A glossary of terms and index will be added by the time I get to the end of the story.
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The Maquisards of the Pyrenees
Alesander Gotson had crossed the Pyrenees many times from 1936 to 1939. He and Marcel Fournier, Adrian’s father, had been in Guernica during the infamous fire bombing, retreating to Bilboa… surviving the War of the North and eventually held out at last in Madrid. Nightmares of squadrons in waves… Junkers, Dorniers, Heinkles, Fiat and Messerschmitt fighters … he could still see the bombs dropping and the strafing. Joining a handful of students led by Francisco Oscuro and his “Dark Ones” they stood up to the Condor Legion as long as they could and then slipped out, or melded with the population, in the confusion and rubble when the city fell with the Republican dream and his hopes for a liberated Basque Country was crushed.
Having set up a chocolate shop in Biarritz after being released from Camp Gurs, thanks to the influence of Marcel Fournier and fellow maquis, Alesander retired from the revolution. Marcel had escaped, but not untouched, and went on to prosper from the black market in Paris. Both were disillusioned with the betrayals by the Stalinists for the constant infighting and power struggles between one faction or another in Madrid. Being a witness to the atrocities; the murder of over a thousand Nationalist prisoners ordered by the Stalinist advisor, Koltzov, Alesander, the professional guidari (warrior) was more loyal to his people, the Basques of northern Spain and southwest France, than any allegiance to political ideology. Political ideals all sounded good in the propaganda of the time but the sight of such brazen disregard for human life was what he’d been struggling against in the dust and ruins of Guernica, Bilbao and Madrid. The crimes of the Republic under Soviet usurpation equaled those of General Mola on the other side… No pasaron, indeed.
He seen Paris fall into the dark clouds of insanity for a worse form of fascism, but he also saw the fall of France as an opportunity to help gather forces from Southern France, inflamed by NAZI oppression, sufficient to wrest Basque country from Franco. While, at the same time he did this, he could put a thorn into the side of the Vichey on the French side of the Pyrenees. The Nazis would make it easier to organize a guerrilla movement now that France itself had been occupied and Alesander was more talented at organizing guerrillas than he was at managing his chocolate shop. He’d left the shop to a cousin and disappeared from Biarritz in the Occupied Zone, before the Gestapo found his name on their lists (where it was sure to be), to take up the fight he’d abandoned in March of 1939.
At nightfall he waited with a half-dozen of his maquisards lined up and ready to light flares illuminating the improvised landing strip. The feint purr of the Lysander in the distant black sky assured him the plane was on time… within seconds... and there would be no waiting around. Alesander didn’t appreciate the help his little band was getting from the British. He didn’t believe in the adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” After dealing with the Stalinist, Anarchist and Republican infighting in Madrid, Alesander observed that the worst enemy of the Resistance was the resistance itself. Why would the British government be free of similar play-pen shenanigans? This was life or death to him while they, at times, seemed to view the guidariki as pawns in the big game. His heart beat freer high up in the Pyrenees where his decisions didn’t have to go through a central committee.
“There it is …” a young guidari called out. The commander’s attention was on the landing strip… a black Lysander landed squarely in the midst of two rows of flares, having been lit only moments before, coming to a stop fifty feet from those marking the end of the strip. Alesander admired the ability of these pilots to land on a dime and take off again without a minute lost. He watched as a tall, broad shouldered man with close cropped, blond hair and a huge backpack, jumped to the ground.
The plane was immediately turned around by his men and headed back down the strip to disappear into the night, “This way,” he said in English and the group darted off into the forest.
After about a half-hour hike they came to a small hut where a young girl, Iniga, one of maquisards waiting for their return, lit a kerosene lamp and put it in the middle of the table. Alesander thought of her as a fiery angel with a moon face and cupid-bow lips framed by unruly and wild brown tufts tied down under a provocative Basque Beret. She was only seventeen but had already been slated for a train from Gur to Drancy and sure death before he, and the former préfet of Aveyon, Jean Moulin, managed to wrangle her release two years before. Though barely a teen at the time she had witnessed the assassination of Durruti at the Bridge in Madrid and had become a hardened veteran by1943.
“So, what are we doing… no supplies… no ammo… nothing from you Brits but another face to feed?” She blurted out before the tall muscular, blond man could say anything. He was busy opening a suitcase he’d carried from the plane on the table revealing a compact radio.
"The rest will be dropped tomorrow night… we have another radio code-book…" returning her glare and adding casually, "the others have been compromised. That is why I’m here.”
Alesander had heard that accent in Madrid. It was the accent of the Lincoln Brigade he’d fought with in the last days of the Republic in Madrid. He had a kinship with the Americans… more than with the British whose class distinctions made them almost as nasty as the Germans. But, some of the Americans of the Lincoln Brigade were idealists who’d become as disillusioned as he.
The American pulled another kit out of his pack and put it on the table. Beside two dry cell batteries, there were two thirty-two caliber Welrod pistols with silencers and several boxes of ammo.
