Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces sic-3 Read online

In order to minimize Nazi reprisals against civilians, it was essential that the major Maquisard offensive not break out until after the invasion had been launched. And then Maquis objectives and timetables had to be coordinated with overall Allied goals. This would require considerable psychological, political, and military acuity — in a fiercely high-stress, high-threat environment.

  The operation was named JEDBURGH, after a castle in Scotland, and the teams were called Jedburgh Teams.

  Singlaub landed in waist-high brush, rolled to the ground, then picked himself up and, as he gathered his chute into a bundle, made sure that Dominique and Dennau had come down safely fifty yards away.

  Darkened figures emerged from the trees, calling out softly in French. Some separated from the rest in order to grab the cargo chutes. Most of the others spread out into a periphery defense. A single figure approached, their contact, a British SOE officer named Simon. They had landed about three kilometers from a village called Bonnefond, he explained, and about twenty kilometers from a German garrison in the town of Egletons.

  After months of training, Jack Singlaub was at last in occupied France. He was twenty-three years old.

  Soon the three newly arrived Jeds were ready to go. The heavy radio was stowed in Dennau's rucksack; Singlaub had slid a magazine into their submachine gun and readied the weapon; they had disposed of their chutes and shouldered their rucksacks; and Simon and the Maquis were leading them off into the night-shrouded woods. As they went, Singlaub noted with professional satisfaction that the Maquis troops were both well-trained and well-armed. They kept a good interval in their column, there was a point squad ahead, and flankers were on the sides.

  Here was the situation they faced: At that time, 8,000 Maquisards of the Force Francaises d'Interieur (FFI) operated in the region. Of these, 5,000 belonged to the well-trained and well-armed Gaullist Armee Secrete (AS), while most of the rest were Communist Franc Tireurs et Partisans (FTP). Though there was little love or cooperation between the two, Maquis attacks on German garrisons and convoys had grown since D Day.

  Meanwhile, a breakout seemed near out of the Normandy beachhead. Once it came, Allied armies would race west along the Loire. An increasingly likely second Allied invasion — from the Mediterranean coast up the Rhone valley — would put further pressure on the Germans.

  The Loire rises in the south of France, flows vaguely north and west to Orleans, about a hundred kilometers south of Paris, then turns west and flows into the Atlantic. The major artery passing through Correze, Route Nationale 89, connected Bordeaux on the coast with Lyon on the Rhone (which is east of the Loire and flows south into the Mediterranean). Route 89 was the main German logistics — and escape — route from southwestern France. For that reason, German forces along the highway remained potent: Better than 2,000 veteran artillery and armor-equipped troops were divided among four heavily fortified garrisons along the highway (at Tulle, Brive, Egletons, and Ussel), while specially trained mobile anti-Maquis troops, equipped with light armor, trucks, and spotter planes, continued at the ready to sweep up Free French units. The Germans intended to keep Route 89 open.

  On the other hand, the terrain gave a big advantage to the Maquis. The Massif Central was rugged, offering plentiful choke points. Both road and rail lines through Correze ran along narrow valleys. There was God's own plenty of bridges, viaducts, culverts — lots of targets. And to make matters more interesting, an Allied breakout from Normandy would cut off the Germans in southwest France, while an Allied sweep up the Rhone would close the box and trap them. The time was growing ripe for a major Maquis uprising in the Massif.

  Airdrops had equipped the Maquis with modern weapons. They wanted — and needed — more, but it was a good start. Team James's job was to train the Maquis units in the use of those weapons and to be the liaison between the Maquis and Allied headquarters for further weapons drops. They would also be involved in sabotage and ambush operations as needed. And, not least, they'd be expected to lead the Maquis troops against the Germans, in whose eyes the Jedburghs were spies and not soldiers. If captured, they could expect torture and execution. (Poison pills had been issued to those who wanted them. Singlaub did not.)

