Following the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, the Basque government-in-exile saw its administrative structures break up and, after the disappearance of Lehendakari (President) Aguirre, who was trapped in Belgium, the only Basque governing delegation left was that of London. In relation to the said delegation, and as an exceptional answer to the need of creating an interim body to represent the Basque interests in such a situation of power vacuum and uneasiness, the National Council of Euzkadi, presided over by Manuel Irujo, was established. In May 1941, the Council signed in London an agreement with Charles De Gaulle's Free France towards the incorporation of Basque volunteers into a combat unit of the Free French Naval Forces. Those were critical times for the French, as they needed troops to fight in the Middle East and in Africa, and soon problems started to arise. Some of these difficulties were of political nature -Britain had some misgivings about the agreement due to the pressures received from the Francoist authorities through the Spanish ambassador, the Duke of Alba- and some other were just practical matters, given that recruiting volunteers for that new unit proved an extremely difficult task and, as a result, they were forced to draft South Americans, mercenaries and adventurers who were not necessary of Basque origin. In the end, Britain's opposition frustrated the creation of the 3rd Battalion of the Basque Naval Fusiliers, which was organised only to be disbanded as early as 1942. De Gaulle had faced a similar scene two years before that, when he attempted at creating an army to fight against the Nazis at the margin of an already surrendered France. He managed to recruit only about 1,200 volunteers, 120 of which were former republican Spanish soldiers from the 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade. The members of the battalion of the Basque Naval Fusiliers were scattered into other Free France units and many of them remained in the Naval Forces. Their emblem, which depicts a Gernika tree on a red background, symbolises that frustrated dream that could be brought to life three years later with the creation of the Gernika battalion.

At the end of 1944 the tables were turned. After the German defeat in Normandy, the German army retreated from most parts of France. It was a propitious moment for the Euzkadi Government, which had settled in its Paris head-office and was presided over by José Antonio Aguirre, to establish at last a specifically Basque unit in order to show the world that they were against the Nazis. The Gernika battalion has its origin in Kepa Ordoki's Basque Brigade, which split from the UNE (the Spanish National Union, controlled by the PCE) before the unsuccessful invasion of Valle de Arán on their way to Burdeaux, where it joined the FFI (French Forces of the Interior). The relocation of the unit from Sauveterre de Béarn to Le Bouscat, since it was not willingly accepted by the UNE, was full of obstacles. In January 1945, the Gernika battalion was created out of a heterogeneous group of Basques with different ideologies, including some veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the fight against Nazis and many inexperienced young men. It was a small unit with a clear Maquisard origin, as the rest of FFI units were. It hardly exceeded the number of soldiers in a company, but it was a highly cohesive group built around a sense of belonging to a people, although some of its soldiers had seen themselves forced to enlist under threat of being incorporated into Foreign Legion units. In March 1945, they moved to their new headquarters in Macau, but they only remained there for a short time, as on the 22nd they were posted to the Médoc front in order to replace the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of Lot. They established contact with the German patrols operating in no man's land and exchanged gunfire with them. One of the skirmishes resulted in their first death and also a first injured man. The battle of Pointe de Grave was about to start.

At the end of World War II, Germany still kept some isolated pockets of resistance along the Atlantic coast, making a total of 100,000 men. The area we refer to comprised La Rochelle, Royan, Pointe de Grave and two islands: Oléron and Ré, with nearly 30,000 well-stocked men that were inter-connected via internal waters under the protection of the Atlantic Wall fortifications, which were defended by heavy artillery. The pockets of resistance of Royan and Pointe de Grave were located at both sides of the Gironde estuary, blocking the entrance to the Port of Bordeaux and forming the so-called Festung Gironde (Fortress Gironde). Facing them there were only some heterogeneous units of the French Resistance, and since they were poorly organised and lacked heavy armament, these did not represent a major problem for Germans. In the winter of 1944, France's most trained units were fighting in Alsace and thus those minor fronts were left for the FFI units. That of Pointe de Grave, also known as the Médoc front, was defended by the Carnot Brigade, which was lead by Colonel Jean de Milleret.

The said front covered the furthest part of the Médoc peninsula, an area including marshes, sand beaches and deep pine forest patches that was around 20 km deep. The impressive German fortifications built at Pointe de Grave gathered around 37 strongpoints and resistance nests. The said strongpoints (or Stützpunkt) consisted mainly of coastal artillery positions made of concrete and bunkers with 24 medium or large calibre guns, while resistance nests (or Widerstandsnest), which were also made of concrete, were equipped with small weapons, as for instance 37.50 and 75 mm anti-tank guns and machine guns. There were a total of 350 bunkers of different sizes, connected by a 135 km telephone line and defended by 80 guns of different calibres, including AA defences and a strong "Vogel" radar station. The strategy of the German command was based on two terrestrial lines of defence: an interior, strongly-fortified line around Soulac-sur-Mer, including an antitank ditch, minefields and resistance nests; and an external line, also including heavy mined fields, that was defended by advance posts (squads or Sperrpunkte (SP- Blocking points)) fortified with pine logs covered with earth. SP were equipped with machine guns and Panzerfaust, and sometimes defended with mortars, guns and rockets. There were 4,200 men in the Garrison and its strength lied in three infantry battalions: FESTA LXXX, 1059th Fusiliers Battalion and the marine battalion of Narvik.

