They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  His patient strategy may be demonstrated by the fact that no one of his many Réseaux from the Landes through Lot-et-Garonne, part of the Dordogne, Lot proper, Gers Tarn, Aude down as far as the Hautes Pyrenees on the Spanish border, knew of the existence of any other. When you consider that this area was as large as Yorkshire you may have some idea of the extent of ground which Hilaire and his lieutenants covered. When the call came for action in the days immediately before and after D-Day, Hilaire’s Réseaux were so perfectly organised that each was able, in spite of knowing nothing of its neighbours, to be perfectly co-ordinated with them by ourselves in London; Hilaire’s network totally dislocated, contained and destroyed the German troops stationed in the south-west of France.

  Apart from creating this vast offensive organisation, Hilaire was also responsible for the setting up of the escape lines which assisted in the escape of both Harry Peulevé and Denis Rake. He is one of the great names; too modest to tell his own story and too wise to let others know it, his activities can only be guessed at by the scope of his final achievement.

  A large number of the men who did brilliant work for SOE started in the ranks. Few of them were of distinguished origin or came from famous regiments, yet all possessed a quality which I can only describe as that most likely to make an officer – initiative. We had no use for those who could not think for themselves and we placed a premium on those whose common sense could be relied upon. Inflexibility was the most dangerous drawback to a man’s selection; a man had to make his own appraisal of a situation, obeying where obedience was necessary, acting on his own authority where he found good cause to vary the judgement of superior officers.

  It was no use trying to do things by the book. There was no book. It may be thought that we encouraged eccentricity. This is not so: our officers, when in uniform, were among the smartest in London; their esprit de corps forbade them to be otherwise. Ours was a strictly military set-up; there was nothing irregular about it. (When the time came it was integrated with supreme Allied strategy and when the Americans were fully in the war it took on a properly Anglo-American character and I had an American number two, Major Huot.) As opposed to spying in the full sense, our men were engaged on offensive work, not predominantly on sending information. Starting with the destruction of the engine sheds at Troyes we gradually extended our scope, by planning new targets in London (in consultation with the Ministry of Economic Warfare) and by approving those suggested by men actually in the field.

  Every officer was trained in demolitions (with the exception of Denis Rake) and we instructed them in the most effective way of interrupting railway traffic by derailments. The most important thing was to derail trains in cuttings and not on embankments; the reason was simple: a train derailed in a cutting would block the line until hauled away, while one derailed from an embankment could be rolled down into the fields adjacent to it, so allowing traffic to continue as before. On the other hand you might deliberately choose an embankment for derailing a troop train since the crash over the side of the line and the fires which might result could cause greater loss of life than a cutting derailment where the damage to the actual train and its contents would be slight. You had to use your head. When a train was carrying French civilians the idea was to keep casualties down; we did not want the Resistance to get a bad name. Our men became so skilled that they were able to derail a train without even tipping it over; the charges exploded as the leading coaches came over them and the train simply ran off the line and parked itself in the cutting.

  There was a great art in sabotage and always our ideal was to harm the Germans as much and the French as little as possible. It was our claim which we were later to substantiate again and again that we were more accurate and less destructive than bombing; when we managed to convince the RAF of this fact they became much more willing to provide us with aircraft for transport and supply; earlier they had been both suspicious and parsimonious. The notion that we were all amateurs died hard among the high-ups. To scotch it we arranged meetings between our officers and high-ranking officers of the other arms of the service; our officers’ smartness, intelligence and obvious knowledge of their job served to convince them of our seriousness.

  We also instituted joint training schemes for our men and the airmen who were to transport them – Lysander pilots would thus get to know our men so well that there would be a personal bond between them so strong that if they heard one of our men was trapped and had to be got out in a hurry they would feel that they had to get Harry or George or whoever it was before the Boches did. This was another instance of the sense of individuality we tried to instil in all who worked with us. Our men were lonely in the field, that was inevitable; we had to make them feel that we – and all at home – cared for them personally and were prepared to take risks for them. I think we succeeded.

  II

  ‘Last night’s drop to Hilaire seems to have gone all right,’ Bourne-Paterson said. ‘I’ve got the crew’s reports and so far as I can see it all went swimmingly.’

  ‘Good stuff,’ I said. ‘I only wish we could get supplies dropped to the north as easily as we seem to manage it in the south. I’ve had a message from Conrade in Paris that the Resistance around Lille is crying out for arms and explosives.’

  ‘The flak’s so thick we haven’t got a chance in the Lille area,’ Bourne-Paterson said.

  ‘I’m not unaware of that,’ I remarked. It had been one of our biggest headaches since the very beginning – the Germans had so protected the north of France with antiaircraft guns that the parachute drops which we were able to engineer with comparative immunity in the sparsely garrisoned south were impossible in the industrial north. Furthermore, the density of population made ‘parachutage’ less practical than in open country; it was no use dropping supplies into a gasworks or a smelting-kiln. This was especially annoying since Lille was one of the very first of the Resistance areas; it claims the proud title of ‘Cradle of the Resistance’. Yet though there were many willing and tough resisters in the organisation, they remained virtually without arms. The problem seemed insoluble. We knew how anxious they were to take action and by now, towards the beginning of 1943, we were as keen as they to step up sabotage, for already we were staging the softening up which was preparatory to D-Day.

