Finding himself on the Allied side of the lines at the outbreak of war, Victor Pierre Joseph Adonis Marié, whose life up until that point had been marked by a distinct absence of heroism, slouched up to a British officer in a rear camp and offered his family, contacts, and knowledge of the land beyond the lines in the service of the Allies. On a moonless night in the middle of August 1915, Victor Marié, under orders from British intelligence, crossed the lines in a plane piloted by an English airman and touched down by the Bois de Vaucelles, near Laon, some ten miles inside occupied France. With the aid of Marius and his underworld contacts, Victor set about gathering ‘information on troop movements’, the morale of the local population, ammunition depots and, ‘above all, the layout of the light railways’. Plans, statistics and other information were then sent back across the line, initially via carrier pigeons dropped by British aircraft at arranged sites, and later through ‘a system of couriers across the Dutch border’. Victor was the brains behind the operation, and Marius was the muscle – ‘strolling within a hair’s breadth of the German officials, a gun concealed under his arm’ – but their widowed mother, Coralie Marié-Leroy, was its ‘soul’.
The Réseau Victor, Victor’s network, grew to about sixty members in a matter of months, some of whom were, like its founder, from the criminal underworld. The organisation, relying on word-of-mouth and absolute secrecy, fanned out into the villages and towns of the region, with agents in Saint-Quentin, Le Câtelet and Cambrai, and extending deep into occupied Belgium and the Netherlands in what British intelligence code-named the Beverloo system. On dark nights, British planes would land to collect information, ‘touching down at Havrincourt, near the CoufHet wood, or close to Neuville-Saint-Rémy’. Victor and Marius kept on the move with forged passes, but at the centre of the web was inconspicuous little Villeret. Whereas everyone in the village now knew of the English soldiers, only a tiny handful were aware of Villeret’s other dangerous secret. Among those involved in the spy ring were the formidable widow Marié, Henri Marié, the brother-in-law of Victor and Marius, and Joséphine Marié, their sister-in-law. It may have been no more than accident that the most important Allied spy network in the region and the largest remnant force of British soldiers both happened to be present in the same small village. But a mind like that of Karl Evers did not deal in coincidences.
On 30 March 1916 a new poster was plastered to the door of Villeret mairie. This was not one of Major Evers’s periodic intrusions, but a full-blown proclamation from the commander-in-chief of the German army.
More persons attached to enemy armies have been anested in the area of France occupied by our troops, having been given hospitality by local people, and consequently I hereby order that: Persons who, in the course of the war, belonged to or followed the orders of an enemy army and who currently find themselves in the territory occupied by German troops are required to surrender to a German command post or an army unit by 30 April, at the latest. Whoever surrenders before the deadline will not be punished and will be treated as a prisoner of war. All those arrested after 30 April 1916, will be punished by death or, in less serious cases, by imprisonment. Anyone who has fed, housed or otherwise aided an enemy soldier, as well as those who have failed to report, promptly, the existence of an individual of this type to the nearest military authority, will be punished by imprisonment (five years minimum), plus a fine of up to 10,000 marks. Mayors or administrators of communes where an enemy soldier is arrested after 30 April 1916, or where an enemy soldier is found hidden, will be imprisoned for up to fifteen years. In addition, a fine of up to 15,000 marks will be imposed. Any community in which the population is suspected of taking part in the above infractions will face a larger fine.
Panic gripped Villeret; many were convinced that the declaration was directly aimed at the village, a prelude to mass arrests. ‘The secret of the soldiers’ presence had got out. ’The Germans had become aware that there were Englishmen in the region,’ some villagers declared.
With German search parties expected by the hour, six of the seven British soldiers bade hasty farewells to Villeret and ‘immediately headed for Bellicourt’, guided by Arthur Tordeux, the poacher who had originally found them in the Trocmé woods. Only Robert Digby opted to stay.
