LITMIR.BIZ

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      Aided by bright moonlight, which illuminated the narrow road through the forest, the column of jeeps had a relatively easy first morning, heading without lights for open country dotted with small farming communities. Some of the villages, as the men knew, were still occupied by the Germans and so had to be approached carefully; others had been freed but were surrounded by the advancing and retreating armies, which meant that the Germans could return unexpectedly; and an increasing number were well out of the danger zone and preparing to give a heart-felt welcome to their Allied liberators.

      Progress was frustratingly slow because one jeep was out ahead on point, its crew having been given the dangerous job of acting as advance scouts, prepared to either engage the enemy or, if possible, return unseen to the main column and report the enemy’s presence to Captains Callaghan and Greaves, who would then jointly decide if they should attack or simply make a detour. The brief, as outlined by Callaghan, was to avoid engaging the enemy whenever possible and instead reconnoitre the area for a suitable base camp from where they could move out to find the Maquis.

      In fact, more than once the men on point in the jeep – Sergeant Lorrimer as driver, Jacko on the twin Vickers K guns and Rich on the Browning heavy machine-gun – noticed the glow of camp-fires and oil lamps in the forest and assumed them to be from German camps. Invariably, closer inspection, usually on foot, revealed this to be true and the men therefore always had to backtrack to meet up with the column behind and inform Callaghan and Greaves of the enemy presence. The column, now split into two, with Callaghan in charge of Group One and Greaves leading Group Two, would then take the nearest side road and make a wide detour around the enemy, to travel on unmolested.

      This was the situation for most of the first six hours, as they travelled through the night and early morning in the depths of the forest. By dawn, however, the trees were thinning out and they were emerging into open countryside with wide, rolling fields dotted with hamlets and crossed by a web of major and minor roads, including German military supply routes (MSRs).

      ‘It looks so peaceful out there,’ Callaghan said.

      ‘Except for that smoke on the horizon,’ Greaves replied. ‘It’s all happening there.’

      Now out in the open, they had to travel much more carefully. To get from one side of an MSR to the other, they usually drove alongside it, out of sight behind hedgerows or trees, until they came to where the road was crossed by a track. There they would wait until the track was inspected by the jeep on point; when it was reported clear, the column of jeeps, using the track, would cross at top speed. Once or twice the last of their jeeps crossed just as retreating German columns appeared along the MSR and headed towards them; but that first day, at least, they managed to push on unseen.

      The first village they came to was on the banks of the Loire. Arriving there just before noon, they were greeted by villagers, mostly women, children and elderly men who cheered, applauded and placed garlands of flowers around the soldiers’ necks. The soldiers then learned that they were the first Allied troops to arrive; that the Germans had only recently fled from this village; that three of the villages around it were still occupied by sizeable German columns; and that the Germans were reported to have recently fled from the next village along the SAS men’s route.

      As most of the soldiers settled down in the sunny village square to flirt with the bolder local girls while enjoying a lunch of fresh bread, cheese and calvados, all supplied by the grateful villagers, Callaghan and Greaves received a visit from the mayor and the sole remaining member of the Maquis. The mayor was a portly, good-humoured individual who gave them invaluable information about the German forces who had occupied the village. The Maquisard was a young man, Pierre, who wore shabby grey trousers, a torn tweed jacket, shoes with holes in the soles and a rakishly positioned black beret. With a stolen German semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, he grinned cockily as he told them, in French, that the rest of his Maquis friends had left the village in pursuit of the fleeing Germans and that he had been left behind to act as guide to the first Allied troops to arrive.

      ‘That means us,’ Callaghan said.

      ‘Oui, mon capitaine. I will be proud to serve.’

      ‘Ah, you speak English!’

      Pierre grinned and placed his index finger just above his thumb, leaving a tiny gap between them. ‘Only a little.’ Then, reverting to his own language, he said: ‘But your French, I notice, is excellent.’

      ‘It’s good enough,’ Callaghan said, though he spoke the language well, ‘I’m sure we’ll get by with it. What was it like with the Germans here?’

      Pierre shrugged and stopped grinning. ‘Not good, monsieur, but other villages had it worse. Here, though the Boche commandeered the best houses and took most of the food we grew, they were a disciplined bunch who neither harmed the older folk nor abused the women. They did take the few remaining young men away for forced labour in Germany, but as most of us knew they would do that when they came, we fled into the forest and made our own camps there.’

      ‘And were very successful at harassing the Germans,’ Greaves said diplomatically.

      ‘In a limited way only – at least until the invasion was launched. Before that, we had to be careful about coming out of the forest to attack the Germans, because if we did they would exact some terrible form of vengeance. Sometimes they shot three or four Frenchmen for every German shot by us, or even worse, in one case they herded every member of a village into the church and then set fire to it. So some of them have done terrible things, but here we were lucky.’

      ‘And your fellow Maquisards are now pursuing those same Germans?’

      ‘Sniping on them as they retreat. The main German supply route, along which they are retreating, runs through hilly, densely forested countryside. The Maquis are well protected by the trees and pick them off from the hills. This not only reduces the Germans in number, but also makes them constantly nervous. I wish I was there!’

      ‘You can be,’ Callaghan told him. ‘It’s imperative that we link up with the Maquis and learn all we can about the Germans’ movements and habits. If you act as our guide, you’ll be able to rejoin your companions.’

      ‘Then I’m your man, mon capitaine.’

      ‘Thank you, monsieur.’

      Callaghan glanced across the village square and saw that the SAS troopers not on guard at the edge of the forest encircling the village were sprawled around the fountain in the middle of the square, in the shade of the leafy trees, finishing off their bread and cheese, swigging calvados, and shamelessly flirting with the younger, bolder girls. The girls’ parents were looking on, not offended, simply thrilled to see the British soldiers here, scarcely believing that they were human like other men, and might seduce their daughters. The fountain itself,

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