17 SABOTAGE AND COGNAC

When Schley and Alsop had accustomed themselves to this sudden atmosphere of war, they went to find Nancy and inquire if there was anything they could do to help set up the new camp. They were told that she had left the camp to go back and look for Hubert.

‘You know,’ Alsop remarked to Schley, ‘that girl would cheerfully risk her own life to save any one of the men here. She’s gone straight back to where we’ve just come from to look for a guy who should be looking after her.’

‘Don’t forget,’ Schley reminded him quietly, ‘that only this morning she was looking after us! Remarkable girl.’

‘Remarkable temper too. Hope she never gives me a tongue-lashing like that.’

A car drove into the camp; in it were Nancy and Hubert.

‘He was looking for your lost bag,’ Nancy shouted to Schley. ‘Got cut off from us by the attack. Too bad. He missed all the fun – and the cigars.’

‘Any Germans down there now?’ Schley asked curiously.

‘No. All gone home.’ She walked quickly away to give Roger a message for London. Placidly he coded it, then balanced his wireless on the wheel of a truck and tapped the signal out. Nothing ever bothered Roger. He could send messages from any place in any circumstances. Nancy felt positively maternal towards him.

‘Well that,’ summed up Schley, talking of their recent foray at the crossroads, ‘must have been one of the most unsuccessful missions in the history of war. But why do you imagine the Germans broke off the action so early?’

‘Union hours,’ Alsop informed him. ‘It was four o’clock. I guess we’re free for the evening!’

Next morning Nancy took a truck back to the outhouse in which the Americans had slept on their arrival, to collect the bodies of the seven dead Frenchmen. There she met Gaspard and Laurent. They had driven up to see her the afternoon before, had heard the fighting and lain low. Now they helped her load up the corpses.

Back in camp she washed the bodies carefully, particularly the hideously torn faces, and then shrouded them in parachute silk – this, the same woman who only two years earlier had nearly fainted when her hand was placed against the cheek of a dead woman. Gaspard watched her respectfully. ‘ Formidable ,’ he murmured.

Nancy then held a conference at which she suggested that the least they could do was to give the bodies a decent burial and, when everyone agreed, the whole group got into their transport and drove to a nearby cemetery. The cemetery was surrounded by a high wall and had only one exit and into it poured the executive of the entire Maquis, plus all their foreign assistants, to conduct a forty-five-minute burial service. Outside, just so that no passing Germans could possibly fail to see them (or so the alarmed Americans felt) was posted a Maquisard with a machine gun.

Eventually it was over. ‘Did that feel like forty-five minutes to you?’ queried Alsop. ‘More like five days,’ responded Schley. And since Nancy and her followers had seemed perfectly at home throughout the ceremony, the Americans wondered, as they drove back to their camp, whether they would ever get used to the strangeness of it all.

They stayed for several days in the forest near the Spaniards and then moved on to the forest of Troncet, to a much more elaborate camp. Here the routine hard work really began.

For the men, in between attacks on convoys, bridges and railway lines, there were the regular chores of camp life – cleaning, doing sentry duty, cooking and fetching water – and, in this respect, only a recent batch of gendarme recruits failed to fall into the spirit of the place. Full of the dignity of their social position as policemen, they refused to do their stint of water carrying. The matter was reported to Nancy.

‘You don’t want to collect water, I hear?’ she asked, marching up to them. They were all sitting on a tree trunk and they indicated that this was so.

‘Well, then, of course you mustn’t,’ she said sweetly. ‘You are gendarmes. Water carrying is not for you. Now you just stay there comfortably in the sun and I’ll get the water for you.’

‘This,’ remarked Denis, ‘I must watch.’

She put the buckets in her car, drove to the nearby lake, filled them up and drove back to the headquarters. Then, grim-faced, she opened the door of her car, took out one bucket of water, marched across to the first gendarme and deposited it violently upside down over his head.

‘Don’t move!’ she bellowed at his startled companions. Petrified, they sat where they were. And so, one after another, she helmeted every one of them with a pailful of water.

‘That’s our Gertie,’ commented Denis placidly.

