was rescued, close to death, by Cyril Watney and a group of maquisards. He was operated upon under the most primitive circumstances in an abandoned presbytery high in the hills of the Lot, and narrowly survived. Malraux was delivered unscathed from imprisonment at the liberation of Toulouse, not without incurring the scepticism of some résistants who inquired acidly how he had ‘conned’ the Germans out of a firing squad.
That April with Poirier in Paris, Malraux had been as flamboyant as ever. He took him to dine at Prunier, relishing his immediate recognition by the head waiter. He introduced the young Frenchman to Camus as a British officer. Poirier began to be infected by the other man’s style. One morning, walking up the Champs-Elysées, he saw a huge German shepherd dog in the window of a pet shop, and knew instantly that he had to possess it. Ten minutes later and 10,000 francs of SOE’s money the poorer, he was leading it past the Arc de Triomphe when he met Malraux. Even the farfelu ’s sense of discretion was appalled: ‘Jack, you’re crazy – you’re in Paris to hide .’ But Poirier would not be parted from the dog. He arranged for it to be taken down to the Dordogne, and all through that wild summer of 1944, Dick the dog rode with him on the wing of his car, trotted behind him through the camps in the woods, and slept in his room at the château where, with increasing confidence in their own power, the maquisards made their headquarters.
‘I was always a château type at heart,’ said Poirier wryly. In the weeks before D-Day, he and a band of Soleil’s maquisards took over the lovely Château le Poujade, set high on a hill above Urval, overlooking the great river and its irregular patchwork of fieldsand vineyards in the distance. Only once were they disturbed by the Germans. Early one morning, a maquisard guard burst in to report that a German column led by armoured cars was crawling up the long, narrow road towards the château. Hastily they seized their weapons and took up position covering the approaches, conscious that their situation was desperate. But to their astonishment, halfway up the hill the Germans halted, paused, and then turned their vehicles and drove away. It seemed almost certain that they had seen the maquisards’ movements. Yet by that phase, the Occupiers had become less than enthusiastic about meeting them head on, in battle. A large part of the contempt with which crack units such as the Das Reich regarded local garrison troops stemmed from the tacit enthusiasm of most security regiments for a policy of ‘live and let live’ with the Resistance. To German fighting units and to the zealots of the Gestapo, local German commanders often appeared absurdly anxious to placate French opinion, and contemptibly preoccupied with shipping produce and loot back to the Reich.
Poirier survived a dozen narrow escapes that spring. Maquisards in their camps in the woods were comparatively safe except in action. It was organizers and couriers, who were compelled to travel, who constantly risked capture. Meetings of any kind were a deadly risk: in November 1943, eleven local Resistance chiefs had been captured at a single conference in Montpazier.
There was a delicate balance to be struck between the need for speed and that for security. To walk or cycle was safer, but much too slow for the huge area Poirier had to cover. He generally employed gazogènes , which were designed by a Brive engineer, Maurice Arnhouil, who was one of the maquis ’s most enthusiastic – although also least discreet – supporters. Even the gazos were maddeningly sluggish, often needing to be pushed uphill by the combined efforts of every passenger except the driver. Once, stopped at a German roadblock, Poirier fed all his incriminating papers into the charcoal burner under the pretext of filling it with fuel. Although the Germans seldom now ventured far from mainroads and towns unless in punitive columns, as
That April with Poirier in Paris, Malraux had been as flamboyant as ever. He took him to dine at Prunier, relishing his immediate recognition by the head waiter. He introduced the young Frenchman to Camus as a British officer. Poirier began to be infected by the other man’s style. One morning, walking up the Champs-Elysées, he saw a huge German shepherd dog in the window of a pet shop, and knew instantly that he had to possess it. Ten minutes later and 10,000 francs of SOE’s money the poorer, he was leading it past the Arc de Triomphe when he met Malraux. Even the farfelu ’s sense of discretion was appalled: ‘Jack, you’re crazy – you’re in Paris to hide .’ But Poirier would not be parted from the dog. He arranged for it to be taken down to the Dordogne, and all through that wild summer of 1944, Dick the dog rode with him on the wing of his car, trotted behind him through the camps in the woods, and slept in his room at the château where, with increasing confidence in their own power, the maquisards made their headquarters.
‘I was always a château type at heart,’ said Poirier wryly. In the weeks before D-Day, he and a band of Soleil’s maquisards took over the lovely Château le Poujade, set high on a hill above Urval, overlooking the great river and its irregular patchwork of fieldsand vineyards in the distance. Only once were they disturbed by the Germans. Early one morning, a maquisard guard burst in to report that a German column led by armoured cars was crawling up the long, narrow road towards the château. Hastily they seized their weapons and took up position covering the approaches, conscious that their situation was desperate. But to their astonishment, halfway up the hill the Germans halted, paused, and then turned their vehicles and drove away. It seemed almost certain that they had seen the maquisards’ movements. Yet by that phase, the Occupiers had become less than enthusiastic about meeting them head on, in battle. A large part of the contempt with which crack units such as the Das Reich regarded local garrison troops stemmed from the tacit enthusiasm of most security regiments for a policy of ‘live and let live’ with the Resistance. To German fighting units and to the zealots of the Gestapo, local German commanders often appeared absurdly anxious to placate French opinion, and contemptibly preoccupied with shipping produce and loot back to the Reich.
Poirier survived a dozen narrow escapes that spring. Maquisards in their camps in the woods were comparatively safe except in action. It was organizers and couriers, who were compelled to travel, who constantly risked capture. Meetings of any kind were a deadly risk: in November 1943, eleven local Resistance chiefs had been captured at a single conference in Montpazier.
There was a delicate balance to be struck between the need for speed and that for security. To walk or cycle was safer, but much too slow for the huge area Poirier had to cover. He generally employed gazogènes , which were designed by a Brive engineer, Maurice Arnhouil, who was one of the maquis ’s most enthusiastic – although also least discreet – supporters. Even the gazos were maddeningly sluggish, often needing to be pushed uphill by the combined efforts of every passenger except the driver. Once, stopped at a German roadblock, Poirier fed all his incriminating papers into the charcoal burner under the pretext of filling it with fuel. Although the Germans seldom now ventured far from mainroads and towns unless in punitive columns, as
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