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Vassieux-en-Vercors

— As 1944 arrived in the Vercors, along with the cold winds and frosty temperatures, there was also tension in the air.”

As 1944 arrived in the Vercors, along with the cold winds and frosty temperatures, there was also tension in the air.

Plans for operations in the mountains had been approved. Local officials from Grenoble had organised themselves. The previous year, youths had absconded when required to do work in Germany and hidden in the hills. Eventually, even a Republic of the Vercors was declared.

Hundreds of people had scattered among the woods, caves and mountains for many months, well away from the occupiers and sustained by sympathetic locals.

All were waiting for the word from London. Attacking the enemy rear would divert resources from its defence of the northern coast. In the meantime, allied planes dropped light weapons, munitions and supplies. The maquisards bided their time with training and small operations.

Reprisals

As the target of these efforts, the occupiers were however well-informed. Like a summer storm, the growing presence of a threat at higher altitude did not go entirely unnoticed.

The occupier took decisive action. A force consisting of between 10 and 20,000 personnel was raised to deal with the maquis. From January onwards, the occupier ousted the resistants from the last of their lower lying bases, killing civilians and burning villages.

Higher up, the maquis were more difficult to dislodge. In July, gliders landed on the plateau near Vassieux and, under fire from the maquis, those who had landed moved quickly into the village. Almost a fifth of the civilian population of Vassieux was murdered and the village torched.

Remembrance

At Vassieux today, there are three main monuments to the events of 1944. The necropolis on the road to La Chapelle contains the graves of over an hundred resistants. Many of their names will become familiar to those who subsequently visit the Memorial atop the airy Col de Lachau and the newly-opened museum in the centre of Vassieux itself.

The Memorial features the testimony of those who survived and the stories of those who did not. Visitors emerge to find an impressive panorama of the Vercors ridge, with Les Moucherolles on the extreme left, towering above Villard-de-Lans. The stout Grand Veymont dominates the centre, as impassive as when we had climbed it last week. To the right, the rocky crests of the Glandasse cutting deep into the Diois.

Below the Col, many of the hamlets and farmsteads torched by the enemy forces have risen again. Likewise the little town of Vassieux, rebuilt immediately after the war with the labour of prisoners of war, at least one of whom the Memorial records as becoming a permanent resident.

Behind the church, the museum was in its first week of opening with an impressive collection. The exhibits are grouped chronologically, presenting the Vercors before, during and after 1944.

As the days progress, the respective last days of each of the resistants are marked, along with the circumstances of their death. Some events, such as the occupier’s discovery of the Grotte de la Luire – a hastily improvised hospital for injured resistants – record a disconcertingly high number of individuals, executed in situ, often accompanied by graphic images.