No one used their real names and very few asked, but Alesander finally recognized the man. He was Harry Baker, aka, Perro de Caza... the Bird Dog, and had come to Madrid in the last weeks before everyone with any sense scrambled out of there. He never got to know him but he suspected that Mr. Baker played both sides to his benefit. Madrid was far away but the wounds… the distrust… it never heals.
After everyone bedded down outside the hut, Baker sat at the table and lit a pipe, “You are familiar… you were in Madrid at the bridge?”
“Yes, and you were with the International Brigade at Manzanares…” Inga added, “When Durruti was taken out…” She then went back out of the hut.
After she left, Alesander picked up on what the girl was implying, “It was almost over then. How did you get out?”
“That’s classified, sorry,” was Baker pulling rank?
Alesander swiftly yanked his Welrod from inside his jacket, holding it steady between Baker’s eyes. “This round in the chamber is classified too… so tell me Mr. Baker, how did you get out of Madrid?”
Baker didn’t flinch… there was no reaction. It seemed as though he didn’t care one way or another whether Alesander pulled the trigger. “Let me just say, it was a matter of knowing where the bricks, walls and body parts fell during the bombardments.”
“They say… some I know to be reliable… they, and there was more than one, I’ve heard them say that it was a Stalinist that shot Durruti.” Alesander had been with Durruti, the leader of the anarchist column, during the drive to Zaragosa.
“It could have been,” the American still hadn’t blinked.
Iniga burst in the door and came to a halt when she saw the two men poised in an absurd diorama… neither moved. “I hate to interrupt… better put a bullet in his head, Alesander, we have to get moving.”
Two more maquisards entered the hut, “Bind him…,” Alesander ordered, “we’ll pick up our conversation later.”
Baker put his hands behind his back without resistance while Iniga, with a cord of sinew, had begun to bind them. Alesander stopped her from binding him that way, saying, “Tie them to the front, he can move easier that way. We don’t need to have him stumbling in the dark.”
“Thanks,” Baker nodded in agreement.
Two hand guns, 9 mm Lugar semi-automatic pistol and MP 40 German machine pistol with a detached shoulder stock, a makeshift garrote along with two knives in shoulder sheathes, were lifted from inside his heavy jacket. Iniga ran her delicate fingers across the smooth side of the peculiar blade of the biggest one.
Baker grinned at the girl as she examined the odd shaped heavy dagger, “It’s a Smatchet. You can jam that fucker right through an SS helmet. You can have it… I’ll keep the others.”
She approved as the others left the hut.Alesander still hadn’t put the Welrod down until Baker’s hands were secured. She then snuffed the lamp and the band filed out up the hill, splitting up into two or three man groups.
Iniga took the point while Alesander held back behind Baker. He stepped aside and took a stand on an outcrop to pause and check his watch. The column in pursuit would be almost to the hut by this time. He could see a few lights from farm houses in the valley below from his viewpoint but the darkness hid nearly everything else. Had he not known the terrain so well, he wouldn’t have been able to guess where the hut they’d just left might have been… he could hear one of their pursuers loudly complaining that they had to dismount their horses at the hut and hike.
Alesander left his perch… slinging his British Sten and taking up the rear behind his compliant and strangely complacent captive, he puzzled over what to do now. He could have blown the hut with plastique at this time but he didn’t want to give the Regulares any reason to retaliate with reprisals on the villagers below who had as little knowledge of the actions of the maquis as they did the Guardia Civil. The Regulars weren’t as brutal with reprisals as the Civil Guard, or the Germans in France, but trouble of any kind in the countryside could turn the locals against them and the Maquis sorely needed the support of the villagers.
They made their way along a path known only to a few; skirting the limestone cliffs that dropped several hundred feet from the barren landscape to wind, below the tree-line, sidelong the steep slopes down and over a crest, forested with firs and some beech trees to a hidden limestone cave where they met the others and stashed the radio. All except the three then dispersed, some down into the town, Jaca: others scattered elsewhere.
It is said that the garrison of Jaca’s mutiny against the monarchy and its suppression in 1930 gave birth to the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. At the cave the three; Iniga, Baker and Alesander, would bind their fates far beyond the immediate circumstances of that day in 1943.
“Unbind him,” Alesander nodded to Iniga.
“What, you want to give him a chance to escape?” she sneered indignantly.
“He could have had that chance a half dozen times by now…” Alesander answered. An uncustomary grin showed the worried features, so weary of warfare, on what ought to have been a youthful face, “You should be a little less eager for blood, my dear one.” But he knew full well how bitterly the savagery of oppression etched itself into the lives of what ought to have been the carefree youth of those times. The Civil Guard had taken her parents to a wall and gang-raped her at fourteen. She went straight to the front lines in Madrid as a messenger before it fell in '39. Alesander understood because he himself had his first taste of combat as a messenger in '36 when he was fourteen. He was only twenty years of age now but had already been a hardened veteran since the Civil War started a lifetime ago in '36.
