Ten Thousand Eyes

Roger Deschambres, the plumber now remembered that some weeks previously, back in March while fixing the central heating in the Hotel de Rouen, the owner, a Swiss named Pierre Mayoraz had seemed sympathetic to the Resistance cause and Deschambres wasted no time in asking him to both provide a letter box service and accommodation for agents visiting Caen. Mayoraz agreed at once to provide free accommodation and a letter box was set up behind the bar in the hotel. The hotel location, just across the street from the railway station was ideal and soon P-2 agents would be transiting back and forth between Cherbourg, St. Lo, Honfleur and Le Harve, picking up reports from local P-0s and depositing the data as guests at Hotel de Rouen.

It's probably not the same building, but a search on Google Maps does indeed show a ‘Hotel de Rouen’ a few paces from the entrance to the Caen Railway Station.

Mid way through April 1942, the new ‘Centurie’ network was ready and operational. It was a superb feat of organisation to have it up and running in such a short time. Girard and Meslin had accomplished the task in just two weeks. They, nor any of their agents in the field, had any knowledge of how important their work was to become. The network agents all risked their lives – and the lives of their families - not knowing if their efforts would ever bear fruit in helping to free their beloved France.

The nerve centre of the network at Meslin’s office in the Department of Highways and Bridges building became very busy…half a dozen times a day, Meslin’s secretary Jeanne Verinaud would be startled as the door opened without warning, Lieutenant Karl Hoefa, the blond liaison officer from Kriegsmarine Wehr (Naval Defense) would walk in on a heated Resistance conference between Meslin and three or four agents.

Meslin knew what he was doing however, and had insisted that those agents visiting him openly at his office must be able to claim legitimate business. Duchez came to nose out painting contracts, Girard to discuss cement supplies and they all had become adept at translating Resistance talk into terms of lorry loads and labour gangs, with the first turn of the office door handle. Meslin even took out a life assurance policy with Harivel’s company, the premiums supplying a valid reason for the money that often changed hands over the desk.

At Least once a week Girard came, always in a hurry, always with a fresh batch of instructions, pounding the table and talking so fast that Jeanne Verinaud almost developed stenographer’s cramp taking notes.

The line of communication planned was not foolproof, but it was the best available. From the lanes and fields which ringed the Wall, the information would travel a risky 600 mile route to London.

An agent would see a new blockhouse under way, scribble down details on a scrap of paper headed with his cover name and drop it in the boiler at the Café des Touristes or seal it in a plain envelope and leave it behind the bar in the Hotel de Rouen. But that was only the beginning. Once a week Duchez or Harivel, the “postman,” had to clear the letter boxes and carry the grubby incriminating scraps, like the contents of some treacherous suggestion box, to Meslin’s office. Then Meslin would classify the information according to subject matter, welding it into a lengthy report for typing.

Most of the typing Jeanne Verinaud squeezes into office hours – the Gestapo were suspicious of lights burning late – putting aside her new Imperial (typewriter) in favour of an old four-bank Underwood that was kept locked in a filing cabinet in the washroom annexe.

‘Officially we’ve never reported the serial number of this machine,’ she told the approving Meslin.

‘If they ever captured one of our reports, they couldn’t trace it back to here.’

Once a fortnight the courier ran the reports to Paris, passing them to Girard or to Berthelot, the ex-diplomat, who appended the information that had come in from Touny’s O.C.M. agents all over northern France, before passing them to Renault.

It would be up to Renault then, either by Lysander pick-up from “Guardian Angle” or by maritime rendezvous, somehow to pile up all this information, plus the gleanings of his fourteen other networks, on Dewavrin’s desk in London.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

The courier chosen by Meslin to bring the reports from Caen to Paris was Maurice Himbert, who owned a motorbike repair shop. He had valid reasons for visiting Paris on a regular basis, picking up spare parts for his business.

Despite the early flush of intelligence, the flow soon slowed as, although fake identity cards were not in short supply, there remained the problem that only a handful of agents had valid reasons to visit the Forbidden Zone.

However, this all changed following the events which occurred on the night of Thursday 16th to Friday 17th April 1942.

Sometime during that night, an unknown group of saboteurs de-railed a German troop train near the station of Moult-Argences on the Paris-Cherbourg line. Nearly 30 soldiers were killed in the incident and dozens more injured. Incredibly, the Resistance group responsible repeated the attack a fortnight later on the 30th April and a smaller number of Germans were again also killed.

The station at Moult-Agences lies a mere 15kms or so from Caen and the reprisals which followed these two attacks would be felt in the city and surrounding districts.

Five hundred Communists, their names supplied by Vichy’s political police and five hundred Jews, who were easily identifiable by the Star of David sown onto their clothes, were deported and never seen again.

Of the seventeen conspirators who had given Torres such food for thought, three were shot on the 9th May in the yard of the 43rd Artillery Company Barracks. (I am not sure where this barracks was located, but I am assuming it to be in Caen). The remaining fourteen were transported for life.

Cinemas, sports grounds and restaurants were closed indefinitely and a 7pm to 6am curfew was imposed in the city. German attitude to locals changed to reveal true colours. All trains now carried a large black and red notice board with the wording:

‘WILL FROM NOW ON CARRY A PERCENTAGE OF CIVILIAN HOSTAGES’​

The Germans had of course to find their hostages for each train journey. Twenty per train were required. Busy housewives, arriving at the Caen Gare Centrale to visit relatives in Evreux or Lisieux, would find themselves herded, protesting, onto completely different troop trains, forced to endure not only the journey in the opposite direction to places like Cherbourg, but to stay overnight (expenses paid) in the commandeered Hotel de Cherbourg. Their only freedom was to choose the time of their return the following day.

Even staunch collaborators shied from this duty – but not a stocky ruddy-faced cement contractor named Gilbert Michel, one of Centurie’s most enterprising agents. Each week, whenever he could spare time, the obliging Michel reported to the Bureau Civil at the Prefecture for the journey as an example to the irresponsible traitors who were sabotaging peaceful co-existence.

If this was pitching it rather high, the Germans raised no objections; they were glad enough to find volunteers. Most other people in Caen had decided abruptly that their journeys were not really necessary.

Michel explained to Girard that normal travel on wartime trains meant you had to stand in cramped corridors, but hostages rode free in the first-class carriages directly behind the engine. There were risks of course – most Resistance attacks on trains at this stage were being carried out by Communists, whose ideologies had little regard for their fellow countrymen’s safety. Michel admited later that his recklessness did at times strike fear whenever a train suddenly braked or a jarred from poorly aligned track.

On arriving in Cherbourg Station, Michel would turn right along the Quai Caligny and then left onto the Place de Napoleon, overlooking the inner harbour, and walking free as air with a German pass in his pocket, to savor the salt breeze, would carefully note the distances between the heavily sandbagged machine-gun nests along the quays and where the minefields on the beaches begun and ended.

Gerard and Meslin were delighted. Centurie was at last developing impressive ‘eyes’.

…and one of the best eyes were that of a one-eyed agent named Fernard Arsene. He was the second plumber to join the network and had lost one eye when a central heating system had exploded back in the 1930s. Contentious but brave as a lion, he hated the invader with a passion few others possessed. Because the plumbing business was slack, he drove a truck delivering coal to German barracks around Caen and wherever he drove, his one eye missed nothing.

One late afternoon, sometime in that spring of 1942, Arsene received a call from a woman whose central heating had stopped working. She was located somewhere beyond the village of Evrecy. Arsene got in his old camionette and drove south along the D8 secondary road. Twice he was stopped at check points, and it occurred to him that if the job was a long one, he would be forced to make the twelve mile return trip in the dark.

Just south of Evrecy, the road ran level for about 900 yards with a new feature of the defenses – here the rich cow pastures had been transformed into the temporary dispersal airdrome at Ainchamps. Driving at a steady 20mph on the road bounded by a hawthorn hedge topped with tangled barbed wire, Arsene suddenly noticed a curious thing…the time was now 5:30pm and the low sun shone as a golden disc on the western horizon. A gaggle of JU-87s lay dispersed in the open. Despite the whole field being bathed in the glow of the setting sun, there was no answering glint from the wings of the Stukas.

Making an excuse to his customer for not having the correct tools, he returned again the following day and drove round all the lanes in the area until he found the real airdrome with the aircraft carefully hidden in small hangars within the treeline of a wood described in the book as being ‘over a square mile of woodland.’

The location of the real thing was sent to London that night.

I found this on Evrecy Airdrome from the PDF titled “Luftwaffe Airfields 1935 – 1945” by Henry L. deZeng IV on the www.ww2.dk site:

“EVRECY (FR) (49 06N – 00 30W)

General: landing ground in Normandy 13-14 SW of Caen. No records found of Luftwaffe flying units being stationed there after fall 1940.

Operational Units: I./St.G. 1(Oct 1940)?

Station Commands: FI.H.Kdtr. E 11/VII (Oct 1940 – Apr 1941).

Station Units: (on various dates – not complete): Gefechtsstand/III. Flakkorps (Jun 1944)”

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

New agents were now being recruited almost weekly. Many were to prove shining examples of the faith to which Dewavrin had spoken in London.

