Nancy Wake: World War Two’s Most Rebellious Spy Page 21

  Then, to give effect to their words, they drove him over to the distillery and demanded that he should lead them at once to the boardroom. There, armed to the teeth, they held the most extraordinary executive meeting ever inspired by the thirsty throat of the internal combustion engine.

  Employing Schley’s legal knowledge, Alsop’s business technique, Tardivat’s commercial training, Hubert’s military experience and Nancy’s unholy delight at a situation both logistically valuable and humanly comic, they solemnly prepared production schedules, delivery dates, pick-up centres and ways and means and instructed the unfortunate manager to adhere strictly to all their formal resolutions.

  As they drove back to the forest Nancy started to laugh.

  ‘Guess we looked kind of peculiar directors.’ Schley grinned.

  ‘Just to think of it,’ cooed Nancy. ‘Me, an oil king!’

  For a long time the presence of a Gestapo headquarters in Montluçon had irritated Tardivat. He discussed the matter with Nancy and they decided that life would be pleasanter if the Gestapo were to vanish.

  The town was very thoroughly reconnoitred and the movements of its large German garrison carefully noted. Similar attention was paid to the habits of the officers in the Gestapo headquarters.

  Finally it was agreed that the best time to deal with the problem was at twenty-five minutes past midday. At that time, invariably (for they were systematic creatures) all the Gestapo gentlemen would be sipping aperitifs, just prior to taking their lunch at half past twelve.

  At noon, in four cars, Nancy and fourteen others, all dressed in makeshift uniform, drove into the town, a covering party having preceded them into Montluçon and scattered into various ‘safe houses’, where they had collected an impressive array of Bren and Sten guns.

  Precisely at 12.25, it had been planned, Nancy, Tardivat and their small band of attackers would rush up to the Gestapo headquarters in cars. At the same moment their cover party would arrive, to provide any support necessary to their withdrawal after the attack.

  The plan worked perfectly. To the second, the entire force was punctual, halting violently at the unguarded rear door of the building.

  Nancy leapt out of her car, dashed through the back entrance, ran up the staircase, flung open the first door, deposited her hand grenade inside it and was halfway down the stairs again as it exploded. Every room in the building was similarly treated. Half a minute later they were into their cars and roaring away down the street, their cover party following in their own vehicles.

  Roused by a series of shattering explosions in the middle of the town, the locals came rushing out into the street. And, seeing a convoy of semi-uniformed Allies, they began to cheer and shout, ‘ Les Alliés sont arrives .’

  ‘My God,’ screamed Nancy, ‘stop them or soon they’ll all be waving Union Jacks! They think we’re liberating them!’

  Frantically they persuaded the excited inhabitants to return indoors. Then they quit the town. Behind them they left a destroyed headquarters and, in it, thirty-eight dead Germans.

  Cosne-d’Allier was their next port of call – a semi-social, semi-official call. They wished to see exactly what was happening in the town and they also wished to demonstrate to its inhabitants the growing power of the Maquis.

  In convoy, heavily armed, therefore, they drove into the town centre. Everyone turned out to greet them, throwing flowers and cheering, and their progress became a triumph. A restauranteur, who claimed that he had been chef on the Ile de France , even insisted that they should dine as his guests at his establishment, and so they had a superb meal as well.

  Just as they were taking their coffee, a train was heard entering the town. By mutual consent the two Americans, the Maquis and Nancy abandoned their proposed liqueurs and marched spectacularly to the station. There, in the best German tradition, they thoroughly ‘checked’ the train.

  Every passenger on board was required to show his identity card; many were questioned severely as to why they travelled and where; and only after the Maquis had completely demonstrated their ability to ‘control’ traffic in that area did Nancy give the signal which permitted the train to proceed on its way into German-dominated territory.

