We Fought for Ardnish

by Angus MacDonald

  Finally, we reached the top and sat, dripping sweat, in the sunshine. The men were gulping water from jars and fishing in their packs for more cigarettes. We looked east towards Chamonix.

  ‘There, you see? That is the issue,’ Charles said, gesturing. ‘There are a thousand people in the valley who will not get food after we blow the canyon. My sister’s family lives down there. There will be reprisals. And did you know that many Jews escaped through the gorge from Chamonix to Geneva? We may be cutting off their escape route, too.’

  I could see how upset he was. ‘Yes, my friend, but we need to think on a larger scale – of the millions of people, not the hundreds.’

  Three of the Maquis had brought skis with them and idled longer at the ridge. They would get down the hill far quicker than us. Charles and I and the other three set off in the heavy wet snow. Even with our snowshoes, we struggled.

  Surprisingly, Claude didn’t get to our meeting point before us. It wasn’t until the early evening that he arrived; apparently the truck had started to struggle going up the hill and overheated. They kept having to stop to let the engine cool down. Several Alpini vehicles had driven past, causing some nerve-racking moments. He was more exhausted than the rest of us, who had spent eight hours climbing over the mountain. But soon the truck was hidden away in the barn, the men dispersed to stay with friends, and I was berthed in a bed of soft hay. Charles had wisely decided that I could not be explained away to the locals and should be kept out of sight.

  ‘It is too late to do a reconnaissance tonight,’ Claude said. ‘I will bring you some food in the morning, and I will enjoy my casserole, my friend.’ He smiled apologetically as he departed.

  I was comfortable enough, but I couldn’t help nervously cradling my gun. Despite not having been challenged, everyone must have seen the men in the truck grinding their way up here. I felt sure a patrol would be sent to check. And, of course, I was still fretting about Françoise.

  Sleep didn’t come easily that night as I went over and over the task ahead. The men arrived in dribs and drabs at the barn early the next morning, with the two long climbing ropes and baskets I had requested. We left the truck and explosives in the shed while we went to study potential sites for the planned explosion and rock fall.

  I needed to find a rock fissure into which I could cram plastic explosives, on a slope to trigger a landslide. I reckoned it may take a day or two to identify the best place, transport the explosives and prepare the area.

  We set up an abseil point on a tree, a thousand feet above the gorge. I was aware that we could be seen from the other side of the valley, and the sight of us of scurrying around carrying loads and lowering men with ropes would be bound to arouse curiosity. All but three of us had to stay in the barn under cover. It wasn’t until late afternoon that we finally secured our place: a twenty-ton boulder sitting on a scree face of precariously balanced rocks. We examined it carefully from all angles, weighing up the options. The worst outcome would be an earth-shattering roar, shards flying everywhere and the rock remaining exactly where it was, followed by German patrols teeming over the hilltop.

  As we worked we could see the enormous factory, almost directly beneath us in the valley, in Chedde. Charles had told us that it made aluminium parts for German aircraft and was probably another reason why Kaufmann had frequented the area so often. The factory was powered by the river Arve that flowed south from Chamonix. My mind was wrestling with how we could stop production by blocking the water supply and therefore their electricity, as well as cutting off the road up the valley. It was amazing how much free movement there currently was in the Alps, and still so little involvement from the Alpini. It was bound to change. And the Germans would be much more brutal.

  That night I returned to my nest in the barn. Claude arrived with a bowl of cold stew, which I wolfed down. We talked while I ate. I was keen for him to get a message to a British colonel called Bettenfield, who had been in the area for a long time and was based in Chamonix. Apparently he was away, but I needed to meet him and co-ordinate plans for the Mont Blanc area. Claude reckoned he knew someone who would arrange for the colonel to get in touch when he returned.

  After Claude had gone, I settled down to sleep, quietly relieved not to be with my rowdy French comrades. Sleep would come easily tonight.