Two of these new agents were husband and wife, Rene and Olgrive Vauclin. Rene was a tiler by trade and it was this profession which led a German Pioneer officer to arrive at their door in a black Citroen, complete with driver, just after lunch one day in April 1942.

The German officer ordered Rene to come at once and they drove in silence through numerous lanes to the village of Bretteville L’Orgeulleuse which was located on the N13 north west of Caen.

The village was also in a direct line of sight with the main runway at Carpiguet Airdrome.

Waiting for him at the base of the church steeple was a Colonel of Pioneers, described in the book as an elderly man with a lined grey face.

The Colonel explained to Rene that he would be required to do work on the tower and the steeple. The tiler merely nodded and he went on:

‘I shall provide you with labour, monsieur, and with red lamps. You will install one of these red lamps on each of the four corners of the tower and wire them for electricity.’

‘A red lamp at each corner?’ Rene was thinking rapidly.

‘Exactly; now the steeple itself.’ Rene followed the Colonel’s outstretched finger and he could see the stone steeple pointing 160 foot into the blue sky overhead.

‘You see the weather vane?...very well then, at the extreme ends, two more red lamps.’

The implications hit Rene at just about the same time that the Colonel began elaborating, and they were considerable.

Five miles to the east lay the bomber airfield of Carpiguet. Rene was not in a position to know it, but thereon were several squadrons of Focke-Wulf fighter bombers, and currently heavily involved in the “Baedeker Raids”. These raids were designed to lower British civilian morale by destroying ancient landmarks in old English towns, such as centuries old cathedrals and churches. Exeter and Bath were both singled out for particular attention. The name came from the pre-war tourist guide book.

The Colonel of course kept all this from Rene, but he did explain to the tiler that the red lights on both the tower and steeple weather vane were a visual fix for homing aircraft, to be turned off immediately the last plane landed.

Rene was more astonished than ever when the Colonel further elaborated.

‘At the same time, we shall switch on our landing lights at St. Manvieu.’

Rene knew a little about this airstrip which lay about three miles to the south east.

I’m a little confused here, as on googling ‘St. Manvieu Airstrip’, it refers to Carpiguet – I’m assuming therefore that this strip was a close by ‘satellite’ strip for the main airdrome.

In any event, Rene now saw the plan which the Luftwaffe were intending to implement. If the RAF were to launch a nightime retaliatory raid against Carpiguet, they would find the lit up decoy strip at St.Manvieu and bomb open farmland whilst the Focke-Wulfs lay safely in the hangars at Carpiquet.

Rene spent the rest of the afternoon, aided by local labour, fixing the wiring like a good collaborator, hauling the lamps up to the belfry by means of winches. Later the Germans were good enough to drive him home, and just before 5pm, he was knocking on the door of Duchez the painter’s house. In due course, ‘St. Manvieu’ joined the list of non-existent airdromes which the Air Ministry was building up in London.

And while the RAF were not yet in a position to bomb Carpiguet, knowing it to be the real thing, neither had they wasted men and machines bombing ‘St. Manvieu’. Instead it was the Germans which had wasted time and labour building one more part to the Wall which fooled nobody. At this time, the RAF found it more profitable to drop baskets of pigeons over France.

It was one of those pigeons which set the scene for the next part of the war against the Wall.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

I had a look at the Saint Germain church in Bretteville L’Orgeulleuse and was surprised to see it's tower and steeple appears to have survived the Invasion!

I am assuming the conference between the German Colonel of Pioneers and Rene took place on the southern side of the tower as it appears in this street view to be the access side of the church for motor vehicles.

Regards,

Pat

 

The pigeon in question was found in the marshes north of Bayeux by two workmen.

Within German occupied France in that spring of 1942, possession of a racing pigeon was considered to be the same as being caught in possession of a radio transmitter and punishable by anything up to and including execution.

Dewavrin in London had been organising air drops of these birds in special baskets in several suitable parts of France and the RAF, as yet unable to mount large scale raids, had been only too happy to facilitate him in this endeavor. He used the birds to ease the burden on overworked radio frequencies. This worked relatively well until the Germans opened a pigeon school of their own in St. Lo.

The men, knowing the danger of possession, took the bird to the back door of a house in the town, knowing the house belonged to the parents of a young law student Jeanne Escolan. The workmen knew the girl could be trusted because just that day her parents had been arrested on suspicion of espionage.

Jeanne decided it was too dangerous to keep the bird in the house over night and brought it instead to a grain merchant named Lefort. The next day, she took the bird and cycled from Bayeux to Caen and knocked on the door of Rene and Olgrive Vauclin – Rene the tiler, the reader will recall, had installed the red lights on the Sainte Germain church tower and steeple in Bretteville L’Orgeulleuse.

When Olgvie opened the door of her house at 34 Rue St. Martin, she was astonished to see Jeanne.

‘You must be mad to come here on a day like this – why are you not in hiding? They’ll get you too.’

The girl only stood there, pale and tense. ‘Never mind all that. The pigeon must go.’

The procedure for pigeons was to pass the birds from one agent to another until it came to someone who had important information to send to London. The agent in possession of the information would then scribble a note and attached it to the racing band on the bird’s leg and release it in the early morning.

Olgrive Vauclin had important information. On one of periodic cycle trips round the countryside looking to buy butter and eggs, she had seen in the Bois de la Londe near Carpiquet airdrome, large concentrations of troops and tanks. These were identified as elements of the 24th Panzer Division, which had been tasked with establishing a defense west of a line between Caen and St. Nazaire.

At 5am the next morning, the Vauclins, having slept uneasily with the pigeon in their possession, rose and prepared to release the bird. Curfew still had ninety minutes to run and German revielle would not sound for another hour. Racing pigeons are temperamental in nature and this bird, sensing the tense atmosphere in the bedroom, broke free of Rene’s hands just as he was about to launch it up and outwards like he had seen the pigeon fanciers do.

Instead of flying upwards and away, the bird, together with the incriminating note attached to its leg band, fell like a stone from the upstairs window, disappearing from view.

The implications were stark and instantly appreciated by Rene and Olgvie – if the bird was dead on the street and a German patrol found it, all was lost.

Rene went downstairs to see if the bird was visible from the ground floor. No sign of the bird could be found and returning to the bedroom, Rene and Olgvie pondered what to do next. Just as it seemed all was lost, Olgvie spotted the bird on the roof of No. 25 across the street, sitting quite smugly and in perfect health.

Just two doors down the street on their side was located the Hotel Florida at No. 36 Rue St. Martin. Therein were billeted a score of infantrymen from the 716th Division. Soon these men would be waking. Finally, as the sun caught the bird in its early morning glare, the pigeon spread its wings and took flight to the immense relief of the two Resistants.

At 9:30 on the following Saturday night, crouched in the cellar of No. 32, beside a forbidden radio receiver, Olgvie heard the BBC announcer telling “Madame Marthe”, as the Underground knew Olgvie Vauclin, that her message had been received.

The pigeon had made it to its English dovecote.

Another piece of the Wall had crumbled.

The blue door of No.32 is clearly visible today in this Google ‘Street View’ – together with the former Hotel Florida, now known as Hotel Saint Etienne.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Meanwhile, Leonard Gille, the recruiting officer for the new ‘Centurie’ network had gone to a small, cramped studio off the rue Geole. He was there to interview a sculptor named Robert Douin, who like Duchez, was to become one of the colourful characters of the network.

But while Duchez was gay and insouciant, Douin is described in the book as ‘a man afire’ who made small attempt at concealing his emotions. He started the interview by asking Leonard in a fury of quivering prose:

‘Are to asking me to work for the English, m’sieu?’

Leonard replied that he was asking him to work for both France and humanity, but the peppery little sculptor, bearded with his hair poking in wild spikes from beneath his beret, was only partially mollified.

‘I must make this very clear to you monsieur. I am a Royalist. You may work for whom you please, but I shall be working for the King of France. I do not recognise the Republic of France, any more than I recognise the English.’

Leonard was so taken aback that he lost track of the complex historical reasoning whereby Douin held the English directly responsible for the French Revolution. However, he left the studio in no doubt that the sculptor found his bread and butter work extremely distasteful. Most of his commissions were to sculpt the head of the legendary woman called Marianne, the accepted symbol of the Republic, which appears over every public building in France.

A former Professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and the last of a long line of sculptors, Douin was a perfect addition to Centurie’s Caen cell. In the most sanctified way imaginable, he had endless opportunities to penetrate the Forbidden Zone. He was also a restorer of church statues.

In the first week of May 1942, Douin was scheduled to carry out repairs to the statues and carvings in the belfry of Notre Dame de Ranville. The weather was clear, without hint of haze, and Douin, who bicycled to and from his sites, worked undisturbed for several days, seeing few people apart from Abbe Georges Duhamel, the local priest.

North of Caen the land is flat and lonely and the only vantage points are the high belfries of the village churches. From the belfry of Notre Dame in the village of Ranville, 75 feet high, Douin could see all the land lying between Caen and the sea with vivid clarity.

Due north, two miles away on the secondary road running from St. Aubin d’Arquenay to Ouistreham, was the waterworks. Douin was glad he knew the landmark, for it helped him define precisely that only a hundred yards or so due north was a battery of short range 155s. He knew that type of gun from his experience in an artillery regiment. In addition to the 155s he noted a single gun which was of larger caliber but could not determine exactly the size from that distance. In addition, he noted the position of the barracks which housed the gun crews.

