The Nazi Hunters (14 page)

In light of the earlier loss of all their radios, Hislop decided that they would disassemble the Jed Sets and carry them on their person, stuffed deep in pockets and secured in their webbing. That way, if they did have to go on the run and ditch their heavy packs, they wouldn’t risk leaving their precious radios behind.

At dawn Druce’s force got on the move. They hurried across the open expanse of the road leading into Veney, pushing east towards the dense, rolling woodlands of the Forêt de Reclos. Even as they moved out, the terrain to their backs resounded to the crump of powerful explosions. The enemy had brought up heavy armour to shell the camp that the SAS had just vacated, at the fringes of the Veney DZ. The force had got moving in the nick of time.

They climbed steadily, taking to the high ground above Celles-sur-Plaine village. There Druce figured they could establish a new base in some degree of safety. But the Bergen-loads of fresh supplies proved too heavy to haul up the precipitous slopes, and all non-essential kit had to be dumped in the undergrowth. Druce prioritized the bare necessities: food, ammo, warm clothing, radios.

‘We had to reconnoitre a new place to go to, to try to set up camp,’ Druce remarked, ‘and there were always Germans on the main roads to make us be wary. When we were at the top of the hill it was five miles down to the bottom. It felt like fifty by the time you’d climbed up to the top of that hill, where we had somewhere considered safe from the Germans.’

Their new mountaintop base was chosen with the help of Roger Souchal, the seventeen-year-old aspiring-lawyer-turned-SAS-guide. Souchal had attached himself to Colonel Franks, seemingly irrevocably. Franks appeared to have that kind of effect on people: inspiring loyalty, courage and selfless devotion, largely by example.

Colonel Franks had only been with the SAS a matter of months, but he’d fought alongside them in Italy when serving with the commandos, winning the Military Cross (MC). Neither hidebound nor constrained by convention, he’d also served with the Phantoms, and was another close friend of the Phantom and actor, David Niven.

Niven and Franks had grown up together on the Isle of Wight, forming a sailing club in their teens. They’d made a decent profit in the first year, investing it all in booze, and had been found one morning face-down in a patch of nettles. Crucially, Franks had a combination of bravery and maverick daring that suited the Regiment. And, in his command of 2 SAS, Franks seemed to encapsulate the Regiment’s motto, first coined by their founder, David Stirling, three years earlier: ‘Who Dares, Wins.’

In theory, Franks could have called off Operation Loyton in light of the adverse conditions encountered on the ground. Operation Instruction No. 38 – the order that defined Loyton – stated the following, regarding Druce’s advance force: ‘If this party were successful and targets were available and aircraft re-supply proved easy, permission to increase the party up to one Squadron would almost certainly be given.’

By Druce’s own admission the advance party had been far from successful, and while there were targets aplenty on the ground, resupply by air had proved hugely problematic. Franks would have had every excuse to cancel Op Loyton, but it wasn’t in the man’s nature to take a backward step. Quite the contrary; by going in to lead things himself, Franks had signalled what a massive personal investment he was making in the present mission.

On the high ground above Celles-sur-Plaine, a makeshift base was hewn out of the bush. The SAS colonel called a conference with the Maquis leaders, as a result of which several maquisards were attached to the SAS to act as porters, cooks and general helpers. It was agreed that the Maquis would operate separately from the SAS, but work in close collaboration wherever practicable.

The Jedburgh officer, Captain Victor Gough, was to serve as the link between the two outfits. Colonel Franks had also brought with him Captain Chris Sykes, one of 2 SAS’s most experienced intelligence officers. Sykes would be Franks’ liaison with the Maquis, working closely with their gamekeeper-cum-intelligence-officer, Albert Freine.

The Op Loyton war diary makes it clear how good the SAS’s intelligence network in the region was. ‘There is a group of about 20 natives in this area who are trustworthy, intelligent and working under SAS direction gathering intelligence. With this net and other means, it is believed that any enemy information requested from the area can be supplied.’

