Churchill's Band of Brothers

by Damien Lewis

  ‘He must have been wounded and dragged himself there,’ remarked Hildemann. As Ilgenfritz raised his weapon, the man broke cover and began to run. Ilgenfritz yelled out an order for him to stop. ‘Halt! Stand still! Halt! Stand still!’ As the fleeing man ‘did not comply with my call, I made use of my weapon’, Ilgenfritz would report. Taking aim at ‘the prisoner running’, Ilgenfritz proceeded to ‘shoot him down’.

  The dead man was carried back to the clearing. Now there were five corpses, where by rights there should have been seven. Beside himself with dread, Schnur began to argue that ‘one of the bodies had been carried away by . . . members of a Resistance or sabotage group’, which left only one escapee. Seeing the drift of Schnur’s argument, Schmidt and Ilgenfritz backed him up. For sure, only one man could have got away. Haug thought this was utter rubbish, but he wasn’t about to argue. Schnur had already begun to blame him for supposedly allowing the one captive to flee.

  Hildemann was dispatched to guard the vehicles, in case the escapee tried to steal one and make good his getaway. Shortly, Ilgenfritz joined him. Schnur had ordered them to drive to the local Luftwaffe base, to seek reinforcements. They set off in the Opel, heading for a nearby château where the Luftwaffe had their headquarters. They returned, a short while later, with a truck full of airmen in tow, who proceeded to load the five corpses onto their vehicle. The Luftwaffe men had been told that some ‘saboteurs’ had been surprised and killed in a gun battle in the woods. One had escaped and the surroundings needed to be searched most thoroughly. And so the circle of deceit and lies was closed.

  Or at least, it should have been. Against all odds, two men had got away. One, Jones, was lying low in the depths of the woods and would not break cover until nightfall. The other, Vaculik, was even now stumbling exhaustedly into a French village, desperately seeking anyone who might hide and succour him. Both men had every intention of seeing the murder of their brothers in arms avenged, if only they could evade the enemy and somehow make it back to Allied lines.

  It was far from being a happy drive back to Paris, late that afternoon, as Schnur and the other SS killers contemplated the wrath of Berlin. By orders of the Führer, all the SAS captives had been condemned to be shot, in a top-secret operation. Despite that, they had allowed one at least to get away. There was bound to be an investigation and surely heads would roll.

  But by chance, fortune was to come to the execution party’s rescue. As luck would have it, news of the botched executions was about to be buried by the coming cataclysm. Just ten days after the Noailles Wood shootings the battle for Paris would begin. The city was liberated by the Allies in short order.

  Soon Kieffer, Schnur, von Kapri, Ilgenfritz and their ilk would be burning their files and fleeing towards Germany, seeking safety.

  Chapter 18

  As Vaculik bicycled his way towards the house of Fernard Bourgoin, a local woodsman, he still harboured serious doubts. Across France, the gardes de forêt – the French foresters – were known to form the backbone of the local Resistance, but there was always the exception that proved the rule. All it would take was for this man’s incredible story to be a concoction of lies, cooked up on behalf of the Gestapo, and Vaculik might be about to fall back into the hands of those from whom he’d only recently fled. The thought didn’t fill him with any great sense of happiness or ease.

  Bourgoin claimed to be sheltering an English soldier who had escaped from an enemy firing squad. The description the forester had given – of a redheaded individual who spoke not a word of French, but who had by gestures indicated he’d fled from a German death squad – could only be Ginger Jones. But that was impossible, as far as Vaculik was concerned, for he was convinced that he alone had made it out of the Noailles Wood alive.

  Indeed, over the past few days his dreams had been plagued by bloody images of his six fellows being gunned down. ‘I could imagine their bodies sprawled in line under the trees in that clearing and tears came to my eyes,’ Vaculik remarked, of the visions that haunted his night hours.

  It was a week after his miraculous escape, and in the interim Vaculik had endured a series of heart-stopping adventures, during which he’d realised that his ‘nerve seemed to have gone’. Upon shaking off his SS executioners, he’d made his way into the nearest village and headed for the church. In their briefings the SAS men had been told that if in desperate straits, they should seek out the local priest. As with the gardes de forêt, the curés –the Roman Catholic priests – tended to be staunchly anti-Nazi. But not this one: Vaculik was summarily turned away, for there were German troops nearby.

