They Fought Alone

by Maurice Buckmaster

  A train carrying rations to the stranded Panzer division was derailed in a railway tunnel in the Poligny district. This sabotage was done by a man called Martial Chaperon who had a highly skilled demolitions team working under him. His best coup was achieved later, however, when he and his men engineered a double derailing, two bauxite trains being simultaneously derailed and totally wrecked. Generally trains were travelling slowly through the mountain passes, but on this occasion both were in great haste and both tumbled over a small bridge, became entangled and, besides contributing to their own mutual destruction, entirely blocked and disrupted the main line.

  At St Jean de Losne, the lock gates were totally wrecked when it was learned that the Germans were using the waterway to bring supplies to their reserve forces. Here the local Maquisards had to mop up a detachment of Germans before the demolitions could be successfully concluded. The locks were out of action from June till November, by which time our troops were in control of the area. Meanwhile, on the other side of France, a Ruffec dentist, Gaston Denivelle, had brought the number of his railway demolitions to 243 separate actions, a record I believe. In this work he was assisted by Colonel Henry de Gua, whose valour had already been proved in the First World War.

  ***

  In the Massif Central, the district in which Hubert† and Nancy Wake were operating, things were not going as easily as had been hoped. Many of the German garrison troops were, at this stage, elderly men and puny boys. It was against opposition of this calibre that Hubert, Nancy and Denis Rake had been expecting to fight. They were at first disconcerted to find that the Germans had fielded forces of quite a different standard. They had recruited tough Mongol warriors who came from the German-held parts of Russia (or from those parts which the Germans had once held) and these Mongols were ruthless and courageous fighters who cared for little but battle and its rewards. Against these men our forces had only light arms and no armoured vehicles of any kind. The conflict was long and fierce, often hand to hand, and the Mongols hung on so grimly that it was almost impossible to disengage and attack from another quarter, a tactic which was usually successful against more slow-moving and heavily mechanised forces.

  Denis Rake, during this protracted battle, showed all the qualities which I had believed he possessed in the far off days when I fought to have him accepted in the organisation. He was resourceful and calm and he carried out his job with conspicuous acumen and courage. The reports of his exploits were to earn him the MC.

  I think it only right to mention at this stage that, though many of SOE’s officers earned decorations, we and certainly they did not necessarily think more highly of them than of those who fought and received no reward, or of those who died in agony to protect a trivial secret or conceal information already known to the enemy. In no other department of war did so much courage pass unnoticed. In no other department of war were men and women called upon to die alone, to withstand agony of mind and of body in utter solitude, to face death, often ignominious and pain-racked, uncertain whether they might not have saved themselves by the revelation of petty secrets. In no other department of war were civilians asked to risk everything in order to conceal a man whom they had never seen before and might never see again.

  Some it may be have read a great deal about the French being too easily vanquished and too ready to collaborate. For my part, I think it would be fitter to remember the tortures which they faced (tortures which so few in any country could stomach reading about, let alone suffering) and the risks they took in the face of a cruel, vindictive and sadistic invader. Let no one in England criticise the ordinary men and women of France till he has examined his own conscience and found himself blameless of compromise with forces and opinions which he secretly detests. Some Frenchmen, perhaps many, compromised with the invader. Many more, in the face of death, stood true to their country and to her allies.

  III

  Xavier now had his greatest success. One of his bands was detailed to attack a German formation sealed off in one of the road sections south of Besançon. They attacked and set on fire a number of German vehicles, but at the height of the attack the Germans were reinforced by a battery of field artillery. Xavier’s men were forced to retreat by the weight of the enemy firepower. The Germans, really believing that they had Xavier’s men on the run, gave chase. Their field guns were highly manoeuvrable and the vehicles which drew them pursued the retreating Maquisards up a narrow side road into the hills. The going got rougher, but infuriated with the persistence of their attackers, the Germans pressed on.

  The commander of the Maquis saw his chance. He sent a runner to Xavier who quickly deployed further forces in the rear of the advancing field guns. Within an hour the Germans were bracketed between two bands of Maquisards. The road was now a pitted track and the guns were tilting and bouncing over the uneven surface. There was complete silence. The German commander gave the order to halt and mopped his brow with a handkerchief, surveying the deserted landscape. Where had the enemy disappeared to?

  ‘Now,’ shouted Xavier. From the apparently deserted hedges, from behind boulders and crumbled shepherds’ huts, the Maquisards poured out, levelling a deadly fire against the bemused gun crews. The Germans put up a brief defence and then surrendered. Their guns could not be manned and otherwise they were poorly armed.

  For the first time, the Maquis were now in control of an artillery battery. It was a tremendous morale booster. Xavier saw to it that the advantage was military as well as moral. The field guns were manned by the Maquisards (after instruction by the German crews) and added to the fighting power of the secret army. The captured gun crews were employed at Xavier’s headquarters – as mess waiters.