‘Two days later the soldiers were back,’ reporting that the area around Bellicourt was swarming with troops and quite impassable. The following night, Corporal John Edwards, ever a solitary and mysterious figure, vanished without a word to anyone. ‘He was a canny fellow,’ Elise Lelong, the baker’s wife, remarked approvingly. ‘He preferred to take his chances alone, which was a damn fine idea, and we never heard another word about him.’ The Englishman was picked up by the Germans at Marcoing before he had managed to get ten miles from Villeret. Edwards was brought before Gramme in Le Câtelet, and successfully convinced the judge that he was a member of the Red Cross. ‘He escaped death, but was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.’
Willie O’Sullivan and Harry May were also determined to get make their move before the 30 April deadline. They apparently gave a short speech as they prepared to leave: ‘We do not want the people here to get into trouble because of us, or that you should be exposed to danger, all of you, who have been so good to us.’ Elise Lelong carefully recorded and later reported this uplifting sentiment, but it does not quite ring true. O’Sullivan had shown scant regard for the villagers’ safety when he was asking German sentries to light his cigarettes. The two men were captured at Malin-court, about half way between Villeret and Bertry, within hours of leaving the village, and held as prisoners of war. In custody, the men flatly refused to say where, and by whom, they had been hidden.
Of the original seven soldiers who had been sheltered in Villeret only four now remained – the original group that had banded together back in August 1914. Willie Thorpe, David Martin and Thomas Donohoe announced they would stand by Robert Digby and stay in the village, at least until a better opportunity for escape presented itself. Digby was only too well aware of the perils: anxious talk was circulating in the village; if his former comrades were intercepted, they might be forced into revealing the place they had been in hiding; someone in the village could crack and go running to the Germans. Léon Lelong, the gloomy baker, was deputed to ‘make the four remaining men understand the redoubled and grave danger of the situation’. Finally, it was Parfait Marié who came forward and, as head of the community, flatly ‘invited them to leave the area, to prevent reprisals’. There was, it seems, more than a hint of threat in Lelong’s advice and Marie’s ‘invitation’. The four men now agreed they had little choice, but rather than head north they would go south and try to find a way across the battle lines.
That evening Digby handed Claire Dessenne a letter addressed to his mother, with instructions that it should be sent to Ellen Digby of Totton, Hampshire, after the war, should he fail to come back. It read:
Dear Mother,
This letter is written by me to introduce you to this young woman if, by chance, I should die. I have been in this place, in hiding, from September 1, 1914 until April 25, 1916. I have a child I love very much, and if all goes well, I will come back with her and my little one to be near you. But if anything should happen to me, then I beg you, my dear mother, to help make a good life for my darling little girl. She is five months old. The whole village respects us both, she and I. Do not think ill of her after my death, but cherish and help her.
Your affectionate son,
Robert
The next night, on 26 April, the four men set out with ‘ample provisions and money’ donated by the villagers, as well as a guide, Lucien Lelong, the baker’s son, to ‘attempt the impossible and cross the German lines at Péronne’. They were ‘sent off with a “bon voyage”,’ although the attitude of some was closer to ‘good riddance’.
Claire wept bitterly as Digby prepared to depart. Solemnly, he shook hands with the men of the Dessenne household – Florency and Léon Recolet – and kissed the
tearful Marie-Thérèse and Marie Coulette, for once silent and subdued. Then Claire and Robert were left alone with Hélène, a murmuring child blissfully unaware of her parents’ pain. Digby told his lover that, whether or not he evaded capture, he would return to Villeret one day, to make their lives together in peacetime. Before a final embrace, Digby handed Claire a second copy of the letter to his mother, translated into French. ‘If all goes well, I will come back with her and my little one …’ If all went well, the letter would not have to be delivered. Those few lines were, in truth, Digby’s farewell statement of love for Claire and their daughter, a keepsake if all did not go well, as he had every reason to expect it would not. The words unconsciously echo those of Rupert Brooke: If I should die.
