The Nazi Hunters (18 page)

A second redoubtable Moussey woman also served the cause of the Resistance. In many ways Mlle Bergeron was the opposite of Mme Rossi; she was a severe-looking, middle-aged spinster living in a farm set some distance from the village. She was also the chief message-bearer for the Maquis. There was little she could not have told the Germans, had they managed to break her. But in one respect she and Mme Rossi proved exactly similar: they were
unbreakable
.

The Gestapo piled upon Mlle Bergeron every humiliation and terror imaginable. They beat her and tortured her. They turned her lovely farmhouse into a brothel. This silent, prim and proper woman – who was always smartly dressed and immaculate – proved to have the courage of a lioness. When they realized they could not make her crack, they turned upon her eighty-year-old aunt. One night they dragged her out of her bed and forced the octogenarian to dance for them in her nightgown. She died of the shock.

Still Mlle Bergeron would not talk. If anything, such outrages made her stronger.

Yet by mid September 1944, the forces of Waldfest had closed in on one of their key targets – gamekeeper Albert Freine. If the Gestapo could break Freine, the consequences would be utterly disastrous for the SAS. Freine knew as much as there was to tell. As the grey autumn rains settled over the Vosges, the Gestapo came for the gamekeeper’s wife. For twenty-four hours Mme Freine was beaten, abused and interrogated. She knew almost as much as her husband, but she gave nothing away.

The Gestapo marched her into the forest. At gunpoint, they demanded to be shown the location of the ‘British parachutists’ base’. She passed so close to its actual location, one that she knew very well, that Sykes saw the party she led move by. But somehow she convinced the Gestapo that she was a simple, ignorant woman, and that her husband was likewise an innocent
garde-chasse
. They let her go, but not before they had smashed up the Freine household as a warning.

Albert Freine remained unbowed. He was full, as always, of outspoken defiance. ‘Death for me is a trifle!’ he declared to Sykes. ‘Me, a prisoner? Never! Even if the death stroke had to be delivered by my own hand!’ Sykes believed him, too. Freine’s open boastfulness hid a heart of steely fortitude.

The climate that autumn over the Vosges proved unseasonably cold. With Waldfest biting deeper and the weather conditions worsening, it was hard for the Op Loyton men to keep positive and retain morale. A blanket of mist and fog descended over the hills, making flying resupply missions nightmarishly difficult. Several had to be cancelled, and Franks’ force was soon running short of ammunition, explosives and food.

An SAS report on Op Loyton sums up the plethora of problems Franks’ men faced. ‘The bad weather and impossible flying conditions which hindered the dispatch of supply aircraft, coupled with the difficulty of selecting DZs free of enemy supervision in such unsuitable terrain added . . . to the difficulties of the operation.’

When it rained, and it was doing so pretty much constantly now, the men had to wrap themselves in their sleeping bags and cover themselves from head to toe in a waterproof cape, as they tried to get through the dark, damp night hours. When wet, their down-filled sleeping bags became useless, and they proved near impossible to dry. The SAS men’s cotton para-smocks – perfect for jumping with, and for keeping warm in dry conditions – became sodden in the incessant rain.

Captain Druce’s advance party had been on the ground for approaching five weeks now, on a mission initially scheduled to last two to three weeks at most. That was the time it was supposed to have taken for Patton’s 3rd Army to break through the German defences and advance into the Vosges. Unfortunately there was little sign of that happening any time soon and, as the weather worsened, it appeared increasingly less likely.

An Op Loyton intelligence report smuggled back to London made the situation crystal clear. ‘Valleys are becoming very soggy and would probably not be passable for trucks and tanks. There is a local saying: “When it starts raining it stays raining.” Rains sometimes hold on for nearly a week with only slight let-ups. Streams due to rainfall are often in flood . . .’

‘That was not a happy period,’ remarked Captain Druce, a man not normally accustomed to complaining. ‘I think perhaps one had one’s worst moments when wet, dirty, tired, exhausted and with no chance of getting into a nice warm bed . . . Always trying to sleep under some sort of cover, usually not with any sleeping bag or anything. And September in that area can be damned cold at night. Those are the sort of moments when your morale is really at its lowest, when you’re trying to get to sleep but you can’t sleep . . . It’s bloody cold, and you’re wet and you can’t get dry and you’re possibly quite hungry, because we had periods where we really didn’t have very much to eat.’