  ‘Let the Gestapo think over that one,’ she gloated. With Frenchmen now stopping and checking trains in what was still officially Occupied France, the war of the Underground had made vast strides. The inhabitants of Cosne-d’Allier, not to mention the passengers on the train that had just passed through it, were all profoundly impressed. Nancy’s gesture may have been a mischievous and frivolous one, but it had certainly had the desired effect.

  London advised that the long-overdue landing on the southern shores of France was imminent. Arms were to be lavished on those groups in the lower part of Nancy’s area of control so that maximum destruction of roadworks, railways and installations might be effected in that zone.

  In two Citroëns of pre-war vintage, machine guns poking through their windscreens, Nancy, Hubert, Schley and Alsop drove down to the extreme southerly group below Clermont-Ferrand. They drove through territory teeming with German garrisons and troop movements – and yet both Nancy and Hubert, to the unaccustomed eyes of their American colleagues, seemed utterly unconcerned.

  ‘Fascinating,’ commented Schley.

  ‘The way those two travel about the French countryside, you’d think they owned it. They drive,’ Alsop concluded, ‘as if they were going from London to Plymouth.’

  Schley and Alsop were quite justified in their concern. Though Nancy chose secondary roads which the Germans usually avoided, these were not usual times. Also, they frequently had to cross primary roads, and anywhere on the approaches to such main routes they might be observed by an enemy patrol. Then, with whole armies of the enemy in the area, their lives would be short.

  On the other hand, Nancy herself was justified in driving as she did. She had to get to almost every one of the southern groups to organise parachutages and, if she had to, then there was no use being timid. She took a calculated war risk and she was successful. She brought Schley and Alsop with her to train her men in the use of the new weapons they would soon be receiving.

  At each group headquarters they were welcomed with open arms and a night of celebrations. The Maquis sensed victory on the wind and was anxious to show its gratitude to those who had armed and trained them.

  In woods, in fields, in farmhouses and in villages these celebrations took place. There would be feasting and drinking and toasting – and finally the national anthems.

  The Maquis would roar ‘The Marseillaise’, Nancy and Hubert would sing ‘God Save the King’, and then everyone would look expectantly at Schley and Alsop. But they, excessively embarrassed, simply could not sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ – because they didn’t know the words.

  After two of these dismal failures they put their heads together.

  ‘You know, Reeve,’ ruminated Alsop, ‘I guess we ought to do something at these functions on behalf of poor old Uncle Sam.’

  ‘Sure, but how can we when we don’t know the words?’

  ‘Well what do you know the words of?’

  Each went through the short list of songs all the words of which were familiar to him. They found that only one was common to them both. One, however, was all they wanted. They went at once to see Nancy.

  ‘Gert,’ Schley said, ‘Alsop and I’ve been thinking we should do something about this anthem business. It’s getting kind of embarrassing the way everyone stands and looks at us so expectantly and then we don’t have anything to say.’ Nancy stared at them intently and waited for what might follow. Knowing Schley and Alsop, she felt that anything might follow.

  ‘Well,’ Alsop continued the tale, ‘the only song Schley and I know isn’t exactly “The Star-Spangled Banner”. So we thought next time it’s necessary, you might announce that we are going to sing a new anthem. Not the American anthem but the specially composed “Entente Cordiale United Nations Anthem”.’
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  ‘What is this new anthem?’ Nancy inquired suspiciously.

  ‘It goes to the tune of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”,’ Alsop replied evasively. ‘We both of us had a church education so we know the tune well.’

  ‘OK,’ Nancy agreed, ‘I’ll do it. What was it you called it again?’

  ‘“The Entente Cordiale International Anthem”,’ Schley told her unctuously. ‘Explain that it is a new international anthem of goodwill, signalising the unity of our people.’

  ‘You know, when you two talk like that,’ she replied, ‘I don’t trust you at all.’

  At the very next celebration, Nancy, the toasts concluded and the national anthems about to be sung, made the agreed announcement. It was greeted with widespread murmurs of approval and it fired the other groups to an even more fervent than usual rendition of their own anthems. The French thundered ‘The Marseillaise’, Nancy and Hubert delivered a confidently fortissimo ‘God Save the King’, and then the Americans burst into their anthem of the United States, of the Entente Cordiale and of international goodwill. Their faces glowing with zeal, they sang:

  Uncle George and Aunty Mabel

  Fainted at the breakfast table.

