Richard Heslop’s brilliant account of the work of an officer in the British Special Operations Executive controlling resistance operations in German-occupied France is one of the most stirring special operations memoires ever written. With an exhilarating opening featuring what was clearly one of the most traumatic moments in Heslop’s life, the pace never slackens. Xavier, the title of the book, was Heslop’s fieldname on the ground in France. He was codenamed Marksman, the leader of the SOE’s network, or ‘circuit’, of the same name which operated in the Savoie/Haute-Savoie/Ain area which stretches from Lyon in the west to the Swiss border, but his false documents listed him as René Garrat, a French factory worker by day while leading or plotting the attacks on the Germans by night.
The role of the resistance behind occupied lines in France is well known, celebrated in numerous war films and by a host of statues and monuments dotted around the French countryside. The main resistance groups were each controlled by an ‘organiser’ like Heslop, but what is less well known is the importance of their operations during the invasion of Europe in June 1944. Since the Marksman circuit dominated most of the situation reports put out by SOE’s ‘F Section’ in the days after the D-Day landings, it is appropriate that as this Dialogue edition of this book was published, the few remaining veterans of D-Day were celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings.
The work of Heslop’s Marksman circuit in the weeks ahead of the invasion and in the immediate aftermath tied down large numbers of German troops with his numbers growing all the while, from just over 1,000 initially, to more than 3,000 by mid-May and thousands more within days of the landings as patriotic French men and women took up arms to add to the pressure on the Germans.
The extent to which the Marksman circuit expanded is reflected in Heslop’s repeated pleas in his reports to London (included here as an appendix) for more arms and ammunition both of which were by now in far shorter supply than enthusiastic resistance fighters. In a fascinating foreword to the book, Colin Gubbins, the operational head of SOE, refers to the difficulty they had in making the necessary supply drops with resources, and in particular aircraft, understandably stretched to the limit.
Gubbins rightly pays a glowing tribute to the resistance fighters who worked under Heslop. The Communist Maquis − described in his reports as fighting ‘like tigers’ − were largely ignored by the authorities in post-war Gaullist France, so there is a timely reminder of the importance of their role, both in Heslop’s own account and in his situation reports, included here as an appendix.
But just as much as it emphasises the bravery of the Maquis and the other resistance fighters working with Heslop, it is also a timely reminder of his own bravery. He is rarely mentioned in histories of the SOE in France. This welcome new edition of Xavier rights that wrong.
Michael Smith, editor of Dialogue Espionage Classics
May 2014