The Nazi Hunters (9 page)

Isselhorst, a trained lawyer, had joined the Nazi party in 1931, rising rapidly through its ranks. He came to Hitler’s notice while defending various prominent Nazis on trial, becoming a protégé of the Führer. Shortly after the outbreak of war, he was appointed an SS officer and chief of the Gestapo in Munich, reflecting his meteoric rise to power. Three years later he was sent to the Eastern Front to use his talents hunting down the very active Russian partisans.

Commanding
Einsatzgruppe
B, based at Smolensk, a Russian city 225 miles to the west of Moscow, Isselhorst would earn several decorations for so-called bravery. In truth, Isselhorst’s
Einsatzgruppe
was one of the euphemistically named ‘special commandos’, which were basically death squads, charged with rounding up those earmarked for ‘liquidation’: Russian resistance fighters, Jews, gypsies and the disabled.

In Smolensk, part of Isselhorst’s remit proved to be the merciless ‘evacuation’ of the Jewish ghettos. In August 1943 he wrote in his diary of one such operation: ‘Since there was resistance – great slaughter; 3,100 J [Jews] dead. Only 350 have volunteered for transportation available.’ That transportation was, of course, to the concentration camps, and during his time on the Eastern Front, Isselhorst would earn a reputation for being an efficient orchestrator of the machinery of mass murder.

Isselhorst returned to Germany a
Standartenführer
(the equivalent SS rank of colonel) and was appointed the Gestapo chief for the Vosges, based in the city of Strasbourg on the region’s eastern border. By the summer of 1944, he was hearing reports of Maquis activity in the region. Then, in mid August, matters became altogether more alarming. Low-flying aircraft had been heard at night, and there were reports that ‘English parachutists’ had joined the Maquis, bringing weapons to raise an insurrection.

For the staunch Nazi Isselhorst, this was infuriating. Working closely with his triumvirate of deputies, Isselhorst drew up plans for the ironically named Operation Waldfest (which translates as ‘party in the forest’). Waldfest was modelled on the type of brutal and bloody operations that he had orchestrated in Smolensk against the Russian partisans.

Isselhorst’s deputy on Operation Waldfest was Wilhelm Schneider, a former navy captain from the First World War, and a renowned bully and drunkard. Small of stature, weasel-faced and with a greying, goatee beard, Schneider was largely ineffective without his two partners in crime – one of whom proved to be the real brains behind Waldfest.

Alfonso Uhring, Isselhorst’s foreign intelligence chief, was an overweight, balding, jowly tank of a man, who would be responsible for interrogating any captured British operators. Uhring had Schneider’s ear, and might be described as the puppet master who pulled his strings. Operationally, Waldfest would be very much his baby.

The third figure in Isselhorst’s triumvirate of deputies was Julius Gehrum, a piggy-eyed, triple-chinned bull of a man, one who was said to be inordinately fond both of drink and of his Nazi uniform, and especially of the Iron Cross that adorned his left breast pocket. Gehrum was the chief of the frontier guard force, and he was renowned as a figure of extreme ruthlessness and brutality.

Under stage one of Operation Waldfest, spearheaded by the
Wehrmacht
, a massive military sweep would uncover the arms and ammunition dropped to the Maquis, and find and eliminate their bases in the hills. In stage two, spearheaded by the Gestapo, the surrounding villages would be purged of all Maquis and their supporters, thus draining the Resistance of all backing.

Just as Isselhorst had done in Smolensk,
Einsatzkommandos
would be posted across the Vosges. Most were named after their German commander.
Einsatzkommando
Ernst was commanded by notorious SS officer
Sturmbannführer
(major) Hans Dietrich Ernst, who had recently sent eight hundred French Jews to their deaths at Auschwitz. Ernst was a vicious, sadistic man, and a past master at forcing captives to break under extreme interrogation and torture.

Operation Waldfest received the personal blessing of Heinrich Himmler,
Reichsführer
of the SS, at that time one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. With the bulwark of the Vosges forming the German military’s key line of defence, Himmler ordered that it be defended at all costs. The area was to be ‘cleaned’ of all Maquis, a demand that gave Waldfest added urgency and impetus.

