Das Reich (33 page)

The men who remember Tonkin from those days speak of him as ‘the classic English public schoolboy’; a keen shot and rugger player, compulsively energetic and cheerful, an enthusiastic practical joker off-duty. Like all the SAS, he was immensely fit, and bursting to carry the war to the Germans.

A few minutes after 1 am on 6 June, the mid-upper gunner of the Halifax slipped from his turret and moved up the fuselage, softly shaking the five men awake. They finished their coffee, climbed to their feet, and fitted the huge rucksacks to the quick-release clips below their knees. Tonkin, the first man out, groped his way to the jump hole in the floor of the aircraft. Gazing below him in the light of the brilliant moon, he began to identify the ground details he had spent so many hours memorizing. The engines cut, and the aircraft started to glide. The gunner shouted the ‘Go’ signal and swept down his arm. Tonkin slid forward:

The reception committee was just three men – the farmer who owned the land, his son and a farmhand. They were nervous about interference from a nearby German night-fighter field, and indeed they had scarcely finished bundling and hiding the great white parachute canopies when an aircraft droned overhead, and circled for several minutes. The team dozed in a barn through the dawn of D-Day. At around 7 am, a quiet dark-haired young man carrying a Sten gun arrived. There followed one of those conversations that always made those taking part feel slightly absurd. ‘Is there a house in the wood?’ asked Tonkin in French. ‘Yes, but it is not very good,’ answered the visitor.

Tonkin had recognized him from a photograph he had seen in London, even before he heard the password. This was ‘Samuel’, one of SOE French Section’s outstanding agents. Major Amédée Maingard de la Ville-ès-Offrans was a twenty-five-year-old Mauritian of aristocratic background, who had been studying accountancy in London when war broke out. He volunteered at once for the 60th Rifles, and it was there that Selwyn Jepson’s talent scouts sought him out and asked if he would go to France. He was parachuted into the Indre in April 1943 to assist ‘Hector’ – Maurice Southgate. After Southgate’s arrest, Samuel and the redoubtable Pearl Witherington divided his area between them, and built up two of the most effective networks in SOE, blowing scores of rail links on the eve of D-Day and in the weeks that followed.

That D-Day morning, news of the invasion had still not reached Samuel or his assistants. For some hours, after so many months of impatience and disappointment, they were frankly disbelieving of the parachutists’ report that the invasion had begun. But Samuel was due to receive a
parachutage
many miles away that night, and Tonkin and Crisp and the Jedburgh team were to receive a further SAS party on the night of 7 June. At 7.30 am that morning they left the farm by car – two hours before German troops arrived to
comb the area unsuccessfully for evidence of a drop. On 7 June, some forty miles south-eastwards, Tonkin was joined by Lieutenant Twm Stephens and eight more SAS. The Jedburgh team moved east, to begin demolition and
maquis
training around Leblanc. The SAS, eleven strong, then moved a few miles by truck to yet another dropping zone, this time close to the main Limoges-Poitiers road, south of Montmorillon.

Tonkin now spent the first of many hours with Samuel and local Resistance leaders, emphasizing the urgency of concentrating attacks on railways and petrol supplies, and discussing how best to assist the training of the
maquis.
There were some 2,800 FTP and 6,400 Gaullist
maquis
in the Vienne, most of them under-armed and all of them under-trained. Before D-Day, the local Resistance had concentrated upon assisting the escape of shot-down Allied aircrew, and there had been little sabotage. The flat, open country did not lend itself to guerilla war as in the Dordogne and the Lot, until the Germans had been thrown decisively on to the defensive. Colonel Bernard, the local AS chief, seemed to many
résistants
too regimental and orthodox to make the best use of his forces. He had attempted some measure of cooperation with the communists but relations between the FTP and the AS were as usual jealous and fractious.

