The Cruel Victory: The French Resistance, D-Day and the Battle for the Vercors 1944. Paddy Ashdown

      

COPYRIGHT

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,

      77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

      London W6 8JB

       WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2014

      Copyright © Paddy Ashdown 2014

      Maps by Harriet McDougall

      Paddy Ashdown asserts his moral right to

      be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is

      available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Cover photographs © Musée départmental de la Résistance du Vercors, Vassieux-en-Vercors

      Maps by Harriet McDougall

      Source ISBN: 9780007520800

      Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007520824

      Version: 2014-11-28

DEDICATION

      To the boy in the white shirt

EPIGRAPH

      In war, young men go out to die for old men’s dreams

       Anon

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       A Note on Usages

       Preface

       Dramatis Personae

       List of Maps

       Prologue

       1 The Vercors before the Vercors

       2 France from the Fall to 1943: Setting the Scene

       3 Beginnings

       4 The Army Goes Underground

       5 Camps and Plans

       6 Exodus and Folly

       7 Expectation, Nomadisation and Decapitation

       8 Retreat, Retrenchment and Reconstruction

       9 Pressure and Parachutes

       10 The Labours of Hercules

       11 January 1944

       12 Of Germans and Spies

       13 February 1944

       14 March 1944

       15 Weapons, Wirelesses, Air Drops and Codes

       16 April 1944

       17 A Basket of Crabs

       18 May 1944

       19 The First Five Days of June 1944

       20 D-Day: 6 June 1944

       21 Mobilization

       22 The First Battle of Saint-Nizier

       23 The Second Battle of Saint-Nizier

       24 Respite and Reorganization

       25 A Damned Good Show

       26 Mixed Messages

       27 The Republic

       28 Action and Expectation