The Nazi Hunters (7 page)

The containers had codes stencilled on the outside, identifying the contents. The code ‘SERA’ indicated a load of explosives, comprising 20 pounds of PE, six Lewes bombs, a selection of timers, fuses and detonators, plus non-flaming matches and various other elements necessary for blowing the enemy all to hell. The ‘JODI’ container was stuffed full of twenty-four-hour ration packs, plus tins of cigarettes, water-sterilization powder and Hexamine cookers, complete with fuel blocks.

Items that didn’t particularly need protection – sleeping bags, clothing, boots – were packed into steel wire panniers, and padded out with coir (coconut fibre padding). The panniers proved highly ineffective. Dropped manually, as opposed to using the bomb-release mechanism, they were invariably kicked out last from an aircraft travelling at around 100 metres per second. Being lighter they tended to drift on the breeze, and more often than not ended up a good distance from the drop zone.

As a result of such shortcomings it was approaching dawn by the time the Maquis, together with their Special Forces companions, had gathered up the scattered Op Loyton supplies. This ‘stores’ airdrop had delivered enough weaponry to arm 200 Maquis, but a great deal more was required.

As the column of mixed SAS, Phantoms, Jeds and Resistance fighters shouldered their heavy loads and set off for the hills, Hislop couldn’t help but feel a burning sense of urgency to get away from the open expanse of the DZ. Even as they were swallowed by the beckoning forest, he had the unsettling feeling that it would not be long before the enemy discovered the location of their drop, and came hunting.

Hislop’s instinct would prove remarkably prescient.

The Op Loyton war diary makes it clear that the greatest challenge facing these men was one not of their own making: it was timing. ‘It had been hoped to mount this operation shortly before or immediately after D-Day, at a time when the area was relatively lightly-held by the enemy and while there were . . . many other areas of partisan activity, which would distract enemy attention from the presence of SAS troops in so sensitive a position.’

But D-Day had been 6 June 1944, over nine long weeks ago. Inserting the Op Loyton force had been delayed by two main factors: one, the inclement weather; and two, the need for the longer hours of darkness that August had brought, to hide the aircraft and parachutists from enemy eyes.

In the interim, conditions had changed irrevocably on the ground. The fifteen Special Forces soldiers now climbing into the hills above La Petite Raon had been told to expect little resistance from the enemy. Sparsely garrisoned with low-calibre troops, the Vosges should have offered them the perfect environment to hit the transport and communications infrastructure that linked the front-line troops to the German heartland.

That may have been the case back in June. It wasn’t now. Increasingly, as German forces fell back from the Normandy beachhead, and from the Allied thrust through the soft underbelly of southern Europe, they were being funnelled into the main gateway into Germany – the bottleneck of the Vosges.

In the way of this massive, battle-ravaged German force stood fifteen Special Forces soldiers, plus a few hundred very poorly armed Maquis.

And all too soon now, battle would be joined.

Chapter Four

At first glance the terrain of the Vosges seemed ideal for the kind of covert operations and skulduggery that Druce had in mind. Carpeted in dark and impenetrable forests slashed by deep chasms, brooding lakes and plunging waterfalls, the valleys were perfect for concealing such small, mobile parties.

But those same deep, twisting ravines were also the route-ways for the few roads that snaked through the region, as well as the villages that clung to their length. Away from those sparse settlements, there were just a few isolated farms and lonely foresters’ huts scattered amidst the deep woods. And by no means all the inhabitants of the Vosges were guaranteed to be friendly.

A passing visitor might gaze upon the Vosges villages as islands of rural tranquillity. In truth, there was a seething distrust that lay just below the surface. On the western slopes of the mountains most villagers were staunchly French in every sense of the word, forming the heartland of the Resistance. But on the eastern – German – side, many were as Teutonic as your average Berliner, and they still owed their allegiances to the Reich.

For centuries the Vosges had been fought over, a prize sought and alternately claimed by each party. In 1871 the Prussians – loosely speaking, the ‘German’ side of the divide – defeated Napoleon III and took possession of the Vosges. Less than fifty years later, at the end of the First World War, France claimed the territory back again.