He spread a scrap of paper on the worn grey stone and began sketching intently. There was an observatory for the battery a little to the west, on the Colleville sur Orne road, and further on, at Colleville itself loomed the outline of the Charot factory. The sculptor had no idea what they manufactured there but teamwork with other agents later determined it was industrial alcohol for the Germans.

I assume, perhaps incorrectly, the present day water tower on the road from St. Aubin d’Arquenay to Ouistreham as seen here was also the site of the water works in 1942.

As Douin worked and chipped with mallet and chisel, he paused now and then to let his eyes wonder further across the landscape. Now he was looking south of Colleville, towards Benville, on the road back to Caen. Concrete works were going up there, the dark ant-like figures of the labourers teeming like an upturned nest. It looked like this site was also for artillery. He decided it would be up to Duchez to gain further information on this site from an agent amongst the workmen.

Almost certainly, the concrete works being described was the beginnings of the WN 17 ‘Hillman’ Complex which held up the advance on Caen for a crucial 24 hours on the 6th June two years later.

Closer in and to his right, Douin noted amongst the kingcups of the Orne River meadows, was another battery of 155s, which with an artillery man’s experience, he took to be of longer range that the first battery. Finally, he noted the positions of Flak batteries near Ranville bridge only a mile away from where he crouched in his high eyrie.

Douin took his findings back to his studio and worked them all onto a map, using an accepted military scale of one in fifty thousand, or just over one inch to the mile.

In addition to his own work, other information had come to him from Chateau and Deschambres by the time he was ready to deliver his work to Gille and he incorporated that additional intelligence onto the map as well. A munitions dump on the left hand side of the road running from Riva-Bella to the sea, and two more batteries of 155s with an anti-tank cannon, both going under concrete, eastwards along the coast from Riva-Bella.

The Wall seemed more guns than concrete and that, although they didn’t know it, was the pattern along its whole 2,000 mile length.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Despite these successes, Girard and Meslin were all too painfully aware of the overall slow rate of progress. Most of the intelligence gathered to date related to secondary defensive positions but almost nothing was known of the positions being built along the shoreline.

In addition, at this rate of progress, revisions to any changes the Germans made to positions already reported might not be known for some considerable time, if at all. The two men wondered if aerial reconnaissance might solve the update problem once the original locations became known through the work of Centurie’s agents. They assumed London would provide the answer to this question.

The answer, as it happened came from Duchez and what became known as the ‘Map and the Mirror’ incident.

Early in May 1942, a notice appeared on the board outside the Maire in Caen. Duchez noticed it around mid-morning on Thursday, 7th May and he stopped his battered grey camionette to read what it said. It was an invitation for decorators to submit estimates to the Maire in connection with minor repairs to be carried out at the headquarters of the Todt Organisation in the city. The final date for submission had been 5pm on the previous day.

Duchez sat and thought about it. The deadline suggested he had missed his opportunity but Duchez was never a man to underestimate his abilities to fool the Germans. In the dim lobby of the Maire, he made enquiries and was directed to the Bureau Civil, run by a Monsieur Postel, who told him:

‘All the estimates were in twenty four hours ago…but on the other hand, they haven’t told us yet that they have accepted any. You could always try going to them direct.’

From the Maire, Duchez turned left across the first intersection into the Avenue de Bagatelle. While the Todt Organisation in Caen was not the premier branch; the Normandy headquarters was located in St. Malo, they did have three buildings in the city. One was a dummy address, another for administering forward area personnel and the third for the Abteilung Technik, which dealt with mapping and works contracts. It was to this building which Duchez was directed.

The exact address is not stated in the book, but its obviously somewhere on the Avenue de Bagatelle. The building is described as ‘a four storey stone mansion faced in brick with stone sashed windows.’ Unfortunately, Google ‘street view’ shows quite a few buildings which fit that description, but my guess would be its No. 1 here.

Anyone able to confirm or correct?

Fifty yards from the main entrance, this street (Avenue de Bagatelle) was closed off by a barbed wire barrier and a sentry occupied a white and black box at the building. As Duchez approached, the sentry brought his rifle to the ready and shouted ‘Halten!’

As Duchez continued forward, the challenge was repeated with a demand for his ‘ausweis’ (ID). This time the rifle came hard against his ribs.

There followed an almost comic sketch wherein Duchez tried to make the sentry understand he was coming to enquire about the decorating contract by gesturing on the side of the sentry box as if he was putting up wall paper. The commotion attracted the attention of a second sentry who approached as Duchez was being pushed back by the first. The reaction of the second sentry was somewhat more brisk that the first. A savage blow from the flat of the hand struck Duchez and almost knocked him senseless. And to a running accompaniment of cuffs and kicks Duchez was hustled along the street through a moulded stone doorway and into a ground floor office.

That description of the entrance does seem to point to No. 1 in the above Google ‘street view’ but I’d still like confirmation if anyone knows. Thanks.

A torrent of German followed, too fast for Duchez to understand until at last a monocled Hauptbaufuhrer appeared with some knowledge of French. The German captain icily asked Duchez if he knew the penalties meted out to wretched Frenchmen who dared to poke fun at the Fuehrer. Duchez stared at the officer for a moment whilst the full savor of the jest hit him. Controlling himself with difficulty, Duchez explained that he had cast no aspersions on the Fuehrer, nor indeed on house painters in general. He himself was a house painter in search of work.

The Hauptbaufuhrer began to chuckle dryly, dismissed the sentries and sent an orderly for the junior officer in charge of the painting estimates.

A young officer led him up two flights of stairs explaining it was a simple painting job involving two offices on the second floor. Would Duchez submit an estimate?

The painter thought fast. He could gauge pretty accurately what his competitors would be charging. They would take only a small margin of profit, because work was scarce and anyone who did a good job for the Todt Organisation might expect to be called upon again.

Duchez breathed a silent apology to his competitors and decided for the sake of the network this was one job that would have to be done at a loss.

‘Twelve Thousand Francs’ Duchez declared to the officer, conscious that this amount was at least one-third below anyone else’s estimate and before the officer even opened his mouth to speak, he knew that the job was his.

‘You will report in person,’ the Oberbaufuhrer told him, ‘to Bauleiter (Todt Major) Schnedderer.’

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Major Schnedderer is described as being ‘a bald, powerfully built man with a thick crease of duelling scar on his right cheek.’

Wearing the silver-lined Todt uniform collar and swastika brassard, Schnedderer received the painter jovially in his second floor office. Then he began to expound at length on the patterns he had envisaged. Blue horsemen carrying flags on a light yellow background might look good. Or silver cannons against a background of navy blue.

Wallpaper, like most other items, was in short supply, but Duchez promised to return the next day with some likely samples. Later in the evening Duchez met with Dumis and Deschambres when they met in the Café de Touristes and told them he had high hopes that much might come of his new contract with the Todt Organisation. Dumis begged his friend to be careful.

Duchez brushed aside Dumis’s concerns.

‘Now look mona mi, I am Duchez. I can do things with the Germans that others cannot do. Why? Simply because they think I am all sorts of a cretin, and they don’t care what they say in front of me.’

Then seeing “Albert” sitting in one corner, lost in thought over a cognac, he did not neglect to nod to him politely. “Albert” was an elderly German Hauptmann, whose real name they never knew; the only German who ever used the Café de Touristes, he had frequented it long before the network was formed. At first the agents had mis-trusted him profoundly, giving the café a wide berth, but carefully laid traps had revealed that the man neither spoke nor understood a word of French.

And in a strange irrational way Duchez and the rest now welcomed “Albert’s” visits; his presence was soothing rather than otherwise, and he was such a good front that the network’s business could be discussed freely before him. In turn the shy elderly man seemed to derive comfort from watching what he evidently believed were the little traders of a French town, gossiping about life over a glass of ordinaire.

Soon after 10 o’clock on Friday, 8th May 1942 Duchez duly presented himself at the Todt building. This time he had no trouble in gaining access to Schnedderer, and the major began to pore over the pattern books, sometimes grunting as one caught his eye. Duchez was standing facing him on the other side of his paper littered desk. Schnedderer was debating between two particular patterns when a knock came on his door.

Still turning the pages of the pattern book, he called “Come in”.

A junior officer, whom the painter had not seen before, entered carrying what looked like a thick pile of papers. A “Heil Hitler” and a click of heels. Still browsing, Schnedderer said absently “Put them down there,” and then, a minute later, “Danke schin, Oberbaufuhrer, I was waiting for those.” As he put the pattern book aside and began to unfold the pile of papers lengthwise, Duchez saw from the corner of his eye that they were not papers but maps.

Duchez stood quite still, watching, but after a moment it was obvious that Schnedderer, studying the maps intently, had temporarily forgotten his existence. Ostensibly the painter went on staring at the cypress trees outside the window, with the expression of amiable idiocy that he always wore when dealing with the Germans, but all the time his heart was pounding.

