by Douglas Boyd
At 6 a.m. the destroyer HMS Foxhound was sighted offshore through the mist. At 6.15 a.m. it signalled, ‘British Admiralty is sending Captain Holland to confer with you. Stop. Permission to enter, please.’
Now commanding the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, Holland had been Naval Attaché to the Paris embassy. Until 8 April he had been a liaison officer with the French Admiralty. However, it was Admiral Gensoul’s duty not to compromise French neutrality. Despite his personal liking for Holland, he had to be as wary of British naval vessels and personnel as he would have been of Italian or German ones.
He decided therefore to send aboard Foxhound his aide-de-camp Lieutenant Dufay, who was both a fluent English-speaker and a close friend of Holland. At 7.15 a.m. the launch from Gensoul’s flagship Dunkerque pulled alongside the gangway of the British destroyer. When Holland attempted to board it, Dufay informed him that Gensoul refused to receive him.
Back on board Dunkerque at 7.45 a.m., Dufay found his admiral reading a signal received from Foxhound which read:
The Admiralty is sending Capt Holland to confer with you in the hope that his proposals will permit the gallant and glorious French navy to remain on our side. In this case, your vessels will remain under your control and you need have no care for the future. A British squadron is standing out to sea to bid you welcome.
With the mist clearing, it was at that moment the lookouts aboard Dunkerque made out the silhouettes of the cruiser Hood, the battleships Resolution, Valiant and Ark Royal, whose torpedo-carrying Swordfish were already in the air. From Hood came the flashing of an Aldis signal lamp: ‘We hope that our proposals are acceptable and that you will be on our side.’
Enough men in the French crews could read Morse for them to be aware what the British were up to. Reservists packed their kitbags and demanded to be let ashore, rather than be press-ganged into the Royal Navy, while officers attempted to calm them with assurances that there was no question of this.
Fretting at the loss of time, Holland authorised Foxhound to rejoin station and headed for Dunkerque in the destroyer’s launch, determined to find some compromise. Intercepted by Dufay in the admiral’s barge between the anti-torpedo net and the jetty with the news that Gensoul still refused to receive him, he handed to his friend the sealed letter whose contents he had hoped to soften orally.
At 8.30 a.m. Admiral Gensoul was reading the ultimatum from the War Cabinet in London that gave him the choice between three impossible courses of action:
(1) to sail with the British ships and fight until victory over the Germans and Italians;
(2) to sail with skeleton crews to a British port, the crews to be repatriated as soon as possible;
(3) if he believed himself obliged to stipulate that his vessels might not be used against the Germans and Italians because that would compromise France’s neutrality, to sail under escort with skeleton crews to a French port in the Antilles such as Martinique where the ships could be demilitarised or handed over to the (neutral) USA and the crews repatriated.
The sting was in the tail. Should Gensoul reject all three courses of action, he was given six hours to scuttle all the vessels under his command. Failing this, Admiral Somerville was charged ‘to take all necessary measures to see that your ships do not fall into German or Italian hands’.8
At 9 a.m. Gensoul ordered all ships to make steam and prepare for action. Ashore, crews of the coastal batteries began feverishly to re-arm their weapons and ground crews started checking and rearming aircraft. Aboard his launch at the torpedo net, Holland watched all these preparations with mounting concern, which Gensoul’s reply brought to him by Dufay did nothing to allay.
It was short and to the point:
(1) the assurances given by Adm Gensoul to Adm Sir Dudley North will be respected. In no circumstances will French vessels fall intact into the hands of the Germans or Italians;
(2) in view of the form and content of the ultimatum that has been given to Adm Gensoul, the French vessels will defend themselves with force.
Holland admitted that the ultimatum was a clumsy attempt at bullying a neutral force. The War Cabinet should have expressed the hope that the French would come over to the British side. When he argued that disarmed ships left in port with maintenance crews aboard could be taken by surprise by the Germans or Italians before they could be scuttled, Dufay assured him that the sea-cocks were manned night and day and scuttling entailed no delay awaiting further orders from the French Admiralty.
