- 2 days ago
Why Germans never caught the Canadians smuggling Allied airmen home comes down to one brutal idea: the escape line was built like a military operation, not a loose resistance network. In occupied France, Lucien Dumais and Raymond LaBrosse turned Brittany’s worst beach into a secret evacuation route, guiding downed pilots from Paris to a cliffside rendezvous, across a mined shingle, and out to a waiting Royal Navy motor gun boat.
This WWII history story follows the Sherbrooke-style escape line known as Shelburne, the Gestapo hunt, the BBC coded message that triggered each pickup, and the strict rules that kept the operation intact. It is a gripping military history documentary-style narration about escape lines in France, Allied airmen, MI9, resistance cells, and the Canadian men who refused to let one captured helper or one loose word bring the whole chain down.
For listeners searching for Canadian war stories, World War 2 escape stories, military history narration, and WWII documentary content, this is a focused account of sabotage, secrecy, and rescue behind enemy lines. It also fits searches for history storytelling, wartime resistance, and true accounts of Allied airmen escape routes.
This WWII history story follows the Sherbrooke-style escape line known as Shelburne, the Gestapo hunt, the BBC coded message that triggered each pickup, and the strict rules that kept the operation intact. It is a gripping military history documentary-style narration about escape lines in France, Allied airmen, MI9, resistance cells, and the Canadian men who refused to let one captured helper or one loose word bring the whole chain down.
For listeners searching for Canadian war stories, World War 2 escape stories, military history narration, and WWII documentary content, this is a focused account of sabotage, secrecy, and rescue behind enemy lines. It also fits searches for history storytelling, wartime resistance, and true accounts of Allied airmen escape routes.
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the night of January 28, 1944, a 38-year-old man from Montreal stood halfway down a cliff
00:08on the coast of Brittany and did the single most dangerous thing anybody could do on that coast.
00:14He took out a flashlight, he turned it toward the open sea, and he switched it on.
00:21Not a shielded glow at his feet, a light aimed outward from a cliff face
00:27the German army watched with guns. Behind him on the path, strung out in single file, were 19 people.
00:36Most of them were American and British airmen who had been shot down over France
00:41and who had been hidden, moved, fed, and dressed by strangers for weeks.
00:47They were walking on a track barely wide enough for one man.
00:52That afternoon, the track and the shingle below it had been swept for mines,
00:56and 17 had been found. Each one was marked with a white handkerchief, laid down like a small flag,
01:04to be collected on the way back so that no German patrol would ever see it.
01:091,200 meters north of that beach stood a German artillery blockhouse.
01:15On the headland above sat 40-millimeter guns.
01:2430 minutes earlier, in a stone farmhouse 2 kilometers inland, one of the passengers had been talking.
01:32He was an American, and he was not an ordinary evader.
01:37He had run the escape line that came before this one,
01:41and eight months earlier, the Gestapo had taken that line apart around him and put him in a prison cell.
01:49He had got out.
01:51Now, he was being sent home,
01:53and he was talking too freely in a room full of men whose lives depended on silence.
02:00The Canadian in charge walked over, put a pistol on him,
02:05and told him that if he opened his mouth again, he would shoot him himself.
02:10That was the rule.
02:12Not a warning.
02:14Not a policy.
02:15A pistol in a kitchen,
02:17from the only man in the entire operation who carried a weapon.
02:22Then, he took them down the cliff.
02:25Halfway, he stopped,
02:26and sent one short flash out over the water.
02:30The letter B in Morse, three times.
02:34Out in the dark, four hours from England,
02:37a Royal Navy gunboat had been sitting with her engines dead, listening.
02:43That light was the only thing that told her crew the beach belonged to them,
02:48and not to the Germans.
02:50If what the Canadians did on this coast matters to you,
02:54a subscribe helps these stories reach more people.
02:58Now hold that image of the flashlight,
03:01because everything in this story runs through it.
03:05By 1944,
03:07helping allied airmen escape from occupied France
03:10was the most lethal volunteer work in Europe,
03:13and everybody in it knew how it ended.
03:16The Comet Line,
03:18which walked airmen from Brussels to the Pyrenees,
03:21had been betrayed,
03:22and its young founder arrested in January of 1943.
03:27The Pat O'Leary Line,
03:29which moved men south through Marseille,
03:32was broken by a single paid informer,
03:35who walked into it,
03:37learned the names,
03:38and handed them over that march.
03:40Hundreds of French, Belgian, and Dutch helpers were arrested.
03:44Many of them were shot.
03:45Many more died in the camps.
03:48The pattern was always the same.
03:49One arrest,
03:51one interrogation,
03:52one name,
03:53and then the line unzipped from one end to the other.
03:56Now here is the fact this whole story is built on,
04:00and I want you to sit with it.
04:01Between January and August of 1944,
04:04one escape line ran airmen out of Paris,
04:07across occupied France,
04:09down that mined cliff,
04:10and onto the open sea,
04:12again and again,
04:14under those German guns.
04:15More than 130 airmen went home that way.
04:18Somewhere around 300 men in total
04:21owed their freedom to the organization behind it.
04:24And when the war was over,
04:26and the German records were read,
04:28historians found something that exists
04:30nowhere else in the history of the escape lines.
04:33The Gestapo never got inside it.
04:36Not one member captured.
04:38Not one evader lost after reaching it.
04:41Not one cell rolled up.
04:43It is the only allied escape line in occupied France
04:46that was never penetrated,
04:47and it was run on the ground by two Canadians.
04:52The man with the flashlight was Lucien Dumais,
04:55a career sergeant major of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal,
04:59a French-speaking regiment out of Montreal.
05:01He was not an intelligence officer.
05:04He was an infantry NCO of the old school,
05:07hard, exact,
05:09and known in his own battalion
05:11for being unwilling to hear excuses.
05:13He had landed at Dieppe in August of 1942,
05:17and he had been taken prisoner there
05:19along with roughly 2,000 other Canadians.
05:22He did not stay a prisoner.
05:25Remember that,
05:26because it is the reason MI9
05:28eventually handed him a piece of a country.
05:30The second man was Raymond Labrasse from Ottawa,
05:35a signalman of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals,
05:38who had gone overseas in 1940 as a teenager.
05:42He was the radio operator,
05:44which, in occupied France,
05:45meant he was the man
05:47with the shortest life expectancy
05:48in any room he walked into.
05:51He was also the first Canadian
05:52that British military intelligence
05:54ever recruited for this work.
05:56And he was the only one of the two
05:57who had already done it,
05:59who had already been dropped into France,
06:01already built a line,
06:02and already watched it die.
06:04So here is the question
06:05this story is going to answer,
06:07and I am not going to give it to you cheaply,
06:09because the easy answers are all wrong.
06:11It was not luck.
06:12It was not a quiet corner of France
06:15that nobody was watching.
06:16You have already heard
06:17what was sitting 1,200 meters from that beach.
06:19And it was not that the Germans were careless.
06:22They had broken every other line in the country
06:24using the same patient methods,
06:26and they applied those methods to Brittany, too.
06:29They hunted the radio.
06:30They pushed men in.
06:32In the end,
06:33they came to within 2 kilometers of the answer,
06:35and burned a house down out of pure suspicion,
06:37and still went home with nothing.
06:40Something about this line was built differently.
06:42Something in it made the German technique fail.
06:45And the reason it was built differently
06:47is the uncomfortable part.
06:49It is not that these two Canadians
06:51were cleverer than the people who came before them.
06:54It is that both of them
06:56had personally watched a line collapse from the inside.
07:00One of them from a German prisoner train,
07:03the other from a wireless set
07:05that had stopped working
07:06at the exact moment he needed it.
07:09Eleven months before that flashlight,
07:12Raymond Labrosse was standing in a field
07:14outside Paris in the middle of the night,
07:17holding a suitcase that no longer worked.
07:19The field was a few kilometers
07:21from the forest of Rambouillet,
07:23west of Paris,
07:24and the night was the last night of February, 1943.