Given General De Gaulle's obstinacy, who did not want to wait until the end of the war in Europe, on the 14th of April 1945 the Operation Vénérable started, which was aimed at freeing the remaining pockets trapped at Pointe de Grave and Royan. It was supported by the aeroplanes of the USAAF 8th Air Force and its naval aviation forces (FFA), by Admiral Rue's cruisers, 15 pieces of artillery and by the tanks of the 2nd Armoured Division and the 13th Dragons Regiment. The number of soldiers in the Carnot Brigade increased up to 13,000 men organised in infantry regiments. The Gernika battalion joined the Libertad battalion, which was made from anarchist Spanish republicans and, under the commandment of Rascle, formed the 1st Battalion of the Foreign and Moroccan Mixed Regiment (the RMEM, Commander Chodzco). The other two battalions were the Moroccan battalion commanded by Laborde de Nogués and Brun's mixed battalion. At 15:35 on the 14th of April 1945, the Gernika and the Libertad battalions crossed a heavy mined field along a firebreak gap that run among pine trees, following a narrow corridor that had been signalled by the French mine clearance teams, which lost some men in the process. The Gernika battalion started the attack on hill 40 in order to clear the way to Montalivet, but the heavy fire of machine guns, mortars and Stuka zu Fuss rockets that was pouring on them caused a carpet bombing that did not let them move forward. All the gudaris had to lie face down as the number of casualties increased up to 4 killed and 20 wounded, until they retreated under the protection of the machine guns of the Libertad battalion, which also lost some men. Stretcher bearers had a hard time to evacuate all wounded men to the rearguard area, since doctors and nurses could not approach due to the thick German barrage fire. At the beginning of the attack there were 80 soldiers, but then there were only 52 men left, and they were highly demoralised by casualties. At the approach of night, a group of four gudaris lead by Ordoki moved forward on a brave reconnaissance of the enemy lines in order to prepare the following day's attack. However, that proved an unnecessary action, for on the 15th of April the allied air forces dropped firebombs on the German positions located at the pinewoods and they were forced to withdraw. On the 16th of April, the RMEM had already freed Montalivet and was heading north following the coast to subdue some of the seaside nests of resistance. From that moment on, the Gernika battalion was constantly exposed to heavy artillery fire and the burns caused by the explosions resulted in several casualties. The French units deployed at the right area freed Grayan et L´Hôpital, and in two days they reached the Soulac anti-tank ditch, were the Festung (fortress) started.

On the 18th of April, the RMEM freed Soulac-sur-Mer. The Gernika gudaris had to enter into this seaside town following a railroad track that run next to a German military hospital, captured all its medical staff and added them to the more than fifteen prisoners they had already captured. After that, when they deployed on the town's streets in order to secure it, the German heavy artillery fire started pouring on them, and they saw their field kitchen, which had been brought by Lieutenant Prieto, blow up, flabbergasted, for they had not eaten a hot meal for 4 days! The French started the assault on the battery of Arros - an amazing fortress containing more than 20 bunkers with anti-tank and anti-aircraft coast defence guns that was defended by the Kriegsmarine artillerymen of the M.A.A. 618-, but the gudaris were given orders to spend the night on the beach, where they dug pits to protect themselves from artillery. They would have their opportunity on the next day.

