Das Reich (24 page)

But Macpherson embodied the exact spirit that SHAEF had intended to send with the Jedburghs. He had no interest in clandestine life – he considered that his business was to make as much open trouble for the Germans as possible. Thus he wore his uniform and kilt wherever he went. When he acquired a Citroën car, he decorated the bonnet with the Union Jack and Tricolour. Thus also, he moved at once to take into action what men he could muster. His attitude exasperated local SOE agents, who had spent months working in great secrecy, and above all with concern for the welfare of the French people among whom they lived. Macpherson troubled himself only about attacking Germans, and wasted no time brooding about possible reprisals. He considered his instructions: ‘The theme of our training had been that we were to use our own judgment to create whatever mayhem could tie down enemy forces, and build up a trained nucleus of
résistants
for the “phase of Liberation”.’ In the little cluster of huts in the woods in which the
maquis
lived, he reviewed Cournil’s little group. Between them, they had a few old French army rifles and one light machine gun. But Macpherson and his team had come with superb personal equipment – much of it American and extending to a money-belt laden with gold sovereigns for each man. They had also brought Brens, gammon bombs and explosives. Within a few hours of landing – and chiefly to put some life into the
maquisards
– Macpherson had mined and blown an unguarded bridge on the Aurillac–Maurs railway line, where it crossed a country road. They were short of food. Macpherson stopped a civilian lorry and hijacked four sacks of sugar. A German
ration truck drove down the road shortly afterwards, and they shot it to pieces. In the back, they found two tons of chestnut purée. They carted it back to the camp.

Until the moment of the Liberation, Macpherson waged an ambitious and ruthless campaign against the Germans across the region – attacking trains and convoys, rail links and roads with remorseless energy. He was determined to compel the French to decide which side they were on. One day he drove into Decazeville and invited the mayor to join him for a drink at the cafe in the main square. The trembling Frenchman talked to him for a few minutes before there was a sudden shout that a German convoy was approaching. Macpherson and his
maquisards
leaped into the car and drove furiously out of the town, pursued by an armoured car. When they reached the bridge over the road, Macpherson leapt out, climbed on to the parapet, and lobbed a gammon bomb neatly on to the German vehicle as it passed underneath, instantly halting and wrecking it.

The team rapidly became cynical about some of their own men. After one or two bad experiences at
parachutages
, Macpherson insisted that all containers were opened in front of himself or Bourdon. There were some
maquisards
– a small but energetic minority – who stole substantial fortunes in the course of the war by deflecting SOE money from
parachutages
, or by selling off material. In Macpherson’s view – which would be fiercely contested by many
résistants
and some of SOE’s officers – ‘If it hadn’t
been for the British officers there, the
maquis
would have done nothing. They were concerned with the necessities of life, and with establishing a power base.’

To the anger of some SOE officers, Macpherson worked closely with Robert Noireau and the local FTP, simply because he felt that these men were most committed to killing Germans. Local
résistants
were also exasperated by Macpherson’s assertion that, in the first weeks after his arrival, most of the local railway system was ‘working quite normally – indeed it was the only means by which the Germans could still move supplies’ – no doubt assisted by the fact that they had now begun to place a flatcar loaded with very old or very young French hostages in front of most of their engines.

The young Scot was a trained soldier, who regarded the situation in southern France without sentiment, merely as a military problem. He made a fine contribution to the guerilla war in the region. It is not surprising that, in doing so, he aroused fierce controversy.

But this account must focus upon Macpherson’s first days in France and his contribution to the battle against the Das Reich. Shortly after they returned to the
maquis
camp with their load of captured chestnut purée – still little more than hours after their landing – word reached the Jedburgh that armoured elements of the Das Reich Division were still moving up the Figeac–Tulle road. Macpherson learned later to mistrust much of the intelligence he received: ‘If an armoured car and a truck moved into a town, we were always told it was a battalion. If it was two half-tracks, we heard it was a Panther regiment.’ But for once, the news was accurate. That evening the Scot drove to within sight of the road, and glimpsed a lagered tank. He retreated to the camp: ‘I thought we’d better make a little bit of a show,’ he said. But with what? They had used most of their explosives to blow the rail bridge. They had no bazookas. Macpherson thought that they might be able to weaken a small bridge, and cover it for long enough to compel the Germans to dismount from their vehicles, with all the
delay that this entailed. It was time rather than casualties that they could cause the Germans to lose.