07:31Raymond Labrosse was 20 years old.
07:33He was standing in occupied France
07:36in civilian clothes,
07:37and the first thing he did
07:39after he got out of his parachute harness
07:41was open his suitcase
07:43and find out that his war
07:45had already gone wrong.
07:47The wireless set inside it was broken.
07:51So was the bicycle that had been dropped with him.
07:55Now, I want you to understand
07:57exactly what that meant,
07:59because it is the hinge
08:00of everything that comes later.
08:03A wireless operator without a wireless
08:06is not a man with an inconvenience.
08:09He is a man who has been cut off
08:11from the only people
08:13who can act on what he learns.
08:15And the mission he had just landed to build
08:18was a mission that could not function without him.
08:21It was called Oak Tree,
08:24and its purpose was to take
08:26shot-down Allied airmen
08:28out of France by sea,
08:30from the coast of Brittany,
08:32at night,
08:32by Royal Navy boat.
08:34You cannot summon a gunboat
08:36to a beach by letter.
08:38You cannot agree on a date,
08:40a tide,
08:41and a moonless night
08:42with a note passed hand-to-hand
08:44through six strangers.
08:46Sea evacuation runs on radio,
08:49or it does not run at all.
08:51And in that field,
08:53in the dark,
08:54the radio was scrap.
08:56The man Labras had jumped with
08:58was called Val Williams.
09:00His real name was Vladimir Burishkin.
09:03He was Russian-born
09:04and American-raised.
09:06He had been a basketball champion
09:08before the war,
09:09and he was one of the most experienced
09:11helpers the escape world had.
09:13He had already worked
09:15inside the Pat O'Leary line,
09:17the network that ran men south
09:19through Marseille.
09:20He was brave,
09:22he was charming,
09:23and he had exactly the instincts
09:25that get escape lines killed.
09:27Because without the radio,
09:29the mission had to become
09:30something else.
09:31And what it became
09:33was a collecting operation
09:34with nowhere to deliver.
09:36Airmen kept coming.
09:38In 1943,
09:40the Allied bomber offensive
09:41was tearing itself apart
09:43over Germany and France.
09:44And every week,
09:46more crews came down
09:47in fields and woods
09:48and were hidden by farmers
09:50who had no idea
09:51what to do with them next.
09:53Oak tree gathered them.
09:55In Paris,
09:57in Brittany,
09:58in safe houses
09:59and barns
10:00and back rooms,
10:01the numbers built up.
10:03Men with no French,
10:04no papers that would survive
10:06a serious check,
10:07and nothing to do
10:08but wait for a boat
10:10that could not be called.
10:12To hold them all,
10:13Williams needed helpers.
10:15To get helpers,
10:16he recruited.
10:17To recruit,
10:18he had to meet people
10:19and be introduced to people
10:21and be vouched for by people.
10:23And each of those people
10:25learned a face,
10:26a name,
10:26an address.
10:28Mark that,
10:29because it is the mechanism.
10:30Every escape line
10:32in occupied Europe
10:33grew the same way
10:34for the same honest reason.
10:37There were always
10:38more airmen
10:39than beds.
10:40And every time it grew,
10:42it created another person
10:44who could be arrested
10:45and another person
10:46who knew enough to matter.
10:48The Germans understood this
10:49better than the lines did.
10:51Their counterintelligence
10:52did not usually smash
10:54an escape network
10:55from outside.
10:56They got one thread into it,
10:59an informer,
11:00a paid man,
11:01sometimes a German agent
11:03posing as a downed airman.
11:05And then they waited,
11:06watched,
11:07and let the network
11:08introduce him to itself.
11:10That is how the Pat O'Leary line
11:12came apart that same spring.
11:14A single infiltrator,
11:16trusted,
11:17passed from hand to hand
11:19until the man who ran it
11:21was arrested in a cafe in March.
11:23Oaktree was hit
11:25on the 4th of June,
11:261943.
11:28Val Williams
11:29was taken by the Gestapo.
11:31Raymond Labrosse
11:32was now alone in France,
11:34with no partner,
11:35no radio,
11:36and a network around him
11:38that had a German thread
11:39running through it somewhere,
11:41and no way of knowing where.
11:43He was 21 years old.
11:45He was a signalman from Ottawa,
11:47who, three years earlier,
11:49had been a teenager
11:50going overseas for the first time.
11:53Here is what he did,
11:54and this is the part of the story
11:55that tells you
11:56what kind of man
11:57MI9 had accidentally recruited.
12:00He did not run for Spain.
12:02He collected airmen.
12:04Through the summer of 1943,
12:06with the line disintegrating behind him,
12:09Labrosse gathered the evaders
12:10he could reach
12:11and moved them south,
12:12out of Brittany,
12:13across France,
12:14to the foothills of the Pyrenees,
12:16and then over the mountains on foot.
12:1929 of them.
12:2029 men who,
12:22two months earlier,
12:23had been sitting in attics
12:24waiting for a boat
12:25that would never come,
12:27and who walked out of occupied Europe
12:29with a Canadian signalman
12:30because that was the only route left.
12:33He brought them into Spain,
12:35and from Spain to Gibraltar,
12:36and in August he was back in London.
12:39That is the failure.
12:41Now watch what he does with it.
12:43Most men,
12:44coming out of that,
12:45would have been finished with Brittany.
12:47The line was blown.
12:49The coast was the place
12:50where it had gone wrong.
12:51Every instinct and intelligence work
12:53says abandon the ground.
12:56Labrosse walked into MI9
12:57and argued the opposite.
12:59The beach was right,
13:01he told them.
13:01The method was right.
13:03Taking men off by sea
13:05was still the fastest,
13:06safest way out of France,
13:08and it was still better
13:09than walking them
13:101,500 kilometers
13:12past hundreds of strangers
13:14to a mountain range.
13:15What had failed
13:16was not the geography.
13:18What had failed
13:19was the shape
13:20of the organization.
13:21That distinction
13:22is the entire reason
13:24you are watching this story,
13:25and it came from
13:27a 21-year-old
13:28who had just spent
13:29five months
13:30watching a line
13:31die around him.
13:32He knew which link
13:34killed it.
13:35It was not the farmer,
13:36and it was not the beach,
13:38and it was not the boat.
13:40It was the growth,
13:41the recruiting,
13:42the introductions,
13:44the widening circle
13:45of people
13:45who knew more
13:46than they needed to know.
13:48MI9 listened to him.
13:50They agreed to try Brittany again,
13:52but they attached a condition,
13:54and the condition tells you
13:56they had learned
13:56the same lesson he had.
13:58Labrosse would go back
13:59as the wireless operator,
14:01not as the chief.
14:02The new line
14:03would be run by somebody else,
14:05somebody who would treat it
14:06not as a resistance network
14:08with friends and volunteers,
14:09but as a military operation
14:11with orders
14:12and silence
14:13and consequences.
14:14They found their man
14:16in England that autumn.
14:17He was a sergeant major
14:19of infantry
14:19who had never run
14:20an agent in his life,
14:22who had already told
14:23the British exactly
14:24what he thought
14:24of their plans once,
14:26and who had a list
14:26of conditions of his own
14:28before he would take the job.
14:29And the reason they wanted him
14:31was not his experience,
14:32it was what he had done
14:34inside a German prisoner train
14:3536 hours after Dieppe.
14:38Go back to the 19th of August, 1942,
14:41and a beach at Dieppe.
14:44Lucien Dumais came off
14:46that beach a prisoner.
14:47He had been wounded,
14:49and he was one of roughly
14:502,000 Canadians
14:52the Germans collected
14:53out of the shingle
14:54and the burning landing craft
14:56that morning.
14:57The largest haul
14:58of Canadian prisoners
14:59of the entire war.
15:02The lightly wounded
15:03were held west of Paris
15:05while the paperwork was done,
15:06and then they were put
15:07on trains for Germany.
