, I urged them to fight with all the means in their power according to the orders given by the French command. But the delivery of arms depended on Allied headquarters and remained, at the start, limited. It was especially with regard to demolition of railways, roads and essential communications that the Combined General Staff was concerned.

“As for the railways, the objectives were distributed between the air forces and the resistance. The latter accounted for the more remote regions; Lyons, Dujon, Deubs, the east, the centre, the south-west. During June and July six hundred trains were derailed. Our men also took the responsibility, on all lines, for the sabotage that immobilized 1800 locomotives and more than 6000 cars. As for the underground telegraph cables which the enemy reserved for their own use, skilful demolitions on June 6th and the days following the landings put those serving Normandy and the area around Paris out of commission. Wires above ground were also cut in countless numbers. The Germans were thrown into great difficulties by such chaos in transport and communications. At the same time a military insurrection was launched in a number of departments, producing noticeable influence on the course of operations. At last the Allied high command recognised the advantages of this kind of warfare and gave the maquis help which was no less effective for remaining circumspect....”

With de Gaulle’s account of the effectiveness of the Resistance, I am in complete agreement. And it is certainly true that, until late in the day, the Americans were especially reluctant to give the Resistance the materials it needed (though, as is their nature, when they changed their minds they poured in arms in cloudbursts).

But what of the contradictory orders given, according to this account, by Generals Eisenhower and de Gaulle? Did the Resistance find itself the momentary focus of that international political contention and strife that persisted almost to the end of the war? Was Eisenhower’s “American” distrust of the Resistance counterbalanced by de Gaulle’s anxiety to prove that the French could more than pull their weight when it came to fighting for the freedom of their own country? I fear this is the truth of the matter. But de Gaulle was right in this: large numbers of the Resistance were aching for the day when they could come out into the open against the Germans; a policy of restraint, after the landings, might have been extremely difficult to pursue successfully.

As it was, what happened? All that de Gaulle claims for the Resistance is, as I have said, gloriously true. But the country-wide uprising that followed the landings also had tragic results. Inspired by the news of the invasion, and inflamed by the sight of Resistance “victories” and chaos among the Occupation forces, so many simple good people thought that France had been liberated overnight. The caution which had preserved their lives for four years was cast aside recklessly; celebrations were premature. In very many places—Guéret for instance—the Communists, against general orders, seized the municipal buildings and assumed power, in the vacuum caused by German troop movements. Then more Germans came, the Communists went into hiding, leaving the enemy to take an easy and savage revenge upon the civilian population, massacring whole villages, slaughtering men, women, and children, burning and razing property. They could not hit the Allied troops, they could not always hit the Resistance, so they hit at the people of France, innocent and guilty alike. One example, one atrocious example, is enough: on the tenth of June, 600 women and children were burned alive in the church at Oradour-sur-Glane by the S.S. Division, Das Reich. That gross statistic of horror stands out among the many atrocities committed at this time. But also in the Creuse and the Corrèze, to name only two counties, “executions” of fifty or sixty people were almost commonplace.

Furthermore, I believe that the desire of de Gaulle to give the F.F.I.—the French Forces of the Interior, the “troops” of the Resistance—a “military bearing” led to unnecessary deaths among them. Along with the weapons distributed to them were brassards—arm bands—colored blue, white, and red, and bearing the initials F.F.I. and the Cross of Lorraine. They were told to wear these from D-Day onward—and officers and N.C.O.s were encouraged to fix somewhat national emblems of “rank” on their sleeves or berets. The men obeyed in good faith, proud to come out into the open and show they were patriots. But all it did was draw unnecessary attention to themselves. If they were not seen by the Germans and shot down in the street—and some were—they had put themselves at the mercy of traitors.

If any of them thought it would afford them protection, as soldiers, when captured, they were deluded. We were not soldiers, in the accepted sense, and brassards did not constitute uniform under the Geneva Conventions. A uniform is not something you can slip on or off and carry about in your pocket. We knew when we joined the Resistance—and I made sure that all my men realized it—that, as civilians bearing arms, we could expect to be shot, and the Germans would be within their rights, under the laws governing the conduct of war, to shoot us. I never wore the uniform of a British officer in France—although a uniform of sorts was dropped to me in the field—because I felt I should seek no protection that my men could not enjoy. Our secrecy was our protection, and when the F.F.I. put on their brassards they deprived themselves even of that small aid to survival. My advice to all the men in my sector was to throw away their brassards and to fight as they had always fought—in the ordinary clothes they stood up in. But not one word of all this must depreciate the men of the “Secret Army,” the F.F.I., who engaged the Germans all over France and fought magnificently.

On the night of the fifth of June, following the message announcing the invasion, we prepared to attack local targets, according to our orders, and the local F.F.I. was mobilized, ready for action. Telephone wires and cables were cut; post-office personnel were “invited” to delay all official communications; explosives were packed and placed on roads and railways; power stations were sabotaged; bridges were blown.

During the night of the fifth, the Communist F.T.P.—the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans—asked for arms: we had some eight tons ready for use. Until now the Communists had received none of them.

“If you want them for political purposes—then, no,” they were told. “If it is solely to attack the enemy along with us, then all right.”

“We have the same ambition as you,” said the Communists. “We want to fight the Germans and get them out of France.” The next morning the Communists were given arms, taught how to handle them, and 150 or more of them came under the orders of the F.F.I.

This was done reluctantly, but we had come to the moment when political discord was unimportant beside the single aim of beating the Germans. But, even as it was done, we knew that later the Communists would exploit their part in the Resistance and might well use their arms in an attempt to seize political power.

On the night of D-Day itself, the sixth of June, “bodies’ and containers of arms were dropping all over France. Among the “bodies” were the first of the Jedburgh teams—teams of British, French, and American officers, with a radio operator. Their mission, in official terms, was “to establish a base to receive reinforcements from which raids could be carried out on enemy lines of communication.” In fact, the “Jets,” as we came to know them, were most useful in areas where the Resistance lacked officers with military training. Pearl Witherington, the S.O.E. agent operating to the south of me, who found herself in charge not of her original small group but of more than 2000 maquisards, asked and asked again for a “Jet” team to help her. (She first asked for them on June 10; a team arrived in late July, by which time her maquis had fought a pitched battle with the Germans.)

Three “bodies”—not Jets—were dropped to me on the night of D-Day. I went to the “ground” to meet them and was chagrined, while escorting them away, when a train loaded with German tanks and munitions held us up at the level crossing between Nouan-le-Fuzelier and Salbris. We were not equipped to attack it; it rolled past us unmolested. But I need not have fretted: my men had blown up the line farther on.

On D-Day, all of us, all sections of the Resistance, came under the command of the Free French General Koenig. From then onward, I operated under military command, but I was still in contact with London. As far as I was concerned, the change made little practical difference. I still had my distinct responsibilities, and I found no difficulty in working alongside the Gaullist officers. Indeed, it was a relief to find that in London, as had long been the case in France, we were now considered, officially, to be working for the same purpose. There were, however, incidents in the region where men who had enjoyed the leadership of their own particular branch of the Resistance resented and resisted the new authority to which they were supposed to be subordinate. This was not surprising, but it took some time to sort out. Who would expect individualists, capable of clandestine warfare, to be enthusiastic about submitting to rule by the military—and by men who were frequently newcomers to the district?

“Dédé” was just one of many men who now decided to take a holiday from work. With the help of the railway doctor, “Dédé” “went sick” and was not able to give his services to the S.N.C.F. for some considerable time. He was needed elsewhere.

From D-Day onward, the Resistance gave the Germans no respite. The methods we used varied according to the terrain in which we were operating and the ingenuity of the leaders. But a description of our activities in my five counties can illustrate what was happening all over France.

Apart from the obvious work of blowing up bridges, cutting cable junctions, and delaying rail movement, there were all manner of simple techniques employed to impede the Germans.

We removed all the signposts. A map and a compass are inadequate aids in a foreign country; even a person familiar with a district can lose himself if he has no signposts to confirm his memory. The Germans wandered about helplessly, wasting hours on the road only to find they were back where they started. And the ordinary French people were only too anxious to “help” them—to go in the wrong direction.

There were no longer any milestones. (In France the milestones are numbered, showing the road on which you are traveling and, on each side, the names of the places ahead of and behind you.) We started taking up the milestones, but that was such laborious work we decided to paint them all over with coal tar. More than once I saw a column moving in one direction and met them again, the next day, traveling in the opposite direction, still seeking information on their whereabouts.

Just before nightfall we uprooted the white posts indicating the correct way round a sharp turn and replaced them with posts, supplied by the local carpenter, facing in the wrong direction to send the Germans into a ditch, or preferably over a precipice. Where necessary, we filled in ditches, cut away banks, felled trees, to complete the illusion. Our biggest prize was to see three lorries full of German soldiers, led by a motorcyclist, go straight over a precipice. They made a nasty mess a hundred or so feet below, where they landed.

A pile of stones was, as now, a common enough sight beside a French road. The German convoys crunching along in the heat of the summer saw nothing sinister when they came to yet another pile. But sometimes it had been put there by the Resistance, the stones carefully selected—not too big or too heavy, but as jagged as possible. Under the heap was a pound of plastic explosive, attached to it a “pull switch.” Fifty yards away we sat, behind a bank or tree. As the convoy came along, the first, second, and third lorries were allowed to pass the stones safely. As a lorry in the middle of the convoy was level with the pile, we tugged at the pull switch. Several hundredweight of sharp stones were blown into the air, cutting, tearing at the lorry, often stripping it completely, so that, even if it did not catch fire, all that remained of the vehicle and the men inside was a skeleton chassis and dismembered bodies. Once that had happened to a convoy, any pile of stones by the roadside was suspect. Movement was halted, men and vehicles crouched in cover, as a wary inspection was carried out. Hours of delay resulted.

By parachute we had received “tire bursters”—little boxes containing plastic explosives and detonators. When a car drove over one of them, an explosion ripped away the tire, perhaps overturning the car.

The tire bursters were hidden in small holes in the road and covered with horse dung or something of that sort.

But we did not have as many tire bursters as we wanted. So when we were short, I sent children—aged ten or eleven, perhaps—out of their village to arrange horse dung on the road in a symmetrical pattern. When the Germans came and saw the dung, so neatly arranged, they stopped. Tire burster, they said to themselves, but the foolish French, with their tidy minds, have made it too obvious. The Germans got out of their vehicles and made for cover, while one man crept up to see whether he could find the explosive. Twenty frightened minutes were spent investigating a heap of horse dung put there by children.

This was the one kind of warfare in which we had every advantage over the Germans. Day after day, by relatively small means, we scraped away at the exposed nerves of the Germans, who were facing the mass offensive of the Allies on the one hand and the hostility of the French people on the other. The more jittery they became, the more easily we could scare them. A wire tied to a tree and projecting visibly into the road, a stone in the middle of the road and a wire shining on the bank: these were enough to stop a whole convoy while an explosives specialist was sent to investigate, accompanied by a dozen men with machine guns. They dare not pass a single object that might signal danger. The Germans’ speed of movement was cut down to as little as five miles a day by these methods.

When the chance offered itself, there was particular pleasure in killing a few Germans as well. The attack the Germans feared most of all, I think, was that of the lone fighter. His ideal position was at a bend in the road, with a wood near him into which he could escape if necessary. He sat by the roadside, reading a book, peacefully enjoying the sunshine. As the German convoy came past, the soldiers looked out of the lorries, sweating in their uniforms, envying the man in his open-necked shirt, who had nothing to do but sit in the sun. As the rear of the convoy was passing him, the idle man took his rifle and shot at a German soldier dangling his feet over the tailboard of the last lorry. The German curled backward and fell at the feet of his comrades in the lorry. They shouted and screamed, “Terrorist, terrorist, quick, quick,” but by the time they had persuaded the driver to stop, it was too late.

We found a German major on a farm. His car had been wrecked by a tire burster and he had hidden away while waiting for another car to fetch him. He was writing a letter to his family. They never received it. He fought well, but we killed him. He had written, “I have come up from the south, and I’ve been attacked five times on the road. I’m fed up with this, and I hope soon to be able to get back to Germany and see all of you again.”

A German column of lorries, horses, and men were lumbering along a wide road in the Sologne. The column stretched for nearly a mile, presenting an unbearable temptation to my men as they watched it go by. I agreed to let them carry out a most audacious hit-and-run attack.

Four of them set out in a Citroën to catch up with the column. One of them sat beside the driver, wearing the hat of the German major we had killed. The Citroën approached the column at high speed, the dust swirling up behind it. The Germans saw it coming, but, seeing the officer’s hat in the front of the car, suspected no danger.

As soon as the Citroën drew level with the rear of the column, the driver put his foot right down on the accelerator and the other men thrust machine guns through the windows. They kept firing all the way down the mile length of the column, killing scores of Germans. It took them less than a minute to spray the column and keep going as fast as possible. They escaped without a scratch, their speed and the advantage of surprise protecting them.

We used that technique just three times, each time with devastating success. But the team who carried out the third raid disobeyed my orders. I told them they must never try a return run, for the Germans were bound to be ready for them a second time. But these young men could not resist trying. They had created such havoc behind them they thought they could get away with it again. But a German officer in the middle of the column saw them coming and moved his lorry across the road, blocking it. The Citroën crashed into the lorry and all my men were killed.

I loved the great hearts of those men. I knew the courage and excitement that had made them try it, but our object was to kill as many Germans as possible without being killed ourselves.

A few days after the landings, I sent one of my maquis—it was led by “One Eye”—to attack a small German convoy passing through. The maquis opened fire on the Germans from the side of the road as they came by, the Germans returned the fire for a short time—and then the whole convoy surrendered.

Traveling with the convoy were eight “gray mice”—the name we gave to women in the German Army because of the gray uniforms they wore. The maquis took the “gray mice” into their safekeeping. When a report of the surrender of the convoy—and of the captured women—came to me, I was some distance away. At the first opportunity, I went to “One Eye” and his men. They were back in their hide-out in a wood. I warned “One Eye” against keeping the women.

“There’s going to be trouble one way or another,” I said. “Either these women will escape and give away where you are, or else you’ll have squabbles and fights among your own men over them.”

“But patron,” said “One Eye,” a picture of offended innocence, “they’re wonderful—and they’re perfectly all right. We won’t have any trouble—you’ll see.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “I’m sure they’re wonderful, but you can’t keep them; you mustn’t have them with you here. You can’t take the risk.”

“Risk?” said “One Eye.” “Oh no, boss, there’s no risk, really. You only say that because you haven’t seen them. Ah, but you must see them—then you’ll change your mind.”

“I doubt it,” I said, “but let’s see them anyway.” “One Eye” sent for them, and the eight young women, who had been given a hint of my reaction, came along, looking apprehensive. As they stood there, in their gray uniform trousers and their blouses open at the neck, I could see my maquisards looking at them, and at me, no less anxiously.