By the evening of 16 August 1944 the noose of Waldfest was being drawn ever tighter around Druce’s force. Just three days after the British Special Forces had got boots on the ground, Isselhorst’s intelligence was already remarkably accurate. He’d split his forces between two valleys – the Rabodeau and Celles-sur-Plaine – leaving the Maquis and their British comrades trapped on the 3,000-foot ridge lying in the middle.

Druce awoke on the morning of 17 August to learn of the dire developments that had occurred overnight. A necklace of German troops had been strung around the base of the mountain. They were moving stealthily upwards, seeking to enclose the British force and the Maquis in a steely embrace. Druce decided to move immediately to stand the best chance of escape. Lieutenant LeFranc concurred, although his orders were to resist abandoning their camp until the last.

There was no time to waste. Weaponry, ammo, supplies and radios – all were loaded up in a hastily prepared mule train of Maquis and Special Forces operators. With the crunch of summer-dry debris underfoot, the columns of men moved out in a tense and apprehensive silence. An advance party led by Lieutenant David Dill, a dashingly handsome SAS man of no more than twenty years of age, took the lead, scouting the way ahead.

Lieutenant Dill was small and slight, with a somewhat impish, almost baby-faced look, and a happy-go-lucky air. In the past few days he’d also shown himself to be astonishingly tough, and calm and cool under pressure. Druce figured he was the perfect man to raise the alarm should they stumble into German forces. They were to hold their fire at all costs. Druce needed to preserve his own men and to bring in the rest of the Op Loyton troops; there was every need to avoid a potentially devastating gun battle.

By around nine o’clock that morning the hundred-odd fighters had been swallowed into the forest shadows. A small rearguard had been left to cover the main party’s withdrawal. It included Sergeant Lodge – the German Jew, Freidlaender – and Lou Fiddick. Druce had set a rendezvous (RV) point at a six-figure grid plucked off a map: 470902. This was where they would meet, should they lose each other during whatever was coming.

After two hours of difficult going, Druce’s party hit a well-defined track, one used by oxen to haul timber out of the higher reaches of the mountains. The trail didn’t appear to have been used for lumberjacking purposes for some time, and a thick carpet of pine needles lay underfoot. It served to deaden the sound of the men’s passing. All that could be heard was the occasional clink of metal, plus the groan of a canvas or leather strap under the strain of a crushing load.

Druce led his party along that track for 400 yards, only to see Lieutenant Dill come hurrying back in their direction. A German patrol had been spotted by the trackside. They’d stopped for an early lunch, and luckily neither Dill nor his fellows had been seen. Druce ordered the entire group to secrete themselves in the forest, and to remain utterly silent. The plan was to allow the Germans to pass by, and only then to continue on their way.

At the lower side of the track lay a deep hollow, which provided perfect cover for Druce, Hislop and most of the British force. To either side of them the Maquis melted into the trees. Further downslope the terrain was thickly wooded and precipitous, and uphill lay the track. There were few easy escape routes if the enemy patrol got wise to the British and French presence.

The forest fell utterly silent. The midday sun cut a swathe of blinding light along the length of the track, but to either side the woods were shrouded in semi-darkness. It should be next to impossible for anyone moving in the open to spot those hiding in the thick forest shadows.

A faint chatter of voices announced the enemy’s arrival. They moved into view, two columns of grey-uniformed troops marching very much at ease. Doubtless this was one of the Waldfest search parties, but there was nothing about the soldiers’ body language or demeanour that suggested they expected to stumble upon their French and British prey any time soon.

The vanguard drew level with the hidden force and proceeded to move on by. Hislop found himself holding his breath as the tension mounted, and he could barely believe their luck as the rear end of the column drew level with their hiding place. But it was then that a disastrously curious Maquis decided to ease his head above cover to get a look at – and draw a bead on – the hated enemy.

A cry rang out, as harsh and guttural as it was unwelcome: ‘
Achtung!
’

It was followed by the distinctive clink of metal on metal, as a weapon was made ready. But the shot that followed came from the direction of the forest, and it ended in a strangled gurgle, as the German soldier who had issued the challenge was shot dead by the maquisard who had allowed himself to be seen.

