Just after D Day, a pair of over enthusiastic Maquis botch-ups had brought on Nazi massacres in the towns of Oradour-sur-Glane and Tulle. In Tulle, the Nazis hanged nearly a hundred men from lampposts. In Oradour-sur-Glane, the SS jammed hundreds of men into barns and garages and hundreds more women and children into the town church, then machine-gunned the men and set fire to the barns, garages, and church. No one inside — men, women, or children — survived the flames. After that, they looted the town and killed the few people who'd tried to hide in cellars. They left behind a ghost town.
No doubt about it, Hubert had made a powerful case — military, political, and humanitarian — for getting weapons for his troops. Dominique and Singlaub promised to do what they could.
Later that morning, word came that an OSS operational group had blown up a rail bridge on a northern spur to the east-west line connecting Bordeaux with Lyon, while another band of saboteurs had taken a hydroelectric plant out of action. This cut off power both to an arms factory in Tulle and to the electrified rail line between Correze and Bordeaux. Other Maquis commanders had their eye on Route 89 bridges and were asking for explosives.
This presented Lieutenant Singlaub with a problem. Though the bridges were legitimate targets, closing the highway was not a good idea. The Route 89 corridor through Correze was terrific ambush country, while a closed Route 89 would simply drive the German traffic north toward the more open country near the Loire — and expose Patton's flank. Conclusion: It was best to keep pressure on the German garrisons along Route 89 but to leave the bridges intact and keep the highway open. This decision soon became the first Team James operational order to the Maquis.
Over the next days, Dominique and Singlaub reconnoitered, paying special attention to the German garrisons at Brive, Tulle, Ussel, and Egletons — heavily defended, with sandbagged windows, barbed-wire entanglements, and machine-gun emplacements. Well-trained and disciplined Maquis forces had isolated each of these garrisons; barricades and roadblocks had been set up. Soon there would be coordinated attacks.
Meanwhile, seven of Antoine's FTP companies, together with two of Hubert's AS companies, were laying siege to what was to prove the hardest nut to crack, the garrison at Egletons.
Unhappily, this "joint" arrangement was working no better than previous FTP-AS acts of "cooperation." As ever, the Communists intended to go their own independent way.
This situation grew more complicated a day or so later, when Patrick's regional intelligence officer, who called himself Coriolan, passed on disturbing news: Informants within Antoine's FTP units had warned Coriolan that on the previous night Antoine had pressed the attack against Egletons, and had done it without informing Hubert of this operation, or bothering to coordinate his attack with the AS companies taking part in the encirclement.
Worse, the poorly trained FTP troops screwed it up. Instead of catching the Germans off guard, their attack was so inept that the Germans had managed to retreat in good order back into a fortified and practically impregnable refuge in the Ecole Professionelle, a three-story stone-and-concrete complex on a ridge at the edge of town. Because they were in radio contact with their regional headquarters and defended by heavy machine guns and a 37mm antitank gun, they were as comfy as rats in a sewer. Before long, an armored column would come to relieve them. And air support wasn't far away.
The choice was clear. The Jedburghs had to go to Egletons (where they would join Hubert, who was already there), do what they could to salvage the situation, and prepare to ambush the German relief column. Since collaborators and spies were everywhere, the three of them (and a ten-man AS escort) had to hike over backcountry Maquis trails — maybe twenty-five kilometers point to point, but closer to fifty on the ground. It took them a day.
That evening they linked up with Hubert, who had set up his PC on the ground floor of a stonc house with a walled garden, perhaps 500 meters from the northwest corner of the Ecole Professionelle. His two companies had taken positions in neighboring houses and along a sunken road, while the FTP troops were in pockets ringed around the other three corners of the school compound.
After Hubert's briefing and a quick look around, Dominique and Singlaub tried to link up with the FTP and conduct the kind of reconnaissance needed for a realistic attack plan, but quickly decided to put that off until daylight after they were warned off by FTP sentries, whose hostility was palpable.
The next morning, the Communists' suspicion and hostility was little diminished, but nevertheless, the two Jedburgh officers managed to talk their way into the FTP area.
Once again Singlaub was struck by the indiscipline of the FTP troops, who were firing Bren guns sporadically at the stone facade of the school, to no real effect except to send stone chips flying. Uncoordinated fire is like an unfocused lens — a waste.
When Dominique and Singlaub asked for directions to the FTP commander, sullen Communists pointed out a bullet-pocked house near the school. the way there was dicey, since much of the street was in view of the school, and there was so much glass and rubble underfoot it was impossible for the two Jedburghs not to make noise and call attention to themselves. This was made worse by the FTP soldiers they passed en route, all of whom seemed bent to point them out and challenge their presence.
Bent low, they raced down the street, then passed through a garden and burst through the back door of the house closest to the school. While Dominique stayed behind to guard his rear, Singlaub climbed up to the slate-roofed attic to see what he could learn. A small, square window opened onto the school, two hundred meters away. He opened it and stealthily raised his face to look outside.
Some of his OSS training in England came in handy just then — how to make quick, accurate recons. It was like a meditation technique: The idea was to clear your mind of conscious thought, focus your gaze like a camera, and let what passed before you register as though your mind were photographic film. Singlaub panned his eyes across the school courtyard across the road and the school walls and windows, noting the timber barricades, overturned concrete slabs, and heavy furniture blocking the windows. Shadowy figures moving in the shrubbery probably indicated a machine-gun crew.
At that moment, angry shouts came from below. And he could hear Dominique cursing. Meanwhile, off to the side he could see FTP soldiers down in the street stupidly pointing fingers in the direction of his own attic window, effectively spotting him for the German gunners. In OSS school, they'd had to go through what were called "bungler exercises," in which the trainees would be subjected to unexpected, frustrating, and often stupid annoyances to see how they would react. This was different. It was the real thing. The German gunners quickly got the point and started spraying the window from at least two machine guns, but not before Singlaub had scrambled down the stairs and out the back door. By then, the machine guns had opened up on the front windows. Dominique was waiting for him, his face white with fury — not so much at the Germans as at their own supposed friends.
"Let's get out of here," Singlaub said to him, "in case the Krauts have got a mortar over there."
There came then a loud crack and a deep-throated metallic clang, as the 37mm antitank gun blew a hole through the slate roof under which Singlaub had just been hiding. Slate fragments showered down as he and Dominique scuttled away.
A little later that morning, they were set to meet Antoine (they had so far never set eyes on him), for a tactical conference in a stone barn on the other side of the sunken road. But the Communist leader was proving to be elusive ("He's been called away on urgent operational matters," it was explained), and his chief of staff showed up in his stead.