Churchill's Hellraisers. Damien Lewis
of the Vosges region of France, an area of thick woodland and rain-washed mountains that straddles the Franco-German border. Hitler had vowed that on the western wall of the Vosges his Panzer divisions and infantry would make a heroic last stand, hurling the Allies back into France and preventing them from marching into the Fatherland. It seemed a fitting area in which Farran and his SAS might cause trouble, but things weren’t quite to turn out as he had planned.
It was the second week of September 1944 when Farran linked up with a new resistance group at Grandrupt. This one – somewhat implausibly – was based around a Boy Scout troop. The members of the Grandrupt Maquis struck Farran as being a little young to go to war, although those in command were seasoned resistance fighters. They’d set up base in a cluster of white canvas bell-tents pitched beside a mountain stream, and the whole scene struck Farran as being reminiscent of a scout camp in peacetime.
It was somehow so incongruous, yet their spirit to fight appeared to be unmatched. Farran delivered a stirring speech in his best schoolboy French and was mobbed by a crowd of young would-be warriors. He decided to arrange an air-drop of much-needed arms and supplies onto the boy scouts’ drop zone, which if nothing else would give them some direct experience of a ‘lancée’, as the Maquis tended to call such an event.
The DZ was a large flat field fringed by trees, so well screened from any watchers. There was a cold wind blowing, as September ushered in the autumn and winter storms so typical of the Vosges. Farran explained in detail the configuration of signal lights and fires that were required to guide the aircraft in, but he doubted if the scouts had completely grasped it. He was just giving up hope of any aircraft appearing, when, at around 0200 hours, the distant drone of a Handley Page Halifax’s four Rolls-Royce Vulture engines cut the skies.
The Halifax was designed for use as a heavy bomber, but specialised versions had also been built for parachute and cargo operations. It had become the work-horse of special forces resupply missions. As the pair of aircraft homed in on the DZ, Farran figured they were making their approach at too high an altitude. Sure enough, when they released their loads the wind blew a good proportion of the parachutes off course, which plummeted into the trees.
By now, Farran and his men were shivering with the night’s cold, but there was urgent work to be done. Three human parachutists had also dropped in, alongside the supplies. Lieutenant Hugh Gurney, Lance Corporal Challenor and Parachutist Fyffe had gone missing weeks earlier, shortly after Farran’s column had crossed the lines. Somehow, they’d made it back to friendly forces and were now parachuting in to rejoin their unit. Unfortunately, the wind had driven Fyffe into a stand of tall pine trees. It was three long hours before Farran and his men finally got him safely to the ground.
The resupply containers were so widely scattered that by daybreak several were still to be found. A somewhat disgruntled Farran took a break for some much-needed breakfast, leaving the boy-scout Maquis in charge. It was around 0900 hours when a youth of no more than ten came tearing over to Farran in something of a panic. He’d been sent with an urgent message: some 600 German soldiers, supported by armoured cars plus Sonderkraftfahrzeug half-tracks – troop-carriers fitted with machine guns – were converging on the DZ.
There was, as Farran well knew, a crack SS battalion based at Grandrupt-de-Bains. They must have learned of the resupply drop and set out early intending to spoil Farran’s day. Equipped as they were, the enemy were going to heavily outnumber his force, not to mention outgun it.
Farran ordered his men to mount up their jeeps. As he scanned their surroundings, searching for an escape route, the DZ seemed to be completely enclosed in thick, impenetrable woodland. There would be no slipping away via jeep through any of that. One rutted track led out of the clearing, but that was the direction in which the SS battalion were fast approaching.
Opting to stand and fight would be suicide. The half-tracks – known as ‘Hanomags’ to Allied troops – boasted half-inch-thick armour and pairs of pivot-mounted machine guns, and each could carry ten soldiers in full combat gear. Advising the boy-scout Maquis to disperse into the woodland, Farran set about trying to find some means for his jeep-borne force to escape. As if to underscore the dire nature of their predicament the first bursts of fire erupted from the eastern fringes of the DZ, from where the enemy were making their approach.
Farran led his column of jeeps in a desperate dash around the perimeter of the DZ, searching for an elusive means to make their getaway. Here and there expanses of white parachute silk still cloaked the odd tree top, if ever the enemy needed a marker to guide them to their prey. As they gunned the jeeps’ engines, figures came charging out of the woodland – young Maquis, fleeing from the approaching convoy.
To the north of the DZ Farran spied a river cutting through the trees: it would be impossible to ford that in the jeeps. East lay only the enemy, and south and west rose dark walls of pinewoods. Giving up any hope of escape, Farran ordered his men to place their jeeps in the ‘hull-down’ position – so with their bodywork sheltered behind a low ridge, but with the vehicle-mounted machine guns able to menace the line of approach of the enemy.
As they waited, Farran wondered whether they might be better off doing a Last Charge of the Light Brigade, as opposed to something more akin to the heroic stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. It was then that he noticed what appeared to be a small break in the wall of trees, in the far south-western corner. As the grunt of powerful engines rose to a crescendo to the east, Farran led his column in a mad dash for that tantalising promise of escape.
With bursts of fire chasing after them, the jeeps crashed through a wire fence and careered onwards through a copse of young saplings, mowing them down like a herd of crazed elephants put to flight in the jungle. Farran led the column across a small field, the jeeps bucking over the rough ground, before they made the better going of a small lane on the far side.
A mile or so later, they emerged onto a tarmacked road. Farran’s thoughts now were all for the fate of the young Maquis. Facing an SS battalion was some baptism of fire. He ordered Lieutenant Gurney, freshly parachuted into theatre, to take two jeeps to hit the enemy’s rear, by motoring up the Grandrupt road. More jeeps were placed in ambush positions along the highway, intent on catching the SS as they withdrew from the DZ.
Lieutenant Gurney was the first to draw blood. Taking the enemy by complete surprise, he was able to strafe a group of officers positioned on a hillock, knocking out their command vehicle. Meanwhile, one of Farran’s jeeps lying in ambush got lucky. Two staff cars were motoring for the DZ, intent on witnessing the success of the operation. Instead, they drove into a withering hail of fire.
Not a man riding in those vehicles was allowed to get out alive. As luck would have it, they were carrying the top commanders of the SS assault force – their colonel and his officers. While the SS had succeeded in seizing the drop-zone and some of the remnant supplies, Farran and his SAS had definitely cut the head off the snake. Having done so, his fear, once again, was of the reprisals.
He ordered his column to move out. They probed south, seeking a new patch of forest in which to hide. Over several days they covered just eighty kilometres, the enemy were so thick on the ground. Retreating from the advancing Allied forces, the Germans were converging on the western wall of the Vosges, being funnelled into the very area where Farran had chosen to operate. In short, at every turn the ground was thick with their forces.
Farran’s patrols left more burning vehicles and dead Germans – as often as not, officers – in their wake. Their war diary gave the flavour of one such bloody confrontation. ‘Two jeeps met an enemy six-wheeled car, which halted; two officers got out, one armed with a Schmeisser. Dvr. Beckett, expecting them to be Americans, walked towards them. One officer with a Luger pointed it . . . and said “Haende Hoch”. Beckett pushed the gun away and fell into the ditch to escape the tracer fired from the jeep . . . The remaining officers in the car tried to get out. Two succeeded and attempted to climb over a wall, but were killed against it. The others perished in the car, which caught fire.’
But as the war diary reflected, the hue and cry was up for Farran’s patrol. ‘Truck loads of Germans had been inquiring at all villages to the south of the forest about British parachutists, and there were rumours that the maquis at Grandrupt had been