I asked the women if they were content to be held by the maquisards. They said they were quite “satisfied.”

“We want to stay on,” they said, “why do you want to send us back? We do not want to go.”

“Because I can’t have you here—I don’t want any trouble with my men.”

“Why should there be trouble?” one of them said. “Aren’t your men satisfied with us? We cook for them, we wash for them, we repair their linen, darn their socks—we do anything they ask. Is there any complaint? If they are not happy, you must tell me, and then we will work harder for them.” I do not know what an orthodox military commander would have done, confronted with eight German women settling down in a French wood to act as hausfraus to a band of rough-looking maquisards. I doubt whether he could have found any text on which to rely. I made the best of what I still considered a bad job, rather than take the other risk of upsetting my men. They seemed to have managed without any trouble so far, I comforted myself. I left the “gray mice” in the wood.

A few days later the Germans attacked the maquis. The women loaded themselves like mules, with pots and pans, blankets, ammunition, everything that the maquisards would need. A couple of the men escorted them to the place agreed on as the next hide-out. By the time the fight was over, the women had “set up home” again and had a hot meal ready for the troops. Some of the men were wounded; the “gray mice,” one of whom had had some nursing training, dressed their wounds and looked after them. When the doctor came to see the men, he said his journey was unnecessary: the women had done all that was required. This was a new and more appealing form of “collaboration.”

The “mobilization” of the F.F.I., on receipt of the messages heralding D-Day, meant in effect that fathers and sons left their work, their homes, and their families to group together as a military unit. It is one thing to be called up for the Army in an unoccupied country, quite another to volunteer to fight in your own district with the enemy very capable of taking revenge upon innocent women and children.

The mobilization was in accord with the orders of General Koenig, as commander of all the F.F.I. It was all part of the plan to face the Germans with organized military resistance. But “mobilization” in small towns and villages could not help but be conspicuous. It could be only a question of time before the Germans became aware of the existence of a concentrated force of the Resistance. The amassing of the F.F.I. in a place very close to Salbris, for instance, could not go unnoticed.

The warning came to the maquis that their encampment had been discovered by the Germans—or betrayed to them. They moved off to a new camp and continued their military and physical training. The Germans followed the scent and prepared to attack. There was a possibility of moving camp again, and of avoiding a fight, but Captain Stanislas Makowski, who was in command, decided to engage the Germans.

Captain Makowski, known locally as “Maurice,” or sometimes as “Jean” or “Dmitri,” was a Pole who had lived in Russia for the early part of his childhood. His father was a big property owner there, but he was dispossessed during the revolution. The family went back to Poland, and Makowski studied winegrowing in France. At the outbreak of war, he offered himself to the Polish military attaché in Paris and served with the Polish Army in France. He escaped to Britain and in Edinburgh married an English girl he had met in France as a student. He served in Equatorial Africa in the Gamba Regiment and then, late in 1943, joined S.O.E. He dropped into France in April 1944 to serve as my adjutant.

Makowski was a handsome, impulsive man. His personality was very attractive and he had no difficulty in winning the confidence of the Resistance. But he was not overendowed with the qualities of restraint. He could not resist the idea of engaging the German Army.

The maquis took to wooded country and took up their positions in ditches. The butcher, the baker, the cobbler, the mechanics, and the young boys prepared for the fight. Makowski planned it well. Four hundred Germans advanced upon some fifty maquisards and they were repulsed. Makowski allowed the Germans to come well within range before ordering his men, with machine guns and Bren guns, to open fire. Two waves of German troops came on them; others attempted to outflank the French, many of whom were fighting for the first time. The maquisards used ditches, scrub, trees, to conceal themselves. The first assault was beaten back.

Then the Germans prepared for a second attack, reinforced by another 300 men, setting fire to the undergrowth and employing mortars. Artillery was brought up. The maquis continued to fight back, firing often at point-blank range. The grenades began to shower upon them, and the fire threatened to overrun their positions. A blanket of smoke now enveloped the fir trees, the scrub, and the rutted earth on which the battle was fought. Night was approaching but was still too far away to help. It was obvious that the maquis could not hold out any longer. Under cover of the smoke they withdrew.

The maquisards had been split up during the engagement, and now they retreated, seeking safety, as best they could. Older men helped the young boys. Others stumbled through the night, supporting the wounded and carrying away precious weapons. Some of them trudged as far as twenty or more miles before finding refuge. Many families were bereaved that day, and yet, if there had to be a fight with the Germans on such a scale, it could be reckoned a proud day. The battle of Souesmes, as it was to be known, resulted in the deaths of 121 Germans and another sixty-five wounded, while the French counted thirteen dead, four of whom were taken prisoner before being slaughtered. The wounded among the maquis were numerous.

The battle was fought on the seventeenth of June, 1944. The following day the Germans and the French police and civilians went to the field of battle to reclaim their dead. I went there, too, dressed in my uniform as a head gamekeeper. As I watched the bodies being taken away, I thought back to those days of 1940 and 1941 when Resistance was at its most embryonic.

We were a long way from the days when it had seemed something of a “game” to outwit the Germans. Who would live to see the time when the last German had been driven out, and men, like those who now lay dead, could return to their homes and their peaceful lives again?

Four more people were to pay with their lives for that defeat of the Germans, although they played no part in it. The Germans sought revenge. They took the wife and daughter of one of the leaders of the maquis, deporting them to the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, where they died. They arrested another woman and a man, both of whom also died after being deported to Germany.

The Gestapo came to Vincent’s garage. He escaped by a secret passage, prepared for just such a day. The week before, the Feld-gendarmes had come for him, but, finding him away, had arrested his fifteen-year-old son. The son, however, had been released and Vincent had gone home. Now he was to remain in hiding for the next two months.

The Germans put a price of one million francs on the head of Captain Makowski and two million on that of “St. Paul.” We felt duly complimented.

The battle of Souesmes did not discourage the maquis. They infested every road, every village, every wood, so that the Germans never felt safe, even in large numbers. And the maquisards were no respecters of persons.

I was cycling through the Bourges forest on a brand-new bicycle when three men, armed with Sten guns, held me up. They proposed to requisition my bicycle, claiming they had more need of it than I. It took me some time to persuade them I was the man who had supplied them with their guns, that I was in fact their boss. But in the end I had dinner with their maquis—their colleagues enjoyed the joke of my being “arrested”—and slept the night with them in the forest.

To carry out hit-and-run attacks on German columns, and merely to get from one place to another with some hope of safety, the maquis needed petrol for their cars. Cars run on wood gas were always a danger because they were not fast enough and were liable to stall on a hill.

We decided to get the petrol we needed from a pump belonging to the Militia. The pump was inside a small barracks, which meant that the operation was likely to be hazardous. But the petrol was needed.

Late at night a big lorry, with a capacity of a ton and a half, laden with big containers, was driven to the top of the hill overlooking the barracks. At the top, the engine was cut, the lorry was put into neutral, and the maquisards pushed it slowly down the hill and backed it into the barracks’ courtyard, whose gate had already been opened. At night the Militia removed the pump handle and pipe from the petrol pump. The maquis brought their own accessories and quietly set about the job of siphoning the petrol into the big containers. The man who did most of the pumping knew his job: he was in charge of the distribution of petrol for the whole of France. The situation was an appealing one.

Without disturbance, they filled all the containers, nearly emptying the Militia petrol station of its supplies. Then the lorry was pushed slowly out of the courtyard into the street, the gate closed behind, the engine started, and away they went.

Throughout the night and the following morning the containers were shared with the surrounding maquis. But so successful had the operation been that, come the following afternoon, all the maquis had been served, yet two containers remained. I was at a house in La Ferté-Saint-Cyr when the young man doing the distribution, Henri Lemaignan, came to me to report. We agreed on the maquis to whom the last two containers of petrol should be given. I was about to leave on my bicycle for my next call when Henri said:

“I’m going the same way—why don’t you come along with me.” I did not fancy the idea, for I had always tried to avoid running needlessly into trouble—and a lorry carrying petrol stolen from the Militia smelled like potential trouble. On the other hand, I had been cycling most of the morning and I was tired. At first I refused the lift.

“Oh, go on,” said my friends, “get in.”

“No, I’d better not,” I said.

“Come on,” said Henri.

“All right, I will.” So we put my bicycle on the back of the lorry, and I climbed into the cab alongside Henri. He had a Sten gun in the rack and a revolver behind his seat. I usually traveled about unarmed so that if I were stopped I might have a better chance of bluffing my way out of trouble. But Henri—who drove me whenever I went by car—had shared many adventures with me already; if trouble were to come, it would be with a spirited and resourceful young man.

He looked very happy behind the wheel of that great lorry, although he had been carting the petrol—which might just as well have been dynamite—for several hours. He sang quietly to himself. I felt good, too.

At the top of the hill leading down into the village of Dhuizon, we stopped a man.

“Any Germans in the village?”

“No, no, we haven’t seen them for at least a week. Nothing to worry about.” So we started down into the village.

When we reached the market place in the center of Dhuizon, we saw a solitary German soldier walking.

“Ah, patron,” said Henri, who was a pugnacious little man, “let’s just get rid of this one.” He looked sad when I said we had other things to do.

At the end of the market place we saw, coming up the street toward us, a column of German troops. At the head of it were two men on motor bikes. Behind them were cars bearing machine guns.

“Quick,” I said to Henri, “switch off to the right and take the other road.” He manhandled the lorry into a sharp turn, but the Germans had seen us. They whistled at us, and then, as we took no notice, the motorcyclists revved up and started after us. We turned right and right again, making as much speed as we could. But the lorry was heavily laden, and, although we were carrying petrol, it was running on wood gas. The engine spluttered as we started to climb the hill out of the village again. The motorcyclists were with us, turning the corner not far behind.

I picked up the Sten gun, leaned out of the cab, and took aim at the face of the leading motorcyclist. I saw the terrified look on his face. As I was pulling the trigger, he lost control of his machine, spun off the road, and crashed into a wall.

As I tried to fire at the second man, the Sten jammed. Still looking back at him, I reached behind me with my right hand.

“Quick, Henri,” I shouted, “give me the revolver.” As Henri tried to get the revolver from behind him, he took his eyes off the road and we ran into a ditch. The lorry heeled over at an angle. The rest of the German column was not far behind us, and they had started to fire at the lorry. I was afraid—not only of being hit myself, but that the Germans might fire an incendiary or tracer bullet into one of the containers of petrol. I shouted my fears to Henri, as we tried to get our balance.

“If they catch the petrol, the whole works will go up in flames, and we’ll be baked alive. Get out—get out quick.” I pulled him out from his seat and told him, “You run into the village by the back way, and I’ll try to make the woods.”

So we split up. I started running, over some logs, into a field—and then I realized that ahead of me, up the hill, was a small vineyard. I was afraid and angry. The vineyard ran in straight lines up the slope for about 100 yards. One hundred yards of exposed countryside. A rapid glance behind me showed that the Germans had stopped their cars and were clambering out. Now there were men on foot with rifles—as well as the static machine guns.

I had no choice. I ran up the straight line of the vineyard, stumbling and scrabbling my way to the top of the slope. Now I knew what a rabbit had felt when I was shooting at it. Bullets kicked up the dust on either side of me and split the thin posts by which the vines were trained. I kept going and was within twenty yards or so of the top of the slope when I heard a boom—boom. “Hell,” I said to myself, “they’ve got Henri in some house, and they’re blowing it with a quick-firing gun.”

I passed an old man working in the vineyard two rows away from me.

“Go on, young fellow,” he shouted, “go on, keep going.” Then his shouts ended in a gurgle. I reached the top of the hill, expecting to see a wood before me. But it was a mile or more away. I faced a wide, open expanse of vineyards. The Germans were running up the hill behind me. I felt all the more like a rabbit. I still had the Sten gun in my hand. There was a chance that I might manage to unjam it, but how long would that take? Could I do it before the Germans came over the top of the hill?

I stripped off my jacket, wrapped the Sten in it, and hid the bundle under a heap of vine cuttings. At hand was a bundle of sticks, to which the vines were tied. I picked it up, put them over my shoulder, and, sweating heavily from fear and exertion in the heat, started to walk back. As I began to go down the hill, the Germans met me, a few yards to my left.

“Up there, up there,” I shouted, pointing beyond the top of the hill, and continued walking downhill, a man in brown trousers and shirt sleeves, carrying stakes over his shoulder.

I reached the old man who had shouted to me as I ran up the hill. He had taken a bullet through the throat. I dragged him down the hill and got him back to his house. There his wife said the most wonderful and extraordinary thing I have ever heard.

“It’s better,” she said, “that it should be him than the young British officer.” She did not know who I was, of course, but she had drawn her own conclusions, and even at that moment, when she thought her husband was dying, she could think in terms of the relative sacrifice. And such are the uncontrolled thoughts that flash through one’s mind at such times, I said to myself, “And thank you for the ‘young’”—he was older than I was, at any rate. Happily, after a week in the hospital, the old man recovered.

Henri, meanwhile, had run into the village, losing a shoe on the way. The Germans came after him. He tried the door of a house, but found it locked. He turned round and saw a ditch behind the house, a ditch overgrown with brambles. He lay down and wormed his way into the brambles.

The Germans, following close behind him, came to the same house and tried the door as he had done. Thinking he had gone inside and locked the door behind him, they smashed it down and rushed into the house. Some half a dozen of them combed the house from top to bottom. Henri dared not move, for other Germans were looking for him elsewhere in the village.

After several minutes, the soldiers came out of the house. It was a hot afternoon, and they were tired. They picked peaches from a tree in the garden and sat down on the steps of the house to eat them. They threw the stones into the ditch—alongside the bramble bush in which Henri was hiding. Henri understood German and heard one of them say:

“Dammit, we’ve had enough of this, we’ve chased him, we’ve searched the house—let the others go on searching if they want to. We’ll wait here until they call us back.”

Henri had taken the revolver with him. He lay in the ditch with it pressed against his chest, determined to fight it out with them if necessary.

Half an hour passed in which he did not dare to move his aching muscles, lest he betray his hiding place. Then a whistle blew and the Germans stood up, with a yawning and spitting, and went back to their cars. Our lorry had been put back on the road and tied up behind another lorry. It was towed away with the column.

I left the old man who had been shot in the throat and started walking out of the village. As I made my way along the road, I saw another person coming toward me in a hurry on a bicycle. It was a woman I knew well, one who lived in a large house about three miles from Dhuizon. Madame Zizi, a woman of about thirty, and her husband both worked for the Resistance. Now she was cycling toward me, wearing her Red Cross brassard. She had been told of the incident—and that both Henri and myself had been killed.

When she saw me, she jumped off her bike and we embraced each other.

“But I thought you—patron, patron—I thought you were dead,” she gasped.

“No, I got away all right, but little Henri’s been killed—I heard them shooting at him. But what are you doing here?”

“I came to pick your bodies up—to try to get them back from the Germans.”

