by Clare Mulley
By 21 July it had become clear that, unless the remaining maquisards either forced a passage through the enemy line, or rapidly dispersed in small groups through the forests, they would all be killed along with any civilians who were believed to have sheltered them. A summer storm had blown in and the paths and fields were slick with mud. The Maquis were still a few thousand strong, but German reinforcements greatly outnumbered them, and they had been massively under-armed from the start. On 23 July, with defeat inevitable and driving rain making rivers of the mountain paths and washing through the remaining camps, the order to disperse was given, followed by the release of the Maquis’s prisoners. Many in France would later regard the abandonment of the Vercors as treason. It was certainly a disaster in terms of morale and the loss of the region’s most strategic base for guerrilla raids. Nonetheless the Vercors Maquis had forced the Germans to deploy 11,000 men in the area for six weeks, at a time when they were badly needed in Normandy. By the end of July there seemed to be little honour in the prospect of certain martyrdom, rather than regrouping to fight again elsewhere. As it was, most of the exits from the plateau were already blocked and several hundred maquisards were caught trying to fight their way out in small groups. No prisoners were taken.
* * *
The Maquis lost over 600 men at Vercors. As their line retreated, over 200 local villagers, young and old, men and women, were also summarily murdered or raped in reprisals that compare with some of the worst Nazi atrocities. The horror of the messages reaching SOE HQ was so great that the young woman who decoded them, in safe and leafy Grendon Underwood, in Buckinghamshire, had to be transferred. Captured maquisards were burned alive in buildings or left hanging by piano wire. ‘The Germans would eat their lunch in front of the struggling men’, read one report.39 Villagers were tortured and shot. Corpses were mutilated and trampled on. In one village on the plateau a nineteen-year-old secretary was disembowelled and left to die with her entrails round her neck.
On an isolated farm twelve-year-old Arlette Blanc was pulled from the ruins of her home where she had been trapped between the decomposing bodies of her family – including her aunt Suzy, who had been baking victory cakes just a few weeks before. Also dead were her grandmother and younger sisters Jacquie and Danie, aged just seven and four, and her eighteen-month-old baby brother, Maurice. Her mother had taken several days to die, begging for water until the end. Wehrmacht troops had passed by, but, she said, ‘gave me nothing, and left mocking me’.40 Arlette was eventually freed and taken in a wheelbarrow to a neighbouring village, where she was washed and her wounds tended to. She ate, slept, asked to write to her father, and then died in great pain the following day, tormented that she had not seen her father and did not know where she would be buried. Ten members of Arlette’s family had been killed in four days. Houses, livestock and harvests were systematically looted and destroyed. In Vassieux only ten properties were left out of the village of 150 houses, and even in tiny Saint-Julien, where Christine had made her home, thirteen buildings were razed to the ground. Putrefying corpses lay everywhere.
On 27 July, a Red Cross camp in the one of the larger Vercors limestone caves, the Grotte de la Luire or ‘Gleaming Cave’, was surrounded by the Wehrmacht. It had been set up by a doctor, priest and six uniformed nurses only a week before, and tended to both Allied and enemy injured, their stretchers lying between the boulders. Any of the wounded who could support themselves had already been taken further into the forest in small groups led by nurses including Christine’s friend Sylviane. Some of the others had been driven to safety by Daniel Huillier’s uncle, in a bus with its seats ripped out. When asked to help, Daniel, the sixteen-year-old boy who had been so struck with Christine drinking her aperitif in a café a few days before, now refused to drive to the cave, insisting that he did not want to ‘die in that hole’.41 That instinct may have saved his life.
