Conquistadors of the Useless (13 page)

At the very end of his tale, Boell seems to have divined our true attitude. He quotes my actual words when I realised that our ascent of Point 7986 was not in fact destined to frighten a single German: ‘When all's said and done it's a piece of luck that the L.M.G. isn't working. Nobody will know we've been here, and we can do it all again.' Perhaps he was right in concluding: ‘Terray, a genuine sportsman and silent man of action, is of the breed who do not need hope in order to set out, or success in order to carry on.'

After three months or so of defending the mountain ranges separating Modana from Bardonnèche, the Compagnie Stéphane was posted to another part of the front where more serious and difficult assignments awaited it. At the end of the Arc valley the two villages of Bonneval and Bessans were cut off from the rest of Maurienne by a no man's land of eighteen kilometres. The reason for this was that the Germans were strongly fortified on the Col du Mont Cenis and the old Tura fort, so that it was impossible to defend the area open to their artillery fire at any acceptable cost. This area amounted to the districts of Lanslebourg and Lans-le-Villard. The people and livestock of Bonneval and Bessans had remained where they were, and it was necessary to protect them from the looting raids which the enemy could hardly fail to make sooner or later. The defence and supply of this enclave was a complex problem. Theoretically they could have been supplied by portages across the Col de l'lseran, which was between us and the troops stationed in Val d'Isère, but such a long route would have been dangerous owing to avalanches, and would also have called for a large force of men.

Headquarters preferred to supply us by parachute, a system which was very popular at the time but not very practical. For technical reasons which I cannot now remember the aeroplanes were afraid to fly low over the valley, and dropped their loads from such a height that the least puff of wind dispersed them over a wide area. The containers came down all over the hillsides. Many were lost, and the recovery of the remainder was a tiresome job. The whole business was so slow and inefficient that it was decided to try the riskier method of bringing supplies through the no man's land at night. Thanks to the darkness there was no great fear of German shells, but the valley was narrow and ideally suited to ambush. In the event the enemy turned out to be not much more aggressive than in the Modane sector, so that there were no more than two or three clashes even though dozens of men passed in both directions every night.

Throughout the early winter the sector had been defended by a company of the 7th B.C. A. After three months virtually cut off from their own side they needed a relief, and Compagnie Stéphane was given the job. We were to see a lot more action on this front than on the one we were leaving, some of which was to prove really thrilling.

After helping to install a telephone line between Val d'Isere and Bonneval, I and some other N.C.O.s were detailed to take charge of the supply columns through the no man's land. I did this journey five or six times in both directions. In spite of our fitness those eleven miles of stumbling through the darkness under loads of up to ninety pounds always seemed extremely hard, but the physical effort was nothing in comparison with the nervous tension. Virtually the whole of our route lay open to attack by the enemy, and although we tried to reassure ourselves that such attacks were in fact rare, this knowledge created a very unpleasant anxiety neurosis. The worst part was going through Lanslebourg. There was absolutely no way of avoiding this village, placed in a narrowing of the valley. It had been evacuated and partly destroyed, so that the least breath of wind would rattle the half tom-off sheets of corrugated iron, or slam doors and windows. These sounds seemed incredibly sinister at dead of night as one passed through the ruins in the knowledge that a machine gun might be hidden behind every wall, and as they broke the oppressive silence even the bravest of us could hardly help jumping.

Around the beginning of March there was a patch of fine weather, which made possible a series of high-altitude operations in which my climbing and skiing abilities were again put to the test. The mountains of high Maurienne are over eleven thousand feet in places, and the cols which link them are high and steep. The weak forces of Germans and Italians which opposed us on this front had seen fit not to occupy the actual line of crests, which they doubtless judged to be militarily inaccessible at this time of year. These units, mainly made up of Italians who had been pressed forcibly into service, had been content to dig in around the highest villages of the three Stura valleys. Faced with this weak point in the enemy line of defence, the high command, probably encouraged by Stéphane, decided we should occupy not only the cols but some strategic points on the Italian side.

