They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  ‘I must have somewhere for tonight,’ Denis said.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve fixed something for you. It isn’t very grand, I’m afraid.’

  Denis shrugged. The rooms were in an attic in the Rue Violette la Chatte. Denis and Renée were met by a hard-looking woman with a cigarette stuck between red-purple lips.

  ‘What’s it all about, love?’ she demanded.

  ‘I want a room for my friend,’ Renée told her. ‘Guillaume told you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well, I see,’ she said, staring at Denis. ‘Means I’ve got to move.’

  ‘Yes, of course, we’ll compensate you whatever you think is fair. My friend wants to move in today.’

  ‘You’re in a hurry, love, aren’t you?’ she cackled.

  At length terms were agreed and Denis moved into the small, perfume-laden flat. The prostitute was very inquisitive and kept demanding who Denis was and why Renée wanted him and whether he was an escaped prisoner; she explained how she loved soldiers, and could hardly be restrained from staying to comfort Denis herself.

  Denis was able to continue his job without snags. He reported back to us that the railwaymen in one of their subgroups had perfected a new way of sabotaging trains which was both simple and undetectable; they put grit in the axles. The trains were able to move on from the sidings in which this had been done, only to seize up or burn out miles away, often in open country, so blocking the line until they could be shifted. We at once saw the value of this, for it meant that reprisals could not be taken against anyone as it was impossible to know where the damage had been caused.

  The railwaymen became adept at this game and could judge almost to the mile where the eventual seizing up would take place. We were thus able to warn the local groups that such and such a train would be burning out in their area at such and such a date and they could then pilfer arms and other supplies from it while it lay helpless in open country. Ben Cowburn and his men added to the discomfiture of the Boches by destroying several large railway cranes which were the only things capable of removing obstacles from the line. Our task in London was so to link these operations that they could happen with a bewildering simultaneity which, to the harassed Germans, seemed like black magic.

  It was about this time that we started using the BBC extensively in the manner that was to become so famous. It was tiresome for us to have to burden our operators with messages confirming earlier arrangements when these confirmations could be made by another means, for the operator was in great danger all the time he was on the air and at home our object was always to find ways of lessening that time.

  We now hit upon the idea of using the BBC’s French Service for giving the word to field sections that men were to be dropped to them on such and such a night, that certain operations were to be undertaken, others cancelled and so forth. Innocent messages like Le cheval est dans l’écurie would convey to a striking force that they were to blow up wireless masts in a given area. These messages were sent, as most people know, through the messages personnels after the news. They were, of course, not code messages in the usual sense, for they conveyed only that a previous instruction was to be acted upon, not the text of the orders themselves. The Germans did not know this, at least until much later, and employed a large staff trying to decode messages which in fact were not in code at all, a somewhat arduous and definitely frustrating endeavour. Many of the messages had no application whatsoever and were merely designed to fill in time, for we nearly always filled up the full time allocated for messages, so that the Germans could not divine from their numbers the amount of activity they could expect at any one time. We kept them permanently jittery. Another objective was being fulfilled. Europe was not yet ablaze, but it was beginning to smoulder.

  † Return to Duties.

  † Field name of Philippe Liewer.

  † Field name of Albert Browne-Bartroli, organiser of the DITCHER Circuit.

  † Virginia Hall, US citizen. Renée was one of her field names. Her code name was HECKLER.

  Chapter 5

  Suspicion

  ‘The Milice have been asking my landlady questions,’ Clément said.

  ‘What questions?’ Renée asked.

  ‘When I arrived, what I do, where I spend my evenings.’

  ‘We’d better get you out,’ Renée said. ‘You’ll stay with Gerard tonight and we’ll get instructions about what to do with you.’

  Denis and Clément left together. ‘I’ll just pop back to my place and get my things,’ Clément said.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Denis replied. ‘If you’re suspected you don’t want to go back.’

  ‘Look, all my things are at the flat. I won’t have anything unless I go back. You wait in that café over there. I won’t be a minute.’

  Before Denis could protest any further Clément had dashed off. Denis waited in the café and it was not long before Clément returned with a suitcase. ‘All clear,’ he said.

  They set off for the Rue Violette la Chatte. It was getting late now and the streets were almost deserted. That was why Denis noticed the man who was following them.

  II

  ‘We’ve got to get Clément out,’ Denis said to Renée. He had had the greatest difficulty in throwing off the man who was following him; by the time the morning came the original follower had called up help. The situation was critical. That afternoon Denis sent a message to us in London in which he explained briefly what had happened.

  ‘I think the best thing is to recall Clément,’ I said to Bourne-Paterson. ‘I don’t think he’s fitting with the circuit.’

  ‘What about Rake, then?’ Bourne-Paterson asked. ‘He seems to be doing a good job out there.’

  ‘Yes, he does, doesn’t he?’ I observed wryly. ‘I don’t think we ought to bring him back yet. Wireless operators are much too scarce to bring ’em back after one scare.’

  ‘Why don’t we tack him on to Xavier?† They can use another W/T boy in Paris.’

