大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Sutton Coldfield Libraryon behalf of Sid Payne and has been added to the site with his permission.The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

This is about the most unusual party I ever attended.

It started in the summer of 1944. I was one of a party of four special forces men who were dropped in the middle of France a few miles from Auxerre.

After a few weeks we had two jeeps dropped to us, these were heavily armed with twin machine guns.

Sadly a short time later we had 50% casualities, which left two of us to continue the job of giving assistance to French Resistance workers.

Every night if possible we had to listen to the 大象传媒 at 6 in the evening. Messages were sent to us in code.

This one night we had a message and when we coded it, we had to meet a party at a given map reference. The map reference was a crossroads in the middle of a forrest not far away and the meeting would be at dawn. We arrived long before dawn and scouted around to make sure we were alone.

Just after dawn two large cars approached the crossroads, obviously filled with French Maquis (resistances). We made ourselves known and learned that in the cars were leading Resistance Chiefs who were going to a meeting in Nevers. We had to make sure they got there.

I think it was about 50 minutes to Nevers but it took us all day. Most of the route being along farm tracks and forrest tracks and with the guidance of local french men, who knew the area and knew where the German bases and camps were.

We arrived at the outskirts of Nevers and we left them there. It was too dangerous for us to proceed any further.

We then decided we would stop at the next village on the way back, contact the Local Resistance and ask them to fix us up for a night, it had rained all day and we had got pretty wet.

The Resistance led us to the village Hotel, not very big and on the main road. There our jeep was hidden in an outhouse at the rear of the hotel.

The owner of the hotel soon had a large fire going in one of the rooms and we started to dry out.

On looking round the hotel I noticed that in the dining room a table was being laid for 12 diners and I realised it was going to be a celebration of some sort.

The party started at about 8pm in the evening, a very good meal with plenty of wine and cognac. The allied air force had control of the sky during the day so the Germans could only move at night. As soon as it was dark the German transport began to move.

The front door of the hotel was right on the pavement, about 6 feet from the road. As long as the party went on, a young girl stood in the shadow. At the first sign of a truck entering the village she would tap on the window, in the dining room another girl stood by the light switch, which she switched off as soon as she heard the rap on the window. Inside we then heard the German trucks rumbling by just feet away from us.

My comrade and I went to bed at about two and I was afraid that if Germans had knocked on the door we would never had heard them.

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