The photographers, with their traditional scant regard for authority, were shouting across the water to the general to
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manoeuvre the rowing boat to one side so that they could get their first shots. He did so good-humouredly. This brought the larger boat directly in front of Le Blanc's target. From the elevation he might have fired over the first boat and the photographers' heads with a good percentage chance of hitting his man. But he wanted it to be without error. He breathed shallowly and waited. By now Ormerod was watching the scene with horror and fascination. The window sash had been lifted over the barrel of the rifle and the afternoon breeze came in sweetly. Marie-Thérèse still faced the patients with her gun in her small hand, but now the British and French men just sat dumbfounded around the ward waiting for the shooting to happen. The fly buzzed impatiently against the imprisoning window. Ormerod moved to squash it against the glass. Marie-Thérèse snapped : 'Be still.'
It was like a slow, locked dream. From the door of the ward Henri emitted a click of the tongue. Someone was coming up the stairs. He raised the nub of his pistol. In through the doors came a white-coated doctor, a Frenchman. His eyes glazed as they came down on the hole of Henri's pistol. Speaking quietly Henri told him to sit down on the nearest bed. He sat down, his trembling hands trying to find the iron bedfoot to steady himself.
At that moment it became right. On the lake the photographers swung their boat for a picture at a different angle. It brought Groemann facing the rifle, with his two passengers slightly to one side and clear of the field of fire. Jean Le Blanc recognized a right moment when he saw it. His sight was on the centre of the general's chest, just to the side of his double bank of medals. He checked his breath. He pressed the first pressure of the trigger and then, almost at once, the second. The single sharp explosion burst around the lake and its buildings, sending birds screaming from the trees. General Wolfgang Groemann, a sudden blood-red flower spraying outwards on his tunic, remained upright for several seconds, then his body seemed to leap on some spring and fall backwards into the bottom of the little boat he had been rowing. 'Take a photograph of that,' muttered Le Blanc. The boat trembled and crazily turned. It was five seconds before the shouts went
178
up. The wounded soldiers, like two comedians, tried to stand up and tipped the boat first one way then the other. The one with the bandaged arms fell over the side and was drowned, although nobody noticed at the time.
'Depart,' said Jean Le Blanc in the ward. They knew what to do. There was no time to dismantle the rifle. It remained
where it was like a piece of modern sculpture, cold and im
personal. The resistance group began to back away towards the door. Ormerod looked for the last time at young Bailey.
The young officer was sitting speechless on the side of the bed,
tears running surrealistically from his one eye. Ormerod felt an overwhelming need to apologize to him.
'Bastards!' called the other officer across the ward. 'Bastards !'
The French doctor who had intruded suddenly stood up and ran screaming towards Le Blanc, who shot him without compunction. His pistol exploded and the man's white coat
was ripped apart by the shot. He fell down, bloody and gro
tesquely spread out in the middle of the ward. They went out. Standing in the open door of a lift on the landing was the French doctor who had first taken Ormerod into the
ward. He seemed mesmerized with fear. Le Blanc pushed him
aside as they got into the lift. Before the doors closed Henri fired two shots towards the ward door to discourage pursuit.
The grating closed and they descended six floors. Only the
heavy sound of their breathing filled the cage. To Ormerod it seemed as though they went down in slow motion.
Le Blanc and Henri ran out into the sunshine, ready to
shoot. But the road at the side of the building was vacant. An
ambulance stood against the kerb, its engine vibrating. The French doctor ran like a rabbit to climb into the cab and the rest of the group hurried into the back and closed the doors.
The vehicle started with a jolt that all but toppled them
from their feet. Ormerod felt sick. Marie-Thérèse put her hand
on his wrist and he felt her vibrating. He did not look at her.
