CIC Reassures Brittany Town (15 AUG 1944)
Captain DeLoach, a 33-year-old Mississippian, and his detachment landed in France on July 18 with the 6th Armored Division. In early August, the division swung into Brittany and drove toward Brest and its strategic port facilities. As the division moved west, DeLoach formed his detachment into small, mobile teams that pushed forward on the heels of the armored columns. In the Brittany villages and towns, these teams enforced civilian travel restrictions, searched captured Nazi installations, vetted local administrators, and screened displaced refugees.
By mid-August, the CIC detachment had reached Landerneau, with a population between 9,000 and 10,000, and its key crossing sites over the Elorn River. Moreover, it could control the water supply to Brest. Despite its tactical value, the only allied troops in the town were DeLoach’s agents and some members of Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (FFI). The rest of the division was to the north maneuvering to isolate the German defenders of Brest.
Amid the situation, “rumors developed,” the American captain later reported, “to the effect that anywhere between 300 to 3,000 Germans were marching on the city from Brest.” The rumors swiftly snowballed with the Germans only three kilometers from the city; others speculated that the enemy were dressed in American uniforms. Some townspeople tore down the welcoming flags and decorations from their windows while others fled to the countryside. The local FFI band frantically dug in to meet the suspected assault.
Captain DeLoach reported Landerneau’s “streets were jammed with residents anxious over the situation.” The town’s mayor appealed to the American to contact higher echelons for help. Not sure of the rumors’ veracity, DeLoach directed agents to make a motor reconnaissance to the west of town. The teams drove their jeeps along the supposed German axis of advance. Scouting up to 11 kilometers beyond the town, the teams found no signs of Germans. They then encountered a FFI patrol that reported seeing no Germans for another 2 kilometers. Armed with this intelligence, Captain DeLoach returned to the town hall to reassure the mayor and the jittery townspeople that the city was safe from German repercussions.
Shortly afterwards, DeLoach learned the full story behind the rumors. His men discovered the FFI had successfully uncovered an intended German attack through a wiretap. Before passing it on to the Americans, however, a local resistance leader inserted false data, altering the German target to a vital water point near Landerneau. When DeLoach’s team exposed the fraud, the Frenchman justified his fabrication by claiming “he wanted more American troops to defend the Landerneau area.”
Over the next few weeks, Captain DeLoach and his detachment developed the counterintelligence situation for the division, including a CI overlay map of the Brest area. Yet, the Landerneau incident underscored that DeLoach and other CIC leaders in Brittany could not take FFI reports at face value. While most of the Brittany resistance provided useful aid to the Americans, some had personal or political agendas that tainted their information. Thus, a postwar report noted, “CIC agents continued to encourage resistance workers to furnish information but were forced to adopt a ‘show me’ attitude and to double check all information instead of accepting it as they formerly had been able to do.”
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Article by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
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