´óÏó´«Ã½

• Continued from chapter two

Sheltering airmen was a risky business. By this time, the wood was swarming with Germans on the look out for crewmen who’d baled out. While Jack had been sheltering in the forest cabin, two of his crew mates, Australian Geoff O’Brien and Englishman Eric Ashford, had been rounded up and both taken into German custody in Sens, where they were briefly reunited before being transferred to separate POW camps in Germany.

For the time being, Jack was safely hidden away in the attic of the woodman’s house — even Jacques’ own children didn’t know the airman was there.

But by the next morning, plans were already in hand for Jack to be moved on - this time, just a few doors away to a neighbours’ house, occupied by a married couple, M and Mme Norbert Veslan.

By a stroke of good luck, M Veslan knew that the young postman who did the rounds in the village had links with a resistance group further south in the region.

And so it was that in the evening of 5th May, a black car arrived to pick up Jack. In it were the postman, nineteen-year-old Roland Aubert and his two resistance comrades, René Peigné, member of a maquis group called ‘Bourgogne’, and Henri Mittay, its chief.

The car turned south, finally pulling up outside the farmhouse of M and Mme Chevallier and their son, Jean, aged nineteen. Jack was entrusted to their care. He was now in the hamlet of Les Thorets, in the parish of Cerisiers, some 20 km due south of the area where he’d baled out.

The next morning he got a very pleasant surprise. Hearing the roar of a motorbike coming into the farmyard, he saw the the young maquis chief Henri Mittay dismount and lead a tall young man towards the door of the farmhouse. It was twenty-four-year-old Garth Harrison, Jack’s Australian pilot!

The two young airmen had a bit of catching up to do although neither of them could enlighten the other as to what had become of the rest of the crew.

They were probably starting to feel a little more confident that they would both be repatriated to the UK before very long. Despite their precarious situation, at least they now had each other for company and decision-making wouldn’t seem such a lonely process.

Little did they know that the maquis group into which they’d stumbled had been disastrously compromised: its chief, Henri Mittay, was none too discrete and roared around the countryside on a not inconspicuous motorbike. More importantly, the existence of the group and the identity of some of its members were known to the authorities — in fact, the group was the subject of a gendarmes’ report. But most worryingly, its ranks had been infiltrated by a German agent.

So when Jack and Garth were ultimately moved away from the Chevalliers’ farm and into a camp in the forest with the rest of the young resistants, betrayal and tragedy were only a few days away.

But the tragedy was almost on the point of being averted. Even as Jack and Garth were settling into maquis life in the forest near to the village of Dixmont, on or around 8th May, four days after baling out, a fierce dispute was breaking out within the hierarchy of the regional military committee. This Communist body politic had ultimate responsibility for the management and organisation of the local FTP maquis groups. It had ordered Henri Mittay to de-camp to safety some 80 km away to the south. He refused point blank to go and this resulted in a schism in the group. Command now fell to a Spanish republican, Constantino Simo, who had escaped the Civil War and a young man called Georges Pinet who had regional responsibility, amongst other things, for arming the resistants.

By Sunday 14th May, Simo and Pinet were in agreement that they should start the trek to the south the following day.

Jack and Garth had settled well into their clandestine life in the forest. At this point, they were ensconced deep in the woods called Bois de Chapitre near to the village of Dixmont. Seven kilometres away to the west lay the village of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne and twice as far away to the north, the biggest city in the area - Sens,

When Jack and Garth woke early on Monday 15th May the camp was already a hive of activity. This was the day the maquis group would evacuate the forest and make their way south as a matter of urgency. Constantino Simo and Georges Pinet had decided that a large vehicle of some description would have to be commandeered from somewhere in order to effect the transfer of men, arms and equipment.

Georges himself, accompanied by three comrades, Jean Delaporte, Raymond Baudoin and Pierre Guillot, set off quickly on foot towards Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, with the aim of heading for the N6 main road running north-south between Sens and Villeneuve and on to Joigny, where, they hoped, a vehicle could be requisitioned — by force or otherwise.

Constantino SImo was left in charge of the rest of the men — and the two British airmen. There was a lot to do before they would be ready to leave. The four men who’d gone off to commandeer a vehicle were expected to return around noon……

But noon came and went. By 4pm, Simo was more than anxious. The one vehicle they did have was packed and left in a state of readiness, engine running. Jack and his French resistant comrade, twenty-one-year-old André Dussault were up a nearby tree, untying the ropes attaching a tarpaulin shelter to the branches.

