The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas (23 page)

The moment he entered the woman’s home he came under the spell of her calm, powerful presence. There was nothing, her bearing suggested, that could break the spirit of Thérèse Mathieu. She reaffirmed hope, and Michel felt she carried within her the essence of eternal France. ‘She was a Catholic, a principled person with a strong value system. She had a strong, healthy love of France, which I found beautiful. She had a deep influence on me. She was a symbol of courage and the highest principles of humanity. She told me: “We don’t do these things for decorations or awards. We do these things because we have to.”’

Thérèse Mathieu was a highly respected citizen of Biviers, an Alpinist and skier who was in love with the mountains. It aroused the suspicion of no one when this respectable spinster took one of her many solitary skiing or hiking trips in the mountains. Except now she took a secret route across the border into Switzerland and carried vital intelligence in and out of France. The local citizenry might - or might not - have been surprised to see her seated at her kitchen table instructing new members of Michel’s commando unit on how to disassemble and clean a machine gun.

For Michel was now working to create and organise the Groupe Biviers, affiliated to the Gresivaudan Secret Army which had its HO in the Belledonne mountains. He became its administrative chief responsible for paying his ‘tens’ and ‘thirties’ commando groups that were now formed into a rudimentary military organisation. Each man received ten francs a day and was provided with food, clothes and arms. He built a place of refuge in the woods by digging an underground complex designed to house a dozen
résistants
. He became the liaison officer between Gresivaudan, Chartreuse and the Vercors, carrying money from one to the other, riding the only motor bike in the region. He also worked for the Service de Renseignements Departmental (Security Intelligence, which later became the Deuxième Bureau). The name of Le Patriote became widely known.
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Mathieu’s solid, bourgeois home became the HQ for Michel’s Résistance activities, and although poorly armed and supplied, the commando group went increasingly on the offensive. Raids were carried out against both Vichy and German supply depots to seize food and supplies for the increasing number of
maquisards
inhabiting the woods and caves of the region.

He had not been in Biviers long when he reluctantly entered a fateful love affair that he neither encouraged nor wanted. Her name was Diane. ‘I did not return the affection because I did not want to be encumbered. Whenever I came back to the house Diane came to greet me. She would leave her house and be happy to just sit and look at me. I never touched her. I didn’t want to talk to her. Just for me to be there was enough. I did not want to encourage her or reciprocate in a relationship that I couldn’t afford. I never gave her anything to eat or anything to drink. There was nothing for her to get from me. I didn’t reject her exactly, but I tried to ignore her.’ Diane was one of a pair of Irish setters belonging to a neighbour.

When Michel was away on a mission the dog remained at her home, but the moment he returned she came and sat at his feet in Thérèse Mathieu’s kitchen, her large eyes swimming with love. One day Michel was confronted by the neighbour: ‘Let’s face it, she’s your dog. I know how Diane feels - consider her yours.’

Diane moved in and became Michel’s constant companion. ‘When I went into the mountains I allowed her to come. She would go ahead of me like a hunting dog. Very soon people knew that if they saw Diane, I was somewhere nearby. I did not want to face it, but she was a give-away, a liability.’

Despite the treatment by the Milice, and his contempt and hatred for them, he sought victory not revenge. So when he received an order from headquarters for his group to execute the regional leader he experienced conflicting emotions. ‘I organised surveillance. We knew where he lived, established his routine, learned his habits - but I was going through the motions. He was after us and would not have hesitated to have us shot in cold blood. Whenever it came to fixing a time and a place for the act I always found an excuse not to do it. Because I couldn’t. I was not an assassin.’

