Das Reich (10 page)
The Groupes Vény’s strength in the Lot had grown from twelve in January 1941 to forty-eight in January 1942, 401 in July 1943 with eighty-five
maquis
, and 623 in January 1944 with 346
maquisards.
It achieved a peak in July 1944 of 156 AS and 2,037
maquisards
after the great D-Day mobilization. To the Frenchmen with whom he worked, Hiller was the very image of an English gentleman of
L’Intelligence Service
, to which all France was convinced that every British agent belonged. He became much liked and respected in his area. While many agents had no contact whatever with neighbouring circuits, in the late spring of 1944 he began to work increasingly closely with his neighbours in the Dordogne and Corrèze. When he wrote of his assignment’s extraordinary combination of tension and ‘the light fantastic’, he must have been thinking of such moments as Soleil’s banquet in the heart of the Dordogne.
Soleil was a ferocious, semi-literate, twenty-three-year-old communist, originally from Avignon and more recently from the darker corners of Marseille. His real name was René Cousteille. ‘Fearless and unscrupulous, a born leader, small, dark, twitching with energy’, in Hiller’s words, the little tough had formed a
maquis
on the south side of the Dordogne river, close to the marvellous golden hilltop village of Belvès. From his camps, he ruled a great swath of the region. He had forced every inhabitant of the neighbouring hamlets to conceal some of his petrol and oil reserves, according to Hiller to ensure that all of them would suffer if any was indiscreet. In the spring of 1944, a young Englishman named Peter Lake – ‘Jean-Pierre’ of F Section – toured Soleil’s
maquis
in miserable discomfort on the pillion of a ‘
moto
’, holding weapon training classes for an eager audience. Jean-Pierre
was not happy with the young bandits. He sensed that the slightest misplaced word could cause him to disappear rapidly and painfully. Soleil had already threatened to kill his SOE colleague, ‘Commandant Jack’, if he cut off supplies of arms. His
maquis
was feared and detested throughout most of the surrounding countryside for the ruthless killing of any man suspected of collaboration, and Soleil’s orders to his men to seize whatever they needed from whoever possessed it. But Commandant Jack respected Soleil’s courage and toughness, and armed his men because he believed that they would excel where it mattered – in fighting the Germans. The
maquis
prospered, and one night Hiller found himself solemnly invited by the young killer to a formal banquet, with after-dinner entertainment in the form of a lecture on small arms by Jean-Pierre.
The castle chosen by Soleil’s nineteen-year-old deputy, the Baron, was a fine example of late eighteenth-century Gothic, hidden away in a wood on the banks of the Dordogne. As we approached, we were repeatedly challenged, and we found that detachments of Spaniards armed with numerous Bren guns guarded all the approaches. Their French was poor, and they did their job so conscientiously that we were glad to get inside the castle. There we found the village leaders, some fifty fat, middle-aged men, dressed in their Sunday best. Jean-Pierre fussed around like a good lecturer making sure that all the exhibits were ready. Against a background of tapestries and wrought iron stood a U-shaped table covered with linen and flowers and candelabra and fine porcelain. In front of each plate was a menu bearing the badge of the Groupe Soleil, a flaming sun and an inscription recording the occasion. The Baron, once he had been duly congratulated, explained that he had had great difficulty in finding a competent sign writer. For the rest, he merely told the butler and his wife, who lived there permanently, that the castle was requisitioned for the night, and there would be so many guests. They in turn prepared everything as if it were a formal peacetime dinner
party. The service was perfect, and the butler and his staff impassive. But we could not help trying to guess from the fleeting expressions on his face what was going on in his mind as he leaned forward to pour the wine. He was probably scandalized at the way these ruffians had invaded the house, to which they would never have been invited before the war. He was probably frightened, too, that the dinner might end with a surprise raid by the Germans. Then, as the dinner went on, he seemed to thaw as he listened to the quiet conversation of these people who all appeared too young or too old to be terrorists. In the end, he was listening with interest to the panegyric on the Sten.The inaugural lecture began very late. Some of us, in fact, thought that it would never take place after so many speeches and toasts. But we had counted without Jean-Pierre’s determination, or the surprising resilience of the village’s leaders, who had taken the banquet in their stride. Not only was the lecture a great success, but when we went off to bed in the small hours, Jean-Pierre and the fat men were still busy arguing about some of the finer points of the Bren gun.