  ‘I don’t much like hooking people on to new circuits. If he’s recognised it means another whole section is suspect. Still, he said he’d shaken off his tail, didn’t he? Yes, I think we’ll risk it.’

  Clément got out of Lyons and came back to England through Spain. Denis got our message to move to Paris. Renée gave him an address in a village just short of Chalons-sur-Saône where a man would help to get him across the demarcation line into occupied France. She also gave him 78,000 francs to take to Xavier, in accord with our instructions from London. On 3 May he set off.

  A tiny shop labelled ‘Jean Aimé – CHARBONS’ was the address given to Denis. He found it easily and presented himself to Monsieur Aimé. The man was not expecting him but nevertheless agreed to talk to him in the back room of the shop.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Monsieur Aimé demanded, somewhat suspicious.

  ‘I rather want to get across into the occupied zone,’ Denis explained.

  ‘That can be arranged easily enough,’ said the charbonnier. ‘Be at the farm at the far end of the village at six-thirty tomorrow morning. It has a red gate; you can’t miss it. That will be 2,000 francs.’

  The arrangement was brisk and businesslike and there was clearly a frequent service across the frontier. Denis stayed overnight in an auberge near the farm. After dinner he got into conversation with a young girl who, he found, was also making the crossing the next morning. They arranged to wake each other and Denis felt emboldened to ask her to do him a favour: ‘If we are stopped—’

  ‘Ah, that will not happen, Monsieur—’

  ‘No, but if it does, will you tell them that you know that I came south from Paris and am now returning?’

  ‘How could I know that?’

  ‘You could say that we travelled south together.’

  ‘We won’t be stopped,’ the girl said again. ‘But if we are, I’ll do what I can.’

  There were nine people in the charcoal van in which Denis was to make the crossing. It was drawn by two horses. Mo
st of the travellers looked rather shady and it was clear from the bundles which they carried that the majority of them were black marketeers returning to the occupied zone with loads of contraband food.

  The cart creaked off down the road towards Chalons and then turned off down a rutted track towards some woods. Denis was sitting next to the girl whom he had met the previous evening and he asked her, in a whisper, whether she knew where the demarcation line was. She said she didn’t, but that she thought it was on the far side of the woods. The cart entered the woods which were in the pale green leaf of late spring, and creaked onwards towards the frontier. Most of the travellers seemed to be old friends of Monsieur Aimé and they chatted and joked with him quite unconcernedly. Denis and the girl were at the back of the cart and felt rather out of things.

  The cart came round a corner of the track and they could see open country. The cart rolled ponderously on. With a dramatic suddenness three German soldiers, under a sergeant, stepped out from behind the cover of the trees and grabbed at the reins of the horses. As they were plodding forward with the greatest reluctance this seemed an unnecessary precaution.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘I’m giving some friends a lift,’ Monsieur Aimé replied with a wink that suggested earlier complicity.

  ‘You know this is strictly forbidden,’ said the sergeant.

  Aimé shrugged. He reached inside his pocket and drew out two bars of chocolate and some money. He handed them down to the sergeant who stood irresolute. Monsieur Aimé added a packet of cigarettes and folded his arms.

  The sergeant tucked them away in his pocket and Monsieur Aimé made to move on. The sergeant grabbed the reins again, however, and said ‘Not so fast.’

  ‘But sergeant – surely—’

  ‘My officer is getting suspicious,’ the sergeant said, ‘at the fact that we haven’t brought anyone in lately. He’s getting questions from the CO. I’m afraid I shall have to ask you for a couple of your passengers again.’

  To Denis’s horror, the driver did not protest. Plainly, this had happened before. ‘You can take the two at the back,’ Monsieur Aimé jerked his thumb at Denis and the girl who were at the back. There was no time to move and to run would be fatal. The sergeant and a private came round and undid the flap of the cart. ‘Come on, you two,’ the sergeant said. The girl and Denis were forced to jump to the ground.

  The cart creaked forward.

  There were five German officers in the interrogation room at the Controle Central in Chalons-s-Saône and they questioned Denis with great persistence.

  ‘I tell you I came south to see my aunt in Lyons who is sick. I am on my way back to Paris.’

  ‘It is quite true, Messieurs,’ said the girl who had been brought in with Denis.

  ‘How can you explain all this money you have with you? How much was it – 78,000 francs? This aunt of yours, is she very rich as well as ill?’ They all laughed. ‘Is she perhaps also a leading light in the black market as well as being rich and ill?’ Again they laughed and Denis saw that it was best to humour them; he smiled ruefully as if to suggest that they were too clever for him. This seemed to be successful in averting further examination either of himself or his papers, and he was put in the cells overnight. The next morning he went in front of the magistrate together with another bunch of supposed black marketeers.

  ‘Three weeks,’ said the magistrate, ‘and 15,000 francs.’

  Denis spent his three weeks in constant fear that someone might decide to pass the time by examining the validity of his papers, but they did not do so and at the end of the time he was released, along with those sentenced at the same time as himself and was at liberty to proceed – northwards.