15:10Dumais was on one
15:11of those trains
15:12inside 36 hours.
15:14He was also off it
15:16inside 36 hours.
15:18He had decided,
15:19somewhere between the beach
15:21and the cattle car,
15:22that he was not going
15:23to be delivered alive
15:25into a German prison camp.
15:26So in the dark,
15:28with the train moving,
15:30he went out of it.
15:31And two other men
15:33of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal
15:35went with him,
15:36Corporal Vermette
15:37and Private Cloutier.
15:40Three Canadians
15:41in the ditch
15:42beside a French railway line,
15:44in uniform,
15:45in occupied territory,
15:47with no French papers
15:49and no idea
15:50where they were.
15:51He was one of the very first
15:53Dieppe prisoners
15:54to escape.
15:55And what happened
15:56to him next
15:57is the reason
15:58this story exists at all.
16:00Because for the next
16:01several months,
16:03Lucien Dumais
16:03was cargo.
16:05He was picked up,
16:06hidden,
16:07fed,
16:08moved,
16:09and handed along
16:10by the Pat O'Leary line,
16:12the same network
16:13you heard about
16:13a moment ago,
16:15the one that ran
16:16evaders south
16:17through Marseille.
16:18He was passed
16:19from stranger to stranger
16:21down the length of France,
16:23out through Spain,
16:24and eventually
16:25home to England.
16:26He owed those people
16:28his freedom,
16:28and he never pretended otherwise.
16:31But he had spent
16:32those months
16:33doing something
16:33almost nobody else
16:35in the escape business
16:36ever got to do.
16:37He had ridden a line
16:39from the inside,
16:40as a passenger,
16:42with the eyes
16:42of a professional soldier.
16:44And he did not like
16:46what he saw.
16:47He saw safe houses
16:48with too many men in them.
16:50He saw helpers
16:51who talked
16:52in front of evaders.
16:54He saw people
16:55being introduced
16:56to each other
16:57who had no business
16:59ever knowing
17:00each other's faces.
17:01He saw a system
17:03built on kindness
17:04and courage
17:05and improvisation,
17:07run by civilians
17:09who were risking
17:10everything,
17:11and who had never
17:12been taught
17:13the one thing
17:14an infantry sergeant-major
17:16knows in his bones.
17:18That discipline
17:20is not cruelty.
17:22Discipline
17:23is what keeps
17:24people alive.
17:26Within months
17:27of his getting home,
17:29the Pat O'Leary line
17:30was broken,
17:31and the man
17:32who ran it
17:33was in German hands.
17:35Dumais
17:36had been a passenger
17:37on a machine
17:38that was already dying
17:39while he rode it.
17:41So he asked
17:43British intelligence
17:44for special duties,
17:46and British intelligence
17:47turned him down.
17:49I want you to sit
17:50with that for a second,
17:51because it is one
17:53of those small
17:54administrative facts
17:55that nearly
17:56changes history.
17:58The one man
17:58in Britain
17:59who had escaped
18:00Dieppe,
18:01crossed occupied
18:02France as a fugitive,
18:03and formed hard
18:04professional opinions
18:05about why
18:06escape lines fail,
18:08applied to go back,
18:09and was told no.
18:11He went off
18:12to North Africa instead,
18:14and spent four months
18:15training with the
18:16British First Army.
18:17Then,
18:18in the autumn of 1943,
18:20MI9 changed its mind.
18:23A 21-year-old signalman
18:25from Ottawa
18:25had just walked out
18:26of France
18:27over the Pyrenees,
18:28and he had told them
18:29Brittany could still be done
18:30if somebody would
18:32run it properly.
18:33Dumais took the job
18:35on his own terms.
18:36He did not want
18:37a partnership.
18:38He wanted command.
18:40He wanted the right
18:41to refuse to move
18:42a man he did not trust.
18:44And among his demands,
18:46there was one item
18:47that tells you
18:47exactly how his mind
18:49worked,
18:49and I want you to
18:50hold on to it,
18:51because it comes back
18:52on a cliff in the dark.
18:54He asked them
18:55to send him
18:56a mind detector.
18:58Not codes,
18:59not gold,
19:00not a bodyguard.
19:01An infantry NCO,
19:03being sent to organise
19:04a secret escape route,
19:05sat in a briefing room
19:06in England
19:07and asked for the single
19:08piece of equipment
19:09that an engineer uses
19:10to make a piece of ground
19:11safe for men to walk on.
19:13He was not thinking
19:15about spies,
19:16he was thinking about
19:16a route,
19:17a column,
19:18and casualties.
19:20On the night of the 16th
19:21of November,
19:221943,
19:23a Westland Lysander
19:25came in low
19:25over a field
19:26about 80 kilometres
19:27north of Paris,
19:29touched down,
19:29dropped two men,
19:31and was gone
19:31inside three minutes.
19:33Dumais was now
19:34Lucien Debiens,
19:36an undertaker
19:36from Amiens,
19:37a trade that let
19:38a man travel
19:39and that made
19:40curious strangers
19:41stop asking questions.
19:43In the field,
19:44he was called Leon.
19:46Labros became
19:47Marcel Desjardins,
19:48a salesman of
19:49medical supplies,
19:50and in the field,
19:51he was Claude.
19:52And here is the first
19:53thing you need to know
19:54about how Lucien Dumais
19:56behaved in occupied France.
19:58Not long after
19:59they arrived,
20:00the two of them
20:00were on the road
20:01in Brittany,
20:02near Rennes,
20:03Labros carrying
20:04the wireless set
20:05in a suitcase.
20:06A German soldier
20:07stopped them
20:08and wanted
20:08Dumais' bicycle.
20:10Every instinct
20:11of a hunted man
20:12says,
20:13give him the bicycle,
20:14say nothing,
20:15walk away,
20:16thank God.
20:17That is what
20:18a fugitive does.
20:19Dumais talked at him,
20:21fast and loudly,
20:22and let him take it.
20:23Then he walked
20:24to the nearest
20:25German army post
20:26and complained.
20:27One of their men,
20:28he told them,
20:29had stolen his bicycle.
20:31He was an ordinary
20:32French businessman
20:33going about his
20:34ordinary business.
20:35He had been robbed
20:36by a German soldier,
20:37and since they had
20:38taken his transport,
20:39the least they could do
20:40was give him a lift.
20:41They gave him a lift.
20:43A German vehicle
20:44drove Lucien Dumais
20:46toward the coast,
20:47with the wireless set
20:48that the German
20:49radio detection service
20:50was already hunting.
20:51He was not
20:52pretending to be invisible,
20:54he was pretending
20:55to be annoyed.
20:56It is a completely
20:57different disguise,
20:58and it is the reason
20:59he survived nine months
21:00in a country
21:01that was looking for him.
21:02In Paris,
21:03the other half
21:04of the organization
21:04was put in the hands
21:06of a Frenchman
21:06named Paul Campinci,
21:08who worked inside
21:09the police prefecture itself.
21:11Campinci would find
21:13the airmen,
21:13hide them,
21:14dress them,
21:15paper them,
21:16and put them on trains.
21:18Dumais made one rule
21:19about that
21:19from the very beginning,
21:20and it was the strangest rule
21:22in the escape business.
21:23He did not want
21:25to meet Campinci's people.
21:27Ever.
21:27Then he went down
21:28to Brittany,
21:29to a village called Ploua
21:30on the north coast,
21:32and stood on the cliffs
21:33above a cove
21:34the locals called
21:35Anse-Kochat,
21:36and looked at the beach
21:37that MI9 had given him.
21:39It was,
21:40by any sane military judgment,
21:42the worst possible place
21:43on that coast
21:44to take men off by sea.
21:46It had German guns above it,
21:47a blockhouse to the north,
21:49mines in the shingle,
21:50and a patrol path
21:51along the top.
21:52Dumais looked at all of that
21:54and decided it was perfect.
