On the Devil's Tail

In Combat with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1945, and with the French in Indochina 1951–54

Paul Martelli, Vittorino dal Cengio

• Editore: Helion & Company
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781910777527
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: Military Biographies

A collaborationist who fought for Germany during WWII and later for the French in Vietnam tells his eventful life story in this military memoir. This is the riveting true story of Paul Martelli who fought on the Eastern Front in 1945 as a fifteen-year-old member of the 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS Charlemagne, and later, as a soldier with French forces in the Tonkin area of Vietnam. Paul recounts his time at the Sennheim military training base; his experience of the German invasion of France when he was still a boy in Lorraine; and his motivations for enlisting with the Waffen SS a few years later. He reveals his escapades at Greifenberg, his first love with a German girl helping refugees, and his experiences of combat. After the German defeat, Martelli ends up delivering a group of female camp prisoners to a Russian officer, then living in disguise among enemy soldiers until he escapes and surrenders to the Americans. After a prison sentence and military service in Morocco, Paul is sent to fight in defense of French bases north of Hanoi, Vietnam. Though he survives three years of fierce combat, he compares his service in the Waffen SS with the inefficiency of the French Expeditionary Force and comes out deeply frustrated. At almost twenty-six, Martelli has fought and lost in two wars, both against the communists. Unemployed, and with the ideals of a 'Nouvelle Europe' in pieces, he briefly joins the French Foreign Legion before choosing another path

1

The Waffen SS Volunteer

Choosing Sides

It was after a long rail journey in 1943 that I arrived in Marseille to work for Organisation Todt. A billet had been arranged for me on the outskirts, at Septèmesles-Vallons. As the train slowed on its approach to the platform, it passed wagons smashed by bombs, and broken, twisted rails, curling into the air like broken springs. One of the jagged spikes had pierced the chest of a woman who hung there in tattered clothes, as if frozen in a writhe of agony.

Guards lined the rails on both sides, protecting them from sabotage by the Maquis. The Germans feared them, these French partisans, and often changed train routes at the last moment. Sometimes they attached civilian wagons at the front of the convoy as a deterrent.

Oberleutnant Wödl was a friend of my family from my mother’s side; he had fought in the First World War and now lived in Marseille, in a villa not far from the gendarmerie. He was a very serious gentleman, around fifty years old, bold, of normal height but thickset and short-sighted. He gave me his telephone number which I could use in case of trouble.

After work, I liked to stroll along the piers of the old port. Many young people were arriving at Marseille in search of adventure and, like most seaports, the area was swarming with all sort of pedlars, including ones selling bread coupons. I bought some of those coupons, and the following morning stopped by the bakery at Septèmes-les-Vallons in order to exchange one for a hot, crispy loaf.

“Hem! Wait here,” the baker told me after turning the coupon in his fingers again and again, examining it very carefully. “I have to ask my wife something, she’s in the back shop.”

I realized he was suspicious and so I examined the coupons I still had in my pocket: they were stamped with the date of the following month so they should not have been in circulation. Only then did it dawn on me that I had bought them from a black marketer.

The baker returned. “My wife thinks they are not good,” he said after a couple of minutes, showing his face from the back room. “You know, we could have problems in case of controls but I could offer you some bread…I have some just out of the oven…a delight if you are willing to wait.”

To hell, I thought. This fellow is selling me a pig in a poke; he only wants to gain time by keeping me here. I slipped out of the shop but it was too late to avoid two gendarmes who grabbed my arms and then took me to the police station in Marseille. There they frisked me, confiscating everything I had in my pockets, money included. “You’ll be stuck in prison for years,” a tall and skinny gendarme told me, gloating, “for coupon trafficking… up to twenty-five-years forced labour.”

I was flung into a seat. A bright light was directed into my eyes. Hours of interrogation followed with every word I answered typed by the skinny gendarme’s assistant. It was now past five o’clock in the afternoon. Through the interrogation room window I looked longingly at the fresh, autumn sunset. Finally, the clatter from the typewriter ended. They forced a deposition into my hands, which was impossible to read because of the blinding light, and told me to sign it. “May I phone my father?” I asked in a low voice, tired and nauseated.

“Your father is here?”

“And he has a telephone?”

