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138 SD Halifax W1012
Some Burgundy, SOE, Pat Line and Bordeaux connnections
This page first posted 29 Apr 2024
On the evening of 19 February 1943, 138 SD Halifax W1012 took off from Tempsford on operations Buttercup 2 and Director 4 to drop supplies for SOE; and Burgundy, to deliver BCRA agent Georges Broussine to France where he would organise his Bourgogne escape line. Engineer W/O Frederick Jerome (LIB/1338) says they were heading for the Golfe du Lion but bad weather forced them to turn back, and second pilot F/Lt Robert Hogg (LIB/1811) says bad visibilty made map-reading impossible. They were close to Tours when they were hit by light flak, and with the aircraft at such a low altitude that baling out was not an option, pilot F/Lt Peter Kingsford-Smith (LIB/136) jettisoned the containers and crash-landed his aircraft a few miles south of the city.
Neither their passenger nor any of the eight-man crew was injured in the landing, and after setting fire to the aircraft, their passenger, Broussine, took charge. He led them to the village of Larçay, and the home of Roger Bodineau.
“Our passenger, a Frenchman, lead us back towards Tours about 12 miles to the north-west and we reached the small village of Larçay. Our passenger left us in a stable belonging to a farmer and said that he would be back within 48 hours. He had given us 20,000 francs which we split up between us. The next day the farmer brought us food, civilian clothing etc. He fed the eight members of the crew for two days. As our passenger did not return we decided to push off.” (Hogg LIB/1811)
In Broussine's version of events, he led the airman to Larçay, where he knocked on the first door he came to, the home of farmer Roger Bodineau and his wife Marcelle. He found out later that Roger Bodineau assumed that he, Broussine, was a member of the local resistance who had found the airmen within a couple of hours of their landing (everyone in the area had heard the aircraft), and brought them to his door. Unknown to the airmen, Broussine had urgent matters to attend to in Paris and Lyon first, and when he did return to Larçay, it was several days after the airmen had left.
Roger Bodineau (born 10 Feb 1900) his wife Marcelle (born 17 Jan 1905) and son Raoul, were subsequently recruited by Broussine into his new Bourgogne (aka Burgundy) escape line, and they sheltered a number of Allied evaders and radio-operators on their farm “la Salle Girault”. They (along with radio-operator Michel Bourgeois aka Maxime) were arrested on 24 July 1944 following the capture of an agent from another organisation who had letters in his possession, including one from F/O James M Clement RCAF, who was also being sheltered on the Bodineau farm. Roger Pierre Bodineau was executed – shot at Saint Symphorien, Tours (along with James Clement) on 9 August 1944 - and Marcelle Bodineau deported to Ravensbruck - she was repatriated by the Swedish Red Cross as a semi-permanent invalid on 29 June 1945.
The airmen split into pairs to make their way south to Toulouse, where Broussine had told them to go to Hotel de Paris. Robert Hogg and Peter Kingsford-Smith walked all that night, and in the early morning, called on a farmer. They never knew the farmer's name but he gave them food, shelter for the day and maps, and the local mayor brought them more maps, and cigarettes. He also gave them a lift about 7 kms out of the village, which Hogg says was just a few kilometres north-west of Le Liège (so probably Luzille). They took this route to avoid Loches where they had been told that Germans were stationed.
They walked to Saint-Hippolyte (Indre-et-Loire) that evening, where after trying about five houses, they were taken in by a farmer and fed. He then brought in a young student from Loches University who later brought the Profesor of English from the University.
That night, following instructions from the professor (Robert Morisset (aka Maurice) Professor d'Anglais of 6 Place de l'Hotel de Ville, Loches), they set off on bicycles with the student (Christian Doucet , Surveillant d'Internat (boarding school supervisor), College de Loches - query) as their guide, who passed them over to another guide, who in turn handed them over to a woman. The woman led them a cottage in the Forest of Loches where they met two French ladies who spoke English and lived in a chateau.
The ladies took the airmen's details and sheltered them for five days, the men going into the forest during daytime. One of the ladies said she was in an organisation receiving “stuff” dropped from the air, and that her son had been dropped from England some time before at the same place.
Their hostess was Mme Marthe Dauprat-Sevenet, mother of SOE agent Henri Paul Sevenet, at the Chateau de Breuil. Henri (born 3 Nov 1914) had left France in July 1942 with help from the Pat Line, joining a party of RAF evaders - F/Sgt Kenneth Houghton (788), F/O Alojzy Szkuta (786) and P/O W P Wasik (971) - at Toulouse, and crossing the Pyrenees with them. I am guessing it was through their contact with the Pat Line (probably via André Simon) that the family knew René Gérard in Loches (see below). On arrival at Barcelona, Henri claimed priority over the airmen, and reached London on 19 July. After a month of training, Henri parachuted back onto the family land at Chédigny (about eight kilometers north of Loches) on 27 August 1942, where his mother Marthe was head of the reception committee.
