These vignettes* tell the story of my grandfather Waller Booth’s secret mission behind German lines in France during World War II. As an OSS operative, he worked with the French resistance in the fall of 1944 — and, curiously, Ukrainian soldiers — to harass the Germans as they retreated back to Germany after the Normandy invasion.
My grandfather witnessed bravery, sacrifice and sangfroid while helping the French resistance expel the Germans after four years of occupation. Indeed, themes of duty to country, the determination to be free and the paying the ultimate price all figure in the story — as they do today in Ukraine.
In announcing my grandfather’s passing in February 1986 to his French comrades-in-arms, my grandmother noted the covert intelligence mission as a highpoint of his life. “It was a short period of time,” my grandmother wrote, “but it colored and enriched the rest of his life.”
You see, my grandfather was an expert in clandestine warfare. During World War Two, he was in the vanguard of an approach to fighting that was trying to prove that military intelligence, gleaned with the help of local partisans, could turn the tide of a conflict at a fraction of the cost in lives and resources compared to conventional war. In France, over the course of 51 days with the maquisards of the French resistance, my grandfather put his theories to work brilliantly.
* Thank you to Guy Mauvais for photos and information and for arranging my visit to Confracourt in October 2022; the citizens of Confracourt for a warm welcome; Chrissie Crawford for photos and letters of the 1953 visit to Confracourt; Peter Gallant for providing information about his father-in-law Walter Kuzmuk; the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center in Toronto and Zorian Stekh for information about Lev Hloba; and my cousin Grace Housholder for support, promotion and family photos and letters.
Slava Ukraini!
Jeffrey Lilley Writing 