To the British soldiers, among whom only Tonkin possessed any command of French, the
maquis
seemed exotic and somewhat bewildering. John Hislop, further east with another SAS unit, described them bluntly as ‘obscure of purpose, jealous of their position and uncooperative’. The Bulbasket team were chiefly perturbed by the excessive French zeal to get into action. Tonkin, in a strange country and utterly unfamiliar conditions, quickly decided that the only reasonable course was to trust the
maquis
in almost everything. He and Samuel took a conscious decision that, since it was impossible to keep secret the arrival of a large body of uniformed men, they should seek to capitalize upon it for intelligence, propaganda and prestige. Samuel believed that his men could keep the railways cut east of Poitiers. The SAS would
concentrate on the vital Poitiers–Bordeaux and Poitiers–Tours lines south of the city. The SAS would camp with groups of
maquisards
, to whom they could give weapon training, and rely on the
résistants
and local people for warning of a German attack.

On the morning of 10 June, in Tonkin’s words ‘a small, very frightened and therefore highly courageous French civilian (I think he was a railway employee) arrived at our newly established base. He told us that there were eleven petrol trains on a well-camouflaged and heavily guarded series of sidings about a kilometre south-west of Châtellerault.’ London had told them repeatedly that petrol was a priority target. But before calling for an air strike, it was essential to pinpoint and confirm the existence of the trains.

Lieutenant Twm Stephens was a fierce, wiry little Welsh regular soldier who had transferred to the SAS after meeting John Tonkin in a transit camp in North Africa after his escape in Italy. Stephens, too, had been a prisoner of war. He came to France with a passionate hatred of all things German, and a determination to erase the indignity of surrender. Although he spoke no French it was agreed that he should accompany the railwayman and another
résistant
to reconnoitre the petrol trains. A civilian suit was found for him. Despite Stephens’s withering comments on French transport, he accepted the loan of a bicycle. The three men set off on the thirty-five-mile ride to Châtellerault.

They returned, exhausted, late the following morning. At 5.17 that afternoon, Special Forces HQ logged a cipher message from Bulbasket, giving the map reference of the petrol trains. The message was at once passed to 2nd Tactical Air Force. Shortly after 8 pm that night, twenty-four Mosquitos of 487 RNZAF, 464 RAAF and 107 RAF squadrons took off from their bases in south-east England to attack the sidings at Châtellerault.

Late that evening, Tonkin and his men stood by the unlit bonfires on the dropping zone, ready to receive the main party of SAS. To their consternation, they saw approaching northwards on the main road from Limoges a great column of lights. It was
clearly a major German troop movement. There was a quick debate. They decided that if they moved quickly to clear the DZ, there was just time to handle the drop. The drone of the Stirlings closed on the field. The fires were lit and parachutes began to bloom above them. Then, to their horror, they saw coloured lights suddenly burst forth on the containers in the sky. It was the fruit of an ill-conceived technical innovation in England, to make containers immediately visible on the ground. The lights were supposed to switch on only at impact, but something had gone disastrously wrong. As the containers touched, soldiers ran desperately forward to smash the light bulbs.
Résistants
urged forward the bullock carts to move the great 500 lb containers, 16 tons of supplies in all. On the road, the German convoy had extinguished its lights. They were vehicles of the Das Reich. Mercifully for the British, they made no move to intervene.

Tonkin met Sergeant Jessiman, commanding the new arrivals. There had been yet another change of plan, reported the NCO. There had been a request from SHAEF for attacks on the railways west of Poitiers, too distant for Bulbasket to reach. Two officers and fourteen men had therefore been dropped ‘blind’ on the vital lines, with orders to march to join Tonkin after they had laid their charges. As Tonkin’s men settled for the remainder of the night in a farmyard, they could see the great glow in the sky to the north-west, from the flames of Poitiers. Still further north, beyond their vision, more fires were burning. 2nd TAF’s Mosquitos had attacked Châtellerault in three waves at very low level with cannon, forty-eight 500 lb bombs, and perfect accuracy. The petrol trains, more precious than gold to Germany’s battle for Normandy and to the movement of the Das Reich, were blazing beyond salvage.