Aware that his cause was lost, Holland wrote a note to Admiral Gensoul setting out his point of view. Thirty minutes later, Captain Danbé brought him Gensoul’s second reply. It contained the words: ‘The first shot fired against us will result in the whole fleet turning against Great Britain – a result diametrically opposed to that sought by British Admiralty.’9
Thanking Danbé, Holland said that his reply in the circumstances would have been no different. A few minutes later, at 9.50 a.m., Foxhound signalled the French: ‘Regret to inform you that I have orders not to allow you to leave the port unless the terms of His Majesty’s government are accepted.’
The confrontation was by now inevitable. In the full light of a day, already so hot that touching metal was painful, Somerville could see black smoke pumping out of the funnels of the French fleet. He gave orders for Swordfish from Ark Royal to mine the harbour entrance. Although in compliance with his orders from London, the step meant that the first three suggested courses of action in his ultimatum were now impossible – a point that was not lost on Admiral Gensoul.
Aboard the British ships at action stations, men sweated under a brazen sky without the slightest breeze, waiting to fire on fellow sailors. During the past winter, many of them had sailed in convoy across the Atlantic with Dunkerque and other vessels in the harbour. Aboard Hood, Admiral Somerville signalled London that he was ready to commence firing. Disgusted with the whole operation imposed on him, he also asked Holland whether there was anything else that could be done and, at his suggestion ordered Foxhound back within visual signalling range. From its bridge flashed the message to Dunkerque: ‘If you accept the proposals, hoist a square flag on the main mast. If not, I open fire at 1300 hours. Your port is mined.’
Gensoul acknowledged that he would be prepared to parley. At 1.15 p.m., with still no shot fired on either side, he signalled back that he was in communication with his government, had no intention of leaving harbour and was prepared to receive a spokesman to seek an honourable solution. The signal ended: ‘Do not take the irreparable step.’
At 3.15 p.m. Holland, wearing no decorations other than the Légion d’Honneur, stepped aboard Dunkerque with two other Royal Navy officers. The French now had steam up and all gun turrets were pointing in the direction of Force H. Shown Darlan’s message to all ships dated 28 May, Holland murmured, ‘If only we had known about this.’
Softening on his side also, Gensoul seemed prepared to consider disarming and sailing to the Antilles or the USA, but freely, without Royal Navy personnel on board or under armed escort. Holland signalled this apparent breakthrough to Somerville, who replied that this was unacceptable.
Although neither side knew it at the time, the local negotiations had been pre-empted. Gensoul’s signals to the French Admiralty had gone to its temporary HQ at Nérac in Gironde, just to the east of the Demarcation Line. There, Admiral Leluc attempted to contact Darlan, who was in Clermont-Ferrand and could not be reached. But Leluc was not idle. Gensoul was now instructed to inform the British that all French warships in the Mediterranean were steaming to his rescue. Intercepted in London, where the prime minister and former First Lord of the Admiralty was determined to do things his way, the result was an instruction to Somerville to end the business rapidly or face French reinforcements.
At sea, sailors traditionally saved the lives of fellow mariners. To fire on an enemy, whether or not he had opened fire, was one thing. But to fire on vessels of a country with which Britain had been allied until shortly
before, and with which she was not at war, was a breach of international law. Despite his personal repugnance, Somerville signalled Dunkerque: ‘If none of the proposals is accepted by 1730 BST – I repeat by 1730 – I shall have to sink your ships.’
At 6.25 p.m. local time – five minutes before the deadline – the three Royal Navy officers were shown off Dunkerque with all the usual honours. Not until they had passed the exit in the net was the first shot fired by Hood. Although the French warships had steam up and could return fire until their limited stock of shells ran out, little manoeuvring was possible in the confines of the harbour. They were thus sitting ducks for the Royal Navy’s bombardment, which killed a total of 1,297 French sailors, with several hundred wounded. Whilst shrouding the corpses, many other sailors were killed when three flights of Swordfish from Ark Royal flew in at deck level, machine-gunning them to add to the casualties.