In May 1940 the mighty Nazi war machine had thundered across the border, and Germany claimed the Vosges once more. Most resented the invaders and hungered for some means to fight back and resist. But there were some, especially those living on the steep, eastern flanks of the hills, who viewed the Germans as liberators.

It was in those areas and amongst those inhabitants that the SAS would have to take the very greatest care. One man amongst their number, Robert Lodge, felt this venomous threat most personally. Sergeant ‘Lodge’ was in truth Rudolf Freidlaender, a German Jew who had had the foresight to flee Germany in the 1930s, even as Hitler had ramped up his hate-fuelled rhetoric against the Jewish population, in preparation for launching his ‘Final Solution’.

Friedlaender had settled with his family in west London, but at the outbreak of war he’d felt compelled to fight, and he had already won the Distinguished Conduct Medal on previous operations. He was a comparatively ancient member of Druce’s party, being all of thirty-three years of age, but in spite of this and his thick, jam-jar glasses, he’d earned one of the finest fighting reputations in the SAS.

Friedlaender had adopted the typically Anglo-Saxon sounding name of ‘Lodge’ in the hope that it might obscure his German Jewish origins if he were ever to be captured. But with his big, heavy, kindly looks, he was – to many eyes – clearly from a Jewish background, and he was under no illusions as to what might happen if he were taken captive in the Vosges.

The trek from the DZ to the Maquis’ hilltop redoubt proved to be a gruelling, ten-hour affair, crossing terrain as difficult as any the Op Loyton party had ever trained over. The first 2,000-foot ridge was crested in the cool hours of early morning, putting the DZ thankfully out of sight. Even if the enemy did find the DZ, tracing Druce’s force would become more and more difficult with their every footfall further into the hills.

The first miles on the trail were almost welcome after the cramped, stuffy confines of the warplane’s hold. But as the sun climbed above the horizon, its powerful rays reaching into the deepest valleys and chasing away the shadows, so the heat began to rise. In spite of the dappled shade cast by the ranks of trees that towered on either side, it grew hot and humid, and the men found themselves boiling up as they toiled beneath their crushing loads.

The Maquis guides were as sure-footed as mountain goats. The pace they set was punishing, even for men accustomed to such tough physicality, and especially as the adrenalin of the parachute drop drained from their systems. By mid afternoon they’d completed some 10,000 feet of exhausting ascent and descent, and the Special Forces operators found themselves gasping for breath and sweating rivulets.

Captain Henry Druce had to force effort from limbs that felt like lead. The Op Loyton commander was suffering more than most. Even as they had begun the trek he was still talking (mostly) concussed nonsense. Springs and gushing creeks were on hand at every turn, and at their rest stops Druce splashed cool mountain water over his neck and face, in an effort to try to clear his head.

The forest was thick and verdant: ever-present, crowding in from all sides. Here and there huge granite boulders reared up from the undergrowth, as if hurled down from a distant peak by a giant’s hand. In such terrain you could stumble to within 15 feet of an enemy position and still not be able to see it. It was ideal ambush territory.

By the time the Maquis camp was in sight the fierce exertion seemed to have driven most of Druce’s concussion away. The base – set just to the west of Lac de la Maix, an upland lake lying at some 2,000 feet of altitude – was of solid timber construction. A log cabin closely surrounded on all sides by dense tracts of woodland, it was rendered all but invisible to anything but an aircraft flying directly overhead.

It was equipped with rough-hewn tables, chairs and sleeping platforms, and Druce was surprised at the neatness and apparent efficiency of the place. There was even a French tricolour flying from an adjacent flagpole, one that would be hauled down at sunset with military precision and raised again at dawn. In the minds of the Alsace Maquis, the Lac de la Maix area was already part of liberated France, and Druce, Hislop, Gough and their men couldn’t help but be impressed.