A few miles away, on the Hargival estate, another fugitive of the war emerged from his hiding place. For months the German authorities, out of deference to the charming Madame Magniez, had ignored Flirt, the magnificent thoroughbred everyone knew was hidden between the haystack and the orchard wall on the Magniez estate. Indeed the cavalry officer Wilhelm Richter had even taken rides with Jeanne Magniez mounted on her husband’s fine horse. But in the new, intensifying atmosphere, Jeanne had become convinced that the Germans planned to confiscate the animal and punish her. Perhaps she had received a tip-off. One morning, before dawn, she led Flirt gently from the orchard and walked him to the far corner of the estate where, in a different life, she used to ride with Georges and Anne de Becquevort. Deep in the woods she removed Flirt’s bridle, cocked the old pistol she had retrieved from beneath the barn, and shot the horse through the temple.
Georges Magniez was mortified when, many months later, the news of what had happened reached him at the front: ‘My great woman has killed Flirt in the night to prevent the Boche from getting him … Such misery, what courage. How she must have wept. I see Jeanne at night in my dreams. The Boche did not get Flirt. She had to kill him. The poor woman, dear God, deliver her from this soon …’
On 28 April, just two days after they had departed, Digby and the three other men walked wearily back into Villeret under cover of night. It had been impossible to get anywhere near the front line for German soldiers, they said, let alone to cross it. They would stay in Villeret, come what may. Claire was of course delighted to see Digby return, but this was not a view universally shared in Villeret. And at least one person now decided something would have to be done.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Brave British Soldier
The squad of German military police – universally known as the diables verts, the green devils, on account of the high green collars on their uniforms – knew exactly where they were going when they marched into Villeret at dawn on 16 May. The officer in command of the squad declared he had come ‘to search for horses on the orders of the Kommandant of Le Câtelet’, and then headed directly for the hayloft behind Florency Dessenne’s house in the rue d’En Bas, where Digby and the three other men were hiding. In retrospect, it was agreed that the officer’s reference to an official search for horses was no more than ‘a pretext’: the last horses in Villeret had been requisitioned months before, and it is not easy to get a horse into a hayloft.
Thorpe, Donohoe and Martin were asleep on the hay when the Germans burst in. ‘They were captured without a struggle.’ Digby’s reactions were swifter. The soldiers were barely inside the loft when he ‘leapt through a window’, crashed to the ground some twenty feet below and sprinted into the woods before the Germans could open fire. This was the second time Digby had taken refuge in Trocmé woods, and in the intervening eighteen months he had spent many hours there, poaching rabbits and collecting firewood. He knew the ground as well as any inhabitant of Villeret, and it would have taken a hundred soldiers several days to flush him out. After a brief search, Digby’s pursuers abandoned the chase.
Thorpe, Donohoe and Martin were bound and marched the five miles to Le Câtelet, where they were flung into the prison. Evers gave full vent to his temper and within hours the reprisals began in Villeret. ‘The military police arrived in a furious mood.’ Florency and Marie-Thérèse Dessenne, Léon and Elise Lelong, and Achille Poêtte, the postman, were all arrested and taken to Le Câtelet, along with ‘a number of other inhabitants’ suspected of sheltering the British soldiers. Louise Dessenne cowered in a corner as the search party ransacked her home. ‘They opened every drawer in the kitchen and threw everything on the ground. In one of the drawers there were a few coins in a tin. My sister Marthe bent down to pick them up and this German, I remember the shape of his helmet, he shoved her out of the way and grabbed them himself.’
Ignoring the screams of her infant son, the soldiers dragged Suzanne Boitelle from her house. The following day the Germans returned, this time for Parfait Marié, the acting mayor, who was waiting for them in front of the mairie alongside the garde champêtre, who was also arrested for good measure.
