cussseesiet te Bu ee Mol. Ill. No. 3. Saturday, January 22, 1944- an = In Corsica when French troops landed a patriot army struck the Nazis from every side. What “| happened in Corsica has set the pattern for all Europe as the Red Army drives from the East and Allied armies poise on the invasion Ler springboard in the West. ‘| By SGT. HERBERT MITTANG | - of U.S. Stars and Stripes Staff 4 citizen army looked seaward, patiently waited. That was va > time, seven days after United States troops clambered up ms beaches of North Africa. Then the yellow ragpaper tracts lyre secretly passed hand-to-hand among the faithful, ever P itehtul of the Germans. ae) his was to be the lesson, the ref Ving sround for Europe’s pa- nig its: below, ~ liberation for te] nch Nerth Africa was accom- hed: fianked by Italy and its group. Principal reason for the eompact units was security. Com- posed as they were, if one man was caught and forced to give diterranean possessions, Cor- infermation he could reveal only ae. watched its own Shores, four others. S08 i landings and : oe z ee SOS eens Oi Of the five original leaders in Corsica, three were members ot the Communist Party. Each orig- inal member carefully chose five others and they, in turn, picked out others. This went on, town to town, until 15,000 men were patriot “regulars.” One-third of the men capable of bearing arms were in this partisan army. em ' ; way. i4-point handset type on it @d-ripped slips -of paper, is- Sismiers read a Secret Message: ie STATE OF ALARM en his posters the enemy has mi rly indicated the activities Sich hinder him since the de- beexation; he has warned us un- ay. the threat of death. They meet in deserted farm- houses and barns: in- mountain ceves known only to people who lived in the region all of their sif- prisoners. France counts on lives; in innocent-looking tav- ap§ -yone to do his duty. erns. The men lived spartan lives. DE | E They had to. It was either self- very evening at 2250 hours Guiiai or pitiless persecution if in to the broadcast over F221819 aiscovered. Organization was qnce (Algiers) for Corsica. | ore absolute than in a regular ional Front. army, and there was no such 4 thing as disobeying or question- ing an order. In the hearts of the men in eyery unit were engraved hol ut it is the Homeland we must ha@ y and not the enemy—our fu- hi rol 04nd the clandestine radios, in lies watched by Italians, Ger- fis and Corsican gauleiters, yw dt oq up imnocent-sounding these vows, similar to those taken #5. proadcasts from Radio Py their brother patriots hiding Si¥ yee which directed their eep im the forests of France: 4 ements in coordination with lGtemporary government set up y.lgiers. om 1. You are not only fugitives, you are also soldiers. 2. Hold no ‘communica:.ohs with family or friends. > f a small mountain town in efa northeastern region, Jacques y #iachem,—a 29-year-old news- ger man, Sat pounding the keys ome typewriter. A former photog- ~ Her for the Paris Soir, his dic had taken him to London iseveral years and to Holly- 3. Do not complain if your fam- ily cannot help you. 4. You expect no pay. 5. There is no distinction in the ranks between race, faith or 4d for three months. He was . pare = felio means handsome. His red- 6. Never abandon a wounded cd-brown hair topped an ordin- comrade. | ooking face, but his body ap- 7. Gare for and protect your angjed sturdy, with a long, wiry ASAS: P y dfigth. @nly his eyes looked un- wil’ They had a quick, shift- paglance which spotted every- who walked into the Fascist iquarters in the town. : Ae they kept their allegi- ance. The RAF, in the meantime, supplied the patriots with arms. In close cooperation with Radio France in Algiers, codes were broadcast which gave the time and location when rifles and am- munition would be parachuted down from an Allied plane. /-On their own official sta- sry he transmitted secret sages in code and passed , {i along from province to pro- Ane, Covering the entire island. ie€ patriots worked in units of patterned after the citizens’ 7 in France: they numbered = d Fascists were unaware of {0 “We like good apples” might mean “Tonight at Ajaccio, usual spot, usual signal.” There was 1g ; ig HOSE were the long days, the long hours, when Corsica’s many French evacuees in their - he People Spring To Arms trouble, plenty of -slip-ups, be- tween code signal and final de- livery into the patriot armys hands. One eyening a religious feast was going on in an east coast village. Festival lights shone brightly in many homes. The Fascist garrison in the vil- lage silently tolerated the feast. That night an RAF plane Swooped down over the town, *saw the lights. The pilot thought they were his signal: Bundles ot small arms floated earthward and plopped into the public square. The precious arms cost lives that night—Italian and patriot—before they were partially retrived and secreted away. By this time German, Italian and French police were on the trail of Jacques Manachem. He had revealed himself as a unit leader. Meanwhile, high back in the Corsican mountains, Jacques was editing Le Patriote—organ of the Corsican National Front, binding force and news source for every woman and man en the island. Five thousand copies of the quarter-sized paper secretly passed from hand to hand. As far north as Bastia an {Mtalian truck driven by a patriot distrib- uted the people’s paper. A DOZEN or more times sus- picious soldiers combed the for- est attempting to locate the hid- Gen presses. Once fialian police into whose hands copies of the newspaper had fallen entered the very area where Jacques was bus- ily engaged with an edition. He silenced the whir of the presses and waited to be caught, breath- lessly. The police were no more {kan three feet from him, but they did not discover the hide- eut. For this hilltop land was the “maquis” — the peculiar terrain of Corsica where the tree and scrub bushes are like jungies, where one unfasniliar with it can- not see three feet ahead. False names were assigned to members of the patriot units to prevent detection. “Remington” was the name for one clerk who used the European model of that type typewriter. “Hannibal” was the code for another. September 9, 1943, will so down in Corsican history alongside of July 14, 1789, That was the day the Americans moved into Ajac- cio in force, together with their French and British allies. The patriots were ready. They were familiar with the roads to the Ligurian Sea. They knew that German strategy was to head north, toward-Bastia and escape. For six crucial days the Ger- mans were delayed in their flight by the patriots. The hated boches Were cut off on the western coast, but the patriots’ machine guns were no real match for the Nazi tanks and field pieces hast- ily cutting across the Tyrrhenian Sea side of the island. Wherever small German companies were trapped, however, they were an- nihilated or taken prisoner. Most- ly they were killed. The patriots counted 506 of their own dead after the battles. A. 2 o’clock in the afternoon of the day when the Germans were finally driven off the island life returned to the capital city French troops landing on Corsica. Ajaccio. Flags were draped over the balustrades. Crowds of moun- tain warriors, armed with the Weapons they had carefully nur- tured and successfully used, marehed fearlessly down the Cours Grandval, down toward Napoleon’s statue. Their clothes were ragged, they were out of step—but they were soldiers. _ Jacques Manachem stood in the doorway at 14 Cours Grandval watching as the men walked by, Singing and joking. Le Patriote, now with the largest circulation and no longer printed in the “maquis,” was still proudly edit- ed by him. He was one of them. He had helped to free nis home. hate that night, the celebration over, the youthful editor sat at his cluttered desk and penned the next day’s editorial: “These men, these people—one doesn’t have to teach them lib- erty or government. They dis- eovered what they wanted, what free government was. when they united against forced rule. Their elections in case of death came from the bottom; went from town to town—were not dictated from above. They had representative government in their people’s army. “When the erisis was at hand there was no question of politics. There was only a goal of freedom for the living, a new hope for those yet unborn. We have only a small island. There are patriots now fighting all over Europe, risking their lives under threat ot death, pursued like thieves and murderers. They, too, know what liberty means, These citizen- patriots must have their chance.”