“Try and get hold of Henri’s body if you can,” I said. “I’ll wait for you here.”

Zizi cycled into the village, asking everyone she met, “Where’s the body? Where’s the young man’s body?” No one knew of any body. Then she saw Henri hobbling along the street, with one shoe missing.

“The patron’s been killed,” he cried, “he’s been killed. I saw them shooting at him—and he couldn’t escape. I could see the bullets.”

Zizi told him I, too, was safe, and we all went back together to her house. It was only when we talked over our escapes that I learned that the quick-firing gun had not been shooting at Henri, but at me.

Chapter Twenty-one

During May, about a month before D-Day, I “acquired” Alex, who was to become my bombiste—specialist in explosives.

Alex was tall and thin. In repose, his face had a slightly lugubrious look, but in conversation his mouth lifted and his humor crackled. When I first met him, he was forty. His real name was Maurice Lostrie. Born at Aurillac in the Cantal, he was Parisian by “adoption.” Before the war he worked in a government office. When the Germans occupied France, they ordered him to labor on the Atlantic Wall.

“But I can’t,” said Alex, “I’m a bureaucrat—I’m not fit enough.” To avoid working for the Germans, he volunteered as an apprentice shepherd. While looking after sheep, he also helped people cross the demarcation line. But his heart was set on his own escape to England. He heard of a man who knew another man who would help him—that much was typical of so many escape stories—but when Alex finally reached Spain, hungry and broke, his adventures suddenly took on a more luxurious complexion. After crossing the mountains, he ran into a Spanish civil guard, flamboyant in cloak and gaudy headgear. Alex presented himself as an Englishman, improbable tale though that was.

“But you can’t be an Englishman—you have French papers,” said the Spaniard.

“Yes, I am English,” said Alex, “I was born in Glasgow, but I’ve spent all my life in France. I want to get to England to join de Gaulle.” The Spaniard took Alex’s papers, tore them up, and said, “Now you’re English.”

From that time, Alex enjoyed first-class travel, a long stay at British expense in an establishment with a swimming pool and a room to himself, and, finally, although he still had no money, a first-class cabin to himself on a boat to England. Knowing Alex and his capacity for unwinding a yarn, intricate and extravagantly colored, I can imagine how he achieved his exclusive, if impoverished, status.

In England, despite his arrival with no money, no clothes, no papers, he managed to blarney his interrogators into believing his story, and he joined the Free French to be trained as an agent. When he dropped into France—at the same time as Yeo Thomas, “The White Rabbit”—he was “lost” for some time, before joining up with his commanding officer in the field, Lieutenant-Colonel Rondenay, known to us as “Jarry.” During April and May he laid the solid foundations—if that is the right phrase to use when describing the activities of a bombiste—of his audacious career. He operated under different “chiefs” in the Eure-et-Loir, Loiret, and Loir-et-Cher. Then he ran out of explosives. That was how I heard of him. I was told there was a man looking for explosives because he wanted to do some blowing-up. Because I did not hand out explosives as casually as that, a meeting was arranged between us. We decided we could work together, but he was still officially under Free French command. But I had the explosives, and his chief, “Jarry,” had none at that time, so I arranged with the Free French that Alex should work for me.

Alex instructed my maquis in the use of explosives, but he also quickly got back into stride with his beloved work of destruction; he handled his explosives with the care and sentiment of a mother nursing her baby, and without them he seemed incomplete, lost.

A couple of days after the landings I sent Alex and “Dédé” on a mission into the Nièvre. They were not intended to operate there, but they found that though the local men had explosives they did not know how to use them. So Alex and “Dédé” proceeded to demonstrate.

First of all, they blew up the bridge at Neuvy-sur-Loire. Two days later they set out with the idea of destroying the bridge at Pont-Aubry, but found no way of lodging the plastic in the reinforced concrete of the bridge. They made do with blowing up the railway lines instead. Then they decided to knock out the bridge at Bannay, which carried the railway line from Cosne to Bourges over a canal. Three of them went on this operation—Alex, “Dédé,” and a young man of nineteen who was to look after the equipment.

When they got to the bridge they found a German munitions train there. The R.A.F. were carrying out a raid in clear moonlight on the town and station of Cosne, and the Germans had moved the train, in a hurry, out of harm’s way. The German soldiers guarding the train were dozing.

Alex loved the look of that long munitions train, and, taking advantage of the noise of the air raid, he and “Dédé” picked their way carefully between the sentries and crawled underneath the train to tie their bundles of plastic onto the rails and wagons. When that had been done to Alex’s satisfaction—and growing anticipation—he whispered to “Dédé”:

“Pass the pencils.” The “pencils” were a mechanism by which the explosion could be conveniently timed.

“I haven’t got them,” said “Dédé,” “you have.”

“No, I haven’t, you’ve got them.”

“I tell you I haven’t—I thought you’d brought them.”

“Oh hell,” said Alex, “we left them behind when we were sorting out our bundles. Never mind, you stay here, I’ll get them.” Now the air raid was over, and everything was still and quiet again. Alex began to crawl out from underneath the train, and, as he did so, somehow he knocked against what he thought was probably a brake. Whatever it was, it set up noisy vibrations along the whole length of the train. The drowsy German sentries reacted sharply. A crowd of them began running toward the train. The French boy who was standing guard fired on them and shot one German twice in the stomach, killing him. The Germans fired back. The boy ran into the bushes fringing the track, where he was joined by Alex and “Dédé.” The Germans followed them and the three Frenchmen had to make a run for it. They kept firing at the Germans and got away safely, although the boy was wounded in the hand. Cycling home in the moonlight, they shared a feeling of sadness that such a lovely train was still in one piece.

Next morning I went early to see them. I found them lying on their stomachs; the people with whom they were staying were pulling thorns out of their flesh with pincers. The bushes at the side of the railway had had long, pointed thorns, the kind that produce festers if a broken point remains in the flesh.

“I’ve already taken out sixty,” said a woman, bending over Alex with the pincers.

“It feels like it, too,” said Alex. “Still, better sixty thorns than sixty bullets.”

Alex made light of his work, but it was very dangerous. Apart from the operation itself, there had to be careful reconnaissance if the work were to be done well. Alex had to decide how much explosive he would need, where he could fix it, how he could get it there, and how to get away again.

There was one particular bridge, for example, which we wanted to destroy. The Germans had forbidden any French to pass over it and had posted sentries on it and all round it. This multiplied normal difficulties. How was Alex to size up the job, let alone actually blow it up?

We bought a prize trotting horse and a dapper sulky; Alex dressed himself up as an elegant gentleman farmer. He was very fond of horses, anyway, and enjoyed getting into the sulky behind the prize trotter and bowling smartly down the road. He made himself a familiar sight in the countryside for a few days, and then, as scheduled, drove his sulky to the bridge. The German sentry looked at him, but did not stop him. Alex reined his trotter and walked him slowly over the bridge—for horses must not be taken over bridges at a trot. While he was on the bridge, he had a good look round and was able to decide how much plastic he would need and where he could fix it. When he reached the other side of the bridge he trotted off again, waving a patronizing hand to the Germans. He drove around for a couple of hours, enjoying himself hugely and thinking what a pity it was that he could not always do his work thus.

Then he took the trotter back to the bridge, and again the Germans, with their fondness for horses and their respect for a well-accoutered equipage, let him through.

Two weeks later, working under cover of darkness, Alex blew a big hole in the bridge and made it unusable. The trotter and sulky were not seen again until after the Liberation, and Alex reluctantly cast off the role of gentleman farmer. The Resistance were able to adopt methods not open to conventional armies: I wonder what an army paymaster would have said to the purchase of a sulky and prize trotter.

There was another bridge requiring attention. It was a smallish bridge, but carried a main road over a canal. The Germans did not like to see bridges blown up, and they were guarding this one well. We decided, nevertheless, that Alex should do his stuff.

We knew the layout of the bridge, and Alex knew how much plastic he would need to put it out of action. The problem was how to get under the bridge with so many sentries about. But at least the French were still allowed to use this bridge, so we did not despair.

One of my men snooped round to estimate the possibilities and came back with good news.

“There’s a barge on the canal,” he said excitedly. “It’s tied up and it’s only about ten meters from the bridge. If we could only get it under the bridge—” His plan was a good one. Each day the barge was given more rope so that it edged nearer and nearer the bridge, yard by yard. Its movement was so cautious that it passed unnoticed.

When the nose of the barge was just underneath the first arch of the bridge, we decided the time had come for action. Alex and his team went off. Three of them were to keep watch and if the German sentries became suspicious and inquisitive, they were to do their best to take care of them. The plastic had been made into bundles according to Alex’s specifications.

While the three men kept watch in the darkness, Alex and two others slipped down to the canal and onto the barge. They took a pair of stepladders with them, which they placed on the barge. Alex and the man chosen to help him climbed onto the barge. The third man gave the barge a little more rope, letting it out slowly so that the barge drifted farther under the bridge.

When the barge was made fast by the rope again, Alex climbed to the top of the stepladders and started work. The night was silent, and he worked with a care that experience had taught him was worth even more than speed. He tied to a girder above him the first bundle of plastic. Then the man below handed him the biggest parcel of substantial size—which was to form the core of the explosion. Alex started to tie it up. It slipped. He tried to hold the parcel back, but it lobbed from his hand. He waited for the thud, knowing in that instant that the noise might give the alarm. But there was no sound of it falling. It fell only part of the way. Alex felt it at his feet on the angled leg of the stepladders. Clamping it with his feet, he reached down slowly to retrieve it. Breathing more normally again, he went back to work, this time attaching it safely to the bridge. But the “pencil” broke as he was fixing it; this meant that, before he was ready, the fuse had begun to be controlled by the time mechanism.

Alex hurried down from the ladder, picked it up, and crept off the barge in the cover of the bridge. On the bank he met the man who had been in charge of the rope by which the barge was made fast to the bank. Alex expected to see the man who had been with him on the barge.

“Where is he?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” said the other man, “he hasn’t left the barge while I’ve been here—I’d have seen him.”

“Are you sure he didn’t slip past you?”

“Quite sure.” They both went on the barge and found the third man there. He was lying unconscious. They dragged and carried him off the barge and up the slope to where their three companions, who had been keeping guard, were waiting for them. Still carrying the unconscious man, they all retreated quietly to a safe distance from the bridge to watch. Alex had reckoned on a maximum of ten minutes between the “pencil” breaking and the explosion. But a full ten minutes had passed, eleven, twelve....

“Hell,” said Alex, “something must have gone wrong with it. I must have done something when I dropped it.” He wondered whether he should go back.

“Wait,” said another man. “Give it a chance.” It was like waiting for childhood fireworks to go off, when the fuse ceased to glow, but one was never quite sure if it was really out. “You’ll be a long time dead if you go back and it really goes off,” said Alex’s companion. Alex decided not to anticipate his reception into heaven. He waited. Thirteen minutes...fourteen minutes...then it happened. With a great, glorious flashing and crunching, the bridge went up into the air. And two sentries on top of the bridge beat Alex to heaven.

When Alex’s aide on the barge came round, he explained that the big bundle of plastic had hit him on the top of the head, as it slipped from Alex’s hand, and knocked him out. Then it must have bounced back onto the steps at Alex’s feet. He considered the large-sized bump earned in a good cause.

The Germans did not make very much use of the canals at this stage of the war. The movement was too slow for them, and also the Resistance found it relatively easy to damage the barges. But some traffic still moved that way, and Alex was quite fond of blowing up the lock gates of the canals. He had the satisfaction of knowing that it would not take the French too long to repair them once the Germans had been driven out. This form of sabotage was also popular with the maquis. When the lock was blown, a harvest of stunned fish was deposited on the land or left stranded in small craters as the waters rushed into the adjoining lock. The fishing was good and easy then. Whenever those who knew him saw Alex, they hoped it was the open season for fishing.

“The canal, perhaps,” they said to him.

“Perhaps,” said Alex.

“The fish is good—very fresh.”

“Good,” said Alex. And remembering his days in England, he added, incomprehensibly, “Frying tonight.”

A frustration and a challenge to the maquis in many parts of France was that presented by the huge cranes employed on the railways to pick up engines which had been blown off the rails by the Resistance and to right them again. We had an effective method for derailing trains—a mine under one rail was enough. As the engine passed over it, the mine exploded, tipping the engine down the bank into the ditch. Wagons or carriages sometimes heeled over with it. But, sooner or later, along came the great crane to clear the wreckage and get the trains going again.

One sixty-ton crane, the only crane capable of dealing with these derailings, was left in the southern part of the Loire. It was important that we put it out of action so as to maximize the effect of our attack on the trains.

We noticed that when the crane was not being used it was kept on a siding, in the midst of accompanying rolling stock: one engine, three or four trucks, then the crane, followed by more trucks and another engine. The Germans, manning the trucks with machine guns and mortars, were thus prepared to move off, at speed, in whatever direction the crane was needed. A lookout at either end warned them of armed attack, and the arrangement of the train made sure that if the track were mined the crane would not be damaged, but only the engine or trucks ahead of it. Day and night we saw the crane being shuttled to work, undoing the damage we had done, and we yearned to put it out of action. We did not want to destroy it, because by now we had a concern for the time after the Liberation when we should need such cranes to work for France. But we wanted to disable it sufficiently to hold up the Germans.

We decided to employ a Piat against the crane—a weapon that was not used much during the war, and rarely with effect. It was a spring gun that fired a kind of rocket. It required a certain amount of “leisure” to make the best use of it because of its weight. If possible, you tried to “aim” at a moving target before it arrived. This meant, in brief, measuring the interval between the order to “fire” and the crane coming into the direct line of the rocket’s projectory, rather like the technique of naval gunnery.

We practiced as the crane, with its attendant engines and strongly defended trucks, plied up and down the track. We watched it go past, estimated its speed, measuring the number of seconds it took to cover a specified distance, and gave the imaginary order to shoot the rocket. After a few trial runs, we reckoned we had it all worked out fairly well.

It was a fine, sunny morning when Alex went out with his team of three, bearing the spring gun with them. They mounted the gun some distance away from the railway, but with an excellent view of it. They waited, tensely, optimistically, for the crane to trundle into view.

“Nice morning for a little sport,” said Alex.

“We’ll get it this time,” said a companion.

They lay in the brush looking ahead and down at the track. The sun was still high and the lines were free of haze and dazzle; the air smelled clean and sweet.

“She’s coming.” The engine at the head of the train came in sight round a bend in the rails.

“Get ready.” Alex crouched in front of the gun. The seconds were counted. “Fire.” Alex pulled the trigger. The rocket sped toward the train. As we intended, it hit the front wheel of the truck carrying the crane, and that great piece of machinery, like some ungainly and ill-proportioned liner sinking, toppled over slowly, crashing to the ground. The French railwaymen, compelled to drive the train, clambered down onto the track, looked at the crane, and shook their heads with feigned regret. The German soldiers jumped out of the trucks and fired wildly in all directions. Alex and his companions made haste with dignity, away from the scene of their highly successful attack on the great crane.

