The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for the Vercors 1944. Paddy Ashdown

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СКАЧАТЬ the northern and the other the southern half of the plateau. Given that this was all done under the noses of a seemingly alert enemy, Chavant’s organization was astonishingly comprehensive. It incorporated the postal and telecoms services in the area, the co-ordination of friendly Gendarme units where these existed, the setting up of a system of ‘sentinels’ linked by phone and courier, the direction of the plateau’s hydroelectric generating plants and a system of motorcycle couriers based at the western edge of the plateau at Saint-Nazaire-en-Royans, who were ready round the clock to carry messages and alert the plateau of impending danger.

      Alain Le Ray, replicating Chavant’s civilian structure, split his military ‘command’ in two as well, appointing Costa de Beauregard as commander of the north and another of his officers the south. Over the summer months and into the early autumn, Le Ray concentrated on reorganizing, training and, as far as he could, arming the Vercors camps, always ensuring that everything he did was coordinated with Chavant and his civilian partners. Far from lazing around in ‘holiday camps’, most of the Vercors réfractaires – when they weren’t out in the fields helping to get in the harvest – spent this summer on forced marches, on learning to live off the land and on repeated military manoeuvres under the direction of professional military officers who had by now been appointed to command each of the camps on the plateau.

      Le Ray himself embarked on a tireless round of the camps, checking on their security, seeing to their needs and instructing them about their role and importance. A flavour of these events is given in an account of Le Ray’s visit to the Vercors’ first camp, the Ferme d’Ambel. After a dinner sitting, quiet and unannounced, among the réfractaires around the rough wooden tables of Ambel’s refectory, Le Ray called for silence and spoke: ‘From today you will be a part of a new French force which General de Gaulle has created, with the support of our powerful Allies, to recover our independence and rediscover the true strength of our country. This is the great task which is before you, the glory which is yours to achieve. You have responded to this appeal even before it was made. You have taken your posts, even before they were assigned to you … The role you have already accepted to play is one of the most important in the battle for our freedom. This is what your leaders confirm today, placing their trust in your courage. Now you must wait for their orders – they will not be long in coming. In a few months – in a few weeks, perhaps – the signal will be given. You must be ready. I am here today to give you my assurance that the service you will give – the sacrifice you will perhaps have to make – will be fully recognized and will contribute decisively to the victory your courage will have delivered.’

      After the war Le Ray outlined what he was trying to achieve during his push for better organization and coordination in the late spring and early summer of 1943:

      We had to change our whole approach according to five principal aims:

      1. The elimination of all the damaging distinctions between the military and the civilians. We were now united together under a single category: Resistance fighters.

      2. A structure of command which was as simple and direct as possible.

      3. The elimination of all embedded prejudices, especially where the lifestyles of the Maquis groups could have the effect of damaging relations with the local villages.

4. A dual role for those who remained in their own communities waiting for the call to action:* providing intelligence, early warning, food and supplies to the Maquis, putting together teams, quickly and on demand, for specific assignments.

      5. The strengthening of the professional and leadership elements in each of the Maquis groups.

      It was in pursuit of the fourth of these, ‘A dual role for those who remained in their own communities’, that a decision was taken which was to have a profound effect on all those who lived around the Vercors during the struggle ahead. Conscious that there would be a general mobilization of forces when the Allies landed, Le Ray proposed that a reserve force made up of four secret Maquisard companies should be raised from the young men of the communities lying outside the mountainous perimeter of the Vercors. Each of these would be led by a professional military officer who would provide them with training at the weekends. No doubt one of Le Ray’s motives in proposing this reserve force was to help deepen the connection between the military and the local civil society. But it had strong military advantages too for it provided, not just reinforcement which could be called to the plateau when required, but also a kind of informal militarized cordon around its outside edge which would act both as a warning system and as a line of defence in case of attack.

      One of these companies was founded by a Socialist professor of mathematics at the Romans Technical College, André Vincent-Beaume, and was constituted from young volunteers from the towns of Romans, Bourg-de-Péage and Saint-Donat-sur-l’Herbasse off the western edge of the plateau. A secret programme of recruitment to what was eventually to become Abel Company began in the three towns in June 1943, with recruits being drawn from factories, warehouses, offices, local clubs (especially the rugby club) and even the patient lists of a doctor and a dentist in the area. Provisioning and money for the clandestine unit was provided from local sources, chiefly by collections in factories, churches and clubs. A hundred pairs of boots were donated by a local factory owner (this area is famous in France as the centre of the shoe industry) and funds were banked in the Romans branch of the Banque Populaire.

      Serious training, conducted mostly by military professionals and consisting of long forced marches, military manoeuvres and occasional firing of weapons, began in July. At weekends the young men of Abel Company would quietly melt away from their communities and reassemble in forest clearings or at mountain refuges on the high pastures of the plateau, returning on Sunday evening ready for work next day. In August, Abel Company, now numbering some 235 Maquisards and divided into four sections, was formally given its proposed area of operation when full mobilization on ‘Jour J’ occurred – they were to help defend the whole of the south-west quadrant of the plateau.

      The D-Day mobilization process itself was carefully planned. Special signs were prepared which would be nailed to trees and barn doors indicating where to find assembly points, there was a mass purchase of Michelin maps of the area, camping gear was requisitioned from local sporting and hardware shops and each Maquisard was required to have a rucksack ready packed for quick departure containing a candle, spare shoes, a blanket, a waterproof sheet, a set of mess-tins, eating utensils and a water bottle.

      On the other side of the Vercors massif, in the little market town of Mens in the Trièves region, under the plateau’s south-eastern corner, the same thing was happening.

      ‘You free this evening after 8 p.m.?’ asked Jacques, who owned a saw-mill at the entry to Mens. It was six o’clock in the evening and almost dark when he had knocked on the door of the Darier house. The evening light caught the last streaks of unmelted snow on the slopes of the Bonnet de Calvin, high above the little town.

      ‘Sure. I can easily be free,’ Albert Darier replied.

      ‘Good.’ Jacques continued, ‘I know you believe in the Resistance. But we have nothing organized here. One of the key men in the Secret Army is coming tonight to see if we can set up a unit in the Trièves. If you would like, why not come along and meet him – and bring anyone else you think might be interested.’

      When Albert Darier, who turned twenty-one that year, and six of his closest companions arrived at 20.00 precisely in the first-floor private room set aside in the Café de Paris, he found a brightly lit space with several chairs set around a table on which stood a small vase of spring flowers. His friend Jacques and a young stranger, who was introduced as ‘Emmanuel, one of the local chiefs of the Secret Army’, were already there. Otherwise the room was empty.

      At first the stranger seemed a СКАЧАТЬ