March 1944: Evading Germans – Heading to the Pyrenees to Escape Occupied France

Chuck Yeager, in his own words:

“After being shot down on March 5, 1944 and evading Germans for a few weeks, I find myself at the Bianco farm in hiding. The farm is off the main road by a couple kilometers and hidden behind some stone walls, trees. Those and the barn keep people and animals completely hidden from the main road. This is the type of place Germans would not venture into, not knowing what resistance they might find behind the walls. Such resistance could kill many Germans before the Germans even got close.

A few more alleged Allied evadees arrive at the Bianco farm where Gabriel has taken me to hide while waiting for safe transport to the Pyrenees.”

(Note from Victoria: General Yeager and I learned when we visited in 2012 that after Gabriel was apprised the Gestapo was coming to town, he immediately got F/O Yeager out of town, and the Maquis in his battalion into the forests. The Gestapo knocked on Gabriel’s front door as he was running out the back, through his commercial vegetable garden, and into the cemetery, where he, a Catholic, hid in a sarcophagus. Then he made his way to the forests.)

“When night comes, we load up in a small truck, and head south off the main roads. I observe the other passengers carefully. Every few towns, we switch trucks. The driver delivering us does not know where the driver picking us up is going. The driver picking us up has not idea from whence we came. Thus, if one is caught and the chain broken, he cannot be tortured or bribed into giving much information.

None of us, the passengers, speak to each other.

We arrive at a house at the foothills of the Pyrenees and drive into the enclosed courtyard which is obscured from the road by a solid stone wall. It is either the house of Mensencal or Dufaza. We are secreted into the house where we have a meal and wait again for nightfall.

The heads of these families were head of the Maquis.”

(Note from Victoria: Bianco was told to get out of town, too, before the Gestapo arrived. He refused saying no one suspected him and his farm was well hidden and dangerous to approach. Well, he was carted off by the Gestapo and never heard from again. Also, Mensencal left his area & we cannot find him or his family.)

c. GCYI