Noel Eliot’s home was a camp hidden in the Fréteval forest near Châteaudun. The tents were set among trees and thick undergrowth, with branches spread over them to camouflage them further. Noel slept on straw but at least he had blankets. Here he lived with seventy other English, Canadian and American airmen. In the days after D-Day, all anxiously awaited rescue by the invasion troops.
A Belgian airman named Lucien was in charge of the camp, which had been set up by the Comète network. His surname was Boussa, but for security reasons the men did not know that name, or the surname of any other Resistance member. When the Germans occupied Belgium, Lucien had escaped to England, where he flew fighters with the RAF. Later, he was parachuted into France to help organise camps like this one.
The second-in-charge was a Belgian Army officer who had gone underground after the invasion of his country. His real name was Baron Jean de Blommaert de Soye, but to the camp residents he was only ‘Big John’. The average helper on an escape line was captured within ninety days, but Big John had worked with the Comète network since 1940. He had many aliases and was known to the Germans as ‘The Fox’. His code name with MI9 was ‘Rutland’. The Gestapo had put a price on his head. After narrowly escaping a trap set by a traitor in the Underground, he was evacuated to England. Later, like Lucien, he was parachuted back into France to help organise the camps for Allied airmen. In collaboration with the local Resistance members, Big John and Lucien organised food supplies and security. All the men in the camp had the greatest respect and admiration for them.
By 1944, the various Resistance movements in France had an estimated 100,000 members—more than double the number a year earlier. By the spring of 1944, there were sixty cells focused solely on collecting intelligence; other cells carried out acts of sabotage. In the build-up to D-Day, the work of the Resistance was vital. In May 1944 alone, it sent 3000 written and 700 wireless intelligence reports to the Allies. Between April and May, it also destroyed 1800 railway engines—only 600 fewer than those destroyed by Allied bombers.
Lucien and Big John were funded from England. There were francs in abundance: to Noel, the British seemed to be printing notes with an abandon bordering on recklessness. Lucien chose an RAF gunnery leader to take charge of the camp when he was away. Noel thought that the officer left much to be desired. ‘He was mainly noted for lying in his tent and eating the minute supply of chocolate that he was supposed to distribute to the rest of the inhabitants,’ he recalled. As the camp’s population grew, a meeting was held and Noel was elected as second-in-command. He was known to the Americans, who formed a majority of the evaders in the camp, as ‘Aussie’.
Evaders were usually collected from the station at Châteaudun and walked to the forest at night. Horse-drawn carts and cycles were also used; evaders arriving by cart were given pitchforks to reinforce the impression they were farm labourers. A woman who lived in view of the main approach to the forest kept a pile of wood and leaves at her home ready to light as a warning fire. There was a well-organised system of guards, who were rostered for duty every twenty-four hours. Several guard posts were set up at strategic points around the perimeter of the forest, each manned by two men for four hours at a time. If any Germans were sighted in or near the forest, one man was to stay and watch them while the other ran to warn the camp. A guard post was also situated about a kilometre from the camp to interrogate all new arrivals.
A rough bush shed made of branches served as a kitchen. Charcoal was used for cooking, as this did not create much smoke. Two Americans who had either been chefs or had experience with cooking were appointed to prepare meals. There was a daily roster for kitchen-help duties. Noel thought the two Americans did a pretty good job, though they had little to work with but beans and more beans. Breakfast was usually bread fried in butter, sometimes with an egg. ‘We made coffee by putting barley in a frying pan, shaking it about over the fire until it was almost black, and then crushing it. Any resemblance to real coffee would be mainly in the imagination, but it was better than drinking water,’ Noel recalled.
With food scarce, one day Lucien bought a yearling steer from the nearby farm. The catch was that it was alive and had to be killed and dressed at the farm. Noel was the only camp resident with a clue how to go about the job, which was made harder by the requirement that the animal could not be shot lest the Germans hear the noise. ‘Somehow or other we got the job done,’ Noel recalled, and for the next few days they ate like kings. Horse-drawn carts delivered occasional chickens and other foods, while a doctor and the barber from nearby Cloyes paid weekly visits. The badly injured, most of whom had burns, were cared for in the homes of local Resistance members.
One of the biggest security problems was keeping the noise level down, particularly in the evening, when everyone would sit around and ‘beat the gums’, as the Americans called it. To Noel, ‘it was the Yanks who always seemed to talk the loudest’. ‘The part of the forest that we were in was not very wide and on a calm evening or night we could hear the voices of the German soldiers as they went along the nearby road to do their guard duties on the ammunition dumps that were in other parts of the forest.’
The shortage of cigarettes was another big problem, and caused considerable dissension. There was a ration of about five smokes a day for each man, but this left many unsatisfied, and they resorted to rolling up dry leaves and bark. Big John became so concerned about the cigarette situation that he asked the local Resistance group for help. One of its leaders, who was chief of the gendarmerie in Cloyes, broke into a tobacconist’s shop and stole eight kilograms of cigarettes. Once, a desperate young American went to a nearby village to try and get some cigarettes. This infuriated his fellow evaders, for it endangered the whole camp. No one was angrier than Big John, who told the American, ‘I will break your back if you do that again.’