In the months we worked together, Alex epitomized the Resistance: individualistic to a stubborn degree (like myself); resourceful; borne up by a gaiety of spirits which might have seemed, to a stranger, incongruent with the circumstances; impulsive, and of remarkable audacity.

His grand aggregate of successes included, apart from the knocking out of the crane and the destruction of lock gates, the cutting of the railway lines in more than thirty places, the severing of the underground telephone lines in more than twenty—and the blowing up of thirteen bridges. He looked for a fourteenth, but could not find one.

Often I planned an operation with Alex and then waited for him to come back to me to report on it; occasionally we worked together. It was at the end of one such day when, after doing a job and cycling many miles, we both felt very tired. We came to a small town and decided to stay at a hotel for the night and push on the next morning.

We had a meal together—a light meal, during which neither of us said very much because we were weary—and then went to our bedroom. I went to sleep in the bed, Alex on a mattress on the floor.

At about two o’clock in the morning I woke up suddenly, absolutely certain that something was going to happen and we were in danger. I shook Alex.

“Quick, Alex,” I said, “we’ve got to get out.”

“Oh no, boss,” Alex groaned, “why should we leave? It’s lovely here.” By day, no one could have called that scrubby little hotel “lovely,” but Alex was sleeping—or had been—and that was “lovely” enough.

“I’m sorry, but I know we must go. Do you know anybody in the town—quick.” Once Alex had decided I was not to be dissuaded from leaving the hotel, he mentioned a few names. Among them was the local dentist.

“We’ll go to him,” I said.

“But there’s no bed there for us,” said Alex. “He’s only got three rooms, and one of them’s his surgery.”

“The surgery will do—we’ll sleep there.” Reluctantly, Alex got up. We both dressed quickly and left the hotel. We woke up the dentist, asked for a couple of rugs, and slept on his surgery floor for the rest of the night. (Alex tried the patient’s chair, but decided he would have bad dreams if he stayed in it.)

Alex was grumbling when he awoke in the morning. I agreed with him that the surgery floor was hard. Then the dentist came in.

“You know,” he said, “you were awfully lucky. Only twenty minutes after you left the hotel, the Germans turned up, surrounded the place, and took away everyone staying there.”

Why did I awake in the middle of the night with that premonition of danger? I tell the story not to suggest that I was very clever to know they were coming. I was not clever. I knew they were coming only because of the operation of some sixth sense which I still cannot explain. I believe that many Resistance people—if not most—evolved a sixth sense. I do not know whether it developed only in a particular kind of person; to know that would require the kind of exhaustive research that has never been carried out. But I do know that what I call a sixth sense saved me many times and warned me about other people in trouble.

Twice I ordered my car back to Muriel Byck, when I possessed absolutely no information to cause me anxiety. On both occasions, I was justified.

When I first met the double agent who, in 1941, was to betray my friends at Marseilles, I reacted against him in a violently physical, almost metaphysical, way. If human hair can stand on end, as an animal’s coat is said to bristle, then mine did that day.

There was also the time when I hurrying back to Salbris. I was on my bicycle and carrying on the back of it Sten guns and a radio set. It was unusual for me, in the late days of the war, to carry any incriminating baggage, whether something as large as a gun or something as small as a letter; I considered that if I were caught the very least that could happen was the disruption of my circuit.

But that day there was no one else whom I could send with the guns and radio set to Salbris and I was taking them myself. I was a little late for my rendezvous with Vincent and pedaling fast to make it in time.

Just before reaching Salbris I looked at my watch. I was already twenty minutes late. Yet, as I looked at the time, I was possessed by a powerful feeling that the Germans were waiting for me just inside the town. I hesitated for a moment to follow my sixth sense, because I was so late. But I knew I must act upon it. I turned back along the main road and took a side road leading to a small wooden bridge across a stream. It meant approaching Salbris by a longer, roundabout route.

When I reached the town at last, I met Vincent. He was very worried, pallid with fear.

“I tried to warn you,” he said. “How did you get in without being caught?”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“The Germans were waiting for you—just behind the house on the corner, across from me—out of sight from the bridge, but ready for you as soon as you came over. They’ve pounced on everyone who’s crossed the bridge, searched their bikes, searched them from head to toe.”

I would like to know how that sixth sense operated, but I must leave it to others to offer an explanation.

Chapter Twenty-two

The first two weeks of August saw the Allied offensive expand to the east, the south, and the west. From the German point of view it was like a blot of ink spreading and obliterating a significant part of their design for the New Europe. Eastward, General Patton’s Third Army thrust into Brittany, where some 50,000 troops of the F.F.I., armed by the R.A.F. and organized by French and British S.A.S. paratroops, by the O.S.S. and “Jet” teams, were already in command of much of the territory.

Patton’s army also drove toward the south, reaching the northern banks of the Loire. There they paused, leaving the country that lay on the other side of the great river still in German control. This was left to the care of the Resistance. The aim of the invading Allied armies was to squeeze the Germans between the Seine and the Loire.

Strategically, as one can see now, the plan was a good one. But the Resistance could not liberate, by themselves, the counties still occupied by the Germans. They could only continue to harass and needle the German forces. This, it is easy to understand, was frustrating for maquisards and ordinary French families who had heard of the landings and of the German retreat from other parts of France, north of the Loire.

To those who still waited came an impulse to despair: the Germans were still strutting about the streets; the reprisals became even more savage. Why bother about Resistance? It was now, perhaps more than ever before, that the leaders of the Resistance in the still occupied parts of France had to keep the example alive.

On July 14—Bastille Day-1944, for example, the Resistance in Marseilles placed a big wreath on the war memorial, with a legend dedicated:

“To those who fell before us, comrades of the Resistance.” Attached to the wreath was a box with a notice, saying:

“Achtung—Minen.” It was a box such as was used to carry mines.

The workmen in the cemetery saw it. So did the people of Marseilles bringing flowers to the memorial. The chief of police was told, and he reported the fact to the German commander.

The siren sounded, the streets were cleared, and the cemetery closed to civilians. The Germans brought in troops. They fired at the box. Nothing happened. A German officer removed his clothes and crawled warily toward the box at the foot of the memorial. While everyone else crouched in cover, he opened the box.

It was full of stones. The Resistance had struck again. But thirty hostages were killed by the Germans in reprisal.

Early in August a detachment of S.A.S. parachuted into France and made their camp in the forest of Orléans. There were some thirty of them led by a British colonel. They were dropped with jeeps, bazookas, and good supplies of ammunition.

The weather was fine and warm, and there was little for them to do because all the main targets for destruction and sabotage had already been dealt with. This, from the point of view of the S.A.S., was unfortunate.

Not that the men thought so. It seemed an idyllic life for them. The local people soon heard there were British soldiers, in uniform, in the forest, and women and boys and girls from miles around came on their bicycles to see the “tommies.” I tried to warn them off with my maquis, but they found a way round. To the French people it was an anticipation of the peace for which they yearned so passionately. That British soldiers could more or less openly set up a base in the forest was a sign of the defeat of the Germans. But the Germans, however much on the retreat, and however reluctant in those parts to provoke a battle, were still there.

The people brought gifts to the troops—cakes, wines, cognac. Each evening the presents were piled in front of the colonel’s tent. The civilians and soldiers went off to a lake close to the forest for bathing parties. They were all so happy, and it was so natural they should grasp at simple pleasures so long denied them; but it was a happiness that could not last. I had to play the Jeremiah to the colonel, warning him of the danger to his troops and to the people who came to the forest. But, I am sorry to say, the parties went on.

A little later I read in the paper published in the adjacent county that the S.A.S. had been attacked by the Germans and wiped out. I made inquiries immediately; it was not true. But I went again to see the colonel.

“This is a warning,” I told him. “The Germans are trying to get you to move away. They don’t want to lose men by attacking you, but if the people are allowed to stream into the forest to visit your troops, as though they were on some gay Sunday-afternoon outing, the Germans will be provoked into attacking you. They can’t ignore it.” The colonel said he had no orders to leave.

“If you like,” I said, “I can give you the order to leave. There’s another forest forty or fifty miles away where you can make your camp—we’ll see you’re comfortable there. That will save the Germans’ faces and probably save your lives.” But the colonel would not agree to move.

It made me sick when my forebodings were confirmed by events. A fortnight after that meeting with the colonel, the Germans made a big attack on the S.A.S. Quite a number of maquisards were in the forest, too, and faced the Germans.

The enemy made good use of the symmetrical layout of the forest, which was cut into squares, bounded by big, wide roads. The Germans stationed their machine guns, quick-firing guns, and lorries on those roads. Then they set fire to the forest, square by square, block by block. As the British and French rushed out of one section, across the road, they were fired on. Then the next block was set alight and the maneuver repeated. The Germans brought in tanks to add to the slaughter.

The S.A.S. and the maquis fought hard; they killed a lot of Germans, but our losses were much more grievous. Today, in the forest of Orléans, there is a monument to the British S.A.S. and French maquisards. Their names are side by side, as they fought and were killed. It is a very beautiful monument. But I must feel there need never have been cause to erect it.

The sky over France was now the stage for daily air battles, as Allied fighters and fighter bombers flew in support of their comrades on the ground; as massed bombing raids continued the ruthless razing of German and German-controlled industries, railways, ports, dams, and rocket sites; as the Americans now glutted the Resistance with arms and supplies dropped by daylight—the first such operation was carried out toward the end of June—by fortresses of the Eighth Air Force.

An inevitable concomitant to all this activity in the air was a’ vast increase in the number of Allied airmen bailing out behind the German lines in France. The escape routes were jammed with them.

The day following a raid on targets between Orléans and Vierzon—a raid which had cost the Allies several aircraft—everyone I met was harboring an airman, or knew of someone who was sheltering one. Or so it seemed. At any rate, I heard of twenty in one district alone, hiding in different houses. I decided to take a batch of them and try to hand them over to Patton’s army north of the Loire. It was not a long journey, but the Germans were trigger happy by now and needed little or no excuse to start firing. The fact that the airmen were still in uniform—we had no more civilian clothes to give them—aggravated the risk. But we reckoned we could manage all right by taking the small, side roads and keeping the airmen well out of sight in the back of a lorry.

All seemed to be going well. We were within a few miles of the river when, on one of the narrow roads, we caught up with a German lorry. It was stationary, and half a dozen Germans, one of them an officer, stood around it.

“Don’t move and don’t say anything,” I said to the airmen sitting in the darkness behind the cab. “If I tell you to run, run like hell and do what you can to get away.”

The young German officer signaled us to stop. He walked up to the front of my lorry and, speaking very good French, asked for help.

“My lorry’s stuck, and I can’t get it to move,” he said. “Can you give us a pull to get it going again?” I said we would be delighted.

We drove to the front of his vehicle and tied the two lorries together with a chain. Under the tarpaulin behind me, the airmen were very uncomfortable, but the Germans had not bothered to investigate—they were more concerned with getting their lorry to move.

The German lorry was a big one, ours considerably smaller—much more a truck than a lorry, really. My driver cut down the supply of wood gas on which it was working and started to try to pull the German lorry. The engine whined and raced, but it made no impression on the vehicle behind, which stayed stuck. We tried again, but without success. I heard the German officer say, in German, to his driver, “They’re not trying. I’m sure they could do it if they really tried.” So I walked over to him and said:

“I’m terribly sorry we can’t manage it. My truck isn’t strong enough, and you know with wood gas it doesn’t work very well. On the other hand, my driver’s a young fellow—he’s not much good—why not let your driver have a shot—he may be able to manage it.

Before the German got into the driver’s seat, my driver cut down the gas supply still further. The engine groaned again, the dust flew up from the sun-baked road, but the German lorry did not move. The German driver tried twice, three times, but it was no good. He was sweating in the sun. He waved his hand in despair at the officer.

“I’ll give you a lift if you like,” I said to the officer. “We’ll take you into the next village and you can get help there.” He said he would not come with us, but asked me to arrange for German mechanics to come. I did not argue. We started again, restoring the gas supply to normal. The airmen at the back were relieved to see the last of the Germans. They had never seen German soldiers at close quarters, and their own uniforms naturally increased their apprehension.

When we reached the next village, I went to a friend of mine and arranged to help the Germans. He sent a whole maquis to pick them up. It turned out there were fifteen Germans altogether—the others were lying in the fields about fifty yards away from the road. I was glad we had not attempted to overpower the handful we met.

The maquis crept up on the Germans and took them by surprise. There was some shooting, a few of the Germans were killed, the others taken prisoner. The maquis brought them back to the village.

And they brought back the German lorry, which was a much more valuable prize because it contained not only ammunition, which was always useful, but 400 bottles of cointreau and many boxes of Spanish cigars. For the next week or so, no self-respecting maquisard was seen without a cigar in his mouth—and for much longer than that no meal was complete without a glass or two of cointreau to round it off.

The prisoners, in fact, were nothing but a nuisance. We were never happy about taking prisoners; we did not know what to do with them. Where could we keep them? In the past we had dumped a few in an old pigsty. They were tied up and seemed safe enough, but they remained a liability. They had to be fed, and, we needed all the food we could get for ourselves. And there was always the possibility that they would escape and return to their compatriots; that meant a retaliatory attack on us or reprisals against the innocent. This time, fortunately, we were able to take them—as we had taken the airmen—across the Loire to the Americans. Those Germans ought to have thanked us: they were lucky to be out of it.

The maquis had their own arrangements for getting supplies of tobacco. In my region, they had an arrangement with a tobacco manufacturer. He told them in advance the route and timetable for one of his lorries carrying supplies. The maquis stopped the lorry, displaced the driver, drove the lorry away, and took the tobacco. Later the lorry was returned, and I paid the manufacturer for the “stolen goods.” It was a happy arrangement which satisfied everyone, except the Germans.

On one such “mission,” three maquisards stopped the lorry, the driver got out, and they took over. Two of them sat in the back, on top of the tobacco, enjoying pipe dreams of the pleasure to come.

They were driving along at a fair rate, when five Germans stepped out into the road, signaling them to stop. The driver said to the men hidden behind him, “Don’t do anything, and don’t talk for the moment—there are five Boches trying to stop me. Let’s see what they want.” He stopped alongside the Germans, who were carrying rifles.

“Could you give us a lift into Salbris?” they asked.

“Sure, I’ll take you, I’m going that way,” said the driver. His two friends heard the conversation. He whispered rapidly to them as the Germans moved round to the back of the lorry.

As each German appeared at the back of the lorry, pushing aside the canvas flap, one of the maquisards said, “Pass your gun along.” One by one they climbed in, handing over their rifles, and then found themselves facing the other man who pointed a revolver at them and tapped his lips with a finger, telling them to be quiet. Without a murmur the five of them were disarmed, and the lorry set off again.