Alesander returned Baker’s weapons, “Sorry, we can’t be too careful with our trust." Gesturing for her to unstrap the sheath, "Iniga, give him back his smatchet.”
“But he said I could have it…” she pouted intriguingly girlish.
“We have to set up a drop site…” Baker interrupted.
“Please can I keep the smatchet?” Iniga flashed her mock, little girl, pout at Baker and patted her side where under her coat the smatchet was holstered.
“Sure,” Baker smiled flashing his straight white teeth. He couldn’t figure if she was patting her breast teasingly or the smatchet sheath. He then turned his head up the hill and held his hand out, palm down, to signal silence… he heard voices.
The three fanned out and took cover. Alesander’s took a position above and to the side between a couple of boulders where he could watch the entrance of the cave. That radio in there was crucial for their survival. Ambush strategies and tactics had been worked out long before by the maquisards but Baker had only his well honed instincts to land in a perfect place to observe the approaching column. Iniga found cover a hundred meters up the hill camouflaged behind some scrub beneath some beech trees.
This was an operation with too many problems for Alesander. He preferred quiet operations, where a couple of spikes on a mountain railway track could be dislodged, resulting in a supply train headed for Southern France to derail and tumble into a gulch long after his men would be enjoying a few carafes of wine in Jaca; but this one was suspiciously compromised from the start. Those being his feelings regardless, he would get a chance to gain respect for Baker’s abilities this morning as an ominous mist cast an aura of mystery around the arrival of two Civil Guards and a half-dozen Regulars.
As the squad approached, Baker let the point pass within feet of his position. Alesander had been in so many ambushes by now that he felt calm and focused. The men looked tired and finally the squad leader ordered a rest. They had to scramble up and down these trails, far from the warmth and security of their post. Dumping their packs, rolling and lighting up cigarettes, each made a tremendous amount of noise. From his position he could see Baker gesture, pointing out the sergeant… claiming him for his own… as he was separate from his squad…. taking a dump. Garrote ready, Baker waited, making sure that the sergeant finished his dump before taking him out. He didn’t want to mess himself up in close quarters like that. He gave Alesander a hand signal to wait.
Iniga had the smatchet out and poised to use on one of them leaning against the same beech she had been using for cover. He’d taken off his German style helmet adorned with the Franco Eagle emblem, to roll up and light a cigarette. This bothered her because she wanted to see how that damned blade worked even though he’d set aside his new, and hardly ever used, parade-ground Muaser rifle within easy reach. Still, in spite of her youthful petulance she was disciplined enough to wait for Alesander’s signal. He was in the line of sight for both her and Baker but, of course, she had no idea what the waiting was about.
One of the men spoke loud enough for all to hear, “They are probably in Jaca by now… having breakfast… eh?” there would be no answer from the sergeant.
Alesander was in position to catch most of the rest with his Sten when Baker made his move. These men were green... Franco had to send his more experienced, so-called volunteer, Blue Divisions to the Russian Front to appease Hitler. The army never recovered from the loss of experienced fighters. Now Spain, with the exception of a few Moroccan veterans, had nothing but barracks mavens to send out on patrol: they looked good for the parade grounds but were of little use in the field.
It was over before anyone was able to lift a weapon. Everyone had all moved in such precision that only a short burst from Alesander’s Sten made any sound. Baker worried that the sound of that burst might have carried. He had taken out three with a knife as Iniga made short work of two more with one of the Welrods. The three had moved in unison as though choreographed in a deadly dance.
In the end, Iniga had one pinned against a tree by the Mauser she held casually to her side with the business end of the barrel only inches from the boy’s crotch. He was no older than Iniga.
“What are we going to do with him?” she almost pled.
Alesander walked straight up to the quivering kid with tears of fear on his adolescent face, saying calmly, “Its going to be alright…” he assured the boy as he put a silenced round into the side of the youth’s head. The boy dropped to the ground in front of Iniga’s Mauser muzzle.
She turned to catch Alesander walking away as though he’d only delivered a paper. She understood… no prisoners… but a deep ache welled up in her with tears of her own.She then put the boy's helmet back on his head and slammed the smatchet through it to the hilt.
Jerking away she called out to Baker, “Hey, it went through his helmet like a butter knife!” displaying the bloody smatchet.
Baker kicked the body over, the helmet rolled off to show the wound in the back of the kid's head. The helmet had a hole in the middle of the top, “You did that afterwards.”
“I had to try it,” she answered coyly and smiled broadly.
He gave her a pat on the back and the three of them got busy hiding the bodies.
War… the crisp, clean, autumn, mountain air, now smelled of blood, shit and urine soaked trousers,from exploded intestines. All three were young and should have been cramming for studies in dorms or playing soccer… but here they were. It had to be accepted… it is unfair… every dead soldier has a grieving family… a mother… a father… a lover… war!
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