  Early next morning, rucksack by rucksack, the ton of explosive was carried along a track in the forest, all beautifully packaged in War Office packaging. I’d been to the Nobel factory in Newcastle where thousands of women cut plastic explosive to length, added fuses and then rolled it into shape with brown paper and a Nobel 808 label. The place was utterly indispensable to the war effort – one well-directed German bomb would have put back the efforts of the SOE for a year, not to mention wiping out a vast area of Newcastle.

  Having reached our chosen explosion point, we set up a pulley system to lower the basket down to the huge boulder and others surrounding it. I was roped up with another man on an extremely steep face, with stones slipping away from under our feet, bouncing over the rocks and falling into the gorge as we gradually created a hollow under the boulder.

  I felt horribly exposed, knowing that the falling stones and hillside covered with men could attract attention. As the basket came down to us we would tightly pack the explosives around the rock, and by late in the day, we were ready to go. The detonators were in, and wire snaked three hundred yards up the hill to the plunger. A spotter aircraft drifted past in the twilight and circled to come in for a closer look. We froze against the hillside. We couldn’t delay the explosion until the morning as the place would be over-run by the enemy by then.

  Charles and another man volunteered to take the truck down to the gorge and leave it as a road block just below where the debris was to fall. Another man would stop traffic from the Chamonix side. The aim was to get the truck back to Les Contamines. Our men were greatly concerned about the prospect of locals getting killed, but we believed the risk was minimal at night, with no one likely to be on the road at night.

  At two in the morning, with everything in place, I pushed the plunger. There was an almighty rumble and it seemed as if the whole mountain shook before the boulder bounced into the dark valley beneath us. I wondered what the people in Chedde must have thought as they lay in their beds. An Allied bombing? An earthquake?

  There was much cheering and celebration, but we needed to get away fast. Claude was to lie low in Vaudagne, and the others were to make their way back to Les Contamines. As for me, my work here was complete. My next sortie was in Courmayeur, and after that I would travel back over the mountain I had crossed with Françoise.

  Clasping me to him, Claude kissed me several times. ‘We will pray for Françoise,’ he said. ‘I have a good feeling about her.’

  Later, as we arrived at the path down to the village we were met by a distraught Marie. ‘The Gestapo have been here, dragging people from their houses!’ she cried. ‘They’re looking for Claude and all of you. I ran into the forest but I saw everything. We must hide.’

  ‘Marie, I need to go to Vaudagne and find Claude. You’ll be safe there,’ I exclaimed. ‘I need to get across the glacier.’

  ‘Oh, and Angus, we have news about Françoise.’

  My heart lurched in my chest.

  ‘She was tortured, I’m afraid. She’s alive, but seriously injured. We have a woman working at the army camp in Sallanches who took food to her. Her arm was shattered by the grenade and her feet have been badly broken. She can’t walk. They’ll be moving her to a prison, but we don’t know which one.’

  Shaken by this news, I took my leave of Marie and set off by myself, retracing my route. So, Françoise had been injured by the grenade. Because she had succeeded in killing Kaufmann, the Germans would want retribution – and information. I shuddered to think about her plight. I wondered why she hadn’t killed herself – she would have had her cyanide pill and a pistol – but perhaps she hadn’t had time. Would they know by now that she was
a Canadian SOE agent or could she convince them she was a local? Her resolve and powers of persuasion would mean the difference between life and death.

  *

  My next stop was with the Resistance in Courmayeur. They had had the task of destroying the Italian network of via ferrata, the network of steel cables and iron rungs that allowed their troops easy movement along the steepest alps. We were to block the route over the Great Saint Bernard Pass, from Saint Rhémy-en-Bosses in Italy to Bourg-Saint-Pierre in Switzerland.

  Charles had introduced me to a young guide, Jean, who was a real mountain man. Tall, fit and muscular, he had immediately inspired confidence in me. After an efficient briefing, during which he pointed out the pitfalls and likely trouble spots where the Alpini might be, we set off at a fast pace the next morning after a night sleeping rough in the forest. Jean was in the lead, and there was no sound apart from the swish of our skis and the roar of the swollen river. The skis were a blessing. I had snowshoes, too, and a white bed sheet, in which I’d cut a hole for my head, so that I wouldn’t stand out so much against the snow.