Guard duties and kitchen parade kept some of the men occupied each day, but for the others the time dragged. A bulletin board was placed in the centre of the camp with the aim of keeping up morale, but the men had to find ways of keeping themselves occupied. One of the most popular pastimes was whittling, and some fancy walking sticks and other carvings were produced with the aid of a pocket knife and unlimited spare time. Near the camp was an open grassy patch that the men called Piccadilly Circus. On sunny days, many of them would strip off and sun bake there, Noel Eliot among them.
Often lying there in the sun, we would watch the formations of American Flying Fortresses and Liberators flying high overhead and being attacked by the German fighters, and they in turn being engaged by the Allied fighters escorting the bombers. As we watched we would often see a bomber slowly dropping out of the formation with increasing amounts of smoke coming from it, spiralling with increasing speed towards the ground. As we watched it go down, the usual comment was ‘Poor bastards!’ It was an unreal sort of experience to be relaxing there in an enemy occupied country, watching our own planes being shot down. Probably some of the survivors—if any—could finish up in our camp.
There seemed to be two separate Resistance groups in the area, one Communist and the other not. The members of both groups were armed and determined-looking. It seemed that their ‘rank’ depended on the number of Germans they had killed. At this time, most of the German convoys moved at night, as Allied fighters patrolled most of the roads during the day. ‘Those in charge of our camp tried to persuade the Resistance boys to practise their nocturnal sport well away from the camps so as not to attract the Germans to our area, but there were nights when we could hear volleys of shots not very far away,’ Noel recalled.
After the camp had been operating for about a month, Lucien warned the men that the risk of discovery grew with every passing day. He gave them each 5000 francs and told them that if the Germans attacked the camp, it was every man for himself and they were to get away as best they could. Anxiety levels increased. ‘We all slept fully dressed and with our boots on, ready for a sudden dash if required,’ Noel said. He heard more and more men at night talking in their sleep, while others became neurotic. ‘Several of the men in the camp had been shot down more than six months previously and they knew that after six months their category would be changed from “Missing” to “Believed killed in action”, and their next-of-kin advised accordingly.’
As the weeks went by and more and more airmen arrived, a second camp was established. Seventy was considered the maximum number that the first camp could accommodate. Big John set up the second camp about thirteen kilometres away, still in Fréteval forest. He became its commander but visited the first camp frequently. Soon there were 152 aircrew evaders in the two camps, hiding under the noses of the Germans and hoping that Allied troops would reach them before the Germans did.
The original camp was expected to be discovered within a month, at most. Before then, it was hoped, the Allied armies would have liberated the area. However, with the Allied advance held up around Caen, liberation was well behind schedule and time was running out. Finally, on 11 August, a British armoured column appeared in a nearby field, and the camp residents received the joyful news that they would be picked up the next day. A wild celebration began. ‘We all broke camp and went to a nearby village and had a drink of wine with the locals who were also celebrating their liberation,’ Noel said.
In the event, it was another three days before jeeps, cars and civilian buses arrived to clear the camp. Noel was relieved that the hiding was finally over. ‘So without any backward glances, we picked up our few—very few—personal possessions, boarded the buses and chugged off to Le Mans.’ That night they stayed at a POW camp where scores of Germans were now behind barbed wire. It gave Noel ‘a rather strange feeling to see for the first time men caged up like animals’.
Next morning they set off again, passing through Caen, which had been devastated by the fighting and bombing. As they drove towards the coast, Noel saw a seemingly endless stream of military equipment going the other way: guns, tanks, trucks and other vehicles, many loaded with troops. ‘As we passed all these machines of war and troops going towards the front, the Americans with us kept up a mindless chant of “Give them hell, boys”!’ Arriving in Bayeux, about ten kilometres from the Channel coast, they were issued with army battledress and interrogated. Later, Noel and his mates looked around the town. ‘As we expected the francs we had on us [were] to be taken from us when we arrived back in England, [so] we bought anything we could with them, regardless of the price. There was hardly anything in the shops to buy, my purchases being two wallets,’ he said. On 18 August they were driven to Banville airfield, loaded onto a Dakota transport plane and flown to England.
After landing we were taken into a building at the airport where there was a man from Air Ministry with a Gladstone bag full of money which he exchanged for our French francs, much to our surprise and delight as the francs had only been on issue to us in the first place. I was sorry I had spent those francs in Bayeux. He also asked what valuables we had lost since being shot down and the value thereof. I was astonished by the number who had lost expensive gold watches.
Noel immediately sent cables to his parents and ‘that lass in Sydney’—Enid Stumbles—to say he was back safe and well. He stayed in London for a few days being interrogated by MI9 and having a medical examination. RAAF headquarters in London decided to send him back to Australia, and on 24 October 1944, he left on the Mauretania for home. Noel was one of eleven Australian evaders freed from the Fréteval forest camp as the Allies consolidated their grip on northern France.