Suddenly, a French voice could be heard shouting, ‘Give yourselves up lads, give yourselves up!’ Then all hell broke loose as a contingent of German soldiers arrived, machine guns blazing. The resistants scattered, heading for the cover of dense forest nearby. But Jack and André’s escape was handicapped by their being caught unprepared for flight, up a tree. Both were hit by machine gun fire and fell to the ground. André was dead, but Jack, despite being hit in the head, was still alive.

By the time the Germans were assessing the success of their raid, they could see that their only prisoner was a British airman, identified as such by the dog tags round his neck. Garth, the Australian pilot, had managed to get away, together with the fifteen or so other young men who’d been caught by surprise when the Germans attacked.

They were to find out later that the four men who’d gone to requisition a vehicle had been apprehended by the Germans after being betrayed by a French collaborator who’d overheard them talking about their plans in a café in VIlleneuve. They were ambushed on the main road as they were walking south towards the neighbouring village of Armeau, still intent on getting a vehicle at all costs. Pierre Guillot had been killed outright during the attack; Raymond Baudoin was machine-gunned in the legs — he would later suffer an amputation after contracting blood poisoning, but this inadvertently saved him from execution. He, together with the other survivors, Georges Pinet and Jean Delaporte, had been taken to Sens for questioning under torture. One of them must have talked and given away the position of the maquisards in the forest. Both Georges and Jean were ultimately executed on 1st July 1944, after one or both of them had betrayed other resistance comrades.

Jack was now himself in a German vehicle on his way to Sens, where he was admitted to hospital and underwent emergency surgery to have a bullet removed from his head. After his operation, his condition was judged so desperate that the Germans didn’t bother themselves with him much — the French police were assigned the task of guarding him. One of these officers, Gaston Villiers, a typesetter by trade initially, was now using his typesetting skills to good use clandestinely in the production of false papers for resistants. He also befriended Jack and was responsible for a photo of him sitting up in his hospital bed, some days after regaining consciousness.

When he did regain consciousness, his surgeon, Doctor Jacques Bonnecaze, showed him the X rays that had been taken, in an attempt to explain the extent of his injuries.

The good news was that he had survived being shot in the left side of his head. The bad news was that, due to the brain damage caused, he was partially paralysed down his right side, would now be prone to epileptic fits AND, had lost his power of speech.

Jacques Bonnecaze was not just a surgeon: he was also secretly in a resistance group, as was one of his nurses, Henriette Fraudin. He was thus surrounded by friends who would do their utmost to make sure that, having survived his surgery and the dangerous convalescence period afterwards, he would be in a fit condition for repatriation, should the chance arise to get him homeward-bound.

For now he was on a daily regime of medication to control epilepsy, a side-effect of the brain damage caused by the bullet penetrating his skull, and was learning to cope with the partial paralysis and loss of feeling to his right side. Not only had he lost his power of speech, he was also finding it difficult to remember how to write, hampering communication even further.

When the Germans saw he was off the danger list, a medical examination was ordered by the authorities — if he passed it, steps would soon be taken to get him on the road to Germany — to a Prisoner of War camp. His new-found friends at the hospital were determined that would never happen.

Hospital staff with the right connections to the resistance got word to a local man, Gilbert Praz, a carpenter by trade, but clandestinely the leader of a communist FTP resistant group in Sens. He started to plan Jack’s escape meticulously.

By the time of the D Day landings, Jack was still in a very weak state, but conscious of his surroundings and what was happening to him. His room mate was a middle-aged man called Gervais Mauclerc, a farmer. He’d been operated on for a fractured skull after being badly beaten by the Germans during an interrogation session. He shared a secret with Jack — his jacket lining concealed a hidden stash of thousands of francs in bank notes! Jack gave him his RAF tie. He didn’t have much else to give — the Germans had taken everything, including his RAF identity discs.

Finally, by early morning of Monday 19th June, Jack had been pre-warned by the hospital staff that the day of his liberation from hospital was imminent. He didn’t have much longer to wait. At about 11.30 am, Gilbert Praz arrived at the hospital with five hand-picked men. Only two would enter the hospital and accompany Jack to his final destination. The others would provide cover in case of trouble.

• Continued in chapter four

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Allan Price of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Janet Marsden and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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