Strictly speaking, the Maquis hadn’t been formed as a military force; at least, not to begin with. Under the terms of the humiliating armistice signed between France and Germany in June 1940, 1.6 million French soldiers had been taken into captivity as prisoners of war. In due course the Germans offered to release a great number of them, if for each man thus ‘freed’ three Frenchmen would ‘volunteer’ to labour for the Reich.

Initially, this
relève
(relief) applied only to fit young men. But as the German armament factories, mines and defensive projects demanded more and more labour, the
relève
was extended to include all males up to the age of fifty, plus able-bodied women. The
relève
was soon made compulsory and renamed the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO): the Compulsory Work Service. By the end of 1943 some 650,000 Frenchmen and women had been shipped off to slave for the Reich.

Those who sought to avoid the STO fled into the remoter stretches of the French countryside, becoming maquisards. The name Maquis appears to have been taken from the word for ‘bush’ or ‘scrub’, the kind of terrain they tended to hide out in.
At first, a Maquis wasn’t someone who necessarily took up arms. Many were keen only to avoid being fed into Nazi Germany’s vast slave-labour operation, from which few would return. But there were those too who were desperate to fight.

Against this growing body of Maquis, the Reich employed the full panoply of state oppression. France was garrisoned by two types of force: German combat troops, tasked to prevent an Allied landing and liberation; and occupation troops, responsible for keeping iron control over the French population. The former were some of the best fighting soldiers available; the latter were often former prisoners of war – Russians, Ukrainians, and even Indians and North Africans – who had opted to switch sides rather than languish in the POW camps.

The occupation troops were generally ill-disciplined and cruel. Commanded by Germans, they fell under the control of the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office): the Nazi intelligence services and secret police, known more commonly as the
Sicherheitsdienst
(SD) and the Gestapo. They made wide use of informers and quislings, particularly from within the Milice – the pro-Nazi French militia raised under German occupation. The Milice was trained and armed by the SS, Hitler’s personal shock troops, and ordered to hunt down the Maquis.

When facing such an array of powerful and unsavoury adversaries, the Alsace Maquis appeared hopelessly outgunned. But if Druce’s men could get proper supplies of weaponry airdropped to them, Colonel Grandval’s Maquis would doubtless prove a force to be reckoned with. Aided by their Jedburgh advisers, they should be well placed to set the Vosges aflame.

One other thing was crystal clear after the long trek to the Maquis’ mountaintop hideout: they couldn’t count on covering much ground over such precipitous and punishing terrain. Druce’s men had managed to travel just 10 miles in ten hours.

That evening they pooled their rations with the Maquis, whose food supplies consisted mostly of a coffee substitute made from roasted acorns, coarse brown bread, meat and a ready supply of vegetables. Their hosts rustled up a meal and, once the famished and exhausted newcomers had eaten, they settled down to rest, safe in the knowledge that the Maquis had set watch for the night.

In the Op Loyton war diary, Druce described their Lac de la Maix base as being ‘well-organised and well-run’, and set ‘in a good defensive position’ on the hilltop. He wrote of being treated to ‘an excellent meal’ and of ‘sleeping the clock around’. For now at least, he and his men felt secure.

Druce awoke early the following morning to fine sunlight lancing through the branches and birdsong serenading the dawn. It was such a peaceful, bracing scene – the mountain air cool and invigorating at such an altitude – that it was hard to believe the world could be at war. Druce found that the climb followed by the long sleep had completely cured any lingering muzzy-headedness, and he figured it was time to get down to the serious business of waging war.

In their rushed pre-departure briefing Colonel Franks had made it clear that time was of the essence with Op Loyton. Druce needed to get the main force in as quickly as possible. Yet, at the same time, he didn’t want to signal the all clear until he had a good sense of the lie of the land, and especially of the Maquis’ capabilities.

Colonel Grandval’s local commander at Lac de la Maix was Lieutenant Félix LeFranc. He was supported by a small nucleus of former French Army officers. There were some eighty Maquis under them, with other groups located at further mountaintop redoubts. Discipline seemed reasonably good, but prior to the airdrop, Lieutenant LeFranc’s men had been armed only with a dozen ancient rifles and possessed very limited supplies of ammunition.