It was one of the hardest wartime escape routes. Warned by two blasts on the driver’s steam whistle, Allied airmen and Free French fighters desperate to elude the Nazis in southern France would leap from the train just before it crossed the bridge over the River Salat into St-Girons.
Collected by waiting French guides, the escapees – les évadés – were hidden in barns to prepare for a tough night-time ascent over the Pyrenees to freedom.
It was a treacherous route over the Massif de Couserans, tackled only under cover of darkness. The journey could take several days and escapees were often ill-prepared for the extreme icy temperatures and the sheer difficulty of the trek. Perilous ledges, steep ravines and mountain peaks stood between them and safety in Spain.
The mountain guides who sheltered and led the évadés across the mountains did so at great risk to themselves and their families. Today, the bravery of these ‘passeurs’, and the évadés, is remembered each July with a four-day tribute walk from St-Girons in the French département of Ariège to Esterri d’Aneu in Spain, along the most-used escape route.
Meticulously organised by Scott Goodall and other members of the Chemin de la Liberté Association, there are 40 places for ‘foreigners’, including 15 that are allocated to Legion supporters raising money for the Poppy Appeal.
“To walk the Freedom Trail is to bring history to life”, says Scott. “And to experience, in a very personal way, at least some of the hardships faced by the men and women who used this high mountain escape route”.
Only the strong survive
It takes 35 hours to cover the 72km (45 miles) with a total altitude gain and loss of over 6,000 metres (20,000 feet). “If you can’t walk 10 miles carrying a 30lb (12kg) pack with ease, don’t even think of signing up”, says Terry Whittles, a Legion Trustee from Hampshire who, at 58, walked the trail for the first time this summer.
“It’s not the altitude that gets you, it’s the amount of uphill trekking, and the pace. Each day is like going to the top of Scafell and down again, but starting from sea level.” It is certainly a tough walk, but at least Scott ensures that the pace is set by the slowest walker.
In the days preceding the walk there are memorial services and ‘vin d’honneur’ receptions attended by surviving couriers, passeurs and rescued airmen. Walkers leave from the Pont du Chemin de la Liberté at 7.30am; the first day is the longest in miles but the ascents are gentle, through beech woods and across flower-filled meadows.
A magnificent lunch is provided by the Barrau family, near the barn where 19-year-old Louis Barrau was shot by a German patrol while waiting to guide a party of évadés in September 1943. He had taken over as a passeur after the arrest of his father and uncle six months earlier. They both later died in a German labour camp.
Undeterred, farmers and shepherds continued to risk their lives as passeurs and helped 782 people – Allied airmen, Jewish refugees and soldiers going to join the Free French forces in north Africa – escape over this massif alone.
Exhausted but exhilarated
The first night is spent in the town of Seix, and from here the trail follows the steep GR10 footpath through woods and summer pastures with glimpses of soaring granite peaks. When the trail was restored in 1994, memorial stones were erected along the route and at each of these there is a short ceremony.
After spending the night camping next to the refuge at Subera, mountain guides sort everyone into groups of 10 for safety on the vertiginous climbs to come. The afternoon is spent negotiating granite boulders on the flank of Mount Valier, with the odd glimpse of a golden eagle or a mighty griffin vulture.
“We were completely exhausted when we reached the Col de Pecouch, the final pass”, recalls Terry Whittles. “At that moment, the clouds parted and we could see our campsite down below. ‘Just a 10-minute stroll’, said our guide, but it took us 40!”
The final push for the border along narrow paths is tough on aching limbs. But there are breathtaking views of steel blue lakes, reflecting perfect images of sky and rock, before ascending a steep ravine of hard-packed snow. The letters FE (France-España) carved into a rock are the only sign that you’ve reached the border. Like so many évadés before them, today’s walkers are overjoyed to reach this point.
Jeanne Agouau remembers this rock. In December 1942, she and her father Jean led 14 Jewish refugees to safety over this massif, including an eight-month-old baby. “The father was too exhausted so I led the way carrying the baby and laid it, wrapped in its duvet, in the shelter of a rock with FE on it”, she recalls. “A few moments later one of the group arrived and I went back to help my father and Jean Baptiste [another passeur whom she later married] bring the rest of the family to the top”.
After decades of wondering what happened to that little baby, Jeanne was delighted to be reunited with him in 2004. Thanks to Jeanne and her father, Claude Henle’s whole family made it to Canada from Spain. Today, he lives in Montreal, and has four children and many grandchildren.
At this point of the tribute walk, the French police turn back and Spanish firemen escort walkers on the two-hour scramble downhill to waiting vehicles. At Esterri d’Aneu, the happy but exhausted walkers enjoy an evening of eating, drinking and country dancing.
“The walk surpassed all my expectations; the adrenaline rush of the relentless uphill push is very exhilarating”, says Richard Macintyre, Housing and Welfare Manager at Royal British Legion Industries. “It’s a pilgrimage really and I found the Remembrance ceremonies very emotional, even though I was born long after the war.”
HOW TO TAKE PART
If you’d like to be one of the 15-strong Legion team for the Chemin de la Liberté trek in 2007, you’ll need to:
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Raise £500 in sponsorship money.
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Ensure that you train for the event and are able to comfortably carry a 30lb (12kg) backpack for at least 10 miles.
If you are interested, email Rebecca Davies at rdavies@britishlegion.org.uk or call 020 7973 7350.