The major had now thrown back his head to study a section of the map he now raised and held at arm’s length. Duchez could see plainly some of the details through the paper outlined in reverse. In an instant he recognised the mirrored outline of the Seine estuary at Quillebeuf in the far corner and, beyond it, the Risle, winding down to Pont-Audmer; the coastline, smooth and rounded as far as Honfleur, then plunging abruptly downwards to the fashionable watering places, Trouville and Cabourg.

With an odd sense of hysteria, Duchez realised he was looking at a Todt Organisation map of the coastline of Normandy.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Still dazed from the possibilities, Duchez saw Schnedderer replace the top map from the pile, push the maps to the left hand corner of his desk nearest Duchez, and return to the pattern book.

Then another knock on the office door. This time it was a Truppfuhrer (Todt Sergeant) who entered, repeating something which sounded like a message, which Duchez could not catch. Whatever it was, it made Schnedderer get up, turn his back on the painter and open a door which led to an inner office immediately behind his desk. The Truppfuhrer withdrew, and Schnedderer, looming in the doorway with his back to the room, one hand propped on the jamb, seemed to be dictating to a clerk.

Duchez was left alone with the maps.

Cautiously, as if it had been a red hot stove-lid, Duchez lifted the top one. It was printed, by the ozalide system of mimeograph, on deep blue cartographic paper, the great red letters:

‘SONDERZEICHUNGEN – STRENG GEHEIM’ (‘Special Blueprint – Top Secret’)​

Duchez thought for a moment that he was going to be ill; although the map was too bulky to risk opening out in full, it seemed to be a blueprint for defense, right enough, though of what order he had no time to find out. Chance phrases like “Blockhauss” caught his eye and “Sofort-program” (highest priority construction).

He cast a scared glance towards the door, but Schnedderer was still dictating. He took three steps backwards across the room, still holding the map, and there was the fireplace; that was no good, but above it was a heavy mirror, perhaps two feet square, with a chased gilt frame, like an oil painting. With his right hand Duchez slid the map behind the mirror lengthways so that the inward cant of the frame prevented it from falling. Then treading lightly, he went back and took up his old innocent stand by the desk.

Then he just waited for Schnedderer to finish dictating, which was the worst time of all. It had not even occurred to him to check whether the maps differed; if they did then the loss might be discovered before he was even out of the building. In the back of his mind was the idea that somehow, at some future date, he could abstract the map without anyone knowing, but beyond a fervent prayer that he might leave the building alive he had no other plans.

Almost before he knew it, Schnedderer had closed the inner door and was back at the desk again, selecting two patterns and making it plain the interview was over.

‘Monday then’ said the major, returning to his papers without even glancing at the maps again, apparently suspecting nothing.

Duchez walked two flights of stairs down to street level quivering with fear, waiting for something to hit him. Nothing did and feeling a lot older than his forty years, he went to the Café des Touristes and had a drink. He felt he had earned it.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

In Paris during this same period of early May 1942, Renault had other worries besides Girard’s new ‘Centurie’ network in Caen.

Subsol, the radio operator had talked.

Here I have to be careful as this man seems to be a controversial figure in the Resistance history. In the book, the author Richard Collier elaborates further:

‘…not under torture, which would have demanded compassion, but quietly and exhaustively, as part of a bargain with the Gestapo and the waking nightmare had begun.’

I have seen other accounts of this man’s fate after capture – see this article on the maitron.fr site. The article states Roger Subsol was executed a year later at Mont-Valerien on the 13th May 1943. His name appears on the monument to the dead and deportation in Courbevole and on the bell monument of Mont-Valerien. This information is not included in the book ‘Ten Thousand Eyes’, the subject of this thread.

In any event, the results for Renault in Paris were catastrophic. The list of contacts Roger Subsol had been captured with was expanded by Gestapo torture. Jean Pelletier, who did the Confrerie’s micro-films, copying every document that went to London, had been dragged fighting from his studio in Asnieres; Dumont, the ex-fighter pilot, who had supplied details for the British raid on Bruneval (Operation Biting) and others, known only to Renault’s lieutenants.

The one consolation was that Roger Subsol had never met Renault. But others, who had been arrested in the fiasco did know him and he knew that by the law of averages that one of them would crack under torture and reveal his identity.

Renault kept Edith and the children, still in Brittany with Madame Le Crom-Hubert, a trusted family friend, ignorant of the mounting danger. With cold, clear fatalism he gave himself a fortnight at most.

His radio link with London hung by a tenuous thread. Papa Fleuret, the pilot of the port, had sent a transmitter from Bordeaux, and it was set up in an office near the Porte St. Martin gate, but within twenty four hours, a detector van was seen prowling around the square looking to locate it. Since then the transmitter had stayed there, silent and useless. Even the reserve equipment depots that Julitte had organised couldn’t e touched, because Subsol had known the addresses and they would now be watched.

Only one radio remained intact, at the house of an agent named Jean Tillier in the Avenue Mozart, and with this transmitter Renault signaled Dewavrin to send replacements as priority. But even this plan misfired. An aircraft flew the new sets over two days later and reported them dropped as planned; however the radios never reached the drop zone in the Aisne countryside that Renault's reception committee had setup.

With only one radio, aerial pickups were almost at a standstill and meantime dispatches were piling up.

In London, in an attempt to ease the pressure on Renault, Dewavrin had arranged the purchase of a fishing boat in Lorient, which could operate legitimately in part of the fishing grounds between Isle des Glenans and Tresco in the Scilly Isles, though the Germans restricted how far the French boats could roam in these waters.

Dispatches would now be only picked up by Lysander from the “Guardian Angle” landing strip near Rouen during periods of full moon. During the new moon periods the N51, a British trawler, manned by a crew of ten, disguised as a Camaret fishing vessel, would pick the dispatches up at a rendezvous with Renault’s new craft.

The new boat could not be described in glowing terms. Renault traveled down to Lorient by train to inspect it and was met on the station platform by Alex Tanguy, his local agent.

‘Well, I’ve done what you wanted, I’ve got the boat, but it wasn’t easy, don’t think it’

They walked down to the harbour and along the quay, until finally the agent said gruffly,

‘Well – that’s her.’

Renault felt his heart sink. Never in his most pessimistic moments had he pictured a boat as totally unsuitable as what lay in the water before them. She was about 35 ft long with a fore-deck, the paint long since chipped from her sides and the white stains of salt crusted on her hatches and lockers. She looked as if one lively spring squall would put pay to her for good. At her masthead the Tricolour fluttered wanly above the furled rust-coloured sail. Worn lettering on her port bow identified her as CC.2900 the “Deux Anges” (Two Angles) out of Concarneau.

They went aboard, the little man’s nose bridling at the odor.

‘What,’ he said finally, ‘did they use her for?’

‘I don’t know. Lobster, I think – or conger eel fishing. Something like that.’

Renault looked her over hopelessly, the dead feeling of despair like a weight on his chest. With a 20 hp Beaudouin engine to help out, Alex was explaining, she could make thirteen knots, but Renault, rummaging vainly for a hiding place suitable for documents or agents, scarcely heard him. Apart from the lockers, about six feet by three and a half by two, there was scarcely room for a ship’s cat to hide, even supposing a cat had condescended to patronise her.

Restraining himself with difficulty, he said:

‘Alex, I know it can’t be easy, but don’t you think – I mean – surely there was some other boat?...’

But Alex said obstinately that there hadn’t been. She was seaworthy, he had paid 75,000 francs for her and he now proposed rounding up a crew in the nearby fishing village of Pont-Aven.

‘Let’s hope their at least as seaworthy,’ said Renault acidly. ‘When can I arrange a rendezvous with London?’

‘About 20th May, I should think. I want to overhaul the engine first.’

Renault went back to Paris by train. A sea link with London was not much, but at least he could send a detailed report of his plight to Dewavrin, something not possible by radio and all the dispatches which had been piling up in Paris since the beginning of April could go too.

On the 15th, if he was still alive, he would travel back to Lorient to supervise the rendezvous.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Now came the second part of Duchez’s endeavor; how to safely remove the map from behind the mirror.

He duly reported on Monday, 11th May at 8:30 at the Todt Organisation office armed with buckets and rolls of wall paper. For about two hours, he worked washing the walls down to the plaster, singing abominably through his nose until an outraged orderly came and told him to stop.

The painter apologised profusely and asked to see, when it was convenient of course, Bauleiter Schnedderer. To his surprise, he was told that the major had been transferred to St. Malo and a new officer was now in charge of the Caen office, Bauleiter Keller.

The rest of the day Duchez spent in deep thought, depressed at this unfortunate turn of events. He even wondered if the transfer of Schnedderer had anything to do with the missing map. He dismissed this thought as he reasoned he would have been rounded up for questioning if the missing map had been noticed.

Resourceful as ever, Duchez formed a plan that night as he lay in bed. On Tuesday, returning once more to the scene of his crime and asked to see the young Oberbaufuhrer in charge of the painting. When the officer appeared, he asked him, with great deference, when Bauleiter Keller would be ready for him to begin.

‘Begin what?’ asked the young officer. ‘Why the papering of course,’ answered Duchez innocently. The arrangement had been that sometime on the Tuesday, he would also paper Major Schnedderer’s office… Bauleiter Keller would know all about it he assured the puzzled officer.

He waited half an hour while the young officer made inquiries, before the man came back and said curtly that Duchez was mistaken; the requisition showed nothing but the papering of two offices on the second floor.

