‘Au revoir et bonne chance,’ called Monsieur Audubon. The two lorries drove out of the garage. Monsieur Audubon, his job done, turned south to Melun. Michael and Jules, their job just beginning, turned north towards the N17 and Lille.
V
The lorry hummed easily along the N17. Michael sat beside Jules and watched the landscape slip past. Jules sat confidently at the wheel, a cigarette barely held between his half-parted lips. He looked across at Michael. ‘We’re coming up to the control proper,’ he warned. ‘Got your papers?’
‘I’ve got them,’ Michael smiled.
The control barrier resembled that which usually guards a frontier. There was a large command post and a barrier across the road. Ahead of them, Michael could see a row of halted lorries. German soldiers were searching the contents of some of them while the drivers went into the command post to have their papers examined. Jules drew the lorry into the side of the road and hopped out. ‘Come on,’ he said. Michael realised that they would have to leave the lorry unattended and trust to luck that the Boches did not go through the contents too thoroughly. Regretfully, Michael got out of the cab and followed Jules into the command post.
A crowd of routiers stood around the harassed clerk behind the desk. They clamoured so loudly and cursed so effectively that the clerk barely had time to stamp one set of passes before the next man slapped his papers on the desk. Jules and Michael took their places, Jules first. He handed over his driving licence when the time came. The clerk looked up and sighed. He frowned at Jules. ‘Won’t you ever learn?’ he asked. Jules shrugged and took the licence and the stamped pass.
Michael put his papers on the desk. The clerk took them in his hand and was about to stamp the pass when he stopped. There was a sudden silence. Michael’s papers were made in London. He looked at Jules whose ruddy face had gone quite pale. The clerk turned the papers over, thumbed through the complicated pages of forged stamps and endorsements and sighed again.
‘Francois Gelin,’ he read out.
‘That’s right,’ Michael said.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the clerk, looking round the circle of routiers who crowded the room. ‘Look at these papers. Have you ever seen such papers?’ he went on scornfully.
I’ve had it, Michael thought.
‘Why can’t you all have papers like these?’ the clerk snapped. ‘Why can’t you learn a lesson from Monsieur Gelin here and keep your papers in proper order?’
The routiers mumbled among themselves. Michael smiled shyly. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.
The clerk handed back his papers. ‘Thank you, Monsieur.’
Michael and Jules walked out of the command post.
‘Why can’t you have lovely papers like mine?’ he taunted Jules.
‘When I have to go to England to get them?’
They walked past the parked lorries back towards their own. Michael stopped. A knot of German soldiers were clustered around their lorry. They’ve found the stuff, Michael thought.
‘What shall we do?’ he whispered.
‘Keep going.’ Jules walked boldly up to the lorry. ‘Bon jour, les gars,’ he said in a comradely, yet somehow contemptuous tone. ‘Yes, I’ve got something for you.’ He reached into his pocket and drew out a battered set of photographs. The Germans smiled when they saw him and clustered round him. ‘Only twenty-five francs each,’ Jules said. ‘And they’re – magnificent.’ He kissed his fingers and rolled his eyes suggestively. The Germans pressed forward. Michael realised what was going on. The Germans had not been searching the lorry at all. They were waiting for Jules. He was bringing them their quota of pornographic pictures. ‘I do it every trip,’ Jules said when they had safely drawn away from the control. ‘It stops them asking awkward questions. They never bother me. They like what I bring them too much for that. I get them in the Boulevard Montmartre before every trip.’
‘You must let me know the tricks of the trade one day,’ Michael observed. ‘It will prevent me having heart failure every time you use them.’
Jules rolled his cigarette along his lip with his tongue in a comic gesture. ‘What is life without surprises?’ he asked.
Through Cambrai and Douai they drove, one grubby lorry, indistinguishable from the other trucks rolling along N17 au service de l’Allemagne.
By nightfall they had safely parked the lorry in a lock-up garage and the arms had been unloaded and stored away in the attic of someone’s house.
That night they sent a telegram to Max in Paris: ‘mother and child both well send more toys’. The next morning Max transmitted the message to us. The plan had worked. Lille could be armed.
VI
It was only the beginning. We had to ship in a lot more stuff if we were to blow up the locomotive sheds in the time which the RAF had ‘allowed’ us. We told Michael to get together as many lorries as he could. We would begin mass shipments, or shipments as massive as we could manage. The next lot would go to Armand on Thursday night.
Michael worked with reckless speed. Two lorries were stolen from a German dump and new number plates attached to them. Small vans and huge long-distance lorries were taken at tremendous risk and added to the Resistance transport pool. At Meaux, Armand and his men arranged for extra transport to make the vital trip to Montmartre where Michael and the others waited for the stuff.
The Germans did not interfere with transport as much as one might imagine. At this time there was no private traffic of any kind, either lorries or cars. Everything was in the service of Germany. Now the Germans, knowing that this was the law, could not believe that anyone would dare to break it; they are a literal-minded people and it seemed inconceivable to them that the French would do anything so flagrant as to use a road and transport which was totally reserved for Germans.
