They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  The fact that Harry was able to go to hospital and not be given away either by the doctor who operated on his leg, the nuns who nursed him, or the barber who came to shave him, is a sufficient indication of the solidarity, if I may use that term, of the Resistance spirit. That our men were able to move about with a fair immunity may be demonstrated by the fact that Claude arranged for Harry to have visitors and for a wireless to be installed in his room so that he could listen to the BBC news. One of Harry’s visitors was Peter Churchill, who came specially from Antibes to see him. I am not sure that I would have been very pleased had I known of this gross breach of security, but it is evidence both of Churchill’s wonderful sense of team spirit and the confidence he had in himself, a confidence he was able to transmit to others.

  Nothing could be further from the truth in any attempt to analyse the personality of our organisation than the notion that we were constituted out of a number of brilliant and volatile individualists; men like Churchill worked exclusively with a team and knew that they were useless without it. They seldom attempted anything on their own except when it took the burden off someone else. Most of our agents were ordinary men and women and it was their ability to maintain that appearance of ordinariness while performing extraordinary actions which most distinguished them.

  Harry was terrified of the operation which was due to be performed on him, for he thought that he might talk under the influence of the chloroform with consequences disastrous to himself and his colleagues. In the event, all passed off without incident, though he never knew whether this was because he did not say anything or because what he said was ignored by those present.

  Claude de Baissac was anxious to get Harry out of the convent hospital as soon as possible. The staff were magnificent, but you could not tell when the Gestapo might decide to make a swoop and then the staff would be powerless; Harry’s cover story was hazy and would not stand investigation. For him to remain in hospital might endanger his and his nurses’ lives.

  In late August, when Harry had been in hospital for two and a half months, the doctor said he could be moved. He had had a desperate time. The bones in his leg had failed to knit and a further operation had become necessary to pin them together. Claude ordered Raymond, a Spanish anarchist refugee, to look after Harry during his convalescence.

  Raymond was a burly Basque, ruthless and without fear; somewhere over forty years old, he preserved a youthful physique and a contempt for danger which made him a trying as well as a trusted companion. Claude had fixed for them to rest up in a safe farm some miles out of Bordeaux while arrangements were made for getting Harry out of the country once his leg could stand the trip. They travelled to the farm in an ambulance whose bell Raymond clanged delightedly, clearing German soldiers out of the road with reckless authority.

  Harry discovered that the farmhouse was one commonly used by escaping prisoners of war making their way south and the farmer and his wife were hardened resisters. The farm lay in rolling country, far from any big town and was seldom visited by anyone. Harry and Raymond were made very comfortable there and Raymond helped the farmer with his work. Harry rested in the house while his leg slowly healed. Raymond proved an excellent companion, full of stories and indignation over the way the Allies had treated the Spanish Government. ‘If they’d only helped us when we asked them we wouldn’t all be in this mess today,’ he would shout, and the blood would pulse in the hole a piece of shrapnel had made in his head during the defence of Barcelona.

  One day when the farmer and Raymond were out in the fields (it was near harvest and there was much to do) Harry was sitting in the orchard behind the house reading a book when he heard a stranger talking to Madame Anjou, the farmer’s wife. Harry took his pistol from his pocket and slid it under the blanket which covered his knees.

  ‘Here’s a visitor for you,’ said Madame Anjou, leading the stranger up to the chair in which Harry was sitting. The stranger was a man of about twenty-five, fair-haired and blue-eyed, who walked with an agreeable looseness which made it no surprise when Madame Anjou informed Harry that he was an RAF officer.

  ‘Sit down,’ Harry said, ‘I can do with some company. My pal’s out helping the farmer. How did you get here?’

  ‘Came from Paris,’ the man replied in English. ‘Is it all right to talk English? My French is jolly rotten.’

  ‘Escaped from a POW camp?’ Harry asked.

  ‘That’s the ticket.’

