Lancaster Men

by Peter Rees

  Noel landed in a cleared field, lurching backwards as he hit the ground. Picking himself up, he released the harness, rolled up the ’chute and stowed it under a hedge. From escape lectures, he knew it was no use heading towards the coast, which was heavily fortified and manned by German troops. Keeping the Pole Star over his left shoulder, he headed south-east. It was just after midnight.

  Fearing the Germans might come to the site of the crash and start looking for any survivors, Noel wanted to get away from the area as fast as possible. Though the moon was not bright, there was enough light from the stars for him to see reasonably well. Keeping to the woods, he skirted farmhouses with their barking dogs and kept going until daylight, when he stopped in a thick wood. He decided to stay there until the next night.

  Sitting with his back against a tree, he heard a dog baying and coming rapidly closer. His first thought was that the Germans had tracked him down with a bloodhound. Suddenly a big pot-bellied dog rushed past him, still howling, as it chased what Noel hoped was a rabbit or hare. Relieved, he opened his small escape kit. In addition to emergency rations and other necessities, the kits contained currency, a map of the area on a silk scarf, a compass, chocolate bars, chewing gum and barley sugar. Deciding to ration the chocolate, Noel ate two small pieces for breakfast. Concealed in his flying boots was a razor blade which he used to cut off the tops of the boots to make them look more like ordinary shoes. Then he cut off his flying brevet, ribbons, ‘Australia’ badge and insignia of rank, which he pocketed.

  Noel set off again at nightfall. In a field he found a heap of turnip-like mangel-wurzels, apparently stored for cattle feed. ‘I peeled one with my razor blade but it tasted terrible, and hungry as I was, I could not eat it,’ he said. When passing small groups of houses, Noel crept into backyards to try and find a cabbage or a lettuce—anything to eat. He found nothing, and his incursions sent the local dogs into a frenzy of barking.

  At daylight the next day, 3 May, he found himself in a big forest—which he discovered later was the Forêt de Hez. There were few signs of habitation, so he kept walking. Late in the morning he came to a clearing with a few houses and fields and sat among trees on a hillside watching, intent on contacting someone to get some food. In the escape lectures he had been told always to approach a lone person, for if he or she was willing to help, they would not want a ‘collaborator’ to know. Noel saw an old man working with a horse and plough in a field below him. Towards evening, as the farmer started to un-yoke his horse, Noel set off down the hillside towards him, planning to present his French phrase card: ‘I am a shot-down Allied airman—can you help me?’ But before he reached the ploughman, he came upon an old woman gathering wood. ‘She was pretty startled to see me, but I showed her my phrase card, and after reading it, she, without any hesitation, beckoned me to follow her and led me to her cottage in the small hamlet. Shortly afterwards her husband came in.

  Their name was Berthomier, and Noel was in the hamlet of Fillerval, near Beauvais. The old couple gave him a meal of raw bacon, bread and wine, and Noel thought it all tasted ‘jolly good’. As the Berthomiers spoke no English and he no French, Noel ate in silence. Later, the couple took him to a barn whose upper storey was furnished as a bedroom. Noel slept soundly for the first time since he had been shot down. When he awoke, he became aware that a stranger was in the house, and that he was engaged in ‘a pretty serious sort of conversation’ with the Berthomiers. He was a doctor.

  I felt he must have had contact with the Underground, as [the] next day a couple of men who spoke English came and asked me a lot of questions about the other members of the crew, what they looked like, where I came from in Australia, questions about our aircraft, what squadron we were from, name of the base and squadron commanders. I remember one question they asked me was how much flap was used on a Halifax for take-off. Having never flown a Halifax, I could not answer that one.

  Though Noel did not know it at the time, Jack Lynch, Jock Weir and Harry Wilson were being sheltered in other houses in the area. Members of the French Resistance were cross-checking their answers to make sure they were who and what they claimed to be. Jack Hassett, Ted Hawkins, Paddy Clayton, and Johnny Grantham had all died in the crash.