21:56Here is why
21:56the worst beach
21:57on that coast
21:58was the right beach.
22:01Lucien Dumais
22:02was not looking
22:03for an easy place
22:04to land a boat.
22:06He was looking for a place
22:07that satisfied
22:08four conditions at once.
22:11And if you understand the four,
22:13you understand the man.
22:15It had to be reachable
22:16from Paris by rail,
22:18because that was how
22:19the airmen would travel,
22:21the night express
22:22to St. Briouk,
22:24and then the last stretch
22:25by road.
22:26It had to be far
22:27from any large
22:28German garrison town.
22:31It had to have a shape
22:32that would hide a boat
22:33from the guns
22:34that covered the water.
22:36And it had to sit
22:37in a community
22:38that could keep
22:39its mouth shut.
22:41Anse-Kochat
22:42sat under the highest cliffs
22:44in Brittany.
22:45That is exactly
22:46why the Germans
22:47had not put a garrison
22:49on top of it.
22:50They had ranged it
22:50with guns
22:51from the headland.
22:52They had put
22:53an artillery blockhouse
22:541,200 meters north.
22:56They had scattered mines
22:57in the shingle,
22:58and they walked a patrol
22:59along the cliff top.
23:01But they had done
23:02all of that
23:02on the assumption
23:03that the cliff itself
23:04was the wall.
23:06Nobody brings 20 men
23:08down a 200-foot cliff face
23:10in the dark.
23:11It is not a thing
23:12that is done.
23:14Dumais' entire operation
23:15was built on doing
23:17the thing that is not done.
23:19And the fourth condition,
23:21the one about the community,
23:22had already been met
23:24before he ever arrived.
23:25In the village of Ploua,
23:27there was a small
23:28resistance group,
23:29and at the center of it
23:30was a butcher
23:31named Francois Le Connec.
23:33Le Connec became
23:34the chief of the beach.
23:36Around him were men
23:37who had spent their lives
23:38on that water.
23:40Job Manguy was one of them,
23:41an old sailor
23:43who would be the man
23:43kneeling on the shingle
23:44working a signal lamp
23:46in Morse.
23:47Pierre Rouet,
23:48known as Tarzan,
23:50had been in naval aviation.
23:51There was a doctor,
23:52Le Balge,
23:53who coordinated
23:54the northern zone.
23:55There was a garage owner
23:57named Francois Querembra,
23:58who had a truck
23:59that ran on charcoal gas
24:01because there was
24:02no petrol in France,
24:03and who drove airmen
24:04the last 40 kilometers
24:06from Gangon
24:06with German checkpoints
24:08on the road.
24:09And there was a young woman
24:11named Marie-Thérèse Le Calvé,
24:13who had been 16 years old
24:14when France fell.
24:16Her job was to collect airmen
24:18from the houses
24:19where they were hidden
24:19and walk them
24:20five or six kilometers
24:21across country
24:22at night
24:23on footpaths
24:24because the main road
24:26between Saint-Brieuc
24:27and Pimpol
24:28was too dangerous
24:29to cross in daylight.
24:31Later,
24:31she would be the one
24:32holding a blue light
24:33on the beach.
24:34Two kilometers from the cove,
24:36at a place called
24:37Kersozon,
24:38there was a small stone house
24:40belonging to Jean
24:41and Marie-Giquel.
24:42It sat inside
24:43the forbidden coastal zone.
24:45It became the last stop
24:46before the sea,
24:47and it became famous
24:48under a name
24:49it did not deserve
24:50to be famous for
24:51because the price
24:52of that fame
24:53was the house itself.
24:56Remember the Giquels.
24:57They come back
24:58at the worst moment
24:59of this story.
25:01Now,
25:01the rules.
25:03Dumais did not organize
25:04these people
25:05the way a resistance network
25:06is organized.
25:07He organized them
25:09the way a company commander
25:10organizes a defensive position,
25:12and every rule he wrote
25:13was aimed at one thing,
25:15reducing the number
25:16of human beings
25:17who knew anything.
25:19The line did not recruit.
25:21That is the first rule,
25:23and it is the strangest one.
25:25Seven households
25:25in the Plua area
25:26took airmen,
25:27and that number
25:28did not grow.
25:29Not when the traffic increased,
25:31not when the houses were full,
25:33not when it would have been easier.
25:34Every other escape line
25:36in Europe
25:36expanded to meet demand.
25:38This one refused,
25:39and simply moved men
25:41faster instead.
25:42Paris did not know Brittany.
25:45Compenche's organization
25:46in the capital
25:47found the airmen,
25:48forged the papers,
25:49and put them on a train.
25:51And that was the end
25:52of what Paris knew.
25:55The people who hit a man
25:56in Paris
25:57could not have told
25:58an interrogator
25:58where he went next,
26:00because they
26:00had never been told.
26:01The local helpers
26:03did not know
26:04where Dumais lived.
26:05He based himself
26:06in a house
26:07at Saint-Barthélemy,
26:08near Plua,
26:09belonging to a woman
26:10named Marie Lesseau.
26:12He came and went.
26:14He did not socialize.
26:15And the airmen
26:16were not guests.
26:18This is the part
26:19that surprised
26:19the Americans most,
26:20and you will hear
26:21one of them on it later.
26:23An evader
26:24who came into this line
26:25was not being sheltered
26:27by kind people.
26:28He was being handled
26:29by an organization,
26:30and the organization's rules
26:32applied to him.
26:33He did not go outside.
26:35He did not speak in public,
26:37ever,
26:38for any reason.
26:39He was taught
26:40how to hold a cigarette
26:41the way a Frenchman holds it,
26:43because an American
26:44holds it differently,
26:45and a German policeman
26:47on a railway platform
26:48has nothing to do all day
26:50but look at people's hands.
26:52When they moved in bulk,
26:54they moved as a work gang.
26:55Twenty men in rough clothes
26:58traveling together
26:59were laborers
27:00going to work
27:01on the coastal defenses.
27:03And Dumais had worked out
27:04that a large group
27:05with a plausible collective story
27:08was safer than the same men
27:10trickling through
27:11one at a time.
27:12A lone stranger
27:13invites a question.
27:15A construction party
27:16invites a shrug.
27:17There was a password
27:19on the last stretch,
27:20the names of two Breton towns,
27:23Dinant and Saint-Brieuc.
27:26Split between two men.
27:27And on the walk down
27:29to the cove,
27:29the column crossed
27:30running water.
27:32Deliberately,
27:33because the German patrols
27:34worked with dogs.
27:36One more rule,
27:37and it is the one
27:38I find hardest to argue with.
27:40In an operation
27:41involving dozens
27:42of French civilians
27:43and hundreds of
27:44Allied servicemen,
27:45exactly one person
27:47carried a weapon,
27:48and it was Dumais.
27:49Not because the others
27:50could not be trusted
27:51with guns,
27:52because a helper
27:53with a pistol in his coat
27:54turns a routine identity check
27:56into a gunfight,
27:58and a gunfight
27:59turns a quiet coast
28:00into an investigated coast.
28:02He kept the only gun
28:04so that the decision
28:05to use one
28:06belonged to a single man.
28:08The mine detector
28:09arrived by C,
28:10delivered in a waterproof case
28:12marked with a painted letter B.
28:14They swept the beach with it
28:15and found 17 mines,
28:17and they put a white handkerchief
28:19on each.
28:20And I have to stop you here,
28:22because you are now
28:23one layer into the answer,
28:24and if you take this layer
28:26for the whole thing,
28:27you will get it wrong.
28:29Discipline was not unique.
28:30The comet line had rules.
28:33The people who ran men
28:34over the Pyrenees
28:35were not fools,
28:36and they were as brave
28:37as anyone in this war.
28:39They were destroyed anyway.
28:41What Dumais had built
28:42was a line
28:43that could not be betrayed
28:45by its own members,
28:46because its own members
28:48did not know enough
28:49to betray it.
28:50What he had not yet tested
28:52was whether it could survive
28:54its own passengers.