‘It wouldn’t be on the requisition,’ Duchez pointed out. ‘It was a last minute decision of Bauleiter Schnedderer’s, but he certainly wrote down some details on a scrap pad.’

Anxious to settle the question one way or the other, the Oberbaufuhrer beckoned Duchez upstairs, and within a few minutes, his heart pounding, he was ushered into the office with the mirror over the fireplace.

An uncomprehending N.C.O., apparently Schnedderer’s chief clerk, was brought into the argument. Soon he heard a voice asking irritably,

‘What is all this nonsense about wallpaper?’

And Bauleiter Keller came out of the inner office to investigate the fuss.

More explanations. More mutual incomprehension. Keller then told Duchez that the budget did not allow the decorating of his office at this time.

Duchez, in suitable astonishment, said that there must be some misapprehension – he had offered to paper the room for free, as a gesture of good will and Bauleiter Schnedderer had done him the honour of accepting.

Both the Oberbaufuhrer and the Truppfuhrer now looked a little put out, in the manner of men who had too hastily misjudged another’s motives.

Bauleiter Keller, his face wreathed in smiles, slapped the painter on the back and said in measured but execrable French, ‘Vois etes un bon francais’.

Unfortunately, Keller said, the papering could not begin that day. He also asked how long the job would be likely to take, and Duchez, thinking fast, said two days. Arrangements were made for the office to be cleared of furniture when work was finished for the day, but Duchez, ever the helpful, good citizen, said hastily that there was no need for that, If the furniture was just moved to the centre of the room, he could cover it with his own dust sheets and work perfectly well.

At 8am, on the morning of Wednesday, 13th May 1942, Duchez moved into the office with the mirror over the fireplace and started work with no one to disturb him.

Duchez knew how to handle the Germans.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Marcel Girard arrived in Caen from Le Mans on the 5:30pm train on Wednesday, 13th May 1942 with no knowledge of Duchez’s coup with the Todt map. He had arranged to meet with the painter in the Café des Touristes that evening.

A few of Centurie’s other agents had drifted in to the café earlier in the afternoon, but as yet there was no sign of Duchez. The hot topic at the domino table was how to safely extract the map from Keller’s office – if indeed it existed at all. It was a well known fact that Duchez was prone to telling tall yarns and only Leon Dumis, staunchly loyal to his friend, had implicit faith in its existence.

“Albert” had also come into the café during the meeting, hanging up his greatcoat on the coat hanger by the door, ordered a cognac and sat down a few tables away.

The group were not expecting Girard and towards 5pm they were on the point of adjourning the meeting when Duchez finally ambled into the café. He did not immediately join the group and seemed a little uneasy.

He ordered a calvados and finally joined the group but then immediately got up again and went to the door. The domino players could feel the tension mounting.

In the doorway Duchez was watching the Boulevard des Allies. Across the roughly paved street, the flower market was in full swing beneath the Eglise St. Pierre. All seemed well to the unaided eye but Duchez sensed something was amiss. Then he saw the black Citroen with police markings nose it’s way into the square. Two men in raincoats and grey felt hats were sitting silently in the back.

Duchez came back into the café, humming, as he often did, loudly and discordantly.

‘With you in a moment, my friends.’ He said. ‘I need cigarettes.’ Eventually he sat down with the group with a pack of crumpled Gauloises.

‘You appear to have done a good job.’ Harivel said. ‘We have been here an hour discussing how to get the map out of the Todt building.’

Duchez replied almost mildly, ‘I have the map.’

No one spoke. Almost instinctively, they glanced at “Albert,” but the Hauptmann had not moved.

Then Harivel said in a cracked voice, ‘Not here, for heaven’s sake? You must get outside…’

‘No time,’ the painter replied. ‘The Gestapo are outside. There’s no time to do anything now but sit tight. And play dominos.’

Harvel replied for the group. ‘Why are they outside? Do they suspect you?’

‘I don’t think so. They may have followed me in a routine way, but no one seems to have missed the map yet. That’s what seems so strange. Prenez garde, mes amis – here they come.’

Everyone bent diligently over the domino board as the Gestapo car slowly drove past the café.

Just before the group could question Duchez further, he got up in tandem with “Albert” and the two men almost collided at the coat stand. Bewildered at his actions, the group saw Duchez beg “Albert’s” pardon, relieve him of the greatcoat, which the German had lifted from the coat stand and helped him into it. Gratified, “Albert” inclined slightly from the waist, wished Paul’s wife who was behind the bar good afternoon and left the café.

Before Duchez could explain his actions, Girard arrived and joined the group. Over the course of the next few minutes, during which a group of German soldiers also entered the café and stood at the bar drinking, Duchez recounted his exploits with the map and the mirror to his chief.

Then Girard said ‘And you brought it here!..instead of putting it in the boiler!’

‘Give it to me quickly; the sooner I can get this to Paris, the better I shall like it.’

Duchez, ignoring the group of Germans at the bar, passed the bulky envelope to Girard, who had some difficulty in getting it into his pocket.

The chief went on ranting, ‘...and next time use your head a little; suppose the Gestapo had come in just now and found that on you. We would all have been finished.’

‘The Gestapo would have searched in vain.’ The painter replied.

Duchez had secretly placed the map in “Albert’s” greatcoat pocket when he first noticed the Citroen outside in the square. Then, when the Hauptmann went to leave, Duchez made the excuse of helping him on with the coat and recovered the map once more.

‘Your insanity is unquestionable,’ Girard with a flash of anger, then grinning broadly added, ‘but so also is your courage.’

I don’t know why, but I have a picture in my mind of “Papa Boule” the French locomotive driver in the 1964 film ‘The Train’ played by Michel Simon when I think of Duchez. The two were probably very different in appearance but both shared the same tenacity of spirit, and I can see the same gestures of determined indifference to danger shown by Papa Boule in the film when reading the descriptions of Duchez’s actions here in ‘Ten Thousand Eyes.’

As a further aside, a French co-worker of mine told me recently, when I mentioned the story of the ‘map and the mirror’ that it had been made into a film at some time in the past. He could’t recall the name, but I would like to see it if it’s available.

Also, the exact location of the Café des Touristes now seems to be across the square from the Eglise St. Pierre church in Caen. In an earlier post above, I stated the address given in the book to be 73 Boulevard des Allies. I’m trying to tie the location down in Google ‘street view’ by looking around from this spot…not sure though as the street junction makes the description difficult to match up and the Google Maps address pin seems to be in the middle of the street.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

In wartime, the Paris Express departed the Gare Centrale at Caen punctually at 6pm. On that same evening, 13th May 1942, the map began it’s fantastic journey to London, when with ten minutes to spare, Girard boarded the train.

Traveling second class, he felt a certain feeling of solid reality with the envelope containing the map wadded in his breast pocket. The hiding place was another of Girard’s ‘normal’ precautions, based on acute observation. On the train, the Gestapo or railway police might demand papers or search your luggage as a matter of routine. But they had to be deeply suspicious before they ordered you to turn out your pockets.

Duchez had done a good job in obtaining the map; now it was up to him to get it and all the other dispatches he carried, past the check points at the Gare St. Lazare.

The chances of being stopped on arrival in Paris were perhaps a hundred to one against. Then the map must be copied and passed to Renault, but first he had to get it to his apartment. For a brief moment Girard felt the enormity of what they were doing. His target was the Normandy sector of the Atlantic Wall, but who knew, he wondered, where or even if the Allies would land in France. Were they risking their lives for nothing and wasn’t it possible their aerial reconnaissance had already found most of the information already anyway?

It was a brief moment of doubt, not uncommon amongst all the Centurie agents.

The train pulled into the Gare St. Lazaire just before 10pm, and Girard walked briskly amongst the hurrying crowds and the bellying steam, clutching his overnight bag, keeping well in the centre of the throng as he passed the barrier.

One outside the station, it was more difficult to appear one of the crowd. Small knots of people scurried in the gloom, anxious to beat the 10pm curfew. Girard forced himself to walk at an even pace. He passed a group of feldengendarmerie and for a moment, one of them seem to hesitate. Girard felt his heart pounding and then he was out in the cool night air, unchallenged, with a million stars glowing gently over the white cupola of Sacre-Couer.

It was now too late to to consult Berthelot or Colonel Touny as per normal procedure, so he would have to bring the map and the other dispatches home. Meanwhile the curfew was due any second and outside the Printempts department store he hailed a velo-taxi and gave the man his address.

His apartment, or rather apartments, were on the Rue Cardinal Lemonine, high up on the left bank of the Seine. Once the velo had laboured painfully up the cobbled incline and the high stone archway of No. 71 came into sight, he felt better.

I found the address on Google Maps here and there is still in place the archway over the entrance gateway. I also note with interest, the plague on the wall which indicates James Joyce was in residence somewhere in building during his many years in Paris prior to the fall of France in 1940.

Having walked briskly up the alleyway we see in the ‘street view’ link above, he entered a courtyard with a modern apartment block. Having reached the sixth floor. In the hallway, the doors of three apartments faced, two at right angles to the third. He did not pause at the first, which was his official residence. He then unlocked the door of the second apartment and went in, being careful to re-lock the door.