‘In future,’ rapped out a very cold Mme Andrée, ‘whether you’re gendarmes or not, you’ll do your share of all the work. Now – go and get me ten buckets of water.’

Sadly, the ten gendarmes disappeared with their buckets down towards the lake.

For the Americans work was endless. They started with squads of trainees at dawn and they switched from squad to squad, right through until dark. They instructed on Brens, Stens, mortars, piats, bazookas, grenades and carbines. Stripping, loading, aiming, cleaning – everything had to be taught. Especially the cleaning. Nancy, whose own weapons were always immaculate, was fanatical in her insistence on that. But she had only the profoundest admiration for the way the two Americans persisted in their task of instructing anyone who needed instructing in a group that numbered nearly seven and a half thousand.

Hubert and Rake were kept occupied with reporting to London on the purely military aspects of the situation and now that it had become less fluid and more orthodox, Hubert had found his feet and was working very efficiently.

Nancy herself, as chef du parachutage , had almost insurmountable difficulties to overcome. Every single day there were engagements of some kind or another with the Germans. Most of the time she was too busy to join in them, but always she had to replenish the ammunition used by them, replace any weapons lost in them, pay out the subsistence allowances for her 7,490 men, make allowance to their dependants, wait in the dew-drenched fields for parachutages that occurred four times or more a week and inspect the various groups to see that they both needed the weapons for which they asked and correctly maintained those she had already procured for them.

All of these inspection journeys were done now with the protection of a personal bodyguard. Several times recently Nancy had had to shoot her way out of attempts by the Germans to halt her car. Once, even, a drink-crazed Communist had attempted her assassination. He had aimed for her car with a bomb. It had exploded too early and he had been pulped against a wall whilst Nancy herself escaped unhurt. Hubert thereupon asked for volunteers to travel with her as an escort on any subsequent expeditions.

The colonel in charge of the Spanish Maquisards at once begged her to allow his men the exclusive privilege of protecting her, and Tardivat, who knew the Spaniards well, urged her to accept their offer. Gratefully she did so.

For a while the Spaniards always drove in the car ahead of hers and in the vehicle which followed Roger’s car. They had removed half the windscreen of each car and filled the empty space with Bren guns. Whenever they met trouble, the plan was, the front and rear cars would fight; Nancy and Roger, in the two middle cars, must run. But after only two trips she declared her intention thereafter of travelling in the leading car.

‘Very brave of you, Gert, but why?’ inquired Roger.

‘Not brave at all, Roger,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand any more dust!’

Their skirmishes were numerous but always ended up safely – except once. Then, having shot their way out of a road check and careered away, they continued along the road at hair-raising speed and swerving wildly.

‘Don’t swerve so much,’ Nancy instructed firmly. Her driver gave her a furious glare and then jerked self-righteously at the steering-wheel, which promptly fell off the column and into his lap. Abruptly, they were precipitated, car and all, into the ditch.

The devotion of the Spaniards to their British leader was a touching one. Whilst regarding her as their complete equal as a soldier, they nevertheless protected her with the utmost gallantry because she was a woman.

In the course of journey upon journey, and fracas after fracas, they never lost patience and never failed in their enthusiasm. Riding along the dusty roads Nancy would suddenly order a halt. It would be time to listen for the special messages on the BBC or it would be the scheduled moment for Roger’s transmission of his coded phrases to London. Whilst she listened attentively at her tiny set, or whilst the fair-haired American tapped casually on a wireless that he balanced on his knee, the escorting Spaniards would wait silently and patiently, smoking cigarettes, watching alertly for the enemy.

But it was when a long journey made it necessary for them to eat away from their headquarters that the bodyguard were at their fiercest and gentlest with her.

They would stop at what seemed a safe restaurant and at once all the Spaniards would pour into the building. They would check everyone’s identity – motioning savagely with their Stens – examine each room and interrogate the proprietor. Only when they were convinced that all was entirely safe would they allow their dust-stained Andrée to leave her car and enter the restaurant.