As the German patrol was only thirty-strong, Druce ordered an all-out attack, in the hope that they could drive the enemy off. Within seconds the air was cut by bursts of automatic fire, as bullets tore through the vegetation to either side of the path and hammered into the enemy column. Some were hit, but most scattered, diving for a ditch at the edge of the track, from where they could return fire. ‘Third-tier’ troops they might have been, but they certainly weren’t running.

Druce held his men firm, short bursts from Stens and carbines raking the path above them. The two sides traded vicious fire at close quarters, but the enemy had the high ground – Druce having chosen their position for maximum stealth and concealment, not for springing an ambush. Still, if they struck aggressively and hard enough, he felt certain they could break through the enemy ranks and escape.

He was about to order a charge to clear the path when the enemy started yelling for back-up. Druce, who could understand German, heard an answering cry from further up the hill, where a second foresters’ track snaked through the vegetation. It was followed moments later by the sounds of dozens of pairs of jackboots thundering downhill towards the firefight.

Seconds later the intensity of the enemy fire redoubled. The Germans on the higher track began to rain down rounds from what could only be a fearsome
Maschinengewehr
42 ‘Spandau’.

The Spandau – a bipod-mounted machine gun – unleashed a long series of probing bursts, bullets ricocheting horribly off the trees to all sides. The MG42 could hammer out twice the rate of rounds of any comparable Allied machine gun. So rapid was the rate of fire that the human ear couldn’t distinguish between each bullet, the distinctive continuous
brrrrr
of the weapon earning it the nickname ‘Hitler’s buzz saw’.

‘It was frightening,’ remarked the otherwise unshakeable Lou Fiddick. ‘We didn’t have that much ammunition with us. I think we’d fired it all off. I was standing behind a tree with bullets going all around it . . . It was a little unusual to have so many bullets flying all around you. I hadn’t expected such a thing, although there were plenty of bullets flying around on the night we got shot down.’

The first of the Maquis broke and ran. They thundered past to either side of the hollow, from where Druce’s force was still trying to fight, disappearing in a helter-skelter retreat. Most were laden down with precious items of SAS and Phantom equipment. Hislop and Druce heard agonized cries as the Spandau raked the slope, the buzz saw’s rounds scything down the heavily laden Maquis, who were unable to move quickly on the steep slope and made for easy targets.

A long Spandau burst sliced through the vegetation above the hollow, bullets tearing through a tree limb as if it were being unzipped. The British force was heavily outnumbered and outgunned now. Druce ordered his men to ditch all their heavy gear and make a run for it. Moving light and low offered the only hope of escape, but first they would need to booby-trap their Bergens with plastic explosives.

Hislop was forced to abandon his Jed Set, but as he had the crystals and code book on his person, the radio would prove of little use to the enemy. Druce opted to lead one half of the force in one direction, with Hislop taking the other the opposite way, in an effort to fox their pursuers. They gathered at the lip of the hollow, the air beneath the trees thick with the grey smog of cordite fumes.

They broke cover and dashed downslope, keeping bent double to escape the thick bursts of fire ripping through the trees. Hislop figured no horse he had ever ridden had run as fast as he did then, charging through the thick vegetation.

He led his party 400 yards downhill, to a point where the thick bush gave way to another track. The open ground ahead was being raked by sustained bursts of fire from above. Hislop waited for one such salvo to end before leading his men in a mad dash across.

‘Now! Go, go, go, go, go!’

He caught a glimpse of the back of Davis – his ultra-reliable fellow Phantom – just ahead of him, as they plunged into the vegetation on the far side. It was the last he was ever to see of him.

Finally Hislop called a halt. In hushed whispers he mustered his force in the thick cover of the undergrowth. He urged them all to keep quiet and to lie low. Any movement or noise would draw the enemy’s eye and ear, followed by a savage burst of fire. Their greatest hope lay in concealment, and there was no better cover than the dense bush that surrounded them on all sides.