The Germans were taken to the maquis where the distribution of tobacco was to take place. I arrived there almost at the same time. Once more, I had to ask myself what we were to do with these prisoners. The Germans came to me, begging for mercy.

“We are old men,” they said. And they were indeed a pretty pathetic, unmilitary-looking lot. The way they had handed over their rifles had betrayed their poor quality. “Don’t shoot us. We didn’t want to fight, but we were forced to join the Army. We’ve all got families—look!” One of them took out his identity card and, from the inside, extracted a tattered picture of his wife and children. His hand was trembling as he passed it to me.

We had no intention of shooting them, but we did not want to be burdened with prisoners in the woods. The five men stood there before us, under the trees, their shoulders drooped, while the maquisards, looking like a bunch of thugs, with their unshaven faces and ragged clothes, surrounded them, mocking.

“Look at the conquering heroes now!”

“How’s Adolf? Wait till the Allies get to Berlin!”

I decided to send the Germans back to their camp. It was the best of the poor choices offered to me. We were too far away from the Loire to risk our lives handing them over to the Americans. We could not kill them in cold blood. They had no weapons and no fight in them: there was no likelihood they would make a run for it and give us the chance to shoot them. They represented the ludicrous, pitiable reality of the Nazi dream of world domination by the German super race.

“Don’t see why they shouldn’t pay a ransom,” I said to the leader of the maquis. “Hang on to their rifles and take anything else you want.”

“Can I have the boots?” said one of our men. “I need a pair of boots—just look at mine.” The soles of his boots gaped, the uppers were split. To the end of the war the maquis were hungry for boots. The Americans dropped supplies to them late in the war, but the American styles, luxurious though they were, presented only danger to any who wore them.

“Yes, take their boots,” I said.

“I want some trousers.”

“A shirt for me.”

“I could do with a pair of socks—let’s see which one takes my size.”

By the time the maquis had finished, the Germans were wearing nothing but their vests.

“The best thing you can do with them,” I said, “is to take them back this evening—drop them about a mile outside Vierzon and let them make their own way back to camp from there.” After they were dumped on the road, the near-naked Germans waited until nightfall and then crept back home. As soon as they reached camp, they were put under arrest. They were court-martialed and shot the following morning.

If I had known what would happen to them, would I have sent them back? I honestly do not know. I have asked myself that question many times since, and I still do not know the answer. I had no wish to see them killed. I balked at the idea of shooting them in cold blood. And yet there was the distinct probability that, had we kept them prisoner, and had they escaped, some of my people would have been killed. I think even if I had known what would happen to them when they reached camp I should have let them go—with all their clothes on. But I am very thankful that I did not know, and that they died because the German Army ordered it.

The appetite of “One Eye,” the maquis leader, for getting rid of Germans was insatiable. The nearest hint of any stray ones around waiting to be picked up was enough to send him rushing away.

He gave chase in a fast car, one day in August, when he heard that two German officers, cut off from the main body of their troops, were on the road alone, trying to catch up with the column. “One Eye,” using a petrol-driven Citroen, raced in the direction he had been given, trying to get the German officers before they caught up with the main column. But he came in sight of that column without seeing the officers. He turned back, a disappointed man, the sunny day spoiled for him. On the way, a peasant stopped him.

“Hey, do you know there’s a German car stopped down there—just by the bridge?” “One Eye” blessed the man and went to take a look. He saw a German bathing in the river; on the bank were his clothes—the uniform of a German colonel.

“One Eye” crept up behind the driver, who was waiting in the car, and hit him over the head with the butt of his revolver. Then he sat down on the riverbank beside the colonel’s clothes. As the German waded naked out of the river, wiping the water out of his eyes, he assumed that the figure sitting on the bank was his driver.

“Bring me my clothes,” he shouted. “One Eye” went down to the river.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said to the colonel, “I’m afraid you can’t have your clothes, because I’ve taken you prisoner.” He tapped his revolver, lest the German should be tempted to misunderstand the position. “But I hope you’ve enjoyed your bath.” “One Eye” gave the colonel his vest and a towel, as he stepped out of the water, and conducted him back to the car. The driver was just coming round, groaning and rubbing the back of his head. “One Eye” made him undress, too, and then bound them both. With two naked Germans in the back seat, he himself with the colonel’s hat on his head, he drove back to the woods, very pleased with himself.

There was the usual problem of what to do with his prisoners. In the end, he took them across the Loire and handed them over to the Americans. The Germans were still without their clothes, for “One Eye” was taking no chances; the Americans were amused by his “present.” The colonel tried to deny his rank, but “One Eye” passed over the papers from the German’s uniform.

After the landings in Normandy, and as German defeat became more and more certain, there was an abundance of last-minute volunteers for the Resistance. We called them the Eleventh Hours. We took some, turned others away.

One man, in charge of a big agricultural organization, and important in his way, wanted to join us.

“I can bring you several thousand men,” he said. This was a man whose attitude toward the Resistance had been one of strict neutrality; he did not betray us, but he gave no help.

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said. “If you had come and said that to us a year ago it would have been interesting, but now—I have more men than I want. What you’re looking for is a good cover story, so that you can tell everyone after the war what a wonderful patriot you were. Well, I’m sorry, there’s nothing doing so far as I’m concerned.”

Another man, who came along equally late, I accepted—because he had a German pass and a good car and could be useful to us. On the other hand, I refused to take a whole troupe of gendarmes, brought to me by their officer, because I felt they were more valuable keeping hooligans in check and keeping us informed about German movements. Provided they were sympathetic to our cause, the gendarmerie proved a considerable aid to the Resistance. After the war, these particular gendarmes came to me and asked for an attestation from me saying they had offered their services: I gave it willingly.

The thirty gardes-mobiles who formed a maquis in the south of the Loire were in a different category. The gardes-mobiles are all tough, ex-military men, used to quelling riots in the most ruthless way. I am no lover of them in peacetime, or of their methods, which amount to undiscriminating thuggery. But as maquisards they were first-class, and I drew from their group when I wanted one or two men with military training to strengthen other maquis; most of our young men had not done military service. The gardes-mobiles provided a sort of backbone to the maquis.

One man who came to me, with another man I knew well, turned out to have been a militian. When I put this to him, he admitted it, but said he had joined the Militia, thinking he could fight communism in France. He fought well in the Resistance, and that saved him after the war when he was accused of having been in the Militia.

The proprietor of big estates in the Sologne also wanted to join. He was well-known in the area and was a friend of Madame Zizi (who had come to pick up my body at Dhuizon the day I was chased up the vineyard). He was a young man, about twenty-three or twenty-four, and it seemed to me he could be useful. I told him to arrange a meeting with one of my men, who would take him into a maquis. I gave him an address to which he should go, and a password. It was a small maquis of about twenty-odd men to which I was sending him, and I thought he might do well as its leader after he had been with them for a while. The young man cycled away again. A German convoy passed him on the road, ignoring him. He continued on his way home. He was nearing his estates when another German column overtook him. He said nothing to the men passing in the lorries; he carried no arms. But as one of the vehicles was passing him, a German soldier fired at him and killed him. His body fell from the bicycle into the ditch. There he lay, murdered.

The column stopped, picked up his body, and took it to Jouy-le-Potier. There they threw the corpse into the middle of the main street. The Germans took up quarters in the village.

One of the villagers came out and started to pick up the body to take it away for burial. A German officer stopped him.

“If you touch that corpse,” said the German, “you will be shot, and your corpse will lie here alongside this one.”

“But you can’t leave a man dead in the middle of the street.”

“Oh, but we can. And you’re going to leave him there as well.”

A message was sent to Zizi, telling her that the body of her young friend was lying in the street. She cycled immediately to the village, propped her bicycle against a wall, and walked to the body. She wore a Red Cross brassard on her sleeve. Despite that, a German soldier stopped her.

“If you touch that corpse,” he said, “I’ll shoot you.”

“But you can’t leave him here.”

“We can. And if you don’t go away, I’ll shoot.”

“All right, shoot me then,” she said. But she walked away. She went to a house and borrowed a wheelbarrow. She pushed the wheelbarrow into the middle of the street, and back came the German soldier.

“I’ve told you that if you touch that body I’ll shoot.” An officer followed him.

“Madame,” he said, “I must warn you not to touch that corpse—if you do, you will be shot.”

“But it’s inhuman to leave him here,” she said. “He’s dead. What harm can he do you now?” The German officer repeated his warning to her.

Zizi put the wheelbarrow alongside the young man’s body and tried to lift it into the wheelbarrow. The soldier raised his rifle to fire. The officer signaled to him to lower his rifle and helped Zizi put the corpse in the barrow. “Madame,” he said, “you are very courageous. You realize that if I had not been here you would have been shot.”

“And that would have been one more crime on your conscience,” she said.

She pushed the wheelbarrow, bearing the corpse, a mile down the road into the woods. There she hid the body. Then she went back and found a carpenter and two other men to help her. In the woods they knocked together a rough coffin. They put the poor young man’s body inside and waited for nightfall. Then, having borrowed a horse and cart from a peasant, they loaded the coffin onto the cart and, with a couple of lanterns, set off for the estates.

It started to rain, and soon it was coming down in a torrent. But the procession continued, one man leading the white horse; behind trundled the cart with its coffin; Madame Zizi and the other two men walked beside it. They trudged on and on through the rain, their clothes and feet soaking, the rain running down their faces. But they kept on walking behind the man holding the big lantern, until they came to the estates. The pathetic, wretched, but noble little procession trundled up the long, wide avenue to the château. One of them went ahead to warn the family of their coming.

As the cart reached the steps of the château, the family stood waiting to receive their dead son and brother. There was a medieval quality about the scene: the lanterns, the horse and cart, the rough coffin, the weeping figures at the entrance to the château—and, over all, the rain still pouring down, dripping from the leaves and branches of the great tall trees. The procession was at once ludicrous and profoundly moving, as though contrived by a film director aware of the way in which deep emotion rubs shoulders with the ridiculous, tragedy with farce, in the story of mankind.

Two days later the young man was buried in a temporary grave in the garden. When the Germans moved out of the village again, his body was laid to rest in the family tomb.

A German column driving along the main road from Beaugency saw a group of seven men emerging from a side road just outside the village of La Ferté-Saint-Cyr. One of the armored cars stopped and fired on the men. All of them fell. The Germans jumped out of their armored car and plunged their bayonets through the throats or heads of the seven men. Then they dragged the bodies into a field and laid them in a line in front of a shed. The armored car moved off again.

I heard the shooting as I was cycling along a minor road a few hundred yards away. I left my bike, splashed across a stream, ran through a field, and came to the shed.

Six men were lying there. It was midday, and it was hot; at first I thought they were sleeping. When I realized they were dead, I went to the house of my friend, Madame Zizi, not far away. She already knew about the bodies and intended to arrange for their burial later. But she had heard that seven men had been killed; I had seen only six bodies.

There had been seven men, a party of French and Spanish woodcutters going home for lunch after a morning’s work in the forest. But one man, a Spaniard, had not been killed. A bullet went through his shoulder, and he had been bayoneted through the side of the throat, but the Germans had not done their job properly. When he heard them leave, the Spaniard, though losing a lot of blood, had managed to drag himself away from his dead companions. He reached the cover of a bush before he fainted.

When he came to, he dragged himself along for about a mile to the nearest farmhouse. The farmer’s wife saw him, covered with blood. He begged for help, but the woman was terrified.

“It’s impossible—no, I can’t take you in—I dare not,” she said. “I know the Germans are going to come here and find you—I’ve got seven children.”

The wretched man, still bleeding and growing weaker all the time, crawled to a pond. He scooped water into his mouth. Then he fainted again.

That night Madame Zizi and another Red Cross nurse went out to search for him. They called at the farm where he had begged for help. The farmer’s wife said he had gone, but she did not know where. The two women picked their way along the roads and rutted paths with torches, calling and shouting. No one answered them. But they went on searching and, at last, they found the Spaniard, unconscious.

They bandaged him and took him to a château close by. It was late at night, but they woke up the two young girls living there—without telling their parents. The women and the girls hauled the Spaniard into a wheelbarrow and carted him to one of the outhouses of the château. There they undressed him and put him to bed. The two girls, one seventeen, the other a year older, fed him and looked after him; Zizi and her friend paid him visits.

The Spaniard lived to tell his story and to remember that Madame Zizi was one of the women who had saved his life.

On August 15, Free French and American armies landed on the Mediterranean coast of France. The German troops retreated before them, and Marshal Pétain began the first of his many humiliating journeys under German escort, journeys that took him farther and farther from Vichy, and finally out of the France he had thought to save.

The Germans in retreat took on the desperation of trapped, taunted animals. Beleaguered columns wandered about the countryside seeking a way out, attacked by the Resistance wherever they went. The Germans slaughtered and burned promiscuously; they sought escape and they sought revenge.

In the Sologne, one of these columns was attacked by the maquis; the Germans lost seventeen men and many more wounded; not one Frenchman was killed.

The rest of that German column, still strong enough to be dangerous, entered the little town of Neung-sur-Beuvron. There they met another German column that had arrived earlier. The beaten detachment came in, bearing their wounded and lusting for vengeance. The captain in charge vowed to set fire to the countryside. But before doing so, to make sure his troops were not butchered a second time by the Resistance, he set up four machine-gun posts. One of these was facing the bridge on the edge of the town.

It was to this bridge, along the road from Romorantin, that my adjutant, Captain Makowski, came. He was driving his petrol-driven Citroen, with its thin armor of metal sheet protecting the sides. Two men were with him in the car—as well as ammunition and secretly printed leaflets bearing a proclamation by the commander of the F.F.I.

Makowski came round the bend toward the bridge at his usual speed—which meant he was going fast—and saw Germans ahead of him. He tried to charge them in his car, hoping to get through before they recovered from their surprise. By the time he came to the second bridge and within a few yards of the main square, he realized that the place was swarming with Germans, and his position was desperate. He flung the car round, trying to get back on the road to Romorantin before the shooting began. But so violent was his maneuver that a car door flew open and one of his comrades was thrown out onto the road. This man, called Rohmer, found himself facing two German sentries. He opened fire on them. The other man in the car, a man named Mauny, kneeling down at the back, fired his Tommy gun. Makowski stopped the car fifty yards down the road to wait for Rohmer. But now the German machine-gun post came into action. The car was hit. Mauny was mortally wounded, and Makowski shot in the knee and shoulder.

The Germans rushed to the car and took Makowski prisoner. Rohmer tried to escape by throwing himself into the river, hoping to swim to the other side and away. He was killed by bullets and grenades. His body was to remain in the water for the rest of that day. Mauny, whom the Germans had thought already dead, tried to creep away. He was bayoneted to death. Makowski was taken from place to place, being interrogated and beaten up at each stage. He gained a brief respite, surprisingly, by saying he was a British officer; during this time a Frenchwoman was allowed to dress his wounds. But he was to pay for his admission later.

