Jean Claude found a maquis commander directing a group working furiously to load canisters onto trucks and carts. The sound of small arms fire came from all directions, continual and close by. The commander swore when Jean Claude told him about the armored car, the German truck, and the ambushes. He directed his crew to carry some containers off into the woods around the plateau, six men to a canister, and hide them in ditches and hollows, camouflaging them with brush. Jean Claude pitched in and worked all day.
Late in the afternoon a runner dashed onto the DZ, out of breath. He reported that his unit was heavily engaged by a German force on a major roadway leading up to the DZ, very near Sussac. They urgently needed ammunition, grenades, and reinforcements, he said. A dozen men grabbed weapons and scrambled aboard one of the trucks that hadn’t been able to reach its destination—it was already loaded with boxes of ammunition, bandoliers, and grenades. Jean Claude thought for a moment. He had had enough of moving containers. The truck, he told himself, would be heading near where Philippe was thought to be. He took a Bren gun and a couple of extra clips out of a container. Jean Claude climbed onto the truck with the others.
The drive over winding back roads was bumpy, tense, and short. The sound of gunfire grew louder as the truck progressed. The truck stopped on the side of a gentle foothill, part of a formation rising to high mountains in the distance. Gunfire seemed to be coming from the other side of the hill.
The runner wanted to lead the men around the hill to his unit. Jean Claude suggested that it would be a better idea to climb to the top and have a look over. The others agreed, and they hustled up to a spot on the ridgeline between two sharp rock projections a good four hundred yards apart. Below them lay a steep, sparsely forested incline. A road ran along its base. It was there that a large contingent of German troops and a group of maquisards had blundered into one another. They were engaged in a ferocious, confused firefight.
Sten guns would be useless at this range, but not Jean Claude’s Bren. The light machine gun, a squad assault weapon, was a mainstay of Britain’s infantry—it fired standard .303-caliber rifle rounds and had an effective range of six hundred yards. With its curved, top-mounted, 30-round magazine, it had a slower rate of fire than a belt-fed machine gun, but it was easier to move around. Jean Claude carried his weapon about halfway down the hill, accompanied by the other men from the DZ.
They found cover behind rocks and trees and opened fire into the German flank. The maquisards on the road understood what was happening and extended their position up the hill until the two forces joined. Together they unleashed a tremendous fusillade down into the enemy position. Visibility through the trees was poor, but they could see that the terrain on the far side of the road was difficult, with a small swamp, dense brush, and a steep slope. The enemy had nowhere to go.
The Germans returned fire with rifles and automatic weapons, but before long they began to retreat. They didn’t break off exactly, they moved back methodically, maintaining aggressive contact, probing for fresh approaches. Then, just before sundown, the shooting ceased.
Jean Claude’s blood fizzed with adrenaline. Looking back on the skirmish—his first real taste of combat—many years later, he didn’t recall feeling much terror. That, he thought, was partly because the fighting had been at a distance, but also because some of his SOE training exercises had been scarier, even though nobody was trying to kill him. Mostly he felt satisfied that he had taken part and accomplished something.
He walked down to the road and found the commander of the maquis group there, who thanked him for the help. They discussed how best to fortify the roadblock. Jean Claude and the others in his group helped cut down trees and drag them into position across the road, left their unused ammunition with the defenders, and drove back to the DZ.
That night the men loaded the trucks and farm carts with fresh urgency. Philippe arrived around midnight. Jean Claude retrieved his wireless set from its hiding place—he was getting good at tossing his antenna into a tree and making transmissions crouched on the ground. Philippe gave him a message for Baker Street. Its gist was that a possible catastrophe was unfolding at Châteauneuf-la-Forêt, ten miles to the north. German troops had assaulted the town, and the maquisards there were determined to hold it. Philippe had insisted that they revert to fluid tactics, but the fighters, mindful of what had happened at Tulle and Oradour, had refused. Bob was in the thick of it. Philippe expected the defense “to go bust.”
Philippe told Jean Claude to stay in the general area of the DZ and make sure the containers were distributed or saved. Then he vanished into the night.