Jean Claude was deeply shaken by Violette’s loss, and depressed at the thought that Operation Salesman II was looking wobbly after just a few days. Neither he nor the others had any time to grieve for Violette, however. Her disappearance made them even busier than they were already, as they had to divide up her duties—chiefly the scouting of drop zones and the recruiting of reception committees—among themselves.
The feckless Commandant Charles notwithstanding, French men and women in the Limousin region had been resisting the German occupation vigorously for some time. Limoges, the capital city, was under the tight control of the Nazis, to be sure. But the countryside all around it was a congenial place to be a guerrilla. Situated on the northwest edge of the Massif Central, the rugged uplands of central France, the Limousin was, and is, among the wildest and least populous areas of the country—part of the broad swath that is sometimes called “empty France.” Steep canyons and gorges cut through plateaus and rolling hills; pastures are bordered by dense, expansive forestland. In 1944 there were few paved roads. People generally moved about via extensive, labyrinthine networks of narrow cantonal pathways and trails. A traveler on one of these rural dirt roads might find that it dead-ended at a high, remote pasture, or at a cliff’s edge. Local knowledge was important.
Many major rail routes traversed the countryside connecting distant large cities. The tracks crossed rivers and crevasses over stone viaducts and timber trestles. Often they wound along river gorges or through narrow rail cuts with high banks on either side.
Towns and villages were small and isolated. The residents were independent minded and accustomed to making their own way. Not surprisingly, they had little regard for the directives of the central government—even when the government was authentically French, and most assuredly when it was not. Since the start of the occupation, bands of armed men had periodically harassed German patrols that dared to leave the safety of Limoges.
They were not, however, armed with much besides hunting rifles, or organized in any uniform way. De Gaulle had made another attempt, shortly before the invasion, to unite the Resistance factions, calling for them to fight together under the rubric of the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur, or French Forces of the Interior. In the long run this was a success: When the liberators finally rolled into Paris later that summer, many guerrillas wore the blue, white, and red armband of the FFI. But in the weeks following D-Day, the maquisards of the Limousin—Gaullists, Communists, Socialists, and others—remained suspicious of one another’s political motives. They might have had a common enemy, but what vision of postwar France were they fighting for?
Philippe did find small bands of maquisards near other villages—Pressac and Blond to the northwest, and Gramont to the south—who were willing to set aside politics and take up the arms he could summon from the sky. He set them to work attacking railways, bridges, and power lines. It was a start, but the assaults were pinpricks, relatively speaking—if Operation Salesman was to succeed, Philippe was going to need a lot more men in a hurry. Commandant Charles was no help, and soon became a hindrance. He wanted the matériel that London could provide, but he hesitated to send his men into harm’s way. Philippe gave him an ultimatum: Charles must submit to his orders or there would be no supplies. Charles took it badly. Discussions grew tense, then hostile. The Salesman agents began to fear that Charles might go so far as to take Jean Claude hostage, to break contact with London.
Philippe sent out feelers to collect intelligence about other maquis groups in the Limousin. He began to hear rumors about a mysterious figure said to command a large force of fighters hidden deep in the countryside. Some called him the Préfet du Maquis (the Prefect of the Maquis). Others called him the Préfet Rouge (the “Red Prefect”), or simply Lo Grand (the “Great One,” in Limousin dialect). Philippe couldn’t determine whether this was a real man or a wishful apparition, the product of the collective imagination of a community living under occupation.
Bob, in those first few days, had a far more straightforward job. In the daylight hours he trained small groups of recruits in the handling of explosives, detonators, timers, Sten guns, Bren guns, grenades, and bazookas. When darkness fell he led them on raids, sometimes two or three in a single night. He typically stole a few hours of sleep around sunrise. In short order Bob’s commandos cut the north-south railway lines at Brive, Tulle, and Uzerche.
Jean Claude, meanwhile, spent long hours at the table in his rock hut, coding and decoding messages, communicating in Morse with Baker Street, and listening to the Broadcast. With Violette gone, though, Philippe needed someone to help with drop zone work. He relaxed his rule against putting Jean Claude in danger, and began sending him out to scout DZs and organize reception committees when his radio schedules permitted.
Jean Claude found DZ duty to be a thoroughly enjoyable way to wage war. The work usually began at around 11:00 P.M., and of course it was always on a moonlit night in clement weather. Jean Claude would make his way to a designated field with a group of locals, who usually brought wagons and carts drawn by draft animals. In the quiet, under the stars, they would set up signal lights or fires in an inverted L pattern and settle down to wait. The mood would shift to anticipation, then excitement, as the first distant drone of an airplane’s big radial engines was heard.
As the plane came closer, the recognition signal—the Morse letter code—was flashed in the direction of the sound; the airplanes never showed any lights. Then it could be a hit-or-miss event. Sometimes a plane had to circle to come at the DZ from the right direction. Occasionally, to Jean Claude’s great disappointment, a plane would keep right on going, either because it had missed the signal or because it was bound for another circuit. But if it all went as hoped, the plane would come in low with a roar and a swish of disturbed air and release its containers, which quickly floated to earth underneath their parachutes. The sound of the plane would diminish as it turned to head for home, or to make another pass.
Then the real work began. Summer nights were short and the moon was the reception committee’s primary source of light. The canisters had to be located, collected, loaded onto wagons, and taken away before daybreak, as dawn brought the possibility of German or Vichy patrols and ID checks. The drops were not always accurate—canisters might land hundreds of yards, even miles, away from the DZ, or in nearby trees. Jean Claude found that English bomber crews were much better than Americans at hitting their targets. On one memorable night, a delivery containing several hundred thousand francs landed in the courtyard of a police station.
By far the most important duty was keeping track of the containers. There might be as many as a dozen per drop, each a cylindrical tube about thirty inches in diameter and about six feet long, weighing from 150 to 200 pounds, with handles on the sides. Some could be broken down into three sections, which made them easier to move. Jean Claude was grateful for the assistance of the gendarmes who had joined up after D-Day, who proved reliable at collecting and delivering everything to the Salesman team in Sussac without pilferage.
Once everything had been removed from the DZ, farmers would drive their cows or sheep onto the matted grass left behind. By dawn the grazing animals would have erased most signs of the evening’s activities.