‘The First Victory for the Resistance’
Early in 1944 the Allies drew up plans to prevent the German troops stationed throughout Brittany from reinforcing their defences at the D-Day landing beaches. Special Air Service (SAS) units, formed from French military volunteers, and Resistance fighters (Maquis) were tasked with harassing the enemy to block their movement, and establishing a base in the forest of Duault, code name: “Samwest”.
By June 11th, 115 SAS and 30 Maquis had gathered at the “Samwest” base. The local people, with their carts, helped to transport the heavy containers of weapons and equipment dropped by parachute. The Germans knew that the population would help the parachutists and wanted information at all costs, and did not hesitate to use terror and torture to get it. Already four civilians had been arrested in Duault.
Commemorative plaque at Kerhamon, Duault.
That day, German soldiers in a vehicle lost their way because the road signs had been removed or pointed in the wrong direction to confuse and delay them. They arrived at the farm of Kerhamon to ask for directions, where they came face to face with some SAS and Maquis. The Germans came under fire, and one German soldier was wounded. The Germans swiftly retreated and raised the alarm.
The following day, the Germans returned in force: three trucks filled with forty infantrymen. During their journey towards the forest they arrested three farmers in order to use them as human shields. They also gunned down another farmer who had tried to flee as they approached.
The anniversary of the battle is still comemorated each year at Kerhamon, Duault, on the 12th June.
The Germans arrived at Kerhamon around 9 am, where they came upon 4 SAS and 2 Maquis. After half an hour of heavy fighting the Germans set fire to a farm at Kerhamon and threw a wounded SAS soldier into the blazing inferno. The SAS counterattacked, surprising the Germans. Four times, the German soldiers attacked and each time were pushed back with significant losses.
About midday, the pressure from the enemy increased with the arrival of 13 German trucks carrying reinforcements. The SAS, fearing encirclement, decided to disperse the base in small groups and towards 2 pm, the evacuation of the base began.
Grave of the 31 Martyrs, Plestan.
The battle of Duault continued until around 6 pm when the Germans retreated. The French had suffered 5 killed and 9 wounded. 45 German soldiers had been killed. As revenge for their failure, the Germans burnt down the farms of Vern-Hir. One owner perished in the fire at his farm when a German officer deliberately pushed him into the burning building. They also took revenge on the young people of the closest villages, seizing six of them as hostages. Like the other civilians already arrested, they were tortured, and finally slaughtered and buried in pits in the woods at Plestan.
On June 18th, nearly one week after the battle, the Germans returned to the forest. Thousands of soldiers raked the woods thoroughly, even using flame throwers in a desperate bid to find the Resistance fighters. But the men of the Maquis and the SAS, together with their arms and ammunition, had disappeared. Furious, the Germans burnt down 5 more farms at St Nicodème.
This victory cost the lives of: fifteen innocent civilians, killed on the spot, or executed after being tortured; four SAS, and nine Maquis fighters. The names of all those who died are remembered each June in a ceremony at Kerhamon in the forest of Duault.
Article written by John Sutter, originally published in the Central Brittany Journal September 2010
Vincent Pinson
Vincent Pinson is one of the few people still alive who has personal recollections of the events that took place at Kerhamon, on the 12th June 1944. He was just eighteen years old at the time, and living in a nearby hamlet. Everyone in the area was aware of the British parachutists landing in the Forest of Duault from the 6th June onwards. The young men in the area could not resist visiting the parachutist’s camp, to get English cigarettes and English chocolate and to see and hear the foreign soldiers in the flesh.
Their arrival inspired everyone with a feeling of new hope – the presence of the parachutists, together with news of the Normandy landings, convinced people that there really was a possibility that the German occupation could soon be ended.
Excitement and a sense of adventure turned into something more serious when some German soldiers stumbled into the farmhouse at Kerhamon, on the edge of the forest, in search of directions, only to be met by gunfire from members of the local Resistance, who were meeting there with one of the British paratroopers. At least one soldier was wounded, and the Germans beat a hasty retreat.
Vincent believes that this could have been the end of the matter: the Germans must have already been aware of the presence of British paratroopers in the region – they had soldiers billeted in the school in St-Servais in the north of the forest who would have heard the aeroplanes going overhead, and they had a large garrison in Callac. The ‘militia’, local people working for the German occupying forces, are also believed to have played a role – perhaps providing information about what was happening in the forest. At any event, German troops returned in strength to Kerhamon the following day and the battle ensued.
As a reprisal for their losses at Kerhamon, German soldiers picked up people more or less at random from nearby farms, and picked up others whom they incorrectly believed to be Resistance members. None of these people were seen alive again.
Vincent remembers that even at the height of the fighting at Kerhamon, not everyone behaved with total inhumanity; a German soldier opened the door to the pig shed and saw the woman of the farm hiding there with her four children; he closed the door and moved on elsewhere. After having had sixty-five years to reflect upon the events of those terrible days in June 1944, Vincent comments that not everyone in an army is necessarily there by choice, and not all of them want to kill people – “Perhaps that soldier too had children at home, of whom he was thinking when he opened that door.”
A monument was erected at Kerhamon in 1975 to commemorate the battle and also all those who lost their lives in its aftermath.
-Gareth Lewis, from an interview with Vincent Pinson in August 2010.