28:56And the first load
28:58waiting in Paris
28:59included a man
29:00who had already lost
29:01one line to the Gestapo.
29:03Now you know
29:04what he had built.
29:05Here is the night
29:06it first had to work.
29:08On the evening
29:09of January 28, 1944,
29:13in a room in Brittany,
29:14two Canadians sat
29:16close to a wireless set
29:17with the volume turned down
29:19to almost nothing
29:20and listened to the BBC French service
29:23read out its personal messages.
29:26You know the kind of thing.
29:28Strings of nonsense sentences
29:30broadcast into occupied Europe
29:32every night,
29:34each one meaningless
29:35to everybody
29:36except the handful of people
29:38it was aimed at.
29:40And then the announcer said it.
29:42Bonjour tout le monde
29:44à la maison d'Alphonse.
29:46Hello everybody
29:47in the house of Alphonse.
29:49That was it.
29:51That sentence,
29:52read out in London
29:53and heard in a kitchen
29:55in Brittany
29:55and in God knows
29:57how many German
29:58listening rooms
29:59in between,
30:00meant that a Royal Navy
30:02motor gunboat
30:03had left Dartmouth
30:04and was crossing
30:05the channel toward them.
30:07It meant the operation
30:09was on tonight.
30:11It also meant
30:11that from this moment
30:12several dozen people
30:14would move in the dark
30:15on a fixed schedule
30:16with no way to call it off
30:18and no way to ask a question.
30:20The boat was MGB 503
30:23of the Royal Navy's
30:2415th Flotilla.
30:26Those boats crossed
30:27at better than 30 knots
30:29and made the run
30:29in roughly four hours.
30:31She would come in
30:32on a moonless night
30:33at low water
30:34and sit offshore
30:36with her engines stopped,
30:37blind,
30:38waiting for a light.
30:40On land,
30:41the machines started moving.
30:43Karimbrun's truck,
30:44coughing along
30:45on charcoal gas
30:46because there was
30:47no petrol in France,
30:48brought men down
30:49from Gangamp.
30:50Others came on foot
30:52across the fields
30:53with Marie-Thérèse Le Calvaise
30:55over five or six kilometers
30:57of footpaths
30:58because the main road
30:59could not be crossed
31:00in daylight.
31:01One by one,
31:02they converged
31:03on that small stone house
31:04at Kersozon,
31:05two kilometers from the sea,
31:07inside the forbidden zone.
31:09Jean and Marie Gickel's house,
31:11the one everybody called
31:12the House of Alphonse.
31:14Nineteen people
31:15ended up in it.
31:16Sixteen were airmen.
31:18And in that crowded kitchen,
31:20in the hour
31:21before they went down the cliff,
31:23Dumais put a pistol
31:24on the man
31:25who could not stop talking.
31:27Then he briefed them,
31:29and the briefing
31:30was pure infantry.
31:32Single file,
31:34each man holds the coat
31:35of the man in front.
31:37Dig your heels in going down,
31:39because a man who slips
31:40takes the men below him
31:42with him.
31:43Nobody speaks.
31:45If a flare goes up,
31:47nobody runs.
31:49They went down that cliff
31:50in the dark,
31:51with a minefield
31:53marked out for them
31:54in white handkerchiefs.
31:55And halfway down,
31:57Dumais put three short flashes
31:59of light out to sea.
32:01Out on the black water,
32:03somebody aboard a gunboat
32:05saw a bee.
32:07What came in
32:08were surfboats,
32:09rowed by Royal Navy sailors
32:11who had been sitting out there
32:13in the cold
32:13with muffled oars,
32:15feeling for a beach
32:16they could not see,
32:17under guns
32:19that could have turned
32:20that cove into daylight
32:21in four seconds.
32:23On the shingle,
32:24Job Mangee
32:26worked his signal lamp.
32:28The boats grounded.
32:29The loading was done fast
32:31and in silence,
32:32and it was not
32:33one-way traffic.
32:34The boats brought things
32:35ashore too,
32:36in waterproof cases
32:37marked with a painted letter B.
32:39Money.
32:40Weapons.
32:42Radio equipment.
32:43The mine detector
32:44had come in
32:45exactly like that.
32:47Then the empty column
32:48climbed back up the cliff,
32:49and somebody went along the path
32:51collecting the white handkerchiefs,
32:53one by one,
32:54so that when a German patrol
32:55walked that clifftop in the morning,
32:57there would be nothing
32:58on the ground at all.
33:00At first light,
33:0119 people
33:02who had been hiding
33:03in attics in occupied France
33:05were standing on a quay
33:06at Dartmouth in Devon.
33:08Now,
33:09I promised you
33:10the easy answers were wrong,
33:12and I have given you one layer.
33:14The discipline.
33:15The silence.
33:16The refusal to grow.
33:18Here is the second layer,
33:19and it is the one
33:20that the men
33:21who built the earlier lines
33:22would have recognized
33:23instantly and painfully.
33:25Think about what this line
33:27actually asked
33:28of a shot-down airman.
33:29On the comet line,
33:30a man who came down in Belgium
33:32was looking at a journey
33:33of roughly 1,500 kilometers.
33:36Brussels,
33:37Paris,
33:38Bordeaux,
33:39the Basque Country,
33:41a night crossing
33:42of the Pyrenees
33:42on foot with a guide,
33:44then Spain,
33:45and Spanish internment
33:47in Gibraltar.
33:48That journey could take weeks.
33:50It often took months.
33:52And every week of it,
33:53he was in somebody's house,
33:55being fed by somebody's mother,
33:57being walked to a station
33:58by somebody's daughter.
34:00Dozens of hands.
34:02Sometimes more than a hundred.
34:04Every single one of those hands
34:05was a name,
34:06and a face,
34:07and an address,
34:09and a person
34:10who could eventually
34:10be arrested and questioned.
34:12Now count the hands
34:14on the Shelburne route,
34:15a safe house in Paris,
34:17a train,
34:18a truck,
34:19a walk across fields,
34:21a stone kitchen,
34:22a cliff,
34:23a boat.
34:24Four days,
34:25sometimes less,
34:26from a Paris attic
34:27to a naval dock
34:29in England.
34:29The German counterintelligence
34:31method against escape lines
34:33was not clever,
34:34it was patient.
34:35Get one thread,
34:37an informer,
34:38a talkative helper,
34:40a planted man,
34:41and then follow the chain
34:44arrest by arrest,
34:46letting each frightened person
34:48give you the next link.
34:50It worked beautifully.
34:53It worked because the lines
34:55were long chains of people.
34:58Shelburne was barely a chain at all.
35:01It was two short chains
35:03that had been deliberately
35:04unhooked from each other
35:06in the middle.
35:07That is the difference
35:08between a network
35:09you can walk backwards
35:11and a network
35:12where the walk ends
35:13after three steps
35:15in a locked room.
35:17Because the man
35:19you just arrested
35:20has genuinely never been told
35:22what comes next.
35:24And the traffic was heavy.
35:27Another operation
35:28went off that beach
35:29in February.
35:31Three more
35:31went in March.
35:33By the end of March,
35:35this line had taken
35:36128 airmen
35:38and seven allied agents
35:40out of occupied France
35:41in nine weeks
35:44from one cove
35:45under those guns.
35:48But success
35:49is its own kind of noise.
35:52Trains carry groups
35:53of quiet young men
35:54who do not quite
35:56hold their cigarettes right.
35:57Villages notice trucks
35:59that move at night.
36:00And above all,
36:02a line that runs on radio
36:04must transmit
36:05again and again
36:07on a schedule
36:09from a small area
36:11of a small country.
36:13The Germans were not blind
36:15and they were not stupid.
36:17They knew perfectly well
36:19that airmen
36:19were disappearing
36:20out of France
36:21faster than they could
36:23be accounted for.
36:24And they had a very good idea
36:26of what had to exist
36:28for that to happen.
