On the afternoon of June 5, 1944, the SOE offices in London got word that D-day, the long hoped-for Allied invasion of German-occupied France on the coast of Normandy, was finally going to occur on the following day. Coded orders were sent over the BBC that evening to agents, resisters, and Maquis in occupied France to engage in sabotage that would immediately impede the German rush to the Normandy coast.
On June 11, 1944, at eight o’clock in the morning, 2,000 Germans attacked Pearl’s band of 20 Maquis along with the neighboring Communist band under the command of Alex. The Germans obviously thought there were more Maquis in Pearl’s area, which is why they sent so many fighting men there. Among other things, their mistake highlights the fierce combat strength of the Maquis.
The Maquis weren’t supposed to fight all-out until D-day, but these French fighters had been harassing German troops by attempting to diminish their ranks, lower their morale, and hinder their movements to some extent all throughout the occupation. The Battle of Les Souches was partly German retaliation against the Maquis in that area as well as an attempt to stifle the sudden and relentless sabotage efforts against the attempted German defense of the Normandy landings.
We reached north Indre on May 2, 1944, just after Maurice’s arrest in Montluçon. We were based on an estate, Les Souches, and lodged in the guardhouse of the château where Monsieur and Madame Sabassier lived with their daughter, Yvonne. From May 1 to June 11, I went on two more missions, and some arms were parachuted. Madame Sabassier prepared our meals, while we cycled around getting the contacts we needed.
Immediately after D-day, Henri commandeered all the château’s outbuildings for the Resistance. The château’s owners, Monsieur and Madame Hay des Nétumières, had little idea of what was happening. On June 11 we told them to escape, but they just wouldn’t listen. They said they weren’t running any risks because they supported Pétain. They were arrested. Monsieur Hay des Nétumières was killed near Blois by [Pierre] Paoli, a Frenchman working for the Gestapo [who hunted down Jews and resisters in central France]. Madame Hay des Nétumières died at Ravensbrück [a concentration camp for women].
A few days after D-day a man arrived at Les Souches by bicycle. The men at the guard post at the end of the lane, on the main road, stopped him and brought him to me. When I asked him where he had come from he said from Paris. I asked him if he had seen barricades en route, and when he said no, I was flabbergasted. It meant that none of the networks between Paris and Les Souches had obeyed London’s orders to block the roads. We were the only ones to have done so, by felling trees across the main road. I immediately thought, Heavens, we’re the bridge-head.
Sure enough, two or three days later we were attacked. The snooper plane had spotted the trees we had felled. For a time, the Germans used the snooper, a small plane they flew to examine the land if they didn’t know it very well. They must have concluded there were quite a number of us hiding in the Taille de Ruine woods. I have never understood why ours was the only team to have obeyed orders.
My lieutenant, Raymond Billard, or “Gaspard,” a discharged sailor and member of the Wrestler circuit, told me that the day after the snooper had flown over, he and four others were driving in a Citroën front-wheel drive from the château to Monsieur Sabassier’s house when they came face-to-face with the Germans. Both parties were very surprised to see each other! The Germans got out and machine-gunned them, but none of them were hurt.
When more German soldiers appeared, the lads on the main road blew the bugle—but obviously not loudly enough. It was our danger signal but I was the only person to hear it. I told Henri, “We’re under attack.” He replied, “No, it’s Sunday, we can’t be attacked on a Sunday.” Father Valuche was celebrating mass nearby in the château. Monsieur Sabassier and the rest of us tried to see who was coming, but it was a long way; we couldn’t see very well. Then Henri had an idea: “We’ll fire into the air and we’ll know straightaway if they’re Germans or other Maquis members.” Sure enough, we found out immediately.
I threw on my clothes, picked up my bag and the cocoa tin where the money was kept. As I climbed down the ladder from the attic, German bullets were whizzing past my ears. At the bottom, I jumped on my bike and cycled to the château’s outhouses where the weapons we had just received were stocked. They hadn’t even been cleaned yet and were still covered in protective grease. I hastily loaded the guns anyway and put detonators in the hand grenades.
Then one of the chaps rushed up to me and told me to leave as quickly as possible: the Germans were approaching. They had got out of their trucks and were advancing in extended order across the plain toward the château. I dropped everything and ran to La Barraque, a farm that was about a mile from the château. Henri was hiding; he saw two Germans coming along a path. He shot at them, killed one, and retreated.
I didn’t want to be caught in a house. I fled into a wheat field. Almost immediately I saw flames shooting out of the barn. The Germans had set fire to it in retaliation. I lay down, very scared lest the wheat should catch fire. I was hoping to reach the underwood [underbrush] when they saw me and started shooting, but I wasn’t hit. I crawled across the field on my hands and knees, only moving when the wind blew and stirred the crops. I was awfully hot and frightened in the blazing sun.
