The Greatest Escape: How one French community saved thousands of lives from the Nazis - A Good Place to Hide (29 page)

The Resistance had an additional role to play. If the occupying forces in, say, the Paris area succeeded in reaching the invasion point, then that would leave Paris as an easy target for a Resistance takeover. Wherever the Germans sent reinforcements forward, the Resistance would swoop on the vacated territory. On the other hand, what if the Germans decided not to reinforce their defences but ordered their troops to instead stay where they were and try to hold on to their territory? Then the Allied invasion force would soon punch a hole in the Atlantic Wall, and the invasion would succeed. So the presence of a powerful, armed Resistance was intended to put the Germans in a no-win fork. Try to reinforce, and you commit yourself to fighting your way across wrecked bridges, blocked roads and through ambushes. Succeed in getting through? Then watch your conquests be taken over by the Resistance filling the vacuum you left behind. Stay where you are? Then watch the Allies pouring in through a hole in the Atlantic Wall, sweeping everything before them.

That was the plan for invasion day. But even before the actual invasion, the Resistance had an important role to play in tying up German forces. A  guerrilla army can wreak havoc on its enemies using very limited resources. As an example, during the ‘Troubles’
in Northern Ireland the British maintained between 9000 and 21,000 troops there; yet they were facing a Provisional IRA that counted its armed and active members in the hundreds rather than thousands. So for the Secret Army in France in 1944, a train derailed here, a ‘collaborator’ assassinated there, an army patrol ambushed somewhere else—all these meant that the Germans were kept constantly busy, and constantly on the back foot, rather than organising a defence against the inevitable invasion.

It would be nice to write that the Resistance on the Plateau set about the Germans with devastating effect in May of 1944. Nice, but untrue. A list of the actions fought is hardly the stuff of wartime derring-do.

12 May:
Theft of 30 kilos of lard, six sausages, four legs of ham and five kilos of butter from a lady farmer in Le Mazet-Saint-Voy. The thieves told the farmer they were STO dodgers living in the forest of Le Meygal, and that if she lodged a complaint they would come back and burn down her farm.

20–21 May:
Three young men aged between twenty and 25 staged a series of raids across the Plateau. They stole 1000 francs from a lady farmer at Chomor near Le Chambon; 2300 francs and four sausages from a farmer at Gratte near Le Mazet; 5000 francs and three sausages from a home in Ronsaveaux; and finally a massive 54,925 francs from an unnamed individual, consisting of 4925 francs from community funds and 50,000 francs from the individual himself (or herself).

25 (or 26, the facts are unclear) May:
Four men armed with submachine guns broke into the town hall at Le Mazet-Saint-Voy and demanded that the secretary hand over the census records from 1921 to 1930. They then moved to the home of the town hall secretary in Le Chambon and demanded at gunpoint that she hand over the keys. Next they ransacked the town hall looking for census figures.
Having failed to find what they wanted, they took 500 meat ration cards, 500 bread ration cards and 500 assorted other ration cards. They left in a Peugeot car in the direction of Fay-sur-Lignon.

26 May:
Four men robbed two farmers: they took 6000 francs, 30 kilos of lard and twelve sausages from the first farmer, and 1700 francs, fifteen kilos of lard and two legs of ham from the second. This time they didn’t get away with it completely. One of the thieves was arrested by the gendarmes, along with an accomplice charged with receiving stolen goods.

27 May:
The same men who had raided the town hall of Le Chambon on 25 or 26 May returned, heavily armed, and took away the 1925 census information, the register of food ration coupons and other pieces of census information.

It may well be that some of these actions were carried out by the faux maquis, the freelance bands of thieves pretending to be part of the Resistance. But your average rural village thief seldom carries a submachine gun or wants census information. Most of these raids have the fingerprints of the Resistance all over them.

• • •

At some point in the first half of 1944—the date is unclear—Pierre Fayol, head of the armed Resistance in Le Chambon, decided he should move house. Dr Le Forestier had received a tip-off from the gendarmes that the Germans were searching the area using radio-detector cars. They were also looking for someone called ‘Rivière’, one of Fayol’s pseudonyms. He might already be under surveillance. He found new lodgings at Le Riou, near Le Mazet.

