After the war Le Ray outlined what he was trying to achieve during his push for better organization and coordination in the late spring and early summer of 1943:
We had to change our whole approach according to five principal aims:
1. The elimination of all the damaging distinctions between the military and the civilians. We were now united together under a single category: Resistance fighters.
2. A structure of command which was as simple and direct as possible.
3. The elimination of all embedded prejudices, especially where the lifestyles of the Maquis groups could have the effect of damaging relations with the local villages.
4. A dual role for those who remained in their own communities waiting for the call to action:* providing intelligence, early warning, food and supplies to the Maquis, putting together teams, quickly and on demand, for specific assignments.
5. The strengthening of the professional and leadership elements in each of the Maquis groups.
It was in pursuit of the fourth of these, ‘A dual role for those who remained in their own communities’, that a decision was taken which was to have a profound effect on all those who lived around the Vercors during the struggle ahead. Conscious that there would be a general mobilization of forces when the Allies landed, Le Ray proposed that a reserve force made up of four secret Maquisard companies should be raised from the young men of the communities lying outside the mountainous perimeter of the Vercors. Each of these would be led by a professional military officer who would provide them with training at the weekends. No doubt one of Le Ray’s motives in proposing this reserve force was to help deepen the connection between the military and the local civil society. But it had strong military advantages too for it provided, not just reinforcement which could be called to the plateau when required, but also a kind of informal militarized cordon around its outside edge which would act both as a warning system and as a line of defence in case of attack.
One of these companies was founded by a Socialist professor of mathematics at the Romans Technical College, André Vincent-Beaume, and was constituted from young volunteers from the towns of Romans, Bourg-de-Péage and Saint-Donat-sur-l’Herbasse off the western edge of the plateau. A secret programme of recruitment to what was eventually to become Abel Company began in the three towns in June 1943, with recruits being drawn from factories, warehouses, offices, local clubs (especially the rugby club) and even the patient lists of a doctor and a dentist in the area. Provisioning and money for the clandestine unit was provided from local sources, chiefly by collections in factories, churches and clubs. A hundred pairs of boots were donated by a local factory owner (this area is famous in France as the centre of the shoe industry) and funds were banked in the Romans branch of the Banque Populaire.
Serious training, conducted mostly by military professionals and consisting of long forced marches, military manoeuvres and occasional firing of weapons, began in July. At weekends the young men of Abel Company would quietly melt away from their communities and reassemble in forest clearings or at mountain refuges on the high pastures of the plateau, returning on Sunday evening ready for work next day. In August, Abel Company, now numbering some 235 Maquisards and divided into four sections, was formally given its proposed area of operation when full mobilization on ‘Jour J’ occurred – they were to help defend the whole of the south-west quadrant of the plateau.
The D-Day mobilization process itself was carefully planned. Special signs were prepared which would be nailed to trees and barn doors indicating where to find assembly points, there was a mass purchase of Michelin maps of the area, camping gear was requisitioned from local sporting and hardware shops and each Maquisard was required to have a rucksack ready packed for quick departure containing a candle, spare shoes, a blanket, a waterproof sheet, a set of mess-tins, eating utensils and a water bottle.
On the other side of the Vercors massif, in the little market town of Mens in the Trièves region, under the plateau’s south-eastern corner, the same thing was happening.
‘You free this evening after 8 p.m.?’ asked Jacques, who owned a saw-mill at the entry to Mens. It was six o’clock in the evening and almost dark when he had knocked on the door of the Darier house. The evening light caught the last streaks of unmelted snow on the slopes of the Bonnet de Calvin, high above the little town.
‘Sure. I can easily be free,’ Albert Darier replied.
‘Good.’ Jacques continued, ‘I know you believe in the Resistance. But we have nothing organized here. One of the key men in the Secret Army is coming tonight to see if we can set up a unit in the Trièves. If you would like, why not come along and meet him – and bring anyone else you think might be interested.’
When Albert Darier, who turned twenty-one that year, and six of his closest companions arrived at 20.00 precisely in the first-floor private room set aside in the Café de Paris, he found a brightly lit space with several chairs set around a table on which stood a small vase of spring flowers. His friend Jacques and a young stranger, who was introduced as ‘Emmanuel, one of the local chiefs of the Secret Army’, were already there. Otherwise the room was empty.
At first the stranger seemed a little disappointed that there were so few of them. But Albert Darier explained that he had known of the meeting only a couple of hours previously and had not had time for discreet contact with more of his friends. Reassured, the stranger spoke of the need to resist the enemy in organized groups and to play a part in the liberation and future of France. He continued, ‘I warn you. It will be hard. Some of us will not return … There will be few to help us. We will not be protected by the laws of war, because we will be “terrorists”. And we will be fighting more than just men. We will be fighting the beast of the Nazi regime … This beast will defend itself with blood and terrible savagery. And it will become even more terrible as its final agonies draw near.’ The six young men sitting round the table hung on every consonant and syllable the mysterious stranger spoke. ‘We will have not just to defend, but also to attack. We will certainly have to kill … But to fight we shall need arms. And at present I have none … I don’t know when exactly the arms will come. But I do know they will come. They have been promised. Maybe not tomorrow, but in due course.’
By now it was late and the Café de Paris had already closed. One by one the new recruits slipped down the back stairs and out into the darkness to their homes, their warm beds and the comfort of their families. The Mens platoon of the Compagnie de Trièves had been formed. In due course they would be given the crucial task of defending the high passes on the south-east corner of the Vercors’ eastern ramparts. Slowly but surely Alain Le Ray was creating a ragged but surprisingly capable guerrilla force – except of course for arms, of which they had none, apart from an occasional old hunting rifle and what little was left of the arms smuggled out of Grenoble that the Italians hadn’t found.
On 10 and 11 August 1943 the leadership of the Organisation Vercors arranged a mass convocation of all the Vercors Maquis and those from the neighbouring areas, on the high pasture of Darbonouse, overlooked by the Grand Veymont which towers above the eastern plateau. Maquis groups and their leaders from across the plateau and beyond made their way up the mountain to a meeting point in a small natural amphitheatre in front of a shepherd’s hut, located in a hidden dip in the middle of the Darbonouse pasture. Sentries were posted at strategic