They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  ‘They were members of some trade commission. They came to ask if they could see over the factory tomorrow. Now, come into the sitting room and we can talk.’

  ‘Did you hear the message?’ Harry asked anxiously. ‘The trade commission—’

  ‘We all heard it,’ Peugeot laughed. ‘I insisted that we all listened to the ridiculous things that the BBC broadcast. The Germans laughed like pigs at the silly messages.’ Harry smiled.

  ‘I’m glad you’re convinced,’ he said.

  ‘I am. But what is your plan?’

  ‘I will tell you quite frankly what the position is. The people in London want the Peugeot factory put out of action. They will bomb you, they say, unless production can be stopped within a short time. Now if they bomb you there will be much loss of life among your workers. They live very close to the factory, a lot of them, and there would certainly be heavy casualties. Now if you were to let a few of my men get into the factory one dark night…’

  ‘I am to destroy my own factory? My dear man…’

  ‘One way or another it will be destroyed. If we do it there will be few casualties and furthermore we can put the explosive where it will do the greatest harm to production and the least to the fabric of the factory. If the RAF bomb you the whole place will be smashed to smithereens. The cause of the Allies will be better served if you let us do it and in the long run you will suffer less.’

  ‘You are very persuasive,’ Peugeot said. ‘Very persuasive.’

  II

  Harry Rée and his men were put in touch with two foremen in charge of the production line. Both were eager resisters and their job was to lead Harry and the others to the part of the factory where Harry knew by his training in England that the explosive would do the greatest damage. Certain machines were virtually irreplaceable under about six months – it was upon these that the dynamiters would concentrate. Peugeot himself knew nothing further of the operation, but he gave them every co-operation, though he was kept out of the inner workings of the plan. Obviously security could not be relaxed in his favour and he had to be treated like any other outsider. He knew neither how nor when his factory would be knocked out, only that it would be.

  Harry and two of his gang were signed on as hands and thus were able to get in and out of the factory without exciting comment. They became thoroughly conversant with the machinery which they were to sabotage and on the pretence of explaining its workings the foremen were able to learn from Harry the vulnerable spots where explosive would do the most damage; Harry remembered with the utmost clarity the many hours he had spent in a Hertfordshire ‘school’ studying the weak spots of presses and lathes.

  On the night of 14 May 1943, three operatives remained in the factory after the other workers had left. Soon after knocking-off time, two foremen let themselves in with their pass-keys and returned to the shop floor which they had only just left. They liberated the three men who were shut in a cleaner’s cupboard on the executive floor and took from it several large boxes labelled ‘cleaning materials.’ The contents of these boxes were tubular containers of scouring powder. The tops of these containers were unscrewed and several long sticks of explosive were revealed. Some flat tins contained plastic explosive which could be fastened to machinery rather like sticking plaster. The five men made their way downstairs to the night-watchman’s room. This was no longer used. The Germans set their own guard on the place. The men could hear them forming up outside. The five ate their sandwiches and settled themselves to wait for the darkness.

  At eleven o’clock they moved to their pre-arranged stations in various sections of the factory. Harry and one of the foremen set their explosives in place, working with quiet detachment. The other men, under the other foreman, were engaged similarly in another sector of the shop floor. By midnight – the agreed time – all the explosive was in place. The ten-minute fuses were set and the five men hurried down to a disused side door of which one of the foremen knew. They came out into a deserted yard at the back of the factory. Another door was unlocked by the foreman’s pass-key and they were out of the factory in a side alley. They all shook hands and hurried away: they had to get home as quickly as they could, for curfew had started and there would be a terrific turn-out of police and military as soon as the factory went up.

  At about ten minutes past midnight the shop floor of the Peugeot factory was rent by several violent explosions. Fires were started and equipment so ruined that production was suspended indefinitely. There was nothing the Germans could do to incriminate Robert Peugeot or any of the staff of whom five were missing. The two foremen had decided to join the Rée group rather than risk arrest by resuming their work. It was upon Harry and the others that the full fury of the authorities was directed. An intensive search was began.