On the 18th and the 19th, there were some assaults on the battery of Arros (GI-307). The German troops had grown strong under the protection of their huge fortifications and were fighting with their heart and soul. The area was preceded by a heavy mined field that covered the whole beach and, before reaching the fortifications, there was also a line of trenches right on the dunes slope that had caused a lot of casualties in the two French regiments that took part in the assault. The air force and the artillery forces attacked bunkers severely but they had to wait until the 19th at dusk to make a joint attack from all positions and with the support of the Somua S-35 tanks of the 13th Dragons Regiment, which had come from Royan. The Gernika and the Libertad battalions had to move forward along the railway tracks in order to avoid mines. A squad of Somua S-35 tanks that was going up a dune was stopped by an embankment and one of them was blown up by a mine. At that moment, the German defenders directed fire against the armoured tanks, and the gudaris took advantage of the situation to assault the position and eliminate the trenches located in the battery's southern area. Meanwhile, two companies of the 131th Infantry Regiment started an assault from the East and saw themselves trapped by heavy machine gun fire until a second squad of tanks silenced them definitely. The Gernika battalion suffered the death of Guinea, who was riddled with bullets by the friendly fire of the Somua S-35 tanks. After that mixed attack, in which the French, the anarchists and the gudaris took part, the German troops had to surrender, but officers were not respected and they were executed when Gernika battalion arrived to the command bunker, including Lieutenant Arndt, who was the commander of the position. That was the end of the intervention of the Gernika battalion at the battle of Pointe de Grave, although it still continued for one more day until the troops reached Le Verdon and conquered the last fortifications. On the 22nd of April, De Gaulle landed at the Grayan airfield, inspected the Carnot Brigade and two officers were decorated: General Larminat, commander of the French Western Forces, and Colonel Milleret. When he walked in front of the ikurriña flag, he told Kepa Ordoki: "Commander, France will never forget all the efforts and sacrifices made by the Basques in the fight to free our country". On the 26th of April, which marked the anniversary of the bombing of Gernika, the whole brigade marched through Bordeaux and was praised by the crowd. The image of the gudaris marching in front of the magnificent Grand Théâtre, bearing the ikurriña flag, was to be remembered for posterity. The Basques received 10 war crosses for military valour in combat plus an eleventh cross that was to be received by the RMEM but could not be awarded to them because they had not a flag. It was pinned on the ikurriña flag by Commander Chodzco himself, in a very honourable gesture, when Lehendakari Aguirre visited the gudaris at Macau. Many of them still had to march through the streets of Paris to celebrate the European victory. Finally, the unit was disbanded in September 1945. In the battle of Pointe de Grave, 400 French soldiers died and 800 soldiers were wounded, while the German troops lost 750 soldiers, 800 men fell injured and 2,500 men were made prisoners. The Basques lost 5 men and had around 30 injured soldiers, that is, over 35% of a force that never had more than 100 men in combat. That gives us an idea of the extent of their sacrifice during the month they fought at the Médoc front, during which they walked almost 20 kilometres exposed to the German artillery fire, freed Montalivet and Soulac-sur-Mer, conquered the Arros battery and took between two hundred and three hundred prisoners.

The Gernika gudaris were uniformed with specific clothes from the stores of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, a Pétain paramilitary youth group. They wore a short, aviation-blue flannel jacket and laced boots with socks or bandages. They also received the 1941 coat with shoulder cape of the Armistice Army, in khaki or in the Chantiers forest green. As their national emblem, they wore a rectangular ikurriña flag on their arm. The combat gear included a British Mk-II helmet, very basic leathers consisting of a belt and one or two Lebel 1916 gun holsters, or even German Kar-98 holsters -although the gudaris were usually equipped with just a blanket, in which they rolled the ammunition and the ration for a day-, plus German or French flasks. Officers wore a Sam Browne belt and a gun and, optionally, a Sten submachine gun. Machine rifle groups were equipped with Bren Mk-II or 1924 French rifles and were made up of three soldiers: a shooter and two ammunition carriers who carried magazines inside Bergam type rucksacks.

During the battle of Pointe de Grave, the Gernika battalion was organised in 3 different sections to engage in combat, with a total of around 80 gudaris, and in each section there were about 25 men distributed in 2 squads. The remaining soldiers until a total of one hundred were stretcher bearers, mortarmen and services staff. Fusiliers carried a Vz-24 or a Kar-98 rifle, both with a 7,92x57 mm. cartridge. They used the Model 24 Stielhandgranate; the mortar squad had a 50 mm and a 81 mm German mortars and there was also a Mg-42 machine gun.

Under the command of Pablo Beldarrain and Primi Abad, a good number of veterans of Pointe de Grave, together with some other Gernika soldiers who were in reserve, were selected to participate in a special operations course that was to be developed by US OSS instructors in the Rothschild castle, 30 km from Paris. They were fitted with a mixture of US uniforms: M-37 shirts and trousers and Garrison caps as service uniforms, and HBT uniforms and M-43 jackets as training outfit. These were the gudaris that paraded in Paris before José Antonio Aguirre on the day the European victory was celebrated. Short afterwards, they were disbanded as a result of a change in the orientation of US alliance politics, which did not need the germ of a Basque police force to guarantee public order in case of an hypothetical invasion of Spain that would never take place. The US uniform extended to the other unit members, first to officers (there are photographs of Commander Ordoki and Lieutenant Prieto wearing the class A combat jacket). A shield with the ikurriña flag and the word "Euzkadi" then became the national emblem. It was worn on the left upper arm, in the US manner.

