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

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СКАЧАТЬ after Delestraint had landed in Britain, Dalloz was listening to the ‘personal’ messages for France broadcast by the BBC in its nightly programme Les Français parlent aux Français when he heard the announcer say: ‘Les montagnards doivent continuer à gravir les cimes.’* It was the code message that Dalloz had been given by Delestraint to indicate that his proposal had been agreed by London. Plan Montagnards was to proceed as discussed.

      It has always been presumed that Plan Montagnards was a purely French affair, known only to the Free French authorities in London and specifically not shared with the British, either at this stage or later. But we now know that Dalloz’s plan was in fact discussed with the British officer acting as French Regional Controller, who was directly responsible to the head of SOE, Brigadier Gubbins. A minute addressed to the Controller dated 10 April 1943 concluded that Montagnards could be ‘of appreciable value in support of an operation directed against the Mediterranean coast of France’. Noting that Dalloz’s plan ‘provides for co-operation with Allied airborne troops’, the minute makes it explicitly clear that ‘It seems extremely unlikely that such co-operation could be provided, except possibly from Africa, and it is certain that we could not promise it. We therefore feel that even if the organisation is to be encouraged they should be told … that they must expect to work on their own.’

      Back in the Vercors, Dalloz immediately set about assembling a small team to help him carry out a full-scale study of the plateau. This included the head of the Department for Water and Forests on the Vercors, whom Dalloz asked to make a record of the plateau’s topography including its many caves and underground caverns, and an ex-commander of the Mountain Warfare School at Chamonix, whom he tasked with drawing up an inventory of all the huts, refuges, food resources, secret caches of arms and explosives and available vehicles on the plateau.

      Dalloz, looking for a third member of his team, also sought out a young ex-Army officer whom he had not met, but had heard of as a skilled and courageous mountaineer. Alain Le Ray, who at thirty-two was Dalloz’s junior by almost ten years, was also an ex-member of a now disbanded Alpine regiment and had a number of noted Alpine climbing firsts to his credit. First captured by the Germans in 1940, he escaped, only to be recaptured and sent to the supposedly escape-proof PoW camp of Colditz Castle. But Colditz held him for only three weeks before he escaped again, this time making successful ‘home run’ back to France.

      Le Ray, tall, athletic and striking to look at, was a most unusual Army officer for his time. Scrupulous about maintaining his political neutrality, meticulous in his analysis, cool in his judgements, he had, unlike most of his Army counterparts, a natural feel for irregular warfare, including an understanding of the need to make compromises in order to combine both the military and civilian elements of the French Resistance. Dalloz asked Le Ray to conduct a full-scale military study of the Vercors. Assisted by three fellow ex-officers, one of whom, Roland Costa de Beauregard, would later command a guerrilla unit on the plateau, Le Ray completed his study (see Annex B) while awaiting Delestraint’s return from London.

      While Dalloz’s team were conducting their various surveys of the plateau, Dalloz and Farge were busy touring the shops in Grenoble and buying up all the available guidebooks and Michelin maps of the area. On the few days the two men were not scouring map shops they were criss-crossing the plateau in a taxi, looking for parachute and landing sites. On one such visit in early March, with the snow melting, Farge and Dalloz clambered over a forest-covered ridge to inspect one of the enclosed high mountain pastures which are a feature of the Vercors. The place was called Herbouilly and they immediately recognized it as an excellent parachute landing ground. There was only one problem. Right in the middle of the valley was a substantial, but unoccupied, farmhouse which was the property of someone suspected of being sympathetic to the Germans. Farge solved the problem by bringing in a special group of Resistants from Lyon one night to burn the place to the ground. By mid-March the two men felt they were ready for Delestraint’s return from London and the next stage of Plan Montagnards.

      Elsewhere on the plateau, however, things which had started so well for Eugène Samuel and his team working with the réfractaires suffered a serious setback.

* ‘The mountain men should continue to climb to the peaks.’

6

       EXODUS AND FOLLY

      ‘So you do not wish to go and work in Germany?’ Eugène Chavant asked abruptly, pulling his pipe out of his mouth for a moment.

      ‘No, M’sieu.’ The young man, no more than twenty or so, nervously twisted his beret between his fingers.

      ‘Who told you to contact me about this?’

      ‘My boss at the shoe factory, M. Blanc, told me you would be a good person to talk to, M’sieu.’

      ‘So you want to join the Maquis?’

      ‘Yes, M’sieu.’

      ‘Are you aware that life in the Maquis is very hard?’

      ‘Yes, M’sieu.’

      ‘Do you understand the risks involved – great risks?’

      ‘Yes, M’sieu.’

      ‘And you know how to keep your tongue, do you?’

      ‘Absolutely, M’sieu.’

      ‘OK. Go to the Fontaine halt on the tramway which takes you up to Villard at five o’clock tomorrow evening. Ask for one of the Huillier brothers and tell him discreetly that you have come to see “Casimir” – that’s the password. He will tell you what to do next. Follow his instructions closely and without any questions. Take a rucksack with what you need. But be careful. Don’t take too much. You must look like a casual traveller.’

      The young man nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.

      Eugène Chavant took out a small piece of paper and wrote a message for his friend Jean Veyrat: ‘There will be one colis [package] to take up to Villard tomorrow evening.’

      The following evening a Huillier bus set the young man down in the main square of the town of Méaudre on the northern half of the Vercors plateau. Here, following his instructions, he went to a café in one of the town’s back streets where he found he was among a number of young men who likewise seemed to be waiting for something – or someone. A short time later an older man arrived. He was wearing hiking clothes and boots and carried a small khaki rucksack.

      ‘Follow me,’ he said, and led the way out of the café and into the darkness.

      The little group walked north along back roads for forty minutes or so and then took a short break before starting to climb steeply up the mountain. Half an hour later they entered a forest and five minutes after that their guide stopped in the darkness and gave three low whistles. Out of the night came three answering whistles. A guide emerged from the trees and led the little group of newcomers to a shepherd’s hut in a clearing in the forest. Though it is doubtful that any of them realized it, they had all taken an irreversible step out of normality, into the Maquis and a life of secrecy and constant danger. One way or another, their lives would never be the same again.

      As German demands for manpower increased, the trickle of réfractaires turned into a flood. The numbers at the Ambel farm quickly rose to eighty-five. There was no more space. In Eugène Samuel’s СКАЧАТЬ