The two Polish patients in the cave, who had been serving with the Wehrmacht forces, came out first, requesting mercy for the thirty casualties left inside. The French wounded, and one American officer, Francis Billon, who had parachuted into France from the same plane as Christine, and had broken his leg on landing, were then ordered out. Those who could not walk were dragged across the rocks by their hair and legs. Most were then shot. After interrogation the doctor and priest were also shot. One survivor recorded that ‘the bodies were driven away and thrown into ditches along the roads. A group of sixteen men who were gravely wounded, covered in blood and supporting themselves on improvised crutches were marched off to a wall and mown down by machine-gun fire … [Later] some fifty men who managed to crawl into a thicket were found by a troop of SS men and beaten to death, one by one’.42 The remaining nurses, still in their once starched caps and aprons, were interrogated and sent to Ravensbrück. ‘How savagely these people were killed by us. We completely exterminated a hospital of partisans, with doctors and nurses…’, one German soldier wrote home, the letter later found on his own dead body, ‘but those pigs deserved nothing more’.43
Over the next few weeks several desperate groups of maquisards who descended from the limestone peaks seeking water were also massacred by waiting Wehrmacht troops. But some, surviving on a diet of clover and the water sucked from moss, managed to break through the German lines, re-form and restart ambush and sabotage operations, and there were many small insurgencies. It was not until 18 August that the last German troops pulled out of the Vercors as the Allies landed in the south.
The tricolore flew over the plateau for six heady weeks, but the ‘Battle of Vercors’ lasted only four days. Francis, Albert and Christine did not see its conclusion. Once the order to disperse had been given they could serve little further purpose on the plateau, and their responsibilities with the Jockey circuit across the region were too great to risk capture or a purely heroic death. Before first light on 22 July, they, Zeller and a few key contacts escaped covertly, driving to one of the tunnels that gave a route out of the plateau, before abandoning their car to struggle down the steep surrounding hillsides. On the road from Die, they watched a Wehrmacht column headed by three tanks moving in, and above it a Luftwaffe plane. Halfway down the hillside they heard the tunnel they had come through being blown up, cutting off one of the few escape routes for the Maquis left behind. They still had to cross the main road, guarded by patrols, and wade across the Drôme river before they could consider themselves out of immediate danger. Eventually they covered a distance of seventy miles, sixty on foot, in twenty-four hours. Christine and Francis headed for the small town of Seyne-les-Alpes. Albert carried his wireless set, still in its battered leather suitcase, to a house in a neighbouring village. Zeller went on to Algiers to demand a meeting with de Gaulle.
The following day SOE sent a short note to Nan Cammaerts: ‘Francis is doing splendid work.’44 In truth he and Christine were holed up together in a safe house, trying to recover their energies while absorbing the horrendous knowledge that they had just left over a hundred courageous young men to face their deaths, ‘to be slaughtered like sheep’, as Christine put it.45 ‘Many officers have disappeared, believed killed’, ran Zeller’s last transmission via Francis. ‘Troops and commanders curse failure to provide air support. Hope for early landing in the south. Send me news.’46 ‘Fully understand your sadness and your feeling of isolation…’, Algiers responded. ‘Confident that Vercors troops despite dispersal will have success and revenge through action as guerrillas.’47 It was bitter comfort. The Allies would not land in the south of France until the middle of August.
Today, the Battle of Vercors is held to be the most heroic resistance stand in occupied France, but for Francis and Christine it was simply their first, sickening, experience of total war.
12: SWITCHING ALLEGIANCES
For Christine, scrambling down the goat tracks that led away from the Vercors battleground towards the relative safety of Francis’s temporary base at Seyne-les-Alpes felt like a shameful betrayal of the Maquis. Few words were
exchanged as she and Francis pushed on, fear and determination holding their exhaustion at bay. When not completely focused on their own immediate safety, both absorbed themselves with how best to help prepare for the imminent Allied invasion in the south.
Francis believed that the main threat to the Allied advance was the unknown quantity of Wehrmacht troops, perhaps as many as seven divisions, stationed in northern Italy and ready to attack over the Alpine passes. Nevertheless his immediate priority was to coordinate the Jockey circuit’s sabotage of key German communications and troop transport routes within south-eastern France. Part of Christine’s mission, however, was to support the arrival of ‘Operation Toplink’, a joint British, French and American special force being prepared to coordinate the work of the partisans on both sides of the high Alps, in order to protect the Allied landings. Fifteen officers, including Christine’s friends John Roper, Paddy O’Regan and Havard Gunn, were due to drop from Algiers in early August. Her focus therefore turned to making advance contact with the Italian partisans. While she was doing so, she thought it could do no harm to try to coordinate the concerted harassment of German garrisons in the Alps and attacks on any convoys that ventured on to the roads.
