Conquistadors of the Useless

by Roberts, David, Terray, Lionel, Sutton, Geoffrey

  Towards the end of December 1944 it was my section’s turn to relieve the advanced post of Challe-Chalet, about seven thousand feet up on a north-facing ridge. It was difficult to hold and to supply, and could hardly have been more uncomfortable. Jacques Boell has described it thus: ‘It was by far the most rudimentary I have ever seen. It consisted of two trenches in the snow linked by a filthy little hovel, inside which it rained and snowed just as much as if one had been outside. The lads who occupied it had given it the picturesque name of ‘Tin-can Palace’. Less than two kilometres away across a small valley the Germans were installed on the Col de l’Arondaz, which commanded our position. I am sure that the enemy could have made life there impossible, whenever he wished, by means of mortars, heavy machine-guns, and night patrols. In point of fact practically nothing happened at all. Although it was in a most vulnerable position the post was never attacked; only, no doubt to keep his eye in, Jerry would occasionally send over a few mortar bombs or bursts of machine gun fire. It can’t have been too bad, anyway, because in several months there were no deaths and very few wounded.’

  Without wishing to put on heroic airs, life at Challe-Chalet was distinctly unpleasant. Day and night it froze hard enough to do mortal harm to a brass monkey, and on some nights the thermometer fell as low as minus thirty-three degrees Centigrade. We had only one stove to warm thirty men, and the draughts were such that six feet from the stove wine froze in the bottle. As we had little equipment of the right kind it goes without saying that this permanent frost made us suffer considerably. Apart from a bit of skiing on the one unsuitable slope sheltered from German fire, and the hour-long lugging of food, wood and ammunition on our own backs, we had absolutely nothing to do. After a few days of this sort of existence we became profoundly bored, and a mixture of boredom and cold is very hard to bear.

  To the right of the Col de l’Arondaz rose two small rocky peaks marked on the map as points 8020’ and 7986’. On 8020, which was the closer to the col, the Germans had installed an observation post from which they could not only see all that went on at Challe-Chalet, but could also direct the heavy artillery which from time to time they turned on Battalion H.Q. in the village of Charmaix, or the mortar fire with which they sprinkled the supply columns going to the Lavoir fort. There was no doubt that Point 8020 was a serious asset to the enemy, but it had to be admitted that he used it with moderation. All in all the post didn’t really matter to us too terribly, and anyway there seemed to be no way of stopping him using it.

  One morning when, for something to do, we had spent an hour or two banging off our mortars at the Col de l’Arondaz and Point 8020, the exasperated Germans replied by firing a few rounds at Tin-can Palace. My cousin Michel Chevallier called out:

  ‘If only we could get at them up there, the Jerries wouldn’t look so bloody clever’.

  I replied jokingly, ‘Well, why shouldn’t we?’

  ‘What the hell are you going to do about it?’ replied my cousin, ‘They’re in an absolutely impregnable position.’

  Carried away by the spirit of the argument, I said: ‘I don’t know so much, it’s not as bad as all that. The face of Point 7986 is out of sight of the Boches, so we could probably get up there. From there to the other top is easy enough to do by night if necessary. You’d only have to climb 7986 in the afternoon and attack the observation post just after nightfall, before they could get help from the Col de l’Arondaz. If you left fixed ropes on the face there’d be ample time to retreat, and it would really put the wind up them.’

  Chevallier’s rather wan grey eyes began to shine. Frowning with interest, he said: ‘It would be terrific if one could do it, but do you really think we could get up the face? It looks pretty hard to me, and when it’s as cold as this you can’t do much.’

  But I replied imperturbably: ‘As far as climbing the face is concerned, leave it to me and we’ll get there. I made a recce over there the other day, and there’s a gully you can’t see from here which makes the first two-thirds easy. Given enough time we can always get up the last bit. It would be more fun than dying of cold here, and anyway think of the look on the faces of the Boches!’

