part0014

Christian Pineau and Jean Cavaillès stood at a crowded bar on Toulouse station concourse, a cup of insipid coffee in front of them. The two gendarmes guarding them had seen no harm in allowing them something warming on this chilly morning as they waited for their connection to Limoges and the internment camp that awaited them. A radio was on in the bar, giving news of German armoured divisions advancing down the Rhône valley — they would be in Marseilles before nightfall.

As soon as word spread of the allied landings in North Africa and the subsequent unopposed Nazi invasion of the free zone, attitudes among officials and citizens of Vichy France had shifted almost instantaneously. All those who had believed Pétain had been playing a double game against the Germans felt confused, if not deceived. Anyone such as Pineau and Cavaillès, imprisoned for opposing Vichy rule, were perhaps not such traitors after all. Certainly, their two escorting gendarmes confessed to a degree of embarrassment at having to treat them as prisoners, although it was clearly more than their job was worth to let them escape ‘accidently on purpose’.

As he leaned against the bar with his coffee, Pineau felt a tug at his elbow. Beside him stood an old friend from his days with the unions, Marius Vivier-Merle, now working for the Resistance. ‘Where are you going? Are you on the run?’ he inquired briskly. Pineau gestured towards his guards and told him to keep his voice down. He explained he was on his way to an internment camp at Limoges and discovered Vivier-Merle was catching the same train. He would be getting out earlier, at Cahors, where he was visiting the distinguished union leader and pacifist, Léon Jouhaux, who had been put under house arrest there by the Vichy government. With no clear idea of how he would achieve it, Pineau told his friend to wait at Cahors station, where he would do his best to meet him.

One of the guards asked Pineau what he had been saying to the man he assumed was a stranger next to him, but seemed satisfied with his explanation that they were just talking about the Germans, as was everybody. Once installed in their compartment on the Limoges train, the guards relaxed visibly. They had safely negotiated the change of trains at Toulouse without losing either prisoner and were now on the final leg of their escort duty. Pineau asked to go to the lavatory as the train got under way. He wanted to see how attentive they would be and, sure enough, one of the gendarmes accompanied him and stood guard outside the door. Pineau had spotted Vivier-Merle in the next-door compartment and occasionally his friend would wander down the corridor glancing discreetly at them through the glass.

Claiming the prison food had given him severe stomach problems, Pineau asked once more to go up the corridor just as the train was leaving Montauban. Again, a guard went with him. At midday, the train pulled into Cahors and Vivier-Merle passed their compartment on his way to leaving the train and cast an anxious, inquiring look in Pineau’s direction. Both guards had begun to eat their packed lunch as the train stood in the station, and Cavaillès, oblivious to any imminent false move by Pineau, had followed suit with a sandwich he had with him. As the train began to move, Pineau leapt to his feet, indicating through gestures that he was about to throw up all over their lunch.

It took Pineau less than two seconds to dash towards the WC and then to throw open the adjacent door and leap out of the gently accelerating train. Unharmed, he made his way back along the track towards the station where, to his relief, Vivier-Merle was waiting patiently on the platform. He gave his ticket to Pineau, who had no identification and no money, and paid for another himself at the barrier. The terms of Léon Jouhaux’s house arrest must have been remarkably lax as there seemed to be no problem in the two men going straight to his front door and taking refuge there while Pineau changed his clothes, shaved off his moustache and took a reviving glass of wine with his illustrious former colleague.

As good luck would have it, another trade union friend of Jouhaux, a Luxembourger by the name of Pierre Krier, was at the house and he undertook to escort Pineau to the village of Mercuès where he lived, some seven kilometres to the west along the river Lot. Even though they took a back-lane route to the village, avoiding the main road, Pineau only just avoided detection by hiding in some farm buildings when a car approached them. His companion, who remained on the road, coolly informed the policeman who stopped his car beside him that he would certainly let them know if he ever saw a man with a moustache and a grey suit.

The village lay on the opposite side of the Lot from their route, so they rolled up their trousers to their thighs and waded across the river. Pineau was then led to an abandoned house that lay beside the river, where he was to stay for a few days until the manhunt had relented. Still wet from the river crossing and unable to light a fire for fear of drawing attention, Pineau settled down alone, shivering under some blankets and waiting for night to fall when Krier had promised to come with some food.

Although Pineau could not repress a sense of triumph as he lay in his hideout, having regained his freedom after some two months of incarceration by the Vichy authorities, his feelings were mixed with a sharp tinge of guilt as he thought of his brother-in-arms, Jean Cavaillès, by now languishing behind the locked gates of the internment camp. When he and Pineau were picked up on the road back from Narbonne-Plage after their failed seaborne exfiltration, they would doubtless have been released soon afterwards had Pineau not been carrying a false identity. Cavaillès’ papers had been in perfect order and it was only his association with Pineau that had led to his imprisonment.

Pineau was still haunted by the look of reproach on Cavaillès’ face as he had heard his comrade explaining to the Surveillance du Territoire inspector why they were near the beach at that time in the morning. Cavaillès had not been party to an earlier conversation between Pineau and the inspector when the latter had shown considerable sympathy with their plight and a willingness to let them off as lightly as possible. He assured Pineau that there was no firearms charge to answer — one customs man had shot the other by accident — and he already knew from the other agent he was holding, Jean-Pierre de Lassus Saint-Geniès, that an attempted operation with the Royal Navy had taken place. As he had to explain his false identity, Pineau had decided to retract the unlikely story of a university professor and a senior civil servant choosing to sleep under the stars on a camping holiday and confessed that he and Cavaillès had, indeed, been trying to get away by sea. Both, he claimed, had received an unsolicited approach by the Free French, asking them to join their cause in London. Their patriotism had made them accept the invitation which, deep down, the Marshal himself would surely have condoned.

Satisfied with this story, the inspector assured them that their likely fate was to be sent to a guarded residential camp from which, with good contacts, it would be fairly simple to gain release. Meanwhile, he agreed to ensure delivery of a letter from Pineau to his wife with news of his misadventure. Through her father, Bonamour, who had been working under cover with Pineau for some time, the Phalanx network would thus also get to hear about it. Unfortunately, the inspector’s optimism on his prisoners’ behalf had not reckoned with the wrath of the Vichy military justice department who, on receipt of his report, ordered that the three would-be escapees be locked up in Montpellier military prison to await trial for breaching national security.