The ambulance took the upward sweep of the road which
sent it over the modest hill below which were parked the staff
cars which had brought the general and the others to the lakeside. Everyone was at the water's edge, the photographers'
179
boat frantically towing the rowing boat towards the shore. In the general's boat the wounded soldier was bending over the dead Groemann, weeping from fright and shock. His comrade's body had gone below the smooth surface. Men were running from buildings all around. As the ambulance turned up the incline and away from the scene. Einder was running up the slope shouting: 'Ambulance! Ambulance!'
Four miles out of Bagnoles de l'Orne, going east on a minor road below trees, towards Sees and the Forest of Ecouves, the ambulance was stopped by the first of the road blocks which the Germans were frantically throwing across all roads leading from the spa town. As the route bordered the small lake, the Etang de Vie, a three-man Wehrmacht motorcycle team appeared by the side of the road. They had only just arrived and Jean Le Blanc, looking through the small window into the driver's cabin of the ambulance, cursed as he saw them ahead. Another two minutes and they would have been there first. Now it all depended whether the Germans knew they had escaped in an ambulance. He watched two of the three Germans come forward towards the vehicle and he knew by their attitude that they were not aware that an ambulance had been used in the escape. Had they known, he had no doubt they would have fired on it first. Now they walked forward unsuspectingly and spoke to the driver. The third man remained by the motorcycle and sidecar in the centre of the quiet road. They had not had time to erect any barrier. The lemon sun was filtering through the bordering branches and birds sang undisturbed in the cool air.
I am going to Sees to pick up a patient,' said the driver to the first soldier. 'What is the trouble?'
'Nobody tells us anything,' grumbled the soldier. 'We have to check all vehicles, that's all. But it's something big by the sound of it. Who's in the back?'
'Just the orderly.'
The soldier was about to turn away and wave the ambulance through when the man who had remained with the motorcycle shouted: 'Go and check the back.' He must have
180
Ormerod’s Landing
by Leslie Thomas
scanned by Bill
author's note
The occupation of secret agent is bizarre and sometimes frankly comic. Professor M. R. D. Foot in his official history of the British Special Operations Executive in wartime France describes an 'atmosphere of adventure and daring often with a touch of light opera thrown in'.
He records that the initial raid attempt on occupied Europe after Dunkirk resulted in the three British participants having to row home. (It took thirteen hours.) Churchill called it a 'foolish fiasco'.
Plans to drop the first parachutist agent into France were marred by his last-moment refusal to jump. A later raider dropped on the roof of a police station. A third, a Frenchman, jumped and then quietly went home to his wife for the remainder of the war. Another parachutist hung in a tree all through a dark night, to discover at dawn that his feet were inches from the ground. Peter Churchill was horrified to have ebullient and noisy Frenchmen, like football supporters, taking him to a rendezvous at a secret air strip.
Agents, not infrequently, spoke imperfect French, or none at all. One, questioned by the Gestapo on a train, and unable to speak French, pretended to be a dolt and got away with it. Another, who did speak the language, blithely told the Germans he was a British Officer carrying a radio transmitter. They laughed and let him go.
One operative, wearing an English overcoat and smoking a pipe, met his secret contact in public with the words 'How are you mate?' A resistance leader 'hiding' among a group of plain-clothes Gestapo men in a bar was loudly sought out by some downed RAF men -
in uniform -
and seeking asylum.
The French also had their oddities. Before 1940 they entrusted at least part of their espionage plans to two men - one nearly blind and the other stone deaf. During the German Occupation they used a submarine to land agents, a vessel impotent in normal operations - a fault in its tubes sent its torpedoes in circles!
In the realm of the outlandish, then, George Ormerod, whose tale is told here, was not alone ...
'It is not Policy to use a good intelligence agent for a dangerous
mission involving sabotage. He is more valuable lying low,
making contacts and gathering information. Others, more readily replaced, should be used for violent or dubious projects ...' Intelligence Directive August 1940
one
The little-known island of Chausey lies between Jersey and the
Normandy coast. Two kilometres in length and seven hundred
metres at its widest, it has a population of about fifty. It is cast about with islets and many rocks. Of all the Channel Islands group, it alone is part of France.