Jean-Pierre – Peter Lake – was a twenty-nine-year-old diplomat’s son who had been a merchant banker in West Africa when the war began, and took part in an early SOE operation in that area before being transferred to French Section and parachuted near Limeuil on Easter Sunday 1944. His French was very poor, but by that stage F was not dropping secret agents, but paramilitary instructors. A more serious deficiency in all F’s training, however, was that in the interests of remaining apolitical they gave agents no briefing whatever on the intricacies of local Resistance politics, and many of them were confused and bewildered to discover the byzantine complications in the field. Lake was taken from his landing ground to the home of a carpenter named Charles Brouillet – ‘
Le bolshévik
’, as he was known locally – in the enchanting village of Siorac-en-Périgord. It was a picaresque introduction to Resistance, eating a splendid 4 am breakfast with the
recklessly confident
résistants.
‘
Ha, ha, mon cher Jean-Pierre
’, said Brouillet happily. ‘
Siorac a deux mille habitants, et sur ces deux mille habitants, il y a deux mille résistants!
’ He confided that many of their arms were stored in the roof of the church: ‘
Tu vois, à l’église, c’est sous la protection du bon Dieu!
’
Yet in catching the genuine, extraordinary romance of secret survival and the preparations for war in one of the most beautiful regions of all France, it is essential never to forget its darker face. Those whom Soleil’s men threatened or robbed hated him as bitterly as the Germans. Each of those at that exotic banquet could never entirely erase from his mind the fear of betrayal, the knowledge that capture meant certain imprisonment and torture, concluded only by an appallingly lonely death. So much sentiment has been expended upon British agents and
résistants
killed by the Germans that it is sometimes forgotten that the Germans were perfectly entitled by the laws of war to shoot them. It was the fact that execution was invariably accompanied by such ghastly cruelty that made their fate seem so intolerable. Commandant Jack had only succeeded to responsibility for the eastern Dordogne and Corrèze in March, after the capture in Brive-la-Gaillarde and dispatch to Buchenwald of his commanding officer, one of SOE’s greatest agents, Harry Peulevé.
Commandant Jack – officially Nestor – was a big, robust, handsome, compulsively adventurous twenty-two-year-old who was assumed by all the
maquis
to be a British officer. In reality, he was the Frenchman Jacques Poirier, who concealed his nationality until the moment of Liberation to safeguard the lives of his family. He was one of those fortunate spirits blessed with the ability to inspire laughter and affection wherever he went. It was Poirier who, with Peulevé, armed most of the
maquisards
of the Corrèze and Dordogne who met the Das Reich division after 6 June.
Poirier had reached SOE after an odyssey remarkable even by Baker Street standards. He had been destined for a career in the air force, following his father, until the war intervened and the family retreated into the Unoccupied Zone near Nice.
Young Jacques was running small errands for the local Resistance when he encountered Harry Peulevé, making a painful escape to England after being badly injured parachuting into France as one of SOE’s wireless operators. Poirier formed an immediate intense admiration for the Englishman, and offered to go with him across the Pyrenees. After many adventures, the two men reached Gibraltar and Peulevé was at once flown back to England. Poirier had to wait rather longer for transport. When at last he arrived in Bristol, to his intense fury he was detained for five days for screening. He was then taken to London as a prisoner, before being handed over to SOE.
He never remembered asking to go back to France – he always took it for granted, just as he assumed and insisted that it would be with Peulevé, French Section put him through the usual training courses under the name of Peters. He had some cheerful evenings in London, some of them with Violette Szabo. Then, one night late in 1943, he found himself at Tempsford airfield, being handed the customary gold cigarette case as a parting present from Buckmaster,
en route
to join Peulevé in the Corrèze.
