SOE Hero: Bob Maloubier and the French Resistance

Preface

by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilbac

This book contrasts sharply with all the memoirs of Resistance members that have been published to date, due to the colourful personality of Bob Maloubier, the exploits and adventures of war it recounts, and a style of writing that carries the reader along at breakneck speed. Another unusual point is that the author’s role in the war was played within a covert organisation reviled by de Gaulle and almost unknown in France: the SOE, Britain’s Special Operations Executive.

In the summer of 1940 Churchill created the SOE on the edges of the Intelligence Service with the mission ‘to set Europe ablaze’. For obscure reasons, the official account of its activities was forbidden from being translated into French for fifty years after the war – this account could not be published until 2008!1 And, due to either chance or hostile reception, none of the accounts published in England by its agents have so far been translated into French.

However, the SOE was a key driver of resistance to German occupation. From the start of the war until liberation it was the SOE that supplied the secret services of France Libre, training its agents, ensuring its parachute drops, supplying it with radio sets, directing its radio links and providing arms to the Résistance. What is more – and it is well that de Gaulle did not admit this as he held that all French nationals reaching British soil must be available to Free France – Section F of SOE, under the authority of Colonel Buckmaster, created in France its own underground networks. These were often supervised by French men and women who had reached London with a determination to ‘bash the Boche’ and who, like Bob, were totally unaware of the tensions between the masters of the game.

The British circuits numbered more than fifty in June 1944 and had means at their disposal that were unavailable to the Free French networks. Direct action, without any political involvement, was their law: their mission was to increase sabotage, each network working in a strictly defined area, and then to organise or support the Maquis therein, thanks to whom three or four of these networks were able to make a major contribution to the liberation of their area.

The young Bob Maloubier was parachuted into France during the night of 15–16 August 1943 so that he could lend his talents in sabotage and act as an instructor in sabotage to the SOE network known as ‘Salesman’, which was active in Upper Normandy between Rouen and Le Havre under the authority of the journalist Philippe Liewer, alias Staunton. He arrived at a crucial time. The Allied landing on the Continent was planned for the following year, but the English believed that the arrest of General Delestraint, then that of Jean Moulin and the secret staff in the southern zone, which had occurred in June, had reduced the military potential of the Résistance by some 80 per cent. The militarisation of the Résistance was becoming urgent and the harassing of the enemy’s machine of war imperative.

The reader will be carried through the mad course of events which made an adventurous 18-year-old high-school student, outraged by the armistice of 1940, into a tough guy, die-hard fighter and lifelong adventurer. For (it is not the subject of the book, but such was his personality) after the war, Bob Maloubier would go on to be parachuted into Laos on behalf of Force 136, SOE ‘branch’ for the Far East, and there he would be wounded for a third time. Later he would be the founder of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) combat unit of divers, a forester in Gabon, an oilman in Nigeria and in the Persian Gulf, the list goes on …

Month after month, therefore, in a France that had seen more than two-thirds of its territory occupied and was locked in by the Vichy authorities, the high school boy did his utmost to get away and become a war pilot in the Free French ranks, each time meeting disappointment, failure and even time in prison. Finally deciding there was no better way to leave France than to join the Armistice Army, in November 1942 he found himself on guard at Bizerte aerodrome when the Germans landed in Tunisia. He escaped with great speed to Algeria, where Admiral Darlan had been forced, a few days earlier, to switch to the Allied side. It is there, lacking any contact with Free France, that he was enrolled in the British secret service as it promised him the most action.

With six months’ training at SOE’s secret schools, three weeks after being parachuted into France he was involved in the most spectacular operation accomplished by the Salesman circuit – the destruction of a small warship being repaired in the Ateliers et Chantiers Navals de Normandie (Naval Shipyard of Normandy), for which he supplied the explosives. The following month, in the space of three weeks, he had two more feats under his belt: paralysing the factory of Française des Métaux in Deville, which was producing parts for fighter aircraft landing gear, and putting the power station transformer in Dieppedalle, which supplied the whole Rouen region, out of action for six months. The breathtaking ups and downs of such exploits are astonishing to read. But life expectancy was short for saboteurs. Arrested and seriously wounded by the Germans in December, he escapes. You don’t become a daredevil without having an exceptional dose of quickness of mind, and audacity in the face of danger and the indomitable energy to survive it.

