The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [169]
The dreadful march of the second SS armored division, Das Reich, in June 1944, from Toulouse in southern France to the Normandy invasion front, is a central element of this novel and every effort has been made to describe it correctly. All German orders and reports cited in the book, including the one by the Das Reich commander, General Heinz Lammerding, are genuine. Its strength and units and composition, its route through the Périgord, the insurrection in Tulle, the brief battle of Cressensac, the tragedy of Terrasson, and the appalling atrocity of Oradour were all very much as described here. There is no historical evidence for my fictional suggestion that in the absence of heavy weapons, Resistance leaders were prepared to provoke the Germans into reprisals in order to delay them. During their postwar trial for the Oradour massacre, German veterans claimed that they had been angered by reports of the killing and abuse of their captured comrades. They carried little credibility. But it remains a startling and unprofessional dereliction of military duty that the German Army allowed one of its premier armored divisions to spend time hunting down the Maquis when it was desperately needed to fight the invasion in Normandy. M.R.D. Foot, in his magisterial official history, SOE in France, concludes: “The extra fortnight’s delay imposed on what should have been a three-day journey may well have been of decisive importance for the successful securing of the Normandy bridgehead.”
Details of rationing under Vichy, the organization of Vichy security forces (including the notorious North African unit), the location of German Headquarters, and the texts of BBC messages are as accurate as current research can make them. The Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux is an imposing and helpful library and a memorial to the Resistance. I am indebted to André Roulland’s La Vie en Périgord sous l’Occupation, to Jacques Lagrange’s 1944 en Dordogne, to the memoirs of René Coustellier in Le Groupe Soleil, and to Guy Penaud’s magnificent Histoire de la Résistance en Périgord. I also sought within the limits of fiction to base my accounts of sabotage and military operations on reality. Readers of George Millar’s Maquis, one of the outstanding books to emerge from the Resistance, will recognize my debt to him. I must also cite my reliance on Max Hastings’s Das Reich, an admirable work of research and reconstruction.
I was introduced to the Périgord by my friends of three decades Gabrielle Merchez and Michael Mills, whose kindness and welcome kept bringing me back. My friend Jean-Henri Picot, son of the renowned Compagnon de la Résistance Paul Picot, opened for me his family archive and recounted his boyhood reminiscences of being able to eat eggs and chicken daily in the Périgord countryside in 1942-44. Other friends and neighbors in the Périgord were generous with their dinner tables, their time, and their memories. I have borrowed some of their names, some of their personalities, and tried to recapture some of their warmth in this novel. Jean-Louis and Kati Perusin introduced me to the songs of Charles Trenet. And I am indebted to Jo and Collette da Cunha, and their invaluable personal library. It was Jo who first acquainted me with the local pineau, which he makes himself, and whose charms ensured that this book took rather longer to write than expected.
Anyone who has seen the extraordinary paintings of the Lascaux caves has probably asked themselves why artists