While Makowski was suffering, the Germans in the town and in the countryside were starting fires, throwing grenades in the streets, not caring where they landed. Most people stayed indoors, but one young man was shot in the stomach and died of his wounds.

When Makowski was taken to the headquarters of the Feldgendarmerie at Romorantin, his last ordeal by torture began. It went on through the night.

At dawn his body was thrown into the narrow Rue de Four. A mutilated corpse, its bones broken, smeared with blood; bayonet wounds slashed his cheeks and jaw.

The Resistance, whose local leader ran the cafe just round the corner from the Feldgendarmerie, retrieved Makowski’s body, and we buried him secretly in the hospital cemetery. A monument by the bridge at Neung today pays tribute to the three heroes of the Resistance, three of the thousands who laid down their lives.

Makowski was a young man of magnificent spirit. He longed to be alive at the Liberation. Only a few days before his death he sent a message to London:

“I escape death every day. I hope to be alive for the grand finale.” I wish he could have been.

The torture and mutilation which he suffered were one more revelation of the nature of the enemy we were fighting. And there were, unhappily, traitors among the French who, even after the landings, were ready to sell their compatriots. It fell to Makowski more than once, under my command, to deal with them.

Such a man was a blacksmith called Viémon, who wrote a letter to the Germans denouncing a courier of the Resistance. The letter was even signed, “Viémon.”

It was an idle, sunny day when the blacksmith rode up to the village post office on his bicycle to post the letter. Inside the post office, the postmistress was knitting. When she heard the bicycle being placed against the wall, and the letter being posted, she was curious enough to look out of her window to see who was putting the letter in the box. She recognized Viémon, although his unsuccessful blacksmith’s business was not in her village.

The postmistress thought it strange that he should cycle to another village to post a letter. Still merely idly curious, she took the letter from the box. She saw it was addressed to the Feldkommandantur at Blois.

She opened the letter and read the signed betrayal, then got in touch with the courier named in the letter. He recognized the handwriting as that which appeared on all the blacksmith’s commercial correspondence. He sent the letter to me. It looked like another clear case of a man trying to pick up the reward that was paid for the capture of any maquisard. I ordered Makowski to investigate and to execute the guilty.

The Resistance found Viémon in his garden. He was bending down when a huge maquisard felled him with a punch. Then Viémon, a small man, was dragged out and pushed onto the narrow carrier at the back of a bicycle. He sat there, with his cap pulled down over his eyes and his arms imprisoned inside his jacket, which was buttoned across him. He was taken into a wood and questioned.

“I deny it,” he said. “I deny writing any such letter.” The maquis knew that he was almost illiterate and that his wife wrote his correspondence. They suggested he forced her to write the letter for him.

“I didn’t,” he cried. “And my wife didn’t write any letter like that. Or if she did, then she did it without my knowledge.”

Viémon was forced to admit that he was a militian. He named another man called Debiez who had recruited him. The next morning Debiez was brought to the wood and interrogated. He admitted he was in the Militia and had recruited Viémon and another man. The Resistance shot both men in the woods.

Then they went to see Viémon’s wife. They accused her of having written the letter. She admitted writing it, but said her husband stood over her, compelling her to write it. Some of the maquisards considered her guilty and favored her execution. But Makowski, seeing her with her small children crying about her, spared her.

“There are enough orphans,” he said. “Why should we make more? We shall be safe now we have shot the two militians. The children will suffer sufficiently for the shame of their father.”

He gave Viémon’s wife a “suspended” sentence of death. She would be left alone, he said, provided that she did nothing more to injure the Resistance. (In October 1945 she was, however, brought to court, found guilty of writing the letter of betrayal, but, because of her children, given the relatively light sentence of two years’ imprisonment.)

The mass uprising of the Resistance in Paris forced the Allies to liberate the capital. According to de Gaulle, Eisenhower considered that the Resistance had acted too soon; the Allied strategic plan at that stage did not include the freeing of Paris. But with all sections of the Paris population, the police among them, in open rebellion against the Germans, with street fighting and, despite the astonishing initial successes of the partisans, the prospect of a massacre by the Germans, Paris had to be saved.

A small detachment of my men, some 150 of them, fought their way into Paris with the Free French forces. They were there to share the exultation, the wild, intoxicated joy of the Parisian welcome for the liberating troops. Such a day may never be known again. And the symbolic climax was achieved when, on August 27, General de Gaulle, with guns still firing in the city, walked to the Arc de Triomphe to receive the tribute of some two million French people and to pay his own homage to those who were not alive to share that day.

For two days I was able to walk in the streets of liberated Paris, liberated France. I reported to the commander of the Resistance, General Koenig, and then returned to the war.

The Sologne was still waiting for liberation. Each day brought more atrocities, more suffering, more grief. But our day of final relief was near. And, so it seemed, was our day of revenge.

Chapter Twenty-three

Eighteen thousand German troops, desperately seeking an escape route home, found themselves encircled by the Resistance. We looked forward to receiving their surrender. If they tried to make a dash for it toward the Loire, hoping ultimately to reach the Swiss frontier, we would slaughter them. (I now continue the story I began in my Prologue.)

The Resistance leaders, as agreed at our meeting at Romorantin, began to close in on the Germans, squeezing them, narrowing their possibilities of movement, and making them more and more desperate. Hour by hour, the clamp was being screwed tighter. The German general, Elster, received one bad piece of news after another. On the morning of the tenth of September, the officer leading the advance guard of the German troops was killed near Sancoins. The same evening his chief of staff was taken prisoner. The following morning the new commander of the advance guard was killed. We were forcing General Elster’s hand.

Then we had a piece of news we did not like. We heard that a young American lieutenant had made contact with the German general and had proposed that the 18,000 German troops should surrender to General Macon, commander of the American 83rd Infantry Division. We knew nothing of General Macon on the other side of the Loire; what we did know was that the Resistance and the S.A.S. were in control of the sector south of the Loire—so much in control that we had brought these Germans to the point of surrender and had every right to the taking of the surrender.

Worse news was to follow. Not merely were the Germans to surrender to the Americans—and we did not doubt that General Elster would prefer that to surrendering to the Resistance—but General Macon had allowed the German commander to make conditions for his surrender. These conditions were that his troops should march some sixty-odd miles through the country we held, and through the towns and villages where they had committed wanton arson and murder, to surrender on the Loire. During ‘that march they would retain their arms.

It may be said that frustrated pride was our dominant reaction to that news. It is true that we were resentful. But the message I sent to London on the twelfth of September was heavy with a concern that went far beyond injured pride. I reported on the intention of the American general, Robert C. Macon, to allow the Germans to retain their arms until they reached the Loire.

“I repeat—with arms,” my message ran. “It cannot be done; I say it is impossible. The risk is too great...”

“The population will stage demonstrations, or they will provoke an incident; I refuse all responsibility for what may happen. The Germans have tortured and massacred many people around here, and you cannot expect these people to stand by meekly as they watch these armed Germans marching by.” I told London I was going to see General Patton.

I went as fast as possible to Third Army headquarters near Châlons-sur-Marne. I made my protest first to Lieutenant-Colonel Powell, I protested against the intrusion of General Macon into our sector, and I protested against the terms of the surrender.

“The Allies are pledged to the unconditional surrender of the Germans,” I said. “The Germans have made conditions here, and the Americans have accepted them. They call it a total surrender, but who knows what will happen in the course of their sixty-mile march before they lay down their arms?” I was still hot with anger, and I did not choose my words with any niceness. Colonel Powell listened to me courteously, reported to General Patton, and then asked me to see the general personally.

I put my case to this reputedly “tough” American military man—an American general for whom I had respect because he and his troops knew what war with the Germans was like. But my temper was still on the boil as I repeated my protest. Patton understood.

He telephoned to General Eisenhower. I stayed in the room. After a great deal of argument on the line, during which Patton was taking on much of my fervor, the general turned to me with a grizzled smile.

“Ike says you have his personal authority to stop the surrender—if you can get the order there before the columns start their march.” Colonel Powell gave me a letter confirming my authority to delay the surrender for twenty-four hours while the matter was investigated and reconsidered. It was about eight o’clock at night. The surrender march was timed to start at six the next morning.

I asked Patton for a plane so that I could be parachuted into the German column to stop the surrender. General Patton said he had no plane for the job.

“Give me a jeep then—and your best night driver,” I said. The Americans provided me with a powerful double jeep and a driver. As soon as I met him, I said, “Here are ten thousand francs. You’ve got to get me there in time. Just go hell for leather. If you make it, I’ll give you another ten thousand francs, and one hundred liters of Calvados.”

We had 200 miles or more to drive. I had the right man for the job. He drove flat out through the night. My hand, holding onto the outside of the jeep, occasionally brushed against a tree or a hedge, but we were going well. We rushed past columns of American lorries going in the opposite direction.

As we strained our eyes in the dim light, we could see what was obviously a big, long convoy coming our way.

“Put your lights on,” I said to my driver.

“Can’t do that, major,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Against orders.”

“But there are no planes about—nothing to worry about—.”

“No can do, major.”

We went speeding on, leaping and bouncing in the jeep. Now the convoy began to pass us, one great lorry after another. And then our journey ended.

One of those lorries was a little out of line with the rest of the convoy. We struck it somewhere at the back where its huge twin wheels were housed. I remember a lot of sparks—and nothing more.

I woke up to see the lights of torches waving around me. A crowd of men stood near. I was in the middle of a field. The jeep was on my chest.

The men dragged the jeep away. I could scarcely breathe.

“Help me to get up,” I said, “help me to stand—I want a pee.” They clearly thought I had other things to worry about, but they helped me to my feet. I pissed in the field.

“Well, that’s better,” I said with a smile, “my kidneys haven’t burst at any rate.” I knew—because I had seen it happen to others—that if the kidneys were crushed or burst, it was impossible to perform the natural functions. I had seen a man die with burst kidneys, and, though I was in terrible pain, I knew that part of me was all right.

“Have you found my driver?”

“You mean you weren’t alone?”

“No, there were two of us.” They searched the field and finally found the driver. He was a dreadful mess. His scalp had been torn off, so that it was just hanging loosely at the back of his head. His face was heavily spattered with blood.

We stood him up. He was still only semi-conscious. The men who found us replaced his scalp, a strip of skin covered with his hair. They tied a handkerchief round his head to try to keep the scalp in position.

Then my driver came round.

“My arm,” he said. “It hurts.” I tested his arm to see if the fingers were working. It looked to me as though the arm had been crushed a little, but not seriously.

“You must be very careful with it,” I said to the driver, “you’ve got a broken arm.”

“I know, I know, I mustn’t lose my arm—I’m a mechanic.” I exaggerated the seriousness of the injury to his arm, so that he would concentrate his fears there.

“What’s happened to my face?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” I said, “just a little cut on the top of your head. They’ve bandaged it up—it’s nothing to worry about. You look after your arm.”

With his undamaged arm he cosseted the other all the way back to the military post at Troyes in a jeep. The crash had happened between Troyes and Sens, and when I arrived at Troyes I realized I had covered only fifty miles, less than a quarter of my journey.

A telephone call to the hospital brought a doctor to the army post. He came in an ambulance and wanted to take me back to the hospital. But I wanted to be on the move again.

“You’ve got broken ribs, you’ve been crushed by a jeep, and you’ve probably got heaven knows what other injuries. You’ve got to go to the hospital.”

“I’m damned if I’m going,” I said.

“You’re a fool,” he said. In one sense he was right, but I had to stop that surrender.

“I may be a fool,” I said, “but I’m in civilian clothes, so you can go to hell—it’s nothing to do with you.”

“Very well,” said the doctor, “if you’re a civilian, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here.” And he told the military police to get rid of me. With little ceremony, I was removed from the military post and I was on my own, broken ribs and all. Fortunately, I had a sister-in-law living in the town. Although it was very late at night, I managed to find her address.

I went to her house and knocked on her door until I woke her; she was a widow whose husband had been killed on the day Troyes was liberated.

“I want some sheets—children’s sheets—clean ones,” I said. There is one thing about a woman with thirteen children—she is almost immune to surprise or shock. I told her she must strap me up with the sheets, and she set about her work with busy efficiency. She strapped the sheets about my ribs and pinned them with good, thick needles. I was ready to go on my way.

In the street I stopped a Frenchman, who took me to the local headquarters of the American Army. I demanded to see the commanding officer.

“But the colonel’s asleep,” said the sentry.

“Then wake him up,” I said.

“We can’t do that, mister.”

“You must wake him up immediately.” The sentry, after much understandable hesitation, agreed to phone the colonel. When the colonel answered, the phone was passed to me.

“What the hell do you want?” said the colonel.

“I’ve got orders direct from Eisenhower,” I told him. “You’ve got to get out of bed and come to see me down here.”

“But it’s the middle of the night,” said the tired voice.

“Sorry, but it can’t be helped.” Finally he turned out and, after more discussion, laid on another jeep for me. We drove another hundred miles through the night. Despite the sheets strapped around my ribs, I suffered a lot of pain from the bumping of the jeep.

We reached Briare, on the north bank of the Loire, about fifty miles away from my destination, toward dawn. At Briare, I found my friend Colonel Beaugouin, the one-armed leader of the S.A.S. paratroops, with whom we had been fighting the Germans who were now about to surrender to the Americans. Not far away was a civilian plane we had been using for spying out the German positions. We managed to get hold of it—and the pilot—and as soon as there was a faint light in the sky we took off. The pilot did well and flew me over the German column. It was not quite six o’clock.

I could see them massed below me. But there was no landing ground nearby. The pilot flew round and round, seeking a field in which he could land, but without success.

We touched down some miles away at Bourges. I picked up one of my cars, but, though I drove at speed again, with the hooter clearing the way, it was half-past seven by the time I reached the German column. It was already on the move.

I showed the German captain in charge of the column the letter I bore, authorizing me to negotiate a postponement of the surrender with his commanding general.

“But the surrender has already started,” said the German officer.

“If you had arrived sooner—.” It was, literally, a painful reminder of my situation. I felt very sorry for myself.

“Of course,” he added, “if you can reach an agreement with my general and the American general, and I get the order, I will stop our troops. There’s nothing else I can do.”

I organized an impressive little convoy of cars to escort me to Romorantin, where General Macon and the German general were. With sirens whining and flags waving, we drove the forty miles from Bourges to Romorantin. Villagers and peasants gaped and waved as we rushed through the country.

This was the Resistance in a new role, mounting a convoy to escort a delegation—I took two other men with me—to make a diplomatic protest—well, a protest—to the commanding officer of an Allied force on French soil. Our mission had the new confidence of our success against the 18,000 Germans and of being able to drive openly through what was now, because of the mass surrender by the Germans, virtually liberated country. We flew tricolor pennants and flags from the cars.

General Macon had set up his headquarters in a modest, but very comfortable château at Romorantin. The château, like many others in the Sologne, although built about 1800, had been taken over before the war by a rich industrialist for weekend shooting parties and had the sort of modern conveniences the Americans would appreciate—particularly these Americans, for we understood they were very recently arrived in France (a fact which added to our resentment about the surrender).

