The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (26 page)

The noise threatened to attract the attention of the Germans, so there was nothing to be done but to go back to the top and silence the dog. He had to move quickly. He hauled himself up the iron rod, slid open the cover and climbed out. Diane jumped up and began to bark with pleasure. ‘Not today,
please
! Go away!’ Michel hissed. ‘Go!’ Diane stood her ground. ‘Go! Leave me!’ Diane cocked her head. Once again he was forced to plead.
‘Please go away... please!
At last, Diane seemed to understand, and she turned and walked off.

Michel heard the crunch of soldiers’ boots as a search party moved up from the lower village. It was too late to climb back down the well, because of the risk of being spotted, so he crawled on his belly towards the empty house and around to the back. A large, windowless brick tool shed with a sloping roof was attached to it, padlocked on the outside. He scaled the wall, using the house to conceal him from the search party, but once on the roof saw that he was exposed to a second patrol above him working its way down through the village.

The roof was constructed of large square tiles and he slid one aside to squeeze into the tool shed below. Holding on to the wooden frame of the roof, he pulled the tile back into position and dropped to the ground. At first he could see nothing in the dim light except for rays that filtered from under the locked door. Above, thick wire was stretched across the shed supporting a wooden plank to form a suspended storage space for hay. It offered a precarious hiding place at best, but he climbed on to a wheelbarrow, pulled himself up and buried himself under the hay.

Suspended in mid-air under hay, he felt reasonably secure. The shed was clearly locked on the outside and the wire and plank construct was more solid than it looked. And then he heard Diane barking at the side of the shed where he had climbed on to the roof.

The dog moved to the shed door and began to scratch at it and moan. ‘My heart stopped beating. This was the end. I was powerless. I could do nothing but wait for the inevitable.’ He pulled out his revolver and held it against his chest. He would empty it into the enemy, saving the last bullet for himself. ‘To be captured in combat meant to be tortured to death. We were branded as terrorists, and I was not going to allow myself to fall into the hands of the Germans.’

He heard one of the search parties enter the house, and the occasional shout in German as the soldiers moved from room to room. Diane suddenly stopped scratching at the door. The search party came out of the house and into the garden. There was momentary silence, and then the sound of aggressive barking as if the dog suddenly understood the source of danger and had switched her attention to the patrol. There was a shout and the noise of a soldier heaving a rock. The barking stopped. Michel lay under the hay, dreading the possibility of the dog’s return, hoping the Germans might give the tool shed a miss because of the padlock.

A group of soldiers paused outside the door. One rattled the padlock. There was a pause, followed by the sound of splintering wood as the timber of the half-rotten door was kicked in. The soldier stepped inside and light flooded the shed. Michel lay still, scarcely breathing. The hay became heavy and hot and he was unbearably uncomfortable. The wait seemed endless. The soldiers looked around and walked out, apparently satisfied the shed was empty. Michel heard the patrol form up and the sound of their boots as they marched away - and Diane’s barking in the distance.

He lay beneath the hay until nightfall and then dropped from his hiding place to the floor of the shed. A dark object outlined against the open door made him start. It was Diane, tail wagging happily. He slipped back to the house where the dog settled under the kitchen table, exuding the newly acquired air of a conspirator. Thérèse Mathieu told Michel that all hell had broken loose: the enemy had launched a major offensive employing thousands of troops. All Résistance groups had been put on alert. It was now too dangerous for any
résistant
to stay put, and she was going to leave the house with her rifle and climb into the mountains to join headquarters in Beldonne.
[115]

The encirclement of Vercors by the Germans was completed by nightfall. The assault on the mountain fortress was launched at six the following morning in drenching rain. A heavily armed column once again climbed the road to St Nizier, while seven others scaled the escarpments and attacked defenders holding the passes. The
maquisards
fought ferociously, but were forced to fall back after twenty-four hours. The Germans sent out large reconnaissance forces probing for weak spots in Maquis positions while the
résistants
retreated. Once the enemy had identified sensitive positions they moved in to destroy them.

Despite effective ambushes inflicting heavy casualties - in one the Germans lost more than eighty men - the enemy gained a foothold on one mountain top after another. Night brought no relief as a multitude of German patrols moved through the woods. In the morning, at first light, the Germans opened up with mortars. As German Alpine commandos moved on to one position, the defenders were killed one after another, and the youngest - just turned seventeen - called out, ‘Tell mama that I died for France!’ His commander, pipe clamped firmly between his teeth, fired his bazooka twenty-seven times. He was wounded, but continued to fight until he was encircled. Before he died he sent a radio message to his commander that his men had decided to fight to the end, signing off: ‘Long live France!’

The Germans succeeded in installing mortars and cannons in mountain-top positions and were now able to fire on the Maquis below them. The military situation had been reversed. The
résistants
were fish in a barrel and the free citadel of Vercors seemed doomed. A desperate report on the enemy action was sent to Algiers: ‘Demand immediate bombardment. Had promised to hold out for three weeks. Now six weeks since establishment of our organisation. Request additional men, fuel and materiel.

Morale of the population excellent, but they will quickly turn against you if you do not take immediate steps, and we would have to agree with them that the leaders in Algiers and London do not understand the situation we find ourselves in and can be considered cowards and criminals. We mean what we say: cowards and criminals.’

An immediate request for commandos was made by the Free French to the Allies, but all forces were being concentrated on the projected landing in Provence. The head of the SOE for the region tried to persuade Allied command to put nearby German airstrips - where transport planes earmarked for carrying troops offered a particularly inviting target - out of action. But nothing happened. The fate of the men of Vercors was sealed. One commander remarked to a comrade: I have always believed that nine out of ten would never return. And yet we didn’t have the right to say no.’