  It would take three days slogging up the Vallée Blanche, one to ski across the glacier to Col de Bionnassay and a third to ski down to Courmayeur.

  We walked up the valley that afternoon, arriving late at a draughty mountain bothy where we rested briefly and uncomfortably in the bitter cold until three in the morning. We wasted no time getting on our way, anticipating that it would get light by half past five, and reached the Refuge du Plan Glacier by nine before laying up all day to wait for nightfall in order to traverse the glacier unseen, using the stars for light.

  Jean knew where all the Alpini observation posts were located. They had good lines of sight and their soldiers were likely to be far quicker skiers than I was. We set off with only the stars and a sliver of moon to light the way. Jean had explained that by aiming for a particular mountain peak we would be on a good route, one that avoided the seracs. We roped ourselves together for safety; if one of us fell into a crevasse then the other could pull him out.

  In darkness we climbed a couloir onto a ridge and Jean announced that we’d reached the Italian border. ‘I’m going to abseil you down here,’ he said. ‘At the end of the rope you’ll find yourself on a ledge. Put your skis on there, and when it’s light, you’ll be able to ski off.’

  I peered over the cliff. From what little I could make out in the dim light, it seemed to be a thousand feet of vertical drop, and I knew Jean’s rope was only fifty yards long. ‘Don’t worry’ – he grinned – ‘you’re not the first to do it.’ I was not reassured.

  The next twenty minutes were the most terrifying of my life. After securing the rope around my waist and between my legs, I stepped over the cliff edge.

  I inched my way down in the darkness, legs trembling violently, hands soaked with sweat.

  But miraculously, as he promised, I soon found myself on a snow-covered ledge, about three feet wide and six feet long. I was right at the end of the rope and there seemed no way possible off the ledge. This couldn’t be the place, could it? I untied the rope, gave two sharp tugs, and Jean pulled it up and away. I was alone.

  I sat on my pack and ate an apple, waiting for the sunrise as Jean had advised. He had told me that I should put on my skis and, keeping my shoulder parallel to the cliff and facing the sun, simply slide off the ledge. It was a three-yard drop to where there was deep snow and from there I could see the route down he had promised was there. ‘You have to trust me,’ he had insisted. Yet from where I sat, it looked suicidal.

  But he was right, of course. Despite my shaking legs, my pumping heart and a relentless trickle of cold sweat into my eyes, I did as he had instructed and landed safely. I was down and off the precipice within two hours. As I sat on a rock at the bottom, listening to the high-pitched cries of black choughs soaring above me, looking back the way I had come, it looked impossible. I thought of Françoise – she would have been proud of my mountaineering feat.

  I set off once more. I still had a long day’s skiing ahead of me, in broad daylight, down the Miage Glacier to the town. I would be highly visible, but right then I was more concerned about the crevasses and seracs. I simply had to run the risk of being seen. The further away from the border I was, the safer I would be; the Alpini would be more suspicious of a man approaching the border from the French side. Once I reached the valley and was skirting the forest, my heart rate steadied.

  I propped my skis up against a tree and strode into the village as confidently as I could, feeling acutely self-conscious. There were only old women in the streets, who stopped talking and stared as I walked past. My being here wouldn’t be a secret for long. As darkness fell, I dodged into a lane behind the main street. The Maquis leader, Luigi, lived here, behind his bakery.

  As his wife prepared supper I told Luigi of my route over from France. I was exhausted now, and struggling to stay awake in the cosy little kitchen, but he was keen to tell me of his plans. He had identified a key bridge to destroy and a way of diverting a river that would wash away the road. The explosives were already up there, in a hiding-place, though not yet in situ. They hoped to carry out the operation the following night, now that I had arrived. I nodded and listened.

  That night, Luigi, in broken English, explained the details. ‘There is a monastery at the summit, and also a major military presence. The pass is still closed to vehicles due to the snow, but I hear it might re-open early next week. The Alpini still use the road – soldiers on foot and mules for transporting supplies. Our footprints will be visible on the snowy bank above the bridge, so everything will have to happen in one night, in darkness. We can risk only a small amount of light under the bridge as the charges are laid.’