  With his handcuffs still stubbornly affixed to one wrist – he couldn’t seem to free one of the clasps – Vaculik wrapped a scarf around the contraption, in an effort to hide it, before hurrying onwards. He realised what a state he must look. His trousers were torn and had bullet holes in them, and blood was running down one leg from where a round had nicked him. One ankle was swollen and turning blue, and he figured he must have twisted it when leaping over the hedge. Fear must have blanked his mind to the pain.

  Tearing down a branch to form a makeshift crutch, like a wounded and hunted animal he’d stumbled on across open country. As German Army trucks rumbled by, he hoped and prayed that he hadn’t been spotted, for there was no way that he could outrun any pursuers now. Finally he’d come across an isolated farmstead. In desperation he’d approached it and told the farmer and his wife his story. They in turn had fetched the local butcher, whose ‘plump red face’ and ‘jovial’ air Vaculik had instinctively warmed to.

  Vaculik had begged the man to help link him up with the local Resistance. It turned out that the butcher and his cousin were diehard anti-Nazis, and with their assistance Vaculik was spirited by horse and cart to the nearby town of Bresles. There, to his shock, he was brought before the local gendarme – resplendent in his French police uniform – together with his young assistant. They had various official-looking papers spread out on a desk before them. Fearing a trap, Vaculik learned to his relief that the gendarme – known to all simply as ‘Rouillard’ – doubled as the local Resistance chief.

  Even so, Rouillard had proceeded to subject Vaculik to a robust interrogation, in order to establish his bona fides, during which he was asked to write down the answers to a list of detailed questions. They were taken off to be checked with ‘friends’. It turned out that a downed British airman was being sheltered by the Bresles Resistance. He had scrutinised Vaculik’s scribblings, declaring that the escapee had passed with flying colours. That being the case, Rouillard was keen to discuss with Vaculik ‘the military situation’ and the ‘best ways and means of carrying out sabotage’.

  Vaculik appreciated how badly Rouillard and his Resistance fighters needed help, but first he felt compelled to confess how seriously he ‘had the wind up’, and how his nights were plagued by the ‘sweat of fear’. Rouillard told him that was only natural, with all he had been subjected to. After a little rest and recuperation with the good people of Bresles, he should be fine.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ the Resistance chief had reassured him. ‘You’ll be alright.’

  Not a day or two later had come the shock news of the seemingly miraculous coming-back-to-life of Ginger Jones. Early one morning Rouillard had burst into the house where Vaculik was billeted. ‘Quick! Get up and get dressed. Something extraordinary has just happened. Can you ride a bike?’ And so they had set off pedalling furiously the 3 miles or so to ‘Old Bourgoin’ the forester’s home.

  En route, Rouillard had outlined his plan to confound any possible Gestapo subterfuge. They’d bring the mystery man into Bourgoin’s kitchen, while Vaculik would remain in the next room, where he could overhear things. They’d need to present the man of mystery with a series of questions that only he could answer.

  ‘What are the best things to ask?’ Rouillard queried.

  ‘Ask him his name, his number, unit, rank, the name of his CO, where he was born and the name of the Fren
chman who was in his group,’ Vaculik told him, ‘and, above all – above all, mark you – the name of his favourite local.’

  By the time they’d reached the forester’s cottage, the target of all their interest and suspicion was already in the kitchen. Vaculik was made to stand in the corridor, with the door a little ajar. But at the very first answer to the very first question Vaculik didn’t need to hear any more. There was no mistaking Ginger Jones’s thick Wigan tones – no Gestapo agent, however talented, could mimic those.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Vaculik burst through the door. Once inside, he just stood there, staring, as though he’d seen a ghost; a man who ‘really had come back from the dead’. As for Jones, he seemed even more dumbfounded. His eyes were like saucers and his mouth hung open in slack-jawed astonishment. Vaculik could see how Jones’s ordeal had affected him – his ‘untidy ginger hair seemed to have lost its vitality and for the first time I noticed streaks of grey in it. He seemed to have aged twenty years.’