36:29They just could not find it.
36:32So they went after
36:34the one thing
36:35the whole operation
36:36could not survive without.
36:38And Raymond Labras
36:40could see them
36:41going past him
36:42from a cafe terrace
36:43in Paris.
36:45Picture a cafe terrace
36:46in Paris
36:47in the spring
36:48of 1944.
36:49Two men
36:50sitting outside
36:51with drinks,
36:52one of them French,
36:53one of them
36:54a wireless operator
36:55from Ottawa
36:56carrying papers
36:57that say he sells
36:58medical supplies.
36:59A vehicle goes past
37:00on the street
37:01with a strange cage
37:02of antennas
37:03on its roof.
37:04Labros nods at it
37:05and says,
37:06There go my personal enemies.
37:08He was not being funny,
37:10he was being precise.
37:12The German radio detection service
37:14had a single job
37:15in occupied France
37:16and that job
37:17was him.
37:18They drove those vans
37:19through the streets
37:20in overlapping sweeps,
37:22listening across
37:22the clandestine frequencies,
37:24and when they caught
37:25a transmitter,
37:26they narrowed the bearings
37:27street by street,
37:28then building by building,
37:30and then they came
37:31up the stairs.
37:32Across occupied Europe,
37:34the average survival time
37:35of an allied wireless operator
37:37in the field
37:37was measured in months.
37:39Some of them lasted weeks.
37:42Labros lasted nine months
37:43and was never located.
37:45He did it by never behaving
37:47like a man with a schedule.
37:49He transmitted from isolated points
37:51he chose himself,
37:53changed them constantly,
37:55kept his time on the air
37:56brutally short,
37:58and moved his sets.
37:59And there was one more precaution,
38:02which tells you
38:03how both these men
38:04were thinking.
38:05He and Dumais
38:06each carried a code
38:08the other did not know.
38:09If one of them was taken,
38:11the other's traffic
38:13stayed secure,
38:14and London would know
38:15immediately
38:16that something was wrong.
38:18That was the first German move,
38:20and it failed.
38:21Here is the second,
38:23and it was the one
38:24that had killed
38:24every other line
38:26in the country.
38:27The Germans put men
38:29into the escape routes.
38:30It was the most effective tool
38:33they had.
38:34A fit young man
38:35in a leather jacket
38:36turns up at a farm,
38:37says he is an American gunner,
38:40says he was shot down
38:41two nights ago.
38:42The farmer is a patriot.
38:44The farmer is terrified.
38:46And the farmer hands him
38:48to the next person
38:49in the chain.
38:50And now,
38:52the Gestapo is inside,
38:54being introduced
38:55from link to link
38:56by the line itself,
38:58taking notes.
38:59That is how Comet
39:01was ripped open.
39:02That is essentially
39:04what had happened
39:05to Le Brass' own first line
39:07in 1943.
39:09So,
39:10the Paris end of Shelburne
39:11did something
39:12that upset
39:13a great many brave Frenchmen
39:15and saved all their lives.
39:18Every evader
39:19was interrogated
39:20before he was moved.
39:22Not by a Frenchman.
39:23By someone
39:24who could hold
39:25a conversation
39:26in American English
39:27about the things
39:29that cannot be learned
39:30from a file.
39:31Where a man went to school.
39:33What team he followed.
39:35What a squadron's ground crew
39:37called their aircraft.
39:39How his hometown
39:40was laid out.
39:42While somebody else
39:43listened from the next room
39:45and compared what he said
39:46with what had come
39:47from London.
39:48A man who satisfied
39:50the questions
39:50went into the pipeline.
39:52A man who did not,
39:54did not.
39:55And at the far end,
39:56in Brittany,
39:57Dumais had reserved
39:58for himself
39:58the right to refuse
39:59any passenger at all,
40:01for any reason.
40:02Including the reason
40:03that he simply
40:04did not like
40:04the way the man
40:05behaved in a room.
40:07Now put it all together
40:08because this is the answer
40:10and you have earned it.
40:12The Germans never
40:13caught this line
40:13for one reason
40:14and it is not luck
40:16and it is not obscurity.
40:18It is that the two Canadians
40:19running it
40:20had each personally
40:21watched a line die
40:22and they had both
40:23come to the same diagnosis
40:25about what kills them.
40:26What kills an escape line
40:28is the man
40:29who knows everybody.
40:31Every other network
40:32in occupied France
40:33had one
40:33and had to have one.
40:35The organizer,
40:36the recruiter,
40:37the person who links
40:38the farm
40:39to the priest
40:39to the railwayman
40:40to the mountain guide
40:41who carries the whole shape
40:43of the thing in his head
40:44because somebody must.
40:46Arrest him
40:47and you get the network.
40:48Arrest anybody near him
40:50and you get him.
40:52Shelburne was built
40:53to have no such person.
40:55Paris did not know Brittany.
40:56Brittany did not know Paris.
40:58The helpers did not know
41:00where the chief slept.
41:02The chief did not want
41:03to meet the helpers.
41:05Nobody was recruited
41:06after the thing was running.
41:09Each of the two Canadians
41:10was blind to the other's codes
41:12and the passengers,
41:14the most dangerous people
41:15in any escape line
41:17because they are strangers
41:18by definition,
41:20were moved through
41:21so fast
41:22that they never accumulated
41:23the knowledge
41:24that makes a prisoner useful.
41:26And there is one more piece.
41:29The piece, I think,
41:30is the real answer
41:31underneath the answer.
41:33Look at where the exit was.
41:34On every land route,
41:36the most fragile part
41:38of the journey
41:38was the end of it.
41:40The mountain guides,
41:41the frontier,
41:42the Spanish police,
41:43the internment camps.
41:45All of that
41:46was in occupied
41:47or hostile territory
41:48run by people
41:50who could be bought,
41:51frightened,
41:52or broken.
41:53Dumais replaced
41:54the entire exit
41:55with a Royal Navy gunboat.
41:58The last link
41:59in this chain
42:00was not a human being
42:01who could be arrested.
42:03It was a warship
42:04four hours away
42:05in Devon,
42:07controlled from England,
42:08reachable only
42:09by a coded sentence
42:11on the BBC
42:11and three flashes
42:13of a torch.
42:14You could infiltrate
42:16the line in Paris
42:17and you would still
42:18not be able
42:19to deliver the exit
42:20because the exit
42:22was not in France.
42:26Airy Neve,
42:26who ran the escape
42:28and evasion side
42:29of MI9
42:30for the last two years
42:31of the war
42:32and who knew
42:33exactly how rare
42:34this was,
42:35wrote afterwards
42:36that the judgment
42:37of both men
42:38had been fulfilled
42:39and that they produced
42:41magnificent results.
42:42There is an American
42:44who can tell you
42:45what it felt like
42:46from inside.
42:48Ralph Patton
42:49was shot down
42:50over France
42:51on the 5th of January,
42:521944.
42:54On the night
42:55of the 18th of March,
42:57he was one of 26 men
42:59lying on the shingle
43:00of that cove,
43:01waiting.
43:02And while they lay there,
43:04the German coastal batteries
43:06opened up
43:06and lit the whole coast,
43:08in Patton's words,
43:10like daylight.
43:11They stayed down.
43:13The guns stopped.
43:15Around 2 in the morning,
43:17five rowing boats
43:18came out of the dark
43:19and took them
43:20to a gunboat.
43:22Patton spent
43:22the rest of his life
43:24keeping the record
43:24of the men
43:25who came home that way,
43:26and he never got over
43:28how young
43:29the operations inventors were
43:31or how little credit
43:32they took.
43:34By the end of March,
43:35this beach
43:36had sent more than
43:37120 airmen home,
43:39and then it stopped.
43:41Not because the Germans
43:43found it,
43:44because of the tides
43:45of the war itself,
43:47the coast tightening,
43:49the spring nights
43:50getting shorter,
43:51and then,
43:52on the 6th of June,
43:54the thing
43:54everyone had been waiting for.
