|
" THE VAUCLUSE DEPARTMENT
By August 19, the 157th Regimental Combat Team (45th Division) was pressing ahead toward the Durance River, the level valley of which, south of the Luberon mountains, serves as the natural direct route to Avignon and the Rhone. The bridge over the Durance at Mirabeau, though damaged, permitted foot soldiers across, and some patrols of the 1st Battalion, encountering no enemy, reached the north bank during the 20th. In crossing the river, the Americans moved from the Var Department to the Vaucluse, the prefectural seat of which was the celebrated old city of Avignon, resting on the Rhone, dominated by the great 14th-century Palace of the Popes. Within the Vaucluse boundaries, fifty miles north rises majestic Mont Ventoux, surrounded by a vast plateau that harbored innumerable Maquis, well-armed and waiting for American tanks and howitzers to support them.
In this region, about 1,000 Maquis forces aligned themselves under the leadership of Lt. Col. Philippe Beyne, a former tax collector and officer of the Colmar 152nd Infantry, who with his deputy Max Fischer, had organized the Maquis Ventoux into groups that could be counted among the best equipped and best trained of the Vaucluse Department. One of the inter-allied missions, headed by Cdt. Gonzague Corbin de Mangoux and Maj. John Goldsmith, had been dispatched in July to the Vaucluse to improve coordination between Beyne, as head of the Ventoux FFI, and the FTP and Groupes Francs in the area. Among the latter was one of Cammaert's units, centered at St.-Christol and led by an able dental surgeon from Avignon, Louis Malarte.
The first member of the mission, the Frenchman Corbin de Mangoux (code named AMICT) had come in by Lysander on July 12, landing at the Spitfire strip south of Sault where he was received by the SAP officer ARCHIDUC (Camille Rayon), known generally among the Resistance as Jean-Pierre, or simply J-P. (This landing strip is the same from which Zeller departed on August 2.)
Goldsmith was parachuted in a week later, on July 19, together with a Canadian officer, Maj. Paul Emile Labelle, and two Frenchmen, Robert Boucart and René Hébert. (A radio operator had been dropped earlier.) The Frenchmen were soon incorporated into Beyne's forces, while Goldsmith remained with ARCHIDUC, whose activities he has described in colorful postwar memoirs."
www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com  Laurent Laloup le vendredi 16 mai 2008 Réponse : J'ai parié sur la traduction de "á,á" en "é" dans "Rená,á Há,ábert"
Contribution au livre ouvert de Gonzague Corbin de Mangoux | |
