The hero who fell to earth

a memorial stands beside the carriageway. It is unspectacular and attracts little attention from locals or the thousands of tourists who pass that way each summer. This is the last resting place of First-Lieutenant Paul Swank of the US Office of Strategic Services. He fell to German grenades and machine-gun fire while fighting to protect French hostages on the afternoon of August 17, 1944. His death marked the end of the liberation of the Aude valley. It serves as a reminder that much of the most dramatic work of the French resistance took place hundreds of miles from the invasion beaches of Normandy, in Vichy-administered territory where memories of collaboration and resistance still divide communities.

Swank should have become a

literary critic. That was the career for which his studies at Davidson University in North Carolina and at the University of Texas had best prepared him. Instead, he parachuted into occupied France. He was buried where he fell because

that is what he requested in the will the OSS required from

volunteers. He is

a hero to the

few surviving veterans of the Maquis units among whom

he spent his

last days.

Swank's final mission was designed to support one of the largest battles fought between resistance volunteers and German occupiers. It took place in the Forest of Picaussel high above the Aude in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

At the village of Lescale, on August 7, 1944, a force of 300 French volunteers and Spanish republican veterans fought a pitched battle with 2000 German regulars backed by tanks and heavy artillery.

The Germans suffered heavy losses. The French, under the command of Colonel Lucien Maury, withdrew with their units intact.

A visitor to Lescale can visit the remnants of the liberated territory controlled by Maury and his men long before the Allied troops hit the beaches of southern France.

Maury had assembled a force of nearly 200 fighters before June 1944. When the crunch came in August, he had 400 armed and trained men under his command. They included French veterans of the 1914-18 war, Spanish republicans, North African troops, career soldiers who had survived the battle of France in 1940 and

local volunteers, including school leavers as young as 14-year-old Antoine Bigou.

The Maquis de Picaussel was organised into eight sections of

35-40 men. They possessed machine-guns, rifles, and assorted anti-tank weapons. The Spaniards, hardened refugees from the civil war with Franco, were explosives experts. They had considerable experience with the plastic charges and detonators supplied by the RAF.

Maury's small army was ambitious. In the dense forest between Lescale and the Plateau de Sault, they built themselves a defensive redoubt, booby-trapped and fully equipped with food, medicine, and motor transport. French weapons hidden since 1940 were supplemented by RAF supply drops. The terrain was brilliantly chosen to balance the discrepancy between German heavy weapons and the infantry equipment available to the resistance. The northern edge of Maquis territory was marked by the single-track D120 which passes through a narrow rock tunnel easily blocked by explosive demolition teams. On other sides are cliffs and forest that no tank or armoured car could penetrate.

It was inevitable that the Germans would identify the site. Maury

conducted mortar training and machine-gun practice as if

he was on a conventional military base. In late July 1944 a mortar shell exploded in its tube causing death and injury among the resistance force. Maury ordered the temporary occupation of the town of Quillan so that his wounded could be treated at the local Red Cross hospital. It was daring, morale-building conduct. But the German garrisons further up the Aude at Couiza and Carcassonne soon heard about it.

In the first week of August 1944 resistance patrols spotted German armour and infantry congregating around Lescale. Maury could have abandoned his post. Many resistance commanders would have done so when confronted with the obvious superiority of the Axis force. Maury contacted London to request additional weapons. He explained his decision in a book written after the war: ''Byzantine discussions between military theorists condemned the whole idea of conventional combat by Maquis units on the basis of a few specific examples of failure. But the truth is it was all a matter of terrain. At Picaussel we proved that a resistance unit of 300 men can provide effective opposition to an initial assault and then melt away into the night strong enough to attack again.''

On the night of August 6, Maury's radio operator tuned into the BBC and heard the coded

message the Maquis de Picaussel longed for. ''La vertu reluit dans tous les yeux.'' The drop was on. Later the message was upgraded to: ''La vertu reluit dans tous les cinq yeux,'' that meant five RAF supply planes were on the way. The heavy Hotchkiss machine-guns and PIAT anti-tank weapons dropped by Halifax bombers at Puivert reached Maury just in time. German infantry backed by tanks and 88-millimetre artillery attacked from Lescale the next morning, August 7.

The Germans knew they faced serious opposition when their attempt to encircle the Maquis with tanks was blocked by the Spanish explosives experts. As the lead tank approached the tunnel on the D120, the Spaniards detonated their charges and poured heavy machine-gun fire into the convoy. Picaussel units in the forest fought hard and clever. Machine-gun and sniper fire killed 60 German soldiers and wounded more before the German commander pulled back to rest and think.

Night was falling and Maury knew it was time

to escape. As German reinforcements began to surround the resistance base in preparation for a renewed assault, some of the younger French volunteers began to panic. Maury described his reaction: ''My weapon had never felt so heavy as when I had to raise it to enforce obedience by my own men: our lorries had to leave with just the heavy machine-guns and other weaponry. That was essential to minimise casualties in the event that the Germans spotted them.''