Captain Sykes was particularly suited to this task. Recruited into the SOE in June 1940, Sykes was posted to Tehran under the cover of being a diplomat. He’d worked before the war as a diplomat in the British embassy in Berlin, so was well prepared for the role. In 1942 he was sent to Cairo and found himself largely without work, so he volunteered for the SAS.

Before the war he’d studied in France, spending a year in Paris, writing – he was also a novelist in civilian life – and he spoke fluent French. For the past several months prior to deploying to the Vosges, he’d worked with a group of French officers, helping form and then shape the operations of one of the French SAS squadrons. He’d also won a Mention in Dispatches immediately after the Normandy landings.

Sykes considered himself to be a true friend of France. As he knew well, the French longed for there to be an uprising of the Maquis so widespread that they would play a major role in liberating the country, constituting an act of Gallic defiance that would enable the French to rediscover their pride and self-respect.

Sykes hoped to make that a reality here in the Vosges, but his initial impressions of the Maquis weren’t overly positive. ‘We were greeted by a host of untrained, unarmed, expectant and physically exhausted young men,’ Sykes remarked. Their only idea of military strategy was to assemble in large groups and to start ‘firing what few weapons they possessed at every rustle of a rabbit.’

Yet in spite of this, Sykes felt that the Maquis were being surprisingly effective in keeping the forests free of German troops. In fact, they were doing so largely
because
they were so untrained.

‘Having no concept of “fieldcraft” they continued to fire their weapons at every starting rabbit or hare.’ As a result the crackle of automatic weapons was heard daily and across a wide swathe of territory. ‘This persuaded the Germans that the Maquis were an immense and heavily armed force, and in consequences they did not enter the woods.’

Sykes homed in on two Maquis bands that he considered to possess the most promise. The first was led by a former professional soldier called Joubert. A simple, unassuming, modest young man, Joubert had drawn a band of like-minded fighters to him. In spite of their youth they were remarkably well disciplined, and they chose their time and place of attack most carefully. Whenever morale flagged, Joubert would opt to launch a stinging ambush to lift the spirits of his young guns.

The second Maquis leader could not have been more different. Etienne was twice Joubert’s age and he had the most villainous appearance imaginable. He spoke French with a terrible, guttural German accent, walked with an ape-like gait, and wore a peaked black cap pulled low over his eyes. His Maquis band was shaped in his image. None looked younger than fifty, and they seemed more like an assemblage of tramps and wizened wizards than the remarkably effective maquisards that they were.

Etienne’s men were very fond of the bottle. Their actions were often drink-fuelled and spontaneous, though no less effective because of it. They roamed the hills incessantly, they knew the forest like the back of their hands, and no German was ever safe from their murderous intent. It was due in large part to Joubert and Etienne’s operations that the enemy believed they were living in the midst of a massive uprising.

With Franks and his reinforcements having parachuted in, it was time for the Op Loyton force to go on the offensive. The first actions consisted of tentative, probing missions, as the SAS colonel sought to get a feel for the enemy. Across the Vosges all motorized transport had been requisitioned by the Germans, so anything moving on the roads was bound to be enemy. Franks sent out small parties of four to lay explosives on the key thoroughfares that cut through the mountains.

The SAS used devices euphemistically named ‘tyre-bursters’ by their inventors – the gadget people at the SOE. SOE agents had retrieved samples of rock types from key areas of planned Maquis and SAS activity. Working from those samples, the SOE boffins had manufactured plastic explosive charges that mimicked the texture, colour and shape of the rocks commonly found in each region. Laid on a road, they appeared to be nothing more than a few scattered stones, until a tyre or track passed over them, detonating the powerful charge.

Reluctant to stop there, the SOE had even produced tyre-bursters that mimicked dog turds and horse droppings, reasoning that no self-respecting German would want to stop their vehicles to remove a pile of poo from the road. But arguably the most infamous such device was the ‘exploding rat’, about which the SOE instruction manual is largely self-explanatory:

‘A rat is skinned, the skin being sewn up and filled with PE to assume the shape of a dead rat. A standard No. 8 primer is set in the PE . . .’ The exploding rat was actually designed to be dropped into the coal supply of a steam train. The stoker would shovel the ‘dead rat’ into the furnace, along with the coal. The rat would then detonate, and the blast would penetrate the high-pressure steam boiler, which in turn would create a devastating explosion.