He switched on the light and sat down to take his first look at Duchez’s map. The first thing which struck him was the size of it. Then he realised the marking text was in German, a language he could not read. However it was clear the map ran from just below Cherbourg to the mouth of the Seine. He saw words in print which read ‘Flammenwefer’ and ‘Grossprogram’ but had no way of translating these to read ‘Flame-thrower’ and ‘Large scale construction’. After a few minutes of further frustration, he refolded the map and slid it down behind the padded window seat. Then, knowing that the Gestapo possess skeleton keys which could open any door in Paris, he quickly left the middle apartment, locking the door and entered the third, which was facing the hallway and offered a view through the keyhole all the way to the head of the stairs.

A Resistant stayed alive longer knowing such things as these.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Next morning, the 14th May 1942, Girard took the map to Berthelot’s apartment on the Boulevard Flandrin, but despite his diplomatic past, Berthelot’s German was not much better than Girard’s. In turn he took the map to Colonel Touny’s small office, camouflaged as a Red Cross branch office, opposite the Pompe Metro Station.

At last the true value of the map became apparent to all. As the Colonel translated the German wording, they became aware of just how detailed the map was. The minutest detail of every coastal defense in the hundred miles between Quillebeuf and Cherbourg, together with troop dispositions were shown on a scale of 1:50,000. The one thing which both dismayed the Colonel and elated him at the same time was just how the Germans had progressed the Atlantic Wall in Normandy, much further that anyone could have dreamed. True, there were sizable gaps – but, on the debit side, a truly mighty concentration of Stuetzpunkt (strongpoints) on the coast above Grandchamps les Bains.

My note: in 1972 Grandchamps les Bains changed its name to Grandchamps-Maisy, so the strongpoint being described is today known as the Maisy Battery (WN83 and WN84) and site of Gary Sterne’s museum.

Even machine gun nests were shown all along the cliff tops at the seaside resorts north of Caen and another strongpoint in the village of Langrune, where Duclos and Beresnikoff had watched the preparations for Operation Sealion two years previously.

I take this strongpoint to be mis-spelled in the book, referring to the Longues-sur-Mer Battery instead.

Touny came to a decision. ‘I think this may be the most important thing we have ever got hold of. We must have it copied and passed to to the Confrerie Notre-Dame before the day is out’.

But to copy the map quickly became a fresh problem.

Until the arrest of Jean Pelletier, Renault’s expert, the system had been simple:

Plans and dispatches had been micro-filmed in his studio at Asnieres, the copy retained until the original reached London and then destroyed. Now, anything in the nature of a map or drawing would have to be copied by a trained cartographer and it was a stroke of the purest luck that only a few weeks previously that Renault had put Berthelot in touch with a two man team; an architect named Rene Bourdon and Paul Mollet, an industrial draughtsman.

Berthelot took the map to them before the morning was out and pressed them to make a rough reduced scale drawing within the next few hours. He treated it as matter of routine urgency, not, in fact, realising how desperately urgent it was. Renault was leaving for Brittany and the sea liaison the next night.

By 4pm, with the enemy all around him, Renault was drinking coffee on the terrace of a café in the Avenue Carnot. Across the street German soldiers on leave were clustered round a revolving rack, admiring coloured postcards of the Champs-Elysees; a few hundred yards away the red and black of the swastika snap-snapped in faint breeze atop the Arc de Triomphe. Presently Berthelot dropped into a seat beside him and looking very excited, he passed him a thick buff envelope containing the map.

‘There is something London may be very pleased to see.’ And lowering his voice, continued ‘a map from our friend ‘Malherbe. He got it through the help of the government engineer in Caen.’

The rendezvous of the ‘Deux Anges’ with the English trawler was timed for the following Wednesday, 20th May. Alex had hired a crew of three without trouble and now it only remained to confirm the rendezvous with Dewavrin in London at the weekend.

But Renault was haunted by fears and doubts which he could not dispel: the sense that the Abwehr were closing in, the memories of Pelletier and Dumont and now Francois Faure, his No. 2, only recently returned from London but pounced on by the Gestapo in the Boulevard Montparnasse that same morning. God alone knew what tortures the Germans had devised to break them. Under the circumstances Renault can be excused from paying little attention to what Berthelot was telling him about the map.

However, at least he knew there would be no difficulty in getting the map to London. That aspect had been settled. The map would go, along with all the other dispatches which had been piling up, in the custody of young Paul Mauger. Until now Mauger had been a humble liaison agent, the youngest of all Renault’s agents. Now seemed the perfect opportunity for him to get to London and join the Free French Air Force as he had so long dreamed of doing. He had just turned eighteen.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

On Friday, 15th May 1942, Renault left Paris with his personal radio operator Robert Delattre from Gare Montparnasse bound for Lorient on the 9:25 morning train. Wrapped up in newspaper was their last remaining transmitter and in Renault’s brief-case was the map of the Atlantic wall along with all the other dispatches.

Once again, Alex Tanguy met them on the platform in Lorient. This time Alex had the young Paul Mauger with him and the four drove to an apartment on the Cours de la Bove where Delattre could operate the transmitter in relative safety...or so he thought.

All morning the thought had nagged Renault – could they get through to London. Alex went to buy petrol from a black market contact for the ‘Deux Anges’ . The contact in turn had got a supply from the German naval base at the port.

Upstairs, in a small attic bedroom overlooking the port, Delattre had been trying to raise London to confirm the sea rendezvous. He had been trying for no more than ten minutes when Renault, keeping watch at the bay window of the dining room, saw the cream coloured ambulance turn into the street. Sheer animal instinct told him it was moving too slowly for any normal mission of mercy and he raced up the stairs, taking two steps at a time to find Delattre just disconnecting his headset, unaware of the impending danger.

‘Well, I got through eventually; we’ll probably get an answer sometime tomorrow.’ Delattre told his chief.

Renault replied ‘That’s if we are still alive tomorrow…there’s a detector van outside! Let’s go!’

Hastily they wrapped the transmitter in newspaper again and all three of them left by the front door and walked calmly onto the windy street. There was a nerve wracking few seconds as the three men met the ‘ambulance’ still crawling tortoise-like face to face. But nothing happened and they set off, walking briskly through side streets in order to shake off any possible pursuers.

At one shop, Renault stopped to buy a tin of biscuits, whilst the others looked at him curiously but he offered no explanation and it was only when they came to a small villa in the suburbs where Alex’s sister lived did they understand the purchase.

While the woman brewed them coffee, Renault emptied the tin and packed in the envelope containing the map which Bertelot had given him in Paris into the empty tin box. He was taking no chances with Girard’s map. The box was about twenty inches square and the envelope containing the map fitted in nicely. He sealing the tin with adhesive tape for the sea journey.

‘You may be in for a damp trip.’ He told Paul. ‘this Plan is important and you must take great care of it.’

The youngster nodded eagerly, unable to say anything adequate. The excitement and importance of his mission were still too much for him.

On Sunday morning, 17th May 1942 Alex drove the three of them to Madame Le Crom-Hubert’s house, eleven miles away at Baud, where Renault’s wife Edith and their children were staying.

No answer came from London and for the next thirty six hours, not even having seen the map, Renault worked at sorting the other dispatches from his other agents. Dispatches which had arrived too late in Paris for typing, sorting and coding. At times, he needed Edith’s hot iron to bring up the secret ink on scraps of paper as he processed each item.

At lunchtime on Monday, Delattre finally got his answer from London. The rendezvous was set for the following Wednesday at 4pm

In setting up the sea pickup, Dewavrin in London had taken no chances. If the first rendezvous failed, a second attempt would be made on the following day, Thursday 21st May at 10am and one final attempt would be made at the designated location at 4pm that same day.

The captain of the British N51 trawler, Renault was he finest choice for the mission. He was a young Breton named Daniel Lomenech, whom de Gaule had loaned to the Royal Navy for special operations because he knew the coast of Brittany so well.

For Renault, Monday passed all too quickly. There were still many dispatches to be coded before young Paul left on the afternoon bus for Lorient. Paul was to stay that night with Alex’s sister and on Tuesday he and Alex were to take the ‘Deux Anges’ to Pont Aven, twelve miles away to pick up the crew.

Paul shook hands solemnly with all of them before leaving and Renault thought that he looked absurdly young and defenseless as he stood there in his fisherman’s jersey, clutching the biscuit box and the brief case.

With the map and the dispatches on their way to London, Renault now had some precious days ahead with Edith and the children, watching the youngest, Michel learn to walk. He tried to put the thoughts of Faure, Duimont and Pelletier being tortured by the Gestapo to the back of his mind. These were precious hours with his family. He decided to change their names for safety and at such an early age it was easier for the children to keep track of these changes in a make-believe world. He gathered them together and told them:

‘Now children, from today onwards, our name is no longer Renault. It is Recordier.’

Later, looking back, he never knew why he had picked on the name.

‘Recordier’, they all repeated solemnly, as if they were learning a lesson, and five minutes later, when they left the room, he knew the lesson had been absorbed.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the voices of Edith and Madame Le Crom-Hubert greeting someone, someone they obviously knew. Then it hit him like a bolt. In a moment, Paul walked into the room still carrying the dispatch case and the biscuit tin.