  Lille has always been a place where the British are very popular; our troops were there in 1940 as well as from 1914–18, and our stock remained so high, even after Dunkirk, that Lille never really acknowledged the armistice at all, remaining truculent and unyielding. Nonetheless, the people had to live and the only way in which a living could be earned was in the factories. Whether they liked it or not, the Lillois had to work for the Boches; unless the factories could be put out of action. That was the objective of the local Resistance who were clamouring for our help. They had already performed several acts of sabotage and had killed a number of Boches; but they needed co-ordination and arms.

  We sent them Michael Trotobas, who had lived in northern France before the war and had been stationed in Lille before the German breakthrough. He was the ideal man. We dropped him in the Yonne area with orders to make his way to Lille as quickly as he could.

  In Lille he began to co-ordinate the Lille Réseau with the rest of the organisation. The first step was to maintain wireless communication with London. So strict were the controls and so rigid the curfew in the Lille area that I had taken the view that it would be suicidal to send a wireless operator to it; he would have little chance of survival. I had discussed all this with Michael before he went and he promised to try to find a way out of the difficulty. He and the leader of the Lille Resistance travelled together to St Quentin.

  At a shop which sold hardware they had a rendezvous with Yolande.† This rendezvous would not have been approved by us in London, had we known of it, for it involved contact between two Réseaux, but it bore fruit. Yolande, an SOE girl, was operating in St Quentin for Guy who was in charge of the Réseau there. She was a girl of great i
nitiative and when Michael put the position to her, she promptly suggested that she should help. ‘I’ve got a French operator, a first-rate chap called Max Leroux,’ she told him. ‘He’s been cleared with London and I’ve already issued him with a full set of codes. He’s ready to go to work as soon as you need him.’

  ‘It’ll mean removing him from your circuit altogether,’ Michael warned the girl.

  ‘We are all here to help each other,’ was the reply.

  Max Leroux was a burly and opinionated man whom Michael found very likeable. ‘I won’t work for de Gaulle,’ was his first remark. ‘Are you anything to do with him?’

  ‘I am a British officer,’ Michael said.

  ‘Mm, well, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘We want you to maintain contact for us with London. Exactly the same sort of thing you were to do for Yolande.’

  ‘This really is a British set-up too, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ll do as you say,’ Max snarled, as if he had refused. ‘Let’s have something to drink.’

  Michael sent his first message through Max the next evening at a sked time agreed before Michael’s departure. He asked for arms, but could not give us any idea of how to get them to him; we were not much further forward. The two men had to get back to Lille which lay in the most restricted of all the zones of occupied France, ringed with guards and continuously subject to all kinds of checks and hazards; to enter it, a special card was needed and the Boches kept the closest scrutiny on all traffic. The C had procured a pass for Michael stamped with the German eagle and proclaiming him to be a special consultant to a glass works; there was not too much difficulty in getting back, but Michael realised what a tremendous task it would be to get arms through the controls, yet to drop them within them was equally impossible. What solution could there be? Michael and the Resistance leader travelled the last part of their journey to Lille on local buses; there was less likely to be a thorough check of passengers on them than on the trains from Paris.

  ‘There seems to be a hell of a lot of traffic on this road,’ Michael observed, as they rolled through the black industrial landscape.

  ‘It’s the routiers,’ the Resistance leader told him. ‘They still use this road all the time, bringing supplies to and from the factories.’

  Michael said: ‘My friend, I have had an idea.’ When they had safely returned to Lille, Michael told his friend the plan: ‘We’ll use road transport to bring the supplies in. London can arrange for them to be ready to be picked up in Paris and the routiers can bring them in.’

  The next few days Michael alerted the organisation in Lille to recruit as many really trustworthy routiers as they could find. A way had been found of bringing arms to Lille; no further incentive was needed: the Resistance started recruiting long-distance drivers.

  III

  ‘We can make the first drop near Meaux,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think this plan will really work?’ demanded Vera Atkins, now my personal assistant and an invaluable member of headquarters staff.

  ‘It has to,’ I said. ‘The Air Ministry want the locomotive shops at Fives-Lille to go up. If we can’t do it, they’re going to. There are workmen’s houses all round that area – it’ll mean hundreds of civilian casualties.’

  ‘Fives-Lille! That’s a tremendous job.’

  ‘That’s why we’ve got to get busy. Now then, Armand† can receive the arms on Monday night. The reception committee is all set to go, we know that. We’ll send a message to him tonight that he must lay on transport for Monday night – I want all the stuff cleared out of the Meaux area by the next morning. Alert Max in Paris that he must get Michael to be ready to take over the lorry when it comes in from Armand’s area. Michel himself will do the first run in with their best long-distance man on Tuesday morning and I want a report on how it’s all gone from Max the following morning after that.’

