Death in the Rain

The rain fell endlessly. But somehow the word buzzed around Grenoble's streets : at 7 p.m. six Milice would be shot against a factory wall at the end of the Cours Berriat. By 6 o'clock the rain-drenched streets were jammed with people afoot, on bicycles, in trolleys and decrepit autos, hurrying toward the death scene.

They might have been people hurrying to a circus. They laughed, shouted greetings, raced each other. Good-naturedly they elbowed each other aside as they struggled for vantage points at the execution ground. In the same lot the Germans had shot 23 patriots last July. But Les Allobroges, Grenoble's morning paper, had promised that the Milice would be shot in a different part of the lot.

Six stakes had been driven into the ground. Near them, while the crowd massed in the pouring rain, stood a squad of Maquis, the executioners. Other Maquis lined the factory yard. To keep the eager crowd back, they shouted threats and finally fired a few shots at the ground.

As the rainy twilight gathered, a closed van crawled through the hooting, whistling crowd. The firing squad marched in single file to a point opposite the six posts and the factory wall. The van door opened. The six Milice stepped out. A Maquis grasped each prisoner by the arm.

But each doomed man walked straight to his post without a struggle. Each wheeled and stood with his back to the post while the Maquis tied his hands securely at kidney level. The youngest prisoner was 19, the oldest 26. One had been a mechanic in other days. Another had been a farmer. One had been a plumber whose job was to keep the toilets flushing at Milice headquarters. Two had been captured in a truck with a Milice captain who was killed. One was caught in the mairie, one at home in bed with his wife.

At the F.F.I, court-martial they had pleaded innocent. They had believed Marshal Petain, Henriot and others who had once been the Government of France. They had been told that the Maquis were bandits, foreigners, enemies of France. Their defense counsel had begged postponement of their trial until passions cooled. But the court had ruled that the six young men had borne arms against France and therefore must die.

The firing squad raised its guns. None could deny that the six young men faced death well. Not one slumped, not one turned his face away. The youngest, who had quit Grenoble University to answer Petain's call for young Milice, stared at the sky, just above the heads of the firing squad. The rain fell.

Without warning or signal, the executioners fired:--two volleys. The six bodies slumped. Maquis officers ran toward the stakes, fired a revolver bullet into each head. Within a minute after the coup de grace, the hands had been cut free, the bodies lay prone.

From a truck men brought six plain wood coffins. As the coffin nails were driven in, the crowd shouted over the dead bodies: "Sauvages! Salauds!" ("Beasts! Scum!").

The van with the six coffins rumbled off through the driving rain.

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