  After Noel had spent three days at Fillerval, a Resistance member arrived in a car to move him on. He ended up at Therdonne, on the outskirts of Beauvais, where a flour-mill worker, Madame Marguerite Defrocourt, took him in, hiding him in her small cottage. She would later explain: ‘I saw him there and thought, “That could be my son,” and I knew his mother would hope someone would care for him.’ At the house Noel met Marguerite’s husband, Maurice, a builder, and her eighteen-year-old son, Albert, who was in a forced labour group working in the local area. With Germans patrolling frequently, Noel was in great danger.

  For the next three weeks he stayed hidden with the Defrocourts, who gave him their main bedroom. They spoke no English, but Albert had a small English/French dictionary and through this they laboriously communicated. ‘We also played draughts together, at which Albert beat me with monotonous regularity,’ Noel said. He spent the days alone in the house, always staying inside. There was a German Army vehicle-maintenance unit only forty metres away—so close he could hear the troops’ voices.

  There was a radio in the house, and if he turned the volume to the lowest setting and put his ear against the set, Noel could listen to the BBC from London. One day he heard a broadcast by Prime Minister John Curtin during his visit to London. ‘It was quite a thrill to hear him with his strong Australian accent. I well remember the surprise and pleasure of unexpectedly hearing his gravelly voice on a BBC broadcast.’ It might well have been the address Curtin gave to the Australian Club on 18 May, in which he defended the bombing campaign over Germany and occupied Europe and denied that it amounted to ‘wanton killing of civilians’.

  While he hid at Therdonne, the Resistance prepared a false French identity card and a work certificate in the name of Albert Charles Favro, born in Ajaccio, Corsica. When visitors came to see the family, he would be trotted out as the prize exhibit. They would shake hands with him, deliver a short burst of French, and shake hands again when they left. Noel had the feeling that everyone in the town must know about him. He was jittery—and his nervousness only increased when one day, from the bedroom, he saw a man in uniform and a peaked cap pass the window on his way to the front door. As he could not get to the back yard to escape, he dived under the bed. Shortly afterwards, Maurice Defrocourt came in. Puzzled by Noel’s apparent absence, he eventually looked under the bed, then burst into laughter and ushered him out to meet the friendly gendarme. He had the same question as all the other visitors: ‘When will the invasion start?’ Noel had to admit he had no idea.

  While Noel was wondering if he would ever get out of France alive, his friend Enid Stumbles opened a letter from the Department of Air and felt suddenly sick with anxiety. Dated 17 May 1944, it deeply regretted to inform her that ‘Pilot Officer Eliot was reported missing as a result of air operations’ on 2 May. That was it—and Enid could find out no more details of what had happened to Noel. A few days later, she finished work at the ABC studios in William Street, Sydney, and caught the train home. The postman had been, bringing the letter Noel had written just before leaving on the Chambly raid. Enid’s heart jumped.

  On 27 May the Resistance moved Noel on again. He and the Defrocourts exchanged tearful farewells when a member of the Underground arrived in a car to pick him up. Noel joined three young American airmen for a journey to an unknown destination. They had not been driving long along the rural road when two German soldiers, one armed with a sub-machine gun and the other with a rifle and bayonet, blocked their path. It was the first time Noel had met any Germans, and he was gripped with anxiety. ‘Our driver, with great sang-froid, showed his papers to the German on his side of the road, made some joking remarks and drove on.’ Along with the three Americans, Noel unclenched his sweating hands and breathed a sigh of relief.r />
  Reaching the railway station at Chaumont en Vexin, Noel was pleasantly surprised to see Jack Lynch and Jock Weir. The three of them, along with a further three American airmen who joined the group, were given railway tickets to Paris and told how to proceed. A small, elderly Frenchwoman was their guide, and they were to follow her, moving in twos, spaced well apart, with each pair keeping the preceding pair in sight. Should the Germans stop the guide or one pair of airmen, the others were to scatter. If the guide met another French person and shook hands with them, they were to follow the new guide. When the train arrived they piled aboard, spreading themselves through several compartments.