This move seemed to me to have a double purpose. In the first place it would enable us to make contact with the Italian Maquis operating behind the enemy lines because, starting from such high bases, we would be able to infiltrate between his strongpoints. In the second, we could take the enemy in the rear when the time came for a major attack on the Col du Mont Cenis, which I had little doubt was in the offing. To do all this with a single company called for an intense effort on the part of every single man, but more especially from the mountaineering specialists. As there were not enough of these to go round, they had practically no rest.

Captain Stéphane seemed to have great faith in my experience and judgement of mountain conditions, as he put me in charge of the technical planning for most of the difficult operations. It was indeed flattering to be so trusted, but it meant that in order to live up to it I had to make enormous efforts – not that I found this in the least bit displeasing. The most remarkable of the missions I took part in at this time was a four-day patrol. By going a very long way round, which involved a bivouac on the way, we were able to link up with a band of Italian partisans hiding close to the small village of Suse, twelve miles behind the lines at Mont Cenis. These men were able to give us the exact positions of several batteries of heavy artillery. The patrol was daring from an alpine as well as from a military point of view, inasmuch as we had to go along craggy ridges and cut across slopes which would have avalanched at the least fall of snow.

There were moments of drama during the four days. Suse was occupied by over eight hundred Germans, and while we were hiding out with the partisans, only about a mile from the village, someone must have given the game away. All the houses were being searched, but we were woken up by the Maquisards and got away under cover of darkness. A couple of hours later we were just coming out of the woods into the higher pastures when we saw two large columns making a pincer movement to cut us off. Fortunately the Germans did not see us, and we escaped by hiding in the branches of high trees. It is probable that if, as often happened, the Jerries had had dogs with them, the adventure would have had a less happy ending.

The following evening, half-starved and worn out by a long forced march carrying arms and ammunition, we were approaching the old generating station by the Lac de la Rousse when we heard the noise of firing. The post had been attacked, several men wounded, and my friend Robert Buchet killed. Instead of finding the rest and nourishment we had been expecting, we had to participate at once in a counter-attack and then fall back on the Col de l'Arnès, situated more than an hour's march above. As if my pack wasn't heavy enough in its own right I had to carry a wounded man's as well. By the time we reached the little hamlet of Avérole on the other side of the col it was the middle of the night, and I understood what it meant to go beyond one's normal limit of endurance. That day, marching virtually without food and with fifty-pound rucksacks, we had climbed and descended a total of over seventeen thousand feet, of which some nine thousand had been uphill.

I shared another interesting experience with Michel Chevallier three hundred feet or so below the summit of the Pointe de Charbonnel. With its twelve and a quarter thousand feet, this peak is the highest in the range. Without being exactly what one would call difficult it is quite steep on all sides, and it can only be climbed in winter when the snow is in safe condition. On one of those sublime days when the mountains glitter like jewels in the sunlight we had climbed a steep gully of hard snow, and there, three hundred feet below the top, had hollowed out of the slope a cave big enough to shelter us comfortably. From this igloo-like base we expected to be able to spend two whole days observing the new German installations on the Col de Ronsse, over the other side of the Ribon valley, on which an attack was being considered. The Pointe de Charbonnel was practically the only place from which such observations could be made discreetly. Our particular job was to get some idea of the size of the enemy forces, the siting of any minefields, and the outposts of the sentries.

Faure and Laurenceau, who had come along to help with the digging, spent the first night in the ice cave with us, then went down, leaving us alone on the mountain. There was not a cloud in the sky and the air was almost utterly still. Despite the cold we spent the day glued to our telescope. At nightfall we returned to our comfortable cave, got out our air mattresses, and slept well after an ample meal. At seven o'clock in the morning I pushed aside the canvas sheet which served us for a door and got a lump of snow in the face for my pains. The weather had changed in the night and there was eight inches of new snow on the ground.