Under such circumstances, receiving ‘comfort loads’ – special para-containers packed with letters from home, chocolate, cigarettes and alcohol – attained an even greater significance for the men on the ground. Aside from scoring successes against the enemy, these proved the biggest boost to morale of all. Unfortunately, SAS headquarters had encountered some difficulty in arranging such deliveries to their suffering fighters.

Britain’s HM Commissioners for Customs and Excise had long argued that they couldn’t permit bulk supplies of cigarettes and booze to be dropped to SAS units deep behind enemy lines. Their reasoning seemed to hinge upon the fact that the men were being provided such comforts at ‘duty free’ prices, when they did not possess an official Army address outside the UK.

By mid September 1944 SAS headquarters had just about won that battle, but by then the bad weather had closed in over the Vosges. Three Handley Page Halifax four-engined heavy bombers had been assigned to permanent duties in support of Op Loyton, in an effort to get the vital supplies through. ‘Comforts’ were to be spread across every load, so that if only a few containers were retrieved the men would still enjoy that vital boost to their flagging spirits.

Such matters may appear as trifles at a time when these soldiers were being hunted by a force as formidable as that deployed under Operation Waldfest, but if they could not maintain their morale, Franks knew that his men were lost. Fortunately, he was about to take delivery of the single biggest morale booster of all.

It would prove a total game-changer in terms of his men’s ability to wage war across the Vosges.

Chapter Eleven

Operation Loyton had never been conceived of purely as a foot-borne mission. In the deserts of North Africa the SAS had first learned the vital importance of mobility – both in terms of being able to strike the enemy hard and fast with sufficient firepower, and to make a clean getaway. This was crucial to the practice of land-based hit-and-run warfare.

The American jeep was the key. Designated the ‘Truck, Utility, 4×4, M38’, it was a general-purpose (GP) vehicle – hence the nickname: GP, or ‘jeep’. Solid, reliable, relatively fast and manoeuvrable, the M38 seemed purpose-built for SAS operations. Stripped of all ‘non-essentials’ – including windscreen, radiator grille and front bumper – the jeep was able to carry sufficient fuel, water, weaponry and ammo for the kind of long-distance raids that would become the Regiment’s trademark.

With its all-round visibility, the open-topped vehicle also made for an excellent gun platform. Most were mounted with the Vickers ‘K’ machine gun. The rapid-firing Vickers – a .303-inch calibre light machine gun – could deliver devastating firepower, especially when loaded with a mixture of standard ball, armour-piercing and tracer rounds.

Usually fitted in pairs, a jeep could carry up to five Vickers (with one mounted singly). Equipped thus, the SAS, supported by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), had penetrated the North African desert carrying out recce, capture and sabotage missions, hitting enemy supply lines, fuel dumps, airfields and ammunition stores. In September 1942 they had launched perhaps their most celebrated mission: Operation Caravan.

Seventeen vehicles carrying forty-seven men had travelled 1,162 miles across the sand-blasted desert. Upon reaching their objective – the Italian-held Libyan town of Barce – the patrol had split up, one half attacking the enemy barracks, the other the airfield. During the latter assault some thirty aircraft – mainly three-engined Italian Air Force bombers – had been hit. In another similar mission, twelve enemy aircraft were destroyed during a five-minute shoot-’em-up raid.

The Vosges had been chosen as an ‘ideal’ area of SAS operations because in theory the rugged, wild terrain suited such mobile jeep-borne missions. If he could get jeeps onto the ground, Colonel Franks figured it would revolutionize the war they were waging here. As the third week of September blew in cold, wet and biting, the SAS colonel tried on successive occasions to get a major airdrop scheduled. Each was defeated by the ever-worsening conditions.

A report by Captain T. Burt, 2 SAS’s UK-based quartermaster, provided a flavour of the kind of problems encountered when trying to resupply the Loyton force. ‘The weather was against us, and the aircraft had to be recalled while over the Channel, and even back here the ground mist was so bad that the load had to be jettisoned near and around the aerodrome.’