  If it should be thought that Robert Peugeot himself is not entitled to as much credit as those more directly concerned in the affair I think it only right to point out that he voluntarily incurred the risk of associating with Rée and further he actually connived at the destruction of a factory which his family had built up over the years into one of the finest in France. If one imagines one’s own feeling at seeing one’s house or shop or car or business being systematically destroyed, one may get some idea of the feelings that must have possessed Robert Peugeot on that May evening in 1943. I think he did rightly; let no one imagine that it was an easy decision. There were some who were not so public-spirited.

  After the explosion the Germans were naturally determined to get the factory into full production again as soon as possible. They therefore set about replacing the presses for tank bodies which had been wrecked by the sabotage. They managed to get a fresh press sent in from Fallersleben. For transport they proposed to use a barge on the Canal du Doubs.

  Harry and his men were now able to devote their full time to foiling the Germans’ plan, for they no longer had to report each day for work at the plant. Accordingly, the gang made their way down the canal bank, having been tipped off about the imminence of the press’s arrival. The canal ran through deserted yards and behind disused sheds and shabby allotments. Harry and his men hid themselves in a large gardening shed and waited.

  Shortly afterwards the barge came into sight. It was manned by a French crew and there was a guard of a few Germans on it. As it came up to them, Harry and his men opened up a murderous fire with automatic weapons and soon the barge came to a halt, swinging across the placid canal as the crew left the controls and jumped for the shore. The Germans fired back, but they were soon overpowered and the barge was in the hands of the Resistance. Harry’s men boarded her, taped explosive below the waterline, on the new press and in the engine-room and quickly left before anyone could give the alarm. Within a few minutes the exploding barge herself gave the alarm. By then it was too late. The new press and the barge were useless. So was the canal, a fact which further infuriated the Germans, for it was one of their favourite ways of passing midget submarines from the Loire to the Mediterranean. Harry and his men pulled back to wait for the next move.

  Weeks passed, in which the Gestapo worked feverishly, but to no effect. Then the Resistance farther up the line warned Harry and his men that the Germans had managed to find another press which they were sending under heavy guard to the factory.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ one of the gang demanded.

  ‘We’ll meet them when they arrive,’ was the decisive answer. ‘Send the word round that everyone’s to be ready to go into hiding as soon as the shooting is over. We’ll go to Claude’s. Tell him to expect us. Things are likely to be pretty hot.’ Claude’s was a safe house where they should be able to hide-out.

  On the day when the press was due at the Peugeot factory, Harry and his men were in position in a small tabac opposite the factory entrance. Three more men with submachine guns were hidden in a yard next to the gate. The idea was that when the convoy pulled up at the gate waiting for the keeper to open up, the resisters would strike. At midday police and military m
otorcyclists cordoned off the adjacent streets. Ten minutes later the tank-body press arrived on a huge truck. The whole area in front of the gate was filled with Germans, police and transport. Harry gave the signal – a grenade lobbed on to the carrier truck – and from two sides a murderous fire was unleashed on the massed Germans.

  A free fight ensued. The Germans were enraged and confused and opened up indiscriminately on anything they saw. Harry and his men dodged from shop to shop, through back doors, and hammered the security forces. Bombs were lobbed from a roof on to the lorry and a small fire was started. Everyone was rushing about loosing off machine-pistols and small arms and motorcyclists were ordered to cut off the resisters. Harry gave the order to pull out. He and his men made their getaway before the Germans became sufficiently organised to seal them off. Nevertheless they sent in hundreds of police and Gestapo agents from Besançon to the area around the factory. They arrested large numbers of workers and forced from them descriptions of the men who had absconded – of the two foremen and the three auxiliary workers who had been in the factory for the weeks before the sabotage. Pictures of the foremen were posted in the streets. Drawings of the other three were alongside them. The time had come to move off. Harry delegated control of the Réseau (not all the members were involved in the affair) and with his four wanted companions made for the Swiss border. There was little snow on the mountains but it was fairly chilly on the higher slopes and it was not easy going. Just before nightfall on the evening of 18 May, Harry and his men were lying up in a hut situated just short of the Swiss border in the vicinity of the Sainte Croix.