  ‘When were you captured?’

  ‘I was shot down, old boy, over Holland. About a month ago.’

  ‘What were you flying?’

  ‘Spitfire. Tell me, how long have you been here?’

  ‘A while,’ Harry replied. Something about the man’s manner made him uneasy. ‘Where were you stationed in England?’

  ‘Near Cambridge,’ was the reply.

  The stillness of the summer day gave the scene a deadly innocence.

  ‘Really?’ Harry said. ‘Do you know that little pub near St Peter’s College? The – what’s it called?’

  The man scratched his head. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘The College Arms,’ Harry said, as if suddenly remembering.

  ‘Of course,’ said the other.

  An insect rasped in the high grass. There is no St Peter’s College at Cambridge, nor is there a ‘College Arms’. Harry tightened his grip on his revolver. The sound of voices came over the hedge. The men were returning from the fields for their lunch.

  ‘Tell me,’ went on the RAF officer, ‘how are you going to get across the frontier from here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘And if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘I say, what do you mean?’

  Harry undramatically uncovered the revolver. ‘Just sit there and don’t move.’

  ‘Now look here – are you a Jerry or something?’

  ‘Just sit.’

  ‘Henri, Henri, where’s this visitor Madame Anjou—’

  Raymond stopped in the gateway to the orchard, seeing in the bright sunshine the dull metal of the revolver pointing at the stranger. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘We have a new friend,’ Harry said grimly, ‘come to question us.’

  At once the RAF man burst out into voluble French: ‘I assure you, Monsieur, I don’t know what this chap’s talking about—’

  ‘Your French has suddenly improved,’ observed Harry drily.

  Raymond turned the RAF man around with a cruel grin. ‘So you came to ask us questions.’

  Quickly, Harry explained how he had trapped the man with the name of the fake pub and college. Raymond grinned. ‘Wait there,’ he said.

  In a moment he was back, carrying a box which he put down on the grass floor of the orchard.

  ‘Look, you’re making a bloody silly mistake.’

  ‘Who are you?’ smiled Raymond. ‘Who are you, please?’

  ‘I am an escaped RAF officer.’

  Still grinning, Raymond hit the man in the face. ‘No,’ he said, ‘the truth.’

  Madame Anjou came and said: ‘Lunch is ready.’

  ‘We’re busy, Madame,’ Raymond said. ‘We will be in any minute. But just now we are busy.’ He bowed and Madame withdrew. He turned back to the RAF man and said: ‘Please don’t keep us from our lunch.’ His expression changed with terrifying swiftness. ‘Now who are you?’

  ‘I don’t understand what this is all about. You must believe—’

  A small sapling grew under the orchard wall. Raymond picked up the box he had brought from the house and walked over to the sapling. ‘Watch me,’ he said. ‘Carefully.’ Raymond attached a detonator to the sapling and then turned to the others and grinned again. ‘Are you watching carefully?’ He lit the fuse and stepped back. The explosion twisted the slim tree to green pulp. Raymond came back to where the others were sitting in the sunshine. He took a length of rope from the box and another detonator. ‘If you would be so good,’ he said to the stranger, pointing to a tree, thick and gnarl
ed in the middle of the orchard.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Ask a few questions.’ Raymond grabbed at the other’s arm and dragged him to the tree, his grip like steel. In a moment the man was lashed to the tree. Harry watched as if he were in a dream. Raymond fastened the detonator to the tree between the man’s legs. Casually he uncoiled the fuse and fretted it between his fingers, shortening it. ‘No sense in dragging these things out,’ he observed amiably.

  The stranger watched him with cold terror. Raymond gave Harry a wink and lit a match, allowing it to burn round until there was a good flame. ‘I should hate to have it go out and spoil everything.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ the man said, in a low voice.

  Raymond looked surprised, as if he had forgotten the man’s presence. ‘Who are you? Who sent you here? What do you know and how much have you told? That sort of thing,’ he explained.

