Nearing D-Day, Allied intelligence used thousands of young men hiding in France's forests and hill country to avoid compulsory labour service in Germany as bait to draw German forces away from the Normandy beaches. There are two principles of guerilla warfare: never to concentrate your forces or rish a pitched battle. But with RAF airdrops of pistols and Sten guns came British, American and French liaison officers who concentrated these untrained civilians in remote areas of France. They thought Allied airborne foreces would land and help them drive the Germans out of their country, but instead were hunted down by collaborationist French paramilitaries, Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops. They died in the snows of winter through high midsummer. Those taken prisoner were raped, tortured and shot or deported to death camps in Germany. Many of their killers were themselves murdered after the liberation, when thousands of French women were also publicly humiliated as sexual traitors.
