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| My answer here was critical, as he had a point. But there had
been a time when the gendarmes were on the German side, when they had done
the Nazis' dirty work of rounding up the Jews and arresting the Résistants.
So, as sincerely as I could, I said, "I got it long before the gendarmes
went up to the Maquis, when they were on your side."
The Lieutenant was stunned. The shirt was, in itself, no proof that the young pastor, whose papers were in order and who wore a well-tailored suit, a conservative civilian tie, and city shoes, was connected to the Maquis. As he could not convince his men that my protest was based on a lie, he had no choice but to let me go. He motioned with his gun for all of us to sit down below the parapet where he was standing. On the way to the place beneath the retaining wall, I turned to Madame Soulier and said, "That was a close call." She nodded. She had seen me move forward and the Germans shoulder their guns after my brief intervention. My exchange with the German officer had escaped her, however. "What are they going to do with us?" she inquired. "They will have to let us go," I assured her, though I was far from sure myself. I felt strongly that we were being kept as hostages. If anything went wrong, we could find ourselves again at the end of a German gun. My fears were being confirmed by the conversation of our captors on the road a few feet above us. The Germans had sent a scouting party into town in order to call Alès and to report on the action at Cornelly. Upon arriving at the Lasalle post office, the Waffen SS found, however, that the lines were dead. The telephone was out of order. The operator suggested that the Maquis could well have cut the telephone lines. In reality (I learned later) it was she herself who had cleverly removed the main fuse of the switchboard and hidden it under a loose plank of the floor. This tactic turned out to be a catastrophe for our group, however, for instead of going home directly, the Germans stayed on, assuming that the cut telephone lines indicated the possibility that the road down to Alès was cut as well, and that they might well be ambushed on the way. Thus the Lieutenant decided simply to wait for reinforcements, which would be sent automatically if he could not reach Alès by telephone. Their arrival would be the indication that the road was clear. At any rate, he explained to his men, he had the civilians, whom he would use as shields in case of an attack on their way down. I did not relay all this German conversation to our little band of hostages, who were asking what I was hearing from above. I quieted their fears by telling them that the Germans would depart soon. That we were to act as shields for their departure I did not mention. They would find out soon enough. Then, suddenly, about nine o'clock, with the sun beginning to set behind
the mountains, all hell broke loose. Shots and explosions came from
all sides; shrapnel was flying. I thought, "This is the end.
The Germans are throwing hand grenades at |
