by Paul Kix
He would also carry out his most daring mission yet.
CHAPTER 21
Though Hitler had ordered his troops to begin evacuating France, he also wanted the submarine bases on the Atlantic coast protected, which meant that in the southwest, and primarily along the Gironde estuary outside Bordeaux, as many as nine thousand soldiers remained through the fall. They built and then buried in the beaches explosive devices, and plunked sixteen-foot logs into the sand, connecting at their tips strings of barbed wire that would entangle the limbs of landing Allied parachutists. Up and down the estuary’s coasts the Germans constructed no fewer than 218 casemates, the squat, scary-looking, cement-fortified antiaircraft artillery compounds that featured 280-millimeter guns. The Allies called the Nazi defensive positions “pockets,” but really they were belts: long lines of nasty fortifications that stretched from towns like Royan, on the mouth of the Gironde estuary, north to La Rochelle and the Bay of Biscay, 35 miles away. The Germans had 210,000 mines in Royan alone, 800,000 overall; 137 bunkers; 80 pieces of artillery—an impressive defense for its submarine bases.
Maybe even too impressive, because the war moved east that fall, away from the Atlantic coast and toward a softening Germany. Yet the Nazi soldiers in that corner of the Gironde remained, peering out from behind their fortifications, wondering if they had safeguarded themselves out of the war.
They hadn’t. These nine thousand Germans bothered Charles de Gaulle. He wanted a France cleansed of Nazis, and, more than that, a French-led victory on French soil. There were other considerations, too. The Nazis in Royan, the soldiers manning the smallest base in the Gironde estuary, had declared a state of siege, forbidding citizens the use of public transportation, or the right to heat or light their homes after dark, or draw any water at night. The Nazis forced eight thousand people to live as if they were in the Middle Ages: their days beginning and ending with the sun, drawing water from wells, and traveling by foot. This couldn’t continue while other French towns returned to a safe and modern democracy. So de Gaulle appointed in October Gen. Edgard de Larminat to liberate the towns of the coastal pockets.
Larminat, a World War I veteran who’d fought in the horrific Battle of Verdun, had joined the Free French after an escape from a German POW camp, commanding divisions in North Africa and Italy, and trying to keep from public view the demons that shadowed him through two wars. Another Free French leader, the five-star general Georges Catroux, called Larminat unethical and mentally unstable. Nevertheless, de Gaulle tasked Larminat with the Atlantic job, enchanted by a glorious record that stretched back to 1916.
Larminat was to take the former résistants and organize them into groups of traditional soldiers, with a hierarchy of command that climbed back to him. Though he admired the rebels’ bravery, he found their methods—the sabotages and attack-and-hide warfare—in poor taste. With veteran officers beneath him, he began to shape the underground fighters into a division of nearly twenty-four thousand soldiers. But, truth be told, the men shaped the division as much as it shaped them. La Rochefoucauld, for instance, landed in the Carnot Brigade, under the direction of Col. Jean de Milleret, a former Resistance leader who now led the Forces Françaises de la Point de Grave et Royan (FFGR). Milleret oversaw small groups of commando teams whose tactics were informed by their time in the underground. La Rochefoucauld’s job was to helm one of those teams, a light cavalry unit, and teach his men all he himself had learned and done in the last three years. His team was stationed not far from Saint-Vivien-de-Médoc, a small town near the southern mouth of the Gironde estuary, across the water from Royan, which would be a focal point in the fighting.
Robert heard that de Gaulle wanted to attack quickly, in November, but many soldiers were still joining up, some weren’t properly trained, and reinforcements weren’t ready. So the so-called Operation Independence was put off until Christmas Day 1944. On December 16, however, the Germans launched a counteroffensive hundreds of miles away, in northeastern France, a massive blitz with 250,000 German troops and five panzer tank divisions driving through the same Ardennes forest that the Nazis had traversed four years earlier, when taking the country the first time. And so the French armored vehicles and air support awaiting deployment in the Atlantic were ordered north and east, toward the Ardennes, to engage in what history would call the Battle of the Bulge.
