One Day in Oradour (8 page)

As the station clock opposite the Hotel de la Gare struck one, twenty officers and a hundred and eighty-seven men from 3rd Company began to assemble their convoy, ready to move out of Saint Junien as Dietrich had ordered. The atmosphere as the soldiers gathered around their vehicles was alive with an explosive mix of excitement and trepidation. No one yet knew where they were headed nor why they suddenly found themselves in the command of Major Dietrich rather than their own commanding officer, Captain Krüger, but they had a sense that they were about to be involved in something big.

Major Dietrich had been pacing about intently, rushing up and down the line of vehicles, organising the men, giving out instructions and checking their weapons. Meanwhile, as he waited patiently by the Major’s car, his driver Ragnar marvelled at Dietrich’s
efficiency and focus. Like him or not, he thought, you had to admire the man’s dogged determination. He had a clear plan and if to achieve it he had to brush aside someone like Captain Krüger and take over the command of his men, he would do it without batting an eyelid. Dietrich had an undeniable talent for getting people to do what he wanted. With his imposing height, steely gaze and sharp eyes, he seemed to command an instant response from any soldier he spoke to. It had taken only minutes for Dietrich to galvanise the men into action and here they were, an hour after the briefing at the hotel, virtually ready to go.

Most of the soldiers were young, around eighteen to twenty years of age, and many were carrying standard issue K98 rifles, while several others, whom Dietrich instructed to travel in the trucks towards the back of the convoy, were carrying KP/31 submachine guns.

One particular group of soldiers had caught Ragnar’s eye. Earlier, he had seen them huddled outside the ammunitions store long after the other men had started gathering by the convoy vehicles. Dietrich had spent an intense ten minutes talking to them and had seemed especially animated. Ragnar had watched him sketching something out in a notebook.

Now that same party of men was quietly loading something into the back of one of the trucks, which was
set apart from the rest of the convoy. Ragnar took a few steps around to the rear of his car to get a better look. There appeared to be three or four similar objects and, from the way the men were carrying them – cautiously, one by one from the ammunitions store – they looked reasonably heavy and were either very fragile or extremely hazardous.

Ragnar moved a little closer. He was desperate to get a clearer view but didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so he ducked down, pretending to do up his shoelace. The men had now finished loading and were rapidly covering the back of the truck with a tarpaulin, but Ragnar was just able to catch a glimpse of one of the objects. It was a jerrycan, the standard steel type, built to hold about twenty litres of fuel. Nothing unusual about that, he thought, except that this jerrycan had been hastily modified. Two pieces of wire were tightly taped around it, holding in place a smoke stick grenade.

Ragnar backed slowly towards his car, feeling the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. What had Dietrich got planned? Was this what he had meant by ‘shaking the beehive’ in Oradour?

Ragnar knew that his boss was ambitious and that he liked to make his mark. How else had he managed to claw his way up through the ranks in the SS so rapidly? Moreover, Ragnar knew that Dietrich was relishing
the task of finding the missing Major Klausner before anyone else could. He loved a difficult challenge. He thrived on proving that he was better than all the rest. But what lengths would he really go to? How many times would he feel the need to prove himself to his beloved SS leaders?

Ragnar could see Dietrich now, striding across to the car, gesturing to him to get in. Whatever worries he had, he would have to bury them for the moment. Dietrich was impatient to leave and definitely not in the mood to tolerate any delay.

Dietrich jumped into the seat next to Ragnar and ordered him to speed to the front of the convoy as it pulled out of Saint Junien.

‘Follow my directions and don’t get too far ahead,’ he said quickly, waving a map in his leather-clad hand.

Ragnar nodded, ‘We’re still heading for Oradour, though, Major, yes?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Dietrich replied, studying the map. ‘But I won’t make it easy for the Resistance to track us. If there are any rebels out there, we’re going to give them a bit of a run-around. No use in broadcasting our intentions.’

‘What exactly are our intentions, Major?’ Ragnar asked tentatively, glancing sideways at his boss.

