After the successful Normandy invasion in June 1944, allied forces in France pushed from the west and up from the south toward France’s northeastern corner. The double-pronged offensives were aimed at trapping retreating German forces. From there the plan called for Allied forces to regroup and launch a final attack on Germany itself.

At the same time, the U.S. military was infiltrating espionage teams into France to further destabilize the German presence. The idea was that the teams would supplement existing British teams already on the ground. The mission of the American teams was to link up with the French resistance – known in French as the “maquis” – and provide intelligence to Allied forces which were advancing across France after the D-Day landings. As part of this effort, grandfather was put in charge of training French resistance fighters located in England to parachute back into France as members of joint American-French espionage teams. 

Grandfather’s opportunity came in late August. An English agent in eastern France cabled to London that they needed five agents and 50 containers to be dropped in a rural region near the French borders with Switzerland and Germany to supply a growing French resistance force.

***

National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD

But the battalion – which had been mistakenly identified as Russian but turned out to be composed mostly of Ukrainian soldiers – urgently needed ammunition, food and clothing. Anti-tank weapons were a dire need in order to help defend against dreaded German Panzer tanks. 

So, on the night of September 9, 1944, grandfather found himself in an U.S. Air Force B-24 flying into occupied France, a single parachute strapped on his back, with no reserve in case of malfunction — that was the English style of parachuting. He had a carbine strapped across his chest, a bag filled with emergency rations, a first-aid kit, extra clips of ammo, a water canteen, a .45 pistol, a commando knife, and binoculars. And, befitting a covert agent flying into occupied territory, he wore a bulging money belt filled with several hundred thousand French Francs, counterfeited in London, to pay for supplies and, if needed, bribes. As the commanding officer of Mission Marcel Proust (MMP), grandfather’s chief task would be to arm and equip the French maquis to harass retreating German forces, capture soldiers and send intelligence about German troop movements to the Allied High Command in London. 

Map of France with Confracourt noted by red pin labeled “Mairie.”

Marcel Proust’s destination was a hot zone swarming with German troops, just outside the village of Confracourt in the Haute-Saone region of Franche-Comte. If they were caught, my grandfather knew he and his team could expect no mercy. A 1942 Nazi directive had declared: “All enemies on so-called Commando Missions . . .  whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the last man . . .  Even if these individuals should apparently be prepared to give themselves up, no pardon is to be granted to them.” 

Sitting in the bay of the B-24 that dark night were four others: two Americans, Michael Burke and Walter Kuzmuk, and two French soldiers.

• A former All-American football player at University of Pennsylvania, Burke at 25 was battle-hardened, having fought in Italy. Raised in New York City, he was well educated, spoke French fluently and moved in elite circles — he counted Ernest Hemingway among his friends and visited the writer in London and Paris when on military leaves during the war. Indeed, Lieutenant Burke comes to mind when recalling OSS Chief Donovan’s famous line about the perfect spy: a Phd who can win a bar fight.

• The second American was Walter Kuzmuk, a 2^nd Lt. with the U.S. Army who had recently transferred to the OSS. Kuzmuk had grown up outside Boston, the son of a Ukrainian father and Polish mother, and spoke Polish, Ukrainian and Russian. Like Burke, he was a combat veteran, having parachuted into France following D-Day as a member of the 101^st Airborne Division. Kuzumk was attached to Mission Marcel three days before the jump because of his Russian language ability based on initial reports that the rebelling soldiers were Russian. 

• The French were Captain Andre Cornut, who had supported grandfather in training French agents in England, and 2^nd Lieutenant Paul Marchardier, whose nom-de-guerre was Chamard, a strapping 29-year old lieutenant who enjoyed regaling Burke with the stories of his favorite brothel in Paris. 

Preparation for the MMP mission had been meticulous. The message signaling the mission’s arrival was broadcast three separate times on BBC radio on Sept. 9 at 130, 730 and 930 pm to make sure the French resistance picked it up. All was coded to throw off German intelligence. Confracourt was called “Aquarelle.” The French phrase “Ne louvoyez pas sur le rail (Don’t lean on the rail.)” meant the parachute jump was on. For the eventual meet-up at the landing zone, different passwords were chosen for the individual search groups to avoid compromise: “ami (friend)” and “the fox has run.” 

About 1 am on Sept. 10, a few hours after the last BBC signal, in the vast clearing uphill from the center of Confracourt, three red beacons were lit to indicate to the pilot the route to follow. A fourth light, white, 10 meters from the first red beacon, emitted in Morse code the recognition signal — the letter D: a line and two dots. Twelve maquisards secured the area, and the Ukrainians manned the woods. 

Postcard from Confracourt sent in 1947 to my grandfather and indicating in French where the parachute landing occurred on Sept 10, 1944.

Guided by the silver ribbon of the nearby Saone River to the south and the road junction at Combeaufontaine to the north, the B-24 slowed down to make its drop: 12 containers – filled with explosives, ammunition and clothing, each with its own parachute– and five team members of Mission Marcel Proust. After the canvas snaps of the opening parachutes, the team descended slowly in the moonlit night, while the bomber, with its engines back to full power, disappeared above the forest.

A second plane with four other members of the MMP team, including the radio set, got lost and mistakenly made its drop in the Paris region. 

The maquisards set about collecting the haul, including their newly arrived comrades. “Friend,” the team of maquisards whispered to a new arrival hanging in a thorn bush. Grandfather, with a flashlight in one hand and a revolver in the other, recognized the password and let his guard down. Soon Lt. Burke, Lt. Kuzmuk, Lt. Chamard and Captain Cornut joined the group. The containers, loaded onto cattle carts, were sent to the woods with Kuzmuk and the two French agents. Escorted by two maquisards, Colonel Booth and Lt. Burke walked down a narrow road with waist-high wheat on either side and entered Confracourt at three in the morning. 

***

Even though it had been a part of German-occupied territory since 1940, Confracourt had escaped harsh German rule. Nevertheless, it was a time marked by ration tickets, forced recruitment of local men to work in Germany, enforced black outs at night, and requisitioning of meat and butter (100 grams/week for an adult) for the occupying German army. Scrambling to feed themselves, some residents cooked snakes and foxes. Others were forced to house soldiers who set up stoves outside the house and helped themselves to poultry from the yard. Sometimes, the Germans gave jam in return.

Burke in his memoir describes entering a town as “silent as a sleeping cat.” Grandfather was immediately taken in by Confracourt’s quaintness. “In the moonlight and dark shadows, the old stone walls and buildings looked like a stage set from ‘Cyrano de Bergerac,’” he recalled in his memoir. 

But beneath the quiet and quaintness, behind the stone walls, the French resistance was planning for the day of liberation. Upon entering their safe house, grandfather and Mike Burke were ushered into a large living-dining room and kitchen combined. At one end, bustling around an open fireplace, their hostess Madame Patillot prepared a warm snack for her husband, a resistance fighter who was often out on nocturnal missions. When she turned around and saw two American officers with her husband, she burst into tears. She extended her arms to toward grandfather and rushed across the room. She dropped to her knees, seized both his hands and started kissing them. “Finally!” she sobbed happily in French. “After four years, you are here! Finally!”

Grandfather’s work had just begun: shaping the French resistance and Ukrainians into an intelligence gathering operation that could pave the way for the Allies to advance across France and into Germany to bring an end to World War II. 

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