Robert and the French troops around the Gironde estuary did not follow the tanks and planes. They had a mandate to stay where they were; their battle was coming, the French high command promised. For La Rochefoucauld, time stretched as daylight shortened. Soldiers in clogs and uniforms that thinned and ripped as the winter winds howled griped about the cold, the sicknesses that spread through the camp, and their inadequate rations. They drilled endlessly. La Rochefoucauld oversaw his troops’ parachute training, instructing them on overcoming a fear of death that he himself still secretly battled. In their significant downtime, he and his men swapped stories, the twenty-one-year-old officer discussing his war and family, enlivening his audience. The commandos soon settled on a nom de guerre for him, Maxim. It was perfect, really, a suggestion of his Three Musketeers–esque service and his distant relative, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, who’d written the aphoristic Maxims, which every French schoolboy had had to read. The troops respected La Rochefoucauld, but as with so many bands of warriors who had to live and fight together, they didn’t want to openly revere him, and so the name acquired an ironic, even mocking tone on their lips. Maxim, they said, as if with air quotes.
The new year came and the fighters remained at their bases, and then watched on January 5 as something strange happened. Across the estuary, a fleet of 350 British planes dropped 800 tons of bombs on Royan. They fell primarily in the city center, and not on the Axis garrisons at its border, killing 442 civilians and only 35 Germans. Robert saw the fiery collapse of almost every building in Royan with a mix of confusion and horror. This episode would in part compel him to say, years later, “I’ll tell you something very important: I do not have the least desire to hear or talk about the war.” Allied officials offered no adequate explanation for the bombing—something about the fleet being scheduled to bomb a location in Germany but, due to inclement weather, rerouting to Royan, with orders to carry out a mission but without maps of German positions.
The destruction enraged de Gaulle. The loss of life was horrendous, and from a military perspective, the Brits had ignored his mandate that an aerial campaign be followed by one on the ground, led by French soldiers. The British aerial attack on Royan without any subsequent troop movement left de Gaulle, and the soldiers in the estuary, feeling ignored and abandoned. In the weeks ahead, some joked that they were the Forgotten French Forces.
The cruel irony for Royonnais was that the bombs didn’t destroy the defensive line, the squat casemates that housed the Nazi artillery along the coast. This almost guaranteed a second attack, one that would feature more bombs and, the French high command insisted, the thousands of French troops stationed around the estuary.
In February, planning for this mission began in earnest. General de Larminat began inspecting the grounds and meeting with officers. On February 8, the general walked before aspirants like Maxim, and when he got to Robert, asked him to present himself. “So I stated my name: La Rochefoucauld.”
Larminat was himself the son of an officer, educated at the Saint-Cyr academy and part of the military nobility. He knew of the La Rochefoucaulds. “I asked for your real name,” Larminat said. “Not your nom de guerre.”
But La Rochefoucauld said that was his name.
Larminat stared at him, seemingly surprised that someone with such lineage would want to lead a gauche commando team. But the confident gaze the young officer returned suggested he was very much at home here. “The general burst out laughing,” La Rochefoucauld wrote.
The following month the reconnaissance began, small groups of men heading out by night in rubber boats to mark the enemy positions. The units finished
the first part of their map by March 7 and had German-manned canals near Saint-Vivien-de-Médoc detailed by the twenty-second. “We badgered the enemy on its lines,” La Rochefoucauld wrote. The men then grew bolder, and hid by day under bridges on the spits of territory the Germans oversaw near Saint-Vivien, bringing back “precious information on enemy terrain,” the official record notes. By March 31, some of the roughly 850 men within the reconnaissance teams had begun the nerve-wracking work of demining the coasts. They found far too many bombs, so a pattern established itself. Night after night, crews bellied their way to German positions, and by the light of a fading moon dismantled the explosives, their anxiety compounded by the fear that Nazi sentries might see them. Morning after morning, though, the crews returned, the beaches a little safer, and the final battle for France that much closer.
