CHAPTER ONE
The Arrival of Das Reich
On 27 April 1944, the stirring strains of Ich habe Einen Kamerade and the rather less popular, Horst Wessel Lied, played by the band of the Waffen SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Deutschland, crashed out in greeting of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich at the railway station in Toulouse.
This welcome came sweetly to the ears of the 2,500 survivors of Battle Group Lammerding, Das Reich, which was at the peak of Nazi Germany’s best trained and most elite forces originally destined to be the spearhead of the invasion of England. Recently plucked from the ice, mud and blood of the Eastern Front, it had left behind thousands of dead in the frozen wastes of the Dnieper River basin, at Kiev and Kharkov, in the Pripet Marshes in Bylo Russia and the Cherkass pocket of Ukraine. Theirs was a horrendous history. In Russia and elsewhere they had cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen in massacres on an enormous scale: 20,000 civilians in just one ‘incident’ at Kharkov alone. Their journey from Russia to south west France had taken eleven days.
Hitler himself had selected Montauban, some twenty five miles to the north of Toulouse, as the designated HQ of Das Reich in the West. On 6 April he had pinpointed its position on a map, ‘it should move over here’, and his staff had confirmed its total strength at 15,385 men out of an establishment of over 20,000. Although badly mauled by the Red Army, its gaps filled by young Alsatians, Hungarians, Romanians and nine other nationalities, it was still an immensely powerful fighting force led by battle hardened veterans, brutalised by the wholesale butchery and excessive reprisals of the war without rules waged in Russia.
The sullen crowd of French people watching their march to barracks and, later, their move to the Montauban area, included the majority, the stoically indifferent; amongst the minorities, those quickly seduced by the banners, drums, decorations and uniforms of a seemingly glamorous and undoubtedly courageous body of fighting men; and those who, in the war in the shadows, were to be responsible for Das Reich’s sometimes uncomfortable stay in south west France and its subsequent nightmare march to Normandy following D-Day. It is this march we are about to follow.
Men of Das Reich arrive in southern France from the Eastern Front.
Setting the Ground Plan
General von Blaskowitz commander of Army Group G.
From the Allied viewpoint, the French Resistance organisations and the British agents of Special Operations Executive (SOE), who had been parachuted in previously, were up against a formidable German presence in the area. This force was augmented by Russian Cossack units, Lithuanians and elements of Italian Marines. As well as Das Reich, a regular Wehrmacht Armoured Division was located south of Périgueux and six Infantry Divisions were scattered across the area between Bordeaux and Cahors, all under the command of General von Blaskowitz, Army Group G, headquartered at Toulouse. This gave the Germans an approximate strength of at least 112,500 men with an unimaginable weight of armour and firepower. As the British agent NESTOR, Jacques Poirier of Circuit DIGGER, was to tell me: ‘There were Germans everywhere’.
The SS Background
But to form an impression of Das Reich, which was part of the SS, one needs to have a brief summary of the history of the SS itself.
The SS (Schutzstaffel) was essentially the private domain of Reichführer Heinrich Himmler and was considered as his ‘private property’ from the time he took it over from Hitler in 1929 until its final days. In the hellish complexity of the Nazi state, the Third Reich, all the various hierarchies; Nazi Party members; bureaucrats of the state; the Wehrmacht and so on were all infiltrated by the SS, as well as all public and private organisations and commercial and banking institutions. As from 1940 all police functionaries, all the chiefs of the major services and all people of importance to the regime were given honorary SS titles.
Its ideology, formed by Alfred Rosenberg, a philosopher, occultist and author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century, increasingly influenced the whole of German life and all positions of management and control were finally absorbed by it. From this ideology came the two fixed basic principles of the SS: racial selection and blind obedience.
Racial selection, although patently a farce, was based on a mix of pseudo-science and ancient German pagan myth, stirred by occult practices. Many Germans privately mocked Dr Goebbels as a misshapen dwarf and, when genealogical researches were being initiated, Hitler personally forbade any investigation into his own Austrian roots. Reinhard Heydrich, head of SS Intelligence under Himmler (and later ‘Hangman Heydrich’) was one of the most paranoic of killers.
Racial selection theorised that mankind was actually divided between the ‘Master Race’ and the ‘sub-humans’. This subhuman element was to be totally exterminated. A solemn oath to the Führer committed the SS, and the Gestapo, to the carrying out of the most monstrous crimes without hesitation: the murder of children, women and old people became obligatory. In his speech of 4 October 1943, Himmler reaffirmed this terrible commitment.