  It was this action and the use of the guns by Xavier which led to the story current among the Germans that we were dropping artillery to the Maquis. We were in no hurry to disabuse them of this notion, but in fact it was not true. The belief that our men were more heavily armed than they were was also held by certain Allied commanders; on one occasion a small band of Maquis armed with light machine-guns was ordered to oppose a fully armed Panzer division. I was forced to point out that there were certain things that even the Maquis could not accomplish.

  IV

  The Panzer division which Roger’s and Xavier’s men had been harassing now came, like the Hermann Goering Division, to a full stop. The roads were impassable, even in the flat country of the Saône et Loire, where Tiburce and Guy D’Artois had organised a brilliant harrying force. The division was forced to turn and retire towards the south once again in order to try and find another, less trouble-ridden, route to the north and the distant battle area.

  It now came into contact again with the forces under the command of Roger, whose men were dispersed once more along the lower stretches of the Route Hannibal. They found themselves in action against badly shaken Germans snaking about in an effort to shake loose from the unwelcome attentions of the evasive Maquisards.

  Roger was well known throughout the south-east. He and his men already had many battle honours and they had succeeded in closing the famous Route Napoléon entirely. The Germans had had so many casualties in their attempts to convoy troops along it that they had given up the attempt. Convoy after convoy had been sealed off and subjected to murderous Bren gun fire.

  Now, as the plans for a landing along the Côte d’Azur went ahead in London, we were to put more and more work in Roger’s way. He and his men stood up to it magnificently and the excellent esprit de corps which he had instilled in all his Réseaux now showed itself. The Simplon Railway was cut continuously and so were the lines which served the Rhone Valley. The Germans were in a frenzy of irritation: whole companies of field police were sent out by the Abwehr with orders to catch Roger, no matter what the cost. They were not to come back without him. In the event, they did not come back. Near Montélimar a complete company of them was ambushed and annihilated. In Valence, the railway line was completely blocked and freight cars were heaped, five and six o
n top of each other, across the line. Marseille was also partly under Roger, partly under the members of the ‘Palestine Express’, and there too the fighting grew hotter. The Germans had already destroyed the whole of the Vieux Port area with high explosives, but even this cataclysmic revenge had not deterred the men who lived there. They fought on from new streets, with new equipment but with the same objective: the elimination of the German forces of occupation.

  Meanwhile Xavier was celebrating the expulsion of the Panzers from his zone by parading his men openly in the villages. On France’s national day, he held a film show in which pictures of the Allied victories were shown in the cinemas of the Jura and the Ain. In this district, liberation was a mere formality: Xavier’s men had completed it weeks before the arrival of Allied land forces.

  Roger’s task was only just reaching its fullest dimension. The Panzers were being engaged by his men, but their arms were incapable of destroying the Panzer heavy tanks. He appealed to us for harder hitting equipment. We dropped him bazookas, Brens and PIATs, but we could do no better than this. But even these arms needed trained operators, and Roger was faced with the harrowing spectacle of the Panzers, on the very edge of total destruction, making their escape. He appealed to us to arrange an air strike from North Africa where Allied troops were massing. The appeal was met.

  While Roger’s forces held the Germans pinned in the defiles of the Alpine foothills, bluffing them that his resources were stronger than they were, the RAF and American Tactical Air Force bludgeoned them, toppling tanks into the ravines, setting half-tracks on fire and finally immobilising a column of armour which might decisively have affected the fighting in the north or hampered the invasion in the south.

  The invading Allied troops faced little opposition when they landed in August and began their swift advance through Provence to the north. Their comparatively easy progress was earned at the cost of many lives among Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who faced German tanks and armour with small arms, grenades and homemade bombs. In the Vercors, there was very heavy fighting. The Germans, savage and despairing, fought like demons.

  Hatred and violence burst through the length of France as the Maquisards, indeed nearly the whole population, rose to pay off the score of four years of barbarism, terrorism and tyranny.

  V

  In the midst of this inferno, two days after the landing of the Allied force, Roger was caught by the Gestapo. It was desperately bad luck, for not only had he lived in constant danger for over a year without being caught, but he was badly needed to command his forces.

  The only witness of his capture was his courier, Christine,† a Polish girl with a wonderful record in many of the German-occupied countries of Central Europe, who was hurrying to catch him up when she saw him taken. She followed as he was marched back to the local Gestapo commander. He was taken into the headquarters and the door shut behind him. Christine wondered what she should do. There was hardly time to collect help, for she knew that Roger might easily be taken away from the town by road towards the north. If the Germans knew how important their prisoner was (and descriptions of him had been circulated) they would not risk holding him so near the battle area. The Allied troops were moving too fast.

  There was only one thing to do and Christine did it. She walked boldly up to the door of the Gestapo headquarters and addressed herself to the sentry.

  ‘I want to see the chief of the Gestapo,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t,’ was the reply. ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘I have some important information for him.’