The château, with a tower at each end of the façade, stood back about fifty yards from the main road, partially obscured from view by large trees in the forecourt.

Major-General Macon had taken a skeleton staff with him to the château to handle the surrender. The German general was also established at the château. It was all very cozy.

A message had been sent ahead, telling General Macon I was coming. When I got out of my car and went to the gate of the château, an American sentry tried to bar my path.

“No access,” he said curtly.

“I am Major Hutton,” I said, “and I’ve got to see the general.” “He is not receiving you,” said the sentry.

“Be damned to that for a tale,” I said. “I’m here to see him.” I walked past the sentry.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

“If you shoot,” I said to the sentry, “I’ll be a dead man. But so will you.” I told my two friends to follow me, and the rest of the maquis escort lined up outside, facing the sentry. The American soldier could have no doubt of what would happen to him if he raised his rifle to fire at me. We were in no mood to put up with this kind of treatment from the Americans.

The three of us walked round the semi-circular drive up to the tall front door of the château. There other sentries tried to stop our going in.

“Go to blazes,” I said to them and walked straight in, and up the wide oak staircase ahead of me. I met a British officer who was attached to General Macon’s staff, told him my story, and showed him the letter from Colonel Powell, explaining my mission.

“I don’t think General Macon will agree to any change in the arrangements,” said the Englishman. “Still, we can but see.”

Next I met an American colonel, named inappropriately “French,” and again put my case before him. I explained to him that the German captain in charge of the surrender column had agreed to abandon their artillery and heavy equipment at their next stop—if the German general would approve. (I considered this would at least mitigate the potential danger presented by German troops marching through the countryside.)

Colonel French went to report to General Macon. He soon returned.

“General Macon will not receive you,” he said. “He will not suggest to the Germans any modification of the present arrangements. The surrender has started, and it will be concluded according to the agreement reached with the Germans.” I thought wryly of the paragraph in Colonel Powell’s letter, requesting that “Major St. Paul be given every consideration.”

I argued with Colonel French about the propriety of the conditional surrender which had been agreed with the Germans. I made heavy play with the suggestion of the displeasure that General Eisenhower would feel at the manner in which the whole affair had been conducted. But Colonel French did not budge from a blunt refusal to discuss the matter further. He said he had no need of either our advice or our help.

I offered him the assistance of Colonel Beaugouin and his paratroops to ensure that the surrender columns did not become involved in incidents with the people of the districts through which the Germans were to march. Colonel French said Beaugouin’s help was unnecessary.

“All we ask,” I said, “is that we should set up patrols around the columns to pick up any Germans who attempt to desert before the surrender point. We understand perfectly well that they are to be treated as prisoners of war.” The Americans proposed to escort the German columns with only a few jeeps. But Colonel French refused also my suggestion for F.F.I. patrols.

There was nothing more I could do. I decided to leave. Then, as I was walking down the main staircase toward the front door again, accompanied by the British officer, I saw an American general coming out of a room on the ground floor. It was clearly General Macon. The British officer presented me to the general.

Just as he was making the introduction, the door leading into the grounds opened, and in came the German general, with his aide.

General Elster joined us. The American general was left with no alternative but to introduce us.

“Let me present Major Hutton of the War Office to you,” said General Macon to the German. General Elster held out his hand. I put mine behind my back.

“I’m sorry, General,” I said to Macon, “you’ve got it all wrong—you’re forgetting your protocol. It is the German general, the commander of the defeated army, who should be presented to me, the victor.”

General Macon’s face reddened. A smile twisted at the corner of the German’s mouth. For some moments, we all stood there, no one moving or speaking. It was an uncomfortable situation for General Macon; for me it was one of pleasure.

“Very well,” said the American at last. He turned to me. “May I present General Elster?” Then to the German, “General, this is Major Hutton.” I stretched out my hand, and General Elster shook it. He had a sarcastic smile on his face, but he seemed to appreciate fully my attitude, because he was well aware of the niceties of military protocol.

With that, I left. I knew that it would be improper, as well as futile, for me to raise the matter of the surrender with the German general. If General Macon would not do so, I could not override his authority.

I went back as fast as I could to organize patrols to follow the German columns. I was concerned about protecting the French people. They had suffered enough misery at the hands of these Germans. I did not want to see any more of them hurt as a result of their hatred getting out of hand as the Germans marched through. The French commissioner for the Orléans region made a public appeal, calling upon the civilian population and the F.F.I. to avoid any incidents which might so easily end up in a massacre.

As it turned out, our worst misgivings were not confirmed. The local people avoided the Germans completely, and the F.F.I. behaved with great restraint. There were no incidents of the kind we feared. But that is the only comforting reflection on the whole operation.

The Germans moved in three columns, toward the surrender point near the Loire. The only escort offered by the Americans were three jeeps to each column, one at the head, one in the middle, and one at the end. Three jeeps were ridiculously inadequate protection for those long straggling columns. And the Germans quickly took advantage of it.

None who watched them go past could have known they were defeated troops, about to surrender. They swaggered, they vaunted their standards and flags. They even sang German marching songs as they went through the villages where, as in Dhuizon and La Ferté-Saint-Cyr, only one week before, they had murdered local people, innocent of any association with the Resistance.

They rode on bicycles, in cars and horse-pulled carts which they had “requisitioned” from the people who now stared at them in hatred.

At night, even now, the officers requisitioned villas for themselves. Others offered as much as 5000 francs for a room. At La Ferté, they wanted to patronize a local bar, despite a notice posted on the wall by order of the mayor, forbidding the sale of drink to the Germans. The German lieutenant colonel protested to the mayor against the order.

“We are prisoners with honor,” said the German. “For the moment we’re still free—we have the same right as the French to go into that cafe.” The mayor had to point out, as calmly as he could, that the Germans were rolling in money, and they would not care what price they paid now for a drink. That, said the mayor, was alone sufficient to provoke trouble with his people. He had no means of keeping order if incidents occurred between the French, on the one hand, and 8500 German soldiers on the other. Eventually the German was persuaded to see the mayor’s point of view. But, just to show that he was not giving in to him, he posted his own notice on the wall, forbidding his troops to enter the bar.

The Germans were three nights on the road. Each night German planes flew over and dropped civilian clothes to the columns. Some Germans tried to get away into the country, dressed as civilians. Some even had French identity papers—heaven knows where they came from. Not all of them were caught. Those who were caught we returned to the columns as deserters. A few who tried to make a fight for it were killed.

The Resistance provided the escorts that Colonel French had refused and helped the German columns to reach their surrender point without becoming involved in conflict with the French people. But we could not prevent the Germans from destroying their equipment. At each halt they set fire to a portion of it, leaving behind smoldering piles of half-melted medals, field glasses, daggers. They destroyed rifles, cameras, and revolvers. On the last night they set fire to much of the stuff they had stolen from the French people: bicycles, farm carts, mattresses, foodstuffs, clothing, and bundles of 5000-franc notes. They fired their rifles and machine guns into the air, terrifying the local people.

And when they came to the final surrender, a mere fraction of their equipment remained. They dumped it in a field about half a mile from the river. When all the columns were assembled there, they marched down the road and crossed the bridge over the Loire into the graceful town of Beaugency. They crossed the bridge over which, by night, the people of the Bausse used to come to exchange their corn for wood.

On the other bank of the river, in Beaugency, the Americans were encamped. General Elster, the German general, was ceremoniously disarmed. His troops were taken to a prisoner-of-war camp.

The Americans then invited the German officers to take tea with them and, so little understanding had they of what the war had meant, of the crimes and atrocities the Germans had committed, they even invited the local head of the F.F.I. to join them. He refused. Other officers of the F.F.I., who had helped the Americans to bring the Germans safely to the surrender point, were now snubbed and hustled away by American soldiers. It was as though the Germans were the Allies, and the French Resistance the enemy.

The climax of this story of American insensibility to French feelings came when, the Germans having been taken to the prisoner-of-war camp, the Americans distributed food to their enemies. In the sight of near-starving French people on the other side of the “wire,” the Germans could be seen eating the white bread, the chocolates, and oranges given them by the Americans. The Germans mocked at the “free” people on the other side of the wire.

It is a sad story to tell. It is impossible to estimate the harm done to the reputation of the Americans in that part of France. After General Macon had refused to consider any alteration in the plans for the surrender, I sent telegrams to S.O.E. in London, to Winston Churchill, to Roosevelt, and to Eisenhower, asking even then that they should intervene to stop the surrender. The telegrams arrived—that I know—but nothing happened. It was probably too late to undo what had been done. A symptom of the harm that followed is that, at a time when elsewhere in France all Allied soldiers were met with a wild happiness, in one village at least, in the Sologne, the American flag was torn down by the local people.

I can well understand that the Germans preferred not to surrender to the Resistance. I know also that the Americans may have lacked confidence in the Resistance and in our ability to handle the surrender in a disciplined way. They were wrong, but such a thought might have been in their minds. But, even so, we should have been content to receive the surrender and to allow the Americans to see that what followed was according to the book. I should have had no objection to a few American jeeps assisting us.

Certainly we should have made the Germans abandon their arms from the start. I have heard American apologists say that there might have been fear about what the Resistance would do with the German arms when they received them. An unlikely excuse for the way they behaved. But, even if this was their thinking, there was no reason why the Americans should not have taken charge of the arms surrendered to us.

For those of the Resistance who had a part in this story, it is an issue which has been chewed over and over. For us, it was a melancholy end to an episode that promised such a rich reward. It little resembled the picture we had drawn for ourselves of what liberation would be like.

Chapter Twenty-four

My work south of the Loire was over. My men were going back to their homes. But as the Germans in the north retreated toward Germany, pursued by the Allied armies, it seemed to me there was still work to be done.

General Patton asked me to organize a regiment of about a thousand of my men, to act as a sort of flying column. Our job would be to “mop up” around the Third Army; to pick up stray Germans; if necessary, to attack small groups of the enemy hiding away in the woods. As Frenchmen, we could also help the Army by acting as their liaison with the villages and towns they entered; we could make contact with the local Resistance, and we could carry out identity checks much more easily and effectively than the Americans.

There were in fact no precise limits to the role General Patton would assign to us. Whatever he wanted done, he would ask me to do. It would be entirely up to me to decide how it was to be done. That suited me well, and the work was of the kind that we were best qualified to do. It was agreed that General Patton would provide us with all transport and pay, clothe, and feed my thousand men, but they were to be under my direct orders.

Unhappily, I took the idea of discipline a little too seriously in those days and felt I must have the consent of the French Government to our work. I asked permission from General Koenig, as the head of all Resistance. I went to see him in Paris. He refused permission. So I returned to Patton’s army and worked with him on my own for a short while. I worked in civilian clothes, which I preferred. (The only uniform I ever wore—and that very occasionally—was a British officer’s uniform to which I attached French rank marks and insignia. I wore a French beret. It was agreeably unconventional, and as uniforms go I liked it.)

Patton wanted information about the strength and disposition of the German troops and about the mine fields that lay ahead of him. This was where I helped a little. I devised what I thought at first was a good technique. I procured new identity papers for myself as a militian. Then I procured a Citroen car and “prepared” it.

Three of us sat inside and then chalk marks were put on the car. These marks indicated where bullets would have to be fired if they were just to miss the occupants of the car. We got out of the car and fired bullets through it at the places marked in chalk. We now had a bullet-ridden car and were ready for operations.

With the American troops firing over our heads, we drove the Citroen at high speed, through the American lines, as it seemed, and into the German lines ahead of us. The Germans, believing we had been fired on by the Americans, received us sympathetically. As we climbed out of the car we saw the bullet holes and feigned fear.

“My God, just look at that one, it must have gone bloody close to my head.”

“What about this one then? How the hell did that miss my guts?” “Hey, one went straight through the windscreen and out the other side. Mother, we’re lucky to be alive.”

The Germans had a look at our papers. They were authentic enough, for we had taken the names of men who had been militians before they died. The Germans nodded, as they examined the papers, and seemed glad to meet “friends.”

“Where can we go to rejoin the Milice?” we asked them. They gave us directions, guiding us through the German lines and through their mine fields. When we were safely free of them, we burned the car or hid it in the woods, and spied on the German troops.

Then, two, three, or four days later, according to plan, we went to a rendezvous to meet the advancing American tanks. There we came out into the open with our hands in the air, were taken to a jeep, and back to headquarters to pass on the information we had collected.

It seemed a sound technique, capable of many repeat performances. Once, twice, it worked well. But the third time it went badly. Although we naturally chose a different place each time to carry out the operation, word may have been passed by the Germans, or perhaps it was that we had the misfortune to meet the wrong man, a less gullible one. At all events, we ran into trouble.

There was nothing wrong with the “holing” of the Citroën; the “escape” from the American lines was done as realistically as before; our papers were in order. But the German officer who questioned us was much more suspicious than his predecessors had been. He locked us in a room and said he was going to check up. What we feared was that we would be sent, under escort, to a Militia barracks where we were supposed to be known, and there our fellow militians would expose us as frauds.

We forced the window of the room in which we had been locked, jumped out, and ran for our lives. Then, as before, we made our way to the rendezvous—a farmhouse just on the edge of a small wood. We lay in a field behind the farmhouse. The Germans had already retreated, and we were waiting for the American advance guard to catch up with us.

Two big American tanks arrived, on schedule as we thought. We came out of cover, our hands in the air, and stood in front of the farmhouse. The tanks stopped, and for a few moments nothing happened. Then we saw their powerful cannons being trained on us. They fired, the noise reverberating. We ran in panic. The farmhouse behind us was flattened. We fell to the ground. The tanks started moving again. We got up, our hands pushed high in the air, as though straining to make the men in the tanks understand who we were. We were very frightened. We had no way of communicating with the Americans inside those armored monsters.

They stopped, and we stopped. We could only wait and pray. I suppose it does not matter much, when you are dead, to whom the gun belonged that killed you, but at that moment, while still alive, I prayed that my life should not be ended by the Americans—the irony would be too terrible.

When no sound had come from the tanks for several moments, and no movement from their cannon, we started to walk toward them, our hands still stiff and trembling above our heads. Our legs were unwilling to carry us. But, shaking with fear, we came level with the tanks.

An American soldier climbed out of one of them, holding a Tommy gun ready. I doubt, at that moment, whether any group of American matrons, concerned with the moral welfare of “our boys,” would have relished the language I used. There was probably a repetition of certain short words.

It turned out that the men in the tanks had forgotten they were to pick us up at the farmhouse. As I told General Patton, they nearly picked up our corpses.

That was the last time we tried our trick with the Citroën. We were no match for the combined forces of the Germans and the Americans.