  ‘There’s a stream about five miles due east of here,’ Harry told them. ‘Once you’re across that stream you’re in Switzerland. They may keep shooting – if they’ve spotted us – but I don’t think they’ll dare come and get us. Marcel, you will lead with Denis and Frédéric; I will follow half an hour later with René.’

  The first three made off at the agreed hour and Harry and René waited in the hut. Harry paced up and down, consulting his watch frequently. ‘They should be at the stream by now,’ he said. ‘If we hear any shooting we’d better move away from here.’ There were no shots. The half hour passed. Harry and René left. There was no one about. They walked in silence. Soon they came to a small cluster of shuttered houses. They passed them. They crossed a wooden bridge. It was getting chilly. ‘Another half hour,’ Harry said.

  They came to a wood and passed through it to a series of barren fields strewn with boulders. They were very close to the frontier. They squatted down in the shelter of a large rock and Harry went forward to see what lay ahead. All seemed quiet, so he came back and gave René details about the crossing of the stream into Switzerland. ‘You go ahead first,’ Harry said. ‘I will follow when you are safely across.’

  The two men crawled forward now, fearing frontier guards, across the rough ground which sloped down to the banks of the stream. They lay down in some rushes and Harry said, ‘Go when you’re ready.’

  René lay there for a few seconds and then moved from the cover of the rushes, crouching, and slipped down to the water. He strode silently into it and soon he was swimming towards the far shore. Suddenly, unbelievably, two shots rang out. Then more. They came from a curve in the river some few hundred yards farther up. ‘Halt,’ someone shouted. Harry thought quickly. There was only one thing to do. The police would be on the spot in no time. He had to follow René. He scrambled along the bank away from the direction of the shots and then flung himself into the river and started to swim for the far shore. He saw René scramble ashore and collapse on the bank. The shooting continued. But now it was directed at him. ‘Halt.’ He plunged on through the freezing water. The flashes of the guards’ rifles were like stabs of pain. The impact of the bullets which hit him were dull hammer blows that seemed incapable of stopping him, though he was hit in the back and in the shoulder. Perhaps the chill of the water anaesthetised the wounds. He swam on. The river seemed as wide as a sea. The shots pursued him and the angry shouting seemed to grow into a roar like that of a crowd. He suddenly knew he could go no farther. He was exhausted. His lungs were solid with effort. He dropped his legs and prepared to be swept away; the water was only about three feet deep. He was safe. He crawled out of the water on to the shore. René was lying where he had collapsed a little farther up. The Germans continued firing. He crawled over to René who moaned and spat water.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oui, mon Capitaine.’

  ‘Come on then.’ Together they drew themselves away from the river and lay out of range of the Boches in a culvert. They were saved. They were found in the morning by Swiss border police and Harry suffered an internment sufficiently indulgent to allow him to continue to direct the Réseau at Besançon from Switzerland. His other men had crossed the border without incident. On D-Day plus one they crossed back into France and joined a Maquis group originally formed by Peter Churchill.

  III

  Harry Rée’s ‘blackmail’ plan seemed to have been very successful in the case of the Peugeot factory and I decided to give details of it to those Réseaux where I thought it might effectively be used. In October 1943, I had a call from the Ministry of Economic Warfare suggesting that it would be a good idea if we could attack German rubber resources. The big Michelin factory at Clermont-Ferrand was particularly in the minds of the high-ups. Could I arrange something?