Bob survives, he is cared for by the SOE and recuperates. He is parachuted into France for a second time on the day after D-Day in June 1944 as a reinforcement for the Limousin Maquis and is involved in the actions of the ‘préfet des Maquis’, George Guingouin. As a result, he is able to record the activities of this unorthodox communist Maquisard chief and to evoke the atrocious reprisals inflicted by the Germans in Tulle and Oradour. Such meetings with extraordinary characters, and his timely presence behind the scenes at historic events, make his tale much more than a mere Résistance autobiography. In Algiers in November 1942, he became fast friends with a number of the young patriots who contributed to the delivery of the town, without any fighting, to the invading American forces; he met an old childhood friend there in the person of Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, who was to shoot Admiral Darlan, and he made contact with some of those involved in the murder plot. Parachuted into Normandy, it is with the co-operation of Claude Malraux, André Malraux’s half-brother, who was soon arrested and deported, that he carries out the sabotage in Dieppedalle. He takes advantage of the illegal landings organised by the most spectacular double agent of the war, Déricourt, at whose trial he would later testify. In the course of the tragic episode in the Limousin in 1944, among his colleagues was the heroic Violette Szabó, one of some thirty female agents sent to France by Section F, SOE, ‘one of the best shots and most ardent spirits in SOE,’ according to historian Michael Foot, and who, less fortunate than Bob, was shot in the neck before being burnt in the Struthof crematorium. Finally he could not resist the temptation to follow the rise and fall of Robert Maxwell, one-time agent of the Mossad Intelligence Service, and, until the end of the 1980s, a British press mogul.

A French survivor of SOE, of which he remains one of the defining characters, Bob Maloubier unfolds the saga of the Résistance like a great adventure where courage is commonplace, where the actors jostle and facts are circumvented. Is the way he tells his tale, at a galloping pace stuffed with dialogue, surprising? It’s how he tells stories: he writes as he speaks and as he acts. Is the dialogue reconstructed? Yes, of course. How better to show that the Résistance was at each stage an affair of pals without whom nothing could have been achieved – pals who laid down their lives? Let yourself be carried away then in his galloping adventures; his tale is more thrilling than a gangster heist film and, what is more, it is all true …

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1  Michael Foot, Des Anglais Dans la Résistance. Le Service Secret Britannique d’Action (SOE) en France, 1940–44 (Tallandier, 2008; ‘Texto’ collection, 2011).

1

Achtung Feldgendarmes!

Rouen, 20 December 1943

‘What the hell is Pierrot doing? Half an hour late, that’s not like him!’

Georges Philippon pulls his head out of the dismantled engine on the bench. ‘You’re right, Bob, not like him! Don’t worry, he’ll be here!’

Running his hands along a bundle of tow rope, he smiles at me reassuringly. Georges is a typical Norman – a typical Cauchois, in fact: stocky, broad, short-legged but powerful, level-headed. Beneath his crown of red hair, cropped short and greying in patches, his face is smattered with freckles. If he ever speaks, it’s only after careful consideration. He’s my deputy and solid as a rock. I appreciated his composure when we carried out attacks together.

Punctuality: the golden rule instilled by the Special Training Schools or STSs, the British espionage schools; they made me into the secret agent that I am, operating behind the Atlantic Wall that Rommel is consolidating during this winter of 1943. I taught this same rule to my little company; Pierrot observed it to the letter until this evening. This boy is a pearl, as calm as Georges but chubbier and younger – 25 perhaps – but just as indispensible since, as an independent carrier licensed by the Occupation authorities, he owns a Citroën P45 lorry powered by gas and the magic words allowing him to move around freely: a German Ausweis, and a French SP. For six months now, he’s been transporting weapons dropped from the sky over the Rouen countryside, taking them to my arsenal, a garage hidden away at the end of Rue des Abbattoirs in Sotteville, a Rouen suburb on the left bank of the river.

On this icy evening in December, in a field near Elbeuf, it’s my job to take delivery of the last parachute drop of the year.

Frowning, George mutters, ‘Stay put, mon ami. I’ll go find out what’s happening.’