  As they marched to the farmhouse that would become their first command post, or PC—poste de commandement, as the Maquis called it — (it was the practice to move PCs frequently), Simon pointed out landmarks and explained the current situation to the three Jeds: "All the local German garrisons are surrounded," he said. "They won't come out at night for fear of ambush. But Egletons is a tough nut — a reinforced company of Hun infantry, with at least a platoon of SS, occupies a commanding position over the Correze valley. The proper lot of machine guns, several antitank guns, and maybe some mortars. They've also got a wireless, so they're in contact with their division HQ in Clermont-Ferrand." Clermont-Ferrand was the base for one of the Wehrmacht specially trained anti-Maquis units. "The German garrisons at Brive and Tulle are larger than the one at Egletons," Simon continued, "but we have more Maquis companies surrounding them; they don't have a wireless; and we've cut all the phone and telegraph lines." He grinned in the moonlight. "Poor buggers don't know what we're up to."

  It was an interesting situation for guerrillas. The enemy was reeling, nervous, vulnerable, yet far from defeated, and still very deadly. The time was ripe for forceful actions, yet overconfidence could ruin everything.

  Soon after dawn, there was a war council. Present were Jack Singlaub, Dominique, Simon, Captain Wauthier (he and his SAS troops had arrived earlier after a long hike through the woods, somewhat more lightly equipped than they'd hoped, having lost through various mishaps four of their cargo pods), and the local Maquis commander, a tough, smart, and very professional former French regular army officer whose nom de guerre was Captain Hubert. Hubert had arrived not long after Wauthier, driving an ancient Renault whose better days long predated the war, and commanded a 3,000-strong Gaullist AS unit called the Corps Franc de Tulle.

  Once the SAS guys and several squads of Hubert's Maquis set up perimeter defense around the PC, the council began. Hubert in particular had important matters to discuss, chiefly:

  His troops were poorly armed. Only about a third of his men carried weapons — captured German Mauser rifles, Schmeisser submachine guns, and a handful of British Sten guns and pistols. The best-armed Maquis in the Correze were the troops of the region's AS commander (whose nom de guerre was Patrick). An enormous American airdrop, with more than seventy B-17s taking part, on Bastille Day, July 14, had provided Patrick with enough rifles, Sten and Bren guns, grenades, pistols, and a few bazookas and British Piat antitank weapons to equip his own 2,000-man unit, but had left few leavings for Hubert.

  Nevertheless, Patrick had put these forces to excellent use. His unit had set up permanent ambushes at three points along Route 89, had completely surrounded the German garrison at Brive, and blocked the southwest approach to the Correze valley, while a smaller but equally well-armed AS unit had blocked the valley's northeast entrance.

  Not only did Hubert's troops crave a piece of this action, but many of them, he added pointedly, had been waiting for weapons for three years, ever since they'd escaped the Nazi Blitzkrieg. "My men are ready to fight the Boches," he said. "But we cannot do it with naked hands."

  When Dominique asked him for detailed requirements, after which contact would be made with London, Hubert (ever the professional) instantly produced a typed list, which he had already long ago prepared. And then he continued, turning even more serious: "There is another matter," he said carefully. "The FTP has recently come into this neighborhood in force, especially south of the highway, in the hills around Egletons — the area which has been my own operational area. They are commanded by a onetime schoolteacher and army corporal who calls himself Colonel Antoine. Antoine commands 3,000 well-armed troops," having received their weapons during the massive American Bastille Day airdrop. "Previously, they operated in the Department of Lot-et-Garonne to our south. But now t
hey are here.

  "Antoine is not at all interested in cooperation with us," Hubert continued, not hiding his scorn. "He is very political. Yes, he wants a public victory over the Boches. But he certainly does not want to share the victory with us."

  Hubert's implication was simple and ominous. If Hubert's troops weren't brought up to the armed strength of Antoine's, the Communists had a good chance of gaining the credit for liberating central Correze, in that way setting the stage for their postwar political agenda. Many FTP soldiers were good, brave, and dedicated, and had fought hard and taken many casualties, but they were poorly trained — more an armed rabble than a well-disciplined fighting force. Even if they wished to coordinate operations with the AS, which they showed little inclination to do, coordination with them would not come casy. Needless to say, relations between the Communist FTP and the Gaullist AS were tense.

