Blood in the Snow, Blood on the Grass by Douglas Boyd

Author:Douglas Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752477053
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

At St Agnan several maquisards trying to pass as civilians were executed. A milicien with local knowledge betrayed the teacher of the little school at Chabotte, in whose cellars weapons had been stored. The 35-year-old mother of a little girl, she was taken out of the village at gunpoint and shot after refusing to say who had placed the arms there. Houses that were alleged to have sheltered ‘terrorists’ were blown up or burned down. In larger villages, the Germans arrested all the young men and trucked them into prison in Grenoble. Their ultimate destination was to have been concentration camps in Germany, but communications by rail were continually being disrupted by the Resistance, so some were fortunate.

But not all. After two German soldiers were assassinated in Grenoble on 14 August, twenty of the youngsters were driven to a waste ground and there executed in groups of four, so that the later groups had to watch their predecessors being killed before taking their place. After the coup de grâce had been given to those still breathing, the soldiers returned to barracks. This was done in full view of horrified passers-by.

An eyewitness account of the ‘campaign’ in the Vercors, as seen from the German side, comes from a letter home, written by a wounded soldier identified only as Rudolph X, a farmer’s son in civilian life. It was found, left behind after he was evacuated. In part, it reads:

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