Conditions in the prison were pitiful. Pineau shared a darkened, filthy cell with de Lassus Saint-Geniès, where they were fed on a diet of nearly raw chickpeas and where nights were spent brushing a variety of crawling insects off their faces and from their hair. Among their fellow prisoners, who they saw during a brief daily promenade in the courtyard, were men, some of whom had been working as agents for the British and others for the Germans. When Arlette Pineau, now heavily pregnant, was eventually allowed a visit to the prison, she was shocked to find a pale and emaciated version of her husband, pathetically grateful for the small package of food she had brought him. In spite of his pallor, she surprised her husband by being happier than he had seen her for some time. The reason, she explained, was that at least now he could come to no further harm.

Any hope of lenient judicial treatment was dashed by Pineau’s interview with a virulently Vichyist colonel charged with investigating his case for the Montpellier military tribunal. The colonel asked Pineau how he could believe he was serving his country by attempting to join up with traitors. Surely he was aware that Monsieur de Gaulle had been condemned to death in his absence and that he, too, could therefore be liable for the same sentence. Fortunately, this was an extreme view amongst Pineau’s captors and, with the help of the lawyer allocated to the case (who confided to Pineau that he was a member of the Combat resistance movement), five years’ imprisonment would be the likely outcome of their trial. Meanwhile, they were moved to the more comfortable ‘political’ section of the gaol.

The new regimen allowed the three men much more spacious quarters consisting of a room with four beds, a table and chairs and freedom to use the adjacent ablutions at their leisure. A fourth prisoner who shared their room was clearly a stool pigeon planted by the authorities. His presence did not, however, deter Pineau from re-establishing contact with his network. Visitors were allowed for two hours every day and, as well as his wife, Pineau was able to receive Bonamour, his father-in-law, who he appointed as leader of Phalanx in his absence. Meanwhile, Cavaillès had been visited by a professor friend of his who belonged to Combat and who, with other local resistance contacts, threw down an unsolicited challenge to the three prisoners’ audacity.

It arrived in the shape of a packet inside a shopping bag which Arlette — who was never searched because of her delicate condition — had been asked to take in on one of her visits. Had she known what was in it, she would probably have left it behind. The package, intended as their passport to freedom, contained a hacksaw, a length of thin cord and a tube of sleeping pills. Only Cavaillès showed enthusiasm to go through with the proposed escape, but the other two felt duty-bound to support him in spite of their severe misgivings. Unfortunately, their pessimism was justified. The cord, to be thrown to accomplices beyond the perimeter wall, never came into use. The sound of sawing on the bars of their window was enough to wake the whole prison, not least Boulivard, their stool pigeon cell-mate, for whom three sleeping pills dissolved in his bedtime tea were hopelessly inadequate for their intended purpose.

He threatened to shout for the guards as soon as he realized what was happening, and short of killing him and risking being found with his body the next morning if their escape failed, there was nothing they could do but to stop sawing. Their rate of progress was such that it would have taken them at least two hours of work on the bars to get out, by which time their accomplices would have long given them up. Although Boulivard wasted no time the next morning in telling his guards about the failed escape, Pineau had been able to hide the offending implements (later smuggled out by Arlette), and, knowing that the prison governor was far from unsympathetic to their predicament, negotiated with him to let the matter rest on condition that no further such attempts were made.

As time passed, Pineau had to content himself by writing a play, while Cavaillès worked on his book on philosophy. Meanwhile, reports reached them about how the network continued to function smoothly under Bonamour’s stewardship, with new agents recruited and a series of successful parachute drops carried out. While pleased to see his creation thriving, Pineau found the proof that he was not indispensable a little hard to take and became increasingly frustrated by his exclusion. These feelings were immediately dispelled when, one day, the prison governor came to give them the news of the allied landings in Algeria and Morocco. He was as delighted as they were and predicted that they would soon be set free.

The following day, however, the mood changed when news broke of the Germans’ entry into the free zone. There was now concern for the political prisoners at Montpellier, as the Nazis would show them no mercy when they arrived. The case against de Lassus Saint-Geniès had never been so strong, and he was allowed to leave prison. Unable to do the same for Pineau and Cavaillès, the authorities nonetheless got them on an early-morning train ahead of the advancing occupation, their destination the internment camp near Limoges. Of course, only the unfortunate Cavaillès would arrive there .

The price of freedom for Christian Pineau was a severe fever contracted after two days in his damp, cold riverside hideout. He was still in a sorry state when his father-in-law arrived at Pierre Krier’s house, where he had been taken when it was considered safe to do so. After spending a few more days there, Bonamour and Pineau, avoiding Cahors, made a circuitous railway journey to Lyons, the centre of the Phalanx network’s operations. Pineau noticed a marked change to the place since the arrival of German forces. Nazi uniforms now exclusively filled black-market restaurants that had once been frequented by locals, untroubled by Vichy law-keepers. The major resistance movements which had openly used Lyons as the hub for their activities were now operating deep underground. Klaus Barbie, who had recently arrived to lead the Gestapo’s tenacious and merciless campaign against subversion, was already striking terror in the town.

Taking back the reins of the network from his father-in-law, Pineau, still badly run down by his illness and his time in prison, found himself yearning for an escape from the oppression and anxiety of working against the occupation. In spite of this, he knew he had important work to do, building up the intelligence-gathering strength of the network and trying to arrange Cavaillès’ escape before the Germans took over the internment camp. Being short of the requisite manpower for such a venture, he made contact with Lucie Aubrac of the Libération Sud resistance organization. At their meeting, he was taken aback by her furious verbal attack on him. She had been behind the plot to spring him and Cavaillès from the gaol at Montpellier and roundly chastised him for failing to use the saw and cord provided. She was equally reproachful that he subsequently abandoned his comrade when he made his escape from the train. She was eventually mollified, however, and they devised an operation involving agents from both their groups, which would succeed in its aim shortly before Christmas 1942.

