Around 10 am on August 27, Major Hloba was leading his troops on horseback to the German encampment in Vesoul. While passing the Doillon Dairy at Noidans-les-Ferroux, according to a plan hatched with Doillon, Hloba ordered a red flare to be fired high in the air, thus signaling the start of the uprising.
Following a command “to put on your helmets and shoot,” soldiers briefed on the uprising shot the German soldiers next to them. However, Germans in the center of the column had time to pull themselves together. Savage hand to hand combat ensued, with the melee spreading, according to a Ukrainian account of the events, like “a fire which gains a wick, centimeter by centimeter.” In an hour, the battalion was free, having massacred 117 German officers and soldiers. By comparison, the revolters suffered minimal casualties: one killed and seven wounded.
Led by Doillon and his fellow maquisard Claude Vougnon, the liberated soldiers crossed the Saone River and took shelter in the Confracourt Woods on the evening of August 27, just outside the village where my grandfather would land two weeks later with his OSS detachment. Local mayors assured safe passage, while residents provided food and served as guides. Soldiers wounded in the revolt were transported to a secret hospital located in a castle in the village of Bougey, twenty kilometers north of Confracourt.
Map of Confracourt and surrounding area, courtesy of Guy Mauvais.
As a result of the successful revolt, with the arrival of 800 soldiers, the ranks of the local maquis swelled from 1,350 to over 2,000 men. In addition to increasing the maquis fighting force, the battalion brought firepower — four anti-tank guns, 28 mortars and 12 heavy machine guns — transport (157 horses and 115 horse-drawn carriages) and ammunition.
Fearing the sudden augmentation of the French resistance they had been ordered to eradicate, the Germans were determined to track down the renegade battalion. But Nazi interrogations of local French villagers turned up nothing. Frustrated and full of vengeance, the German high command in Vesoul ordered the execution of 100 Ukrainian soldiers based in Vesoul. They were completely innocent but for their nationality.
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The renegade battalion was quickly integrated into the Forces Francaises de l’interieur (FFI), the official name of the French resistance, and placed under the command of Captain Doillon and Lt. Vougnon. It became known as the Bataillon Ukrainien in French, or BUK 102. Replacing the Ukrainian command of BUK 102 with French officers was a cagey move made by the 33-year old local maquis commander Claude Roch, whose nom de guerre was Darc. A graduate of France’s prestigious military academy Saint-Cyr, Captain Darc trusted his men more than he trusted Hloba, whom he regarded in the first days as unreliable, given he had twice defected. Hloba remained the titular commander, responsible for admininstrative issues, but day-to-day command of BUK 102 was in the hands of Doillon and Vougnon.
The first order of business was provisioning the newfound military corps. The first alert to the local maquis supply officer had reported that 80 defecting soldiers would need food and lodging. But when Doillon appeared on horseback mounting the crest of a hill overlooking Confracourt, with the Ukrainian battalion in rank behind him, it became apparent that there had been a miscommunication. Instead of 80, there were 800 defectors.
The maquis scrambled. A hastily prepared cantonment in a nearby clearing was moved to the interior of the woods, which would conceal the mass of fighting men. Local mayors and farmers pitched in with food supplies. Fortunately, the region’s bountiful cattle and crops at that time of year sufficed to feed the soldiers.
For their part, the soldiers were overjoyed to be free from the clutches of the Germans — at least for the moment. That evening, at their bivouac in the Confracourt Woods, Major Hloba offered a toast to his French colleagues, who expected water – or at least wine – to quench their thirst after the travails of the day. But Hloba proffered vodka. More used to wine, some French spit out the vodka. The maquisards marveled at how the Ukrainians could manage to carry such large amounts of vodka with them through their ordeals.
Work soon turned toward assembling a joint defense against the German forces swarming the area. Despite initial misgivings about Hloba’s loyalty, Darc assessed BUK 102 positively, even if the soldiers were unfamiliar with guerilla tactics. “The men and managers are characterized by indisputable bravery and an absolute spirit of discipline,” he wrote at the time. “Even if nothing prepares them for the partisan war, they will deal very hard blows to the adversary.” BUK 102 became known as Darc’s “force de surprise.”
There was one last important detail to attend to: the soldiers’ German-issued uniforms. Quick thinking Doillon remembered that a nearby cheese factory had huge vats. He sent the soldiers’ dark-colored military tunics there to be dyed navy blue to distinguish them from the Germans they would be fighting in the days to come. And he replaced their German headgear with French-style berets.
Jeffrey Lilley Writing 