As
chef de section
of a region of the Secret Army, Michel laid down a strict rule that all personal contacts outside of the group must be reported. Two young
résistants
belonging to the Biviers Commando came to him one day and spoke of meeting a pair of pretty girls in Grenoble who needed to be checked out. The girls seemed too keen, and Michel was suspicious. ‘Invite them to a little dinner,’ Michel said. ‘I’ll set it up.’ The girls were delighted to be asked to a Saturday night dinner among friends. They were given a phoney location and only told at the last moment of a change in rendezvous. The sudden alteration in the arrangements did not seem to arouse their suspicions and they were driven to a house in Biviers. Members of the commando unit were already at the home of Michel’s adjutant, André Valat - a fearless twenty-year-old recruited by Michel - when they arrived. There were also several women belonging to the Maquis, and the group suggested nothing more than an amiable weekend gathering of friends.

One of the girls from Grenoble, whom Michel judged to be the leader of the two, sat next to him. She was an attractive creature, with an engaging personality, although he noticed that she had self-consciously arranged a silk scarf around her neck to hide some sort of disfigurement. She was also a flirt. ‘We had a great time, a good dinner with quite a bit to drink. The girls went together to the toilet, and mine left her handbag on her chair.’

While they were gone, Michel went through the bag. Among the papers was a Gestapo pass, signed by Klaus Barbie, of the type issued to French nationals allowing them to avoid curfew and receive privileged treatment from the military. Michel phoned Dax, his district commander, and explained he had found an incriminating document.
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He gave the name on the girl’s pass and explained the suspicious circumstances.

The commander immediately recognised the name. ‘Does she have a mark on her neck, a scar that might have been left by a bullet wound?’ Michel said that she did. ‘She’s wanted. We have been looking for her.’

The commander explained that the girl was actually a Francophone Swiss linked to the Milice, and specialised in infiltrating Maquis groups through gullible young males. She had been responsible for a number of deaths. Michel was ordered to keep her amused while men from outside the village were sent over. There was a momentary pause on the line... he ought to know, the commander said, that the Résistance had sentenced the girl to death.

Michel put down the phone and rejoined the others. He sat down beside the girl and attempted to continue the flirtation, but his heart was no longer in the game. Any moment an execution squad would arrive. The atmosphere in the room had changed subtly and the girl seemed to sense that something was wrong. ‘Perhaps there was something in my manner, perhaps it was a premonition, an animal awareness of impending doom. Without warning the girl fell on my shoulder in hysterics. Her companion just seemed confused and frightened. The girl was shaken by convulsions and screamed out,
“Maman, maman - on va me tuer. Je vais mourir!”
- Mother, mother - they’re going to kill me! I’m going to die!’

Unnerved, Michel picked her up and carried her to a back room used for billiards. He laid her on the table and tried to calm her as the convulsions grew so extreme that she had to be held down. Within half an hour two men arrived from HQ, headed by Aime Recquet, a good friend of Michel who had become a Résistance legend in the Grenoble area when he single-handedly blew up a German ammunition dump.

Nothing was said. Recquet looked across the dimly lit room towards the distraught girl and indicated with a subtle movement of his head that he wanted some sign from Michel to confirm the girl was the one. ‘I realised that with a gesture I could wipe out a human life. A slight nod of the head and she would be shot dead. Although I had been told of her crimes, and fully accepted that she was there to destroy us, I could not pass that sentence of death.’

He walked across the room to Recquet and spoke to him quietly. ‘Yes, she is the one. But I am against this execution. We have facilities in the mountains now to hold prisoners. The end of the war cannot be very far off - the Allies will be in France soon. It is only a matter of time. Let these girls go before a French court and stand trial. They’ll get their just desserts.’

Recquet heard him out, saying nothing. He clapped Michel on the shoulder. ‘All right, my soft-hearted friend. We’ll do it that way.’

The girl and her companion were taken outside to a waiting car. ‘I was relieved. The girl’s screams and hysterics - the pathetic cry for her mother - had shaken me. I was pleased to discover that I still retained a trace of humanity despite all I had gone through.’

It was only much later that he realised the extent of his naivety. After the war he always asked Aime Recquet on their infrequent reunions about the fate of the girls. His friend shrugged, sounded vague, promised to find out... and changed the subject. ‘In some ways I am very sophisticated, in others very naive. It took me years to understand that they would simply have been taken that night up into the mountains. I am certain now that they were shot.’

