An SOE paper marked ‘MOST SECRET’ and dated 13 March 1943, just a week before the return of Moulin and Delestraint, discussed the possible uses of the Resistance in the event of an Allied landing, but warned that ‘the state of feeling in France has, after a gradual rise in temperature, suddenly reached fever pitch … there is a real danger that, if this … is allowed to pass unregarded, the French population … will subside into apathy and despair’. On 18 March, the night before Moulin and Delestraint landed, Maurice Schumann – who was for many the voice of Free France broadcasting on the BBC – was so inspired by news of the flood of réfractaires to the Haute-Savoie that he invoked the famous French Revolutionary force, the Légion des Montagnes, in one of his famous broadcasts, implying a Savoyard uprising. He was immediately rebuked by his London superiors for being premature – but he had accurately caught the feverish mood of excitement and expectation.
On 23 March, just three days after he arrived, Jean Moulin sent a coded telegram to London saying that the mood was so ‘keyed up’ that he had been ‘obliged to calm down the [Resistance] leaders who believe that Allied action was imminent’. One local Resistance leader, however, was sure that the state of over-excitement was generated not in France, but in London: ‘not a single one of us at the time was expecting an imminent landing. The truth was that the “over-excitement” of the [local] leaders reflected our intense preoccupation with the drama that was unfolding as a result of having Maquis organizations [in the field] without any support and our irritation over the attitude of de Gaulle and [the French] clandestine services.’
De Gaulle’s personal instructions to Delestraint before his departure, a copy of which can still be found in the French military archives in the Château de Vincennes in Paris, also give the impression that D-Day is fast approaching. Under the heading of ‘immediate actions’ to be taken ‘In the present period, before the Allied landings’, he instructed Delestraint to ‘prepare the Secret Army for the role it is to play in the liberation of territory’, including the ‘delicate measures necessary to permit a general rising of volunteers after D-Day [referred to by the French as ‘Jour J’] in the zones where this can be sustained because of the difficulty the Germans have in dominating the area’ – a clear reference, it would seem, to Plan Montagnards and the Vercors.
Whatever the true cause of all this premature excitement, the Vercors was not immune from its effects. Aimé Pupin commented that in the camps on the plateau the Allied landings were expected daily and ‘They were all burning for action …’ Unfortunately it was not just the Resistance who were ‘burning for action’ in anticipation of an Allied landing soon. France’s German and Italian occupiers were too.
By this stage of the war the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and were able to provide SOE with the complete text of a cable sent by Japan’s Ambassador to France giving his analysis of the state of the Resistance, following a visit to Vichy in the middle of 1943. This document revealed that the Gestapo had penetrated the entire Resistance movement and were also anticipating ‘a hypothetical D Day which they feared might be imminent’. The Ambassador predicted that the Gestapo would soon unleash a ‘heavy drive’ against Resistance structures with the aim of emasculating them before any landing could take place. At the end of April agents in France were also reporting to London that the Germans were making detailed plans to combat an Allied invasion in the summer.
By the time of the Japanese Ambassador’s visit to Vichy the ‘heavy drive’ had, in fact, already started. Following the arrest of Aimé Pupin’s wife in the Café de la Rotonde on 3 March, the Italians raided the Ferme d’Ambel. But, warned by Fabien Rey, the young occupants fled before the enemy party got there. Then on 18 March Italian mountain troops tried to surprise the C4 réfractaire camp on La Grande Cournouse, the great forest-covered buttress of rock which overlooks the Gorges de la Bourne. Once again the Maquis were warned in time and managed to slip away in good order. By now similar operations were taking place against réfractaire camps across the whole of the region and even in Grenoble.
On 19 April the Italians tried again on the plateau, this time raiding C7 camp on the Plateau de Saint-Ange. ‘The Italians arrived so quickly that our sentries didn’t have time to warn us and everyone tried to find the best hiding place they could, some taking refuge in holes, others scrambling towards the nearest pine tree … No fewer than a dozen of us ended up sitting perched, rucksacks on our backs, in the branches of one especially large fir. “Now this really is what I call a Christmas tree,” one wit remarked. The camp dog, thinking it was all some kind of game, tore after us yelping as we ran for our hiding place and then insisted on sitting down at the base of the tree staring intently at our merry pantomime, while we tried in vain to persuade it to go away. The Italians, the black feathers on their Alpine hats waving in the wind, ran past us not ten metres away.’
Alain Le Ray, who spent much of his time travelling from one camp to the other checking on wellbeing, security and training, saw the danger early and issued instructions: ‘At the smallest sign of trouble, get out, cover your tracks and keep moving for as long as possible.’
By the beginning of May, the Maquisards of C4 camp arrived back at their original site on La Grande Cournouse after a long series of peregrinations, only to be woken in the early morning of 18 May by their sentry shouting ‘Les Ritals! Les Ritals!’ (slang for Italians). In a later coded message to London Aimé Pupin reported that a force of Italian Alpini ‘three thousand’ strong, guided by the Milice, had scaled the sheer slopes from the Gorges on to the plateau overnight. But again the attack appears to have been bungled for, of the eighty in the camp, at the time, the Alpini managed to catch only four, whom they surprised returning from collecting food. De Gaulle himself sent a message to the young Maquisards congratulating them on ‘thwarting the attack’.
And so began what the Vercors fugitives called the ‘summer of nomadisation’ with the réfractaires and their leaders playing a game of cat and mouse with the Italian Army which the Maquisards almost invariably won. But it meant constant changes of camp, hurried last-minute exits and lengthy marches across the mountains often at dead of night. Uncomfortable as it was, the hardships of this period served to toughen soft city bodies and create a real sense of teamwork, comradeship and trust in their leaders.
On one occasion a troop of fleeing Maquisards (after two weeks of nomadisation) passed through the little settlement at Col de Rousset where the redoubtable Jeanne Bordat, known as Mémé Bordat, kept a bar/café/rest house for the refreshment of travellers crossing the Col. Hot on the fugitives’ tail came a troop of Alpini led by an Italian officer who demanded to know where the Maquis were. Mémé Bordat denied any knowledge of the Maquis – indeed, she wanted to know what exactly were these mythical creatures, ‘the Maquis’, for she had never seen them. The Italian officer replied that they were the young men who lived in the mountains. Again Mémé Bordat professed ignorance. Again the Italian returned to the charge, demanding in more insistent terms to know where the fugitives were. Finally, according to Vercors legend, the good Mme Bordat lifted her skirt, pulled down her knickers and, pointing to her bottom, told the officer that if he really wished to know where the young men were, no doubt he could find them up there. The officer left, red faced, taking his Alpini with him.
The importance of this story lies not so much in its veracity as in the indication it provides that, although the disruption caused by nomadisation was uncomfortable, the French Resistance in the Vercors did not regard the Italian Army as a serious threat. As one Maquis leader put it ‘The “Piantis”* were less troublesome and much easier to fool than their allies and friends [the Germans].’ Francis Cammaerts,