  ‘I am a German officer.’

  ‘Ah. He is a German officer,’ Raymond said, untying the man and leading him gently by the arm back to where Harry was sitting.

  The man knew that the game was up and he told them everything. He had been educated in England and had been sent to try to blow the escape line south from Paris. So far he had not made a report.

  With the man’s confession, the tension had gone out of the scene. It was almost with regret that Harry said: ‘You know what we must do, don’t you?’

  The man nodded. ‘The fortune of war,’ he said stiffly. ‘It might have been you.’

  Raymond put his hands on his hips and said: ‘We may as well get it over. I want my lunch. Give me the gun.’

  Harry said: ‘Wait.’ He turned to the German. ‘Have you a last letter to your family you want me to send?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic? Would you like to see a priest?’

  ‘What is this—?’ Raymond began.

  ‘I’m in charge here,’ Harry said.

  ‘I would like to see a priest.’

  Harry said: ‘Raymond, go into the village and get a priest.’ Raymond hesitated. ‘Do as I say, Raymond.’

  The Basque rose and left the orchard. Harry sat there with the sun coming over his shoulder into the fresh face of the man opposite him. Neither of them spoke. The revolver pointed at the man’s heart. There was nothing to do but wait.

  ‘The funny thing is,’ the man said after a long while, ‘I know Cambridge quite well. I went up there for the Greek play once.’

  ‘I hardly know it at all,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t think that was the only thing which gave you away. I had guessed before I asked the question that something was wrong about you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your hair is too short.’

  The farmer’s wife came again to the gate of the orchard, stood for a moment and then went away.

  ‘Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?’ The man shook his head.

  Raymond came back with an aged priest, bustling the old man impatiently. The priest seemed frightened, as if he himself were to die. The two of them, the priest and the German, turned their backs to the others and the priest whispered and whispered in the still of the orchard and the German nodded from time to time as if he, too, were impatient. Harry held the gun in the man’s back.

  At last both men crossed themselves and the priest with a last look at the three men walked from the orchard out into the lane. Harry pulled the trigger. The man fell. Raymond took the revolver and put it to the man’s temple and fired again.

  ‘Just for luck,’ he said.

  Shortly after this, Claude de Baissac came to the farm and told Harry that arrangements had been made for him to be passed on down the escape line into Spain. His leg was in a bad way and it was plainly senseless to keep him in France any longer. He was still able to walk only with the aid of two sticks.

  It was with great regret that he said farewell to Raymond who had been so loyal a friend. Raymond’s sense of humour was on the robust side and he had insisted on parcelling up the body of the German officer they had shot in a foil-lined packing case which he had sent off by rail to Gestapo headquarters in the Avenue Foch, Paris. Inside was a note which read, ‘With the compliments of British Intelligence.’

  Harry went back with Claude into Bordeaux where the escape route could most easily be picked up.

  ‘The place is alive with escapers,’ Claude said as they rode into the town. ‘The other day there was a great horde of British sailors down by the harbour, pretending to be Portuguese. They were talking English so loudly you couldn’t miss it – but the Boches managed to!’

  Harry’s first link was at Roquefort, between Bordeaux and Pau. Here Le Chef, Claude’s French link, had told him to get in touch with a Monsieur Carre, an architect. He was forced to sit in the man’s waiting room, which was full of people, while his name was taken in. He felt very conspicuous: an obvious resister. However, no one seemed to worry about him and Monsieur Carre offered to put him up in a flat in his own building. This Harry refused and accommodation was found for him above the shop of a hairdresser who was a Communist. He paid highly for the room.

  The escape line ahead of him was surfeited with customers and he had to wait several weeks before Monsieur Carre gave the word that he could move on; in Pau he was to contact a certain Abbé Theophile who would be in a church in the Rue St Jacques at eleven the next morning. Harry went by bus to Pau. The weeks in Roquefort had allowed his leg to improve somewhat, but he still suffered considerable pain if he tried to walk more than a few hundred yards.