They would seat her alone at the best table, order the establishment’s best food and wine and then stand menacingly around her whilst she ate in solitary splendour, guarding her throughout. Then, replete, she would get back into her car and they would continue their dangerous journey.

She grew to feel that she was never out of her car with its faithful escort of Spaniards. She and Roger seemed eternally either to be sending the message: Hélène to London , or listening for the emergency BBC call: Special for Hélène , or waiting for the code phrases that came after the news that would mean the planes will be over tonight. All the time, using only the weapons of her own personality and her ability to grant or withhold supplies, she controlled, moderated, changed or cancelled action by the Maquis so that it conformed with her instructions from London.

July and the beginning of August were fabulous months for France’s Maquisards. They attacked, sabotaged, killed and raided all over the country. Only occasionally could Nancy spare the time to go out with them. She joined in a few more cheerful ambushes with Tardivat, she led one attack on a railway line and participated in two others and she and a Spanish bodyguard shot her way unhesitatingly out of any German attempt to check her car. But mainly, at this time, she was a chef du parachutage and a leader.

Until the War ended – or she was captured and tortured to death – she would always have to have fields ready, for ten days before the full moon and ten days after it, every month. Twenty days a month her seventeen chosen fields must be manned by a skeleton staff who would hide in trees and watch the area continuously so that, if ever anyone should start snooping, she would be warned at once.

Then, when her message came over, she must have a full reception committee ready, with trucks to carry the containers away and herself in readiness to supervise every detail of the actual parachutage.

And if there was an emergency drop, she would have to make snap preparations – or, if the drop came in a non-moon period, she must go to the field with her Eureka radio set (which was attuned to a sister set in the plane, called a Rebecca, and which would guide the blind navigator to her tiny field that lay invisible in the blackness of all of France below him) and operate the delicate instrument until the plane roared overhead, when fires and torch flashes would indicate their position quite definitely.

The task was unending and remorseless. Yet London showed her repeatedly that she was not unappreciated. Regularly, once a month, amid containers full of grenades, explosives and deadly weapons, there would be personal parcels containing such pleasant surprises as face cream, sweets, lipstick and little notes (often rude but always delightedly received) from her various friends back in the headquarters of SOE in Wimpole Street.

Twenty nights a month, as long as life or the War should last, she had to be ready. Hers was the sole responsibility, but hers also was all the power and authority attached to that responsibility.

The forest of Tronçais is a large forest and it comfortably accommodated many, many groups of the Maquis. In other, rosier days for the Germans, the great Goering himself had once hunted wild pig there. Now Goering was gone and the Maquis hunted instead. But they lived a harsh open-air life because, although these forests provided safety, it was the experience of people who lived in them that they were also the welcoming refuge of every stray thunderstorm in Europe. It was always raining in Tronçais.

There were no houses available, so Nancy lived in her bus, beside which, with a corrugated-iron roof and lean-to walls, there was an officer’s ‘shower room’. The others lived in tents manufactured out of different-coloured parachutes.

Their furniture was logs on which to sit, packing-cases off which to eat. Their recreation was swimming in the lake, submerging whenever enemy planes flew overhead. Their home comforts were, in the beginning, nil.

But this was not allowed to last. Nancy, appreciating the value of good food and good living, soon had supplies of meat, milk, vegetables, wine and tobacco coming in. If her men couldn’t drink wine with their meals, or smoke after them, then neither would she nor any of her officers – until she had acquired a sufficient stock to make possible a general distribution. Usually though, and it was something of which she was proud, her housewifely instincts prevailed to such an extent that cigarette and wine rations were a daily event. She would buy them, or steal them, but she would rarely allow her men to go without.

Swimming alone was not sufficient amusement for men like Schley and Roger – so she bought them a horse. Thereafter the cavalryman (expertly) and the marine (enthusiastically) were, in turn, regularly to be seen galloping off into the woods.

She also encouraged the Americans to use their cameras. Time after time they sneaked off to a main road and then – from ten feet away – took photographs of German convoys or staff conferences, amusing themselves with the thought that they held the lives of these gentlemen in their hands if they chose to throw a grenade instead of clicking a shutter and refraining from doing so only because they were too close to home. Often, on these expeditions, Nancy liked to go with them. They were not so violent as ambushes, though the technique was the same, and she had always hated violence, but they were exciting, and she loved excitement.