  Wasn’t that sufficient warning not to do it in the morning?

  But Ovaltine has put them right:

  Now they do it morn and night.

  Uncle George is hoping soon

  To do it in the afternoon.

  Their success was instant and riotous. The men saluted and stood quivering to attention, women wept, flowers were thrown all over them, bouquets were pressed on them from every direction. And throughout, as the ditty rolled sonorously through the tune of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, Nancy and Hubert also stood at attention, also quivering, also with tears in their eyes – but through an emotion entirely different from that of the French.

  ‘You devils!’ Nancy hissed as they finished.

  ‘Gertie,’ reproached Schley, ‘how could you? I thought we scored a tremendous success!’ From then on, at each celebration, the two Americans sang their new anthem continuously – and the British joined them in the singing of it!

  South of Clermont-Ferrand they picked up Bazooka and Alsop gave him a new uniform they had brought over specially for him from England. He at once put it on and attached to it his recently awarded insignia of captain. Then they pressed on to their southernmost group.

  Crossing the region south of Clermont-Ferrand was a ticklish business because they had to drive over one of the main bridges. They had halted well short of the bridge, in a side road, and were just preparing to reconnoitre the main road, when an armoured car suddenly appeared in front of them.

  With Clermont-Ferrand and its garrison of twelve thousand Germans less than eight miles away, and a job to do further south, anyhow, there was no sense in doing anything except lie low. They couldn’t possibly damage or cripple an armoured car and to fire on it would only be to rouse hordes of the enemy from all sides. Nevertheless, a shot did ring out. Turning furiously round they saw Bazooka aiming for a second time.

  They knocked his carbine to the ground and then prayed that the Germans had not heard the shot. Unconcernedly the armoured car carried on its way and vanished. Alsop and Schley were furious with Bazooka, but they were mere lieutenants and therefore outranked by him, so they could say nothing. Nancy, to their astonishment, seemed unperturbed. Privately she had decided that, since the Germans had taken no action, the incident no longer mattered. It had angered her momentarily, but she was too fond of Bazooka to show her anger publicly – anyway, she excused him, everyone made slips some time or other.

  ‘Well,’ muttered Bazooka defiantly, ‘we’re here to kill Germans, aren’t we?’

  ‘Kill maybe one or two,’ Alsop whispered to Schley, ‘when there are a whole twelve thousand just over the way! You know, I don’t see why the Yankee part of this mission hasn’t driven Gertie crazy.’

  They completed their five-hundred-kilometre journey, did their work with the southern group and then drove casually back to the forest of Tronçais. Safe again in their yellow tent, Alsop summed up his emotions on the long trip to Schley.

  ‘If those British hadn’t been so calm about everything at the time, I reckon I’d be ready now for the nut-house.’ In fact, the compliment should have been reversed. The British knew the territory perfectly – were well aware of when they needed to worry and when they could travel in calm confidence. But the two Americans possessed none of this reassuring local knowledge, and yet constantly, without showing any fear, they drove long distances through districts that must, to them, have seemed nightmares of danger. It had become one of the strengths of the mission that each of the Allied officers had at last learnt to trust implicitly the specialised knowledge of the others. Thus Nancy could admire the Americans’ superb skill with weapons, they her generalship, or their wireless operator’s devotion, and they could all admire together the results they were achieving, because, at last, they had brought it about that the tired and retreating German had nowhere any longer where he could rest even his head in peace.

  19 SILENT KILLING

  Their biggest day in the forest of Tronçais was undoubtedly 15 August 1944. On that day the Allies landed (rather belatedly) in the South of France and Germany’s fate was sealed. The Maquis were not now merely asked to sabotage and disrupt, they were honour-bound to attack whenever and wherever they could. Not a day passed without a violent skirmish of some kind.