I spelled out the numbers and the ‘lamp-gendarme’, after shutting off the light, dialled them on a phone. The tall and skinny gendarme, who seemed to be in command, waited with his arms folded.

I heard Oberleutnant Wödl’s authoritative voice in the earpiece of the phone in the lamp-gendarme’s hand. “Was! Was! Was fehlt Ihnen den?”

“Your father… is he German?” stuttered the skinny one, his face suddenly pale.

“Yes,” I answered, “an Oberleutnant.”

With a trembling hand, the lamp-gendarme passed me the receiver. As soon as he realized I was the one phoning, Oberleutnant Wödl wanted to know where I was. I didn’t explain anything about the circumstances because he, as an officer, was very rigid and inflexible and had strong ideas regarding principles of military and civil justice. I continued, however, with my little comedy; I would give those gendarmes tit for tat. I held the earpiece a little way from my ear to make sure the gendarmes could hear what was being said. “I am at the gendarmerie because I have declared that I work for Organisation Todt,” I said in German.

“Don’t move! I will be there in a minute,” the Oberleutnant said. I heard him calling his orderly: “Otto, Otto, come quickly!” The gendarmes heard him too, and though they couldn’t understand his words, the Oberleutnant’s tone told them that he was far from happy.

Assailed by a growing sense of panic, the gendarmes suddenly became much more affable. But it was too late. Their office was located on the second floor and, just minutes later, the boots of the Oberleutnant and his orderly stamped heavily on the stairs; and they were in a hurry. They burst into the office. Oberleutnant Wödl set his monocle over one eye, holding it with his thick eyebrow in a manner familiar to me, and asked, “Were you ill-treated?”

“No, but I’ve been here all day,” I answered.

The gendarmes stood at attention, even though they didn’t understand a word of German.

“You!” said the Oberleutnant pointing at the skinny one, “Do you want to be thrown into work making cement for the coastal defenses?”

As I translated, the gendarmes became even stiffer. The skinny commander mumbled, “No, no…ehm…there seems to have been a misunderstanding.” Then, turning to me, continued, “Tell your…”

“Silence!” thundered the Oberleutnant . “Another word and I will send you to forced labour immediately. You scoundrels! Is it in this way you demonstrate your gratitude for all the work we do for you?”

I translated again and then I asked for my documents back. They rushed at once towards the desk, clumsily holding out what I requested. Otto stood looking on, his legs slightly apart, his arms folded. “My money, too,” I said.

“Of course! We did not have any intention of keeping it,” the commander apologized while his assistant quickly gave me the signed deposition which I put in my pocket.

“Good!” said Oberleutnant Wödl. “You have been warned!” He turned on his heels and marched out, followed by Otto.

Cowardice dulled the eyes of the gendarmes. I didn’t say a word of criticism to them but the incident made me wonder which side I was on.

I spent the winter of 1943/44 working for Organisation Todt and then, in the spring, for a local engineering assembly company. Often, heated arguments about politics broke out, creating a tense and unpleasant atmosphere so, in April, I said goodbye to Oberleutnant Wödl, who suggested that I enlist in the German Army, which I was free to do since Prime Minister Laval had signed a decree in July 1943 allowing young Frenchmen to join Waffen SS units, the army of a ‘New Europe’.

I took a train from Marseille, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, 600 kilometers north to Nancy, still undecided about my future. At the station in Nancy, crammed with civilians and German soldiers coming back from or going on leave with their packsacks bulging, there was the most incredible confusion. Porters, calling their clients, were barely able to move. Everybody yelled to make themselves heard over the babble of noise, a counterproductive response that only added to the chaos. The stationmaster had lost control.

As soon as a train arrived, everybody rushed to it, pushing furiously. A young mother jammed her foot on the wagon’s footboard, letting her small son fall down to the platform. A gendarme selfishly tried to push past her while the stationmaster looked on, ignoring the child who was in danger of being separated from his mother. Silence followed two shots from a pistol; a Luftwaffe lieutenant put his smoking pistol in its holster then stepped forward to the wagon door to help the mother and son get inside. He then called the gendarme, saying, “It is not so difficult, after all, you see?” Encouraged by his calm smile, and by his watchful eyes, the passengers boarded the train in good order, without jostling.