  And so it began. Starting with a frustrated argument between a couple of climbers, the idea grew and grew. The next time Captain Stéphane came to see us, Chevallier, who was a sergeant-major, told him of our project. Stéphane, who knew nothing about climbing, was rather sceptical at first about our chances of climbing Point 7986, but after we had assured him that this was the least of our problems he grew very keen on the idea and promised to discuss it with Lieutenant-Colonel Le Ray. The colonel was an experienced mountaineer and an old climbing friend of Michel Chevallier’s, and after having thoroughly investigated the whole matter he gave his permission.

  The plan we finally decided on was no longer to storm Point 8020, but simply to fire at the look-out from Point 7986, which was some hundred and fifty yards away. There were to be only three men in the team: Chevallier, the Chamonix guide Laurent Cretton, and myself. Nothing was left to chance. Cretton and Chevallier, who were both excellent shots, spent several days down at the range practising with a target at a hundred and fifty yards, while I selected the necessary ropes, hammers, pitons and ice axes.

  The day came. After three hours of difficult going on skis we reached the foot of a forty-five-degree couloir. Skiing was out of the question on a slope of this angle, so we continued on foot, sinking up to the waist in light powdery snow which would certainly have avalanched but for the bitter cold which bound the crystals together. After a while we came to rock, where the plaster of ice and snow made climbing a delicate matter. The last pitch of all was really dangerous, consisting of a smooth slab topped by a cornice which was ready to come down at any minute. On my first attempt I fell about ten feet, but was able to stop myself before I came on the rope. It was only towards noon that we emerged from the face, which had been rendered much more serious than usual by the snow on the rock and the absolutely arctic cold.

  Only a light depression in the ridge now separated us from the enemy post a hundred and fifty yards away on Point 8020, and we could see it very clearly. To begin with we took great pains not to be seen, but some time passed and there still seemed to be no signs of life. We hung on thinking that the garrison must be comfortably warming themselves inside, but, despite the bright sunlight that sparkled off the snow, the icy wind made our position almost intolerable. The chill went right through us and our feet began to lose all feeling. Soon we could stand it no longer. It seemed obvious that the Germans had temporarily gone down, probably for Christmas Eve festivities. We were just about to clear out when a sentry appeared, not on Point 8020 but on the Col de l’Arondaz. He was over three hundred yards away, and our chances of hitting him were pretty poor. Chevallier nevertheless decided to let him have a burst; but, when he pulled the trigger, the hammer would not come down sharply enough to fire the round. Although we had taken the greatest care of it, the gun was jammed by the temperature of minus-thirty degrees Celcius. In spite of numb fingers and the problems presented by stripping down a light machine gun on a ridge where a strong wind was continually whipping up the snow, Chevallier and Cretton toiled for over an hour to clear their weapon. It was no use. We could stick it out no longer, and there was nothing for it but to get down.

  Jacques Boell depicts Chevallier as having been in despair over the frustration of our mission, but I can say that this is a great exaggeration. Neither he nor I had any real desire to kill the German sentry pacing up and down on the col, all unconscious of the danger that menaced him. We had long realised the slight military value of all this fighting in the Alps. Life in the front line had ceased to be a patriotic mission so much as a big game of cowboys and Indians, made all the better by the fact that it was played out among our beloved mountains. On the patrols and raids for which we always volunteered we did not really set out to slaughter Germans or anything of that sort. What we enjoy
ed in this pointless and obsolete form of war was its resemblance to mountaineering. We sought adventures where courage, intelligence and strength might enable us to overcome apparently impossible obstacles; action in a world of grandeur and light which appeared different from that of grubs crawling around in the mud.

  These actions seemed no more serious to us than trying to climb mountains by their most difficult faces. But if, therefore, it was no more than sport, we carried it to the limit in just the same way. Reaching the summit is not the point of a climb, only the whistle for end of play. Very often the last few feet of climbing are not very exciting or difficult, but, for all that, real climbers go on to the top. In the same way, the actual game is not the underlying motive of hunting yet no hunter likes to return empty-handed. Thus shooting at the enemy was not for us the sole purpose of our operations so much as a simple rule of the game we played. And so, in the coppery light of that radiant evening, we arranged the ropes for the first rappel with quiet minds, conscious of having done all that was humanly possible towards the accomplishment of our task, and happy in the experience of a splendid adventure.