The recruitment of the SS ‘black aristocracy’ was based on precise criteria: to be at least 5’ 9” tall (Himmler was 5’ 9”), to produce a genealogy going back to 1750, and so on. Out of 100 considered, only ten to fifteen could be selected. The Black Order was destined to represent only five to ten per cent of the total population of conquered Europe, the remainder being relegated to slave status. The SS thus became ‘the untouchables’ and their entire life was ordered and controlled by Himmler. The dagger awarded to them bore the inscription ‘My honour is loyalty’ and was a licence to kill with the full awareness of SS protection against such criminal acts. Every SS man was tattooed with his own number, an important check in the post-war identification of SS members accused of war-time atrocities. Most major crimes of the Third Reich were committed by the SS and the Gestapo, all the Auschwitzs and Oradours of the Second World War. The Waffen SS, or fighting SS, of which Das Reich was a major part, was listed by Himmler as one of the ‘five pillars of the SS’ at his conference in January 1937.
SS volunteers take their solemn oath.
Himmler (right) on a saluting base, with Heydrich (first administrator of the concentration camps) to his right, [note the letters ‘SD’on his forearm signifying ‘Gestapo’]. Behind the base is Kaltenbrunner, who took over from Heydrich after his assasination in May 1942.
The Regiment and Its Staff
Against such a background let us now look at Das Reich as it appears on the scene in France.
Founded in 1934, it numbered about 20,000 men, equipped with more than 200 tanks: sixty-two Panzer Mark V’s of 45 tons each; sixty-four Panzer Mark IV’s of 23 tons; hundreds of halftracks, automatic cannon and tractorised cannon; mortars, flame-throwers and 3,000 vehicles of which 359 were armoured. Anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns and fifty towed artillery pieces were further supported by Outriders, Reconnaissance, Pioneer, Signals, Medical and other support services.
It is now time to introduce some of the characters involved in this fearsome unit. As to their personalities, in so far as we can understand them, we must start with Das Reich Commandant, SS Oberstgruppenführer Heinz Bernard Lammerding. Born in Dortmund in 1905 he qualified as a construction engineer in 1932 and, two years later, founded the SS School of Engineering. In 1935 he became SS member number 247062. (In 1929 it had numbered 200). Working in Berlin and Dresden, by 1939 he was responsible for the SS School of Engineering and Strategy and in November of that year became a member of the Totenkopf Division. Following the outbreak of war he was involved in closing the Dunkerque pocket around the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and in 1941 was transferred to the Russian front. Here, and in Prussia, he was responsible, under General von der Bach-Zelewski, for carrying out innumerable massacres as part of the Nazi Anti-Partisan Policy until he took command of Das Reich in 1944. His signature is to be seen on many extermination orders. Awarded the Knight’s Cross for his work in Russia, this award was celebrated in Montauban where the Regiment had been relocated.
SS-Oberstgruppenführer Lammerding.
The Das Reich Division after its return from Russia in 1944. It is drawn up for inspection by its commander Heinz Lammerding with him is Otto Weidinger, officer commanding Der Führer.
Following the march north to the battlefront in 1944 he was wounded in the Normandy fighting on 25 July and was later chief of an Army Group on the Vistula under Himmler’s command. In 1945 he was hospitalised, arrested by the Americans but liberated after two hours. Following his return to Düsseldorf in July 1945 he was fingerprinted by the British and given his Identity Card. He claimed never to have been in hiding except when the French demanded his extradition when he was advised to go to the mountains to improve his health. Condemned to death in absentia in Bordeaux in 1951 for the hangings in Tulle, his extradition was refused by the British authorities. He became a successful businessman and died of cancer at his home in Bavaria in 1971. His funeral in Düsseldorf was attended by 200 ex-SS including Otto Weidinger, a former Der Führer commander. In 1969 Lammerding, in company with his former staff officers, Major Albert Stückler and Colonel Weidinger, granted an interview to two French historians, Georges Beau and Léopold Gaubussen. From his own account he would have seemed to have been a reasonable and modest man. As to his character, he was not particularly well regarded in Das Reich and was evidently a personal friend of Himmler. Administratively able, a good engineer but colourless and of no individual charisma, his abilities seem to have been more pronounced in the field of anti-partisan repression than in fighting against conventional forces.
Major Albert Stückler in SS uniform.