He slips on his jacket, a Canadienne, jumps on his bike and disappears into thick darkness. As Normandy is within close range of the Allied bombers, the blackout is strictly observed here; a badly camouflaged lamp would attract the Feldgendarmes like flies to a corpse. If you’re careless, you risk ending the night in solitary. And, should an attack take place, the Kommandantur might take it upon itself to go and round up some hostages. The minutes tick by. Half an hour, an hour passes. Anxiety begins to gnaw at me: has ‘something’ happened to Pierrot? Another hour rolls by; this is torture. I imagine the worst: Pierrot’s been arrested, the Gestapo set a trap for Georges … Get away, before it’s too late!

A discreet cough makes me jump. I had forgotten about him, the humble town hall secretary I was supposed to be entertaining with the great game of the night-time parachute drop. Charles Staunton, the head of the circuit and ‘my’ boss had come up with the idea: ‘This chap’s getting us identity and ration cards that are one hundred per cent real. He steals them from the stocks. He’s a gold mine! In his way, he’s risking the same dangers as we are! He complains, quite rightly, that he’s nothing but a tiny cog in a war machine he knows nothing about. I thought seeing weapons dropping out of the sky would boost his morale! First chance you get, take him along!’

He’s tense. I reassure him. My tone was convincing.

Suddenly a door creaks; I jump. Pushing his bike, Georges comes in, growling, ‘Excuse me! Pierrot wasn’t at home. It’s his birthday, he’s out drinking, going from one bar to another with his friends. He was wasted when I caught up with him! He said to me: We’re having one last one and then we’ll be there. Don’t worry, I won’t let Bob down! You bet. It’s us who are going to have to let them down now.’

Impossible. It’s too late to contact London by wireless and cancel the plane. A 30-ton bomber, alone, without protection, and its five crew, are going to get a dose of the Atlantic Wall with its anti-aircraft batteries, as they sneak between the Luftwaffe fighter bases … for sod all! Better if it brings us the latest transmitter, which would bloody well improve communications. We have to go! Georges will drive Pierrot’s truck.

Georges objects. The gazo’s off. Needs a good hour to get it going.

Fortunately, there’s the Blue Bird, a turquoise 125cc moped. It’s kept for emergencies as petrol is so rare and George can only collect a few drops. ‘And the 200 kilos of containers that’ll be dropped thick and fast, you going to carry them in your little arms as far as Rouen, my dear chap?’

‘Come on, Georges, what d’you think the ox carts are for? The farmer who’s waiting for us will help; we’ll plonk them in the barn, and that twit Pierrot will come and get them when he’s sobered up.’

New objection: the curfew begins in half an hour.

‘Bah, we’ll have more than enough time to get out of town. We’ll be okay in the country. The Jerries won’t do a decent search there; you know that as well as I do.’

‘Excuse me … where am I in all this?’ queries the town hall secretary. ‘Your bike won’t carry three!’

The wan ray of light from the headlamp of the Blue Bird in the blue of the civil defence shakes on the bumpy cobbles along the Elbeuf road, criss-crossed by frozen tramway rails that I take great care to avoid. Should one of the wheels of my moped get stuck in a rail, it would certainly be the end of the adventure. The glacial wind pierces the layers of newspaper, jumpers, cardigans and the sheepskin I am wearing like armour. Tears ice up in the corner of my eyes. On the other hand, the pen-pusher is stuck to me like a limpet so my back is hot. The orders of the ‘boss’ are law, so I have given him priority. Sotteville’s streets are deserted; on this cold winter night the crowds of wage slaves who fill them when the factories close are now snug behind their shutters. They are gathering their dead wood, bits of coal, butter, eggs on the sly from various farms, and leftovers on the black market to make sure that this fourth Christmas under the Occupation, so heavy behind the ‘wall’, turns into a feast day.

Charles has given me permission to celebrate the festivities in Paris in the warmth, with oysters and foie gras. I picture the trembling lights of the chandeliers in Monseigneur, a luxury night club; those lights dancing in the blue eyes of Maguy moulded into a satin sheath; and gypsies cooing over blonde moss on her neck. She is one of those rare French women who does not wear synthetic fibres and is not perched on wooden wedge heels. For her, real wool, real satin, real leather. Privileged among the privileged … she is a model chez Heim, the couturier on avenue Matignon. A real blonde, her hair as long as her legs or neck, and whose 19 years have never yet known a bra. A curtain of light eyelashes filters her grey gaze while a Mona Lisa smile often plays enigmatically between two dimples …

On the other hand, Ann, the sweetheart waiting for me in London, has a frank gaze, green like the Channel in autumn; a diadem of curly flaxen hair under her Royal Navy cap; and soft round curves that the machine-made uniform, a stiff collar, tie and thick black grandmother stockings cannot hide. She does not pirouette on a podium; she polishes a submarine of 800 tonnes based in Weymouth.