  At the very end of his tale, Boell seems to have divined our true attitude. He quotes my actual words when I realised that our ascent of Point 7986 was not in fact destined to frighten a single German: ‘When all’s said and done it’s a piece of luck that the L.M.G. isn’t working. Nobody will know we’ve been here, and we can do it all again.’ Perhaps he was right in concluding: ‘Terray, a genuine sportsman and silent man of action, is of the breed who do not need hope in order to set out, or success in order to carry on.’

  After three months or so of defending the mountain ranges separating Modana from Bardonnèche, the Compagnie Stéphane was posted to another part of the front where more serious and difficult assignments awaited it. At the end of the Arc valley the two villages of Bonneval and Bessans were cut off from the rest of Maurienne by a no man’s land of eighteen kilometres. The reason for this was that the Germans were strongly fortified on the Col du Mont Cenis and the old Tura fort, so that it was impossible to defend the area open to their artillery fire at any acceptable cost. This area amounted to the districts of Lanslebourg and Lans-le-Villard. The people and livestock of Bonneval and Bessans had remained where they were, and it was necessary to protect them from the looting raids which the enemy could hardly fail to make sooner or later. The defence and supply of this enclave was a complex problem. Theoretically they could have been supplied by portages across the Col de l’lseran, which was between us and the troops stationed in Val d’Isère, but such a long route would have been dangerous owing to avalanches, and would also have called for a large force of men.

  Headquarters preferred to supply us by parachute, a system which was very popular at the time but not very practical. For technical reasons which I cannot now remember the aeroplanes were afraid to fly low over the valley, and dropped their loads from such a height that the least puff of wind dispersed them over a wide area. The containers came down all over the hillsides. Many were lost, and the recovery of the remainder was a tiresome job. The whole business was so slow and inefficient that it was decided to try the riskier method of bringing supplies through the no man’s land at night. Thanks to the darkness there was no great fear of German shells, but the valley was narrow and ideally suited to ambush. In the event the enemy turned out to be not much more aggressive than in the Modane sector, so that there were no more than two or three clashes even though dozens of men passed in both directions every night.

  Throughout the early winter the sector had been defended by a company of the 7th B.C. A. After three months virtually cut off from their own side they needed a relief, and Compagnie Stéphane was given the job. We were to see a lot more action on this front than on the one we were leaving, some of which was to prove really thrilling.

  After helping to install a telephone line between Val d’Isere and Bonneval, I and some other N.C.O.s were detailed to take charge of the supply columns through the no man’s land. I did this journey five or six times in both directions. In spite of our fitness those eleven miles of stumbling through the darkness under loads of up to ninety pounds always seemed extremely hard, but the physical effort was nothing in comparison with the nervous tension. Virtually the whole of our route lay open to attack by the enemy, and although we tried to reassure ourselves that such attacks were in fact rare, this knowledge created a very unpleasant anxiety neurosis. The worst part was going through Lanslebourg. There was absolutely no way of avoiding this village, placed in a narrowing of the valley. It had been evacuated and partly destroyed, so that the least breath of wind would rattle the half tom-off sheets of corrugated iron, or slam doors and windows. These sounds seemed incredibly sinister at dead of night as one passed through the ruins in the knowledge that a machine gun might be hidden behind every wall, and as they broke the oppressive silence even the bravest of us could hardly help jumping.

  Around the beginning of March there was a patch of fine weather, which made possible a series of high-altitude operations in which my climbing and skiing abilities were again put to the test. The mountains of high Maurienne are over eleven thousand feet in places, and the cols which link them are high and steep. The weak forces of Germans and Italians which opposed us on this front had seen fit not to occupy the actual line of crests, which they doubtless judged to be militarily inaccessible at this time of year. These units, mainly made up of Italians who had been pressed forcibly into service, had been content to dig in around the highest villages of the three Stura valleys. Faced with this weak point in the enemy line of defence, the high command, probably encouraged by Stéphane, decided we should occupy not only the cols but some strategic points on the Italian side.