The map had come back.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Renault exploded. He jumped up shouting violently.

‘In God’s name why have you come back here?’

And for a few moments there was an ugly scene as Edith tried to calm him and Paul stood there, almost blubbering, too upset to speak, but finally in fits and starts, the story came out as bad as it could be.

At the last moment as they were leaving Lorient the day before, the engine of the ‘Deux Anges’ had broken down. By the time Alex had found the cause to be a faulty spark plug, it was too late to make the Wednesday rendezvous. Then, during Wednesday night, came the worst luck of all; British bombers, passing south over Lorient, had dropped mines at the port entrance. The Kriegsmarine had forbidden all shipping to leave port until the channel had been swept.

Now, after five days of tension, the map rarely absent from his mind, Renault was too strung up to bear it. He had told Alex the boat was useless and now this damned map of Girard’s seemed to have put a jinx on everything.

‘You young fool,’ he shouted. ‘Why didn’t you warn me yesterday? We could have notified London and moved the rendezvous. Your not fit to be sent on a mission to General de Gaule, you…’ Then he cut short the tirade for which he has never forgiven himself, because Paul, his eyes filling with tears, had blundered from the room.

Now, sick at heart, there was nothing for him to do but have Delattre contact London and explain the failure of the operation. He apologised to Paul, having realised too late that as Madame Le Crom-Hubert had no telephone in the house, there was no way for the young agent to contact him before coming back.

Renault made preparations to return to Paris and this time Edith came with him, leaving their children in the care of Madame Le Crom-Hubert, but after five days he sent her back to the children in Baud, staying on in the apartment in the Square Henri-Pate.

At this point in the book, the author Richard Collier quotes directly from his notes taken when interviewing Renault:

‘’Up to now I had not examined this map of Girard’s. It remained in the biscuit box, in a cabin trunk in the basement of my apartment block. But obviously the possession of it was dangerous, and it was unthinkable to leave it in a small country house where my wife and children were hidden or even to have my wife with me any longer. I had to stay in Paris with the map and transfer the danger to myself.’

That was Friday the 29th May, three weeks to the day since Duchez had concealed the map behind the mirror.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

With the Century Network just five weeks old, the results had been spectacular and Girard found himself in a kaleidoscope of pounding train wheels, the blare and chaos of railway junctions, and living off ham rolls and sour red wine from station vendors. The number of cover names he used also had to expand and he sometimes wondered how he kept track of them all at the hundreds of check points he passed through.

Girard had by late May 1942 already appointed three departmental heads for the areas which skirted the Wall in Normandy. The Orne was controlled from Argentan, the Sarthe region from Le Mans and the Eure from Evreux. For the most part agents were drawn from working class people with calloused fingers who wore shop keeper’s aprons or labourer’s denims.

In Rouen it was an Alsatian coal merchant with a taste for drama who called himself “The Fox”; in Argentan a cheerful electricity board inspector called Robert Aubin who used the cover name ‘Jonquet’.

Like Renault however, Girard lived the life of a hunted prey. There was no doubt Duchez had pulled off a spectacular coup in acquiring the map and there was still no signs it had been missed by the Todt Organisation – but if it was, then Duchez would be the obvious suspect and both he and his wife Edith would be tortured to reveal the full extent of the new Caen based network. A bitter price to pay for one success.

In the summer of 1942, the Allies lacked sufficient air cover to photograph the full extent of the Wall in Normandy, but Girard had no knowledge of this and how useful the map would be in the future. In fact work had not even commenced on some of the fortifications shown on the map but again Girard lacked sufficient agents in the coastal regions to be aware of this.

While in Paris, Girard now had another pressing problem. Lately, he had become suspicious of an uneasy feeling the Gestapo were taking an interest in him. On Berthelot’s advice, he appointed a ‘secretary’ as his shadow.

Denise Fernande Geninatti Banck, one of the earliest agents to enlist in Touny’s O.C.M. network in Paris, used her cover as a secretary for a Parisian agency named S.V.P. to receive and pass on information. Known in Resistance circles as ‘Dany’, Girard liked her from the start, with a air of cool competence and quickness of wit and above all her quick reflexes.

To signal messages, she would change the click of her heels on the pavement, stop suddenly to adjust her makeup, shift her handbag from her left hand to her right or touch a button. Once leaving the office that Berthelot used on the Place Madeleine, Girard glanced across the street, and in the shadow of the great white temple, saw Dany drop a glove. At once he had bundled into a velo-taxi and was off too quickly for the lounger on the corner to hail another and give chase. On another occasion, disguised as an old woman, Dany shared the contents of her lunch basket with three members of the Wehrmacht on a train journey with a box of good cream cheese containing important documents in the bottom of the box.

As to the whereabouts of Duchez’s map, to Gerard this was the least of his worries. In theory, the Caen network had gained valuable time and he assumed by now it was safe in London. In practice it was only a few miles away, still in the trunk in the basement of Renault’s apartment block and now 32,000 Gestapo agents in Paris had been circulated a description of Renault.

Renault was made aware of this on the Pont Mirabeau, which spans the Seine below the Eiffel Tower, at about 2:30pm on Saturday, 30th May 1942.

One of his agents, Maurice Rossi, the maitre d’hotel of Restaurant Traktir on the Avenue Victor Hugo, had set up a network of head waiters in Paris in order to gleam information at lunch and dinner times from such guests as General von Stulpenagel, the military governor of Paris and other officers who talked loosely at tables lavished with fine wine and food.

Maurice had rushed from duty to meet Renault in order to pass on some advice he had been given by a friendly client who was a member of the lower echelons of the Parisian Gestapo.

‘This man actually warned me,’ Maurice was telling Renault. ‘My name is on the Gestapo’s suspected list. It was in Francois Fanur’s notebook when they arrested him and yours too. Today they were at the restaurant asking about you.’

‘What do they know?’ asked Renault.

Enough, Maurice told him, to know that they were looking for a bald not very tall man who called himself Morin or Jean-Luc, who posed as an insurance inspector for Eagle Star and who always wore a silk handkerchief the same colour as his tie in his breast pocket.

Maurice urged, ‘You’ve got to get away, monsieur. They are getting very close to you.’

But Renault, hastily tucking a green handkerchief out of sight, did not think he could go. Dewavrin had wasted no time in London and during the abortive trip to Lorient, six new transmitters had been successfully landed on the dropping ground at Aisne. Two operators had also been sent and one of them, Olivier Courtaud had already arrived in Paris with one of the sets. Four of the sets had been buried in the ground for future emergencies. Delattre, Renault’s personal radio operator and the other new operator were bringing a set back to Paris. Alex was standing by for another attempt at a sea rendezvous on the 17th June.

Renault told himself he still had three trump cards.

Firstly, the Gestapo did not know his other aliases, Secondly they did not know about his family and lastly, they could not connect him with Girard’s map, which had apparently not been missed.

He came to a decision. ‘I can’t go yet,’ he told Maurice. ‘Instead, mon ami, you must go, because you can compromise me. Take your friend’s advice – get through to the Unoccupied Zone and forget you heard of a Paris network.’

Then he left Maurice staring gloomily from the bridge down at the sunlight reflecting on the Seine.

Renault’s delay in escaping to London very nearly cost him his life.

Before I move on, I done a google for the Restaurant Traktir on the Avenue Victor Hugo and found this photo in the Smithsonian Library site; apparently it's still a famous fish restaurant and the facade is still very much the same now as it was in 1942 as seen here in 'street view'.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Next day, Sunday 31st May 1942, more devastating news hit Renault’s Paris network; news that for the first time made him think that perhaps the time had come to flee France with his family.

On the way back from the dropping ground, Delattre and the second radio operator, a man named Rene-Georges Weil, had been stopped by black market inspectors at the Gare du Nord train station in a routine search for contraband goods. The two men used the initial shock of the inspectors discovering a transmitter to make a break for freedom. It was short lived and within seven hours, with their descriptions circulated to every Gestapo agent in Paris, they were arrested on the Boulevard Haussmann. Delattre, having tried to escape a second time, was shot in the arm and dragged away into custody. Rene-Georges Weil took a cyanide pill and was doubled up dead on the pavement.

But the black day was not over; the sixteen year old Paul Mauger, who had gone to meet the two radio operators at the Gare du Nord station, knew that Delattre had deposited a second transmitter hidden in a case with the left luggage office as a precaution. Delattre had passed him the ticket just before he and Weil were stopped by the black market inspectors.

The youth rashly went back a few hours later to claim the suitcase and the Gestapo were waiting. He too was arrested.

Renault was in despair when he heard the news. Young Paul had been so eager to take Gerard’s map to London and was so bitterly hurt by his chief’s lambasting over the boat. It was safe to say he would never see England now nor have the chance to join the Free French Air Force.

In googling the Paul Mauger, I came across this page on a French Resistance site which indicates Pierre Mauger survived torture firstly at the infamous Rue des Saussaies Prison in Paris, before being moved to La Santa, Fresnes and finally on 25th March 1943, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The same page states Pierre (Paul) Mauger survived and was released from Mauthausen on the 5th May 1945. The site also makes reference to the arrests which hit Renault’s network in Paris in May and June 1942 being the result of an agent called ‘Capri’ who had been turned by the Gestapo. This is not, so far, mentioned in the book ‘Ten Thousand Eyes’.