Like many commandos, La Rochefoucauld’s job in the newly named Operation Venerable was to help free two areas: Pointe de Grave, a spit of beach with heavy German fortresses on the southern mouth of the Gironde estuary, and Royan, which sat across the water from Pointe de Grave.
Over the weekend of April 14 and 15, the Allies at last launched Operation Venerable. First came the twelve hundred B-26 bombers, “drenching” the Gironde, in the words of a front-page New York Times story, with a unique weapon: “460,000 gallons of liquid fire that bathed in flames the German positions and strong points.” This was a new bomb, napalm, that detonated on impact and then flung everywhere a viscous fiery gel, which maintained its consistency even as it burned. Robert peered out from his own fortified compound and saw the woods and the ruins of Royan alight in flames that would not die out. A French admiral watched the scene from the safety of Médis, northeast of Royan, with reverence and terror: “Under a fantastic concentration of fire . . . The countryside and the sky were thick with powder and yellow smoke. One could with difficulty distinguish the mutilated silhouette of the clock tower of Saint-Pierre, which burned like a torch.”
Though Royan burned into the next day, some of the German casemates, resembling squat low-slung houses, with thick cement exteriors sheltering the artillery and men inside, made it through the attack unharmed. The big guns kept blasting out their rounds onto a torched and increasingly barren landscape. On the mouth of the Gironde, La Rochefoucauld was amazed. “We were under ceaseless fire,” he wrote, “coming from a casemate that had weathered the Allied air raid without too much damage.”
A high-ranking French officer within La Rochefoucauld’s regiment asked his subordinates to meet him in a safe house. There, he told them that if they carried out their planned daytime attack on that casemate, they would lose a lot of men and still fail to take the Nazi position. So how could they accomplish their mission without sacrificing all their soldiers?
La Rochefoucauld had asked himself the same question. Now he spoke up, proposing “an unusual plan of action,” he later wrote. This casemate sat near the water’s edge—so far out that some water actually flowed behind the compound. La Rochefoucauld proposed leading a team of men in a rubber boat—the sort that had been used for reconnaissance—and then paddling behind the casemate, sneaking ashore, planting some plastic bombs against the compound, and then watching from the estuary as the whole thing jumped to the stars.
“The captain was skeptical,” La Rochefoucauld wrote. How could a handful of men succeed when twelve hundred bombers had not? The idea had the makings of a suicide mission. But La Rochefoucauld knew a pinpoint sabotage could be more effective than any number of bombers. That had been the case in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles. The commanding officer was aware of La Rochefoucauld’s previous missions; the lore of Maxim had spread through the coastal towns, apparently. He eyed the twenty-one-year-old, and told him to find a rubber boat.
Around 10 p.m. that night he and three other men set off. On the bed of their vessel sat the necessary cords and explosives and submachine guns. There was no moon. A light rain fell. Perfect conditions for a stealth operation.
The paddles glided over the estuary, dipping and driving the boat ahead, lightly, rhythmically, the noise of wood against water almost inaudible. No one dared speak. It was a mile and a half to their landing spot.
The silence allowed reflection, and La Rochefoucauld no doubt felt self-assured. He had sabotaged utilities and rail lines, escaped Nazis in Auxerre and killed them in Bordeaux. He had dressed like a nun to avoid detection and placed bombs in bread to help free his country. The daring boy had become a daring man, and Robert could handle one more daring mission. But he also knew that if any of the events of the last three years had developed a little differently, going back to the Soissons postman, he would be dead now, or near death in a camp. And tonight, to press on? To attempt to succeed where nothing less than napalm had failed? That was Robert’s courage, sure, and his deep desire to avenge his suffering, whatever the risk. But cleaved to this outward-facing élan was a private uncertainty influenced by too many close calls. La Rochefoucauld had been a poor student, but he was smart enough to know that luck and maybe even God’s grace had brought him to this night as much as his sangfroid. He couldn’t tell his men this, but he was not as brave as he wanted to be, which was the price paid for his previous heroic acts. Still, as the Duc de La Rochefoucauld had written in 1665, “Perfect bravery and sheer cowardice are two extremes rarely found. The space between them is vast, and embraces all other sorts of courage.” Robert de La Rochefoucauld had come too far to turn around now.