Maury's nerve held and his men formed up into two columns for a daring march out of the forest under cover of dark. That was when Paul Swank first appeared in the sky over the Forest of Picaussel. Another message conveyed by the BBC had alerted Maury to the arrival of a 15-strong OSS commando unit.

It had also described the signal to use to indicate that a drop was possible. Maury decided not to give it. Swank and his team flew over Puivert three times - attracting heavy anti-aircraft fire from the castle as they searched the ground for the landing signal. It never came. Maury knew the Americans would drop on to German-held territory. Swank and his comrades had buckled their parachute release cords to the automatic release mechanisms, they had watched the red lights inside their Halifaxes indicate

two minutes to drop-zone. Their Thompson machine guns were loaded and in their hands. But they flew back to Algeria instead. Maury could have used the help - but he was not prepared to risk the lives of the American team.

It was only a temporary reprieve. The daring escape of the Picaussel unit precipitated new resistance activity in the Aude valley. Skirmishing broke out throughout the area. Allied commanders saw a chance to tie-down German forces and divert them from the landing beaches at Cavalaire and Dramont. On the night of August 11, Swank found himself over the Aude valley again. This time he was under orders to rendezvous with Maury's neighbours in the communist-controlled Maquis de Salvezines. His mission was to cause havoc by blowing bridges and ambushing convoys.

The Maquis de Salvezines got their message from the BBC. ''Le dattier est une plante exotique.'' That was agreed code for a drop - but it did not specify that the goods would be human. The Salvezines' commanders expected weapons and duly specified a landing zone strewn with rocks just outside the hamlet of Le Clat. Swank and his men were as surprised as the communists when they hit the ground. They were lucky not to break legs or worse. OSS orders for the mission specified no unnecessary risks. Swank was not supposed to copy Maury by starting a pitched battle. But the Germans gave him no choice. Harassed and terrified by Maury's audacious campaign and anticipating invasion, the Germans decided to withdraw their garrisons in the Aude.

Arms and supplies for 100,000 Wehrmacht soldiers were stored at Couiza and Carcassonne. German commanders were determined not to let them fall into the hands of men such as Maury.

On August 17, the German withdrawal began. A convoy of trucks carrying troops and local hostages headed out of Carcassonne on the RN118 bound for Couiza. Maury ordered a Maquis de Picaussel unit under Sergeant Charles Bournet to ambush the column at Les roches de Cascabel, just south of Alet

les Bains. A few hours later, and a

little further north, Swank and his commandos arrived in the gorge beyond Alet. They lay in wait with their communist allies. The convoy would have been tempting enough as a target. The Picaussel and Salvezines units were adamant that the hostage-taking left them with no alternative.

Bournet's men opened fire on the German trucks as soon as they entered the gorges at Cascabel. The convoy stopped and there were a few moments of intense

firing. Then the German commander pushed his civilian hostages out of the trucks and forced them to march ahead.

The hostages became panic-

stricken. They waved frantically towards the resistance. Bournet ordered a ceasefire. Then, when

a suitable gap opened between hostages and Germans, renewed his assault. Bournet and three colleagues died when the Germans returned their fire.

The convoy reached Couiza where the Germans assembled the local population in the town square and took six new hostages, including the mayor, the priest, and the butcher. With the civilians carefully lined up at the head of his column, the German commander set off back up

the RN118 towards Carcassonne. Swank had mined the gorge. As

the Germans hove into view,

his commandos detonated their charges and - after several failed attempts - blocked the route with fallen rocks. The demolition had taken longer than intended and Swank was still on the road when the Germans arrived. With his back to the rocks, he killed several Germans with his machine-gun without injuring a single hostage. As the Germans closed in on him, Swank threw back two stick grenades and maintained intensive fire until a grenade blast knocked him to the ground where he was immediately shot dead. Twenty-two Germans were killed and wounded. Swank was the only fatality among the Allied combatants. One hostage was killed in crossfire and seven

others slightly wounded. The next day the Germans evacuated the Aude valley, never to return.

Paul Swank was 23. His interests until the war revolved around literature, music, and the arts. He had just finished training for a career as an oil industry geologist when he volunteered for the army precisely two years before his death. He had returned from 17 successful missions behind enemy lines before he landed in the Aude valley.

Swank was trained to conduct sabotage and to gather information of use to the Allied high command. His orders specified that he was too valuable to lose. Swank ignored them to protect hostages. That is why his face is as well known in Couiza as in North Carolina. Local archives contain a picture of his mother presenting the Stars and Stripes to the mayor on the 33rd anniversary of his death.

A few old men in Couiza and Quillan still slow down when they pass his grave. Others still flinch when reminded that some countrymen and Allied soldiers actually fought in this part of France.

n Tim Luckhurst is a former editor of the Scotsman. His novel, Shades of Grey, is based on research into the exploits of the Maquis de Picaussel and the fate of Paul Swank. It is nearing completion.