  Meanwhile, Hubert went on, word had come from higher up that General George Patton's Third Army had at last broken out from Normandy and was driving cast at full throttle between the Loire and the Seine. That meant his southern flank was exposed — a situation that typically left Patton unconcerned: "Let the other son-of-a-bitch worry about flanks," he told an aide. Be that as it may, his right flank was exposed, and the FFI had been given the job of protecting it. Specifically, their mission was to blockade the German forces south of the Loire and west of the Massif Central.

  Meaning: The political strain between the FTP and AS had instantly turned dangerous. The blockade would require carefully coordinated actions. But if groups like Antoine's maintained an independent, politically motivated strategy, and continued to resist cooperation, the Germans could crush each center of resistance in turn, like beads on a string. This would also inevitably mean bad news for civilians because of savage Nazi reprisals.

  Just after D Day, a pair of over enthusiastic Maquis botch-ups had brought on Nazi massacres in the towns of Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle. In Tulle, the Nazis hanged nearly a hundred men from lampposts. In Oradour-sur-Glane, the SS jammed hundreds of men into barns and garages and hundreds more women and children into the town church, then machine-gunned the men and set fire to the barns, garages, and church. No one inside — men, women, or children — survived the flames. After that, they looted the town and killed the few people who'd tried to hide in cellars. They left behind a ghost town.

  No doubt about it, Hubert had made a powerful case — military, political, and humanitarian — for getting weapons for his troops. Dominique and Singlaub promised to do what they could.

  Later that morning, word came that an OSS operational group had blown up a rail bridge on a northern spur to the east-west line connecting Bordeaux with Lyon, while another band of saboteurs had taken a hydroelectric plant out of action. This cut off power both to an arms factory in Tulle and to the electrified rail line between Correze and Bordeaux. Other Maquis commanders had their eye on Route 89 bridges and were asking for explosives.

  This presented Lieutenant Singlaub with a problem. Though the bridges were legitimate targets, closing the highway was not a good idea. The Route 89 corridor through Correze was terrific ambush country, while a closed Route 89 would simply drive the German traffic north toward the more open country near the Loire — and expose Patton's flank. Conclusion: It was best to keep pressure on the German garrisons along Route 89 but to leave the bridges intact and keep the highway open. This decision soon became the first Team James operational order to the Maquis.

  Over the next days, Dominique and Singlaub reconnoitered, paying special attention to the German garrisons at Brive, Tulle, Ussel, and Egletons — heavily defended, with sandbagged windows, barbed-wire entanglements, and machine-gun emplacements. Well-trained and disciplined Maquis forces had isolated each of these garrisons; barricades and roadblocks had been set up. Soon there would be coordinated attacks.

  Meanwhile, seven of Antoine's FTP companies, together with two of Hubert's AS companies, were laying siege to what was to prove the hardest nut to crack, the garrison at Egletons.

  Unhappily, this "joint" arrangement was working no better than previous FTP-AS acts of "cooperation." As ever, the Communists intended to go their own independent way.

  This situation grew more complicated a day or so later, when Patrick's regional intelligence officer, who called himself Coriolan, passed on disturbing news: Informants within Antoine's FTP units had warned Coriolan that on the previous night Antoine had pressed the attack against Egletons, and had done it without informing Hubert of this operation, or bothering to coordinate his attack with the AS companies taking part in the encirclement.

  Worse, the poorly trained FTP troops screwed it up. Instead of catching the Germans off guard, their attack was so inept that the Germans had managed to retreat in good order back into a fortified and practically impregnable refuge in the Ecole Professionelle, a three-story stone-and-concrete complex on a ridge at the edge of town. Because they were in radio contact with their regional headquarters and defended by heavy machine guns and a 37mm antitank gun, they were as comfy as rats in a sewer. Before long, an armored column would come to relieve them. And air support wasn't far away.

  The choice was clear. The Jedburghs had to go to Egletons (where they would join Hubert, who was already there), do what they could to salvage the situation, and prepare to ambush the German relief column. Since collaborators and spies were everywhere, the three of them (and a ten-man AS escort) had to hike over backcountry Maquis trails — maybe twenty-five kilometers point to point, but closer to fifty on the ground. It took them a day.

