The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for the Vercors 1944 by Paddy Ashdown

Author:Paddy Ashdown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Military, France, World War II, Nonfiction, History
ISBN: 9780007520824
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Published: 2014-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

After the ceremony, specially printed notices carrying the formal declaration signed by Chavant were posted on noticeboards, trees and other public sites around the plateau.

In London that day, a report by the British Joint Intelligence Committee contained a summary of the latest situation in France, which included a paragraph reporting that the Germans in southern France ‘fear a landing is imminent. Force of circumstances has led them to place tired Divisions in the area.’ In fact, at the time Pflaum’s ‘tired’ division was in the process of launching a full-scale and energetic offensive using 3,500 troops against the Maquis in the Bauges mountains 25 kilometres north-east of the Vercors.

The early-morning Situation Report to Maitland Wilson’s headquarters in Algiers on 4 July included yet another request from the Vercors for the bombing of Chabeuil airfield, stressing that ‘The position is so urgent that they are themselves planning a ground attack on the airfield.’ Later in the day, however, Constans in Algiers sent Zeller a telegram which not only flatly contradicted the information from Hoppers’ reconnaissance of the previous day, but also hinted that the Vercors may have exaggerated the Chabeuil threat: ‘Allied aerial photographs of the area [of Chabeuil] can only find indications of 10 aircraft. We have now received [from you] three different map co-ordinates of this target. Please confirm the true co-ordinates as soon as possible.’

That night, probably in response to Yves Farge’s request to patch up strained relations between the military and the civil organizations on the plateau, Narcisse Geyer invited Eugène Chavant to a full-scale regimental dinner at the cavalryman’s headquarters at La Rivière, south of Saint-Martin. No description survives of what must have been, given Geyer’s love of military ceremony and Chavant’s Socialist dislike of it, a pretty tense affair.

It seems that about this time – towards the end of the first week of July – the thought began to take root in the minds of the Vercors leaders that, despite all the promises and the parachute drops, the fate of the plateau was not a first – or even high – priority in either Algiers or London. The maximum time the plateau was supposed to hold out for was three weeks. But it was now almost a month since the Vercors had mobilized. Meanwhile there was every sign that the Germans were preparing to move on to the offensive and no sign whatever of the promised Allied southern landing. There was no sign either that Algiers was prepared to take action against the greatest immediate threat to the plateau – air attack from Chabeuil airfield.

On 5 July, both Huet and Cammaerts produced what were almost certainly coordinated reports for their superiors on the state of the Vercors. Cammaerts gave his report to Marten, who left that day at the start of the journey to the Lysander that would fly him to Algiers. Huet’s report was carried to London by courier and incorporated into a later paper on resistance in the south-east of France.

Huet, cool and

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