Vercors

This being notice of a book by the late Paddy Ashdown about the battle for Vercors in June 1944 (reference 3), my being directed to this book by a reference in the novel at reference 2. A novel which gives some space to the post-second-world-war trauma of the inglorious French, trying to make some sense of it all, trying to recover some of their previously considerable self-esteem. A novel which I got to in the margins of reference 1.

Vercors is a massive, rugged plateau just to the west of Grenoble, about the size of the Isle of Wight, much of it protected by high cliffs and commanding two of the main routes north from the French Mediterranean coast. It was the site of a determined rising against the German occupiers just after the D-day landings in Normandy – but well before the landings on the much nearer Mediterranean coast. Bad timing which resulted in a lot of unnecessary deaths, including more than 200 non-combatants – and some atrocities – atrocities which went well beyond the execution of civilians as punishment for the activities of the guerrillas in their midst – that is to say freedom fighters or terrorists depending on which side of the fight you were on. 

It should be noted that the Germans made no bones about the reprisals on civilians that would follow from attacks on their soldiers in occupied areas.

It should also be noted, that while the Germans smashed open resistance on Vercors, most of the resistance fighters melted into the woods and came back into action when the Allies landed in the south and moved north not so many weeks later. 

Ashdown estimates the total killed at under a thousand, with the German losses being less than a tenth of the total. So modest numbers compared with the contemporary Normandy campaign. But a battle which looms large among the French as one of their few serious attempts to throw off the German yoke. Albeit, with a good deal of Allied help with matériel and some help with personnel. 

Ashdown was a soldier himself before becoming a politician, so had some credentials to write about a battle, with the present book being one of a number he published after he retired from politics in the UK. A book which takes in both the battle itself and the reasons – rooted in the fevered politics of time and place – why there was a battle of this sort at all. 

The book starts off woodenly enough, but gradually I was captured by the drama of the story and got through it in a couple of days, although I did skip a bit towards the end of something under 400 pages of text. Another irritation was the fictionalisation of the story; writing up accounts of events long gone as if he were a fly on the wall. Another was my getting a bit lost in a welter of names and I should have made myself some charts to better keep track of them all. But the book was helped by a good index and there were plenty of notes if one wanted to follow anything up. Not helped by the quality of the maps and I should have printed myself off a large scale physical map of the Vercors massif. 

A book which well illustrates the problems which arise when one does not have traditional command structures – in this case at almost any level on the Allied side – and when one is fighting a dirty war – that is to say not a war between two regularly organised and uniformed armies, fought out more or less out in the open.

A book which was well enough thought of in France to be translated into French.

A few comments

Both British and US promotion and handling of the French Resistance, seem muddled and amateurish. Not to mention muddles on the French side, with London and Algiers jostling for position. Not to mention De Gaulle being monumentally difficult to deal with. Amazing that we put up with him – but I suppose we were stuck with each other. De Gaulle was also determined to be the one there when the Germans left. He was going to be the new government of France, not some interim government set up under the auspices of the US occupying army. To which end he went off the Vercors operation in favour of doing something big in the Massif Central. More muddle.

But maybe all this muddle was the norm. Maybe that was what war was like – and that one would find just as much muddle if one looked at things from the German side.

Churchill was much keener on the Balkans than France, with the resistance there holding down 20 German divisions – presumably a bloody and seriously unpleasant business. He also hung fire about Anvil (attack through the south of France), wanting to go in from the east from Italy. Anvil was to have coincided with Overlord (attack over the beaches of Normandy) – but in the event it was decided we did not have the resources for that and Anvil was delayed. Which meant that raising the south was premature and was, in reasonably short order, squashed.

While from the point of view of Eisenhower, about to embark on a perilous venture in Normandy, anything to help was good. Throw the kitchen sink at it: that is to say, let the Resistance rip in both the north and the south of France – this last without significant support from the allies. If the Resistance – and attendant civilians – took a few casualties, so be it. Anything to distract the Germans from Normandy. 