As Gensoul had prophesied, the political result was the opposite of what Churchill may have hoped. François Mauriac summed it up: ‘Mr Winston Churchill had united France against England – perhaps for many years.’10 One ancient cruiser was sunk and the admiral’s flagship put out of action for months, but the rest of the damaged fleet steamed at battle readiness to Toulon, where they were nearer by far to the Germans. There, sixteen months later, on 27 November 1942, they were scuttled by their crews when the Wehrmacht crossed the Demarcation Line, in compliance with Darlan’s instruction of 28 May 1940 to stop them falling into German hands.
Churchill had no regrets, seeing the action as strategically justified and showing his subjects and the world that Britain would stop at nothing, however repugnant, to win the war. That was arguable, but as far as France was concerned, Mers el-Kebir was the final straw that killed any sympathy for the British cause. It made of the furious and grieving Admiral Darlan an implacable enemy for Britain and provided a heaven-sent opportunity for Nazi propaganda to claim that France’s true enemy was perfidious Albion and not the Reich.
Even de Gaulle, whose only hope was to side with the British, called it ‘an odious tragedy’. In London, he deplored the British action. Obliged to submit the text of his broadcast for prior approval by Downing Street, he consented with the condition that, if asked to change a single word, he would never broadcast again. Privately, he admitted that the irregular trickle of volunteers to his banner dwindled to nothing after Mers el-Kebir.
Behind the major tragedy were several others which rarely make it into the history books. The previous night, Royal Navy prize crews had seized forty or so French warships in Portsmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth and Cowes harbours to forestall the natural reaction to the news from Mers el-Kebir among the thousands of armed French soldiers in Britain and the 500 armed marines and battalion of infantry under the command of a French admiral in Portsmouth, with double that number in Plymouth and Falmouth.
On board the submarine Surcouf, perfidy changed to tragedy. Moored alongside the submarine HMS Thames, her captain and crew had been entertained both aboard their neighbour and ashore. In the confusion of the midnight seizure by men they knew, three British sailors and one French serviceman were killed. In Alexandria, where the squadron of French naval vessels that had thought themselves safe were seized without bloodshed by Admiral Cunningham’s more subtle approach, who remarked that Catapult had been executed ‘with perfect perfidiousness’.11 In Dakar, French West Africa, Royal Navy frogmen placed mines that immobilised the battleship Richelieu.
Marcel Gensoul retired two years later, refusing for the rest of his life to discuss the tragedy of Mers el-Kebir. After returning to Gibraltar, Captain Holland showed his disgust at the illegal action in which he had been obliged to take part by resigning his commission to spend the rest of the war in the Home Guard.