‘To take care of one hell of a mess,’ said Dietrich
through gritted teeth. ‘Turn right here. We’ll go round through Saint Victurnien then back onto this road where it crosses the Vienne.’

‘But Major General Scholz’s orders still stand? We have to establish whether Oradour has any involvement in the kidnapping?’

‘Oh, his orders haven’t changed,’ snorted Dietrich. ‘We’ll do a thorough search, don’t you worry. There’ll be nothing left in Oradour
to
search by the time we leave.’

‘And if we do find Major Klausner? If the Resistance
have
been keeping him there, do we still take hostages? Still negotiate?’ Ragnar had the distinct impression that Dietrich was holding something back.

‘Whatever we find,’ Dietrich said icily, ‘it’s far too late to negotiate.’ Then, seeing the look of concern on Ragnar’s face, he added, ‘Don’t you worry, my friend. By the end of the day, Major General Scholz will be thanking me. As will the whole German army. I’m about to make our relationship with the Resistance a whole lot easier, and that’s what General Müller wants, I know that for certain.’

Ragnar stared straight ahead, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he negotiated the narrow lanes approaching the River Vienne. He decided that Major Gustav Dietrich was a very dangerous man indeed.
As soon as the convoy had crossed the River Vienne, Dietrich ordered Ragnar to turn up a small lane which curved out of sight of the main road and ran down into a grassy field sloping away to the river. The halting convoy parked in the shade of the weeping willow trees lining the river bank and Dietrich called out to the troops to assemble for their briefing papers.

An advance platoon was ordered to leave immediately and to search all the outlying buildings and farms between the Vienne and Oradour. As he explained the route they had to take, Dietrich revealed the first part of his plan.

‘Round up anyone you can find. I want them all to be brought into the village. You must not leave any barn, any building, any haystack unturned. No one must be missed. And make it impossible for anyone to go back. If they have slipped through the net, there must be nowhere for them to return to. Nowhere to hide. So burn every building to the ground before you move on.’

A second platoon was instructed to divide up and to seal off all four roads into Oradour. ‘We have the advantage of surprise,’ said Dietrich. ‘And Oradour is defenceless and easy to encircle. There are just four ways in and out: the road to Limoges to the south-east across the River Glane, the road we will use, coming in from Saint Junien, the road to Peyrilhac to the north-east
and the road towards Confolens to the north-west. This last road is the main street through the village, Rue Depaul. Once we have sealed off the village, not a soul is to come in or out of that village until I give the order, unless they belong to 3rd Battalion. Is that understood?’

The men nodded, offering a chorus of ‘Yes, Major.’

‘And I need at least two of you to be ready to stop the trams coming in from Limoges. The station is at the top of the village in Rue Depaul so you will have to intercept them before the road block by the river bridge. Bring the drivers and all the passengers into the village and make sure that no tram leaves before we have completed our mission.’

Three platoons were then given maps of Oradour with orders to cover specific buildings or sections of the streets. The plan, they were told, was simple: they had to evacuate every property in the village and gather the entire population in the village green, known as the fairground. Once the buildings were empty, a full search could be carried out. The search parties were to report to Dietrich, who would be based in the fairground coordinating the mission, and then await their next orders.

Dietrich paused to give his men time to digest what he had said. One of the youngest soldiers, a pimply, blond-haired, nervous-looking man, half raised his hand
and dared to speak. ‘Major Dietrich… er, permission to ask a question please, Major?’

Dietrich spun his head round to find the source of the thin, shaky voice. ‘Yes? What is it?’

The rest of the troops stared on in stony silence.

‘Major, what should we do if anyone refuses to come to the fairground?’

Dietrich shook his head, as if the answer was obvious. ‘No one has a choice. It’s your job to make sure everyone knows that. I remind you that we have permission from General Müller to take reprisals against anyone who allies themselves with the Resistance. Major General Scholz has asked us to search Oradour for evidence of the kidnap of an SS officer. So treat anyone who refuses to cooperate with suspicion. If they can walk to the fairground, then they must go. No questions asked.’