The Resistance was a very mixed bag: regular soldiers from the wreck of the French armies, patriots from all walks of life, lefties, young men who didn’t want to get sent to work in German factories, some criminals – and some spies. Sometimes they did not get on too well with each other. And the quality of training and discipline very mixed. French radio security very poor – to the point where the allies were loath to let them have any serious secrets. Particularly the most important secret of all: the destination of the Normandy invasion fleet.

The Germans had demonstrated several times before storming the Vercors that when they wanted to smash into one of these mountain redoubts they could. But the French and their allies persisted with them. Plenty of doubters notwithstanding.

The Germans picked up all the D-Day alert messages sent out by the BBC to resistance groups scattered across France. So they more or less had the date for D-Day a few days in advance – but, luckily, they did not have the place. Plus the chap who did the picking up had been discredited by a false alarm earlier in the year.

A few oddments

On Ashdown’s account, the weapon most used by the Resistance in Vercors was the British sten gun: cheap, mass produced and badly designed. It might have killed plenty of Germans, but it killed plenty of those pulling the triggers on the way. The American Thompson machine gun was much better – but in much shorter supply. Ashdown was much politer about the bolt action Lee-Enfield .303 rifle – which survived to serve the cadet forces of my school days.

Allied planes, in small numbers anyway, seemed to be able to fly about southern France with impunity. Presumably the same was true of German planes over parts of the UK.

I have learned about the Gazogène lorries, which ran on wood or charcoal and were widely used in France during the occupation. Probably not very ecological by today’s standards. See, for example, reference 5.

The Resistance set up a regular headquarters operation on Vercors. Apparently the French practise was to have four offices: one to issue commands, one for intelligence, one for planning and one for logistics. Hence ‘Deuxième Bureau’, the French equivalent of the equally obsolete term ‘MI6’. The regulars also seemed rather keen on declarations of independence, parades and banquets – battles notwithstanding.

Some of the German troops used for an airborne assault on Vercors – gliders rather than parachutes – were on punishment duty. Redemption under fire. I believe the Soviets went in for this sort of thing as well, but I have not come across it on the Allied side.

Two women were famously involved, one infamously. On the good side, Christine Granville, a beautiful Pole with SOE. Sadly, she didn’t settle after the war and ended up being murdered in London in 1952 by a spurned suitor who was subsequently hanged. On the bad side, Mireille Provence, mistress to occupiers and collaborators, not altogether on the side lines, condemned to death, sentenced commuted and subsequently released in 1953, to end up running a hotel with a restaurant. She died in 1997.

Conclusions

A story which is well told. It would now be interesting to read a complementary story about how this battle figured in the story that the French told about themselves after it was all over. How it figured in the reconstruction of France after the catastrophe of loss in 1940. How it figures now.

PS 1: some days later, poking around the large Oxfam bookshop in Exeter, I happened to come across a five volume version of my one volume Times Atlas going for a modest £25. Much grander altogether, although the actual maps did not look that different, but I didn’t think to look for Vercors; in my one volume version, about 8cm by 4cm, not big enough for present purposes, although better than nothing. Both versions presumably from before the days when Murdoch got his hands on the once prestigious newspaper of the same name. 

PS 2: five volumes declined. I dare say I will live to wish I had not.

PS 3: what I was really looking for in the Oxfam shop was a more reading-in-bed friendly version of ‘Clarissa’ than my one volume Penguin Classic. They could do a two volume version from Folio, taken together rather bigger and heavier than the Penguin. Plus, I don’t much care for Folio book design & production. So also declined.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/getting-to-top.html. 

Reference 2: Un Héros – Félicité Herzog – 2012.

Reference 3: The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the battle for Vercors 1944 – Paddy Ashdown – 2014.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vercors_Massif. The source of the map above, showing the cliffs to the east. Grenoble top right.

Reference 5: https://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/en/car/hotchkiss-gazogene/.