On the night of their fifth day, the female guide returned with bicycles and took them to a house in Loches belonging to an “administration official of the legal branch”, whose wife was in prison for leading allied airmen across the demarcation line. Hogg and Kingsford-Smith stayed there that night, and the man provided them with identity cards.
The “administration official” was huissier (public notary) and Pat Line passeur René André Léon Gérard (born 22 Nov 1911) of 6 Mail de la Poterie, Loches. René was the husband of Suzanne Marie Gérard (née Renaud 14 Mar 1914), who was arrested with Louis Nouveau and Jean Veith at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps railway station on 12 February 1943, along with five American aircrew from the B-17 41-24584 SUSFU.
IS9 say that René made his way to England soon after his wife's arrest but RAF Sgts Wilfred Barber (1279) and James Lawrence (1280) report that on 26 April, it was René Gérard and Roger le Legionnaire (Leneveu - see again later) who took them and F/Sgt E Durant (all from 158 Sqn Halifax HR779) from Bar-le-Duc (where René was born) to Paris, where they understood they were now in the hands of the “Bordeaux” organisation . Next day, they were taken by train to Tours, and then by bus to René Gérard's house in Loches, where they met Jean-Claude Camors .. On 10 May, René and Leneveu returned the airmen to Rene's house, where Camors told them arrangements had been made to take them to Spain. Next day, the six men went to Chateauroux, where René and Leneveu left them, and Camors took the three airmen to Toulouse ..
René Gérard returned to France later that year as second-in-command of the French BCRA Pernod organisation. He was arrested in Paris on 8 April 1944, deported to Germany and shot at Buchenwald on 5 October 1944.
It's not clear how René Gérard got to England - presumably via the Pyrenees - nor how he got back to France - assumed by parachute but perhaps he and Pierre Guillot were landed on the double Lysander Operation Gloxinia for S.R. Air (Service de renseignements de l'armée de l'air) on the night of 12-13 Nov 43 to a field near Estrées-St-Denis, Oise.
Hogg says that next morning, the second of their previous guides arrived with a fishing rod, and walked them to a small railway station a little south-east of Loches. He bought them tickets and put them on a train where they met their host (I assume he means René Gérard) and another new man (Jean Pierre Lemée - query), who accompanied them to Toulouse. After changing trains at Chateauroux, they arrived in Toulouse that evening. The new man then went to the Hotel de Paris, and returned with news that the proprietors had been arrested.
Stanislas and Augustine Mongelard were arrested on 20 February 1943 although Françoise Dissard (see below) had already abandoned using the Hotel de Paris following the arrest of Pat Line radio operator Tom Groome on 11 January. The Mongelards were deported to Germany where Stanislas François Mongelard (born 5 Nov 1892) died at Nordhausen during an American air raid but Augustine (born 9 Mar 1893) survived Ravensbruck and Mauthausen and returned to France after the war.
Hogg and Kingsford-Smith spent the next two nights with a student and his girl friend. They never knew their names, and although they were known to their guides, the visit seemed unexpected. They were then handed over to a Frenchman that Hogg says was married to an American woman called “Jane”, and stayed in their house on a road near the canal. At the house, they joined an American airman, 2/Lt Dominick Lazzaro, and several Frenchmen who had escaped from a French concentration camp.
Their hosts were Paul and Imelda Ulmann who sheltered the airmen at 39 rue Pierre Cazeneuve, a villa that Françoise Dissard rented for Paul to house evaders. It is about 300 metres from the Canal du Midi, and although Françoise says the villa was abandoned at the same time as the Hotel de Paris, Imelda and Paul's sister Rolande still insisted on staying there. I believe that 31-year-old Imelda Ulmann was actually born in Austria.
2/Lt Dominck N Lazzaro was the navigator of B-17 42-5058 Hun Hunter (Burman), which was shot down over Brittany on 16 February 1943. The Frenchmen had escaped from the “secret” prison at Castres on 11 February, along with Sgt Clifton R Fincher USAAF and a Canadian airman - both of whom were recaptured on 19 February after being spotted jumping from a train near Banyuls-sur-Mer.
Hogg, Kingsford-Smith and Lazzaro stayed at the house all that day, and in the evening, Hogg reports that “a big party was being given elsewhere by or for the French escapees and the Americans”.