‘But Major…’ the young soldier continued despite receiving a hostile glare from Dietrich. ‘What if someone is too old or too sick to move? We can’t assume that they support the Resistance.’

‘Silence!’ screamed Dietrich, as a couple of sniggers ran round the gathered troop. ‘If they are too old or too sick to walk then just shoot them.’

Dietrich didn’t see the look of shock on the young soldier’s face as he was already storming off to brief the last group of men.

This final platoon was armed with heavy machine guns. They were given protection duty. They were to provide the troops inside Oradour with any necessary covering fire, explained Dietrich, should there be any attack or trouble outside the road blocks.

As he watched Dietrich moving among his men, clarifying his commands, Ragnar couldn’t quell his sense of unease. If this was just a search and rescue mission, why did they need incendiary devices? What had Dietrich really meant when he’d said there would be nothing left in Oradour
to
search?

With their watches synchronised, and satisfied that his men understood their orders, Dietrich gave the advance parties the signal to move out. They had until two o’clock to search the outlying farms and seal off the roads into Oradour before the bulk of the battalion would go in and begin the evacuation of all the buildings. Dietrich would wait there at the Vienne with one final group of men, and would bring up the rear, arriving at the fairground at 2.30.

Dietrich felt a bubble of excitement in his stomach as he watched the first vehicles driving off. It was more than just the pleasure of seeing his plans being put into action, it was the unquestioning respect with which his men carried out his orders. The power, the control, it
was always a rush. When he was in charge of his men, he felt in charge of his life.

He strolled confidently over to the river bank and climbed up onto the crumbling wall which formed the old doorway into an abandoned leather works. The noise of the rushing water filled his ears and Dietrich checked his footing as he looked down over the edge into the deep, dark, swirling river. In some places so tranquil and peaceful, here the Vienne was deadly and foreboding.

Dietrich recalled the time when he was seven years old and his mother had persuaded his father to come out of his study and join them for a Sunday picnic on the Dreisam River near Freiburg. It was a hot, sticky summer afternoon and his mother had let Gustav walk down to the river in his bathing suit and sandals. After they had eaten their lunch, Dietrich was allowed to go and play at the water’s edge. He had loved playing on the beach, paddling, making dams in the sand and skimming stones across the river. Then he had noticed the deep pool underneath the footbridge. The water looked so cool and clear and he knew how to swim, so he scrambled along the bank and onto the bridge.

He remembered shouting out gleefully to his father, desperate for him to watch him as he jumped. He would be like Johnny Weissmuller, a mini-Tarzan leaping out
of the treetops into a jungle pool to bravely fight a crocodile.

The water was deep and his feet only briefly touched the stones on the river bed as he plunged into the pool. He pushed downwards with his hands and kicked, bursting back up out of the water, at the same time spinning round to check that his father hadn’t missed his brave leap. But Father wasn’t there sitting on the picnic rug next to his mother, clapping and cheering as Gustav had hoped.

Momentarily confused and still treading water in the deep pool, Gustav heard his father before he saw him and he could sense his outrage. He was wading out furiously into the water and when Gustav turned to face him he could see his mouth moving and realised that he was yelling. That was when his father’s big hands closed around his arm and he was plucked from the water out onto the shingle bank.

‘You stupid, stupid little boy. You could have killed yourself. What on earth did you think you were doing?’

Gustav had tried to make his father understand that he was a good swimmer and it was alright, he knew it was safe, but Father was too angry. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t even listen to Mother when she said he was over-reacting and asked him not to spoil the day. He simply dragged Gustav back to the picnic rug, threw him
down onto the mat and silently began packing up their things. Mother had said that Father was just taking care of his boy, and she had winked at Gustav and wrapped him closely in a towel. But that didn’t soothe the huge painful lump that had formed in Gustav’s throat nor the stinging of the hot tears as they merged with the cold river water that dripped from his hair. There would be no moment of glory, no laughter, no fun little fantasy shared. The afternoon was over.

That was the last time Father ever came on a family picnic.