England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  After considerable prevarication by Giraud, it was Cunningham who made the arrangements to try to extract him from Vichy France and get him at least as far as Gibraltar in time for operation Torch. There was one bad moment when the French général (the nimble abseiler from Castle Königstein) fell into the sea while trying to board the submarine Seraph from a pitching rowing skiff in the dark. The 63-year-old was hastily retrieved by his son and another young officer who were travelling with him as aides-decamp, the only visible damage being to the herringbone suit he was wearing and his cavalry moustache, neither of which were intended for full saline immersion. The général retired to the captain’s bunk, which was not quite long enough for him, and tried to get some sleep.

  Next morning, in order to get Giraud to Eisenhower as soon as possible, an RAF Catalina flying boat rendezvoused with the Seraph, making a landing close to the submarine despite a choppy sea. South African-born Squadron Leader James Louw, one of Coastal Command’s stars with a sunk U-boat on his log book, managed to get his American-built aircraft within 30 yards of the Seraph. Yet it still took an agonizing eighty-five minutes to transfer by paddled rubber dinghy Giraud, aides-de-camp, Captain Wright USN (his guarantee of the Americanness of the occasion) and the French-speaking former US diplomat Colonel Holmes. There were also various items of luggage. While this was going on an aircraft began circling them at, Louw estimated, ‘about two miles distance’. They were some 700 miles from the nearest RAF base and it was unlikely to be friendly. But the luck that had been with Giraud ever since he descended from Königstein on 60 feet of untested prisoner-plaited rope held and the mysterious aircraft flew away. Three hours later Kingpin, after a bumpy take-off in sea that was getting choppier by the minute, was safely delivered to the British Empire’s most British of fortresses, the Rock of Gibraltar.

  For Giraud it was not a happy landing. With great expectations he went almost immediately into conference with a much relieved Eisenhower and Clark who were receiving visitors down a dank 500éyard tunnel bored deep into Gibraltar’s Jurassic innards. Both sides were almost immediately disappointed in each other. Clark in particular felt that Giraud simply did not look the part. ‘He was a tall man with wrinkled civilian clothes – a man with dark cheeks and a dark growth of beard straggling across his face but with a beautiful handlebar moustache, which also seemed to be drooping. At first glance he hardly seemed a figure that would fit easily into the important niche in history that might be awaiting him.’

  This seems a little unkind from a man who had lost his trousers during his own recent submarine adventures and, even if he had not heard all the details of Giraud’s eventful journey, was fully aware that he had not come in on the Pan Am Clipper. According to his memoirs Clark eventually came to admire Giraud’s patience and dignity. At this first meeting the quality that stood out most was his stubbornness.

  Zero hour for Operation Torch was about eight hours away. By now Giraud should have been smuggled into Algiers and be poised to emerge at the head of Général Mast’s joyful résistants, a commanding and heroic figure calling for a return to arms against Germany. This would be Washington’s superlative answer to London’s controversial de Gaulle who, as the end of the Syrian campaign had proved, most French officers would not serve under. But time had run out. Giraud’s arrival would have to wait until they had captured an airport. A battalion of American paratroopers flying non-stop from Cornwall was earmarked for this very task. Meanwhile, for the moment, what he could do was authorize a short radio broadcast to French North Africa, to be transmitted under his name, urging French troops to cooperate with the Allies and save their bullets for the Axis. It was to be transmitted as soon as it was confirmed that the initial landings were successful.

  Since time was of the essence, Eisenhower and Clark had taken the liberty of writing it for him. Giraud was invited into the small office they shared where the glow of an exterior red light above their door indicated that they should not be disturbed for anything less than a poison gas attack. The interpreter Colonel Holmes translated it into French. The gist of it was that the United States, in order to thwart an Axis plan to seize Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, had decided to act first and called upon all officers and men of L’Armée d’Afrique du Nord to join them in the fight against the common enemy. Of his own role in all this, Giraud was scripted to say no more than, ‘I resume my place of combat among you.’