The only hope seemed to be the airborne troops promised by de Gaulle, and the Vercors Résistance still dared to hope that a force would be flown in, complete with heavy artillery. The construction crew had virtually completed the airstrip at Vassieux, in the centre of the plateau, which was now three thousand, three hundred feet long and four hundred and fifty feet wide, and serviceable. Three days after the Germans opened their attack there was elation as the crew spotted aircraft approaching from the south under low cloud. Word went around the strip that the Allied airborne force was here at last - and it was impressive. Altogether there were twenty planes with troop gliders in tow.

But as the gliders drew closer the awful truth struck home: they were not the long-expected Allied reinforcements at all, but German troop transports. The enemy had closely monitored the progress of the strip through aerial reconnaissance and saw a magnificent opportunity to place troops in the heart of the ‘impregnable’ Vercors. The gliders disgorged four hundred crack SS troops who quickly overwhelmed the Maquis defenders. The attack was a well-planned operation faultlessly executed without quarter. The Germans secured their position in the village and then fanned out on the offensive.

Résistance units were now massively outnumbered and outgunned, and hopelessly overstretched along a one-hundred-and-twenty-mile front. German reinforcements continued to be flown into Vassieux, while other troops poured through the open gate of St Nizier. Medium- and long-range artillery pounded inadequately defended set positions. By nightfall Résistance leaders understood that they would have to revert to guerrilla tactics. A decision was made to keep fighting using all possible means, and then fall back in small units. It was also decided to move the OSS commandos out of the area to the HQ of the Secret Army in the Beldonne mountains.

They reached Chartreuse, a strong Résistance area, and Michel was placed in charge of moving the OSS men across the Isere Valley and up into the Alps. The commandos were loaded into a truck and Michel led the way on a motor bike. ‘I had already been able to organise lookouts all along the route within visual distance of one another. Their job was to warn us of the presence or approach of German troops. If I saw that a man was missing, or a signal was given, we would have been warned. We went like hell, and although we thought it wise to go off the road a couple of times, we had a straight run with no trouble. They were delivered to Beldonne safely.’

Back in Vercors, the SS now staged a number of brutal reprisals. They shot hostages and prisoners and massacred the inhabitants of Vassieux, mostly old men, women and children. One woman was raped by seventeen men in succession, while a German doctor held her pulse, ready to stop the soldiers when she fainted. Another was eviscerated and left to die with her intestines draped around her neck. When three children tried to save themselves by hiding behind a rock, soldiers threw hand grenades at them. All three were wounded, while one - a four-year-old boy - had his left hand torn off at the wrist. When an old lady came out of hiding to plead for him she was shot dead. Another of the children, an eight-year-old girl who had been wounded in the chest, was later carried away and hidden by her parents. They were given away by a barking dog. As the father reached into his pocket to retrieve his ID, the soldiers shot him with the cry, ‘Terrorist!’ They turned on the little girl and her mother. ‘If you cry you’ll get the same.’ Sixty-four civilians died at Vassieux, and more than two hundred villagers and farmers from the region were murdered in reprisal killings.

The Résistance military hospital close to Vassieux, caring for one hundred and twenty wounded, had been evacuated during the assault. The walking wounded were left to fend for themselves. Doctors and nurses took the seats out of a number of buses, loaded the stretcher cases and headed south. News of a German column moving up from Die, a village at the southern tip of the plateau, led to them leaving the main road and heading into the mountains. They followed a rough dirt track to the grotto of La Luire, a limestone cavern sixty feet wide and twice as deep in the side of the Montagne de Beurre - Butter Mountain. The mouth of the cave was hidden by trees, and for a week the three doctors, nine nurses and chaplain cared for the twenty-six wounded, among whom were two women from Vassieux who had been wounded in the bombing, four German prisoners of war, and an American OSS lieutenant, Chester Myers, recovering from an appendix operation.

A reconnaissance plane circled the area early one morning, and in the evening fifteen German soldiers led by a Gestapo lieutenant arrived at the cave. They were visibly nervous as they entered, expecting a Résistance hide-out, and had their weapons at the ready. The wounded German POWs cried out:
‘Kameraden - nicht schiessen! Dies ist ein Krankenhaus! Wir sind deutsche Soldaten! Kriegsgefangene!’
- Comrades - don’t shoot! It’s a hospital! We’re German soldiers! Prisoners of war! The Gestapo lieutenant ripped the bandages from one of the men on the stretcher to see if his wounds were genuine. When several nurses proffered ID cards, he turned on them and said in French, ‘It’s useless to try and explain. Your papers are false. You’re terrorists and you will be exterminated, men and women.’

The soldiers forced everyone out of the cave and took them to an abandoned farm nearby. The wounded who were able to stand were lined up against a wall and shot. The stretcher cases were executed where they lay. A letter found later on a German prisoner, who had been present, graphically described the event: ‘We have exterminated all the occupants of a hospital, including doctors and nurses. There were about forty of them. We dragged them out and shot them down with our automatic pistols. That may seem atrocious, but these dogs didn’t deserve anything better.’

In fact, the soldiers did not execute forty, only twenty-one, and the nurses and doctors were spared. The atrocity seems to have triggered a form of psychotic boasting. The survivors were taken to Grenoble for questioning. The eldest, a doctor in his seventies, was released. The two other doctors and the chaplain were shot. The nurses pretended they had been pressed into service with the Maquis. The eldest was asked, ‘Would you nurse German soldiers?’

‘Of course,’ she replied. The proof of her answer was that she had been nursing four POWs when arrested.

‘Then we will send you to be a nurse on the eastern front.’

The seven nurses were taken to Montluc prison in Lyon. They never reached the eastern front; instead they were transferred to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women fifty miles north of Berlin. Originally conceived as a model prison, complete with landscaping and designed uniforms, ninety thousand inmates died there.