By then, Pineau had received news that Arlette was safely delivered of a son who was given the name of Francis, his father’s own code name in the network. London had also agreed that a Lysander flight should be allocated to Pineau’s evacuation; he was still working without any radio operator of his own and was therefore severely limited in his ability to communicate his network’s requirements to his controller, Passy. He was also in desperate need of a break from the front line. Heavy snowfall in the Pouilly-Fuissé area to the west of Mȃcon prevented the intended landing there in the December moon, but it did give Pineau the chance to see his wife for the first time since her confinement when she came with the newly released Cavaillès to celebrate New Year’s Eve with him at his Mȃcon hotel.

The snow did not prevent a December parachute drop, which brought the answer to many of Pineau’s prayers in the shape of radio operator, Pierre Delaye (Barbara’s beloved ‘Pierre-le-paysan’). He would transform the efficiency of the network, both in its communications with London and in its reception of airborne operations. His first action was on the night of 14 January, when he set up a Lysander landing ground close to the Rhône near the town of Loyettes, east of Lyons. The terrain was ideal (even if only some three kilometres from a Wehrmacht garrison), and it allowed Squadron Leader Hugh Verity to carry out a perfect landing and take-off on what was only his second mission. It could have been his last when, on the way out, concentrating for too long on his chart to pinpoint his position over the river Saône, he nearly collided with a tall radio mast in his path, banking fiercely away at the last moment.

Verity’s outward payload had been just a sack of courier, but he knew when he witnessed three men squeezing into the rear cockpit for the return passage that progress home would be extremely slow against a strong north-westerly wind. Pineau, for it was he and two of his newly recruited agents who were the passengers, stoically endured the five-and-a-half hour flight, which included some alarming aerobatics over the Channel to shake off a German fighter. An exquisite sense of freedom rapidly replaced the cramp and knot of fear in his stomach as he stepped across the tarmac at Tangmere.

Anthony Bertram provided the human connection between the Resistance in France and freedom. How many of our fellow combatants have been able to draw on his slender, athletic outline for their courage and their good humour in the dusk before a departure or the dawn following an arrival at his Elizabethan manor? For so many, he represented the last silhouette of Great Britain.

Pineau considered Bertram not just a comrade-in-arms but a kindred thinker whose company he thoroughly appreciated. Bertram told him he was looking terrible but that, fortunately, he would find some red meat in England to restore his colour, thanks to the American liberty ships. Pineau’s two young fellow passengers were certainly suitably delighted by a foretaste of such luxury, as the three Frenchmen sat down to Barbara’s bacon and eggs on their arrival at Bignor.

Pineau found London full of American servicemen and sensed a more optimistic atmosphere among the inhabitants as he made his way to the offices of the BCRA . Passy had a much clearer picture of the undercover situation throughout France than he did when Pineau last visited. This was mainly thanks to the steady flow of agents and politicians arriving in London, courtesy of the special RAF and RN services. He made it clear to Pineau, however, that, while the flow of political intelligence from the Phalanx network was first class, its military intelligence was scarce, to say the least, and this was of some concern to their British paymasters. He promised Pineau that he would provide him with the necessary personnel to improve this branch of his activities.

When Pineau complained that people like ‘Lot’ the radio operator were more trouble than they were worth, Passy was quick to point out that, with only about a one in ten chance of survival, volunteers were not exactly queuing up to do the work. The pool of people he had to choose from in London was unlikely to yield choirboys. He urged Pineau to do more recruiting of his own in France and to send them to London for training. That was how he could be sure of good agents.

When he was received by General de Gaulle, Pineau was relieved to find he had a better grasp now of what resistance groups were looking for in him as a leader. De Gaulle was also clearly relieved that Pétain was perpetuating his collaboration with Germany, in spite of its occupation of the free zone. Had the breach of the armistice been a trigger for the Marshal to escape to Algeria or London and to join the allied cause, de Gaulle knew that many foreign governments and some of the later French converts to the Resistance would sooner turn to Pétain than himself as the figurehead for liberation.

The General was still not remotely interested in the difficulties faced by Pineau in running his network. He did not want to be concerned with the minutiae of such activities, and showed far more pride in the uniformed troops under his command than in the disparate groups of the underground. The Free French army were a splendid advertisement for his cause, especially to the Americans, and were fully under his control. This could not be said of the Resistance as a whole, some of whom were communists and others, like the Alliance , were working directly for the British and who he therefore deemed to be no better than traitors .

All of Pineau’s superiors, from de Gaulle downwards, showed considerable concern for his health, however, and insisted he spend some time relaxing. Pineau scarcely needed a second invitation and found, unlike in 1942, that there were no constraints whatever on his movements around town. A Frenchman was no longer a rare or obtrusive sight on the streets of London. As well as becoming an avid concert-goer, Pineau was able to indulge his appetite for good food and wine and the company of good-looking women. On one memorable evening, he was dined out by Squadron Leader Guy Lockhart as a special thanks for getting him back to England in record time after his sabotaged landing in Burgundy. A sumptuous dinner in the company of some thirty RAF officers, as well as Lockhart’s wife and sister-in-law — both blond and beautiful — was followed by dancing and drinking until five in the morning at The Coconut nightclub. The quartet (minus the thirty RAF men) would return to the nightclub on at least one other occasion and swore to a permanent friendship. Death would sadly intervene, however, when Guy Lockhart, in command of a bomber squadron, was shot down over Friedrichshafen in April 1944.

Ever the political animal, Pineau could not resist making his own study of the nuances of opinion among the French and British he encountered during his period of rest and recuperation. Those he found to be anti-Gaullist on his earlier visit, such as Louis Lévy, had, if anything, hardened their opposition, taking their lead from the many British detractors of the General. Being a socialist like himself, Lévy wanted Pineau to go back into France and start advocating allegiance among the resistance movements to a more leftist or radical leader, such as former prime ministers Léon Blum or Edouard Herriot. How easy it was, Pineau thought, to dream up postwar panaceas well away from the conflict in the safety of a London apartment. De Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine was a vital unifying symbol to those necessarily isolated from their fellow combatants and waging a clandestine war under the nose of a ruthless occupying force.