  Kingpin was unaware of his code-name but he knew that the Allies did not risk their submarines and aeroplanes for people they did not value. He drew a deep breath. ‘Now let’s get it clear as to my part,’ he said. ‘As I understand it, when I land in North Africa I am to assume command of all Allied forces and become the Supreme Allied Commander in North Africa?’

  ‘I think there must have been some misunderstanding,’ said Eisenhower. Clark describes his tone as ‘cautious’.

  I thought Ike had never been so shocked and showed it so little. Giraud got a stubborn look on his face … There was no question in my mind that he was stating what he believed to be in the agreement. Furthermore, he was under the impression that there would be an almost immediate Allied effort to invade France proper to forestall German occupation of Vichy territory. Just how he had gotten this impression I was never able to clear up. In conversation with General Mast I had particularly not promised that Giraud would have top command. Murphy had been in the position of wanting to offer almost anything because it was of such importance to have a man of Giraud’s calibre to prevent French resistance … All I could ever figure out was that there had been some exaggerated promises made to Giraud in order to make sure that he joined us. Mast, for instance, may have told him not to worry about the command; that it could be straightened out; and since such messages had to be taken to Giraud by courier it is not difficult to see where he might have got the wrong impression. I am sure, at any rate, that Giraud, when he discovered the situation, was as shocked as Ike and I. As we talked it over, it became obvious that we were in for some serious trouble.

  Clark was right. At the end of three hours Giraud’s signature was still not on the statement the Americans had told London to expect for the BBC’s French language service. They agreed to disperse for dinner and try again later. Clark, who knew they had a long night ahead, had camp beds moved into the office and arranged to eat there. Decrypted messages on the flimsy paper the British liked to use for classified material were already beginning to pile up from London, Washington and some of the units involved. Giraud or no Giraud Operation Torch was on.

  Admiral Cunningham took Eisenhower, whom he thought looked ‘desperately tired and worried’, off to dinner at the Mount, the living quarters of the Royal Navy’s senior staff. Giraud dined separately with the governor of Gibraltar, General Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane, at his official residence The Convent. ‘MasonMac’, as he was known to his contemporaries, had spent most of the inter-war years in central European diplomatic posts as a military attaché and their lingua franca was German. The governor had just returned from a well-publicized trip to Malta, all part of the deception operation to make the enemy believe that the ships gathered around the Rock were about to lift the siege of the island and he was there to coordinate their movements. The German Navy had not fallen for this. They were still advising Hitler that the most likely intention of this British fleet was an attack on Rommel’s rear by landing troops between Tripoli and Benghazi. If not there, Sicily was their next choice. After that came Sardinia, then somewhere on the Italian mainland. French North Africa was on their list of possibilities but it was last.

  Under a setting sun some 6 miles off the Algerian coast Sergeant Stamford Weatherall was worried that some playful dolphins were about to capsize them. He could see the school’s phosphorescent wake as they charged towards their canoe, veering away at the last second. Sitting in front of him, navigating with a hand-held compass, was Sub-Lieutenant John Harris of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. They had shipped far too much water when they w
ere launched into a choppy sea from the submarine HMS Ursula. Weatherall estimated their lee board at no more than 2 inches and, since he could not find find the bailer, he was trying to stay afloat by scooping the water out with his green beret. They had already jettisoned the rucksacks containing their spare clothing and a twenty-four-hour ration pack, though the sergeant had retained his boots – they wore plimsolls in the canoe – and his weapons: a Tommy gun in a waterproof cover, a Colt automatic and a kukri, the curved miniature machete that was the Gurkha fighting knife.