The Saseta Battalion was one of the three machinegun battalions that the Basque Army had during the Spanish Civil War in the Basque Country (1936 - 1937), being the two other ones the Ariztimuño and the UGT no.3 "Gonzalez Peña". These units never operated with all its components together, as more often they operated divided in sections to provide fire support to the front sectors that were weaker, due to the worrying lack of machineguns in the Basque infantry battalions. Due to that, each machineguns section from the Saseta had sufficient autonomy to be considered as an independent unit that was able to stay at the front on its own for a prolonged time frame. One of these sections was under the lieutenant Ángel Trula and was part of the "Beti Aurrera" company. Those gudaris (Note from T.: "Basque Soldiers") from Gipuzkoa called "izkilazkarrak" to the machineguns, a word -as many others in Euskera (Note from T.: "Basque language") of intense onomatopoeic reminiscences- that make reference to the automatic weapons fire. Sadly, that word has not been continued along the time, perhaps because it does not exist a military vocabulary Basque dictionary, despite the efforts from the priest Santi Onaindia in those books translations that the Bidasoa Institute of Comtemporary History edited on the 70' s of last century. In the Goaz Museum of the Sabino Arana Foundation it is preserved the ikurriña flag from the company "Beti Aurrera" of the Saseta battalion.

But if there is a ikurriña flag that has been involved in the most important events of the Basque recent history, that' s the one of the "Trula" section. From the Civil War to the World War Two, hoisted by the Gudaris from the Gernika battalion in the battle of Pointe de Grave and in the parades in Bourdeaux and Paris during the commemorations of the victory in Europe. Converted in a symbol of the resistance of the Basques in the exile, it was present during the meetings of the Gernika veterans, and even that flag was the choice to cover the coffin during the funeral of Jose Antonio Aguirre. Later on, and due to its enormous relevancy as an institutional symbol, during the anniversaries of the Pointe de Grave, it was substituted by an ikurriña that was produced specifically with the inscription "Bataillon Basque Gernika", replica of another one that was deposited in the headquarters of the Basque Government in Paris. Since then, the "Trula" was under the care of Andrés Prieto and diligently preserved till formally rendered in the Assembly House of Gernika in the presence of the Lehendakari (Note from the T.: "President of the Basque Country") Carlos Garaikoetxea and the Diputado General of Bizkaia (Note from T.: "General President of the Regional Council of Bizkaia Province") José María Makua on the 10th July 1980. At today's date, that flag is missing, and nobody seems to be able to explain where it can be.

Books

• “Le front du Medoc, une brigade FFI au combat”, Federation des associations d´anciens combattants du front du Medoc et de la Brigade Carnot, Bordeaux, 1985.
• Jiménez de Aberasturi, Juan Carlos, “Los vascos en la II Guerra Mundial: El Consejo Nacional Vasco de Londres. (1940-1944)”, Eusko Ikaskuntza/Sociedad de Estudios Vascos, Donostia/San Sebastián,1991.
• Talón, Vicente, “Los vascos en la Segunda Guerra Mundial”, Extras de la revista Defensa nº 27, Edefa, Madrid, 1992.
• Larronde, Jean Claude, “El batallón Gernika, Gernika batallun euskalduna”, Bidasoa, Bayona, 1995.
• Romaña Arteaga, José Miguel, “La segunda Guerra Mundial y los vascos”, Mensajero, Bilbao, 1998.
• Rodríguez, Mikel, “Memoria de los vascos en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. De la Brigada Vasca al batallón Gernika”, Pamiela, Pamplona, 2002.
• Eizaguirre, Paco e Iribarren, Txus, “Gudari baten oroitzapenak”, Pamiela, Pamplona, 2003.
• Rodríguez, Mikel, “Espías vascos”, Txalaparta, Tafalla, 2004.

Archives

• Fondo Andrés Prieto Arana. Egoibarra, Ayuntamiento de Eibar.
• Fondo Bidasoa/Sancho de beurko, Euskadiko Artxibo Historikoa
• Fondo Blasco Imaz, Euskadiko Artxibo Historikoa.

Memories

• Abad Gorostiza, Primitivo, “Memorias de una vida, apuntes de una época. Bidarte, 23 de marzo de 1956”. Inéditas.

Orale sources

At their own request, oral sources concerning the death of Lieutenant Erwin Arndt are to remain anonymous.

Web sites

• http://www.forteresse-nord-medoc.org/historique.aspx
• http://www.marinavasca.eu/es/

We would like to thank to the Association du Mémorial de la Forteresse du Nord-Médoc and the Association Historique de la poche du Nord-Médoc, and especially to Olivier Jussiaume and Rémy Lacaze, who shared the results of their investigations with us:

• "Les forces d´occupation en aout 1944"
• "Las forces en presence en avril 1945"
• "S-307. Les Arros. Fiche Pedagogique”
• "Org déf de la forteresse Sud Gironde”