As the villagers and the three soldiers sat awaiting trial in Le Câtelet, the recriminations got underway among those left behind in Villeret, where sentries were posted around the village and in force along the rue d’En Bas, in case the fourth soldier should be unwise enough to reappear. There were those who said that Thorpe, Donohoe and Martin had wanted to be caught since, like Digby, ‘they had plenty of time to escape, but allowed themselves to be captured easily’. Some were ready to accuse them of treachery, noting that their capture had been followed immediately by the arrests of all the principal conspirators. Rumours began to fly. ‘Evidently, under interrogation, one of the Englishmen had turned traitor and spilled the beans. Why, he even accused Monsieur Lelong of being the one who had made the fake passes that had been found on the fugitives.’ But others in the village eyed their neighbours and wondered whether the traitor was not still among them.
On 18 May, Major Evers summoned to Le Câtelet every mayor in the district, save Parfait Marié, who was languishing in a cell just a few yards away, and delivered a long and furious harangue on the fate that awaited any other official or community foolish enough to harbour enemy spies. ‘It was a most virulent sermon,’ the mayors reported, ‘and utterly pointless.’
The trial – if such it could be termed since none of the defendants had legal representation – opened at midday on 20 May, in the château of Le Câtelet, with Judge Grumme – nude fisherman and ‘Big Red Turkey’ – presiding. The villagers were convicted and swiftly sentenced. As the senior village official, Parfait Marié was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour and a 5,000-franc fine. For sheltering the Englishmen, Florency and Marie-Thérèse Dessenne each received a sentence of ten years’ forced labour and a combined fine of 10,000 marks. The Lelongs got eight years’ hard labour each and a 5,000-mark fine. Achille Poëtte was sentenced to forced labour for an indefinite period, and Suzanne Boitelle, for providing food and shelter to the men, was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 marks with eighteen months in a German prison. Suzanne did not, as it happened, have two marks, or francs, let alone a thousand, and was not about to give the German invaders a single sou. ‘I am not going to pay this fine,’ the pistol-eyed woman told Judge Grumme, who immediately and indignantly added another five months to the young mother’s sentence. The garde champêtre was acquitted, but an additional fine of 5,000 marks was imposed on the village as a whole.
Some thought the sentences were strangely lenient. Villeret had already been stripped of every valuable, so it was clear to all that ‘the monetary punishments were strictly theoretical’. German proclamations had warned that anyone sheltering fugitive soldiers would be shot, and the fate of Auguste Chalandre and others had shown this was no idle threat. ‘The affair of the Englishmen ought to have proved fatal for a number of the inhabitants,’ wrote Henri Lelong, mayor of Villeret in 1928. Judge Grumme had always had a reputation as a more humane man than his colleagues – ‘he was odd rather than evil’, thought Henriette Legé – but Henri Lelong was not alone in wondering why the lives of the villagers were spared. Had a deal been struck? If so, it did not i
nclude clemency for the British soldiers.
Thorpe, Donohoe and Martin could not deny that the deadline for surrender had passed some three weeks earlier, but they vehemently rejected the charges of espionage. Thorpe’s defence was passionate, and characteristic: he was the father of three children, he pleaded, and his life should be spared. None of the three accused spoke German, no translator was on hand and there is no evidence the military judge had a clue what the men were saying in their own defence. At five o’clock that evening, Grumme passed sentence on all three: death by firing squad, with sentences suspended until confirmation was received from the superior military authorities in Saint-Quentin, who would render a decision on 26 May, six days hence. The condemned men were marched back to their cells.
As in most wartime military ‘spy trials’, the names of the convicted men and the sentences they had received were officially classified as secret, so as not to alert the enemy that its agents had been apprehended. Like most such rules, this one did not work, and news of the death sentences spread swiftly.
While the trial was underway, Robert Digby hid in the woods outside Villeret, plunged in ‘abject misery’. On the day of the arrests, Evers had posted a sentry beside the Dessenne household and placed Villeret under surveillance; any attempt on his part to see Claire or their child would be an invitation to even worse disaster. His supporters in the village knew where he was, but dared not get news or food to him without alerting the sentries. Digby had spent five days hiding in the undergrowth wondering what to do when a familiar figure appeared in Trocmé woods, calling out his name. It was Emile Marié, Parfait’s father, who had taken over as acting mayor the day his son was arrested.
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