To my surprise, upon presenting myself at the railway station the next day, I found no difficulty in buying a ticket for Nice, which I knew to be in Southern France. The man at the ticket kiosk had asked to see my passport, but no extra papers were asked of me, and I climbed aboard with a thin ribbon of dread passing through my body.
So far it had just been too easy.
At the border, the train stopped, and we were boarded by six German troopers led by a Major who filed down the carriages, all checking papers, tickets, passports. There was no point in running; outside the window, more men stood with machine guns at the ready.
So I sat and watched the soldiers approach.
“Papers…”
I handed my passport over, and watched the sergeant’s face. “German?”
I felt so much impudence rise in me; I had to quell it quickly. “Yes, from Stuttgart.”
He returned my papers. “Leave the train, please.”
“What?” I couldn’t understand what I’d done to give myself away.
He leaned over to me conspiratorially. “Don’t say another word, sir. Just get off the damned train.”
Dumfounded at his dropping of etiquette I slid from my seat and moved off down the open carriage. Looking back, the soldier hadn’t followed after me; he checked more tickets, not even glancing at my progress.
But, of course, I had little alternative; I had to disembark from the train. Once my feet touched the ground, I was approached by one of the soldiers. “Where are you going?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Are you German?”
“Yes.”
He motioned with his machine gun. “Go to the back of the train, sir, there’s a truck nearby.”
Only after I was given the instruction did I begin to see others in the same predicament, an elderly couple, a single man, three or four unarmed soldiers, all walking unsteadily along the large shingles. I joined the ragged group, and was directed to a tarpaulin covered truck.
One thing I couldn’t understand; there was no rancor directed at us, in fact no weapon muzzles were aimed at us. Along with a soldier, I helped the elderly lady aboard, not a mean feat. At last an officer approached, the Major from the train. He addressed us in heavily accented German; I thought him perhaps Austrian or Hungarian. “We have been alerted. There may be an incident near the French border. We are under orders to remove German nationals from the train for their own safety.”
One of the soldiers, a middle-aged Leutnant, spoke up. “What kind of incident, Herr Major?”
“We believe there are members of French Resistance on the train, we do not wish you near the incident.”
And that was all he told us. We were driven away, and by a circuitous inland route reached Nice by late afternoon. Again I found a decent, yet inexpensive hotel, this time recommended by the German major.
But my funds were dwindling, and fast. I had passed along the complete length of Italy, yes, but I’d depleted more than half my money doing so.
I woke the next morning, ready for yet another day in the saddle, my backside protesting just sitting down for breakfast.
I decided a day of rest wouldn’t take too much money from the coffers, and since it would be my last on the Mediterranean, I made the most of it. I changed my Lira into Francs, probably losing on the deal, but it now seemed to be irrelevant; my funds were slipping through my fingers, and I knew I’d have to find some cash before I got home. Afterwards I found a café, now my favorite haunt, bought a cheap bottle of wine, and read a German newspaper until the afternoon.
From the map on the railway station wall, it seemed I had numerous ways to get up to the English Channel. All ran through the swathe of central and southern France now under the Vichy government. In the end, I took the middle route, bought a ticket for Clermont-Ferrand, and settled myself to a nice trip through a country heavily under the German jackboot.
The first leg was exceptional for scenery, but we soon left the Mediterranean behind us and turned inland. For all my homesick urges, it didn’t take the edge off my ability to witness some of the most charming countryside I’d passed through.
One scenic picturesque town morphed into another, and by the dimming of the evening’s sun, I almost missed the fact that we’d slipped into beginnings of the Clermont-Ferrand railway yards. Soon the platform presented itself, and I got off the train.
My immediate instinct was that Clermont-Ferrand was different from other stations on my journey; there were less people around, the concourse was less crowded. As I walked with the other passengers, it slowly dawned on me; almost every civilian had their eyes on the scene before me, taking as much notice as I did. I studied each supposed innocent, and found their stance to be unusual, as if ready to start a race. Strange postures, some were obviously concealing weapons under their outer clothing.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath, and tried to veer away from their probable targets. I had gotten near to a large café when the first blast hit me.
Fragments of what had once been a small water fountain flew in all directions, one hitting me squarely above the knee, knocking me to the ground just feet from the café doorway. The German officers who’d been standing close to the fountain were now just crumpled uniforms on the station floor.
From every side, all hell broke loose, people running for cover amid the rapid fire from pistol and machine gun. I put my hands over my head and lay as low to the concrete floor as I could. I could hear the bullets whiz over, and the chips of masonry land on my hands.