  The pair were one of several canoe teams belonging to the recently formed Combined Operations Pilotage Parties whose personnel were drawn from the army and the navy. Weatherall, a Dunkirk veteran from Nottingham who had recently celebrated his thirtieth birthday, was a Commando in No. 2 Special Boat Squadron. In theory their task was first to reconnoitre a hostile beach then guide in landing craft at night by setting up infra-red beacons visible through an adapted molecular glass. In practice, on this their first operation, they had been forbidden to reconnoitre the Operation Torch beaches. After some reflection it had been decided that the dangers of any chance contact with the enemy giving the game away far outweighed the advantages of knowing more about where they were going.

  At 9.15 p.m., over two hours after they left the submarine, Harris and Weatherall, cold and wet and with the sergeant now using one of his boots as a bailer, got through the surf and landed. They thought they had arrived at the place the planners called Z Beach which was west of Algiers. Actually they were at least 5 miles further west than they should have been, something they might have realized had they been allowed to make a reconnaissance. The American first wave was due to arrive at 1.05 a.m. They had plenty of time to set up the infra-red gear, visible for miles out to sea, which the Royal Navy coxwains would spot through their molecular glasses and use as their mark. This done, they cursed the loss of their dry clothing and did their shivering best to keep warm, not daring to move about too much in case the beach was patrolled.

  At the Villa Sidi-Allowi amiraux Darlan and Fenard and Général Juin were on their main course. Juin, who was almost as small as Darlan, used only the fork, in his left hand, his right arm limp at his side as it had been since 1915 when he lost the use of it on the Western Front. But since, even then, Major Juin was considered an officer with a great future ahead of him he was not given a medical discharge. Instead he was granted special permission to salute with his left hand.

  Juin was born the son of a colonial gendarme at Bone, one of the most picturesque of the old Phoenician ports, in Algeria’s north-eastern corner close to the Tunisian border. Between the wars he had served under both Pétain and Giraud in the campaigns against Arab insurgents in Morocco’s Rif Mountains. In 1940 he was captured commanding the 15th Motorized Division during the French stand at Lille which bought time for the Dunkirk evacuation. For Juin, being released from Königstein and replacing Maxime Weygand as Commander-in-Chief in North Africa had been a dream posting, a return to his pied-noir roots and a world away from defeated France.

  Weygand, as he subsequently admitted to Murphy, had accepted the North African post as soon as Britain proved its ability to withstand air attacks. His desire to use his fief as a launch pad for the eventual liberation of France had always been transparent. In the end, his departure in November 1941 had been as a direct result of an ultimatum from Berlin that it would occupy all of France unless he did so. To become his replacement Juin had been required to make a solemn promise that he would never take up arms against the Germans again. In recent months he had made it plain to Murphy that, at the right moment, he wished France to re-enter the war. But the American always felt that Juin would feel honour-bound to inform his superiors in Vichy if he confided in him that they intended to intervene, whereas the escapee Giraud was under no such obligation. Otherwise Murphy would have told him because he liked Juin.

  On the eve of Darlan’s scheduled return to Vichy, once due mention of Alain’s remarkable recovery had been made, the main topic of conversation over dinner at Sidi-Allowi was the usual one. Who would invade French North Africa first: the Axis or the Allies? A good case could be made that the British success at El Alamein had increased the risk from the Axis because Rommel’s defeat could be partly blamed on the number of oil tankers British submarines and aircraft had sunk. The obvious remedy was to shorten the Mediterranean crossing by occupying Tunisia and shipping supplies to Bizerte, hardly 100 miles away from Sicily, instead of Tripoli or Benghazi. Or would the Allies move first to prevent this?

  Towards the end of their meal they received a visitor who was now firmly of this opinion. An excited Contre-amiral Jacques Moreau, commander of the fourth naval district at Algiers, turned up to report what he obviously regarded as a disquieting development. The ships they had thought were heading for Malta, Moreau informed them, were now ideally deployed to turn back towards Oran and Algiers and land whatever troops they had aboard before first light.

  Moreau was advised to calm down and get some sleep. Nothing was going to happen. Not for the first time that evening Darlan cited Murphy’s comment about not coming unless they were summoned. ‘I have assurances,’ he said. Then, after bidding Juin goodnight, he took his own advice and went to bed. He had an early flight back to France in the morning.