  That evening they linked up with Hubert, who had set up his PC on the ground floor of a stonc house with a walled garden, perhaps 500 meters from the northwest corner of the Ecole Professionelle. His two companies had taken positions in neighboring houses and along a sunken road, while the FTP troops were in pockets ringed around the other three corners of the school compound.

  After Hubert's briefing and a quick look around, Dominique and Singlaub tried to link up with the FTP and conduct the kind of reconnaissance needed for a realistic attack plan, but quickly decided to put that off until daylight after they were warned off by FTP sentries, whose hostility was palpable.

  The next morning, the Communists' suspicion and hostility was little diminished, but nevertheless, the two Jedburgh officers managed to talk their way into the FTP area.

  Once again Singlaub was struck by the indiscipline of the FTP troops, who were firing Bren guns sporadically at the stone facade of the school, to no real effect except to send stone chips flying. Uncoordinated fire is like an unfocused lens — a waste.

  When Dominique and Singlaub asked for directions to the FTP commander, sullen Communists pointed out a bullet-pocked house near the school. the way there was dicey, since much of the street was in view of the school, and there was so much glass and rubble underfoot it was impossible for the two Jedburghs not to make noise and call attention to themselves. This was made worse by the FTP soldiers they passed en route, all of whom seemed bent to point them out and challenge their presence.

  Bent low, they raced down the street, then passed through a garden and burst through the back door of the house closest to the school. While Dominique stayed behind to guard his rear, Singlaub climbed up to the slate-roofed attic to see what he could learn. A small, square window opened onto the school, two hundred meters away. He opened it and stealthily raised his face to look outside.

  Some of his OSS training in England came in handy just then — how to make quick, accurate recons. It was like a meditation technique: The idea was to clear your mind of conscious thought, focus your gaze like a camera, and let what passed before you register as though your mind were photographic film. Singlaub panned his eyes across the school courtyard across the road and the school walls and windows, noting the timber barricades, overturned concrete slabs, and heavy furniture blocking the windows. Shadowy figures moving in the shrubbery probably indicated a machine-gun crew.

  A
t that moment, angry shouts came from below. And he could hear Dominique cursing. Meanwhile, off to the side he could see FTP soldiers down in the street stupidly pointing fingers in the direction of his own attic window, effectively spotting him for the German gunners. In OSS school, they'd had to go through what were called "bungler exercises," in which the trainees would be subjected to unexpected, frustrating, and often stupid annoyances to see how they would react. This was different. It was the real thing. The German gunners quickly got the point and started spraying the window from at least two machine guns, but not before Singlaub had scrambled down the stairs and out the back door. By then, the machine guns had opened up on the front windows. Dominique was waiting for him, his face white with fury — not so much at the Germans as at their own supposed friends.

  "Let's get out of here," Singlaub said to him, "in case the Krauts have got a mortar over there."

  There came then a loud crack and a deep-throated metallic clang, as the 37mm antitank gun blew a hole through the slate roof under which Singlaub had just been hiding. Slate fragments showered down as he and Dominique scuttled away.

  A little later that morning, they were set to meet Antoine (they had so far never set eyes on him), for a tactical conference in a stone barn on the other side of the sunken road. But the Communist leader was proving to be elusive ("He's been called away on urgent operational matters," it was explained), and his chief of staff showed up in his stead.

  By then it was clear to the Jeds that taking the school with the weapons they had — Bren guns, Sten guns, rifles, pistols, and hand grenades — was not going to happen. Their alternatives: a long siege (a bad idea, in view of the Germans' ability to send help to their Egletons garrison from their headquarters in Clermont-Ferrand), or a quick, perfectly coordinated attack, supported by mortars and bazookas.

  Antoine's intention, relayed by his chief of staff, was to continue the siege indefinitely. "There are SS inside! We will pin them down." In other words, Antoine was happy to engage in a silly operation in order to reap the political benefit derived from making a few of the hated SS troops moderately miserable.