I then googled Robert Delattre and found him here to have died at Fresnes Prison a year after his arrest on the 13th May 1943. Again, no mention so far in the book of his fate after arrest.

Renault stubbornly refused to leave his Paris network, despite direct orders from Dewavrin in London to do so. These orders had come by letter via Pierre Brossolette who had returned from London on the 10th June where he had met with de Gaule and Dewavrin. The letter was short and to the point:

‘You will return to England as soon as possible and bring your family. The remains of your network must be entrusted to other hands.’

Again, the full extent of the damage to Renault’s ‘Confrerie Notre-Dame-Castille’ network during the period May-June 1942 is not made clear so far in the book. Further googling shows that 24 of Renault’s agents were arrested due to the ‘Capri’ betrayal during these two months, with all of them being transported in one of three ‘Nacht und Nebel’ movements in March and April 1943.

It was not until Friday, 12th June 1942 that Renault finally saw the full scale of the danger posed to himself and his family.

At 6am that morning, he had sent Courtaud to the one safe transmitter post, the house of Madame Chedeville at Pont-Audemer in Normandy, sixty miles from Paris to get in touch with London regarding sea rendezvouses. Now, three hours later he sat on a bench in the Muette Metro Station talking to Georgina Dufour, who acted as a combined femme de chambre for both himself at Auteuil and for his sisters at his former apartment in the Avenue de la Motte-Picquet. For five nights in a row, he had stayed at various hotels, not daring to stay at his own address. He was out of touch and was anxious for news.

Georgina told him that his sisters had been arrested by the Gestapo the previous day. The two sisters Maise and Isabelle had been released after questioning.

‘It is not them who are in danger monsieur, it is you!’ she told him.

‘They know everything about you, monsieur – everything!’

At first Renault did not believe it was possible, but Georgina told him that when his sister Maise had tried to put them off the scent by stating her brother could not be a spy as he was a lazy good for nothing idler whom the family had disowned, the Gestapo man was able to give her a full list of all his cover names and also that he had a wife and children hiding in Brittany somewhere near the coast.

This was enough to make his mind up.

It was one thing to risk his own life, but he could not countenance the thought of loosing his family.

More follows...

Regards,

Pat

 

Renault worked fast now that he realised the imminent danger posed to himself and his family.

He held a brief meeting with his deputy Max Petit, who was a quiet patient man. All the networks under Renault’s control were now entrusted to Max until his return. He then sent a message to Alex to meet him at Hennebont railway station, a quite country stop six miles from Lorient. Then, in the basement of his apartment building, he transferred the biscuit tin with Duchez’s map of the Wall and many other dispatches into a suitcase. A second suitcase was filled with clothes from the storage trunk.

By 6pm that evening, still lugging the two suitcases, he entered the room of his radio operator Olivier Courtaud at the Hotel de Royan, beside the Gare Montparnasse Railway Station. One glance at the man’s face told him all. Olivier had been unable to raise London on the transmitter.

Calculating rapidly now, Renault knew he had just four days. To be at the sea rendezvous the following Wednesday, the British trawler N51 would have to leave the Scilly Isles on the Tuesday evening, but to lay on the rescue operation, London would still need twenty four hours’ notice. Dewavrin would have to set out his requirements for the mission by Monday morning. This meant raising London on the transmitter by tomorrow, Saturday, at the latest, in case a full staff was not on duty on Sunday.

All this was taking place on Friday evening, 12th June 1942. Google cannot find for me the ‘Hotel de Royan’ beside Montparnasse Station, so I am wondering if it might have been re-named since the book was written…there are a few present day hotels ‘beside’ the Montparnasse Station... anyone able to enlighten?

Renault and Courtaud travelled separately on the same train that night to Hennebont in Brittany. Both of Renault's suitcases were registered, but knowing he was the one most likely to be arrested, he gave both tickets to Courtaud. Renault felt sorry for the radio operator, with him only two weeks in France and already in a deep nightmare in which both men now found themselves.

‘If I am arrested on the journey before joining the train, then you wont see me in Hennebont. That is obvious,’ he told Courtard in the hotel room.

‘…so what you do then is check out the suitcases, join up with Alex and somehow see that these dispatches and my wife and children get to England. Only you won’t tell my wife I’ve been arrested. If necessary you will lie unashamedly, but you will somehow convince them that I am to join the boat a few minutes before sailing.’

The radio operator looked pale but composed. ‘I understand.’ He said.

Renault had dinner with friends at Schubert’s and tried to get drunk. However, no matter much wine he drank, The blinding danger he now faced prevented that. He boarded the 9:25pm train without incident and went straight to the two berth sleeping compartment which he had reserved with Cooks.

The sleeping car attendant came to check the reservation card with his identity papers.

‘You are Monsieur Morin?’ the man asked.

Renault shuddered inside. He had forgotten to change his cover name when reserving the upper bunk. The Gestapo now he used this cover name for over two weeks at this point in time. The lower bunk was occupied by a German officer. There was nothing to do but confirm his identity to the attendant. ‘I’m Morin,’ he said quietly and climbed into the upper bunk. The name meant nothing to the German officer who simply wished him good night.

The train arrived in Hennebont the next morning, Saturday 13th June 1942 just after 7:00am. Courtaud had already alighted onto the platform. Renault could see Alex and his young assistant Alain de Beaufort, waiting across the tracks in the battered old Peugeot. So far so good.

However, when Courtaud went to the baggage office to claim the two suitcases, one of them was missing!...the one with the transmitter! The nightmare was continuing apace.

There was a hurried but murmured conference at the side of the car. It was obvious the missing suitcase had been carried on past Hennebont. If they could contact the baggage office at Lorient before the train reached the end of the line at Quimper, then there was still hope of retrieving the transmitter. Having dropped Renault and Courtaud at Madame le Crom-Hubert’s villa, Alex and Alain hurried off in a cloud of dust to beat the train into Lorient. While he waited, Renault informed his wife Edith of the plan to escape to England, bringing her and the children with him.

After several hours Alex and Alain returned with the transmitter intact and finally the whole group sat down to lunch around midday. Suddenly, Courtaud, noting the time, got up and left the room. London would be scanning all the known underground frequencies between 12 noon and 1pm. After ten minutes the radio operator returned to the table and winked to Renault.

‘Ten o’clock tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we'll have the answer.’ He had got through to London.

With the young Alain de Beaufort, whom Renault had agreed to take with him to join the Free French Forces in London, there would be seven passengers on the ‘Deux Anges’. Renault wonder if the leaky old lobster boat had ever embarked on a more dangerous voyage.

Five hours later in London, Dewavrin was sitting tired and drawn in his office at 10 Duke Street. Manuel, his deputy was sitting beside him at his desk sorting dispatches. It had been a close run thing. De Gaule’s intelligence chief had spent three hours with the Commander (I still have to ID this man) – but the Admiralty had agreed to mount the rescue mission.

The trawler N51 would rendezvous with the ‘Deux Anges’ on Wednesday, 17th June 1942 at 4pm GMT; if that failed, a second attempt would be made on the following day at 10am and a third attempt at 4pm the same day. The trawler would wait one hour only at each attempted rendezvous.

‘Do you think they have a chance?’ Manuel asked Dewavrin.

‘Do you want me to be frank?’ his chief replied.

‘I would put their chances at no more than one in five hundred,’ Dewavrin answered.

If he had known about Girard’s map which was coming too, he would have lengthened the odds still further.

Finally, they asked for a code name and Lieutenant Mella, one of Dewavrin’s assistants, consulted the list of code names available, and came up with one.

Operation Marie-Louise was born.

More follows…

Regards,

Pat

 

Having done a bit of further digging, I now believe the Royal Navy officer referred to several times by the pseudonym 'Commander' by the author Richard Collier is Commander Frank Alexander Slocum RN who held the post of Deputy Director of Operations (Irregular),R.N. (DDOD(I)).

It was this man to whom Dewavrin had to liaise with in order to initiate Operation Marie-Louise.

When he died in 1982, the Times wrote in his obituary:

"Frank Slocum who died on May 22 was known to many of his wartime staff as DEP that dammed elusive pimpernal. Charged in 1940 with the general task of opening up communications by both sea and air with occupied Europe, he became the architect of clandestine air landings and pickups which later under RAF control led to the massive British support operations for the French resistance movement. More importantly, he led and build up a team of Royal Navy officers and crews which maintained a regular transport service to France and Norway and at times also to Holland, Denmark and Italy. This service landed and retrieved agents for SOE, M16 and the American OSS and during the last two years of the war rescued from occupied France many hundreds of RAF and USAF evaders, valuable pilots and air crews shot down over France who escaped back to Britain with active assistance of the French Resistance and of the M19 network established in France by the late Major Airey Neave. Many a British and American airman owed his survival to DEP Slocum and his ships, intelligence agents of several nationalities depended on him for their regular cross-channel and North Sea journeys, but most importantly, he commanded the respect and loyalty of every officer and man who served under him from 1940 until the war ended, and to all of them his death will be a particularly personal loss."

Commander Slocum's service record is available to download from the UK National Archives using reference ADM 196/122/219 (free if you have an account with them).

Regards,

Pat