Donovan's Devils
Page 18
A further reorganization occurred toward the end of May, this time to accommodate the demand from General Charles de Gaulle’s Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN), or French Committee of National Liberation, that French officers direct the French resistance. De Gaulle had succeeded in unifying the different factions of resistance inside France under one organization that functioned as a Home Army and was known as Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI), or French Forces of the Interior. Serious problems could arise if the resistance units on the ground would receive orders from a dual chain of command, the SFHQ and the FFI.
On May 24, 1944, the commander of the FFI, General Marie-Pierre Koenig, wrote to Eisenhower’s chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, to recommend the creation of a tripartite staff to include “the English, American, and French elements required to manage the actions of the French resistance.” “If the Supreme Commander and the CFLN agree with my opinion that the command of the French Forces of the Interior ought to be entrusted to a French general, and if they want to entrust me with this command, I am ready to serve under their orders.” Such a letter would have been considered extremely pretentious six months before, but on the eve of the invasion Eisenhower wanted the full engagement of the FFI in the coming fight. On May 30, the SFHQ French operations were transferred to the État-Major des Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (EMFFI), or General Staff of the FFI. Koening was named commander in chief of the FFI with a British and an American deputy to assist him in his command.1
The odds were against the tripartite arrangement working. At the staff level, multilingual officers with different levels of skills and experience had to learn to work together. An undercurrent of divergent political views among British, French, and Americans often created differences of opinion that had to be settled. The British were of the view that the resistance ought to be organized in small, underground cells controlled from London. They favored a limited supply of weapons and equipment out of fear that the resistance groups would use them to fight one another rather than the Germans; it had happened with resistance movements in the Balkans. The Americans were interested in accomplishing the invasion of France as quickly and with as few losses as possible. They advocated dropping large amounts of supplies and ammunition to create militarily effective resistance units capable of harassing the Germans across the country.2 The French were very keen to appear in control and as the liberators of their country. They were also concerned with mass reprisals against the civilian population that premature armed actions against the Germans would cause. With an eye already toward post-war reconstruction, they wanted to protect key infrastructure objects either from unnecessary sabotage on the part of the resistance or from destruction by the Germans. The operators in the field had their own set of issues, too. They had to quickly assess the local resistance leaders and make decisions on how to prioritize the supply of weapons and equipment. Life-and-death decisions had to be made when deciding which resistance units to support: those that were most effective against the Germans or those that were most threatened.
The arrangement nevertheless worked, despite these odds. With regards to arming and supporting the French resistance, the American point of view prevailed. OSS and SOE undertook a massive effort to pack and drop supplies starting in May and through the end of September 1944, when the needs of the resistance dropped significantly because the Allies had overrun most of France. OSS had a packing station in Hume, England, where 326 trained personnel and prisoners of war worked around the clock to prepare containers and packages of supplies destined for northern France. A second packaging center in Algiers with a staff of 142 serviced southern France. Containers were metallic cylinders that could hold up to 220 pounds of supplies, typically arms, ammunition, explosives, and demolition devices. They were fitted with parachutes and released from the planes by aircrews. Packages were bundles of non-breakable items such as clothing, shoes, medicines, and packaged food rations. They weighed up to one hundred pounds and were dropped without parachutes.3 Whereas fewer than three thousand containers had been dropped in France throughout 1943, more than fifty thousand containers and fifteen thousand packages were dropped between June and the end of September 1944.4
The supplies were delivered in close coordination between the SOE, OSS, and French staff who maintained radio contact with their operators attached to resistance units in the field. These operators submitted requests for materials and suggested several safe dropping zones with a surface area of at least two square miles each. The staff in London determined jointly the allocation of supplies based on overall strategic and tactical priorities set by the SHAEF. On the day before the drop, BBC broadcasts advertised in coded messages the drop zone where the supplies would arrive. The team in the field radioed immediately confirmation of the drop and organized a reception party with signals to pinpoint the drop area. Modified US Air Force and Royal Air Force bombers flew in the supplies, typically at night, although American pilots completed successfully at least four massive supply drops in full daylight involving 756 B-17 Flying Fortresses with escort fighters and delivering almost nine thousand containers. The largest of such drops occurred on July 14, 1944, Bastille Day, in which 349 Fortresses delivered 3,791 containers to six open resistance centers around France. The supplies delivered that day included 417 tons of equipment, sufficient to arm more than twenty thousand men.5
From January to September 1944, the OSS parachuted more than 3,500 tons of supplies from England and another 1,500 tons from Algiers. The SOE sent a slightly smaller amount.6 In a report to General de Gaulle in January 1945, Koenig estimated that the drops had supplied weapons and ammunition for 425,000 men.7
* * *
Coordinating the delivery of these vast amounts of supplies in the field, as well as training the resistance fighters in using the weapons and equipment sent to them, required manpower. Before D-Day, eighty-five officers, enlisted men, and civilians from the OSS French Special Operations and Secret Intelligence branches worked with their SOE counterparts to organize the French resistance. To support the resistance activities that surged after the landings in Normandy, the SFHQ called to action the Jedburghs, three-man multinational teams that had spent the months leading to D-Day in eastern England preparing for this mission. Thirteen Jedburgh teams parachuted behind enemy lines in June, ten of them in Brittany, which Eisenhower had declared an area of top priority for resistance actions. Another seventy teams went in between July and September. The majority of these teams went to the areas to the northwest and northeast of the Massif Central, the mountainous region in central France from where resistance units of the FFI attacked the German units retreating from South France towards the French-German border. In total, 286 Jedburghs—83 Americans, 90 British, 103 French, 5 Belgian, and 5 Dutch—parachuted into France, Belgium, and Holland between June and October 1944.
