Free The Nazi Hunters by Damien Lewis

dropped into an area so rife with Germans!’
    Fiddick had been in the Vosges for long enough to have learned a little about the enemy stationed in the region. He’d had to evade numerous search parties, hiding in dingy cellars, cramped attics and even down a well. At one point he was en route to join the Maquis, but ended up coming face to face with a German patrol. Fortunately, the villagers had dressed him as a local, and the enemy column had marched on by.
    In short, Fiddick knew that – contrary to the briefings the SAS men had been given – the area was crawling with the enemy.
    Druce had invited Fiddick to join his force, becoming their sixteenth man, and he’d even kitted out the Canadian in a spare SAS uniform. Fiddick was peculiarly suited to operating in an environment like the Vosges. Having grown up on the heavily forested Vancouver Island on Canada’s western seaboard, he’d worked as a woodsman before the war, and the Vosges felt almost like a home from home. As Druce remarked, Fiddick ‘would turn out to be one of our best soldiers’.
    Being an experienced airman – Fiddick had been flying a Lancaster bomber when shot down – he understood the roles played by various warplanes. He feared that the Storch reconnaissance aircraft could only be doing one thing – searching for the Maquis’ deep-forest bases. And, bearing in mind how quickly the Germans had come looking for him, Fiddick feared that the enemy must know at least something of the British parachutists’ arrival, hence their aerial search.
    Fiddick’s concerns were soon to be proved correct. As Hislop, Gough and Davis returned from their radio excursion, they discovered a second new arrival at camp. Albert Freine was the gard-chasse  – chief gamekeeper – of the region. As such, he was of necessity closely involved with the local German commanders, many of whom were keen on a spot of wild boar hunting, or fishing. It made Freine’s other role – that of chief intelligence officer of the Alsace Maquis – doubly rewarding and challenging, in equal measure.
    Freine was viewed by the Germans as a ‘good’ Frenchman, one who was loyal to the Nazi cause. As such, he was often privy to their plans, ones betrayed by casual remarks while out on the hunt. But, by mid August 1944, even Freine’s ‘cover’ was starting to wear thin, and the deadly game of duplicity was playing on his nerves. The intelligence chief of any Maquis group would be hunted most actively, for if he were unmasked and forced to talk then the entire network could be rolled up.
    Freine introduced himself to Druce. He was a curious-looking figure: slight, sandy-haired and dressed in the traditional beret and rough tweed cloak that Vosges countrymen favoured. He seemed gloomy by nature but fiercely patriotic and loyal, and boastful and fearless in equal measure. In short, he was a bundle of contradictions, but more importantly he had never been known to give inaccurate information, or to say more than he knew.
    Right now, Freine had brought alarming news. A force of some 5,000 German soldiers was carrying out an east-to-west ‘sweep’ of the Celles-sur-Plaine Valley, which was less than 2 miles north of the Maquis camp. It was far too close for comfort, and Freine could only conclude that the influx of enemy troops was connected to the arrival of British paratroopers.
    The German soldiers were from the Wehrmacht ’s 405 Division, part of the 19th Army. Retreating from the Allied advance in southern Europe, the 19th had been charged with defending Germany’s eastern border in the Vosges. The 19th Army consisted mostly of ‘third-tier’ troops: wounded veterans, conscripts and ‘Hiwis’ – foreign POWs who had ‘volunteered’ to serve the Nazi cause. (Hiwi is an abbreviation of the German word Hilfswilliger , meaning ‘those willing to help’.)
    Yet, regardless of their calibre, a 5,000-strong force was far too numerous for Druce’s unit, plus the