Equipped with their tyre-bursters, four-man recce parties were sent to find and identify the enemy’s armour, fuel dumps and rail links. Franks urged his commanders to launch whatever opportunistic strikes they could against ‘the grey lice’, as he’d nicknamed the enemy – for so they appeared, from his mountaintop vantage point, as they moved along the valley floor.

The radio messages sent through to London during that first week of September reflected how the newly invigorated Special Forces operators were gearing up for action, and how wide-ranging were their patrols.

Observed line railway St. Dié–Saales completely blocked with stationary trains. Ideal target RAF.

7 troop trains at Jarville sheet 14G 8709 11.00 hrs 3 Sept.

Source Alsace agent, second September. German counter-attack using GAS planned for ten September. Troops at Colmar exercising in MASKS. 3,500 troops Mutzig. Further information . . . 700 Gestapo arrived tunnel Ste. Marie-aux-Mines. Hitler Jugend digging in area. 50 petrol tankers road Châtenois-Selestat.

That last message alerted London to a suspected poison gas attack. During the war the Nazis had developed the fearsome nerve agents sarin, tabun and toman. Even in the autumn of 1944 the Allies still had no effective defences against such agents – largely because they didn’t even know that they existed. So advanced were these deadly chemical weapons that they are still stockpiled by the world’s major powers, although their use is supposedly banned under international treaties.

As the Allied advance threatened the Fatherland itself, so the fear grew that Hitler would resort to using such weapons in a desperate last stand. The radio message warning of the gas attack also warned that the ‘Hitler Jugend’ – the Hitler Youth – were digging defences in the area, which was all part of Himmler’s initiative to bolster the western wall of the Vosges.

John Hislop was one of those tasked by Franks to go out and ensure that Himmler’s defences could be breached.

‘If you and Peter would like a bit of variety you can go out this evening and mine a road,’ Franks suggested. By ‘Peter’ he was referring to Lieutenant Peter Johnsen, Hislop’s fellow Phantom who had recently rescued the hundred Allied POWs.

By a ‘bit of variety’, Franks meant a break from signals work. And in truth, Hislop was bored of being tied to his Jed Set and sending the regular morning and evening skeds. Hislop – not long ago accused of having
a regrettable lack of military aptitude 
– jumped at the chance of a bit of action. Franks showed him and Lieutenant Johnsen the exact point on the map where he wanted the charges laid.

A quick lesson from an SAS sapper refreshed Hislop and Johnsen’s knowledge of how to lay the explosives, fuses and wires. Bergens packed, they set out into a clear, crisp night. As they took the rough, winding track that led in the direction of Moussey, Hislop found he was remarkably relaxed. By now he was a comparative veteran of the Vosges, and he’d also developed a constant background alertness of mind – a vigilance that was a ever-present companion for those fighting in such territory.

They passed an area where some woodcutters had been at work. The scent of freshly cut pine was rich in their nostrils: tangy, clean, lemony. It reminded Hislop of riding through such woodland at home, before Europe was consumed by war. It seemed an unimaginably long time ago, and a world away from where they were now.

As they wended their way down from the hills, their route took them close to Mme Rossi’s place of abode. They made their way carefully around her property and tapped gently at the rear entrance. Mme Rossi opened cautiously, but once she realized who it was she threw the door wide.

‘At first we thought it was the Germans,’ she declared, as – unbidden – she went about warming some food on the stove. ‘They were here earlier, asking a lot of questions and looking around . . . But they won’t come back now it is dark!’

The kitchen was dimly lit and the windows shuttered tight, so that not a chink of light escaped: no outsider would be able to spy on the Madame and her daughter, and whatever company they might be keeping. Many had been the time when the two redoubtable Frenchwomen had had to hurry their British guests out of the back door, as German visitors hammered on the front.