  I decided that Réseau Hector† which centred on Châteauroux, some distance north of Clermont-Ferrand, was the one most suited to the mission. I asked Vera Atkins to get a message ready for transmission to Amédée Maingard, Hector’s wireless operator, giving details of the scheme.

  This Réseau was a first-rate one. Hector himself, more commonly known on the continent as Maurice or Philippe, was (and is) a man of the greatest devotion and application: he stuck to his job without any thought for his own safety or welfare. He worked long hours – sometimes as many as twenty a day – and he inspired the fiercest enthusiasm in all who worked with him. He was lucky in his colleagues as they were in him. Amédée was a first-rate man; a young Mauritian, he carried out the highly dangerous role of wireless operator with skill and calm. Hector’s courier was Jacqueline Nearne, an agent of the most perfect kind, full of flair and yet steady as a rock; never shirking a risk, she never recklessly incurred one. I had some difficulty in getting her accepted for SOE; although of Scottish origin, she seemed French through and through and had trouble in accustoming herself to British military life and though tremendously popular, her sense of routine, discipline and training method was sketchy. I persisted with her, for I guessed that she would be excellent in the field itself. So it was: she never put a foot wrong.

  She took the message from Amédée to Hector at Château-roux. ‘They want us to tackle the Michelin factory, do they? I’ll say one thing for HQ, they don’t ask much!’

  ‘They seem to be in a hurry for results,’ Jacqueline said.

  ‘I don’t fancy our chances of getting any co-operation from the management,’ Hector said. ‘They seem to be very happy in their work. Very happy.’

  ‘Do we have to approach them?’ Jacqueline asked. ‘It seems to me we’re going a long way about it.’

  ‘I doubt if we could ever get into the factory to set the charges unless we can get in with someone on the executive level. I think we must do as Buck suggests.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Jacqueline said.

  Hector made devious inquiries and found that things were much as he feared. The management of the Michelin factory were not particularly well disposed towards the Resistance. Most of the staff were of like mind. But orders were orders. Hector made an appointment with a Monsieur Legros, one of the managing directors, on the pretext of having some invention to show to him.

  The magnate was sitting in a luxuriously furnished room, a cigar in the ashtray at his elbow, a glass of brandy on the coffee table. ‘What can I do for you, Monsieur—?’

  ‘Maurice,�
� Hector said. ‘I would like to put to you a little proposition which I have.’

  ‘My secretary said something about an invention—’

  ‘She must have misunderstood. No, I have a rather different purpose from peddling inventions. I want you to let me blow up your factory.’

  Monsieur Legros reached for his brandy and took a long sip. He leaned back in his chair and said: ‘You want what?’

  ‘It is very simple, Monsieur. I have to tell you that the RAF have decided to bomb your factory unless you let me destroy it first—’

  Monsieur Legros rose to his feet, pale and shaking. ‘You are raving. J-Jacques, Jacques, come here—’

  Hector pointed his revolver at Monsieur Legros. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said.

  Jacques, the manservant, came into the room, looking apprehensive.

  ‘A cognac, please,’ Hector said. ‘Now listen, Monsieur. We cannot destroy your factory from the air without doing much damage but if you were to permit—’

  The interview took much the same course as the one which Harry Rée had had with Robert Peugeot, but with a difference: Monsieur Legros refused point-blank to have anything to do with the scheme. ‘I do not believe that you can put this absurd threat of air raids into effect. I don’t believe you’re a British officer. I don’t believe that you are anything but a crank – or possibly worse. The British have never bombed Clermont-Ferrand and I see no reason to believe that they ever will. I give you five minutes, Monsieur, to be out of my house or I shall call the police.’

  Hector smiled in a friendly way. ‘If you call the police,’ he said, ‘you will not live the week out. Good night.’

  ‘Monsieur Maurice—’

  ‘I will give you till tomorrow night to make up your mind whether or not you wish to save the lives of your workers and the fabric of your factory, Monsieur Legros.’

  ‘You’re bluffing. I know you’re bluffing.’