Major Albert Stückler was 1st Staff Officer to Lammerding and was in charge of Operations. A regular Wehrmacht officer he was not formally a member of the SS, being on detachment to the Division for organisational and command strategy. Later, immersed in the annihilation battles of the Falaise Pocket in Normandy, he survived and was transferred to the Russian front and very badly wounded in the legs. In 1969, a thin faced and silver haired man, he was only able to walk with the aid of two sticks and needed help in sitting down and standing up. From his earlier portraits he appears as a lean, intelligent, unyielding person. After the war he remained in close contact with his old SS comrades. As a Staff Officer he seems to have been of a very high quality but he leaves little public aura.
SS-Sturmbannführer Krag.
Two lesser figures need introduction here. First, SS Standartenführer Karl Kreutz who was responsible for the artillery units. He has been described as being robust and jovial and unlike the stereotyped SS officer. In Russia, too, he had been witness to scenes of unimaginable savagery and merciless retribution. He was to survive the war. SS Sturmbannführer Ernst Krag, young and vigorous, was in charge of the assault guns and had been busy at Montauban training up infantrymen to replace his shortage of gunners. His six body wounds served as testimony to the ferocity of his battle experience. He too survived and led a busy life in Germany after the war.
SS-Standartenführer Weidinger.
Now we come to SS Standartenführer Otto Weidinger who was born in 1914 and joined the SS in 1934. The son of a post office worker, he had been rejected by the army and the police before being accepted by the SS. A passionate athlete, he was immersed in the glamour of SS life and had married early at the age of twenty-four. At the outset of the war he served in the Deutschland Regiment and was awarded the Iron Cross in Poland in 1939. Later in France he was again decorated and then participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and in Operation Barbarossa, the attack on the Soviet Union. Further decorations followed while in command of the 4th SS Panzer Grenadiers Der Führer in Russia. On moving to France in late 1943 he joined Das Reich, survived the march to Normandy, fought in the battles of the Falaise Gap and, later, was part of the spearhead of the Ardennes offensive. At the end, he fought desperate rearguard actions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Austria. He was awarded the Oakleaves and Swords at the age of thirty-six.
In the 1960s he participated in the interview granted by Lammerding from which he emerges as a self confident individual with a literary bent. In 1971 he attended Lammerding’s funeral and in 1978 published his memoires in a history of the German – Austrian Der Führer Regiment, Comrades to the End, which makes its fateful contribution to revisionist history. Following his death in 1990 his widow, who describes her husband as a man of great generosity, gave me permission to quote from his book.
Then there are some individuals very closely associated with the major events of the march north. SS Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe was Commander of the 3rd Batallion, Der Führer Regiment and a close personal friend of Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann who carried out the Oradour atrocity. He was an extremely popular officer and was the most decorated hero of the Division. From his photograph we can envisage him as physically well-built with a strong, characterful face and commanding presence. This officer’s disappearance, in the area near St-Leonard-de-Noblat on the night of 9 – 10 June 1944, is the subject of Chapter 8. Evidence from this event confirms his popularity as his friend, Diekmann, was described as being ‘in an agitated state’ due to his disappearance. He was physically brave. According to the official German history, Kämpfe was responsible for ordering a French woman, wounded at Guéret, to be taken to the hospital there. From there he is said to have driven to a nearby village to thank the mayor for having repaired a destroyed bridge during the course of the day. Twenty minutes later he was missing.
SS-Sturmbannführer Kämpfe.
The Germans claim to have made every effort to obtain his release from the Maquis, even offering to exchange him for thirty Resistance men then held in Limoges. Perhaps negotiations were started.
SS-Standartenführer Stadler.
After the war his widow made contact with the mayor of Cheissoux with a view to retrieving his body. As to his possible burial site, confusion reigns and much of the ‘evidence’ is based on post war SS disinformation. One such account gives his burial site as Block 1, tomb no. 176 in the German Military Cemetery of Berneuil near Saintes in Charente-Maritime, over 100 miles away: a somewhat unlikely possibility. The most probable site is Cheissoux, at the bottom of a wood near the house of the Delage family, at La Combe de Cheissoux. For further detail on Kämpfe see Chapter 8.
SS Standartenführer Silvester Stadler was a member of the HQ Group of the same Regiment. He was the first to receive Resistance gunfire as he drove north when he fell into an ambush at the village of Cressenac. He was a close friend of Kämpfe, who had been his Adjutant in Russia, and was instrumental in initiating the search when news of the disappearance reached him. He is also said to have been the officer who initiated the ‘enquiry’ into Diekmann’s role at Oradour, the result of which was never made public. In 1944 he was transferred to the 9th SS Hohenstaufen Panzer Regiment as its Commander and left Das Reich.
