March 20-21, 1944: Evading Germans & Recon planes

Most of the time I have no idea where we are. We are constantly on the move, making camp twice a day to eat and sleep never staying anywhere more than a few hours at a time.

The Germans are always hunting for us, their Fiesler Storches skinning in low over the forest while we rush for cover under the biggest trees we can find. We’re well-armed – British sten guns, Spanish .38 Llama automatics – and I’ve love to fire off a couple of bursts at one of those damned Storches, hit the radiator in its belly, and bring it down. But if the pilot radioed our location, we’d have the German air force bombing hell out of these woods in 15 minutes. Of course, we never know for sure when we’ve been spotted by one of these recon planes, and our position reported. So, we stay as alert as deer, knowing that every step can lead to a German ambush. It has happened before in these woods, although it has usually been the Maquis, not the Germans, who have staged the ambushes – getting the drop on a German foot patrol, or wiping out a small motorized convoy

The Maquis hide by day and hit by night, blowingup bridges, sabotaging rail lines, hitting trains carrying munitions or military equipment. Through the French underground, dozens of Maquis contingents like ours, hidden in the forests and mountains are wired in to ost of the towns and villages in southern France. Their people in the marshalling yards and train depots keep them fully informed on the latest movement of troops or munitions. But it is tricky because every village has its informers or double-agents. And from time to time, assassinations are carried out against these people, supporters of pro-Nazi, Vichy French government. I wonder whether there are any double agents in our group.

Running around in the French woods in civilian clothes is not exactly safe duty for a downed American flier. If I were caught, I’d probably share the same fate as any of these Maquis – turned over to the Gestapo for torture-questioning, then shot. Traveling around with the Maquis, the Geneva Convention of the treatment of prisoners of war would not apply to me. But I need these guys if I’m to get out across the Pyrenees.

We’re just waiting for the snows to melt so I can. It’s an unusually frigid, long winter with very deep snow.

It doesn’t seem like it will ever melt…..

c. GCYI