  This move seemed to me to have a double purpose. In the first place it would enable us to make contact with the Italian Maquis operating behind the enemy lines because, starting from such high bases, we would be able to infiltrate between his strongpoints. In the second, we could take the enemy in the rear when the time came for a major attack on the Col du Mont Cenis, which I had little doubt was in the offing. To do all this with a single company called for an intense effort on the part of every single man, but more especially from the mountaineering specialists. As there were not enough of these to go round, they had practically no rest.

  Captain Stéphane seemed to have great faith in my experience and judgement of mountain conditions, as he put me in charge of the technical planning for most of the difficult operations. It was indeed flattering to be so trusted, but it meant that in order to live up to it I had to make enormous efforts – not that I found this in the least bit displeasing. The most remarkable of the missions I took part in at this time was a four-day patrol. By going a very long way round, which involved a bivouac on the way, we were able to link up with a band of Italian partisans hiding close to the small village of Suse, twelve miles behind the lines at Mont Cenis. These men were able to give us the exact positions of several batteries of heavy artillery. The patrol was daring from an alpine as well as from a military point of view, inasmuch as we had to go along craggy ridges and cut across slopes which would have avalanched at the least fall of snow.

  There were moments of drama during the four days. Suse was occupied by over eight hundred Germans, and while we were hiding out with the partisans, only about a mile from the village, someone must have given the game away. All the houses were being searched, but we were woken up by the Maquisards and got away under cover of darkness. A couple of hours later we were just coming out of the woods into the higher pastures when we saw two large columns making a pincer movement to cut us off. Fortunately the Germans did not see us, and we escaped by hiding in the branches of high trees. It is probable that if, as often happened, the Jerries had had dogs with them, the adventure would have had a less happy ending.

  The following evening, half-starved and worn out by a long forced march carrying arms and ammunition, we were
approaching the old generating station by the Lac de la Rousse when we heard the noise of firing. The post had been attacked, several men wounded, and my friend Robert Buchet killed. Instead of finding the rest and nourishment we had been expecting, we had to participate at once in a counter-attack and then fall back on the Col de l’Arnès, situated more than an hour’s march above. As if my pack wasn’t heavy enough in its own right I had to carry a wounded man’s as well. By the time we reached the little hamlet of Avérole on the other side of the col it was the middle of the night, and I understood what it meant to go beyond one’s normal limit of endurance. That day, marching virtually without food and with fifty-pound rucksacks, we had climbed and descended a total of over seventeen thousand feet, of which some nine thousand had been uphill.

  I shared another interesting experience with Michel Chevallier three hundred feet or so below the summit of the Pointe de Charbonnel. With its twelve and a quarter thousand feet, this peak is the highest in the range. Without being exactly what one would call difficult it is quite steep on all sides, and it can only be climbed in winter when the snow is in safe condition. On one of those sublime days when the mountains glitter like jewels in the sunlight we had climbed a steep gully of hard snow, and there, three hundred feet below the top, had hollowed out of the slope a cave big enough to shelter us comfortably. From this igloo-like base we expected to be able to spend two whole days observing the new German installations on the Col de Ronsse, over the other side of the Ribon valley, on which an attack was being considered. The Pointe de Charbonnel was practically the only place from which such observations could be made discreetly. Our particular job was to get some idea of the size of the enemy forces, the siting of any minefields, and the outposts of the sentries.

  Faure and Laurenceau, who had come along to help with the digging, spent the first night in the ice cave with us, then went down, leaving us alone on the mountain. There was not a cloud in the sky and the air was almost utterly still. Despite the cold we spent the day glued to our telescope. At nightfall we returned to our comfortable cave, got out our air mattresses, and slept well after an ample meal. At seven o’clock in the morning I pushed aside the canvas sheet which served us for a door and got a lump of snow in the face for my pains. The weather had changed in the night and there was eight inches of new snow on the ground.