  Naturally there were casualties and Nancy, busier than ever with messages to London and parachutages, was delighted to accept the services of a Resistance doctor called Pierre Bellay.

  Bellay set up a hospital for wounded Maquisards in a small Maquis-controlled village and thereafter all the group’s casualties went to him. It was a weight off the minds of both Nancy and Denis, particularly Denis, that this duty no longer rested on their squeamish shoulders.

  On the night of the fifteenth Hubert received his uniform from England. Determined also to show the flag, Nancy then displayed her pips too. She carried the rank of captain and her neat collar, khaki tie, her purposeful-looking army slacks and her obvious pride in at last being able to assume her true identity filled the Maquisards with delight. Wherever she went after that she was accorded all the privileges of her rank, salutes being not the least of them.

  She celebrated by attending the demolition of two bridges, one rail, one road, in Cosne-d’Allier.

  Enthusiastically the whole town turned out to watch the Maquis blow up their main means of communication with the outside world, chattering among themselves about how only a few weeks ago this same group, led by the same woman, had ‘controlled’ one of their trains.

  ‘This,’ declared Alsop, ‘must be the most popularly attended demolition ever!’

  The Spanish Maquisards, who had learnt their destructive trade in the war against Franco in 1938, industriously dug holes and laid their wads of TNT and plastic. Numerous other warriors were busy keeping guard . . . at any moment German convoys might approach. But Nancy’s task turned out to be solely to try to persuade the locals not to stand gaping at the Spaniards on the edge of a bridge that was about to be blown to eternity.

  As fast as she drove one lot off one end, another lot would wander on from the other. Children and old men were the worst offenders. Finally she carried all the children off, one at a time, and then delivered the old men a fearful blast of dirty Marseille-ese. Abruptly the roadway and approaches were cleared and, to the resounding applause of their large audience, the Maquis blew the bridge.

  Attacked from both west and south, the Germans were at last desperately trying to withdraw a large part of their garrison forces back into Germany, through the Belfort Gap. Tardivat decided to prod them on their way by seizing Montluçon, whose depleted German garrison now numbered only about three thousand.

  Nancy and Hubert went into conference with him and quickly, with about three hundred Maquisards, the attack was launched fr
om several divergent points.

  Whilst Schley and Alsop led a group of men with bazookas (which they used like mortars, lobbing rockets into the old fortified areas of the town) Nancy charged round the perimeter, from one vantage point to another, in her Citroën car.

  A message was given to her at one of them that Tardivat had managed to seize half the barracks occupied by the Germans and that, ‘if she wanted some amusement, she should join him with a bazooka and help him fight the other half’.

  ‘How do I get to him?’ she asked. They indicated on their map a bridge that crossed a canal. ‘He is just beyond that,’ they told her.

  With her driver she raced to the bridge they had pointed out. There was a roadblock at the far side of it, behind which she knew would be Tardivat’s men. Halting her car on the bridge itself she got out and walked towards the roadblock. Bullets sang out around her head.

  ‘Hey,’ she shouted indignantly, ‘it’s me!’

  More bullets, whining off the parapet and stinging the cobbled road. Only then did she realise that she had been directed to the wrong bridge and that she was, in fact, on German soil.

  Her driver had already whirled the little Citroën round in its tracks and as she careered towards him he started to move. The instant she flung herself in through the door he held open for her, he roared off, machine-gun fire now flailing round them. Miraculously they were not killed. They got fresh instructions, and more accurate ones, and then found that Tardivat held the bridge and the area adjacent to the one she had actually crossed. This time, circumspectly, she went to his position on foot, carrying the bazooka he had requested.

  ‘ Quelles andouilles ,’ he bellowed at her as she walked towards him. ‘You stupid sausage. Only an Anglaise would do anything as silly as that!’

  ‘Sausage yourself,’ she told him good-humouredly. ‘What do you want the bazooka for?’