  ‘Is it really you, old man?’ Jones murmured, his eyes filling with tears. ‘It can’t be. I was sure you were dead.’

  Vaculik reassured Jones that he was no apparition, at which the two men stumbled forward to embrace.

  Finally, Jones eased the two of them apart, until he had Vaculik held at arm’s length. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he murmured. ‘I saw you go down when they fired into your back.’

  ‘I did go down,’ Vaculik confirmed, ‘but I tripped over a root. I was up again in an instant.’

  For a while the two men talked over each other, as they tried to make absolutely certain that neither of them was dreaming. Bourgoin, meanwhile – a tough, upstanding-looking figure, in his smart forester’s uniform – broke out a bottle of rum. Together, they drank to a miraculous reunion, as each man regaled the other with the story of his escape.

  Jones’s flight through the woodland had taken him to a small road. In a field on the far side he’d spied two farm workers. Managing to attract their attention, he’d explained as best he could who he was and that he needed to make contact with the local Resistance. Jones was told to stay where he was, lying low in the forest. Someone would come to fetch him.

  He’d remained there until eight o’clock that night, his stomach a knot of fear, until ‘three fellows came along to take me to the house of the forester’. He’d spent the next week camped out in the woods, with Bourgoin bringing him food and drink whenever possible. And now, unbelievably, he’d been reunited with his ‘dead’ friend. ‘I thought I was seeing a ghost,’ Jones concluded simply, of Vaculik’s miraculous reappearance.

  When Jones was done telling his story, Vaculik translated the gist of it for Rouillard, who’d been standing by looking as astonished as anyone. It was decided that Jones should return with them to Bresles. He would be billeted in a house near where Vaculik was staying, with another family who were likewise friends of Rouillard’s. No one doubted that soon they would be getting busy, for together, SAS escapees and Bresles Resistance, there was much work to be done.

  The 24 June ‘Progress Report SAS Operations’ – marked BIGOT Top Secret – had called for ‘Bren Guns (ratio one per ten men) and rifles, with an assortment of PIATs and BAZOOKAs in addition to Stens’, to be dropped to Resistance parties. The PIAT – Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank – was a British-made shoulder-launched anti-armour weapon, with a range of just over 100 yards; the Bazooka was an American portable anti-armour rocket-launcher, with a range a little over that of the PIAT.

  In the month of May, 1,006 Sten guns, 1,877 incendiary bombs (for sabotage) and 4,489 grenades had been parachuted into the French Resistance forces, plus scores of the heavier weapons called for. Over July and August, such armaments drops would continue. But getting hold of weaponry was of little use if there was no proper training, without which it could prove more of a curse than a blessing. Luckily, the Bresles Resistance had just had two of the best possible weapons instructors fall into their hands.

  Within days of their miraculous reunion, Jones and Vaculik –with Rouillard’s help – had got an air-drop of weaponry delivered to the Bresles Resistance. The two escapees proceeded to teach ‘120 men how to use Bren guns, bazookas, grenades and other arms’. The Bazookas in particular needed careful handling, for they ‘could be dangerous in ignorant hands’, the SAS men warned. In addition to weapons instruction, Vaculik and Jones proceeded to deliver a crash course in ‘elementary battle tactics’: how to advance and withdraw over differing terrain, how to mount an ambush, how to take cover, how to scale obstacles and how to master the all-important craft of sabotage. Jones – a natural with any weapon – became the de facto armourer. ‘His big hands were gentle and almost caressing when he was handling our Colts and Sten guns,’ Vaculik observed.

  But it was all very well sneaking out at night to cut telephone wires and to bring down telegraph poles – the kind of sabotage work Rouillard and his men were accustomed to. They needed to move onto bigger and better things. It was via repetitive, dogged reconnaissance work that the first opportunity was identified: a German staff car was spotted, passing daily on the road to Clermont, a town lying to the east of Bresles, in the late afternoon. It ran like clockwork and never seemed to have an escort, which made it a perfect opportunity to cut the head of the Nazi snake.

