Vercors 1944 by Peter Lieb

Author:Peter Lieb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Vercors 1944: Resistance in the French Alps
ISBN: 9781780961163
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

A modern photo showing the attack sector of Reserve Gebirgsjäger Bataillon II/98 on 21 July 1944. The Pas de Bachassons (red circle) was 7. Kompanie’s objective, the Pas de la Selle that of 8. Kompanie. (Author’s collection)

Nevertheless, the road to Die was not yet open to the Germans. Pons ordered his subordinate Pierre Raynaud (‘Alain’) to hold Pontaix and Sainte-Croix with his men; communist FTPFs supported the defence. Overall, 600 Frenchmen were supposed to ward off Kampfgruppe Zabel’s march through the valley whatever the costs might be. However, when the Germans reached the bridge over the Drôme near Pontaix, they found the French positions abandoned. Raynaud had renounced any opposition and declared himself to have obeyed SOE orders instead which had stated that any contact with larger German contingents was to be avoided. Raynaud’s decision sparked a huge controversy amongst the FFI. He was soon blamed for having been unable to mould his Maquis group into a fighting force, but had rather kept them as a loose and ill-disciplined bunch of scoundrels. He was replaced after the Pontaix–Sainte-Croix affair and, on 8 August, arrested. It took SOE Major Cammaert’s personal intervention to free his own protégé.

Having missed the final opportunity to stop the German column, the FFI hastily evacuated Die; the remaining fighters moved northwards to the Vercors plateau. Those Maquisards who had been wounded in the engagements in the Drôme Valley had to stay in the hospital and were left to the mercy of the Germans. When Kampfgruppe Zabel entered the town on 22 July it showed no pity and executed them. Meanwhile, a smaller Kampfgruppe consisting mainly of Reserve Grenadier Bataillon 217 and a few minor detachments had come from the east over the Col de Grimone after some sporadic fighting and linked with Kampfgruppe Zabel east of Die. The encirclement of the Vercors plateau was now complete.

Kampfgruppe Zabel had thus fulfilled its mission and reached its objectives faster than originally expected. This offered the Germans a tempting option: to launch an attack onto the plateau from the south. For the French, the battles to the south of the plateau were not only a disaster on a tactical level but, furthermore, meant the loss of any contact with FFI forces farther south. The Maquis du Vercors was now fully cut off and isolated, an organized retreat to the south impossible.

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