  ‘Wait here,’ said the sentry. He was an elderly soldier and he went hesitantly inside to inform the Gestapo of their importunate visitor. In a moment he returned. ‘You can go in,’ he reported doubtfully.

  ‘Thank you,’ Christine said politely, walking in.

  ‘What is this information you have?’ demanded a lieutenant behind a desk in the office.

  ‘Are you in command here?’ Christine asked.

  ‘You can tell me your business, mademoiselle.’

  ‘My business is with the Commandant.’

  ‘He’s occupied. I am authorised to take a message—’

  ‘I must see the Commandant in person,’ the girl insisted. She knew that her only hope was to deliver what she had to say to the man in supreme authority.

  ‘What do you want to tell Colonel Schwarz?’

  ‘Something that concerns him alone. Now, will you let me speak to him? It is to his advantage to hear me.’

  The young officer rose unwillingly and went into the inner office. Through the open door, Christine could see Roger sitting in a chair with two thugs on either side of him. He looked through the door and saw her. His face was impassive. He gave no sign of recognition whatever.

  The chief of the Gestapo returned with the lieutenant. ‘What is it you want to tell me?’ he snapped. ‘I’m a very busy man.’

  ‘What I have to say I must say to you alone.’

  The chief nodded and the other officer left the room.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I am here to speak to you on behalf of the Maquis,’ Christine said.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘You heard me, Colonel. You have a prisoner in there. I am here to ask you to give him up.’

  ‘Are you mad? You’ve come here to waste my time…’

  ‘I think not,’ Christine interrupted. ‘In a few hours the Americans will be here.’

  ‘What? A few hours?’

  ‘In a few hours,’ Christine repeated. ‘And when they finally arrive they will be very interested to hear the story I have instructed should be told about a Colonel Schwartz.’

  ‘You know my name?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The use of his name seemed to impress the Colonel. ‘What story have you told them?’ the Colonel went on. ‘That you have arrested and tortured an innocent man.’

  ‘That is a lie.’

  ‘That is the story, Colonel. The only way to save your skin is to release your prisoner.’

  ‘Why? Why do you want this terrorist released?’

  ‘My dear Colonel—’ Christine said, shyly.

  The Colonel looked down. ‘In a few hours you say. How do you know they are coming so soon?’

  ‘Everyone knows. If you don’t release your prisoner, it will be your funeral. And I mean exactly that. Now then.’ Christine was shaking from head to foot, though she seemed calm, for she knew that if the Colonel refused to release Roger she would herself be taken into custody and probably deported to Germany. ‘American forces are already to the north of you,’ Christine went on, seeing that the Colonel appeared undecided. ‘In a matter of hours you will be cut off,’ Christine ended.

  The Colonel bit his knuckle. ‘Bring the prisoner in here,’ he shouted. ‘Schnell.’

  Roger was led in by the suspicious subaltern.

  ‘You may leave,’ the Colonel said to Roger.

  Roger looked at Christine and blinked. Security could operate only to a certain point. Miracles were still rather outside the run of things.

  ‘Herr Oberst—’ began the subaltern in a shocked and angry voice.

  ‘Silence,’ barked the Colonel. ‘Silence. Well, go on,’ he said to Roger and the girl. ‘Get out, both of you, get out.’

  ‘Herr Oberst—’

  ‘Come on,’ Christine said.

  In a daze, Roger walked down the corridor. The Colonel followed. At each sentry he gave orders for the two resisters to be allowed to pass. At the door of the headquarters he said: ‘When the Americans come you will tell them what I have done?’

  ‘We will tell them everything you’ve done,’ Roger promised.

  ‘Good, good,’ smiled the German.

  Roger and Christine walked slowly away down the street till they were out of sight. Then Roger turned and clasped Christine in his arms, roaring with laughter. Within an hour he was again in command of his M
aquisards. It took the Americans somewhat longer than the threatened ‘few hours’ to reach Sisteron. In the command post, the Colonel waited for them impatiently. He was going to look rather a fool if they failed to turn up. Already the lieutenant was looking at him very suspiciously.

  VI

  The Hermann Goering Division was still in the toils. Aristide’s men had chopped it into little pieces and now those shredded sections were being mopped up by the whole population of France’s south-west. This area had always been Resistance country and now, like Xavier’s Jura, it virtually liberated itself, except for the big towns which were still strongly garrisoned by the Germans.

  In fact, the Hermann Goering Division never did reach the battle front at all and those elements of it which escaped the full force of the Maquisards’ fury were surrounded and pinned south of the Loire, where they finally surrendered. The delaying action so brilliantly engineered by SOE officers and so staunchly fought by the men under them had achieved far more than we in London had ever expected of it. It would have done all we had hoped of it if it had merely detained the enemy until Eisenhower’s forces were securely lodged in France. It did much more than this: it so contained the Germans that they never fought on any front save that they least expected – in the country not yet reached by any invading force.