It had been intended by the Maquis to welcome the first Americans to land in their midst with a huge banquet as soon as they arrived. The German attack at that time had changed their plans. But now it was put into effect.

Tardivat went into the nearest town and there kidnapped the chef of the leading hotel. Complete with tall white cap, this chef then prepared a magnificent outdoor meal with a menu that ran to eight courses. Hundreds of men sat down to it on planks and logs, and the Americans were toasted in every sort of wine. Right through until one in the morning this party raged and then, inevitably, it began to rain.

The storm was one of fierce tropical intensity and it broke up the celebrations completely. Nancy retired precipitately back to her bus. The men withdrew to their tents.

Soon, though, Nancy began to feel very sorry for Schley’s horse. Not even a horse, she considered, a little alcoholically, should be out in such a downpour. So she ran out into the rain and led the horse into the ‘bathroom’ beside her bus.

The horse, however, was not accustomed to bathrooms, still less to a galvanised-iron bathroom roof which, a foot above its head, was thundering under the rain. It became extremely unhappy and started neighing and kicking, so Nancy opened the bus window to inquire after its health. ‘How are you, Horse?’ she said. Promptly the horse poked its agitated head through the window and into the bus.

Nancy now felt very sad for the horse. She had had a great deal to drink and she was exactly in the mood to feel sad for somebody – the horse was nearest at hand! She spent most of what was left of the night talking to the horse, feeding it an entire month’s supply of sugar and trying to look into both its eyes at once whilst she spoke to it. Because horses’ eyes are so wide apart, and because she was so close, she found this impossible. Also it was dark. Very politely, then, she would light match after match and change from side to side, whilst they had their long conversation, so that she could look into each of her guest’s eyes in turn. Finally, just before dawn, she said good night to her equine friend and went to sleep.

The horse then became most agitated and kicked the bathroom to pieces, but everyone was so tired and the rain was so loud that no one heard him doing it, or came to console him, so eventually he bolted frenziedly out and vanished into the forest.

When Schley and Alsop had gone to bed hours previously, Alsop, who always died the second he hit the pillow, fell asleep with his head hanging under the eaves of their coloured parachute-silk tent. In the morning, when Schley woke him up, Alsop’s face was stained a brilliant yellow – the night’s torrential rain having stripped even the dye out of their tent’s fabric and then dropped continuously on to the heedless head below.

Having at last got the jaundiced Alsop out of bed, Schley wandered across to the bathroom. There he found an indescribable scene of devastation. Shaving cream, toothbrushes, razors, horse manure, cartons, soap and towels had all been mashed together under the terrified hoofs of Nancy’s guest. Schley woke Nancy and invited her to survey the wreckage.

‘Ah, that poor darling horse,’ she said at once. ‘He was so lonely and frightened. Somebody should’ve come and talked to him when I went to sleep.’

Denis wandered over, took one look at the chaos and withdrew again, quoting loudly from his theatrical digs’ days, ‘Please leave this bathroom as you would wish to find it.’ Alsop arrived two minutes later, looking quite transformed since the previous evening.

‘Well,’ he commented, summing up the events of the banqueting night, ‘at least we got through it all without any loss of life.’

Rake returned. He looked at Alsop’s dyed face, moaned gently to himself and clasped his head in his hands.

‘Gertie, I’m ill,’ he declared.

‘Are you, Den? What’s wrong?’

‘My eyes,’ he informed them. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, m’dear, but to me Alsop looks bright yellow! I think I’ll go and lie down again.’

Such was the social life of the Maquis in 1944. They sent out search parties to retrieve their errant steed and they searched all day. But they never found him again – he had obviously had a bellyful of service in the Maquis.

That night, when Roger asked her what phrase she wished him to transmit to London (as the code message they would hear back from the BBC to warn them of their next parachutage) Nancy looked at him with a dead-pan face and said, ‘Tell them to send the message “ Andrée has a horse in the bathroom ”.’