The following morning, Paul left the house at about the same time as the revellers were returning but at about mid-day (sic), a woman came to the house “very excited” and told them that all the members of the organisation, including Paul and Pat, had been arrested at a cafe. The airmen understood that “Pat” was the man who was going to get them across the border.
Three Frenchmen at the house rushed out, and the three airmen were taken across the road where they were sheltered for the rest of the day with a porter from the railway station, who said that he came from Jersey. That evening, they were led to another house where they met two men and an old lady who was continually rolling cigarettes.
On 2 March 1943, Paul Ulmann and Pat O'Leary were arrested at the Super Bar cafe when they went to attend a one-thirty meeting with the French traitor and Gestapo agent Roger Leneveu.
The “old lady” was Marie-Louise (Françoise) Dissard and the house was her home at 12 rue Paul Mériel. The two Frenchmen were Robert Leçuyras (aka Albert) and Bernard Gohon (born 24 Oct 1917).
Note that after the meeting at the Super Bar, O'Leary was due to meet “Geo from Loches” at the Cafe Glacier at three o'clock, so I'm guessing this was one of the two men who accompanied Hogg and Kingsford-Smith from Loches.
It was three o'clock the following morning when Françoise Dissard, Renée Nouveau (wife of Louis Nouveau) and Pat Line guide Bernard Gohon took Hogg, Kingsford-Smith and Lazzaro to the station, where they took a train to Bergerac. They were met by Louis La Paquellerie (of the Moulin de Pomme Bonne in Bergerac) who took them in his baker's truck to a farm where the airmen stayed for ten days. This was the home of Jean Bregi, who Hogg describes as “an engineer who spoke good English, a well-travelled and well-educated type of man” - he was also Pat O‘Leary's regular link with SIS station chief Vic Farrell in Geneva.
On the tenth day, Hogg says that the man went out as usual that morning (Kingsford-Smith says this was on 11 March) but did not return, and an “old French Commandant” who was also staying at the farm, took the airmen to a deserted house in the woods, and left them there with some food.
Jean Henri Bregi (born 15 Dec 1898) (aka Philippe) was arrested in March for sabotage of a factory doing work for the Germans, and condemned to six months in prison. On his release in October, Bregi promptly resumed his work helping evaders, and keeping Vic Farrell in touch with Françoise Dissard.
Next day, the airmen decided to set off on their own but were seen by some children who brought some “truculent“ woodcutters who wanted to know what they were doing in the deserted house. The airmen told them who they were and said they wanted to get to Spain.
The woodcutters went away but then two other men came. They told the airmen that the other people had phoned for the gendarmes, and that they should go with them. One of the men went ahead and suddenly five gendarmes arrived on bicycles from the direction in which he had gone. The gendarmes arrested the airmen and told them not to say anything about the man who had been with them.
Hogg and Kingsford-Smith were taken to the “secret” prison at Castres, used primarily to hold political prisoners and resistance fighters, where they were kept in solitary confinement until 4 May, then transferred to Fresnes, the prison outside Paris where SOE agents and resistance members were held. On 17 July, they were sent to Stalag Luft III (Sagan), and in February 1945, moved to Marlag und Milag Nord, the naval POW camp near Tarmstedt, about 30 kms north-east of Bremen. They were liberated by the British Army on 1 May 1945.
 
W/O Frederick Jerome (LIB/1338), the aircraft's engineer, says that he and Sgt H J Long were the last pair to leave the farm. They set off on foot, walking across country and heading for Toulouse. Six or seven days later, they reached Saint-Quentin (Indre-et-Loire), where they were picked up by two Frenchmen “in a pro-German sort of Home Guard unit”. They were taken to their barracks where they met an officer who took them to his father, André Avril , who sheltered them on his farm at Maillé.
They stayed with André Avril for two days before setting off again, walking for about five days until they reached a village “in the Limoges area”, where they were challenged by two gendarmes. The airmen were taken to the gendarmerie, and the gendarmes sent for the Germans, who took them to a civilian prison at Tours. From there, Jerome says they went to an aerodrome near Paris, and from there, to the Dulag Luft (transit camp) at Frankfurt. The following month (April) they were sent to Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf.
In April 1945, with the appoach of American forces, Jerome and Long were moved to a farmhouse at Augsburg and told to look after themselves – and to prevent the SS from moving them to another camp, a German farmer named Rosengott hid them at his home at 184 Siebnach Strasse, Ettringen near Schwabmunchen until 9 May, when the Americans arrived.
 
The other four crewmen from Halifax W1012, F/Sgt A F A Dawkins, Sgt E J Ramm, Sgt D Robinson and Sgt J Davison, were also captured but I don't have any details.
 
Thank you David Harrison, Jean Michel Dozier and Oliver Clutton-Brock for your contributions to this article.