captured and another wounded. On 22 January 1944, a column of 300 German troops arrived at the Grands Goulets gorge on a punitive expedition in retaliation for the ambush of a German staff car a few days earlier. A small force of maquisards attempted to block their progress on the narrow road but were either outgunned or outflanked by Alpine troops at each blocking position that they established; twenty maquis were killed. When the Germans reached Échevis on the plateau, they burned the village. The Germans also used the (a pro-German French paramilitary militia) to suppress the growing strength of the resistance on the Vercors massif. On 15 April 1944 a column of 25 vehicles attacked the village of Vassieux, burning several farms and shooting or deporting some of the inhabitants. Mixed signals In the weeks leading up to the Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, on 6 June 1944, the instructions given by the Allies to the maquis on the Vercors Massif were contradictory and inconsistent. Should the maquis rise against the Germans immediately after D-Day or wait until later when they could be of maximum help to the Allies? The contradictions are illustrated by the differences in the D-Day messages of the Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and Free French leader Charles de Gaulle. Eisenhower urged all the maquis in France to be cautious and patient; De Gaulle's emotional message was interpreted by the maquis as a call to take up arms immediately. On D-Day, Cammaerts on the Vercors Massif, gave the message to the maquis that, while clandestine sabotage should continue, they should remain hidden as "it would be at least two months before they would be needed". Cammaerts knew also that similar uprisings in other areas had been crushed by the Germans. To the contrary on June 8, Marcel Descour, the regional leader of the French Resistance, instructed Francois Huet, the new commander of the Vercors marquis, to mobilize. When Huet objected that he had neither the men nor the arms to defend Vercors, Descour assured him that the Allies would send reinforcements. The Vercors maquis expected the invasion of southern France shortly after D-Day but it took place more than two months later. The maquis also anticipated incorrectly that Allied paratroopers would land on the massif to assist them and that they would be supplied with anti-tank and other heavy weapons to fight the Germans.