As the Allied offensive neared Germany. General Patton asked me to stay with him, but there was no specific job I could do, and, lacking any of my men with me, I did not see how I could be of any real use. So I decided to leave the Third Army. But, before leaving, I gained the approval of Colonel Powell to one more scheme of mine, and I went to Paris to try to organize it.

My plan was to drop three-man teams, including radio operators, in the vicinity of the concentration and prison camps. We already had papers showing us as civilian workers. We would make contact with the prisoners’ leaders and ask them what arms they would like and when they would be ready to receive them. Then, by arrangement with the air forces, fighter bombers would pretend to strafe the camp, the guards would take cover, and the containers of arms would be dropped to the waiting prisoners, the weapons already assembled and loaded. In a matter of a minute, I reckoned—before the guards had recovered—the prisoners would be in a position to kill the guards and escape from the camp.

The freed prisoners would then make their way back toward the Allied lines. I felt the least they would do would be to create panic behind the German lines. The German troops in retreat would hear of the danger to their families, and their interest in holding up the Allied advance would quickly deteriorate. And I had no doubt there would be danger to their families, for the prisoners from the German camps were unlikely to be filled with kindly thoughts toward their former captors and torturers. My plan was aimed not only at aiding the Allied drive into Germany but also at giving the prisoners a chance, at least, to save their own lives. It seemed to me probable that, otherwise, they might be butchered by the Germans before they could be liberated.

My plan was considered in Paris. I saw the need for action as urgent; the powers that be apparently did not share that sense of urgency. Days, weeks passed, without a decision being reached. From Colonel Buckmaster I received an order to return to London to report; my mission was completed, he said. I replied, saying I still had work to do. Then, as my irritation at the delay increased, he sent another message, counseling patience. All work in Germany, he explained, was to be authorized by a tripartite organization, French-British-American. This was in the process of being set up.

I received that letter on the fifteenth of October. It was, perhaps, a gentle way of saying my plan was being shelved. At any rate, so it proved. Individualistic action, on which the Resistance had thrived, was now being replaced by the complex, inevitably dilatory procedures of tripartite committees. By the time my plan was formally rejected, it would have been too late to put it into effect anyway.

The Allied armies were pushing into Germany. Virtually all of France was now free. But the work of restoring our country, and of rebuilding the lives of individuals, was only beginning. I joined UNRRA, to help with the problems of D.P.s in France.

On a brisk day in October 1944 a Citroën car drove along the narrow leaf-strewn road toward my house. On the front of the car were painted the words, “War Office.” A large French flag flew on the end of a stick held out of a window. Inside the car were a bunch of rough-looking young men and one rather elderly one, equally uncouth.

My wife, who was in the garden, saw the car arriving and ran to meet it. The oldest of the men in the car jumped out to take her in his arms. I had come home again. It was a wonderfully happy moment of reunion.

“But why on earth didn’t you let me know you were still alive?” my wife wanted to know when all the greetings were completed. “Do you realize I’ve buried you all over France? I didn’t know where I should find your body—I didn’t know where you were, or what name you had given yourself. I have been so sad. And you were alive all the time.”

“Well, you’re not sorry about that?” I said, laughing at her.

“No, don’t be silly, but don’t forget we have seven children—you should have kept in touch with us.” I had never forgotten my wife or our seven children. I had sent my messages to London each week without fail and had assumed they had been broadcast and my family had heard them. Now I learned that it was a month and a half since one had been broadcast. No news of me for weeks on end, until my wife had to believe I was dead. For some reason or other, although I was still active in the field, and still exchanging military “telegrams” with London, my personal messages had not been broadcast after the Liberation of Paris. I found it hard to think of any acceptable reason why they should not have been given. The result had been weeks of unnecessary worry and grief for my wife.

I spent a couple of days at home before setting out again to take up my work with UNRRA. My wife suggested I had a duty to perform at home, but I felt I must go. Being a fine Frenchwoman, she understood.

Epilogue

I suppose it is inevitable that the aftermath of the Resistance should have been marked by a fracture of the unity we had achieved and a steep fall in the idealistic temperature.

As we had expected, the Communists sought immediately to exploit their participation in the Resistance, offering themselves as self-proclaimed heroes, riding to power and popularity on the band wagon of patriotism. They appointed themselves agents of vengeance, using the opportunity to liquidate potential enemies of communism and seeking to smear the reputations of others.

In many villages the Communists formed a “cell,” which held meetings to decide which men represented obstacles in their path to power and how to remove them. They regarded any bourgeois who had taken part in the Resistance as important enemies and trumped up any excuse to discredit or execute them. Summary executions, undertaken as “reprisals” on behalf of the Resistance, were a convenient way of getting rid of enemies. Kill first, explain afterward, was the motto of the Communists. Yet there were rare occasions when their ruthless plans failed for most unexpected reasons, and the Communists remembered they were human beings before they were political gangsters.

It was a day in late September when Madame Zizi walked into the village of Dhuizon to do a little shopping. She walked along the street where Henri and I had been pursued when transporting the stolen petrol. The street was now unaccountably silent. All doors and windows were closed; there was no one to be seen.

As she walked, she felt she was being watched. She glanced up and saw someone looking at her from a partially open window. As Zizi looked up, the window closed quickly, the face withdrawn from sight.

She walked on to the market place. There she found the activity that was lacking in the rest of the village—and the explanation for the furtive silence. Five lorries, full of Communists, flying red flags, were just starting on their “rounds,” the men shouting and singing.

As the first lorry passed her, men called to her angrily. The lorry following took up the abuse, when one voice overshouted the rest.

“Stop! Stop!” And the lorry stopped. The lorry ahead also came to a halt to see what was happening. Out of the second lorry jumped a man who rushed up to Zizi, put his arms around her, and embraced her.

“Thank you, dear Madame, thank you.” He yelled to his comrades, “Look, here she is—here’s the one who saved me. She’s a most wonderful woman, and my friend.” It was the Spaniard who, alone of the seven men fired on by the Germans as they came home for lunch after working in the forest, had survived—thanks to Zizi and her friend who had searched for him and had nursed him back to health. “I should be dead now but for this woman,” he shouted.

“But you know where we’re going, don’t you?” said one of the men, smiling.

“No—where?”

“We’re going to kill her husband.” Her husband, no less than she, had done fine work for the Resistance.

“No, no, you can’t do that,” cried the Spaniard, waving his arms wildly. “Get out, all of you, get down here.” The men climbed out of the lorries and crowded around him and Zizi. The Spaniard made an impassioned speech.

“You can’t hurt these people. These are good people, they helped me.”

“They’re dirty bourgeois—enemies of the working class,” one man shouted to him.

“Yes, yes, I know they’re members of the bourgeoisie,” said the Spaniard, “but they’re not ordinary bourgeois—they’re not like the others. You mustn’t do anything to the husband of my friend—you mustn’t do it.”

The Spaniard had a hard time dissuading his comrades from their “duty,” but the whole affair, which could certainly have ended in the death of a man who had given good service to his country, ended by all the men spilling out of the lorries into the pub. With much shouting and singing, they drank numerous toasts to the health of Zizi.

As happens after every war, when the fighting was done, there were celebrations, there were parades, and the Resistance seemed to have included a surprising number of people. At any rate, there was never any shortage of people, showing their brassards, ready to take part in the parades. The men who had really done the fighting, one noticed, were rather more anxious than the others to get back to their homes and to the work they had abandoned for the maquis. They went back to baking their bread and repairing their cars, while the parades still went on.

Then the official organizations sent delegates about the country, drawing up lists of those who deserved certificates and medals—a job which was bound to take a long time, for the deaths and deportations among the ranks of the Resistance, particularly among those who had joined in the early days, made checking-up extremely difficult.

This work was imperfectly done, and the officers on their “circus tours” showed a haste to be finished with it that resulted in a fairly indiscriminate and overgenerous distribution of certificates.

Furthermore, in the years since the war, many men and women who did outstanding work, whose nerves or bodies were wrecked, have, in my opinion, received far too little consideration from the Allied governments, who have failed to honor their moral obligations. (It would be fascinating to analyze and illustrate the effect of the war not only on individuals but on nations. But this is not the place for such an essay.)

I recognize that it is probably the way of all nations, after all wars, to push the misfortunes of one-time heroes into the out tray. I have tried to adopt a philosophical attitude toward it, but I have failed. I knew too many of the men and women concerned, and loved them for their spirit and friendship, to forget them.

But if nations can forget them, they cannot dim the luster of their deeds. And if France has been riven, since the war, by political discord, we shall not forget the days when ordinary men and women of our country were so spontaneous in their courage and self-sacrifice.

For it is they who were the French Resistance and who, in time of deepest misery and grief, were yet to write another noble chapter of our history.

Notes

The part played by the United States in helping the Resistance in France was neither as big as the Americans would have wished nor as we should have liked. Until the United States officially joined in the war against Germany, she was, of course, neutral. During those first two years of the war, the majority of her citizens followed the example of strict neutrality set by their leaders. After France had been overrun, and Vichy had concluded the armistice with Germany, individual Americans in France helped French soldiers to get civilian clothes and find their way home again. Unofficially, the United States consulates and embassies helped most of all to achieve the successful escapes of British soldiers out of France into Spain and Switzerland. Contacts were established between individuals in the United States embassies and consulates, on the one hand, and the British authorities and the Resistance on the other. Information was channeled through the journalist, Virginia Hall, and many others in Lyons, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and, particularly, Marseilles. When the United States declared war on Germany, few Americans remained in France, but we still had our contacts. And now Major-General (as he became) William J. Donovan was appointed director of the Office of Strategic Services—O.S.S. His job was to create a semi-civilian organization to help the Allied war effort by obtaining civilian and military information from the occupied countries and to take an active part in the fight against the enemy there by sabotage operations. General Donovan had to start from scratch; he had no specialized personnel. He had to contend with the British and Free French who already had their own agents in the field, had gained their skill and experience the hard way, and did not welcome the idea of yet another new organization. So the United States Army was confined during this initial phase to the supplying of arms and materials and aircraft to work under British and French orders. After the North African landings, however, O.S.S. took a more direct part. It recruited existing Resistance in North Africa and helped organize a réseau which, at the end of the war, numbered about 500 well-trained and efficient informers. Then in 1943 came the extension of material aid to the Resistance in France, mentioned in the text above. In 1943 and 1944 coastal raids were planned and carried out by O.S.S., which also supplied French-speaking agents to the French and British, who employed them in the field. (I had several under my orders, including two “radios,” and met others in S.O.E.) In 1944, Jedburgh teams, composed of three officers—one American, one British, one French—were trained and dropped into France for the purpose of helping the Resistance. But as most of them arrived after D-Day they were not always as effective as they might have been. After D-Day, the United States Seventh Army, working with O.S.S., sent into Germany thirty-seven agents, all of them Germans who had been recruited from prisoner-of-war camps and had been trained and equipped to work against Hitler in their own country. They did good work; only two of them were missing, presumed killed, at the end of the war. Back

For Students and Teachers

You will see on our web site that many of our ebooks are free. For the ebooks still in copyright which are not free, we offer very inexpensive district-wide, school-wide, and classroom-wide licenses. Please call us with questions about  licenses for concurrent use by all your students in a building or school district at 202-464-9126.

(Samples of all the ebooks below are available on Amazon.)

Young Adult Books
(with Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level)

Flight to Freedom-The Story of the Underground Railroad

by Henrietta Buckmaster (4.7)

Revolt on the Amistad 

by Emma Gelders Sterne (5.1)

Patrick Henry: Firebrand of the Revolution

by Nardi Campion (5.6)

Benito Juarez-Builder of a Nation

by Emma Gelders Sterne (6.3)

Juarez-Hero of Mexico

by Nina Brown Baker (6.0)

Malcolm X: Another Side of the Movement

by Mark Davies (6.1)

Mary McLeod Bethune

by Emma Gelders Sterne. (7.6)

The Life of W.E.B. Du Bois: His Was the Voice

by Emma Gelders Sterne (6.5)

Michael Faraday

by Harry Sootin (6.4)

He Wouldn't be King: The Story of Simon Bolivar

by Nina Brown Baker (6.3)

Edward Jenner and Smallpox Vaccination

by Irmengarde Eberle (7.3)

Lenin with a Study Guide

by Nina Baker Brown (9.0)

Thomas Edison

by Roselyn and Ray Eldon Hiebert (9.1)

Revolts, Resistance and Emancipation

by Dorothy Sterling (9.1)

Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement

by James Haskin (11.0)

Power to the People: The Rise and Fall of the Black Panther Party

by Jim Haskins (11.3)

Military/Political Memoirs

The ebook to the left is our bestseller with over 1,000 positive reviews on Amazon. It was the source for the HBO series on "War in the Pacific."

Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific with Maps

By Robert Leckie (7.4)

Leatherhead in Korea: On the Front Lines with a U.S. Marine Combat Artist

by Norval E. Packwood (mostly illustrations) (3.0)

Serenade to the Big Bird

by Bert Stiles (6.2)

Agent in Italy with a Study Guide

by S.K. (6.4)

The New Legions

by Donald Duncan (6.7)

U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Small Unit Action in 1966

by Captain Francis J. "Bing" West (6.2)

Runaway Russia

by Florence McLeod Harper (6.4)

Last Flight from Singapore

by Arthur Gerald Donahue, D.F.C. (8.7)

Escape from Corregidor

by Edgar Whitcomb (7.7)

Journalism and Biographies

Mrs. R: The Life of Eleanor Roosevelt

by Alfred Steinberg (8.3)

War in Korea: the Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent

by Marguerite Higgins (Pulitzer Prize Winner for International Reporting) (8.4)

Mississippi Notebook: Freedom Summer June-August 1964

by Nicholas Von Hoffman (8.7)

Freedom Ride: Civil Rights and Non-Violent Resistance with a Forward by James Baldwin

by James Peck (9.4)

Abraham Lincoln

by James Daugherty (8.8)

Revolution in Mexico-Death is Incidental

by Heath Bowman and Sterling Dickinson (8.8).

Benjamin Franklin: The First Civilized American

by Philips Russell (9.5)

Thurgood Marshall: From His Early Years to Brown

by Hunter R. Clark and Michael D. Davis (10.1)

Thurgood Marshall: His Triumph in Brown, His Years on the Supreme Court

by Hunter R. Clark and Michael D. Davis (10.2)

Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life, an Autobiography

by Diego Rivera with Gladys March (10.7)

The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott, Founder of the Chicago Defender

by Roi Ottley (11.0)

Harlem: People, Power, and Politics 1900-1950

by Roi Ottley, previously published as New World A-Coming for which Ottley won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (9.5)

A Stranger in My House: Jews and Arabs in the West Bank

by Walter Reich (14.5)

The Legend of John Brown

by Richard O. Boyer (15.9)

Fiction

So Big

by Edna Ferber (5.9)

Pulitizer Prize Winner for Fiction 1924

The Underdogs

by Mariano Azuela (4.9)

One of Ours

by Willa Cather (6.0)

Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction 1923