At dawn on September 20th, 1940, at the ebb of the highest tide of the year (a prodigious rise and fall of forty-one feet) a
nervous London police officer and a young French schoolmistress, who was also a trained killer, landed on the island.
It was the first Anglo-French raid on Occupied Europe follow
ing Dunkirk and the collapse of France.
Two nights later the infiltrators - Detective-Sergeant George Ormerod, aged thirty-five, of 'V Division Metropolitan Police,
and Madame Marie-Thérèse Velin, aged twenty-six, from the
village of St Luc-au-Perche in Lower Normandy - were put ashore,
by the Germans themselves,
at Granville on the main
land. By then they were accompanied by a thin, ugly mongrel
called
Formidable.
Their adventure has never been told before, not because it has been concealed by the Official Secrets Act, or any other
such bureaucratic device, as so many have, but merely because
the two people most concerned had never felt the need to talk about it. In addition, as with other early escapades of its nature, the documentation is missing from the files, a fact
which gives rise to the suspicion that the operation was tacitly
'disowned'.
I first heard the strange story of the Dove and the Dodo, as they were called, from Madame Velin herself, twenty-three years after it took place. She was then living on the French Pacific Island of New Caledonia, about twenty miles from Noumea, its capital.
I was
en route
to London after a newspaper assignment, covering the visit of Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip to Australia. New Caledonia is a little over two hours flying from Sydney and I had gone there for a few days holiday.
7
It was at a dinner party on my second evening that I first heard the name of Marie-Thérèse Velin. My host, a young doctor doing his National Service in the colony, was treating
her for a tropical ailment which caused temporary spasms of
blindness.
He mentioned that she had been a member of the wartime
resistance in France and had settled in New Caledonia as a school teacher in the early nineteen-fifties. It was suggested that I might like to accompany him on a visit to her the
following day, as she spoke good English but had little oppor
tunity of doing so on the island.
I agreed and in the late afternoon, when the day had cooled off a little, we went out from the town and into the copra country beyond, the road running straight between miles of coconut plantations, until we eventually came to a sedate
cottage overlooking a shell beach. On the veranda, looking out
over the sea, was Marie-Thérèse Velin whose name was to remain with me for a long time after that day.
When I first saw her that afternoon in 1963 she appeared much older than she was. The illness which was then in its second month had drained her face and her blindness had returned to remain for two further days. She looked quite small sitting there in her bamboo chair and her hands, laid on her lap, were veined and delicate. She held them up at one
point to make some comment in the conversation and I noticed
that it was possible to see the light around the edges of her fingers and thumbs. I did not know then that she had once
been described, by allies and enemies, as a dangerous woman.
She was obviously pleased in a quiet way that I had come to see her because she enjoyed conversing in her good but
painstaking English. We remained for a couple of hours, trying
to tie up fragments of her memories of England to the places that I knew. At one point I mentioned the Channel Islands
and for a moment her face lightened to a smile. 'Have you ever
been to the Channel Island of Chausey?' she asked eagerly.
'It is the only one of the islands that is still French. The English
have taken the rest long ago.'
Not only had I not been to Chausey, I had never heard of it.
The smile remained with her. 'Not many people know,' she
8
said in a playful whisper. 'We Normans keep it a secret. Go there one day. It is delightful. I went there once.'
If I imagined that this might be the opening of some reminiscence I was mistaken, at least for that day. But three days later, with my doctor friend, I once again drove to the bamboo house by the sea and there she was still, sitting, staring out to the horizon she could no longer see. Her eyes were a good deal improved that day, however, and we had a very cheerful afternoon during which we ceremoniously drank Chinese tea and ate colonial French
patisserie.
After talking for a while she rose and said: 'I will show you something I have hidden, like a secret. I do not show it to many people in New Caledonia. In some way it does not belong here in the Pacific'