The British secret service officers with whom Pineau dined found little sympathy with de Gaulle’s exclusive obsession with the interests of France. They were concerned that it would cause disunity of command among the allies come the campaign to liberate France, expected by most to be launched later in 1943. When Pineau, somewhat injudiciously, passed on to de Gaulle the opinion of one British colonel that one first-class and timely piece of intelligence was worth a whole regiment of soldiers on parade in the desert, the General exploded .

Pineau also had a chance to sit down with Jean Moulin, the man tasked with the co-ordination of all the action-oriented resistance outfits in France. Moulin doubted that the allied embarkation would take place before 1944, and impressed upon Pineau the need to keep intelligence-gathering networks strictly separate from those involved in armed action, despite what others in the BCRA were now saying. He foresaw that, if he were not careful, Pineau would be sent back to France with any number of additional tasks that would not only risk diluting the effectiveness of his network but were almost bound to interfere with his own operation.

Sure enough, André Philip, the socialist politician and friend of Pineau, now in exile in London, was the first to buttonhole him. Charged by de Gaulle to direct the political scene in occupied France, Philip tried to persuade Pineau to become his on-the-spot representative and hand over his intelligence role to someone else. While he was able to refuse this request, he could not possibly say no when de Gaulle himself decided that he would like Pineau to use his contacts back in France to prepare a plan to resupply the country with food, clothing and raw materials after its liberation. Fortunately, Passy had a remedy, suggesting Pineau simply ‘resupply’ another section of his intelligence-gathering enterprise.

Although Pineau had experienced moments of doubt in his own courage to return to a clandestine existence in France, when it was time to return to Bignor Manor for the March moon, his nerves had settled. They were further helped by a weather delay, which allowed him a whole week in the Sussex haven, every day of which he was able to enjoy a long walk in the surrounding countryside in the company of Tony Bertram. Neither Pineau nor Barbara Bertram mentions in their memoirs whether the two other men destined to fly out with Pineau when the weather cleared were fellow guests at Bignor. It would be fair to assume they received the same accommodation arrangements as all of the SIS’s other Lysander passengers, but it is a pity not to be certain, in the context of this story, that two such crucial players in France’s undercover war had indeed been guests of the Bertrams. The two men in question were General Charles Delestraint, returning to France to take command of all undercover military operations, and Jean Moulin, his immediate political superior .

Moulin had already endured near catastrophe aboard a Lysander in the previous moon period when Hugh Verity had attempted to land him near Bourges on the Loire. Fog in the area forced Verity to return with his passenger to Tangmere, where similar conditions now prevailed. After several aborted landing attempts, Verity had to guess where the ground was and the aircraft fell thirty feet to the runway, shattering its undercarriage and scraping along on its nose. As he helped Moulin from the badly damaged plane, which miraculously did not catch fire, he apologized profusely for the disastrous landing. Moulin told him to think nothing of it and thanked him for a ‘very agreeable flight’.

Now, on the night of 19 March 1943, Flight Lieutenant John Bridger would be flying Moulin, Delestraint and Pineau to the north of Roanne on the upper reaches of the Loire, where Pierre Delaye had selected a field for their return to the front line. The operation was successful and the men were driven away in a van by Phalanx agents to a small farm nearby. The next day, via a bus to Mȃcon and then a train, they disappeared to their various hideouts in Lyons. It was only later that Pineau heard that the Gestapo, now hyper-alert to all Lysander operations, had arrived at the landing field just ten minutes after the plane and van had left the scene.

The month which followed Pineau’s return to France was probably the most productive period in the life of the Phalanx network. Despite the ever-tightening grip of Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo operation in Lyons, intelligence was coming in thick and fast and being transmitted or sent as courier to London in record time. This was thanks in large part to the services of an additional radio operator, ‘Roger’, transferred from another network in France, and to the efficiency of Pierre Delaye, who had recently recruited his own sister, Adrienne Loison, to act as liaison between him and Pineau. Since the Lysander operation delivering Pineau, another had been successfully accomplished under Delaye’s direction from his favoured Loyettes terrain, when Pineau’s 17-year-old eldest son Claude had been one of the three fugitives departing for Tangmere (see Chapter 9). On one occasion, thanks to the network’s slick operation, the minutes of a Vichy government cabinet meeting had reached the offices of the BCRA in London on the same evening that the meeting had taken place. André Manuel, Passy’s second-in-command, was on a mission in France at this time and, after a visit to Lyons, declared himself entirely satisfied with Pineau’s outfit.

Pineau’s business during this period took him to Paris for the first time in more than a year. Travel to the north was now much more straightforward, as the Ausweis was a thing of the past since the German occupation of the old free zone. He felt less threatened by the Gestapo in the vastness of Paris than he did in Lyons and found no difficulty in recruiting a young liaison agent by the name of Isabelle, who would identify apartments from which Pierre Delaye could transmit when he was in the capital. He also set to work among his old colleagues at the Ministry of Supply, looking for people who would help him fulfil the task set him by General de Gaulle. Although he established a small group of sympathetic informants, he almost fell foul of one the ministry’s inspectors, who had in the past been a vociferous critic of the Vichy government. The man, when asked to help, became extremely nervous and accused Pineau of asking him to betray his country by assisting de Gaulle. It was fortunate that Pineau was an old colleague, he told him, otherwise he would have had him arrested on the spot.

The Côte d’Azur was another destination for Pineau where he again found less evidence of Gestapo activity than in Lyons. The Wehrmacht were extremely busy, however, building defences along a prime target for an allied invasion. Pineau’s agents in the region were working equally hard, gleaning information on the fortifications for swift despatch to London. While he was in Marseilles, Pineau had a long meeting with Daniel Mayer, secretary-general of the clandestine Socialist Party of France. As with so many of his colleagues from the left, Mayer was already planning how France should be run come the liberation, and was particularly preoccupied by the question of how collaborators and all active or tacit supporters of Vichy should be punished. For his part, Pineau did not share this appetite for revenge and, apart from those who had actually spied for the Germans or who had turned resistance agents over to the Gestapo, it was not hatred that he felt for such people, but contempt or even pity.