  A ten-man ambush force was selected. Vaculik and Jones would go, of course, the latter with a battered old hat pulled low over his shock of red hair. Rouillard would be there, as well as de Rouck, a former soldier in the French Army who had fought against the invasion in May 1940, and who had proven himself an excellent weapons instructor. A position just outside Bresles was selected for the ambush, where thick forest lined the road, providing ample cover to melt into once the job was done.

  One man was concealed in the fringes of the woods, with a Bren to provide cover. The others took up hidden positions along the road. Rouillard was at the forefront, resplendent in his best gendarme’s uniform. At 4.15 p.m. on the dot the big black staff car became visible in the distance. Rouillard strode into the road, waving a gendarme’s flag to signal the approaching vehicle to stop. In theory, the gendarmes were still the French nation’s police force – especially in more rural areas, such as this – and the staff car, though packed with German officers, dutifully ground to a halt.

  The driver’s window wound down. ‘What is it?’ demanded the young-looking SS officer in the front passenger seat, impatiently.

  ‘You’re prisoners,’ Rouillard declared by way of response, drawing his Colt and levelling it at the driver.

  As if by magic, the rest of the gunmen swarmed onto the road, weapons at the ready. Seeing they were surrounded, the car’s occupants decided discretion was the better part of valour. They got out of the vehicle, hands in the air. There were five in all, one – the most senior in rank – wearing the gleaming uniform of an SS colonel.

  ‘You’ll be shot for this!’ he threatened.

  Jones, who was the nearest, didn’t know exactly what the SS colonel said, but the tone was clear enough. He booted the man hard in the backside. ‘Pipe down, laddie,’ he growled. ‘If we want you to talk, we’ll ask you to.’

  If the captives hadn’t realised there were Englishmen amongst their captors, they were sure to know now. As the five prisoners were frog marched into the woods, one of the Resistance men slid behind the staff car’s wheel, ready to drive it off to a pre-arranged hiding place – a remote barn, where it could be covered with bales of straw. Before that, the car was searched. There was a leather briefcase lying on the rear seat: it was found to contain various official-looking documents, plus a selection of photos.

  From those, it was clear that the captives weren’t just SS. They were also Gestapo. Upon learning of this, something inside Jones just seemed to crack. The big, solidly built redhead launched himself at the immaculately dressed SS colonel. It took several men to drag him off, for he’d clearly intended to strangle the man on the spot.

  Cursing f
uriously, Jones demanded he get his shot at revenge. ‘What’s the matter with a bit of our own back?’

  For now, Rouillard, Vaculik and all needed the captives alive and well enough to face questioning. Vaculik explained as much to Jones, although of course he appreciated exactly how his friend was feeling.

  Later in the war, as a column of SAS jeeps pushed into the heart of Nazi Germany, Jones would get his ‘payback’ for real. Colonel Mayne was in command of the patrol, and an SS officer, arrogant and unrepentant in his pristine uniform, was captured. While Mayne had long known that ‘the days of noblesse oblige and the Knights of King Arthur stuff had . . . drawn to a close’, he had always striven to respect the niceties of war. But by then – April 1945 – he’d learned of the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the enemy. He handed the SS officer over to Jones, who exacted his own form of vengeance.

  But right now in the woods outside Bresles, it was vital to get as much intelligence out of the captives as possible. Rouillard began a thorough search, turning out their pockets and winkling out their secret hiding places. Amongst the most interesting finds was a photo marked ‘Minsk, 3.11.42’. It showed a number of figures who’d been hung from trees, and posing beside them, smiling proudly, was the SS captain on whose person the photo had been found. Clearly he carried it as some kind of macabre trophy.

  The fate of the city of Minsk had become notorious. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, opening a second front in the war. Minsk was one of the first cities to fall, with victorious German forces marching into its streets, whereupon a reign of terror had descended over the city. Minsk was designated the administrative centre of Reichskommissariat Ostland – an area covering mostly the Baltic States – which had been designated as Lebensraum (living space) for German nationals. Amongst other policies, the entire Jewish population was to be annihilated, and any remaining locals were to be forced to leave, or face forced Germanisation.