  ‘Abbé Theophile?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said the burly figure by the altar steps.

  ‘I am sent by Dumas.’

  ‘Follow me, old chap.’ The Abbé led Harry through a dark corridor into a tiny room where vestments were hanging. He shut the door and bolted it behind him. ‘We shan’t be disturbed here,’ he said, removing his cassock to reveal a chest full of medals.

  ‘You’ve been in the service?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Sergeant, in the Foreign Legion,’ was the unlikely reply. ‘But I took up the ministry afterwards. One needs security.’ He glanced upwards for a minute to acknowledge the eternal nature of his security. ‘They told me you were coming. So I fixed up for you to meet some people I think you’ll find helpful. We’ve got about an hour. I’ll show you round the church.’

  The Abbé showed Harry the stained-glass windows and the carved pulpit of which he was quite as proud as he was of the hand grenades stored under the porch and the cache of pistols in the organ loft.

  An hour later Harry had met one of the Pyrenean guides whose job it was to be to guide the party over the mountains.

  ‘Will there be much walking?’ Harry asked.

  ‘A bit,’ was the reply.

  Till nightfall, Harry wandered about the streets of Pau, staying in cafés for as long as he decently could. At one of them some frontier guides were resting, their great Pyrenean Mountain Dogs lying docilely at their feet.

  That night Harry went up to the foot of the mountains together with three other escapers and a band of saccharine smugglers. They lay up all the next day at a hut in the deserted approaches to the Col du Pourtalet. The next night they were told to be ready to move as soon as it was dark. At nine o’clock the march began.

  Before they left the path to climb through the mountains the guide turned to the party and said: ‘Keep up, whatever you do; anyone who drops behind will have to be left. We must be over the border by daybreak.’

  By midnight Harry was in agony from his leg. But not until nine the next morning, after zigzagging back and forth across the snow did they reach Spain. He had climbed through the mountains for twelve hours on a leg which could barely support him when he walked down the street. When he returned to England he came up to see me in the flat in Orchard Court.

  ‘Sorry I made a mess of it,’ he said. ‘When can I go back and try again?’

  Chapter
7

  Cradle of the Resistance

  Both Denis Rake and Harry Peulevé were the victims of unfortunate flukes and it said a great deal for both of them that they were able to weather this spell of bad luck and eventually return to France and complete missions of equal danger to those in which, through no fault of their own, they had failed the first time. I shall recount these in due time. On the whole, in spite of misfortunes of this kind, our position at the end of 1942 was considerably healthier than we might have expected at the beginning of it. In the absence of German interference until the very end of the year, the Réseaux in the south of France were in the healthiest condition. This was due, in large part, to the magnificent work of Hilaire,† one of our very first recruits, who built up an intricate network of groups before the Germans occupied the whole of France and maintained it superbly afterwards.

  Hilaire started off the war as a batman, having been a mining technician before it; as a result he had been employed in the Belgian mines and this fact accounted for his mastery of French; although he always spoke with a telltale Belgian accent this passed unremarked as there were many Belgians in France during the war years. Hilaire’s simple ambition was to take out to dinner after the war the officer whose batman he had been at the beginning of it. This was achieved after the liberation; at that time Hilaire was a Colonel and his erstwhile master a Major; for three years in constant danger of death, this was a modest reward. Hilaire typifies the sort of person who was best suited to our work. He appeared on the surface a man of the most unassuming character and you would certainly pass him without a second glance; this was something we were not unwilling to have the Germans do to our men. Underneath he was a person of great patience and determination. Both were vital qualities. Hilaire built up his series of Réseaux with the patience of a genuine strategist, never bothering about any fireworks, reserving his best and final effect for the days when it would best serve the cause to which we were all devoted – the extirpation of the German forces in France.