There was terrible news awaiting Pineau on his return to Lyons. His father-in-law, Bonamour, had been picked up by the Gestapo at the town’s main Perrache railway station on the morning of 27 April as he was about to board a train to Tournon where his wife, daughter and Pineau’s children were living. It remains a mystery to this day as to who betrayed Bonamour to the Germans, and Pineau is very careful in his memoirs not to speculate on this. It did not, however, prevent him from remarking that there was one agent in his network who seemed anything but dismayed at the arrest. This was Fernand Gane, a man who had gained an expertise in military intelligence while working for the Paris-based Polish network, Interallié , before its betrayal by Mathilde Carré in November 1941. Gane had eventually managed to escape to England some ten months later where, as usual, the SIS had first call on debriefing him before his eventual release from the ‘Patriotic School’ immigration control in London.

Colonel Passy at the BCRA , having been assured by Gane that he had not agreed to act directly for the British, took him on and, in a move to strengthen the military intelligence function of the Phalanx network, had sent him out in a Hudson operation in February 1943 to join Pineau’s team. When Pineau returned from his own London trip, he found little love lost between Bonamour and Gane, the latter obviously resentful at taking orders from Bonamour, whose knowledge of military matters he believed was inferior to his own. Gane also had an unhealthy interest in money, demanding a higher wage than any of his fellow agents, and this when Pineau knew that he had been sent out from London with a large sum which he had seemingly spent entirely on himself. It would probably have shocked Pineau to know that Gane would eventually end up as leader of the network, dealing directly with the British when he chose to (in spite of what he had told Passy) and flying in the face of all that Moulin had advocated by confusing the intelligence-gathering role of the network with the use of arms and explosives for sabotage.

Bonamour’s arrest had, in fact, made Pineau momentarily regret the strict separation he had dutifully upheld between intelligence and combatant networks. Knowing that his father-in-law’s only chance of escape was by some form of ambush on the vehicle transporting him between Fort Montluc prison and interrogation sessions at the Gestapo’s Hotel Terminus headquarters, he was equally aware that he had neither the men nor the means for such a task. Bonamour would never crack under interrogation, Pineau was sure, but he took instant security precautions all the same, not knowing what information he might have been carrying when he was picked up nor how much the informant who had turned him in knew about their operation.

Adrienne Loison was sent to Paris where her brother was working to tell him only to transmit messages in his own personal code while all other outposts of the network received similar alerts. ‘Roger’ the Lyons-based operator was tasked with informing London of the emergency. Pineau reluctantly moved from his Lyons lodgings (at the house of his old trade union friend and colleague, Léon Goyet) to another part of the town and made arrangements for a meeting with Arlette to break the news to her of her father’s predicament. Fearing that her house in Tournon-sur-Rhône would be under Gestapo surveillance, Pineau arranged to meet his wife at a mountain inn, some two hours’ walk outside Tournon. Although she was extremely distressed by the news, Pineau was reassured to some extent to hear that there was no sign of any German police at her address. The couple left their mountain retreat after a night together: Arlette to gather up the children to find somewhere outside Tournon to live, Pineau to return to Lyons to nurse his damaged network.

And there had been more damage. Roger’s transmissions to London had been detected by the Gestapo and he had been caught red-handed at his radio and was now also a prisoner at Fort Montluc. Pineau was far less certain about his ability to keep quiet under interrogation than he was about his father-in-law and, as Roger had been found at his post, there was more chance that his captors would have discovered other sensitive papers. Pineau now felt he had to act quickly. Lyons was no longer safe and Phalanx headquarters would have to move to Paris. Pierre Delaye was already working up there on a mission and had established a number of transmission hideouts. Pineau saw his immediate task was to get all existing courier despatched as soon as possible and to collect the network’s funds, as important as its agents, and get them safely to Paris.

Calling at any of his agents’ houses now presented a risk, although, if security rules had been correctly observed, Roger would not have known the address of the network’s chief admin man, who kept the money in his safe. When Pineau arrived there, he found only the man’s mother at home. Unfortunately, she managed to jam the key of the safe in the lock, so he left empty-handed, hoping a locksmith would arrive later that day, before Pineau’s train was due to leave for Paris that evening. Two days earlier, he had left a note, signed ‘Francis’, his code name, at the house of Adrienne Loison. The message said that he would be calling in on her on the evening of 3 May, so that she could hand over the courier she had collected from a liaison trip to Paris. Although this was only lunchtime on 3 May, Pineau hoped he could save time by calling early, especially as he had some urgent alert messages for her to deliver to other agents in the network.

Again, even though he did not even think of it this time, this should have been a safe address for him to visit, as only he and Delaye knew about it. He had to ring the bell twice before the door opened, but the person who ushered him in was a short man he had never seen before. It took Pineau about two seconds to register something was very wrong and, in that time, a fair-haired giant had placed himself in the doorway, blocking any escape. The two Gestapo officers were clearly surprised not to find any weapon on Pineau when they frisked and handcuffed him. They burst into raucous laughter when, in answer to the inevitable first question of what he was doing at the flat, Pineau replied that he had come to collect his laundry. They were less amused when, having ascertained that he was married (he could not deny this as he carried pictures of his family in the wallet they had found on him), he would not say where they lived. His reason to them was that, having arrested him for no reason, he had every right to protect his wife from a similar fate.

The policemen contained their anger at this response, knowing that their captive would soon be facing a much more intense interrogation once they had safely transported him to their headquarters at the Hotel Terminus. Pineau, despite the shock of his capture and the realization that it was almost certain to lead to his ultimate death, used all the available thinking time he had while waiting to face the full fury of the Gestapo to build a story which might mitigate his predicament. At the very least, his inquisitors would have read his note, signed ‘Francis’, announcing his calling in at 6 p.m. and the two policemen would have been waiting for that visit. Seeing that they had somehow obtained Adrienne Loison’s address, it was also quite likely they had learned that ‘Francis’ was leader of the network. If, as was likely, Adrienne had been arrested in her flat after her return from Paris, they would also have the highly incriminating courier she had brought back with her.