NOTES
1. Quoted on www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWlaval.htm.
2. A. Nossiter, France and the Nazis (London: Methuen, 2001), p. 105.
3. P. Bourget in 1940: La Défaite, p. 280.
4. Boyd, French Foreign Legion, p. 346.
5. Personal communication with the author.
6. F. Boulet, Histoire de Moissac (privately published, St-Germain-en-Laye, 2005), p. 114.
7. P. Bourget in 1940: La Défaite, p. 326.
8. P. Masson in 1940: La Défaite, pp. 461–70.
9. Ibid.
10. Article in Le Figaro, 15 July 1940.
11. A. Vulliez in 1940: La Défaite, p. 458.
7
THE NUMBER OF
THE BEAST
Pierre Laval had not always been anti-British. While prime minister, on 19 September 1931 he had been awakened at 1 a.m. by His Britannic Majesty’s Chargé d’Affaires in Paris, in the absence of the ambassador, with a request that the Banque de France support the Bank of England after a catastrophic run on its gold reserves that the US Federal Reserve Bank could not cover. In the interest of speed and to avoid consulting his cabinet – a member of which might leak news of this potentially disastrous situation for Britain – Laval personally granted London a credit of 3 trillion gold francs.1
As Foreign Minister of the short-lived Doumergue administration, in February 1935 he had agreed with the Foreign Office in London that neither country would make unilateral deals with Hitler’s Germany. It is hardly surprising that Britain’s signature four months later of the Anglo-German agreement to rearm and expand the German fleet triggered in Laval a deep and abiding mistrust of British politics.2
Physically, a greater contrast with the silver-haired marshal’s elegant and grandfatherly manner would be hard to find. Laval’s stocky build, swarthy complexion and heavy dark moustache made him look like Josef Stalin’s suntanned brother. Vincent Auriol, who emerged at the Liberation from three years of imprisonment for resisting Vichy’s collaborationist policies and went on to become first President of the Fourth Republic, knew Laval from long acquaintance and described him thus:
A cigarette permanently between his lips, slightly hunched posture and awkward manner … He approaches a group and stops, pretending to listen to one colleague while surveying everyone else. Of his piggy little Mongolian eyes, imprisoned in the folds of their heavy lids, one sees only two black dots.3
Born on 28 June 1883 in the Auvergne village of Châteldon near Vichy to a hard-working butcher and café-owner, who doubled as the village carter conveying merchandise and passengers to the local railway station, Pierre Laval left school at 11, like his father. Studying in his spare time, with the help of the priest, the mayor and the local teacher, the boy prepared himself for his baccalauréat so well that his stubborn father was eventually persuaded to let him go back to school. As a boarder at the lycée in far distant Bayonne, where his older sister lived, Laval obtained his bac only a year later than middle-class coevals who had never interrupted their studies.
Earning a paltry salary as a pion or assistant master looking after boarders in a lycée, he next studied for and gained a degree in natural sciences, which entitled him to apply for a teaching post. This was only a step, for already Laval’s sights were set, not on the classroom, but the courtroom. A law student of 20, he joined the Socialist Party and was called to the bar in 1909 at the age of 26. That same year he married the daughter of Châteldon’s mayor. Among the contradictions of the man so many came to hate are that he was a fond husband to her and a loving father to their daughter Josée, who published an impassioned defence of him when he was on trial for his life after the war.
She grew up in Paris, where her parents set up home soon after the wedding. For eighteen years Laval worked in the Palais de Justice with the same application he had devoted to his studies, all the while sniffing the political winds and awaiting his moment. Most of his clients were union officials. Hailed in the left-wing press after gaining an acquittal for a syndicaliste accused of sabotage, Laval realised the power of the media – and never forgot it. Successfully campaigning for election with the same energy he had put into his legal work, he was in 1914 hailed by L’Humanité –
then the official organ of the Socialist Party – as the youngest deputy of the left.
During the First World War, while Pétain was at the centre of the war effort, Laval was exempted from conscription on the grounds of varicose veins. As a socialist and pacifist, he made no secret of the fact that he deplored the war with Germany, and was for a time under police surveillance on this account. The exiled Leon Trotsky was among his friends until expelled from Paris in September 1916. Despite these question marks against him, Laval’s intellectual qualities were such that he was offered an under-secretariat of state in 1917, which he had to turn down on instructions from the party. To free himself from its discipline, he distanced himself from left-wing friends, making the final break at the 1920 annual Congress in Tours when the party split into communists and socialists. Accepting neither party machine, Laval stood as an independent socialist candidate in the elections of 1924, while in the process of building an empire of printing, press and broadcasting interests that made him a millionaire.
Elected senator with a large majority, he became Minister of Public Works within twelve months and soon afterwards under-secretary for Foreign Affairs. Of this stage of his career the ageing statesman Aristide Briand said, ‘Once he’s got teeth into something, that Auvergnat never lets go of it.’4 A Nobel laureate known as ‘the poet of peace’, Briand advocated a federal Europe as early as 1930. Having a similar background in the law before taking up politics, he exercised a great influence over his much younger colleague. Seeing himself also being called to Stockholm one day to receive a Nobel, Laval pursued Briand’s unrelenting search for peace through various appointments in France’s troubled governments of the 1930s. In 1935 he strengthened the Entente Cordiale with Britain; at the Stresa Conference of First World War allies he spoke out against German rearmament in defiance of the Versailles Treaty; in Moscow he signed a treaty of mutual assistance in an endeavour to encircle Hitler’s infant Reich by alliances. He once declared, ‘In the whole world, there are five or six men on whom peace depends. I am one.’5