Sometimes our big munition loads were broken up before the lorries reached Lille, for purely local traffic was less likely to be subject to checks. This was where the small vans came in useful. They could draw up in front of the places where Michael cached the stuff without exciting too much comment in the neighbourhood. One of Michael’s most trusted van drivers was a girl called Brigitte. One day she was driving along the road from Douai in a small charcoal burning vehicle laden with plastic explosives and detonators and other equipment when, going up a small hill, she began to hear most unpromising noises from the engine. The van topped the rise, sighed, and gave up. It was useless to try and find a garage, because all the French garages were forbidden to give service; theoretically there was no French transport to service. There was only one thing to do. At the bottom of the hill was a German depot. Brigitte started to push the van. A couple of German mechanics, on their way back to the depot, came out of a café. She smiled at them. They smiled back. Within a few seconds both were pushing the van. Brigitte sat in it and steered.
‘Where are we going?’ they asked.
‘To the depot.’
She turned the van in through the front gate.
‘It’s all right, Hans,’ one of her helpers called to the sentry.
‘You’re very kind,’ she said to the two men. ‘Now could you take a look at the engine and see what’s wrong with it? I’d be so grateful.’
Willingly (she was an attractive girl) they set to and repaired the vehicle. ‘I’m in a hurry to get it to the hospital, you see. They need the supplies so badly.’ Soon she had nearly all the mechanics in the place seeing what they could do to help. At the slightest sign of friendship on the part of the French, the Boches were quite likely to be bowled over. A lot of men got out of tight spots by affecting a love of the Germans which the latter could hardly fail to approve and enjoy. Brigitte sat in the van and dimpled prettily and the Boches could not do enough for her. ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ she taunted them.
At last the repairs were completed. ‘I shall write and thank your commanding officer,’ she told them.
As she drove off one of the NCOs said: ‘Now mind you don’t go and pick up any of this terrorist equipment
they say they’re shipping into Lille, will you?’
Everyone roared with laughter, none louder than Brigitte. ‘What would you do if I did?’ she demanded roguishly.
‘We know you wouldn’t do such a thing,’ grinned the NCO.
‘Don’t you be too sure,’ she cried, wagging a naughty finger.
They all rocked. The van drove out of the depot.
‘Be careful how you drive all that dynamite,’ was the last laughter-laden advice she heard. Luckily, of course, the plastic explosive with which the van was loaded needed a detonator to set it off. But you could hardly expect the Germans to know that!
VII
It was obvious that we would have to postpone the blowing up of the sheds at Fives-Lille. Although things were going ahead well, there simply would not be enough explosives and arms there in time for the men to know how to use them. An operation of this kind required very careful planning, for there could be no rehearsal and Michael had to go over the plan again and again with his gang of railwaymen whose job it would be to lay the stuff.
I rang the Wing Commander at Bomber Command and told him of the necessity for delaying the operation a week or two.
‘The old man won’t like it,’ was his comment.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘But that’s the way it’s got to be.’
‘I’ll let you know what the old man says.’
‘All right,’ I said. I was tired of internal politics. I seemed to spend too much time busying myself with policy. I was keener on maintaining contact with our men than on deciding theoretical priorities and keeping up appearances. All the same, this delay at Lille was trying. I hoped Michael would do a good job when the time came. By now it was January 1943 and all over France our chaps were organising sabotage in a way that at one time seemed impossible. Yet more was always being asked of us. I restrained myself: of course it was quite right that more should be asked of us. We were equal to it.
***
Information about France was still very important to us and we could never have enough of it. Things were changing there all the time, particularly since the Germans had taken control of the whole of it, and we had to be up to date. Our briefing officers had to know everything there was to know about the areas to which our men were to be sent. They had to know which days you could have meat in a restaurant, which days and at what times the cinemas were open; the natives would know these things and our men had to be natives, not only in the eyes of the Germans, but also in their own eyes: they had to have the confidence which only thorough briefing could give them.
They were going in greater numbers now and it was inevitable that some of them were heading for areas where the conditions were unknown to us and these men justifiably felt inadequately briefed; they arrived to find things very different from the way they had thought they would be. I am afraid that nothing could be done about that. We collected every scrap of information we could, but that was all that was possible.
To some extent we were hampered by the uncommunicativeness of other arms of the Intelligence and Secret Service. Each little organisation treasured its special nuggets of information with the zeal of prefects hanging on to their privileges. We could get nothing out of them. Sometimes they might know that a certain circuit was blown, yet because they wanted to protect their own men, they would keep the secret to themselves, fearing that to reveal it would lead to arrests among their own chaps. They preferred others to be caught. One could see the reasons for this; no one likes to think that he is responsible for the death of men whom he has sent out, but at times one could not but resent the secrecy which almost amounted to suspicion of the loyalty of others. On the whole I was able, through personal contacts, to get at most of the Secret Service information which was relevant to SOE, but at times it was a struggle. Of course, all secret organisations suffer from this security phobia; they think that the fewer people know the safer they are. This may be true, but liaison among allies should be willingly offered rather than grudgingly conceded.