  Vera looked up. ‘They’ll need a lot more than one lorry load to blow up a locomotive repair shop,’ she said. ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘A month,’ I said.

  IV

  Three long flashes. Two short ones. Three long ones. The throb of the plane grew closer and closer. On the ground Armand and the reception team stood in the shadows of the hedgerow and waited. All were armed with Sten guns except for the ground-to-air wireless operator and the men with the lights.

  ‘Is that C for Charlie, is that C for Charlie?’ came the voice of the aircraft’s captain.

  ‘This is C for Charlie, this is C for Charlie,’ Armand replied. ‘What have you got for us?’

  ‘Eight sacks of toys,’ was the reply. ‘No bods.’ ‘Bods’ was the RAF term for agents. Probably the plane that was bringing supplies to Armand’s group was also taking an agent or two to another group in a different area. We often combined two operations in this way to save the RAF conducting two dangerous missions where one would suffice. It was a highly risky business, this solitary low flying, and it required the greatest coolness on the aircrew’s part. Often the ground-to-air communication (if any) was poor and the guiding lights dim. Occasionally the RAF boys would be new to the job and did not appreciate the difficulties of the people on the ground. One captain was rash enough to comment, ‘Look at those bloody awful lights.’

  The man on the ground heard this over the intercom and cracked back in a broad Lancashire accent: ‘Ay, and your lights’d be bloody awful if you had the Gestapo on your tail!’

  The plane turned and came back over the reception area. ‘This is it,’ Armand whispered to his team. ‘Collect the stuff as quick as you can and report back here.’

  Four containers dropped from the plane and for a moment their parachutes plumed out before they smashed into the ground. These packages were very heavy and they fell a good deal faster than a man could dare to. They were usually lagged with layers of sorbo rubber to protect them against the jolt of landing. The plane turned and came back again. The lights still pointed to the sky to guide it. The sten gunners patrolled along the hedges. There was silence. Four more packages thudded to the ground.

  ‘Out lights,’ snapped Armand. Already men were racing across the field to collect the packages, two men to carry, two pairs searching for, each package. Down a small lane off the side road which connected the dropping zone to the main road a lorry was parked, camouflaged even in the darkness under layers of branches.

  Within four minutes each group leader had reported that one or other of his pairs of men had collected a package, and that all were regrouped. ‘Sten-men number,’ Armand whispered. The sten gunners numbered off; the radio man reported himself present and Armand knew that there was no risk of anyone being left behind – always a danger in the darkness and one which it was important to eliminate, since the Germans might be on the scene in a very short while and would pick up any stray men who had not heard the order to reform and make off. A Sten gunner leading, the team made off towards the lorry. There was no alarm and the branches were removed and the stuff loaded up. The driver was already in the cab and within a quarter of an hour of the plane’s coming over he had driven off, amid whispered calls of ‘good luck’ towards Meaux, Paris and the north.

  ‘Well done, everyone,’ Armand said. ‘Disperse as quickly as possible.’

  Another typical night’s work was over. In many departments of France similar reception committees waited on suitable moonlit nights for the supplies which were to give France new life. As the weeks went by France, little by little, rearmed.

  Westwards from Meaux towards Paris, its back laden with the contraband arms, drove the truck with the words ‘Audubon-Charbons, Melun’ written on its dirty flap-board. Just short of the village of Moret the driver swung it off the road into a small yard. It was now after midnight. The truck drove straight into a small barn where three men were waiting.

  ‘Je viens de la part de Churchill,’ said the driver hurriedly leaping out of the cab. ‘Let’s get it done. I want some sleep. I�
�ve got to be on the move early.’

  The three men nodded and at once a chain was formed along which sacks of slate and coal were passed. The sacks were emptied all over the bundles of arms and soon the latter were completely obscured. One of the men passed the driver a bottle of wine. He took a long swig and wiped his lips. ‘Now for some sleep,’ he said.

  By five he was on the move again, joining the carts and trucks moving along the N7 towards Paris. He had two hours in which to make his rendezvous in a small private garage in Montmartre. There Michael and Jules, a routier well known to the German controls along the Route N17 which led to Lille, were waiting. Jules was confident.

  ‘They all know me,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no trouble.’

  Michael looked at his watch. It was half-past six. Their man was due at seven. Michael said: ‘Have you got your papers?’ He did not want anything to go wrong through carelessness.

  ‘I have my driving licence,’ Jules said. ‘What else do you want me to have – my birth certificate?’

  Michael looked again at his watch. Boots crunched up to and past the locked gate of the garage yard.

  Suddenly there was a hiss of brakes and an imperious hoot. Michael and Jules swung the gates open. Monsieur Audubon de Charbonnier, Melun drove into the yard. It was seven o’clock. Quickly the lorry was driven into the garage and the portcullis shutters were clamped down behind it. The three men now removed the arms from under the charbonnier’s coal and loaded them into a lorry which, according to the slogan on its side, belonged to Hubert et Fils, Lille. A further slogan stamped over it read: ‘Au service de l’Allemagne.’ Eight large drums of gas-oil were piled on top of the load and the engine started up.