Very early the next morning, Macpherson descended to the road with twenty-seven
maquisards
. At his bidding, two men had wrapped wet cloths around the barrels of their Stens. He had learned on the ranges in England that this caused them to sound like heavy machine guns. The men were in buoyant spirits because, unlike Macpherson, they did not appreciate the extreme peril they were about to face. They were all peasants, some wearing fragments of battledress and old French Army uniforms, surmounted by the inevitable berets. A few had put on FFI armbands. Bourdon and Brown remained in camp – there was no merit in risking the entire Jedburgh. Macpherson personally positioned each man, explaining as undramatically as possible what he wished them to do. On one side trees came close to the road; the Scot tied small charges to a succession of trunks, wired them together and gave the exploder to a
maquisard
with orders to twist it when the Germans reached the bridge. He placed ten men with himself around the bridge, and the others among the trees. On the other side, the ground was flat and open. Here, when the Germans tried to deploy upon it, he planned to have his killing ground. There was a solitary cottage by the bridge. They told the old peasant who occupied it to lose himself as rapidly as possible. Then they settled down to wait. There had been rain in the night, and in the first hours after dawn the ground was cold and wet. It was three hours before they heard the shrieking clatter of the approaching column.

It was headed by two motor cyclists, followed by a half-track and a procession of tanks, with trucks in the rear. Macpherson blew the bridge under the leading half-track, which burst into flames. Germans leaped from the wreckage and dashed back down the column. Amidst the barrage of small arms fire the first tank, battened down, paused for a moment to reflect and then crept forward. Macpherson had left a man with a gammon grenade just behind the bridge for this moment. The gammon exploded at the rear of the tank, rupturing a track. The road was blocked.

The tanks further back along the column began to shell their position around the bridge, lumbering off the road into cover. German infantry began to work forward through the trees from the rear. There was a volley of explosions as the mined trees fell. The action lasted perhaps half an hour before Macpherson saw the infantry closing in around their flanks. He signalled the surviving
maquisards
to withdraw, supporting their walking wounded. At a rendezvous a few hundred yards away, their old lorry was waiting. They retreated to the camp.

The official report of their Jedburgh, Quinine, compiled after the Liberation, states that in their action against the Das Reich, twenty out of twenty-seven
maquisards
were killed. Macpherson’s recollection thirty-six years later was that casualties were less severe. But the same lack of fieldcraft and tactical training that cost Guedin’s men so dear further north and west made the Jedburgh action expensive. The
maquisards
simply did not understand the simplest principles of crossing ground under fire.

Macpherson was at pains later to remark that he did not make a practice of embarking on actions against such odds, and indeed he never did it again. It was the urgent need to make an impact on the
maquisards
and on the region, above all upon the Germans, that drove him to stage the ambush. ‘The Germans didn’t suffer much,’ he admitted, beyond the damage to their leading vehicles and an hour or two’s frustration and delay clearing up the mess and replacing tracks. But it was from a thousand such actions the length of France in June 1944 that the confusion and strategic misjudgments of the German High Command concerning Resistance were created, and the passage of the Das Reich to Normandy delayed.

On 10 June 1944, as General Heinz Lammerding reviewed the position of his division and the orders he had received for its urgent movement, he found little cause for satisfaction. Elements of the Das Reich were sprawled across the Lot, Corrèze, and Haute-Vienne. Broken-down tanks and assault guns were lying by the roadside from Tulle to Montauban. All the staff’s warnings about the technical cost of moving heavy armour by the road had been justified. The Panzergrenadier brigade was deployed in a ring covering Limoges against the terrorist attack that the panicky
Kommandantur
in the city considered imminent. The steep hills and woods made communication between all these units erratic and uncertain. The report which Lammerding now transmitted to the general commanding 58th Panzer Corps is a great tribute to the climate created by Resistance after D-Day, and a measure of the Germans’ calamitous error in committing an SS Panzer division to anti-terrorist operations. It is worth quoting in full: