Philip Howells, in a guest contribution, offers some further thoughts on wartime aviation mishaps following the Salut! piece juxtaposing reflections on two such incidents in France .....
The item at Salut! arrived at a most apposite moment for a number of reasons,
all of which bear on the search by Jeremy Robson for information on his
Lancaster crew. Since this is likely to be rather long I send it direct and
leave it to you to decide what, if any, of it to place on Salut.
One thing that making the video programme you referred to (since shown on Arte
and available, in French only at present, at the Espace York Mallory - the
museum that the good people of le Rivier have opened in honour of Leigh-Mallory)
is that time is passing very quickly and we are losing the source material.
Another of the programmes I made (this time for the Oisans Resistance Veterans
Association) dealt with the rescue by them of an American bomber crew. I drew
most of my programme from the only published source, a comprehensive book
published by one of the Resistance members. However, after it was completed and
copies had been sent by the Association to the surviving members of the crew I
received a call from the pilot, drawing my attention to certain errors - errors
he'd also observed in the book.
All were details but all cast the Americans in a poorer light than the
Resistance. Now we all know the victors write the history but this seemed
unnecessary spinning.
However, the pilot's correction of one detail led me in a completely different
direction - to the operations of an OSS Operational Group dropped to the
Resistance in the Vercors after their rising against the Germans after the
Landings in Normandy. You probably know the details of that episode so I won't
repeat them but suffice to say it was (like the similar rising in Glieres)
ill-conceived and doomed to failure - Resistance organisations succeed as
guerillas, not as regular soldiers. The two-man British group sent to the
Vercors at the same time suffered the fate of the Resistance (including the
famous grotto hospital) - murder by the Germans - but the 15-man OSS OG
"Justine" led by Vernon Hoppers managed to survive the man-hunt - at one point
lying still in a forest for three days as the Germans searched around them.
After the search was relaxed, this OG somehow managed to escape, eventually
making contact with "my" pilot at Le Rivier which was then the HQ of the Oisans
Resistance. The book and my programme only refer to one man, but through my
pilot I learned of the others and researched in Washington their exploits.
Hoppers was, according to the pilot, "the most frightening soldier I'd ever met
- and he was on my side". When he left le Rivier it was to recce the escaping
Germans leaving for Italy via the Gresivaudan valley and the Modane train
tunnel. When he found them he raced back to Grenoble which had been reached by
Patch's 7th US Army on 22nd August, and reported the intelligence.
Unfortunately the forces in Grenoble were only the advance guard and Patch
decided to let the Germans (relatively low-grade Alpine troops) to escape. His
task was to link up with Patton's 3rd Army which he did near Dijon some days
later, and then drive for the Rhine.
All this left me with one blank space - how did Hoppers and his group get across
the Isere, already by Grenoble (where it merges with the Romanche and the Drac)
a wide, deep and fast flowing river.
Coincidentally in 2004 I was reading the biography of Michel Thomas, the
celebrated linguist and teacher, and also sometime Resistant. Out of the pages
jumped a reference to him guiding a "patrol" of American soldiers across the
Isere, and into the Chartreuse and thence the Belledonne mountains (in which Le
Rivier lies).
I contacted M Thomas' office in New York and asked if this could be the OG
Justine. He confirmed it was - he knew Hoppers' name - and agreed to meet me in
New York in early January when I planned to video record his testimony.
Sadly, he died of a heart attack on 8th January 2005.
Hoppers' died shortly after the war in an accident and I've been unable to
contact any of the other members of the OG. Time passes.
But let me come back to the spinning of history.
This summer I was invited to the opening of an exhibition in Alpe d'Huez library
marking the 70th anniversary of the Oisans Resistance story and featuring my
video programme. I noticed that on a new display board has been added for the
benefit of today's children the statement that the French Resistance "liberated"
Grenoble on the night of 21/22 August 1944.
As I wrote to the organiser, I don't dispute that Resistance members alone or in
groups could have circulated around Grenoble freely during that night, but that
was because the Germans had left, not because a shot was fired to get them
going. To describe it as a liberation was untrue.
I remarked that it was sad that the French of 2009 still needed to spin the
truth to put themselves in a better light.
It was a matter of record that everyone, Germans and the Free French had been
surprised at the speed with which the US 7th had moved from Provence to Grenoble
- the plans called for them to reach Grenoble on D+90 - in fact they arrived on
D+7! That was primarily because they'd parachuted OSS-type officers along the
route through the mountains assigned to the Americans. In contrast, the French
1st Army under Leclerc made heavy weather making its way (without on the ground
intelligence) up the wider and flatter Rhone valley.
Students of the history of that time have learned to blame de Gaulle's character
and political ambitions for the despicable manner in which he dismissed the
efforts of OSS and SOE forces immediately after the liberation of France - in
celebrated cases like that of George Millar, one of SOE's most outstanding
officers, giving them just 24 hours notice to quit the country - but for
ordinary citizens to be continuing the spinning of history is unfortunate to say
the least.
* Long ago, Philip Howells was Salut!'s first guest columnist. He described himself then as a genuine war baby, adding: "I spent the first 18 years of my working life in BOAC and British Airways Sales and Marketing in the UK and USA. After taking early retirement, I ran my own AV and video business and still make video progranmmes, concentrating on wedding videos. I play guitar and help out on euphonium in the training band section of Astley Youth Brass band. To join the band, kids must be able to open their instrument case."
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