Having passed the last dwellings of the town, I ride over a level crossing leading into the open countryside. The enormous red moon that had risen above the horizon has turned white and paints the meadows and trees silver. I’m smiling contentedly; here I am safe, a quarter of an hour before curfew! Suddenly I hear a roar behind me. At this hour, on a country road, it can only be one of those doctors authorised under the Occupation, along with the top civil servants (and, of course, the collaborator), to live the high life. I keep to the verge to give him room to pass. A large car passes, then suddenly cuts in and stops sharply in front of me. I almost crash into the number plate marked with a black WH* on a white background, the ‘Double Vache’ of the Wehrmacht! I hardly have time to recover, as a ‘kolossal’ Feldgendarme gets out of the car. I identify him from the steel plaque he wears on a chain, the inherited Rink of Teutonic knights.

‘Zir,’ he calls out to me, a nasty smile on his lips. ‘Red laight, nicht gut!’

I repress a sigh of relief. That’s all it is? I promise to change the incriminating bulb, if need be the entire electric circuit! However, his face does not brighten.

‘And your Kamerad, Weg? Gone? Why?’

I turn round. My passenger has vanished into thin air without my realizing! I remain helpless a few seconds then I reply: ‘Not a comrade! Don’t know him, met up on the road. Hitch-hiker!’

A second German appears, lanky, wearing specs, a military cap plonked upright on his head, and he calls out to me in atrocious French: ‘Do you often stop at night to pick up strangers who have so much to hide that they flee at the sight of us? That you will explain to the Kommandantur. Get in!’

He pointedly places his hand on his pistol. The fat ‘Göring’ holding me tightly does the same thing. Side by side, one quite round, the other puny: spitting image of Laurel and Hardy! One of their fellow travellers occupying the back seat of the Mercedes gets out to let me in and then pushes up close against me. I am sandwiched in. Gone, my beautiful optimism! They’re blocking the doors; out of the corner of my eye, I watch the hostile profile under the ‘coal bucket’ steel helmet, visor falling over the nose. Fear crawls through me. God knows it was repeated often enough during the safety course at the end of our training: ‘Never get locked up! You’re licked between four walls, toast! Get out of there even if you only have one in a hundred chances of survival. Better death than torture.’ All very well in the classroom! What would old Colonel Spooner do in my place, he who had drummed these instructions into us; 100 per cent effective … on paper. These Krauts aren’t giving me the smallest chance! I know only too well that eventually under the Gestapo’s quick-fire, trap-laden questioning, I would give myself away. I’ve experienced it ‘in class’ during the simulated but realistic arrests and interrogations. Instructors disguised as SS pulling us out of bed at dawn and breaking down our best alibis.

I yell automatically: ‘And what about my bike?’

‘We are taking charge of it,’ replies ‘Laurel’ smugly. ‘Roly-poly’ has already straddled the Blue Bird and goes furiously at the kickstart without eliciting a sputter from the engine. Taunted by his companions sprawled in the warmth of the Mercedes, he explodes: ‘Fransözische Mechanik, Sheisse!’ [‘French mechanics, pile of shit!’]

He doesn’t know that, out of habit, I closed the fuel valve, which is located out of sight under the tank. And I’m certainly not going to tell him!

‘Go help him,’ Laurel orders me.

My heart leaps in my chest. The chance of my life!

The fat Feldgendarme, choking with aggression, moves out of the way for me. This old moped, struggling on the anaemic wartime petrol, has no secrets from me. Pretending to do up my laces, I unblock the gas tap with my fingertip then hit the kickstart with repeated blows. I deliberately make the engine stutter several times … When at last it starts, as it backfires I shout over the noise, ‘If I stop, it won’t start up again! You go on and I’ll follow you.’

Everything is clear in my head: at the first crossroads, controlled skid, somersault, and I vanish into the woods! My dream is short-lived: behind me the fat man climbs astride the Blue Bird, which sags under his weight and the entire frame groans. He places the icy barrel of his Luger deliberately against my neck, growling: ‘Weg, get a move on!