The only factor in Pineau’s favour was that he had called at the apartment at 1.30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. His false identity papers showed him as a Monsieur Grimeaux of humble rank in the Ministry of Supply and even before he was escorted into the interrogation room at the Hotel Terminus, he had adopted the irresolute manner of someone scarcely suited to run an underground network. He would soon learn that among the four impassive faces that greeted him was that of Klaus Barbie himself. (The other three consisted of the short, plain-clothes man who had arrested him and two well-built individuals who supplied ample physical menace to the line-up).

‘We are merciless,’ Barbie assured Pineau. ‘You have lied about your identity and you have lied about your reason for visiting Madame Loison. You will end up by telling us the truth, sir, as all the others have. The French are all cowards. My father was condemned to two years’ forced labour for sabotage under French occupation. All my life I have wanted to avenge his mistreatment. Now that I am SS and chief of police here in Lyons, I am not going to show pity to anyone. ’

The contents of the ill-fated courier lay on the desk in front of Barbie and, while he leafed through some decoded telegrams, he announced that they also had possession of the network’s codes and had already arrested its principle agents. This last declaration and an accusation that he belonged to an organization which carried out assassinations of German soldiers told Pineau that they did not know as much about his organization as they pretended. There were also signs that they were beginning to doubt that Pineau was the ‘Francis’ they were looking for, and that he was, if anything, a more minor player in the outfit.

This was the moment that Pineau decided to change his story and play up to the role they had cast for him. If they could be convinced that he only had a peripheral involvement, they would realize that most information would have been kept from him and that torture or seizing his family would elicit nothing of value. So he began to tell them what he hoped they would believe was all he knew. Yes, he confessed in a quavering voice, he had gone to the apartment to collect an envelope. He had no idea what it would contain — his instructions were to take it to someone waiting for him in a restaurant. He realized in a flash that, when asked for this person’s name, he could neither make one up, as that would remove credence from his story, nor could he use the name of a real person without condemning them to a fate similar to his own. Instead, he gave the name of ‘Ludovic’, which was, in fact, his second pseudonym and one which he knew would appear in the captured courier. Sure enough, the board of interrogators nodded knowingly and confirmed to Pineau that this was, indeed, the code name of one of the network chiefs.

The questioning continued with Pineau having to describe the appearance and personality of this Ludovic, which he based on a film actor he admired. He explained he had met Ludovic through a colleague of his at the ministry on a visit to Lyons the previous year. He had found him particularly interested in the supply of milk and meat in France (two reports on which Pineau knew were in the courier) and had asked him to give him some statistics on the subject. Pineau denied knowing ‘Barnaud’, the code name for Bonamour, and prayed that they would not make the connection between the photos he carried of his children and similar ones he knew his father-in-law kept in his wallet. He also said he did not know ‘Francis’ but that he thought he had heard Ludovic mention him once or twice.

Then Barbie showed him a diagram the police had drawn of their network with the name ‘Francis’ in the middle and various other names such as ‘ Ludovic’ and ‘Barnaud’ in positions that indicated very little understanding or knowledge of the organization. All the names were Christian names only and it was not difficult for Pineau to pretend that, for instance, ‘Roger’ was too vague for him to be able to recognize. While Barbie examined the photographs of his children, he asked Pineau to give the name and age of each one. Pineau gave their second Christian names only and reduced their ages by a year in the hope that Bonamour would have used first names when asked the same question about his grandchildren. He was shocked to be asked if he had ever thought of sending them to England. His immediate retort — ‘Whatever for, at their age?’ — elicited the information that the Gestapo had decoded a message about the airlift of two boys, one the son of ‘Francis’, by Lysander.

The other boy in the message was André Manuel’s son, who had never turned up at the landing site when Claude Pineau had been flown to Tangmere. The question had particularly unnerved Pineau because it meant that Barbie had not yet convinced himself that the man before him could not be ‘Francis’. The session had gone on nearly long enough for the Gestapo chief by now, however, but he had just one more question for Pineau before he would call a halt.

‘Are you a collaborator?’ he threw at Pineau as he started to pack up his papers. Pineau’s response of ‘No, I am not’ made him look up sharply. ‘Why not?’ he asked. Pineau asked Barbie why he felt he should be, reminding him that Germany had invaded and occupied his country and that no good Frenchman had the right to be a collaborator. Barbie remarked that it was rare for people they had arrested to give such a response and that generally they claim to be the Germans’ friend. Pineau admitted that he had probably made a mistake in giving such an answer but that he had promised to tell nothing but the truth. Barbie’s final remark, made to his fellow interrogators in German which he did not expect the Frenchman to understand, came as music to Pineau’s ears. ‘He’s too stupid,’ he said, ‘he’s not the one we’re looking for.’

Pineau may have deflected suspicion enough to avoid an attempt to tear the truth out of him, but he still now faced indefinite imprisonment at the hands of the Gestapo. He would, in fact, spend the next six months enduring barbaric conditions at Fort Montluc prison in Lyons. For nearly half that time, he was kept in solitary confinement in a 12 ft x 12 ft cell, only allowed out once a day into the courtyard below for slopping out and a rudimentary wash under a tap. Conversation between prisoners was strictly forbidden during the process and no form of reading matter or means to occupy the mind was allowed at any time. Pineau never knew from one day to the next what fate awaited him and every time there was an unscheduled throwing open of his cell door, it could so easily mean a firing squad or a call to face the torturers after his true identity had been discovered.

In fact, he was twice driven back to Gestapo headquarters for further questioning. On the first occasion, he was alarmed to find his fellow passenger was Adrienne Loison, but managed to whisper to her to make out he had never met her. The interrogation was conducted this time by one of Barbie’s lieutenants and took the form of asking him all the same questions as before, obviously to check the consistency of Pineau’s story. The second session required Pineau to give all the minute details of his life since childhood, such as the names of his teachers at school, his grandparents’ Christian names and details about his wife’s family. The trick here, Pineau knew, was to keep as close to the truth as possible, rather than invent names and people, as he was bound to be asked again to verify his answers and his memory could easily let him down. In the case of his wife and family, Pineau was able to supply the details of his first wife’s relations, thus safeguarding Arlette and her father as far as possible.

