Had Philippe known that Das Reich troops were frantically scouring the countryside in search of Sturmbannführer Kämpfe on the day of the Oradour massacre, he would undoubtedly have made different tactical choices. As it was, he had scant local intelligence, an urgent need for recruits, and a difficult decision to make: Should he proceed with discretion, or with speed?
Philippe determined that his best chance of locating effective Resistance fighters would be to make contact with a nearby SOE circuit code-named Digger. Its agents had been operating in the Corrèze department for months; they had already armed more than four thousand maquisards and presumably they knew the lay of the land. The Digger agents operated from a safe house in a village called Brive-la-Gaillarde, fifty miles to the south.
The prudent course for Philippe would be to send his courier by bicycle. Violette was accustomed to long-distance cycling, and a woman traveling alone, unarmed, wouldn’t be likely to arouse suspicion. Even if she were stopped at a checkpoint she could probably bluff her way through, as she had a complete set of expertly forged papers identifying her as a Mme. Villeret, the widow of an antique dealer from Nantes.
One of the maquisards in Sussac, a man named Jacques Dufour, had an alternative suggestion. He told Philippe that he knew where to find some of the Resistance groups in the Corrèze. He also had a car. He volunteered to drive Violette and make introductions, starting with a group south of Arnac-Pompadour, a little more than halfway to the Digger safe house. He would drop her off, and then Violette could move around the region on her bike, making contact with more bands of fighters.
Traveling by automobile would automatically arouse suspicion—the Nazis had banned car travel by French civilians after D-Day—but it would be far quicker. Dufour knew the back roads intimately, and they would have only one major highway to cross, the A20.
Philippe decided to take the chance.
Violette’s bicycle was lashed to the side of Dufour’s big black Citroën Traction Avant. She asked Philippe for a Sten gun, and he gave her one, with extra clips. Dufour had a Marlin submachine gun, an American weapon that was slightly more accurate than the Sten.
Dufour and Violette drove out of Sussac at 9:30 on the morning of June 10. They stopped at a village called La Croisille-sur-Briance and picked up a friend of Dufour, Jean Bariaud, who was to accompany him on the return trip. They drove on for twelve miles. Dufour decided to cross the A20 highway where it passed by Salon-la-Tour, his hometown.
Coming around a bend in the road just outside Salon-la-Tour, they saw a German roadblock fifty yards ahead. It was a squad of Das Reich soldiers searching for Major Kämpfe. There was no question of trying to bluff their way through. Dufour braked to a halt short of the roadblock, and they stepped out of the car.
Bariaud, who was unarmed, sprinted away. The Germans opened fire. Violette and Dufour ran crouching along a ditch and vaulted a fence into a farmyard, carrying their weapons. They ran through a neighboring farmyard, past a hedge, down a meadow, and across a stream at its far end.
SS soldiers charged after them. When the pursuers came to the second farm they asked the farmer which way they had gone. He pointed the soldiers in the wrong direction, and Violette and Dufour gained some ground.
They raced uphill through a broad cornfield toward a dirt road. On the far side of the road were some woods. If they could reach the trees they might escape.
Soldiers spotted them running through the field and opened fire with machine guns. A bullet grazed Violette’s left arm. She and Dufour ran a zigzag pattern through the cornstalks, each pausing to return the Germans’ fire and provide cover for the other. A pair of Das Reich armored cars began moving along the dirt road between the top of the cornfield and the woods, to block their escape route.
Before they could reach the safety of the trees, Violette twisted an ankle and fell. Dufour tried to pick her up and carry her, but she pushed him away, insisting that he keep running and save himself. She crawled to an apple tree, hauled herself upright, clamped a fresh magazine into her Sten, and opened fire. Dufour turned and sprinted on toward the tree line.
The armored cars roared up the road, heading for the same spot as Dufour. Scores of German soldiers poured into the cornfield, converging on Violette’s position. Some of them fell, either wounded or killed. She kept firing.
Dufour lost his footrace with the armored cars. He had to veer off before he reached the trees. Near the top of the field was a small farmhouse he knew well—it was owned by the Montintin family, and he had gone to school with the farmer’s two daughters. Dufour reached the farmyard with just enough time to hide under a small haystack. His foot stuck out, and one of the daughters, Suzanne, sat on it.
Violette kept the German soldiers at bay for the better part of half an hour, firing when she saw movement in the cornstalks. But she couldn’t run on her bad ankle, and the gunfight’s conclusion was foregone. She emptied the last of her magazines, and her Sten fell silent. The SS men cautiously surrounded her. She was exhausted and bleeding. A young officer offered her a cigarette. She refused it. The officer told her in broken French that she was the bravest woman he had ever met. She spat in his face.
The soldiers took her for questioning to the very farmyard where Dufour was hiding. Under his haystack he heard the Das Reich troopers demanding where he had gone. Violette, laughing, replied: “You can run after him, he is far away by now.”
The soldiers put Violette into one of the armored cars and drove her to Limoges, thirty miles to the north. There, at the Gestapo headquarters, they handed her over for interrogation to Sturmbannführer Aurel Kowatsch, the man who had overseen the hangings at Tulle the day before.