Hah! In the slipstream of the car, everything is still to play for!

Alas, the Mercedes doesn’t move off in front, but behind me. The beam of its headlights licks at my vehicle and slight pressure from the pistol brings me back to heel if I accelerate too much. On the right as well as on the left, the flat fields are completely naked, no cover … Already, a town is emerging; houses rise up too quickly! I come out into a square. At the end, an imposing building topped by the sinister Nazi flag. Soon there is less than 100m between us. Neither the car, nor the Luger, gives me an inch. My hope of staying alive is limited to a few seconds, as I’m absolutely decided on chancing everything on a throw of the dice: fly off my bike’s saddle while braking aggressively … And if the car doesn’t run over me, if a bullet doesn’t blow my brains out, if the Feldgendarmes sent after me don’t catch me … I’ll survive.

What an ‘if’ and how I regret having thrown into the first toilet bowl I came across – out of pride, because at 20 you believe you are king of the world – my cyanide capsule, the ‘insurance against torture’ you’re supplied with before the great leap into the unknown. Major Morel, head of operations, personally delivered it to me last June at Orchard Court, the elegant mansion in the chic heart of London that serves as the base of the French Section of SOE, a distinct service carrying out acts of sabotage, guerilla warfare and hits of every kind. Gerald Morel – Gerry – had handed me a blue pill box and a capsule of colourless glass, advising me with a thin smile, ‘Don’t get them confused, Bob! The blue pills, Benzedrine, will keep you awake for hours, the other, the potassium cyanide, will put you to sleep forever. In thirty seconds, you will go out with a bang, if one may say so, while putting the fear of God into the Nazis with your convulsions, eyes popping out of your head and sticking your tongue out at them! Should you be arrested, keep it in your mouth and if you are afraid of giving in to the torture, crack it! By the way, don’t do a dress rehearsal when it’s freezing and your teeth are chattering!’

His wry humour didn’t offend me. I was prepared for it: I was familiar with ‘understatement’, the self-effacing deadpan the British employ even in the most dramatic circumstances, thanks to my mother, who had launched her career as a private tutor in England during the belle époque. The training officers certainly didn’t lack this trait, just like Churchill, who, in July 1940, created out of thin air the SOE, which he proclaimed his ‘Secret Army’, his ‘Fourth Arm’. Churchill even requested that the three bald pates who formed SOE ‘Set Europe ablaze!’ – no joke!

That night it’s not Europe that’s in flames but my head: fear, doubt, the ifs and the buts jostling to overcome me. I am fighting back the panic. I don’t even have an opportune minute to get me out of it; thirty seconds at most … An idea comes to me suddenly … While the Mercedes begins a turn to pull up in front of the building, I go straight on without slowing down.

‘Rechts!’ grumbles my charge, prodding the muzzle of his gun into my neck.

Pretending that I am grappling with the handlebars, that I am struggling to regain control of my motorbike, I cry out: ‘I can’t turn, I’m going too fast! Bremsen, the brakes … nicht gut!’

My guard seems to believe me.

When we finally come to a standstill, the Mercedes has stopped under the swastika … a good 30m from us! Its engine shuts down, its lights go out. A rectangle of light projected by a door that opens reflects on the hood. Three silhouettes sweep into the opening. The Blue Bird groans in relief when old chubby dismounts, ordering me to follow him.

Everything comes back to me.

Mediocre schoolboy, maybe, but I was an exemplary student-spy, memorising the rules taught at the STSs as if they were gospel. For example, ‘Never telegraph your moves. Put the enemy to sleep by appearing docile, terrified, stupid.’ I apply the lesson to the letter: ‘asleep’ due to my perfect docility, and, like me, numb with cold, the big fellow lets his weapon hang down and cranes his neck towards the half-open door. Carried on a light breeze comes the smell of coffee! Hardly do I have the time to glimpse the Wehrmacht slogan ‘Gott mit uns’ [‘God with us’] engraved on the buckle of his belt around his belly, than he turns his back to me!

Now or never!

I pull myself together, I gather my forces, I tense my muscles and I hoist the 50kg of the Blue Bird from the ground up to shoulder height; then I hurl it with