This final interrogation ended with Pineau signing a charge sheet stating that he had confessed to economic espionage by providing an intelligence network with information on French supplies. At the same time, he succeeded in persuading his interviewer to return the photographs of his family for sentimental reasons. By tearing them into shreds and disposing of them via his slops bucket back at the prison, he had destroyed the last piece of evidence linking him to his actual identity.

Gradually, Pineau adjusted to his seemingly eternal solitary existence at Fort Montluc. He had learned to amuse himself in his cell by counting how many times he could successfully throw a pebble into the air and catch it again in one hand — his record was over 2,000 times. He had even managed to make himself some playing cards for patience out of scraps of paper the prisoners were allowed to salvage from the rubbish bins for lavatory paper. Most important of all, he had begun to make contact with other prisoners. He would communicate with the man in his neighbouring cell by tapping on the wall — one tap for A, two for B etc — and also stole brief exchanges of information with the prisoners with whom he shared the daily ablutions routine. Among his particular group was Roger, the Phalanx radio operator. Any outward sign that they had known each other previously could have been lethal, but slowly, through a few shared words at the taps each day, Pineau was able to piece together what had led to his arrest. It had been Pierre Delaye, in a rare lapse of discipline, who had given Adrienne Loison’s address in Lyons to Roger. When Roger was caught at the transmitter — the first time he had ever failed to post the mandatory lookout — he had the address among his papers.

It was Roger, too, who received word of Delaye’s violent death on the bridge over the Rhône at Loyettes and passed it on to Pineau. With Delaye gone, Pineau reflected miserably, his network had lost its heart and he knew it could not continue to function effectively without him. From time to time, he caught glimpses of the sad face of Delaye’s sister, Adrienne, at a window of the women’s wing of the prison, and also occasionally saw his father-in-law, Bonamour, from a distance but never close enough to speak to. He felt immensely proud of all three members of his network at the prison, none of whom could have given anything away under interrogation.

Roger would become Pineau’s chief supplier, not just of information but of other priceless items such as a smuggled pencil, a magazine and a book, all of which added new dimensions to his solitary pastimes in his cell. He would also occasionally thrust a chunk of bread or other morsel of food, which had come from parcels from his family, into Pineau’s hand. The luxury of a hard-boiled egg or a biscuit was immeasurable compared with the twice-daily prison meals consisting of a few pieces of pasta or some other shrivelled object floating in warm water. However much he craved a parcel from his own loved ones, Pineau knew that it could be fatal to him and its bearer, as a link could so easily be made to his true identity. He did, however, receive some parcels eventually, without any repercussions, courageously delivered by his friend and former landlord, Léon Goyet.

It was a terrible shock to Pineau when, one day, as he observed some female prisoners being exercised in the courtyard through his cell skylight, he saw the familiar figure of his mother-in-law among them. As well as his immediate concern that her comparative frailty would not allow her to survive for long under the harsh conditions and cruel treatment of the guards came a far more fearsome question: if the Gestapo had found her at the house in Tournon, what had become of Arlette and the children? It was only several days later that the arch prison correspondent, Roger, was able to whisper in Pineau’s ear that his family were safely in hiding. He also passed him a piece of cake, telling him that it came from Pierre Delaye’s widow who had made it especially for them. As his cell door was shut on him, Pineau wept for the first time since his arrest, not just with relief at the news of his family, but because of the affection he felt for his valiant team of agents and their loyal next of kin.

Among other mournful observations that Pineau made from his tiny window was the regular arrival of Jewish families who had been rounded up from the surrounding area and who were herded, fifty at a time, into a wooden hut in the courtyard. After a night, during which the prison walls echoed with the sound of their children crying, they were lined up and counted before being marched off for onward transportation. Pineau would notice an almost joyous mood about these parties before their departure, when the women would have done their hair and the men busied themselves with their meagre packages of possessions. They seemed so pleased to be leaving the prison and showed little apprehension about their destination.

Pineau would also notice, while on his daily exercise, fellow prisoners who bore the recent scars of torture at the hands of the Gestapo. He would wonder, as they staggered around the courtyard, their faces distorted by bruises and lacerations and their swollen eyes almost shut, whether they had managed to keep quiet or whether they had cracked. Then, on one such occasion late in June, he saw, to his anguish, a face he knew very well. Still unblemished, it was that of Jean Moulin. The two men gave no outward sign of recognition, but their exchange of glances was enough to tell the other he had been noticed. Pineau was only too aware of what a disaster Moulin’s arrest would be to the resistance movement. He also knew the man well enough, when he saw him the next day with all the marks of the Gestapo’s brutality on his face, to know that he would not talk.

The following day, Moulin was no longer among those taking exercise. However, at six o’clock the same evening, Pineau’s cell door opened and he was told by one of the less offensive prison guards to follow him and to bring with him his safety razor. Pineau had always been surprised that he had been allowed to keep his razor when he arrived at the prison and it was the envy of his fellow inmates. He was constantly asked for its loan and a strange ritual had grown up by which the guards allowed Pineau to use it to cut the hair of new arrivals in his wing of the prison. Pineau was happy to do this, as it gave him the chance to find out what was happening in the world outside and how far the allies were progressing in their assault on Italy.

This was not the usual time for such a session, however, and Pineau was perplexed to be led by a single guard down the stairs of his block and towards a bench in the northern courtyard where a soldier stood, his gun slung over his shoulder. Along the bench lay the motionless form of a man to whom the soldier pointed with the words, ‘Shave him.’ It was an extraordinary request considering the man was clearly more dead than alive, his unconscious face a mass of bruises. It was only as he approached the prone figure that Pineau realized who it was: Jean Moulin. His eyes appeared so sunken as to have been pushed back into his skull, a vicious bluish wound coloured one of his temples and his swollen lips emitted a faint rattle of breath.