Of Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, the brutal and bloodthirsty Commander of the 1st Batallion, Der Führer Regiment, Das Reich, relatively little is known. Originally a Nazi Socialist Cadet, he was said to have ‘a pleasant and infectious laugh’. It was he who was responsible, at Oradour, for the direct implementation of the massacre. Even the account of his death is problematical. He is said to have died in Normandy on 29 June 1944 as a result of imprudently exposing his unprotected head above the parapet of his dug-out. Some accounts attribute this action to suicide. Other accounts claim that he survived the war and disappeared. However, a grave marker at Marigny, France, bears his name.
Sturmbannführer Kahn, 3rd Company Commander, Der Führer Regiment, was personally responsible for many murders of French civilians and members of the Resistance, shooting many of them himself. He was No. 2 to Diekmann and issued the orders at Oradour along with Diekmann. It was Kahn who was seen in conversation with Dr Jean Destourteaux at Oradour just before the massacre began. Later, on the Normandy battlefield, he lost an arm, disappeared, and was never seen again.
SS-Sturmbannführer Diekmann.
Finally, we come to Unter-sturmführer Barth. At the time of Oradour he was an ‘old SS’ NCO. We have his actual words on the road to Oradour: ‘You’re going to see some blood flow today! And, we’ll also find out what the Alsatians are made of’. Condemned to life imprisonment at his trial in East Berlin in 1983, he declared that the events at Oradour were, for him, absolutely run of the mill. His only regret was that he was not allowed to see his grandchildren while in prison. If one can judge from his photograph he would appear to be a low calibre, unthinking individual: ‘blind obedience’.
SS NCO Barth.
Lammerding with some officers of Das Reich during the period of reequipping the division in the area of Montauban.
German and Resistance Dispositions Around Montauban
Das Reich was dispersed in some fifty Lagers and barracks throughout a fifty miles radius of Montauban. Its triangular area reached to Caylus in the north, Tonneins in the west and Villefranche-de-Lauragais in the south. It was placed strategically to respond to invasion moves either across the Channel or via the Mediterranean into southern France, and also to help maintain ‘peace and order’ in the region.
Montauban held no fewer than four large barrack complexes: one near the main station on Avenue Marceau-Hamecher; one to the north of the river on Avenue Bourdeaux; the third near the station Villenouvelle on Avenue du lle Régiment Artillerie. Major Kämpfe’s 3rd Armoured Batallion was quartered here. The fourth barrack was Caserne Pomponne on Avenue 19 August 1944. The Regimental HQ was established at Moissac, not in a château as has been reported but in the ancient Collège des Doctraines, now the Trésor Publique, on Boulevard Lakanal, near the Canal.
The regimental standard flying between two Pz kpfw Mk V ‘Panthers’ whilst at Montauban.
The 2nd Batallion was located around Castelsarrasin, some three miles to the south of Moissac, and the 1st Batallion Deutschland, with the Der Führer attached, under Major Diekmann at Valence d’Agen, nine miles to the west of Moissac. Its HQ was probably in the school, Lescipaulou, off the Avenue de Bordeaux. (Every August, Valence presents a spectacle dedicated to the Resistance).
The area is historic: Montauban developed out of a bastide of 1144 and is a mellow, red brick town of considerable charm. Its Ingres Museum commemorates one of its most illustrious sons and the church of St Jacques still bears the scars of cannon balls from Louis XIII’s artillery siege of 1623. But a more clandestine war was to be opened here in 1944 when French railway workers began their sabotage attacks on the rolling stock earmarked for use by the Germans. Amongst the earliest saboteurs were two young women who crept into the marshalling yard by night.
General Inspector of the Panzer Troops Heinz Guderian visited Das Reich in May 1944 to observe the Division during manoeuvres.
A burial party conveys a comrade to his grave. SS Sturmmann (lance-corporal) Mahn, Deutschland Regiment, was shot during an exchange with elements of the Resistance in the Montauban region, June 1944.