Christine also hoped to fulfil another part of her brief – to secure the defection of some of the thousands of her Polish compatriots who had been forcibly conscripted and deployed locally by the enemy. In Cairo, SOE had learnt that there were considerable numbers of Poles among the German garrisons in France, most of whom feared that desertion would lead to reprisals among their families. ‘They do, however, take every opportunity to become prisoners-of-war’, Harold Perkins had noted in 1943, before going on to suggest that there might be an opportunity to organize deserting soldiers and other such prisoners into units.1 Christine had first discussed the possibilities for effecting large-scale desertions among the foreign troops in the Italian border areas with Patrick Howarth in Cairo, and later with Brooks Richards in Algiers. She had already made some inroads before the situation in the Vercors deteriorated. Now arriving at Seyne-les-Alpes she ate, slept, washed, changed clothes and ate some more. Then, impatient to justify her retreat from Vercors, just twenty-four hours after arriving, Christine left Francis and their Seyne safe house for the north-western Italian frontier.
Until the end of July 1943 Italy had been a hostile power, and Germany would remain in effective control of parts of the country until the end of the war. After the Italian collapse Hitler had ordered several Wehrmacht divisions into southern France and north-western Italy to try to persuade the Italians to keep fighting. They met with little success. The Italian 51st Alpini Division turned against the Nazis, and eventually over 50,000 Italian troops were disarmed and sent to the French interior as forced labour units. Many deserted, especially those near the French border, most joining the Italian Maquis or other resistance networks including the Jockey circuit. Released or escaping prisoners-of-war added to partisan numbers. Francis believed that much more could have been done to encourage desertions, and was disappointed not to have been able to collect more Italian arms and supplies. That said, significant resistance did not begin to emerge until both the British and US armies were established on the Italian mainland.
Christine set off on her journey into the Italian Alps dressed in peasant-style sandals, a short-sleeved shirt, plain skirt, jersey tied around her waist, and a headscarf to keep back her thick dark hair. On her back was a haversack full of bread, cheese and hand grenades. After some miles she caught a lift in a gazogène car, converted, like most French cars in wartime, to be powered by a coke-, wood- or coal-fed boiler rather than petrol. Her first stop was Gilbert Galletti’s base in Bramousse, an obscure hamlet 10 kilometres north-east of Guillestre. Galletti, a former garage proprietor, was one of the key local resistance leaders on the French side of the border and was working closely with an inspirational young leader, Paul Hérault, to coordinate the defence of the Italian frontier in the Hautes-Alpes. Both were in close contact with Francis. Confident and cheerful, Galletti was a reassuring figure in his faded blue army shirt and shorts, every pocket of which was weighed down with supplies. His tanned face regularly lit up with a broad smile, and although he was deadly serious about his work he could rarely resist clowning around to raise a laugh. Francis, and soon Christine, too, doted on him.
Paul Hérault was different. A skilled cabinetmaker by trade, he was also a mountaineer who, before the war, had taught young people to appreciate their local landscape. Fit, handsome with a thin, wiry frame and long dark hair, Francis thought that he looked like a ‘Red Indian’.2 Thoughtful and softly spoken, Hérault had quickly won the trust and admiration of everyone he met, civilian or military, Communist, Gaullist or simply patriotic. By 1944 he was the departmental chief of the FFI and, according to Francis, not only ‘the greatest resistance leader’ but ‘the greatest man’ he had ever met.3 Francis would often stay at Hérault’s apartment, where they simply booby-trapped everything before going to sleep as ‘it was well known that entry to his flat would blow him and everyone else up’.4 Later Francis would name his only son Paul in his friend’s honour, and he quickly guessed that he would become a ‘very special friend’ to Christine.5 Both were essentially loners, with few strong emotional ties to the people around them, even those who adored them. Theirs was a rare meeting of minds. ‘Christine recognized the purity and perfection of his personality’, Francis wrote. ‘She needed his level of grace.’6
Galletti’s men knew several of the trails over the Alps, and were already in contact with some Italian partisans, although not with the most important local leader, a hero known as Marcellini. Marcellini commanded over 2,000 men and held the heights between the two main roads leading into France at Briançon, making his, in Francis’s opinion, ‘the only partisan group in the Italian Alps capable of being useful’.7 Clearly contact was essential. Hérault, meanwhile, was enthusiastic about the idea of persuading conscripted Polish and other foreign troops in the region to defect. Together they discussed Christine’s best route through the mountains, the opportunities that might present themselves, the likely outcomes of her work and her strategy for retreat.