Having asked the soldier to fetch him some soap and water, Pineau began his task with a trembling hand. The blade of his razor was far from sharp after its frequent use and much of the face he dared not touch, such was the damage. Just as he was finishing, Moulin opened his eyes and looked at Pineau with a flicker of recognition. ‘Drink,’ he whispered, and Pineau turned to the soldier who went to get some water from the nearby fountain. While he was doing this, Moulin forced a few words out that seemed to be in English but which Pineau could not understand. Pineau offered some words of comfort of his own but, after taking some water, Moulin lost consciousness again. Since the prison guard had disappeared, Pineau stayed with him as night began to fall, as though providing a vigil to the dead. Eventually, he was led back to his cell, Moulin seemingly being left on the bench for the night. By the morning, however, he was gone. Records show that, in fact, Jean Moulin endured another fortnight of brutal attention from the Gestapo. He was taken from Lyons to their Avenue Foch headquarters in Paris and eventually died while being transferred by train to Germany on 8 July 1943.

One possible explanation for the Germans’ strange wish to have Moulin shaved was that Barbie was trying to improve his appearance so as to cover up some of the damage he had inflicted on the Frenchman. He may well have been afraid of the wrath of his bosses in Paris when they discovered that their Lyons subordinate had beaten all the useful life out of the man they were so keen to interrogate themselves.

During this same summer, Pineau was witness to another legendary event in the history of the Resistance. André Devigny, a co-founder of the military intelligence network Gilbert , who was incarcerated in the next cell but one to his and who had suffered long days of torture at Klaus Barbie’s hands, whispered to Pineau one morning that he was soon to be executed. Three days later, Devigny and his cell-mate had vanished, not victims of the firing squad (the sound of whose volleys were a regular accompaniment to life inside Fort Montluc), but escaped from the supposed escape-proof prison. The additional deprivations and reprisals meted out by the German guards following this breakout could not dull the sense of triumph shared by all the inmates left behind. (André Devigny survived the war and wrote in Un Condamné à Mort S’est Echappé about his remarkable escape through a loosened panel of the cell door, across the roof and over two perimeter walls, using a rope made of wire from his bedstead and torn pieces of blanket. An acclaimed 1956 Robert Bresson film, A Man Escaped , shot in Fort Montluc gaol itself, recreates Devigny’s feat, using the original rope and other handmade implements.)

The number of prisoners increased rapidly as 1943 wore on. Pineau was no longer alone in his cell; first one man and then a second was ushered in to share the one mattress and cramped floor-space. Although he appreciated the chance to interact fully again with human beings, Pineau could not confide anything about his background with his new companions. Even if neither had been planted by the Germans, there was no knowing what could be extracted from them under torture. As summer became autumn, Pineau began to believe that he had been overlooked and that he was destined to remain in cell 113 indefinitely. Then, one day, he was told to pack and found himself escorted out of his cell and down to the ground floor where, by pure coincidence, Bonamour had also been summoned with his baggage.

Their destination was the refectory, a wooden hut inside the prison where some fifty of the more privileged prisoners were detained. Inside, it was like paradise. There were bunk beds with proper mattresses, tables and chairs and lockers for possessions. The occupants, most of them anti-Vichy politicians and journalists, showed great concern for the newcomers’ emaciated appearance and immediately offered them food from what seemed to be abundant supplies. Pineau and Bonamour marvelled at their freedom to play card games, to read, to write and, above all, to converse freely with like-minded individuals. At last, Bonamour was able to recount to Pineau the circumstances of his arrest.

It seems that his landlord in Lyons had informed on him and, when he was picked up at the central station, he was carrying documents about the military, so could not deny that he was spying. For some reason, his dossier was sent not to the Gestapo but to a major in German army intelligence. Bonamour declared immediately to this major that he pleaded guilty and, since he would get nothing out of him, they might as well shoot him without wasting any more time.

The major took him at his word and drove Bonamour in his own car to the perimeter road of Fort Montluc prison. Soon, an execution squad arrived and the major asked if he was sure that he did not want to talk. Assured by Bonamour that he did not, the major remarked how regrettable that was, as it would be he who had to give the order to fire. As the soldiers lifted their rifles, the major suddenly announced that he had noticed that Bonamour was from a distinguished French family and asked if he would to do him the honour of taking lunch with him. His only plea was that he should not take advantage by trying to escape. During a sumptuous meal at one of the best black-market restaurants in Lyons, the major, who was himself a baron, told the bemused Bonamour how lucky he had been to have come across the Wehrmacht and not the Gestapo scoundrels whose methods brought dishonour on his country. Their ranks contained nothing but pimps, bankrupt traders and professional layabouts, people who would never have sullied an officer’s uniform in the German army of old.

At the end of the meal, the major drove Bonamour back to Fort Montluc, where he apologized for having also imprisoned his wife there. Unfortunately, the Gestapo had brought her to him, so he had had no choice, but he assured Bonamour that it would not be for too long. (She was, in fact, released after three months). As for Bonamour himself, as long as no one insisted on having him shot, he should expect eventually to be sent to Germany, where he would be decently treated. Remarking on the strange paradox that, while Germans were posted to all corners of Europe, men from all over Europe were now living in Germany, he drove off, leaving Bonamour to his destiny.

Just as the Jews that had left Fort Montluc prison with such relief, Bonamour and Pineau, when their names were called one morning for departure to Germany, were full of hopeful anticipation. A long train journey would break the monotony of life in prison, and seeing out the last few months of the war in some German factory and in living quarters probably no worse than at present seemed a reasonable prospect.

Even from what they had already seen of Nazi contempt for the rights and dignity of their captives, they could not have been expected to envisage the murderous regime that awaited them at Buchenwald concentration camp. So many failed to survive the cattle-truck transportation, the slave labour in the quarries, the near-starvation, the disease, the punishments and the summary executions that it is astonishing that both Christian Pineau and Tristan Bonamour du Tartre survived eighteen months of such maltreatment. Liberation finally came to them on 11 April 1945 — they were back among their families ten days later.