As early as February 1944 the Maquis was in action and by 10 May German railway workers were being assassinated in nearby Decazeville. Similar incidents occurred in Capdenac, Figeac and Mussidan. Montauban had originally been identified as ‘a quiet area’ by Field Marshal von Rundstedt (C-in-C Army Group Centre) who had concluded its position would help stabilise communications between Army Groups G and B in the event of Resistance activity worsening throughout France. As Maquis attacks grew, so the 2nd Panzer found itself committed to punitive expeditions into the countryside. Major Stückler later complained, ‘We were completely unsuited in character and mentality to this sort of warfare. There were specially trained units for this type of work’. It must be remembered that Stückler was an ex-Wehrmacht officer and possibly un-familiar with the methods in use by the Waffen SS in dealing with irregular fighting units.
A Panther practising firing on the range near Montauban in the early summer of 1944. Area commander General Blaskowitz participated in military exercises with Das Reich prior to the Allied invasion in Normandy.
The German forces around Montauban were soon aware of the strength of the local Resistance and, more than that, they realised that it was under the direct control of the Allies in London. The 2nd Panzer Division’s Defence Situation Report No 6 of 27 May 1944 reads:
‘Confirmed sources indicate that the resistance movement is currently in a state of total mobilization and all groups (armed and unarmed alike) have received their operational orders. It is clear that after the start of the invasion the enemy command will drop trained forces in an attempt to take firmer control of the resistance groups and coordinate their efforts with military operations... Regular supply drops by British aircraft supplement the stocks of weapons and ammunition; indeed the entire organisation of the French resistance is almost exclusively in British hands’.
Map 2. Disposition of German Divisions in South West France SOE Circuit Regions and French CNR Resistance Regions June 1944
We will familiarise ourselves with the overall Resistance and SOE operation in the Chapter following. In the Defence Situation Report just quoted the Germans also made reference to ‘The chiefs, who provide money and arms, live outside the camps . . .’ These chiefs, in the Montauban area, were none other than Tony Brooks (ALPHONSE) and George Starr (HILAIRE) of Special Operations Executive (SOE) whose Circuits, PIMENTO and WHEELWRIGHT, were controlling the region. ALPHONSE was first in the field (1/2 July 1942) parachuting in at Bas Soleil, in the Limousin, and making his way to Lyon, Toulouse, Montauban and elsewhere. HILAIRE had arrived in France on 8 November 1942 on board a Portuguese fishing boat with instructions to work with Circuit DETECTIVE but, as the Circuit had been broken up by the Gestapo, he moved to Agen, in Lot-et-Garonne, and started from scratch. Taken to the village of
Das Reich HQ, Moissac. The ancient Collège des Doctraires, now Trésor Public, in 1999.
Castelnau-sous-l’Auvigon, near Condom, he was given effective cover and eventually elected mayor.
Tony Brooks, in an informal chat in 1995, commented on the many inaccuracies in French official histories concerning the Resistance, a criticism I was later to hear repeated by Resistants who had actually participated in the Maquis: parachute operations inaccurately described, Lysanders referred to as bombers, quite frequently the British contribution marginalised. The latter is quite understandable, as far as on-the-ground information is concerned, because SOE security was so tight, not so on the part of an historian. Raymond Aubrac told me that his escape with his wife Lucie from Klaus Barbie, the Lyon Gestapo chief, was ‘hardly known about, even by Resistants’. (The Aubrac’s amazing story is told in her book Ils Partiront dans l’Ivresse and in Claude Berri’s film of the same name). Tony Brooks, also in Lyon at that time, was photographed amongst the crowd listening to Marshal Pétain. After the war Brooks was made Freeman of the city but you will not find his name in the city’s Resistance Museum.
Circuit PIMENTO relied extensively on groups of cheminots, SNCF railway workers who were prepared to engage in sabotage. The following Chapter, which gives the background to SOE, also details how the Circuits operated with the Resistance. Here we are solely concerned with the events in Montauban itself, in particular with the effect of the BBC message of 5 June ‘We will fatten the duck’, meaning ‘invasion imminent’. Tony Brooks’ long laid plans swung immediately into action.