It took two hours before they saw the darkened landing spot on the shore that would guide them to the casemate, a half mile inland. Slowly, they paddled to the beach and disembarked, taking their guns and supplies. The men fell into single file, La Rochefoucauld in the front, a flashlight guiding him. He hoped with each new step to avoid the mines that might still surround them. After an incremental advance, they saw rising in the night the outline of the casemate.
They saw a problem, too. Their target was protected by an outer wall, which ringed the grounds. Between that outer wall and the casemate itself was a courtyard of sorts, a walkway about eight feet across. It had camouflaged netting for a roof, which would repel any Allied parachutist daring enough to land there. The commando team assumed a guard patrolled this courtyard, and so La Rochefoucauld came up with a plan. Two of his men would position themselves on either side of the wall, commandos turned sentries. The third would climb the wall and crouch down on top of it, the explosives in hand. La Rochefoucauld himself would ascend to the top and then crawl out onto the netting, lying against it. If a guard walked beneath, he would cut a hole in the mesh, and then time his jump to land on the Nazi and end the man’s life. The trick was to do it without firing a shot—because that would awaken the men inside the casemate. If he succeeded and silently executed the guard, his companion would toss the plastic explosives down to him. La Rochefoucauld would plant the bombs against the cement fortification, climb back out of the courtyard, and the four of them would take off.
A drizzle still fell, which would make the climb on the wall difficult, but also perhaps drown out any noise Robert made. He told his men to be ready. If a guard spotted him on the netting, they would need to fire on the Nazi. And if that were the case, whether Robert were dead or alive, they should run for cover. Otherwise they would die, too. The men nodded their heads.
They approached in battle crouches, half-running their way along the coastal grass slickened by rain, until they reached their positions. La Rochefoucauld scaled the wall with little noise or difficulty. He knelt on its precipice and peered down. There was a guard, walking back and forth through the courtyard. The German wore a hooded rain jacket. He didn’t seem interested in what happened above him. Luck, even on this inclement night, shone once more on La Rochefoucauld.
He put one foot and then one hand on the camouflaged netting, wobbling his way into a steady position, and then moved his other leg and hand onto it. In a moment he hung in quiet suspension, perhaps a foot above the passing Nazi, who kept his head down wit
h each turn, sheltering his face from the conditions.
La Rochefoucauld slowly took out his knife and began cutting the links of netting. Each gave way with little to no noise. He redistributed his weight as he cut a wider and wider hole, making sure it opened over the path the guard was walking—who still didn’t glance up. Now La Rochefoucauld had a gap big enough to dive through. He looked around, and with hand signals told his team that the next time the guard passed, he’d jump.
The Nazi slung a rifle over his shoulder, walking close to the outer wall of the courtyard. La Rochefoucauld crouched near his hole, and the guard stepped under it.
Robert tackled the German, knocking him off his feet, the rifle splaying off his shoulder. Adrenaline and his training overtook La Rochefoucauld, and he pulled the Nazi close, the guard’s back against Robert’s chest. He sunk his dagger in the man’s throat and swiped it across. The struggle ended almost as soon as it began.
La Rochefoucauld dragged the body against the wall, and let it lie there, slumped over. The only sound was the patter of rain.
His explosives man tossed the plastic bombs through the hole in the netting. La Rochefoucauld synced them up, timed them to burst in seven minutes, and then had his teammate help him out of the compound.
It was a slow scramble for the men, trying to distance themselves from the casemate while watching the ground for mines. “We hadn’t covered five hundred yards when the enormous detonation rang out,” La Rochefoucauld wrote. The team looked at one another, their eyes dancing. But they couldn’t celebrate: The explosion would draw other Germans to the site. So they half ran and hopped their way back to the beach and then into the boat. They “set sail without losing a second,” Robert wrote, paddling back down the Gironde, trying to move quickly but quietly. Hours later, they reached the safety of their camp.