43:56The invasion
43:57broke the railways
43:59of France.
43:59Allied bombers
44:01tore up
44:01the marshalling yards,
44:03the bridges went down,
44:05travel permits collapsed,
44:06and the roads of Brittany
44:08filled with German units
44:10moving toward Normandy.
44:12Every advantage
44:13this line had
44:14was built
44:15on moving men fast
44:16through a working
44:17transport system.
44:19On the 7th of June,
44:21there was no
44:22working transport system.
44:24The line
44:24that no German
44:25could break
44:26had just been broken
44:28by its own side.
44:29The airmen
44:30kept falling.
44:32That is the thing
44:33people forget
44:34about the summer
44:35of 1944.
44:36After the 6th of June,
44:39the air war
44:39over France
44:40got bigger,
44:41not smaller.
44:42Fighter bombers
44:43working the roads,
44:45medium bombers
44:46on the bridges,
44:47heavies going through
44:48to Germany.
44:49And the men
44:50who came down
44:51out of all that
44:53landed in a country
44:54that had seized up.
44:56German divisions
44:57were moving north
44:58to Normandy
44:59on every road.
45:00The Feldgendarmary
45:02was stopping
45:03everything that moved.
45:04Travel documents
45:06that had worked
45:06in April
45:07were worthless
45:08in June.
45:09The coastal zone
45:10was sealed.
45:12Shelburne's whole method
45:13had been speed.
45:15Paris to a beach
45:16in four days
45:17through a functioning railway.
45:20That railway
45:21was now a line
45:22of wrecked
45:23marshalling yards.
45:25MI9's broad answer
45:27to this
45:27was to stop
45:28moving evaders
45:29at all
45:30and start storing them.
45:31a hidden camp
45:33in the forest
45:33at Freteval
45:34where dozens
45:35of airmen
45:36were kept
45:37in the woods
45:37under allied organization
45:39until the ground troops
45:40arrived.
45:41It worked.
45:43It was also
45:43somebody else's operation.
45:46Dumais and Labras
45:47did the local version
45:48of the same idea
45:49and they did it
45:50on a coast
45:51full of German troops
45:53who were now expecting
45:54an invasion of Brittany
45:55at any hour.
45:57They stopped importing.
45:58Men who were already
46:00in the area
46:01or who came down nearby
46:02were hidden
46:03by the same
46:04small circle of families
46:06that had been doing it
46:07since January
46:07still without adding
46:09anybody new
46:10and they were taken off
46:12in small batches
46:13instead of large ones.
46:15The July operations
46:16carried a handful
46:17of men at a time
46:19rather than 20.
46:21Dumais also put himself
46:22to work
46:23with local resistance groups
46:25going after German transport
46:26which is a very
46:28sergeant-major way
46:29of spending a war.
46:30If you cannot run the route
46:32attack the people blocking it.
46:34And then came the night
46:35that nearly ended it.
46:37On the night
46:38of the 23rd of July
46:391944
46:41François Le Cornec
46:43the butcher
46:44the chief of the beach
46:45came up to the house
46:47at Kersozon
46:48with three airmen
46:49who had been driven
46:50across from Guingamp
46:52in Kerembron's
46:53charcoal gas truck.
46:55It was the same procedure
46:57it had always been
46:58the house of Alphonse
47:00a few hours in a kitchen
47:01then the cliff
47:03and the sea.
47:04That night
47:05the Germans came to the house.
47:07They came in the dark
47:08they searched
47:10and by daylight
47:11they were inside it
47:12going through everything
47:14the Gickels owned.
47:16Marie Gickel
47:17lived that morning
47:18and described it afterwards.
47:19Her family got out.
47:22In the afternoon
47:23the Germans brought up
47:24explosives
47:25and brought up
47:26a flamethrower
47:27and they blew the walls apart
47:29and burned the house
47:30of Alphonse to the ground.
47:32Now
47:33I want you to be
47:34very careful
47:35about what you have just heard
47:37because at first hearing it
47:38sounds like the moment
47:40the line was finally caught.
47:42It is the opposite.
47:44It is the moment
47:45the design was proved.
47:47Look at what the Germans
47:48actually had.
47:49They had a house
47:50in a forbidden coastal zone
47:52that they did not like
47:53the look of.
47:54They had suspicion
47:55maybe a rumor
47:56maybe a patrol
47:57that had heard something.
47:58What they did not have
48:00was a prisoner
48:00a name
48:01a confession
48:02or a single thread
48:03they could pull.
48:04An occupying power
48:05that has penetrated
48:06a network
48:07does not burn a house.
48:08It watches the house.
48:10It follows whoever
48:11comes to the door
48:12and it arrests
48:12the whole line
48:13three weeks later
48:14with the evidence in a file.
48:16Burning a building
48:17is what you do
48:17when you are certain
48:18something is happening
48:19and you cannot prove
48:20any of it.
48:21When the only weapon
48:22you have left
48:22is fire.
48:23They destroyed the building
48:25and they went away
48:26with nothing.
48:27No arrests were made
48:28in the network.
48:29The family had gone.
48:30Jean Gickel
48:31later left
48:32with a convoy
48:33of airmen himself.
48:34For seven months
48:35the Germans
48:35had held
48:36that entire coast
48:37with guns above the cove
48:39and mines in the shingle
48:40and patrols
48:41on the clifftop.
48:42And this is as close
48:43as they ever came.
48:44A suspicion strong enough
48:46to justify a flamethrower
48:48and too weak
48:49to produce one name.
48:51And here is the Canadian
48:52answer to that night
48:53which is the part
48:54I want you to take away.
48:56The line did not stop.
48:58Losing the house
48:59of Alphonse
49:00would have finished
49:01most organizations
49:02because most organizations
49:04would have had to assume
49:05they were blown
49:06and would have had
49:07to scatter.
49:08Dumais' people
49:09could not be blown
49:10by the loss of a house
49:11because the house
49:12had never been allowed
49:13to know anything.
49:14It held men
49:15for a few hours.
49:16It did not hold records
49:18or codes
49:19or contacts
49:20or the chief.
49:21So they kept going
49:23without it.
49:24The last operation
49:25off that beach
49:26went out
49:26in the second week
49:27of August
49:28with the Germans
49:29still fighting in Brittany
49:30and the coast
49:31still theirs on paper.
49:32Plouha was liberated
49:34on the 5th of August 1944.
49:37There is a photograph
49:38taken in the village
49:39that day
49:40of Raymond Labras
49:41standing in battle dress.
49:43The first time
49:44in nine months
49:46that the man
49:46who sold medical supplies
49:48had been allowed
49:49to look like
49:50what he actually was.
49:52A signalman
49:53of the Canadian army.
49:56Dumais did not go home
49:57either.
49:58He stayed in France
49:59after the liberation
50:01working to pick up
50:02the German agents
50:03who had been left behind
50:04in the wreckage
50:05which,
50:06if you think about it,
50:08is the same job
50:09he had been doing
50:10all year
50:10turned inside out.
50:13So let me give you
50:14the ledger
50:15and then one last thing
50:17that nobody at the time
50:18could have known.
50:20From the end of January
50:22to the beginning
50:23of August 1944,
50:25more than 130 airmen
50:28and around 15 allied agents
50:30were taken off
50:31that one cove
50:33under those guns.
50:35Taken together
50:36with the men
50:36the organization
50:37moved by other routes,
50:39roughly 300 people
50:41owed their freedom to it.
50:43Not one member
50:44of the line
50:45was captured.
50:46Not one was killed.
50:48Not one evader
50:49was lost
50:50after he reached it.
50:52In the entire catalogue
50:54of escape lines
50:55in occupied Europe,
50:57Comet,
50:58Pat O'Leary,
50:59Burgundy,
51:00all of them,
51:01that record
51:02belongs to this one alone.
