The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Mulley. Clare

Author:Mulley. Clare [Mulley. Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War II, Spies, History
ISBN: 9781250030320
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-07-05T07:00:00+00:00

12: SWITCHING ALLEGIANCES

For Christine, scrambling down the goat tracks that led away from the Vercors battleground towards the relative safety of Francis’s temporary base at Seyne-les-Alpes felt like a shameful betrayal of the Maquis. Few words were exchanged as she and Francis pushed on, fear and determination holding their exhaustion at bay. When not completely focused on their own immediate safety, both absorbed themselves with how best to help prepare for the imminent Allied invasion in the south.

Francis believed that the main threat to the Allied advance was the unknown quantity of Wehrmacht troops, perhaps as many as seven divisions, stationed in northern Italy and ready to attack over the Alpine passes. Nevertheless his immediate priority was to coordinate the Jockey circuit’s sabotage of key German communications and troop transport routes within south-eastern France. Part of Christine’s mission, however, was to support the arrival of ‘Operation Toplink’, a joint British, French and American special force being prepared to coordinate the work of the partisans on both sides of the high Alps, in order to protect the Allied landings. Fifteen officers, including Christine’s friends John Roper, Paddy O’Regan and Havard Gunn, were due to drop from Algiers in early August. Her focus therefore turned to making advance contact with the Italian partisans. While she was doing so, she thought it could do no harm to try to coordinate the concerted harassment of German garrisons in the Alps and attacks on any convoys that ventured on to the roads.

Christine also hoped to fulfil another part of her brief – to secure the defection of some of the thousands of her Polish compatriots who had been forcibly conscripted and deployed locally by the enemy. In Cairo, SOE had learnt that there were considerable numbers of Poles among the German garrisons in France, most of whom feared that desertion would lead to reprisals among their families. ‘They do, however, take every opportunity to become prisoners-of-war’, Harold Perkins had noted in 1943, before going on to suggest that there might be an opportunity to organize deserting soldiers and other such prisoners into units.1 Christine had first discussed the possibilities for effecting large-scale desertions among the foreign troops in the Italian border areas with Patrick Howarth in Cairo, and later with Brooks Richards in Algiers. She had already made some inroads before the situation in the Vercors deteriorated. Now arriving at Seyne-les-Alpes she ate, slept, washed, changed clothes and ate some more. Then, impatient to justify her retreat from Vercors, just twenty-four hours after arriving, Christine left Francis and their Seyne safe house for the north-western Italian frontier.

Until the end of July 1943 Italy had been a hostile power, and Germany would remain in effective control of parts of the country until the end of the war. After the Italian collapse Hitler had ordered several Wehrmacht divisions into southern France and north-western Italy to try to persuade the Italians to keep fighting. They met with little success. The Italian 51st Alpini Division turned against the Nazis,

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