The RAF’s 38 Group made disappointing practice of dropping the four SAS ‘blind’ parties. Lieutenant Morris landed to find one of his troopers missing – he was never seen again, and they assumed
a parachute failure. Sergeant Holmes landed successfully near Airvault, blew a stretch of rail and joined Tonkin later. Corporal Kinnevane and his team were dropped, disastrously, in the middle of the town of Airvault. One man vanished and was never heard of again. The others were compelled to abandon all their explosives and equipment in order to escape. They reached Tonkin only much later.

Lieutenant Peter Weaver, with three men from his old auxiliary unit, landed almost 100 miles from Tonkin’s camp. They were equipped with pistols, wireless and explosives, but no food. They were told that they could live off the country. Weaver asked for portable bicycles to be dropped with them, but the request was refused. None of his party spoke a word of French, but they were ordered to communicate with the French only in emergency. As soon as they landed, they discovered that they were many miles off target. They hid up through the hours of daylight, then walked all night towards the railway. At dawn, they heard the sound of a train. Once more they took cover through the day, in a cornfield where they had the disturbing experience of watching the farmer harvesting around them, until they were left at dusk like rabbits in the tiny patch remaining. In the darkness, they slid down to the line, laid their charges, and retreated a few hundred yards. They waited hours before they were rewarded with an explosion, the hiss of steam and much shouting from the line. Then they set off eastwards towards Tonkin.

They had been told to walk through the fields and avoid roads, but in darkness they found this much too slow. They marched for ten nights, growing very hungry. Occasionally they would separate for an hour, each foraging in a different direction. Once, one of them found a goose, but more often it was only an egg or a few vegetables. One day, in a wood, they were astounded to hear American voices. They stepped cautiously into a clearing and found a major and sergeant in American uniforms sitting alone, surrounded by a great mass of equipment, food, wireless gear and, above all, money – they had a fat chest of French francs, Swiss
francs and American dollars. They said that they had been sent to supply money to the Resistance, but had yet to find any suitable beneficiaries. They asked the British if they would like some. Weaver politely declined, on the grounds that they were overloaded already. They marched on.

When at last they reached the rendezvous, to their dismay they found no sign of Tonkin and his men. Desperately, they approached a farmhouse and asked for news. They were lucky in their choice. The farmer pedalled off on his bicycle, and some time later a car loaded with heavily armed
maquisards
raced up in a cloud of dust. They were taken to a local village, where a crowd fell upon them. Girls kissed them, wine was thrust upon them, and their desperate hunger was appeased. ‘Don’t worry about the Germans, they’re all in Poitiers,’ said a
résistant
lightly when Weaver showed his unease. They were carried in triumph to the
maquis
camp, and at once put to work instructing the Frenchmen in small arms: ‘They hardly knew how to throw a grenade,’ said Weaver. They had weapons, but little idea what to do with them. For four days, the
maquisards
insisted that they knew nothing of any other British soliders. Then it dawned on Weaver that the French were simply so delighted to have acquired a private weapon-training team that they were concealing the truth. The SAS insisted upon being taken to the rendezvous. Very well, said the
résistants
flamboyantly, but on the way they would attack a café that the Germans used. They crowded into their cars and set off. To the intense relief of the British, the café proved empty. They drove without incident to the SAS camp.

For almost three weeks, Tonkin and his men had been among the
maquis
. Four jeeps armed with Vickers K machine guns had been parachuted to them. By night, they patrolled the area or carried the sabotage teams to within easy reach of rail targets perhaps twenty miles away. They had attacked the lines a dozen times. Richard Crisp, young and perhaps too gentle for this kind of war, had nonetheless taken out successful expeditions to mine the roads for German convoys, spreading dirt across the road at
intervals in front of the mines, to compel the enemy to stop and sweep constantly after the first explosion. Tonkin himself went out repeatedly to lay charges. The one serious mishap was that the Phantom team, dropped at a DZ some miles away on 12 June, had failed to link up with Tonkin’s men, and were reportedly stockpiling weapons for the
maquis
from their own base. Tonkin unsuccessfully tried to get them to join him, but was able to maintain contact with London through his own wireless operator, Corporal Chick.