The German counter-espionage services were at loggerheads with each other in a way which made any departmental squabbles or rivalries which might distress us at home look very trivial indeed. The Abwehr, the military counter-espionage, was constantly at odds with the Gestapo. This rivalry came to a head with the arrest by the Gestapo of the Abwehr commander, Admiral Canaris, in August 1944, after the Hitler bomb plot. Whether or not Canaris was actively implicated, it was an ideal opportunity for the Gestapo to exert their authority over the Abwehr. Before then, however, the Abwehr had shown itself a wily enemy to our cause, as we shall shortly see.
The Wing Commander phoned me again later that week from Bomber Command. ‘The old man’s pretty sceptical about the ability of your chaps to do this engine-shed job at all,’ he reported cheerfully. ‘Just thought you would like to know. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather we took the whole operation off your hands?’
‘I said we’d do it. We’ll do it.’
In Lille, Michael had arranged for the railwaymen to take small quantities of explosives in their lunch baskets into the locomotive sheds. The German guards detected nothing and at the price of the railwaymen eating slightly less than usual for lunch Michael was able to begin salting away explosives within the perimeter of the German sentries. The explosives were hidden in the lockers where the men kept their tools and overalls and each day the quantities grew. By the beginning of March Michael was ready to put his final plan into operation. The scheme would take place on a night when there was no moon. He and three men would enter the marshalling yards, all wearing engine-drivers’ overalls liberally daubed with oil-dark paint to make them merge with the background. Michael and the men all had revolvers in their pockets, but he had given orders that they were not to be used unless the danger was desperate. Two other sets of men, under the local Resistance leader, had been detailed to be in the marshalling yards adjacent to the locomotive sheds. If they heard any fighting they were to come to the help of Michael and the others, if not they were to keep off. The fewer men about, the less the chance of discovery.
The night of the second of March was dark and it was raining slightly. Michael’s courier alerted his men and they assembled in the soot-stained house of Paul, a foreman in the locomotive sheds, at one o’clock in the morning. The Resistance fighters were scheduled to be in their places at one-fifteen. The fuses would be ten-minute ones and they would withdraw as soon as they saw Michael and his men come out of the sheds. The blow-up was timed for two o’clock.
‘Come on,’ Michael said, after they had darkened their faces with the grease Paul had provided. ‘No talking, keep together and do exactly as I say without question. Understood?’
The men all nodded. Paul led the way out of the tiny house and down an alley leading to the yards. The lines glistened like fresh paint in the rain. Far off an engine hooted and the flare of its cab shone in the darkness. A lantern bobbed somewhere down towards the shunting yards. Paul, Michael and the others stepped over the lines carefully – some were electric – and tried to stay as much as possible in the shadow of the parked rolling stock. They filed down between two rows of goods vans, taking care not to make a noise as they trod on the ballast between the lines. The rasp of a match sounded ahead of them. They froze. The silhouette of a sentry at the far end of the row flared in the darkness and then went out: only the glow of his cigarette remained. Paul drew them into the gap between two trucks, led them over the couplings and across the empty lines towards the sheds. Michael was ready to deal with sentries if he had to (all our men were skilled in unarmed and silent killing) but naturally preferred not to risk raising an alarm. They approached the sheds. Suddenly they stopped. Michael went forward. Two men were standing at the corner of the shed. He could just see them. One of the men left the other and made off across the yards. Rain glistened on his hair. Michael went quickly forward and got in behind an electric fuse-box. He could see the man as a dark smudge against the wall of the shed. The man walk
ed forward and came towards the fuse-box. Michael stood on the balls of his feet, ready to spring. The man walked past the fuse-box and then turned. Michael started forward and then stopped. It was the local Resistance leader.
‘What the hell?’ he whispered.
‘Michael? There are two sentries at the far end of the sheds. You must go in this end. My men are keeping a watch on the sentries. If they make any move to enter the building we will follow them. If they come round to this end we will keep with them and kill them if necessary to secure your retreat.’
Michael clasped the Resistance leader’s hand. ‘Excellent.’ He was shaking with shock at the closeness he had come to killing his friend. He signalled to Paul and the others to come forward. Silently, the Resistance leader withdrew. Michael and the others reached the door of the locomotive sheds and Paul opened the padlock with his foreman’s pass-key. The four men slipped into the black interior of the shed and shut the door behind them. They placed a bucket against the inside of the door. If anyone came in he would involuntarily make enough clatter to warn them of his presence.
Paul led the way straight to the locker room. A pale pencil of light from Michael’s torch was their only guide. Within a few minutes the lockers had been emptied of explosive and each man went to his task with silent certainty.
Outside, the Resistance fighters lay in the dark shadows of the marshalling yards, one party keeping watch on either end of the engine sheds. A quarter of an hour passed. Twenty minutes. It was a quarter to two. The slightest gleam of light shone out from the door of the shed and went out. Four figures came silently, barely visible, through the door of the shed. The torch shone wanly for a fraction of a second in the direction of the Resistance leader: the signal that all was completed.
‘Scatter,’ he said. ‘Pass the word. Mission completed.’
They Fought Alone Page 14