I left the station thinking about that Luftwaffe lieutenant, his cool nerves and his display of authority in a difficult situation. Then, on a billboard, I noticed a poster with the headline: ‘WITH YOUR EUROPEAN COMRADES, UNDER THE SS INSIGNIA YOU WILL WIN!’ And the more I thought of Oberleutnant Wödl’s advice, the more sense it seemed to make.

At the SS recruiting office I was very well-received, but there was a snag: being still a minor, my recruiting papers had to be signed by one of my parents and it had to bear the stamp of the police superintendent closest to my village. A German officer gave me a route-paper for a two-way train ticket from Nancy to my home, and a pass as a soldier of the Reich.

In a waiting room at the station in Nancy, I was still mulling over the decision I had just taken when a man dressed in a leather coat caught my eye. He approached me bit by bit without raising undue attention and sat beside me. He offered me a cigarette and promptly I lit up his, thanking him.

“Out of work?” he asked, speaking with the cigarette moving in his mouth.

“At the moment,” I answered.

“Travelling alone?”

“Yes.”

“Interested in defending our Motherland from the invaders?” he asked point-blank, searching my eyes.

“And how?”

He took the cigarette from his mouth, rubbed his untidy beard and said: “Ever heard about…” he swallowed, taking a short pause: “…the Resistance?”

“Maquis?”

“Ssst!” The bearded man’s eyes darted from side to side. “I see we understand each other.”

“I’m too young.”

“But no…we have messengers that are even younger than you and…”

“I can’t.” I interrupted, showing him the raised palm of my hands for good measure.

“Everybody says that at the beginning, it’s natural. But think of this, it’s a noble cause…”

“The fact is, I’ve just made up my mind,” I answered, displaying under his nose my route-papers and my pass. “I’m enlisting in the German Army to fight for a different cause, a noble European cause.”

Half an hour later I was striding proudly across the platform to a train bound for Longwy, to a wagon at the rear, reserved for German troops.

“Hei, you! Those cars are reserved for the Boches!” the French stationmaster scolded me, guessing my intentions. I went back on my steps, waved my pass under his nose. “I am one of them now,” I told him in a calm voice. He made a hasty, awkward military salute, and then turned in the direction of the locomotive.

In the wagon, German soldiers were happy, singing and joking; that cheerful atmosphere enveloped my spirit. I was on the verge of manhood and all of a sudden had the right to other people’s respect — even from a stationmaster.

Back home I explained to my father that I had found work, that I would learn to drive trucks in Germany. He signed my recruiting papers. At the police station it wasn’t so easy: as I expected, they wanted to ask questions but I told them that I was in a hurry and risked missing the train. They stamped the necessary permit and let me go, but not without remarking about my young age.

The following day, the goodbyes to my family were brief. I shook hands with my friend Dodek, wishing him good luck — he had, he told me, chosen to fight for the Resistance.

On my route-paper, the next address was that of the Marine Ministry, Balard Square, in Paris. There, between medical checks, eating delicious soups at the mess and restful sleeps in the dormitory, I learned how to differentiate between the various traits of character amongst the volunteers: there were skilled, small-time thieves; intellectuals; farmers; adventurers; pimps and veteran police inspectors.

During the frequent night-time air raids, English planes launched phosphorous rockets in order to illuminate bombing targets. German anti-aircraft cannons, aided by searchlight beams, promptly responded to the threat. Civilians took refuge in underground shelters — the one in Balard Square had a steel door that closed automatically. Inside, an elevator descended deep underground, to the lower floors which were equipped with air conditioning. There was an occasional day-time alarm too, with sirens giving their warning with ear-piercing, prolonged wails. Each room in the shelter was crammed with up to twenty people. Once inside, I couldn’t wait to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere.

Our departure from Paris took place at the Oriental Station. Representatives of civilian authorities and officers in German military uniform with medals on their chests gathered around us, the recruits, speaking in French while a photographer was busy taking snapshots of us before we boarded a train that would carry us to Sennheim. Singing broke out amongst the recruits; some of them made faces and hurled insults at the stationmaster as we were photographed. Others scribbled on the wagons’ walls. Rations, which included bottles of wine, were distributed at the last moment and so the racket increased. I stood apart, not appreciating at all that kind of misbehaviour.

From Thann to Sennheim

I arrived by train at Thann, 13 Ma...