I had a revolver. I decided that if arrested it would be better if I weren’t carrying any weapons, so I buried it. In fact it was never found. All day long I remained hidden in the field. I couldn’t leave it because German lorries were constantly coming and going—Henri counted 56—also the field was out in the open. There was a moment when the German snooper plane flew over, so I curled up in a ball hoping they would think I was just a bag or something.
I was still lying in the field at about 10:30 PM. I could no longer hear the lorries. I looked up and saw the farmer’s wife putting out the fire. I stood up and waved, but Madame Sabassier and her daughter, Yvonne, were so frightened when they saw me on the other side of the wheat field, they rushed back indoors. They didn’t recognize me because it was dark and because they’d had an extremely tense day. I went to join them. They hadn’t much food to give me because they had been feeding the Germans all day. They managed to find two eggs, which I ate, and then I made my way to the Trochets’ house.
They had tried to join Henri and Monsier Sabassier, who were hidden together in a wheat field, but they couldn’t make it all the way across the courtyard before the Germans arrived and started shooting at them from all angles. They would have been killed in the courtyard. So they returned to the house with the farmer’s wife and her maid.
The Germans followed the women, ordered them outside, pointed their guns at them, and demanded to know where the “terrorists” were. The women didn’t know, so they couldn’t tell them anything. So the Germans kept the four women covered all day and forced them to cook. Madame Sabassier made them omelettes that the women had to taste before the Germans would eat them.
The women considered themselves lucky because these Germans were middle-aged Wehrmacht [regular German army] men, not SS. They sensed the war was nearly over and were content to stay inside the house since they didn’t know how many Maquis were in the area or how well they were armed. One of them spoke French. He had a conversation with Madame Sabassier, whose son was in Germany. He said, “The war’s a bad thing. I come from Russia.”
In the afternoon, the Germans captured the neighboring farmer’s son, Roger Catineau, whose knee was injured. He had managed to bury his gun and had hidden in a thicket not far from La Barraque. When they found him they were angry. To make things worse, they found some hand grenades in a stock of firewood. They set fire to them and they exploded all over the place; the whole cowshed burned down. As the fire spread, the farmer let out the cows and horses, which created bedlam in the courtyard. The Germans asked for eau de vie [distilled alcohol], and they wiped Catineau’s knee with it. They took him with them but released him in Orleans, near a drug store.
In the evening, they said to the women, “We’re taking the four of you with us.” They made them climb into the lorry, but another order was given and they were told to get out again. They were lucky not to have been deported. The Germans left the same evening.
Henri, Monsieur Sabassier, and Monsieur Baron had spent the day in hiding watching over the house. They had decided that if the Germans did anything to the women, they would attack. It wasn’t necessary because these Germans didn’t feel like fighting anymore; they were quite happy where they were.
The day had been hectic, but it wasn’t over yet for me. I borrowed a bike to go to the farm called Doulçay [Maray]. I got lost on the way. I knew I had to turn right at a certain crossroads where there was a cross. I finally found the cross—I hadn’t realized it was so far—and I turned right; then I heard someone talking. It was dark so I couldn’t see very well. I assumed it was one of the men on guard, but no, it was a man all by himself. He said to me, “So you’se a woman then … “
“Yes, I’m a woman.”
Then he lurched forward to kiss me! Well, I really didn’t fancy being kissed by him. It was a chap I knew of from Maray who drank rather a lot and wandered about by himself at night. What a great way to end such a day!
Next morning, the priest from Anjouin came to tell the Sebassiers where they could find their father. Yvonne and Madame Sabassier walked back to Les Souches to try to find the grandmother. The Germans had left her in the middle of a manure heap, but they hadn’t hurt her. She was taken in by Monsieur Barboux of Les Léoments farm. They brought her home the following Monday.
The Sabassiers’ house in Les Souches had been completely wrecked. The Germans had destroyed all the furniture by shooting holes in it. The only thing they could retrieve, to begin with, was some linen. They decided to come back the next day, Tuesday, with Monsieur Barboux, his car, and horse to salvage as much as possible. But at 7 AM Tuesday the Germans burned their house. They realized what was happening before they got there because they heard the incendiary grenades exploding. The Sabassiers later learned that the Germans had returned with the Gestapo to arrest them because of the pile of stuff they had found—weapons, a radio set, and so on.
The battle of Les Souches wasn’t just a skirmish. It was a planned attack by Germans against what they assumed to be a large Maquis group. I later learned we had been attacked by three German garrisons who had encircled the whole Dun-le-Poëlier sector. Les Souches was just a small part of a larger battle in which 32 French people lost their lives.