  Two or three stations later, several German soldiers got on the train. Jammed in shoulder to shoulder, they filled Noel’s compartment. A French girl stood up and, with a disdainful look, walked out and stood in the corridor for the rest of the trip. Noel wanted to follow her but thought it might look suspicious. He feared one of the Germans might ask him for a light for his cigarette, but they arrived in Paris without any problems and left the train at the busy Gare du Nord railway station. In pairs, they followed their guide through the city streets, trying to look anonymous among the locals in the spring warmth. Jack Lynch and Noel were on the end of the ‘alligator’ line with Jock Weir and another airman walking in front of them.

  There were German soldiers everywhere but by this time we were becoming fairly blase about them, until two German officers stopped Jock and asked him for his identity card. He produced it and one of the officers crumpled it in his hand, smelt it, then handed it back to Jock, who made off as fast as he could. Fortunately he was still able to see the pair in front of him, otherwise he and his mate, Jack and I would have been adrift in Paris. Why they picked on Jock I do not know, though he certainly did not look like a Frenchman. He was dressed in [a] grey dungaree type coat and trousers—he probably looked more like a Dutch agricultural worker.

  The party eventually arrived at a florist’s shop and were taken to a back room, where they met a woman named Virginia d’Albert-Lake. Born and raised in the United States, she had married a Frenchman, Philippe d’Albert-Lake, in 1937. After the German invasion of France, Philippe urged Virginia to return to her family in Florida, but she steadfastly refused. In 1943, the couple joined the Comète network, which smuggled Allied airmen out of France through Spain and back to England. Over the next year, they hid sixty-six airmen in their two homes; Virginia would often take them for walks through occupied Paris to let them get some fresh air.

  Formed in 1940, the Comète escape line was based around village priests, teachers and doctors. All of its members took enormous risks. Men caught helping Allied airmen were shot on the spot, and women were sent to concentration camps. Virginia d’Albert-Lake was charged with quizzing new airmen to confirm their bona fides, a crucial job now that German soldiers who had been educated in English-speaking countries were trying to pass themselves off as Allied airmen.

  After dark, a young Frenchwoman arrived to take Noel and two of the American airmen to her flat for the night. Going up the stairs, she told them to be quiet, as there was a collaborator in the flat above. The three men slept in the one bed and early the next morning, 28 May, they and the woman set off for a railway station, striding through almost empty streets that were littered with Resistance pamphlets dropped during the night. Noel was walking along the opposite side of the street from their guide when she crossed over and took his arm. They walked on arm in arm until they reached the station. The train was packed with Parisians travelling to the country in search of food to supplement their rations. With Germany plundering the French treasury, extra food, as well as clothes and fuel, were virtually impossible to obtain.

  There were sixteen evaders on the train. Forced to stop frequently because of Allied bombing attacks on the line, the train moved slowly. At the town of Châteaudun, 115 kilometres south-west of Paris, they followed their guide off the train and sorted themselves out in pairs. German soldiers armed with sub-machine guns were guarding each end of the platform. As the airmen filed out through the ticket collector’s gate, they saw a dozen or so Gestapo officers forming two lines a metre apart through which all the train passengers had to pass. As they did so, Noel noticed that the Gestapo closely scrutinised each one. ‘Our guide went through without blinking an eyelid, but I felt sure that at least some of us airmen had come to the end of our freedom. I felt very conscious of my blue RAAF uniform trousers. Obviously, it was not us they were looking for and we all passed through and followed our girl along the street, shaking our heads in disbelief.’

  After travelling a short distance, the young Frenchwoman went up to a man and shook hands with him, signifying that from then on the airmen had to follow him. Passing through the town, they continued on into the country, strung out along the road in twos. At one point, they passed a school building that German troops had taken over. There were two armed sentries at the entrance and Noel thought this gaggle of sixteen young men, wandering along two by two at regular intervals, was sure to arouse their suspicions. ‘When Jack and I were almost abreast of the gateway, one of the sentries started to walk towards us—I thought, “Here we go again!” However, before he reached us he stopped and allowed us to pass. We found it hard not to quicken our steps.’