Poirier reached the soil of France to find that his dropping aircraft had ejected him more than 100 miles from the rendezvous. He walked for some hours to reach a station, survived asking for a ticket in English, and fell asleep on the train to wake up surrounded by a compartment full of Germans. They mercifully ignored him, and within a few hours he found himself in the substantial town of Brive-la-Gaillarde, deserted in Sunday silence. He could think of no less conspicuous refuge than a church, and sat through four masses before slipping discreetly out of the town to a nearby hillside for the night. The next morning, he found Peulevé.
In the months that followed, Poirier and his commanding officer travelled ceaselessly through the eastern Dordogne and Corrèze, meeting the men of the AS and the FTP, arranging
parachutages
and holding weapon training classes. Roger Beauclerk – ‘Casimir’ – was parachuted to act as Poirier’s wireless operator,
and settled down to the usual nerve-racking, monotonous existence. The operators suffered terribly from boredom between transmissions, unable to wander because of their schedules, moved constantly from safe house to safe house to avoid the risk of German direction-finding, and thus never able to relax amidst established relationships. They had too much time to think, and too few of the compensations of the agents. Many found the strain intolerable unless, like Cyril Watney, they were blessed with unshakeable patience and good nature.
In March 1944 Poirier slipped away for a few days to visit his mother, now living in the foothills of the Pyrenees. By the merest chance, one night he was sitting in the kitchen listening with half an ear to the BBC
messages personnels
– which it was wildly unlikely would bear any special signal for him – when he caught an electrifying phrase: ‘
Attention à Nestor! Message important pour Nestor! Ne retournez pas chez vouz! jean est tres malade!
’ Peulevé and his wireless operator Roland Malraux had been arrested – by terrible ill luck, denounced by a neighbour as suspected Jewish black marketeers. George Hiller heard the news, and with immense effort and ingenuity managed to have the warning broadcast to Poirier. Jacques took the train to Martel, high in the Lot, and sought out the Verlhacs who were astounded to see him, because they believed that he had already been taken by the Germans.
Contrary to popular belief, it is never expected that an agent will tell his captors nothing. The most critical achievement that is expected of him is silence for forty-eight hours, until warnings can be circulated and men take to hiding. Then he can begin to reveal small things, odd names and places. Eventually, under extreme duress, it is recognized that he may begin to talk of more vital matters. Peulevé revealed nothing important under torture in Fresnes prison, or later in Buchenwald. But the Germans had a description of Poirier. He vanished into hiding while they combed every possible contact point in Corrèze and east Dordogne for him.
Roland Malraux’s brother André said that the region was
obviously too hot to hold Poirier for the time being. He suggested a cooling-off period, in Paris. This young, still impressionable ex-student found himself hiding in the flat of André Gide, with its window looking out on the courtyard of Laval’s Interior Ministry. He walked by the Seine between Malraux and Albert Camus. To his lifelong regret, he never remembered a word of what either man said.
Of all the extraordinary figures who held the stage in the Resistance of Dordogne and Corrèze in the summer of 1944, none surpassed André Malraux. Young men like Poirier, Hiller, Lake – so worldly about so much in their secret lives – found themselves awed and fascinated by this mountebank of genius who thrust himself upon them. He was already a legend – the author of
La Condition Humaine
, exotic traveller, film-maker, commander in Spain of the Republican fighter squadron he himself had raised,
Malraux-le-rouge
who had his uniforms tailored by Lanvin.
Yet his record as a
résistant
from 1940 to 1944 had not been impressive. After serving with a French tank unit in the débâcle of 1940, he retired to the Côte d’Azur to work – though he wrote nothing of merit – and to reflect, in circumstances of sybaritic ease by the standards of the world in those days. In September 1941, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir cycled the length of France to appeal for his support in Resistance. ‘They lunched on chicken Maryland, exquisitely prepared and served. Malraux heard Sartre out very courteously, but said that for the time being at any rate, action of any sort would be quite useless. He was relying on Russian tanks and American planes to win the war.’ Later, when the
Combat résistants
also approached him, he asked simply: ‘Have you arms? No? Have you money? No? Then it’s not serious . . .’ Towards the end of 1943, he moved with his mistress Clara to a comfortable little château on the Dordogne. Still he showed no urge to have any part of Resistance.