My grandfather got his first look at BUK 102 on the morning of September 10. Tucked away in the woods, Darc’s “force de surprise” was an impressive sight. Seven hundred and sixty nine officers and men standing at attention as U.S. Lt. Colonel Waller Booth carried out inspection.
Above, soldiers from BUK 102 in the fall of 1944 line up behind U.S. Army Lt. Walter Kuzmuk (front line, center) who was a member of the OSS Mission Marcel Proust. Below, Kuzmuk poses with Ukrainian boys soldiers from BUK 102. Photos courtesy of Peter Gallant.
In addition to the weapons and soldiers it brought to the Allied side, BUK 102 had field kitchens and a hospital wagon with medical personnel. The battalion even had a mascot — a 12-year old orphan boy, picked up in the Soviet Union a few years earlier. The boy was a living symbol of the battalion’s journey from the Soviet Army to German Wehrmacht to the French resistance.
The arrival of BUK 102 dramatically changed the military posture of the Confracourt maquis. Used to being undermanned and on-the-run, the French underground started to take on the German occupiers more aggressively. Augmented by hundreds of soldiers, the maquis conducted daily raids and ambushes on roads and in nearby towns that yielded German prisoners. This was a boon for intelligence gathering, the raison-d’être for Mission Marcel Proust.
Under a joint intelligence operation with the maquis organized by grandfather, the OSS culled intelligence from French interrogations of German POWs, translated the most important information and then via couriers sent reports to advancing Allied troops. (In a mix-up, communications equipment had failed to arrive in the parachute drop on September 10.) Grandfather described the intelligence bonanza as akin to picking ripe fruit “lying about . . . in a wild orchard.”
Information conveyed to advancing American, British and French troops also included instruction to refrain from firing on soldiers in BUK 102, many of whom could still be easily mistaken for the enemy given their German-issued garb and military equipment, the dyeing process and French berets notwithstanding.
For their part, the Germans, on edge about the phantom battalion which had suddenly switched sides, redoubled efforts to destroy the irksome maquis. In the days following the revolt, Nazi forces attempted several times to flush the troublesome resistance fighters from the Confracourt Woods. During a battle on September 1, in the face of a German assault led by two Tiger tanks, several armored cars and 700 soldiers, the BUK 102 ranks appeared to give way, thus threatening a German breakthrough. But as the Germans pushed closer to the woods, Doillon rallied the troops. An OSS report written after the fact by Captain Cornut reports that Doillon “circulated across the whole width of the front, through exploding shells and bursting mortars with complete disregard for death.” Yes, this was the man who invariably replied, “Ca ne risque rien,” (There’s no risk.) when queried about dangerous operations he wanted to mount against the Germans.*
Having fended off the German attack, Doillon and Vougnon kept their German foes guessing by moving the Ukrainian battalion 15 miles back and forth between the Confracourt Woods and Cherlieu Forest. Guided by knowledgeable maquisards, the Ukrainians used forest paths to move imperceptibly through the French countryside, like “fish in water,” according to a former maquisard. Commanded ably by Doillon and Vougnon, they harassed the Germans when they saw an advantage, always retreating to the forests for safe cover. During a daring raid on the occupied village of Melin on September 2, a platoon from BUK 102 freed 17 hostages who were lined up against a wall, ready to be executed by German forces.
My research indicates that the battalion killed hundreds of German soldiers in the weeks after its successful mutiny while losing 20 men with another 43 wounded. The Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Byelorussians and Hungarians in BUK 102 were brave in battle. They were also ruthless, showing no mercy to surrendering Germans and then stripping the dead soldiers of their clothes, boots, watches, rings and bracelets. Things got so bad for the Germans forces traveling through the region that, to deter attacks, they forced local villagers to sit on the front fenders of their vehicles. Once safe passage was secured, the French citizens were allowed to return home.
Provisioning the huge force, however, continued to present challenges. When they had access to local town and villages, the maquis sent out cars to collect cheese, bread, butter and potatoes. But when trapped in the woods, the maquis had to make do with what was nearby to feed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and themselves. On one occasion, four men harvested potatoes in a field on the edge of the woods, while four others fetched an ox from a nearby pasture. After dispatching the cow with a shot to the head, a maquisard, who was a butcher by trade, stripped and cut the ox up, hanging the quarters of meat on a wire between two trees to be smoked from a low fire below. Cooked potatoes, pieces of grilled and smoked meat, and water fed the French maquisards and Ukrainian troops for two days.
*Captain Simon Doillon was felled by a German sniper’s bullet on October 7, 1944, when serving as a member of an OSS reconnaissance team in the Vosges. He was posthumously awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit, the citation and certificate for which were signed by President Roosevelt. Shortly before Doillon’s death, his brother, flying a British Spitfire, was shot down and killed but not before he had destroyed three German Messerschmidt fighters in a dogfight.
Jeffrey Lilley Writing 