51:05But the claim
51:07you have been listening to
51:08for the last hour,
51:09the claim
51:10that the Germans
51:11never got inside,
51:12is not something
51:14Dumais or Labras
51:15could have proved
51:16in 1944.
51:18They could not see
51:20into the German files.
51:22They went nine months
51:24without ever knowing
51:25for certain
51:26whether there was
51:27already a thread
51:28in their line,
51:29being patiently followed,
51:31waiting.
51:32The answer
51:33to that question
51:34was sitting
51:35in German records,
51:37and nobody read it
51:38until after the war
51:40was over.
51:41When the war ended,
51:42the Allies
51:42took possession
51:43of the German security files
51:45in France
51:46and went through them.
51:47The Gestapo records,
51:48the counterintelligence reports,
51:50the accounts
51:51of which networks
51:52had been penetrated,
51:53by whom,
51:54and when.
51:55Those files
51:56are how we know
51:57the inside story
51:58of Comet,
51:59and of the Pat O'Leary line,
52:02and of most
52:03of the rest of it.
52:04They are how we know
52:05the names
52:06of the informers.
52:08Shelburne is not in them
52:09as a broken network.
52:11There is no agent
52:12inside it,
52:13no file on its structure,
52:15no thread
52:15that was being followed.
52:17For nine months,
52:19two Canadians
52:19ran hundreds of men
52:21across occupied France
52:22and out to sea
52:23from a cove
52:24the Germans
52:25had ranged
52:25with artillery,
52:26and the people
52:27whose entire profession
52:28was finding such things
52:30never once
52:31got a hand on it.
52:32That is the answer
52:34to the question
52:34in the title,
52:35and it is not really
52:37a spy story.
52:38It is a story
52:39about a man
52:39who had been
52:40somebody else's cargo,
52:41and who decided
52:42that the people
52:43who had saved him
52:44had been doing it
52:45in a way
52:45that was getting them killed.
52:47The village
52:48kept the memory.
52:49France gave Plouas
52:51as a town
52:52the medal
52:52of the resistance.
52:54The house of Alphonse
52:55was never rebuilt.
52:57There is a low stone
52:58and a plaque
52:59at Cersozon
53:00where it stood.
53:00And if you walk
53:01the coast path today,
53:03you can stand
53:04where Marie
53:04and Jean Gickel's
53:05kitchen was
53:06and see,
53:07two kilometers away,
53:08the top of the cliff.
53:10The people
53:11who did the work
53:12mostly went back
53:13to being
53:13what they had been.
53:14François Le Cornec
53:15went back
53:16to his shop.
53:17Jaume Manguy,
53:18who knelt on the shingle
53:19with a signal lamp,
53:20went back to the sea.
53:22Querembra
53:23went back
53:23to his garage
53:24and to Petrel
53:25when there was Petrel again.
53:27Marie-Thérèse Le Calvé,
53:29who was 16
53:29when France fell
53:30and who walked
53:31strangers across country
53:33at night
53:33for two years,
53:34lived a long life
53:36in Brittany,
53:36and a book
53:37was eventually written
53:38about her there.
53:39The Americans came back.
53:40There were reunions
53:42on that beach.
53:43And in 1984,
53:4540 years after
53:47the first operation,
53:48a plaque was unveiled
53:50above the cove
53:51with the names on it.
53:53Ralph Patton,
53:54who had lain
53:55on that shingle
53:56at 23
53:57while the German batteries
53:58lit the coast,
53:59spent decades afterwards
54:01keeping the records
54:02of American evaders
54:04and making sure
54:05the French families
54:06who had hidden them
54:07were not forgotten.
54:09Raymond Le Brasse
54:10received the military cross,
54:12he also received
54:13the American Medal of Freedom,
54:15the Croix de Guerre,
54:16and the Legion of Honor,
54:18which is an unusual set
54:19of decorations
54:20for a signalman from Ottawa
54:22who had gone overseas
54:23as a teenager.
54:24He stayed in the army.
54:26He joined the Royal 22nd Régiment,
54:29served in Korea,
54:30and retired as a lieutenant colonel
54:32in 1971.
54:34He died in 1988
54:36and is buried
54:37at Pinecrest Cemetery
54:39in Ottawa.
54:40Two years after his death,
54:42the city named a street
54:43in Orleans after him.
54:45Most of the people
54:46who drive down it
54:47have no idea
54:48that the man it is named for
54:50spent nine months
54:51as the most hunted category
54:53of human being
54:54in occupied France
54:56and was never found.
54:59Lucien Dumais
55:00received the military cross
55:01as well,
55:02along with French
55:03and American decorations.
55:05He went home to Montreal.
55:07He wrote his account of it
55:09in French first
55:10and then in English
55:12under a title
55:13that says everything
55:14about how he understood
55:16his own war.
55:17He called it
55:18The Man Who Went Back.
55:21He died in Montreal
55:22on the 10th of June, 1993,
55:25at 88 years old.
55:28And now,
55:29go back to the cliff with me
55:31one more time.
55:32The night of the 28th of January, 1944.
55:37A 38-year-old sergeant-major
55:39of Les Fusiliers Monroyal
55:41standing halfway down
55:43a 200-foot cliff face
55:45with 19 people behind him
55:47on a path through a minefield
55:49and German guns
55:51on the headland above.
55:52He takes out a flashlight,
55:54turns it toward the open sea
55:56and switches it on.
55:58At the beginning of this story
55:59that looked like
56:00the most reckless act imaginable,
56:03it was the opposite.
56:05That light was the one moment
56:07in the whole operation
56:08when Lucien Dumais
56:10had to trust everything
56:11he had built.
56:12The seven families
56:13who never recruited an eighth.
56:15The two halves of the line
56:17that were forbidden
56:18to know each other.
56:19The young man from Ottawa
56:21moving his wireless
56:23from field to field.
56:24so the vans never caught him.
56:26The handkerchiefs on the mines.
56:29The passwords split
56:30between two Breton towns.
56:32The gun he carried
56:34so that nobody else
56:36would have to.
56:37If any part of it had failed,
56:39the light would have brought
56:41the guns down on him
56:42and everybody behind him.
56:44He switched it on anyway.
56:46and he did it again
56:48and again
56:49all year.
56:51Canada came into that war
56:53with 11 million people
56:55and an army of volunteers
56:57fighting inside somebody else's structures
56:59with somebody else's equipment
57:01and usually handed the jobs
57:04nobody else wanted.
57:05This one was given to two men
57:07who were not
57:07intelligence professionals at all.
57:09An infantry NCO
57:11who had been a prisoner
57:12for 36 hours
57:13and a signalman
57:14barely out of his teens
57:15whose first mission
57:17had collapsed around him.
57:19Between them,
57:20they built the only escape line
57:21in occupied France
57:22that the Gestapo
57:23never got inside
57:25and more than 300 men
57:27came home because of it.
57:29The British officer
57:30who sent them
57:30wrote afterwards
57:31that they had produced
57:32magnificent results.
57:34The Americans
57:36who lay on that shingle
57:37spent the rest of their lives
57:38saying it in their own way
57:39by going back.
57:41But the truest measure of it
57:43is a burned patch of ground
57:45at Caires-Sos-en.
57:46On the 24th of July, 1944,
57:50the German army
57:50finally got close enough
57:52to be sure
57:53that something was happening
57:54on that coast.
57:55And all they could do with it
57:56was set fire to an empty house
57:58and go away
58:00with nothing at all.
58:03Thank you for staying
58:04to the end of this one.
58:05If you think
58:05what the Canadians did
58:06on that coast
58:07deserves to be remembered,
58:09a like genuinely helps it
58:10find the people
58:11who would want to know about it.
58:13And if you'd like to hear
58:13more of these,
58:14we're here every week.
58:16And if your father,
58:17your grandfather,
58:18or your uncle
58:19served in the Second World War,
58:20in any service,
58:22in any army,
58:23I'd be honored to hear
58:24about him in the comments.
58:25This channel exists
58:27because of those names.