On the ground, the Jedburgh teams played a liaison role between the Allied headquarters and local resistance groups already organized by earlier SO and SOE efforts or by the French themselves. They assessed the strengths and needs of these groups, maintained radio communications with the SFHQ headquarters in England, arranged for delivery of supplies, collected intelligence, and received directives for military operations in their area, which they transmitted to the resistance leaders. They served as instructors to the resistance fighters and advised the local commanders on organizing attacks against German lines of communications and garrisons. Due to their small size and the nature of their assignment, the Jedburghs served primarily as liaison teams. They did not engage in independent actions behind the lines or lead resistance units in the fight against the Germans. In those situations where the SFHQ deemed it necessary to send fighting units capable of operating alone behind the lines or to lead local resistance groups in action, they called upon the Operational Groups of Company B, 2671st Special Reconnaissance Battalion Provisional (Separate), also known as the French OGs.8
The French OGs had arrived in Al
giers in February 1944 and had spent the time there conducting extensive parachute training and preparing for the day of action. Between June 8 and September 2, 1944, fourteen French OG sections from Algiers, each with fifteen men, including a radio operator and a medical technician, parachuted behind enemy lines. OSS transferred two French operational groups to London where they joined two Norwegian operational groups, 120 men in total, assigned to support the war effort in France because of the lack of action in Norway. Seven missions departed from London between August 1 and September 9, 1944.9
Like the Jedburghs in northern France and Brittany, the OGs coordinated supply drops for the resistance units and trained the Maquisards in the use of weapons, explosives, and demolition devices sent to them. But, being larger in size and closer in structure to military units than the Jedburgh teams, the OGs often engaged in direct action, ambushing and harassing German units as they retreated. In implementing the Allied anti-scorched earth strategy, the OGs also captured and secured key infrastructure objects to keep the retreating Germans from destroying them. By September 10, 1944, all the OG teams parachuted into France had completed their missions and returned to England or were overrun by the Allied armies in their advance eastward toward Germany. During their engagement, the French OGs and the Maquis groups they helped train and equip killed 461, wounded 467, and captured 10,021 Germans. They demolished eleven power lines and cables, mined seventeen roads, shot down three aircraft, and destroyed two trains and three locomotives.10 The story of team Patrick, led by Serge Obolensky, the veteran of the September 1943 mission to Sardinia, helps understand how the French OGs achieved such success in their missions.
* * *
Missions of French OGs attached to the European and Mediterranean theaters of operations.
By the time the invasion of France began, Serge Obolensky had reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and had become executive officer for the French Operational Groups based in Algiers. He took charge of the French and Norwegian OGs that were transferred to England to launch missions behind the German lines from there. The OGs resided in Brockhall Hall, a country estate in Northamptonshire, a little over seventy miles north of London. It offered the perfect setting for the OSS personnel. The Manor House, property of the Thornton family since the mid-1600s, came with four hundred acres of farmland and woods that offered seclusion and privacy.11 Yet it was only four miles from the village of Weedon, where the OGs often walked or biked for a pint of beer. It was located about twenty miles from Harrington Field, which the OGs used to fly out for their parachute missions.