On 2 June 1944, what Fayol describes as ‘real military operations’ began. He was ordered to move some of his Secret Army troops to Mont Mouchet, on the far western edge of the Haute-Loire beyond Le
Puy-en-Velay. There they would be commanded by a Captain Hulot, who had arrived from the Loire, and whose cousin André Kauffman was one of Fayol’s troops in Yssingeaux. About eighty men from the Plateau accordingly set off for Mont Mouchet. Meanwhile, Fayol was told he should stay where he was and await further orders. What, he wondered, was going on?

Four days later, at 6.30 am on 6 June, the answer became clear: the invasion began. By that evening, 160,000 Allied troops (including 73,000 Americans, 61,715 British and 21,400 Canadians) had landed on the beaches of Normandy. This was D-Day. The liberation of Western Europe had begun. And so had the Resistance’s real fight.

• • •

The first action fought by the maquis of the Plateau broke the most fundamental rule of guerrilla warfare, and failed as a result. Whole books are written about the military theory behind guerrilla actions, so there is something presumptuous about trying to condense it to a few sentences in a single paragraph. Nevertheless, the first principle can be stated fairly simply: hit and run. Don’t get dragged into a head-to-head battle with a well-armed and well-trained regular army. You’ll lose.

On 9 June the Mont Mouchet battle began. Some 3000 German troops, with air support, set out to rid the area of maquisards once and for all. The Resistance fighters were outnumbered five or six to one by regular Wehrmacht troops, and were not as well armed. The Germans launched their first attack at Venteuges, a few kilometres east of Mont Mouchet. At the same time, a group of well-trained and well-armed maquisards attacked the Germans at the tiny village of La Vachellerie, near Monistrol-d’Allier. Over the next two days the Secret Army fought a series of battles with regular German troops across the area. Predictably, the maquis took a terrible mauling. They lost 260 killed and a further 160 wounded. In addition, the Germans shot 100 civilian hostages. German casualties are unknown, though one Resistance report claimed 1400 German dead and 1700 wounded.
This is transparent nonsense. The outcome was not a defeat for the maquisards, nor was it a victory for the Wehrmacht. The ‘Battle of Mont Mouchet’ was more a series of inconclusive skirmishes, with neither side able to claim a win. After three days the maquisards were ordered by their officers to disperse, which they did. It was a salutary lesson, ending the dream of finishing off the occupation of the Haute-Loire with a few well-aimed bursts of Sten-gun fire. The Germans were a tougher bunch than that.

Pierre Fayol needed no telling. He could see the folly of a head-on charge. There were better ways to harass the Germans.

• • •

Sometime in the first half of June 1944—there is no record of the exact date—a fearful pounding on his front door woke Pierre Fayol. On the doorstep stood Maurice Lebrat, one of his Resistance fighters. Lebrat told him that one of his men, Sergeant Petit, had some important information which he had to convey to Fayol in person. Petit was waiting by the road outside.

Petit did indeed have some important news. A  British agent, a  woman, had arrived in Le Chambon and had demanded to meet someone senior from the Secret Army. Together with Petit and Lebrat, Fayol went straight away to meet her. For reasons that would soon become apparent, the meeting took place in a field well away from the village. Fayol found himself in the presence of a tall American woman—not British—who spoke French with what Fayol describes as a ‘terrible accent’. She introduced herself as Diane. She was accompanied by a French woman who spoke not a word all night; Fayol never even learned her name.

Diane didn’t waste time with pleasantries: she got straight down to business. ‘Do you have sites for parachuting?’ she demanded.

‘Yes,’ said Fayol.

‘Can you muster up about forty men?’

‘Ten times that number if we can arm them,’ Fayol responded.

‘Are you willing to follow orders?’

‘What sort of orders?’ Fayol asked.

‘Sabotage,’ said Diane.

‘Yes, anything that isn’t against the instructions of my chiefs.’

While all this was going on, Fayol heard an aircraft overhead. For the first time in the Ardèche, it delivered a man instead of arms: Lieutenant-Colonel Vanel, a Canadian, together with his radio, arrived by parachute. Fayol now knew why they had met in the countryside, not in the village. Clearly something important was happening.

Diane had a final question. ‘What do you need?’

Fayol had a ready answer. ‘Guns and explosives for operations, and some money for the quartermaster.’