Town Visit
The visitor to Montauban is directed first to the SNCF station on the Avenue Chamier across the Sapiac Bridge. It was here that ALPHONSE’s teams went to work, following the intensive training courses he had inaugurated. Using his ‘grease-gun’ system (whereby abrasives were forced into rolling stock bearings) he disabled the wagons through the carborundum going round and round until it ground up the metal and the axles seized up. Another form of railway sabotage was conducted at the station by means of the signals controller who would start trains moving at the wrong time and so create chaos in the sidings. Rail cuts were effected using British Bickford army fuses which were ignited by a spark from a fog signal cap. French crews would hear this and take the precaution of standing on the opposite side of the footplate. Electric trains were disabled through the substitution of burnt-out contactors. Bang! When the Germans ran up the driver would shrug and exclaim ‘kaput!’ By night, the sabotage teams would be ostensibly checking the good condition of the flat cars and wagons, wielding their ‘grease guns’ the while. In all, eighty-two tank-carrying wagons, seventy-five steam and twenty-nine electric loco-motives were destroyed and 24 major lines were cut following D-Day. Das Reich took to the road.
SS-Oberstgruppenführer Lammerding seen here with SS-Obersturmbannführer Christian Tychsen, who would take over command of Das Reich in Normandy, at Montauban shortly before the drive north.
When at the railway station the visitor should look for two special points of interest. To the station’s immediate left a wide gateway leads into a delivery area backing onto the tracks. Climbing onto the raised goods platform one can see the old storage buildings much as they were in 1944. Off to the left can be seen the typical flat-cars which first drew the attention of PIMENTO agents to the fact that such wagons were part of the German pre D-Day build-up. To the right of the station a car park now provides a convenient viewing point of the tracks and target rolling stock. Finally, there is the location of the signals control facility where the head of rail sabotage worked. This has been swept away in the modernisation programme but was located just to the right of the car park. A tablet in the station commemorates the SNCF victims of the Occupation.
Before leaving Montauban the visitor should go to the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation in the Grand Rue Villenouvelle (RM B-7). Its helpful staff will show you round and it is an essential orientation point for comprehending the Resistance in Tarn-et-Garonne. Amongst its, admittedly limited, SOE exhibits you will see the model of a Lysander, the gift of 161 Squadron, RAF. Your questions will be readily answered and its archives are comprehensive.
Order to Move
Through the effective sabotage of rolling stock at Montauban, the Division had no option but to take to the roads and drive northwards through Resistance-infested countryside to the battles raging in Normandy: a drive of some 450 miles that would put a tremendous strain on engines and caterpillar track links. The repair and maintenance unit, SS Panzer Instandsetzungs Abteilung 2, would be kept busy driving its lorries back and forth along the route attending breakdowns. Keeping the troops supplied with fuel and food would be a major operation – a logistical problem that would last over two weeks (the drive should have taken about three days). Coupled with constant attacks and delaying tactics, the tortuous journey would go down in history books as the ‘March of Das Reich’.
In the early hours of 8 June 1944, the roaring of tank engines, the clatter of tracks and the staccato hail of showers of stones and asphalt announced the departure for the battlefront. Dense blue diesel and petrol fumes billowed up. All over the widely scattered area the Order of March began to shake down.
Selecting routes prior to the drive north: SS-Sturmbannführer Kämpfe, SS-Sturmbannführer Krag, Colonel Stückler and SS-Oberstgruppenführer Lammerding.
We now begin to retrace this march north which takes us to the Place de la Libération, along the Avenue 19 Août 1944 and onto the N20, direction Caussade, Cahors and Brive. Ignore the present day rash of billboards and supermarket signs on the outskirts, you are soon in the open countryside which the SS enjoyed in bright summer sunshine with still no intimation of what was to come.
A lengthy rest stop at midday, all proceeded to plan until the afternoon. By 5 pm the atmosphere began to change. Civilians along the route seemed more reserved. Some villages appeared to be wholly deserted. A peculiar tension hung in the air.
The N20 runs straight as a die beside the railway as far as Caussade. Wheeling through the market square to the left, past the pavement cafés with the occasional astonished and silent customer, Das Reich set out along the now twisting N20 to Cahors. Parachute drops had been made near here. A short way up the road they passed Montpezat-de-Quercy to the west. How many recalled the ‘incident’ there on 2 May when, in revenge for a rifle attack on one of the tank battalions, the SS had set fire to several houses, looting others and shooting fifteen civilians? This was part of the Plan Lammerding which targeted 5,000 deportees; the requisition of 200 lorries and 400 cars; ten hangings for every German killed; five hangings for every German wounded.
A pause for refreshment during the journey north. Das Reich officers at ease.