  It was a hot afternoon, and as most of them had been in hiding for some weeks with little if any exercise, they began to tire. Finally they were able to rest in a small wood, where they stayed until dark. After a walk of several kilometres during which they tensely crossed a bridge guarded by Germans, they reached a farmhouse, where Jack, Jock, Noel and two Americans were to stay. In the farmhouse kitchen a meal awaited them, with much vin rouge. They were soon drunk and treating the farmers, the Fouchard family, to a vigorous, if unmusical, rendition of the Marseillaise. That night they bedded down in the hayloft above the stable.

  Next morning a noise in the courtyard awakened them. Peering out cautiously, Noel saw two German soldiers on a motorbike and sidecar just below them. But their fears that the Germans would search the place proved unfounded: they were there to requisition food, not look for Allied airmen. The group stayed at the farm for two weeks, confined to the loft during the day. Each night they went on a ‘toilet run’, walking through the woods with the farmer and his three daughters, Simone, Micheline and Jacqueline, and making the necessary deviations, much to the amusement of the girls. It was their job to take meals to the men, who pulled the food up to the loft on a rope.

  While they waited at the farm, preparations for the approaching Allied invasion, as well as Gestapo infiltration, were playing havoc with the Comète escape line. With Allied aircraft targeting communications, railways, and bridges, moving men became difficult. The provision of food was also becoming a problem in large towns and cities, and safe houses were being compromised by the Gestapo. MI9, the British escape and evasion intelligence unit, identified several ‘choke points’ that had to be cleared.

  From mid-1943 MI9, working alongside its American equivalent, MIS-X, developed Operation MARATHON. The plan was to concentrate evaders into areas that would be safely isolated from an Allied advance and from the expected German withdrawal. Three forest areas were identified: near Rennes in Brittany, in the Belgian/French Ardennes, and near Châteaudun. MI9 proposed that once the battle for France began, all evaders at choke points should be moved to a camp in the forest area nearest to them. This would ensure that they were not trapped behind the front lines or in battle areas.

  The camp near Châteaudun was hidden in the Fréteval forest and code-named Sherwood. It was the biggest of the camps and it was here that Noel Eliot went on 11 June 1944. Next day, the Germans arrested Virginia d’Albert-Lake at an impromptu roadblock. She was on her way to Fréteval with a group of English and American airmen and carrying a list of contact people in the region. To avoid the collapse of the whole network, she quickly swallowed the list. After being threatened with execution and tortured, Virginia was transported to the
Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she spent the rest of the war. She never betrayed the network. For this, Noel Eliot—who was unaware of her capture—had reason to be thankful, as the Allied invasion on 6 June offered hope that his ordeal would be soon over.

  26

  D-DAY

  As he ambled along the Brighton beachfront, past stunted trees and crews moving distractedly around their anti-aircraft guns, Warrant Officer Keith Woodward heard a faint humming. It was 6 a.m. on 6 June 1944, and the first rays of a weak summer sun struggled through a light cloud cover, coaxing a feeble gleam from the waters of the English Channel. Keith, a twenty-three-year-old navigator, served with both 463 and 467 Squadrons. On leave from Waddington, he knew he was hearing the first sounds of an airborne armada. As the noise of throbbing engines grew louder,

  The pseudo-calm of this coast was torn away. I listened to the harsh crescendo of the air. I followed the rising of tone and volume. Noise hummed and wailed, to find the chasms between quiet buildings, to awaken the sleeping houses. Noise began to rock the town, the noise of a thousand engines, and a thousand more, growing, widening, until the half-naked heavens were thick and cumbrous and wild with aircrafts’ roaring. My head was lifted and turning northward, as from every building people came rushing out of doors. The mass of black specks crawling high aloft, under the cloud base, became a stream of definite shapes; the clear design of each machine was visible as the first squadrons passed overhead; the separate outlines began to blur as they touched the distance; then they became a mass of black specks again, and the leading formations were lost to me.