At his Basse de Lieumont base, Franks felt doubly frustrated. In recent months a technique had been developed to enable jeeps to be dropped by air into remote areas like the high Vosges. Number 38 Group RAF – a unit more used to the delivery of airborne troops – had been given the tricky job of developing and perfecting this process. Slung in a specially designed metal ‘cradle’, the jeep could be hung from the main support beam of a Halifax heavy bomber, half-tucked into its bomb bay. When released it would drop beneath four, 60-foot-diameter parachutes, one attached to each of the corners of the vehicle.

That at least was the theory. In practice, if the jeep tumbled upon release, the rigging lines would snag, and if one chute didn’t open the drop was doomed. The cradles were vital for cushioning the load. The front and rear wheels were protected by two crash pans, designed to flatten upon impact, and the Vickers machine guns were removed and stowed safely inside the vehicle.

The four chutes were packed into two special ‘valises’, which sat on the back seat. Upon the jeep’s release, a static line attached to the Halifax would haul the valises free and the chutes would deploy. A small explosive charge would detonate upon landing, cutting the four chutes free of the vehicle, and making it easier for the retrieval party to get the jeep up and running.

When first used operationally – parachuting jeeps to SAS parties in the immediate aftermath of D-Day – up to 50 per cent of the vehicles hadn’t survived the drop. Colonel Franks was hoping for better success over the Vosges and praying for a weather window. Six jeeps were scheduled to be airlifted to him, which should enable a good half of his force to head out on jeep-mounted operations, all guns blazing.

In the meantime, the missions on foot continued.

On 17 September, Major Peter Lancelot John Le Poer Power finally made it through to Colonel Franks’ base. In doing so, he and his small band of men had marched through dozens of miles of hostile and mountainous terrain, evading the predations of Waldfest and tracking the colonel’s main force from Pierre-Percée through a dozen different locations, always seeming to be one step behind them.

‘Although he set out eastwards to try to contact Capt. Druce, he was out of touch for four weeks,’ the war diary records of Major Power and his men. Throughout that time the SAS major had never given up, nor missed an opportunity to hit back against the enemy. And, in spite of the worsening conditions, neither did Colonel Franks and his main force.

The very day of Major Power’s arrival at the SAS’s Moussey headquarters, Druce had been out on operations. He’d discovered that four trains loaded with tanks had become immobilized at St. Dié station, 8 miles south of their Basse de Lieumont camp. He radioed through the coordinates to SFHQ, requesting an RAF air strike to hit them.

The following day he was charged with capturing two agents of the Milice – the French pro-Nazi militia – who were of ‘Arab’ origin (most likely Algerians). In another section of the Op Loyton war diary that was originally censored, Druce reported: ‘Managed to round those up after considerable difficulty and they were both shot.’ Again, the sensitivity appears to have revolved around Druce and his fellows’ ruthless suppression of those who might betray the SAS or otherwise jeopardize their mission.

Another of Franks’ sabotage parties had blown up a train on the Celle to Allarmont railway line, which was carrying vital supplies to the front. That same party had gone on to ambush a German staff car using an American bazooka – once again, targeting the enemy’s commanders. The bazooka round had cut through the vehicle without exploding, but still succeeded in stopping it.

But such missions were becoming increasingly fraught; what the SAS men needed was speed and firepower. On the evening of 19 September they would finally get it. In guiding the flight of Halifax aircraft to the chosen DZ, Colonel Franks was aided by a new piece of equipment – a Eureka air beacon, which was designed to ‘steer’ aircraft blind through thick cloud and fog.

More accurately known as the ‘Rebecca/Eureka transponding radar’, it consisted of an airborne receiver and antenna system (the Rebecca) which was used by an in-bound aircraft to pick up a radio signal transmitting from the ground-based Eureka unit. The Rebecca calculated the range and position of the Eureka, based upon the timings and direction of the return signal. It was accurate up to 50 miles in clear conditions and, even under cloud or thick vegetation, it was still detectable from up to 5 miles away.