Turn off here onto the D20 and pay a visit to Montpezat and you will be justly rewarded. The glory of this little village is the Collégiale St Martin, the foundation of which dates back to 1159 although there was a church here in 639. Park in the village square, with its lovely timbered houses, the Place de la Résistance. Observe the memorial plaque to a deportee to Ravensbrück, Marie-Antoinette Orcival, 2 May 1944, who died 19 June 1945 in Hamburg. Then, walk down the Rue du Château, past the ancient well head and Lourdes Grotto, and the church of St Martin is in front of you. To the left, the memorial to the villagers killed by the SS; inside, some of the most glorious Flemish tapestries of the 16th century together with splendid treasures of the 14th to 17th centuries. The excellent guide book available here will enable you to explore six other treasure – house churches in the immediate area.
Original N20 Montauban to Caussade road runs beside the new road on the left. Route taken by elements of Das Reich.
Montauban railway station in 1999 showing flat-cars of the type sabotaged by PIMENTO cheminots (railway workers).
Moving back up again on the N20 we pass Lalbenque, scene of another SOE parachutage (code letter E) organised by George Hiller (MAXIME) and Cyril Watney (EUSTACHE) of Circuit FOOTMAN. Hereabouts the three Circuits PIMENTO, WHEELWRIGHT and FOOTMAN begin to overlap.
Finally, we arrive at Cahors, superbly positioned on the River Lot. The outskirts are as tawdry today as are Montauban’s and road traffic can be congested here, particularly on a Saturday. Nevertheless, Cahors is essential to your trip and you will discover a town of great charm: its famous Pont Valentré bridge is one of the loveliest in France. Romanesque buildings, typically decorated old Quercy houses, balconies and round towers are a joy.
Author beside the memorial to hostages killed at Montpezat-de-Quercy. Montpezat today, church of St Martin is on the right.
Cahors was the scene of intensive Resistance activity, generated by Circuit FOOTMAN. The German garrison was isolated from all communications when their telephone lines were cut on D-Day. From 6 June the Germans never again ventured outside the town and never repaired their communication lines. The local French Gendarmerie and Police mostly joined the Resistance. Two light aircraft were ‘commandeered’ at the airfield and on 18 August, after guerilla fighting on the outskirts, the town was liberated and 100 prisoners released. German casualties ran to 207 killed, wounded or captured; the Maquis suffered twenty-seven casualties.
The main port of call in Cahors is the ‘Museum of the Resistance, Deportation and Liberation of the Lot’.
Located in the centre of the town, and housed in the old Caserne Bessières, it is perhaps one of the most balanced and objective of such museums, fair to many sides of the Resistance and of the contribution made by the SOE and OSS. There are six separate rooms and in the Salle Jean-Jacques Chapou many SOE agents are prominently featured. George Hiller’s uniform and his parachuted medicine chest should be noted, along with SOE containers, radio sets and the ubiquitous STEN gun (RV Shepherd and HJ Turpin, Royal Ordnance Factory, Enfield, Middlesex). Under the direction of Pierre Combes, the museum staff are enormously helpful and its publications varied and authoritative. They have been awarded the museum Silver Medal by France magazine.
The bridge at Cahors during the occupation. Note the barricades.
On 8 June 1944 Das Reich traversed Cahors and, on the northern outskirts at St Etienne, divided: the main thrust continued due north, still on the N20, led by Diekmann of the 1st Battalion Der Führer; the armour branched east onto the D653 towards Figeac, some elements continuing across the wild and desolate Causse de Gramat (location of several ‘safe houses’, wireless transmission sites and the scene of innumerable parachutages), others continuing along the twisting riverside D662 where they were to encounter a number of ambushes. Our route lies north however and takes us up to the Pont-de-Rhodes over the Céou River where Diekmann’s Battalion turned off west through St Chamarand on the D704 to Gourdon.
Resistance Museum at Cahors housed in the old barracks.
All around them, the Maquis were organising. To the east, on the Causse de Gramat, dramatic events were to unfold, culminating in the 22 July ambush of George Hiller (MAXIME), André Malraux and Marius Loubiéres by German troops armed with deadly dum-dum bullets. To the west, more parachute drops had ensured the Maquis were well armed. Nevertheless, the next five miles to Gourdon remained calm and the lovely old hill top market town, which marks the borders of Quercy and Périgord, rises into view.
Our journey has begun, without incident so far, even if for the tank crews in 1944, the wear and tear on the tracks and the collapse of connector pins was giving the maintenance personnel a nightmare in the blistering heat of summer.
SOE wireless transmitter being operated at St Laurent-les-Tours, St Céré.
Armed and motorised – Maquis group at a secret camp in the countryside in the summer of 1944.