The snow was still falling in thick, wet flakes. In such conditions it would have been impossible to go back down the couloir without starting an avalanche. We were virtually cut off in our cave. This might not have been too serious if we had had plenty of food, but our reconnaissance was supposed to finish that day and we had practically nothing left. The weather didn't seem to be getting any better, and as the layer of new snow grew thicker it became increasingly likely that an avalanche would occur spontaneously. Although our position was not yet desperate it was becoming increasingly worrying. By noon it had stopped snowing and was getting warmer, thus reducing the stability of the slope still further. The boredom and hunger began to pall, and eventually I decided to try a rather risky way out which, however, I had already used successfully elsewhere.

Putting on my skis, I went a few yards easily to the right. Here I was on the edge of a couloir which went straight down into the little valley of Vincendière. On the other side of the couloir, only about fifty feet away, was a well-defined rib on which one would be safe from avalanches, and I skied straight for it as fast as I could go. As I had intended, the tracks of my skies undercut the slope and started the avalanche; but my passage was so quick that I was in safety before it had really begun to move. We were now free to swoop down the hard, smooth slope in a series of graceful curves. I have used this stratagem two or three times during my career, but obviously it cannot be recommended in just any snow conditions or, particularly, on just any kind of ground. It is absolutely essential to be moving at a certain speed when the unstable mass of snow ruptures, and to have a sheltered spot to aim for not very far away. But contrary to appearances, given a good skier and the right conditions, the exercise is more sensational than really dangerous.

I spent the whole of that winter and spring on mountain assignments at altitudes ranging from five to ten thousand feet and even higher. Military considerations often forced us out in weather and snow conditions which we would normally have thought out of the question. It would have been quite easy to pretend that certain operations were impossible for technical reasons, and our officers would have been in no position to contradict us; but we always played the game and frequently undertook to cross dangerous slopes. I was twice caught in large avalanches. The first time I was carried down for over a thousand feet, and only escaped by a double stroke of luck in losing my skis and in being on top of the avalanche when it came to rest. The second time I got away by going all out for a bunch of trees where I was able to find shelter. One of my comrades who could not ski so well was killed.

Very few people go out on the mountains in the heart of winter. At that time of year they ski on relatively low runs, and only with the return of spring, when the snow improves, do a few specialists venture on to the heights. Most of our officers knew little about the problems of winter mountaineering, and some of them had no idea at all. The majority of the missions they ordered, and which my section and I sometimes managed to carry out at considerable risk, were not likely to have any great effect on the course of the war. But for all that, as long as the odds were reasonable, I always volunteered. Most of my companions had no more illusions than I about the usefulness of these actions, but did the same. The war in the mountains was only a game to me, but like other parts of the climbing game I played it to the limits of my strength and courage. The very frequency with which I thus went to the extreme margin between safety and danger, a margin which most people keep comfortably wide, ended by giving me a knowledge of snow and avalanche conditions which few mountaineers normally have the chance to acquire.

This practical science of snow is made up partly of information which can be culled from books, and partly of a kind of intuition based on a natural flair and a mass of accumulated observations, more often than not subconscious. I learnt more about this field that winter than in the whole of the rest of my life put together, despite the fact that Goodness knows I had often enough taken unwise chances on the condition of slopes. Many years later, on the occasion of a mountain tragedy so painful that I will not enlarge upon it here although it caused me to revise all my ideas about the brotherhood of mountaineers and even of men as a whole, it was with the confidence born of this experience that I raised my voice against the timidity and incompetence of certain folk in spite of the troubles my action brought down on my own head. Despite all the silly capital made out of it by the Press during those unfortunate days of January 1957, I will say once more that, as was witnessed in writing by the famous Swiss climbers who accompanied me, the mountain was in good condition and two lives could have been saved.
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When my friends and I finally got tired of being messed about by ‘the authorities' and set out, unhappily one day too late, we had no difficulty with three-quarters of the so-called impossible slopes and couloirs. Later we even returned down them despite the thick layer of new snow from the storm which halted our advance. It should not be forgotten that at the same time the Italian guides successfully rescued their countrymen Bonatti and Gheser from the Gonella hut, the approach to which is quite well known for its exposure to avalanches. Why was a thing possible on one side of Mont Blanc and not on the other?