A favorite spot for the OGs was a little pub called the Spotted Cow, just down the road from Weedon and a short distance from Brockhall. It became a regular hangout for the Americans, who could walk there through the fields. Darts and cribbage were the evenings’ entertainment, with competitions between locals and guests where pints of bitters were at stake. Occasionally, the OGs received passes to Northhampton, a fairly good-sized city about nine miles from Brockhall, where they could watch a movie and then stop at the USO club for a cup of tea and a sweet roll.12
At Brockhall, the OGs kept a dog and a cat as mascots. They trained the dog to bark at airplanes when they went overhead. The dog ran across fields, looking up and barking until the plane was out of sight. The cat, on the other hand, was taught to parachute. Several of the men had fashioned a parachute that they would attach to the cat before dropping him from the roof of Brockhall. The cat would descend gracefully to the ground with claws extended and with what appeared to be a smile on his face. As soon as he touched the ground, the cat would take off and hide, but not for long. His parachute gave away his position and allowed the OGs to retrieve him. He seemed to enjoy the experience, as he never left camp. His name was Geronimo.13
Always a man of action, Obolensky volunteered to parachute in the Indre department in central France, four hundred miles behind German lines, at the head of a team of twenty-five men selected from the French and Norwegian OGs. Team Patrick’s primary mission was to prevent the destruction of the dam and hydroelectric plant at Eguzon, the largest one in France at the time. In addition, they were to attack railroads and highways when the Germans began their retreat from the region. In early August, Obolensky assembled the team at Brockhall and explained the operation. He passed around pictures of the dam and described a preliminary plan to approach and take the objective. He swore the team to silence and cancelled all leaves, per standard practice, to maintain the secrecy of the operation. The demolition engineers began to calculate the charges they needed to make their way through the German positions. Then the men began preparing the charges of plastic explosives that they molded by hand into packages the size of a one-pound hamburger. The explosives were made out of nitroglycerin, which after some exposure gave the men a severe headache, so they had to take turns getting fresh air outside.
The team was ready on August 14, 1944. That night, five B-24 Liberator bombers flew in formation from Harrington Field toward central France. There were five OGs in each plane with their parachutes on, gear and side arms fastened on their body. Rifles, ammunition, field rations, and other equipment were secured in containers in the bomb bay of the aircraft. When the plane approached the drop zone, the OGs assumed positions on the floor of the bomber. The ball turret at the belly of the bomber had been removed before the flight and the sixty-inch hole had been covered by a piece of plywood so no one would fall through. The engines slowed and the plane began to descend. The jumpmaster removed the piece of plywood, and the OGs could see the lights of towns and villages below as the plane raced forward.
Ellsworth Johnson, the medic of the team, remembered checking his watch before leaving the plane. It was 0120 hours on August 15, and the plane was at five hundred feet. From this altitude, the first 350 feet were in near free-fall. The jumper waited in agony for the static line to snap and pull the deployment bag out of the container on his back, thus freeing the canopy of the parachute and allowing it to deploy. Malfunctions happened and resulted in tragic accidents, because there was no time to deploy the parachute by hand or to activate the spare one. The life of the paratrooper was in the hands of the person who had packed his parachute or in those of the jumpmaster who fastened his static line to the body of the aircraft. A song that the paratroopers sang to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” captured the agony they felt as they hurled to the ground:
“Is everybody happy?” cried the Sergeant looking up,
Our hero feebly answered, “Yes,” and then they all stood up,
He jumped right out into the blast, his static line unhooked,
And he ain’t gonna jump no more.
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
And he ain’t gonna jump no more.
He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock,
He felt the wind, he felt the clouds, he felt the awful drop.
He jerked the cord, the silk spilled out, and wrapped around his legs
And he ain’t gonna jump no more.
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,
And he ain’t gonna jump no more.
The risers wrapped around his neck, connectors cracked his dome,
His lines were snarled and tied in knots around his skinny bones,
His canopy became his shroud, and hurled him to the ground,
And he ain’t gonna jump no more.14
* * *
Everyone in Team Patrick executed a perfect landing that night. Smooth rolling maneuvers when touching the ground helped them avoid broken bones or other injuries. Once on the ground, they found Frenchmen all around eager to welcome them and help them out of their harnesses. The nylon canopies of the parachutes were quickly set aside—French women coveted their material for lingerie
in those times when silk was scarce. Obolensky discovered that only three planes had dropped their cargo and men. He decided to hide in a forest nearby and wait until the next night. The Maquisards posted sentries all around in case the Germans had noticed the low-lying airplanes and decided to investigate. The following night, the two Liberators arrived on time and dropped the rest of the team and their equipment.14
At dawn on August 16, after the entire team had assembled, the Maquisards brought three trucks, loaded all the men, gear, and equipment, and drove to a small town of about two hundred people called Le Blanc where the team set up its base of operations. A few miles from there, they found an abandoned quarry suitable as a storage site for their explosives and demolition equipment. On August 17, Obolensky sent a patrol to reconnoiter the area near the hydroelectric plant. They came back with information that only a small company of Germans under the charge of a young lieutenant were at the plant. However, an entire regiment of Vichy soldiers was stationed at Eguzon to help the Germans protect the dam. Upon receiving this information, Obolensky moved the team to the headquarters of the local Maquis in the Muhet area about ten miles from his objective. They set up camp in the woods, half a mile from the main highway connecting Limoges and Paris, close enough to hear the German columns rolling by in trucks. The OGs began providing instructions to the Maquisards on the use of bazookas, mortars, and machine guns they had brought with them, which the French put to use in the next few days in small ambushes along the forested roads.