But, before we arrive at Gourdon and experience the first clash of arms, we must familiarise ourselves with the background of the French Resistance, the nature of Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the situation prevailing in Normandy, the battlefront to which Das Reich was called.
A Flammpanzerwagen, Sd Kfz 251, belonging to a unit of Das Reich, pictured during the drive north to Normandy.
Circuit: PIMENTO
Dates: July 1942 – August 1944
Principal Departments: HAUTE GARONNE, TARN et
GARONNE, DORDOGNE, LOT and CORRÈZE.
Run highly successfully by Tony Brooks (ALPHONSE), the youngest F Section agent ever sent into France, PIMENTO was primarily a sabotage Circuit, wreaking havoc with railway rolling stock through his contacts with the cheminots of SNCF thanks to his contacts with CHARLES (later ROBERT) a prominent Trade Unionist. Although much of PIMENTO lies outside Das Reich area (notably around Lyon) his 30 ‘grease-gun’ crews and line sabotage operations in Périgueux, Limoges, Brive, Figeac, Toulouse, Montauban, Agen and Cahors were primarily responsible for forcing Das Reich to abandon the railways. As an example, 82 tank-carrying wagons, the property of the Deutschland and Der Führer Regiments, were destroyed in Montauban in April 1944. Following D-Day, 104 locomotives were destroyed and 24 major line cuts effected by PIMENTO. Important agents in this Circuit were M Mordant (MARTINET); Marcus Bloom (URBAIN); Robert Caza (EMMANUEL), a Canadian.
Tony Brooks.
Tony Brooks holds the DSO and MC.
Circuit: WHEELWRIGHT
Dates: November 1942 – September 1944
Principal Departments: TARN-et-GARONNE, LOT-et-
GARONNE, GERS, LOT and DORDOGNE
George Starr (HILAIRE) was the ‘unchallenged overlord’ of no less than ten Departments. The legend lives on that the Germans believed him to be a British general responsible for the whole of the Resistance in the south west. A ‘dead or alive’ reward of FF10m was put on his head: no one collected. The history of WHEELWRIGHT is complex: a criss-cross of Gestapo, betrayals, Milice, Jeds, rumours and accusations. Amongst his team: Yvonne Cormeau (ANNETTE) – ‘the girl with the golden fingers’ – who sent 400 coded messages without a single mistake – see her memorabilia in the Imperial War Museum; Anne-Marie Walters (COLETTE), courier to Starr (known to her as LE PATRON), who travelled all over an enormous area from the Pyrénées to Périgueux; URBAIN, PIERROT, ARACHAT and many others. Isolating von Blaskowitz’s Group C HQ in Toulouse, Starr marched at the head of 1,000 Maquis of the ARMAGNAC Division with Commandant PARISOT and Jed MARK to liberate Toulouse, 21 August 1944. Nine days later, a petulant de Gaulle ordered Starr out of France. Starr stood his ground and was, eventually, awarded the Croix de Guerre and Légion d’Honneur to add to his DSO and MC.
George Starr.
Yvonne Cormeau.
Circuit: FOOTMAN
Dates: January 1944 – September 1944
Principal Departments: LOT, LOT-et-GARONNE, TARN and
HAUTE GARONNE.
George Hiller.
George Hiller (MAXIME) is described as ‘diplomatic and cold-blooded’. His Circuit was highly successful and he commanded the deepest respect within the French Resistance. He was charged with ‘one of the most delicate missions ever faced by an SOE agent’: to locate and close with the elusive Captain VENY, actually Jean Vincent, whose Resistance intentions were unclear in London. Hiller persuaded him to eschew his communist political objective and to fight the common foe. On 14 July 1944, FOOTMAN organised one of the most spectacular parachutages of the war in support of the Resistance. MAXIME had been dropped on 7 January 1944 along with Cyril Watney (EUSTACHE) as Wireless Operator. Other SOE agents: the Mayer brothers (ultimately FIREMAN); Pinder, Cohen, Boiteux and the Americans Blackwell and McCarthy. Very seriously wounded, and close to death, he was rescued by Cyril Watney and operated on in the abandoned presbytery at Magnagues by the light of an old car lamp. A reward, the equivalent of £6,000, was offered for evidence leading to his capture. He was never betrayed. The Verlhacs, Odette Bach and Georges and Odette Bru are among the many Resistants who gave MAXIME unqualified aid.
On returning to England, Hiller received the DSO.