On the night of 5 June 1944, Résistance groups all over France finally heard the longed-for coded messages from the BBC. The order went out to the Maquis groups to go on an all-out offensive, meaning the wholesale sabotage of road, rail, telephone and power installations aimed at causing widespread German troop disruption. The Biviers Commando worked night and day cutting down telephone poles and blowing up bridges. Michel was elated, a mood that reached its height when news came of the Allied D-Day landing in Normandy. He felt that a second landing in the south could only be days away.

The Résistance in the Alps played a special, symbolic role in the national consciousness, particularly after the establishment of a free mountain state in the Vercors. The message from the BBC to the Maquis of the Vercors was
Le chamois des Alpes bondit
- the Alpine chamois bounds.
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The regional chief of staff of the Forces Francaises de l’lnterieur - founded by de Gaulle in March 1944 and intended to be the future army of liberated France - stated: ‘The Vercors is the only Maquis, in the whole of France, which has been given the mission to set up its own free territory. It will receive the arms, ammunition and troops that will allow it to be the advance guard of a landing in Provence. It is not impossible that de Gaulle himself will land here to make his first proclamation to the French people.’

The Vercors plateau in the mountains south-west of Grenoble had been chosen by the leaders of the Maquis as an impregnable plateau protected on all sides by a natural mountain wall. Only eight roads led to the interior, three of which traversed mountain ridges, so that access to the plateau could only be gained through easily defended mountain passes. Viewed from below, the great half-mile-high limestone cliffs even have the appearance of a natural fortress. Twenty-eight miles long and thirteen wide, with an altitude over three thousand feet, the plateau lies hidden and protected by these cliffs. On the map it is shaped like a crude stone arrowhead defined by two rivers, and seen from the air the terrain is a patchwork of plains and valleys, with waterfalls cascading from sheer cliffs into deep gorges. Good farming land supported a scattered population of five thousand at this time, and the plateau contained one of the largest forests in western Europe, still said to contain bear. Narrow roads linked a score of villages, hamlets and Alpine farms.

This mountain vastness carried enormous emotional and psychological significance for Michel. ‘Vercors was the France of the Résistance, the France that fought for freedom, the France I felt a deep love for. Despite my ambivalence because of what happened to me, Vercors brought out the love I felt for the country.’

The day after the D-Day landings, General de Gaulle’s Special Projects operations centre in Algiers promised to airlift four thousand men to Vercors. Volunteers from around Grenoble, and the entire mountain region, began to pour in on foot, bicycle, bus and car. These included many regular soldiers and officers from the disbanded Armistice Army. They gathered in previously prepared mobilisation centres, were given a cursory medical check-up, and allocated a unit. Within days the armed forces on the Vercors rose from five hundred to three thousand, and by the end of the summer their number would reach five thousand.

Morale was high. Locals and
résistants
became one. The weather was also magnificent. There were clear blue skies day after day, the mountain air was crisp and clean, and the young volunteers felt free. The French tricolour was flown openly beside the Cross of Lorraine - the flag of the Résistance - and the shame of occupation and collaboration fell away.

It was all to prove a tragic illusion. Even as the men gathered, leaders of Résistance units throughout France received a message from London reversing previous orders. ‘Slow down to the utmost guerrilla activity. Impossible as of this moment to provide sufficient weapons and ammunition... Avoid large gatherings. Organise small, isolated groups.’

The invasion in the south, confidently expected within days, was actually two months away. The messages originally broadcast activating all Maquis units were merely part of Allied diversionary tactics to keep the Germans guessing about the true location of the D-Day invasion. Now that the troops had landed in Normandy, London tried to limit the damage to the Maquis. The landing had tied up all air support so that arms drops became infrequent and haphazard. The specific order now went out to the Vercors Maquis: ‘Until such time as plans for obtaining weapons and ammunitions can be realised, avoid gathering unarmed units around forces already formed.’