From Bramousse a local ski instructor, Gilbert Tavernier, drove Christine into the foothills of the Alps on the back of his motorbike. At one point they were stopped and ordered off the bike by a Wehrmacht detachment controlling the roads. Christine waited politely, the picture of ease, sitting in the sunshine twiddling a stick while Tavernier was searched; she knew he was not carrying anything incriminating. Only when invited did she pull herself up, smile, and climb back on the bike behind him, the hand-grenades in her rucksack softly clunking as she moved.8 Simply being a woman – calm, charming and modestly dressed – was still excellent camouflage.
Once in the foothills Christine made her ascent alone, sticking mainly to the higher forest tracks above the roads. It was hot, and the climb hard going, but no more demanding than her hikes in the hills outside Algiers. The trees at first provided welcome shade, but as she climbed higher the snow-capped mountains shimmered in the heat and clouds of dust blew up along the paths. At one stage, Andrzej must have been intending to join her, because she sent a message to Brooks Richards saying that his leg would not be up to it. ‘The conditions now on the … frontier are too difficult for him,’ she signalled, ‘there are no means of transport at all and everything has to be done on foot.’9 Christine spent two weeks trekking back and forth across the mountains, which were rapidly becoming a battlefield, reporting back on enemy troop movements, resistance plans and general morale. Stopping at villages on both sides of the border she saw how unpopular the conflict had been locally. Whether they were French or Italian, people in the Alps were shaped by the same cultures and traditions, and sometimes even shared the same family names. Crossing the German lines, she noticed that the guards looked increasingly nervous; everyone knew the tide of the war had turned and the Wehrmacht troops had lost their certain faith in victory. ‘The mora
le in the German army is bad,’ she reported, ‘they know the war is lost. Propaganda is almost unnecessary.’10
Christine was always on the move, pushing herself to the limit, and glad to re-establish contact with her friends in France every few days, where she might stop for some ersatz coffee, made with ground acorns or grilled barley, or, better, some tea or a glass of local wine. It was in these kitchens and cafés that her stories began tumbling out. Once, she said, she had been stopped by a Nazi frontier patrol as she was openly carrying her SOE silk map of the area.* Unable to run, or to hide what was in her hands, she calmly shook the map out and used it to replace the scarf tying back her hair. Paying no more attention to it she then greeted the soldiers in fluent French, persuading them that she was just a local village woman running errands in her sandals.
Her sangfroid paid off again one evening in Piedmont, on the Italian side of the Alps, when a border patrol caught sight of her with some French partisans some way ahead. They flung themselves under some dense bushes in a wood near the road, but were quickly sniffed out by the patrol’s vicious Alsatian dog, trained to bite and break necks. Christine quietly put her arm around the animal, and as she did so it lay down beside her, ignoring its handler’s whistles. Christine’s former lover, Wladimir Ledóchowski, later laughed at her pride in her ability to connect with animals, and the way that Christine would tell her dog-charming stories ‘right and left, to whoever was willing to listen’.11 Francis, however, was less cynical, believing ‘she had a magic with dogs’.12 ‘A dog, like any human being, would simply be drawn to her like a magnet…’, he mused. ‘There are people like that who draw your eyes; she was an intensely compelling personality’ and ‘had a sort of electricity which was not only human but animal’.13 Gilbert Tavernier, who had been with her, however, thought that in this instance Christine’s compelling personality was supplemented by her quick thinking. She had been using chicken-fat to stop her heavy sandals from rubbing blisters on her heels, and had quickly smeared some on to her hands, giving the dog something good to lick while she whispered Polish endearments in its ears. Permanently switching allegiance, the dog remained with Gilbert Galletti for the rest of the war, only leaving his side to greet Christine by rolling at her feet whenever she appeared.