Combat· World War II
Montgirod
Union II marched with Captain Jean Bulle and two hundred fighters of the Compagnie du Lac, hardened mountain troops in Chasseurs Alpins uniform.
Each American hauled about sixty pounds over passes at seven thousand feet. Bulle was a Saint-Cyr graduate who had refused to accept 1940. His battalion mobilized from Albertville to Beaufort. Its field headquarters sat at the Cormet d'Arêches. On August 14 the column reached Montgirod, a village of thirty stone houses on a hill above the Isère. Around noon German artillery found it. Mortar shells wounded four French soldiers. Two could not be moved and were left with the priest. Ortiz and Bulle climbed the church steeple, saw German skirmishers closing from the west, and got their people out. German security troops entered the moment the column was gone. They found the two wounded men in the parish church, shot them, and burned the church to the ground. Then they took hostages from the town. The team crawled through the German cordon at dusk, crossed the Isère at Centron, and by morning was hidden in rocky ground above the village of Longefoy. Ortiz walked in alone. The mayor was nervous at first, then hospitable, and food and drink were carried up to the hideout. Ortiz found an observation post and spent the afternoon watching German movement in the valley. He came back with news: German infantry had passed through hours earlier, and the Allies had landed in the south of France. Operation Dragoon was ashore. At nightfall the team entered Longefoy and slept under roofs. For some of them it was the last good night's sleep for months. Captain Bulle did not live to see the liberation he built. On August 25 he entered Albertville under a flag of truce to negotiate the German garrison's surrender. He was shot in the head, driven outside the city, shot again at point-blank range, and left in the brush, on the order of Colonel Franz Schwehr of the 157th Division.
Podcast episodes on World War II
Record no. 893