Apparently satisfied, Diane told Fayol: ‘Come and find me at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll go and look around the area.’ She and her French companion then left, while Vanel stayed behind.

A nonplussed Fayol asked Vanel whether he had to obey orders from the American. You bet, said Vanel. Diane was the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel.

The next day, Fayol and Diane, accompanied by Maurice Lebrat, checked some potential parachute sites. The American seemed to like what she saw. Between them, they agreed on some codes. ‘The shark has a soft nose’ would send the Resistance scurrying to a drop site near Yssingeaux. ‘This dark moonlight falls’ repeated three times would signal a similar snowstorm of parachutes at Villelonge. Diane then handed Fayol a bag that she said contained 150,000 francs, and abruptly ordered Lebrat to count it.

Lebrat counted carefully, and announced: ‘A hundred and fifty-two thousand francs.’

‘That’s wrong,’ said Diane. ‘Count it again.’

Lebrat recounted the money. ‘A hundred and fifty-two thousand francs,’ he repeated.

Diane’s tone changed. ‘My mistake. I must have confused myself. I didn’t use much money on the trip here.’

Both Fayol and Lebrat felt they had passed some kind of test. Diane’s next words confirmed this. ‘When I get back, I’ll have a mission for you,’ she said. She also told Fayol he could expect a parachute drop of arms at Cosne-sur-Loire, about 300 kilometres away in the Nièvre, on the night of 15 June. He would hear the code message confirmation on the BBC.

The radio now crackled between London and the Plateau, beginning with what was clearly a strongly favourable report from ‘Diane’ on both the Plateau and Pierre Fayol. In the message log of the SOE in London is the following entry, dated 18 June 1944:

VIRGINIA HALL:

Reports a group at CHAMBON of 200 well-led men, soon to be increased to 500, and states it would be worth sending 2 officers, a W/T operator and arms to this Maquis.
⁵²
(It is planned to put her in charge of this Maquis.)

Meanwhile, Pierre Fayol received some more welcome news. As of 24 June, he was appointed head of the FFI, the Secret Army,
⁵³
in the Yssingeaux sector. He was Jean Bonnissol’s successor.

• • •

As we have seen, the Germans did not station troops on the Plateau. They had a group of soldiers convalescing in three hotels in Le Chambon, principally the Hôtel du Lignon; however, these men were unarmed and could never be seen as an occupying force. There are no precise records of what happened to them, but it is thought that around 10 June—four days after the Allied landing in Normandy—the
majority of them pulled out of Le Chambon and headed for the nearest Wehrmacht base, in Le Puy-en-Velay, 42 kilometres away. It is also possible that some deserted and joined the Resistance. This would certainly have made sense for any Russians in the group.

The Le Puy force, under the command of Major Schmähling, was in no position to spread its handful of troops across every village and field in the Haute-Loire. So, for the Resistance, the Plateau was there for the taking. ‘Capturing’ a village consisted of not much more than arranging for a few men to arrive by car with Sten guns slung over their shoulders and announce that they had won. This was generally followed up by ‘occupying’ the town hall, the post office and anywhere else that looked useful. By that standard, Le Chambon was liberated early. On 14 June, only eight days after D-Day, André Trocmé felt able to return openly from his exile in the Château de Perdyer and resume his work as Le Chambon’s pastor.

He did not like everything he saw on his return. Young maquisards strolled the streets, openly carrying weapons. There was talk of revenge. ‘Collaborators’ went in fear of their lives. As always, Trocmé chose to speak out, in a Sunday sermon at the temple.

The greatest tests for our country, and perhaps for our church as well, are still ahead of us. We have come to know, bit by bit, war in all its forms, and we are now cast into the furnace with the rest of the country. However, our little difficulties are nothing compared with the problems in burnt and bombed cities, and in those places where fighting is still going on.

These coming tests will tell us all what kind of people we are. There will be those who choose the selfish life, who seek to profit from the suffering of others. And there will be those who will instead allow themselves to be swept up by a spirit of enthusiasm, sacrifice and devotion.

The true Christian does not seek an earthly kingdom. He seeks the Kingdom of God. He does not use, in the fight against all forms of evil, the earthly weapons of violence, lies and vengeance. I have been happy to see, from the day of my return, that you have all stayed calm and steady. A spirit of moderation and gentleness should now reign among us.