I raised my head slightly, more to get a feel for the fight than anything else, and saw a few casualties, one German soldier a few feet away had taken a hit in the neck, and was obviously dead. The firing carried on for a minute or so, but it soon became obvious that the resistance fighters’ initial surprise had vanished. The Germans now had the upper hand, and five men firing from behind a large ticket office had most of the resistance pinned down. I shook my head, surely help would arrive soon, and the poor men and women would be gunned down by superior numbers.
I looked for other troops, but found only the huddle behind the ticket office.
The dead German’s discarded Schmeisser lay only five feet from me.
Shaking my head, and knowing I was risking my life, I crawled to the gun, and checked the weight of the magazine. Full. Lifting myself onto my elbows I sighted over the German’s stomach, and sprayed the area. Thirty-two bullets can make a mess, and the poor Huns never saw me coming. Only one had a chance to turn round before my bullets cut them all to pieces.
Seeing I’d achieved my objective, I dropped the gun, and crawled into the café doorway, my leg still giving me considerable pain. Hands appeared and pulled me inside, then for some reason I felt the world begin to spin, my eyesight went completely blurred, and the last thing I remember was a redness dripping into my eyes. I know I moaned at their handling of my poor frail body, but they took no notice, all the words alien to my ears.
I woke in the dark.
I was sitting on a chair, but when I tried to pull myself upright, I found myself bound fast, hands and feet, my eyes blindfolded. “What’s going on?”
Yup, I’d automatically said it in German.
“He’s awake,” a voice from behind me. “German, just like his papers said.”
I felt the blindfold being roughly untied behind my head. Bright lights fired into my matter encrusted eyes. I could hardly open them. French words snapped between two men close by. “Name?”
“Ich bin Eric Volland,”
My hair was grabbed from behind, forcing my head back. “And yet you talk in your sleep with a Scottish accent.”
“Ich bin Eric Volland,” I repeated, determined to last out. I had no idea who these guys were, what they represented or anything.
Slap. A real good one that send me and chair tumbling in a short arc to the carpeted floor. Then someone got a kick at my stomach before I could tense my muscles against the strike.
“Argh!”
Then I was carefully set upright again. The silence after the uproar was tense. I looked from one shadowy figure to the other, my eyes still misty and crusted.
“Why did you shoot the Nazis in the station?”
I looked up at the man in front of me, wondered if I could rise from the chair, smash my forehead into his chin. “I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “Oh, and they just died by accident? A strike from God?”
Bam! A blow from behind, but this time hands clutched at my shoulders, keeping me upright. Another to the opposite side, I had tensed for that one, riding the blow. I looked at the men. “First tell me who you are.” I risked the question.
I could see the men exchange glances. “French Resistance.”
“Partisans, true Frenchmen,” the other added.
“How do I know for sure?” I asked.
The man in front leaned over, placing his head at the perfect position for a head butt. “Because you are alive. If the Germans had caught you, you would be hanging already, German passport or not.”
I resisted the head butt. “Who is your operator? Your top man?”
“In England?”
I nodded.
“Moulin.”
Damned if that wasn’t the only French contact I’d heard of. “In London?”
He shook his head. “Moulin is in France, near Lyon.”
“So what organization controls you?”
He gave a slight smile. “How come you’re asking the questions?”
“Because I’m better at it.” I smiled as far as my split lip would allow. “Your organization?”
He hesitated, looked at his friend, and must have received a nod. “The Bureau De Renseignements Et D'action.”
Moulin’s boys, under De Gaule. Maquis. I took a deep breath. “I’m British Military Intelligence.” I said in English.
“Merde,” the man in front straightened up. “Get me some water, now!”
And so I went from German slap-around to friend in an instant. I was untied, and a pretty French girl with cigarette breath began to dab water on my face.
“You got hit pretty bad on the head, here.” Georges said, his expression full of contrition and concern.
“It must have been the primary explosion,” I ventured. “I can’t remember getting hit after that.”
“We owe you our lives, although we would have died for the exchange. We killed twenty-one Germans, seven of them were officers.”
“You got the last five, of course,” his slap-happy friend added. “Good shooting.”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“You have a good tan. Where were you stationed?” Georges asked.
I shook my head. “I need to keep that under wraps, sorry.”
“Can you divulge your mission here?”
I almost laughed, but then it hurt, and I didn’t continue with the action. “I’m not on a mission. I’m just trying to get home to England.” I kept my final destination to myself.
“And you intended to do it on a forged passport?”
I nodded, and the girl ‘tisked’ at me moving. “I have a good cover story, and the Germans are so full of secrets, they are inclined to ask no questions if you mention one of the high-ups as your boss.”
“So you intend to keep going?”
“If I can. I have a wife back home.”
“Well, while you convalesce, we’ve got a little job we’d like your experience on.”
And that’s how, on the second day of March, 1942, I got to working for the French resistance.