  Luigi drew a detailed diagram of the bridge, which allowed me to work out where would be best to strap the explosives.

  ‘And the river needs to be diverted at the same time,’ he continued. ‘It’s full of snowmelt, so if we get it right there will be a torrent that should undermine the road. It’s so steep there, I’m certain that, without a foundation, the road will be washed down the hillside. We do not need many men as the heavy work has been done. It will just be my brother Antonio and us.’

  I used Luigi’s transmitter to request an extraction. A Lysander would come to pick me up. There was a field not too far away that had been used for a landing before, in fact the one into which Françoise had been parachuted. I was advised that there was a storm coming and it would have to be in two days from now. Everything would be a rush, and I wondered if Luigi could organise a lift to the pick-up site.

  As we talked late into the night, I told Luigi about the possible invasion of Switzerland and how every effort was being made to stop it. I explained that the German High Command would want the Italian army to come over the pass and into Switzerland from the Aosta Valley, to support them.

  ‘If our work succeeds, then they won’t get through the Great Saint Bernard Pass this summer,’ he replied confidently.

  I retired to bed, aching and exhausted. It had been so long since I had slept on a mattress. Fatigue, anxiety and my ever-present fears for Françoise were taking their toll on my mental and physical health.

  The next morning I woke late and devoured a whole loaf of bread, fresh and warm from the bakery, with black-currant jam. Refreshed, I assembled a pack full of detonators from Luigi’s hoard. I needed to time the explosives so they went off when we were a few hours away. At least, that was the plan.

  I boiled some water on the fire and had a badly needed scrub, packed my kit and settled down with a jug of strong coffee. My mind drifted between Françoise and her ordeal and my mother and grandparents. I wondered how the winter had gone. Having enough food for the livestock, and themselves, was always the worry in March. If spring came late everyone suffered.

  I dozed off, despite the coffee, thinking wistfully of my visit home almost a year ago. It seemed a world away.

  *

  Mother had run down
the path to greet me, and later we sat on the step outside the house, enjoying the evening sun. Her two collies were at her feet and she was scratching the old one behind its ears. Mairi and my grandfather were there, too, lying on the warm grass.

  I remember feeling blissfully happy. We watched the yellow-necked gannets lift on the thermal air, then fold their enormous wings back and dive like arrows into the sea to catch their prey. We saw that the sea was boiling across by Goat Island as a shoal of mackerel or herring stirred the surface and gulls swarmed above. Mother said she had seen dolphins earlier and thought it could be them agitating the fish.

  A destroyer had been moored in the sea just beyond Goat Island. Over the course of the day we had seen at least a dozen craft heading up and down between us and Roshven House, as well as converted fishing boats and landing craft. There must have been a big exercise on, or perhaps SOE folk were getting loaded up and taken off on a mission.

  We watched with interest from our comfortable spot in the sun, and at that moment, despite the reminders of war, I believed there could be nowhere more peaceful in the world.

  One sad occasion which took place during my visit was the funeral of an old lady, a close friend of my grandmother’s. We all attended the ceremony and then the graveside as she was laid to rest in Arisaig. It had been a small turnout, as is often the way with the very old – maybe twenty people at most.

  Mother told us how she had been to funerals where she had been the only mourner. One such had been Maureen MacGillivary, who had lived at the back of Keppoch until she was a hundred. ‘I still wonder how she got the birthday card from the king,’ she mused. ‘How would he have known she was a hundred?’

  Grandfather had the funeral tale to top them all. Apparently, in 1933, he had attended the funeral in Beauly of Lord Lovat, his former boss in the Scouts. He told us there was likely a thousand, maybe two, lining the streets, including a hundred workers and crofters from his estate in Morar. He and Grandmother took the train together, determined to pay their respects. When they got there, they watched in awe the entire battalion of the Lovat Scouts marching ahead of the funeral procession, fifty pipers and a sea of tartan, chiefs of all the great clans, a forest of eagle feathers in their bonnets.