  Shortly before midnight Murphy, listening to the BBC French service on his short-wave radio, heard what he had been waiting for. It came amid the list of ‘personal messages’ the announcer gave out after the news summary, each read out twice and carefully enunciated, like a language teacher giving a pupil a new phrase. ‘Allo, Robert,’ said London. ‘Franklin est arrivé ’

  This oddly transparent message to Robert Murphy from Franklin D. Roosevelt was the signal that the Operation Torch landings were about to begin. If everything went on schedule American troops would be in the city in two hours. In the interim Murphy’s first task was to see that Mast’s insurgents had been alerted and had taken over the key positions that would ease the Americans’ passage into the city. Britain’s Special Operations Executive had failed to deliver the arms Clark promised at the Cherchell meeting. On several occasions, dates had been set and men left standing on lonely beaches flashing their insistent Morse at an empty sea until they ran out of darkness. Murphy thought the SOE had let them down because the British had no faith in the American ability to judge who was worth the risk of a ship. If so, SOE were sadly mistaken. Despite their ill-assorted weaponry, and well within the allotted time, the insurgents had acted. Police posts and power stations had been seized, as had most communication centres for radio and telephones. They also began to encircle some military headquarters as well as cordon off the residences of several senior officers.

  On what had now become Z Beach, where Sub-Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Weatherall had been keeping their cold vigil, the coxes landed the first wave of Americans at 1.15 a.m. – ten minutes late. Weatherall noted in the log he was keeping that they made ‘a perfect landing without any opposition’. At least they were only an hour’s march or so from where they should have been. Some of the Americans were put ashore even further from Algiers than was intended and none of them, wherever they were landed, managed to get to the city as quickly as they were supposed to.

  French North Africa was neutral. There was no blackout. An American submarine commander surfacing that same night 7 miles off Casablanca said it was ‘like coming up in the centre of Times Square’. At about the time Z Beach’s Combined Operations Pilotage Party were introducing themselves to the first wave of Americans to set foot in French North Africa, Murphy, accompanied by US Vice-Consul Kenneth Pendar who was to remain in the car, was being driven along the well-lit, jacaranda-lined streets of el-Biar district. He was about to make an unannounced call on Général Juin at Villa des Oliviers, official residence of the army’s Commander-in-Chief. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. According to the script he was supposed to have accompanied Giraud to Juin’s house as living
proof of Franco-American collusion. But Giraud was missing and there had been no message from Eisenhower explaining why.

  It was now about 1.30 a.m. and Juin, having returned from his dinner with Darlan and Fenard, was fast asleep. Mast’s fifth column had not yet arrived here and the security of Villa des Oliviers was still in the hands of a detachment of tall Senegalese askaris who Murphy had to talk his way through.

  After some difficulty I was admitted and persuaded a servant to wake the général. He came to the drawing room in pink-striped pyjamas, tousled and sleepy. My news snapped him awake. I told him, as calmly as I could, that an American expeditionary force of half a million men was about to land all along the coasts of French North Africa. According to my instructions, I multiplied the size and made no mention of its British components.

  ‘I wish to tell you about this in advance,’ explained the American, the words well rehearsed, ‘because over the last year our talks have convinced me that you desire, above all else, to see the liberation of France which can only come about through co-operation with the United States.’

  ‘But you told me only a week ago that the United States would not attack us,’ protested a clearly incredulous Juin.

  ‘We’re here by invitation.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Giraud.’

  ‘Is he here in Algiers?’

  ‘We expect him momentarily,’ murmured Murphy.

  The général began to pace the room. His visitor repeated that they had always been confident of his support when the time came.

  Suddenly Juin found his way out of this dreadful dilemma. ‘If the matter was entirely in my hands I would be with you,’ he said. ‘But, as you know, Darlan is in Algiers visiting his son. He outranks me and no matter what decision I might make, Darlan could immediately overrule it.’