  He went straight to Auteuil where Renée had told him his wireless set would be waiting for him in the house of a certain Princess Wilma. The princess’s house was a large one set behind a screen of tall trees and approached along a broad sweep of drive; cupolas stood at each end of the front elevation of the house. A maid opened the door. ‘The princess is not at home,’ she announced. ‘Go away,’ she added quickly. ‘Go away. Hurry.’

  Gathering that something was very wrong, Denis hurried out of the drive and went back into the centre of Paris. There he treated himself to a large dinner at the Boeuf sur le Toit. As he was having his coffee, a new waiter came on duty. No sooner did he see Denis than he came straight over to his table. ‘Why, Monsieur Rake! What a long time it has been!’ Denis regretted that his nostalgia had brought him back to a restaurant where he was known, nevertheless he turned the meeting to good account, for through the friendly waiter he was able to ask if there was anywhere safe for him to stay the night. The waiter told him to wait on the stairs for a moment while he spoke to the patron. After a minute, the waiter rejoined him. ‘This way, sir.’ He took Denis upstairs, asking questions in a loud voice about where Denis had been and what he was doing in Paris. ‘I think this gentleman will help you,’ the waiter said at last, opening the door of one of the private dining rooms. Denis walked in and the waiter closed the door behind him. Sitting alone at the table in the window was an SS officer.

  Denis spun round, but the door was already shut. The waiter smiled. ‘It’s all right,’ he said reassuringly. Denis looked back at the SS man. The latter put down his napkin and smiled.

  ‘Come and have something to drink.’ Denis knew that whatever was going on he would have to play it out, so he sat down and soon he and the SS man were talking amiably. Apparently he was a very wretched man, sensitive and artistic, who had found himself, owing to his family connections, recruited into the SS, in spite of his detestation of Hitler. He often came to the Boeuf sur le Toit to get away from things. He said that Denis could stay the night in his flat in the Rue Tilsit.

  In spite of the SS man’s melancholy bonhomie, Denis was glad to get away from him the next morning and set out to give the slip to anyone who might be following him. He took the métro and he climbed up to the Sacré Coeur, doubling back through the narrow back streets of Montmartre. At length he was convinced that there was no one after him, so he set out for the Café Napoléon near the Folies Bergère.

  His contact was to be a tall thick-set man with a Roman nose. He was supposed to be there every alternate hour from ten o’clock onwards. But he did not turn up the first four times that Denis went. Denis seemed to be spending all his time at the café and was growing very self-conscious about it. He resolved to try once more and then give it up. Although he knew the times at which his man would be there, Denis had no orders about how to contact him. He could think of nothing better to do than drop his wallet containing a picture of a man called Wilkinson, another agent whom he knew to be in the Paris Circuit, at the feet of his contact.

  With any luck he would recognise it and know who Denis was. He put this plan into operation when, on his fifth visit to the Café Napoléon, a man answering the description Renée had given him entered. Denis dropped his wallet at his feet. The man bent down and picked up the wallet which lay open. He saw the picture and looked for a fraction of a second at Denis and blinked to show he had recognised it. Denis rose and followed the man out of the café, having already paid his bill; this last was an important hint given in training – it enabled our men to follow their contacts without wasting time and drawing attention by calling for the bill.

  Denis’s contact turned out to be Xavier himself. Denis explained to him the difficulty in which he stood and told him that he was ready to do whatever Xavier thought best. ‘My wireless set should have gone through to the princess’s at Auteuil, but I’ve got a feeling that something’s gone wrong there. They were going to put it in a consignment of vegetables and my guess is that the Boches have discovered it.’

  ‘I’ll send a man to find out,’ Xavier said.

  The man never returned. They waited for him in a safe flat and finally Xavier said: ‘He must have had it. I think the best thing would be for you to go back to Lyons and see what’s happened. If necessa
ry you can pick up another set and come back. Report back to me when you get there.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  The agent whose real name was Edward Wilkinson and whose code name was Alexandre was also present, and he suggested that they should all proceed at once to Limoges, separately. There they could rendezvous in the unoccupied zone and could operate with greater ease. This plan was adopted and they agreed to meet at the Hotel des Faisans in two days’ time. Denis still had no papers with which to cross the demarcation line, so he was forced to use his ingenuity. Again he used the method favoured by black marketeers. At a railwaymen’s café he managed to get put in touch with the driver of the night train to the south. For 5,000 francs the latter agreed to smuggle him over the line hidden in the train’s fuse-box. This was a roomy compartment and immune from the attentions of the border police. Denis arrived safely in Limoges. He went straight to the Hotel des Faisans which stood in a small side street in a poorish quarter. He walked past it to make sure that there were no miliciens about and then entered. The landlady was a white-haired woman, small and sullen, whose face lit up with a rather artificial smile when Denis said that he would be staying for several nights. He was given room number thirteen.

  That night and the morning of the next day passed without Xavier and Alexandre arriving. Denis was forced to stay in his room, waiting for them. The landlady came in with her pass-key to find him still there at three in the afternoon. ‘Are you ill, monsieur?’

  ‘I’m waiting for some friends of mine whom I met on the train,’ Denis replied. ‘I have some business to conclude.’