SHORTLY after Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, the Army Air Force let it be known that it would recommission a certain number of ex-combat pilots of World War I. Those accepted were known as Retreads. I was a Retread—for about a quarter of an hour.
On April 22, 1942, I reported to the old Munitions Building in Washington, D.C. Having sworn me in, the A-2 colonel in charge looked doubtful.
“We don’t seem to have your complete file here,” he said. “Whom were you supposed to report to?”
“Colonel Curtis, A-2.”
“I see,” he said. “Unfortunately Colonel Curtis is week-ending in Iceland”
“That was last week.” Another colonel spoke up from across the room. “Ted left here yesterday for Cairo.”
An Infantry colonel came up carrying a sheaf of papers.
“Hi, Bob,” the A-2 colonel said. “What can we do for you today?”
The Infantry colonel sank his voice to a whisper.
“I see.” The A-2 colonel cleared his throat. “Well, it just so happens, Bob, that I’ve got exactly the man you’re looking for.” Then to me, “You’re certainly in luck, Major. Colonel Harding here, of G-2, has the perfect job for you.”
“What is it?”
“Look, Major,” the A-2 colonel said, “it would be wiser not to ask questions. Just take my word for it and run along with the Colonel here. We’ll have your orders out right away. You won’t be sorry.”
As things turned out, he was right.
Behind the sentry-guarded door of a room on the third floor of the same Munitions Building the staff of Western Task Force sweated out the stifling Washington summer of the fateful year of 1942. Partitioned off at one end were the offices of the Chief of Staff and the General. Out in the open bull-pen the staff sections, about whom swirled a never-ending stream of Navy opposite numbers, meteorologists, Air liaison officers, North African consuls, French tugboat captains, and Arab interpreters, struggled with the joint and several problems posed by the first amphibious landings to be launched eastward across the Atlantic Ocean.
Late on the sweltering afternoon prior to our departure, Colonel Percy Black, Assistant Chief of Staff G-2, stopped before the Prisoner Interrogation Section desk, or rather table, shared by Bunny Carter{3} and myself. Onto the table the Colonel dropped several pounds of fifth-carbon typescript.
“The treaties,” he said.
“The treaties?”
“With the French Protectorate of Morocco,” he said. “State just got around to sending them over. Three of them. Which one will be applied depends on the circumstances.”
The Colonel started to move off.
“Translate them into French,” he said. “Six copies of each. And have them on my desk by midnight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Treaty A: a nice friendly treaty predicated on the French receiving us with open arms.
Treaty B: stern but fair—based on the eventuality of a slight token resistance.
Treaty C: the surrender terms to be imposed on the French forces in the event of an all-out fight. This one was tough.
By the time Bunny and I had translated them into understandable if not precisely Quai d’Orsay French and had laid the eighteen copies on the Colonel’s desk it was another day—October 23, 1942.
Dawn was breaking over the capital. Having said good-by to our wives, Bunny and I threw our gear into a taxi and buzzed off over the bridge to Fort Myer on our way to the waiting convoy. Twenty-four hours later we were at sea on the first lap of our second world war.
This is a combined operation and until we land, a Navy show. The Navy’s mission—to transport the thirty-five thousand troops and two hundred fifty tanks composing the all-American Western Task Force, together with ammunition and supplies, four thousand nautical miles from Norfolk, Virginia, and to land them in Higgins boats on three sets of beaches situated on the Atlantic coast of French Morocco at H hour of D day, 4 A.M., November 8, 1942. Said mission to be synchronized with the Anglo-American task force scheduled to leave England, pass through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean to make simultaneous landings in Algeria some five hundred miles away. The purpose—to deny French North Africa to the Axis powers and to open the Mediterranean and a second front. The name—Operation Torch, as of then the largest overseas expeditionary force in history.
But in the opinion of the Pentagon not nearly large enough. A boy sent to do a man’s job. In spite of the 1940 debacle in France, the French, it was argued, still have a pretty good African Army, sixty thousand troops in Morocco alone, and, in control of coast defenses, an aggressive Navy embittered by Dakar and Mers-el-Kebir. If loyalty to their soldier’s oath to Marshal Pétain and a deeply ingrained sense of obedience to the chain of command inspire them to resist, if the Luftwaffe moves in fast, if Franco’s Spain and the heavily garrisoned strip of Spanish Morocco which runs along the Mediterranean shore from Tangier, opposite Gibraltar, almost to the Algerian border intervene, if seven or eight million Arabs and Berbers take exception to the infidel Anglo-Saxon presence in their midst, will it, asked the Pentagon, be possible to maintain and supply a beachhead across four thousand miles of open sea? If all goes well and the landing craft do manage to find the beaches in the dark, what about the surf? According to the hydrographic boys, small-boat landing conditions around Casablanca during the autumn are no better than a one-to-five shot.
Of the Twelve Apostles of the General Staff, at least one who came down to see us off made it plain that he thought our chances of making it stick were less than fifty-fifty. He was very nice about it, of course, wished us luck and hoped to see us soon.
Aboard the SS Ancon
November 3, 1942. Over miles of glittering sea a brave sight. Thirty transports and cargo vessels, their screen of forty to fifty destroyers milling about like polo ponies. The cruisers Augusta, Cleveland, and Brooklyn—compact, businesslike—and in the dim distance the reassuring presence of the big battle-wagons, Texas, New York, and, last but not least, the newly commissioned Massachusetts. On the converted Esso oil tankers’ decks, clusters of Army P-40’s, straining at their leashes, and from the Ranger’s flight deck, Navy dive bombers and Wildcat fighters roaring and zooming over the convoy.
Well, it won’t be long now.
“Attention.”
Over the loud-speaker system Major Gardner, Commander of Troops aboard the Ancon, will read a message from the Commanding General.
“Soldiers:
“We are now on our way to force a landing on the coast of northwest Africa. We are to be congratulated because we have been chosen as the units of the United States Army to take part in this great American effort.”
“Our mission is threefold. First, to capture a beachhead, second, to capture the city of Casablanca, third, to move against the German wherever he may be and destroy him....
“We may be opposed by a limited number of Germans. It is not known whether the French African Army will contest our landing....When the great day of battle comes, remember your training and remember above all that speed and vigor of attack are the sure roads to success....During the first days and nights after you get ashore you must work unceasingly, regardless of sleep, regardless of food. A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.
“The eyes of the world are watching us....God is with us....We will surely win.
Signed: G. S. Patton, Jr.
Major General, U.S.A., Commanding”
From all accounts General Patton must be quite a man. Have never seen him close to. To date just an awesome presence beyond that partition in the Munitions Building. At times when it got noisy in the bull pen the partition would vibrate as to a short burst of machine-gun fire.
“Tell ‘em to stop that goddam racket. I can’t hear myself think.”
Out would come Colonel Hap Gay, Chief of Staff.{4}
“The General wants QUIET.”
That would do it.
And now the General is aboard Admiral Hewitt’s flagship, the heavy cruiser Augusta, enjoying relative quiet, plenty of time to think, and plenty to think about. And in the cavern headquarters inside the Rock of Gibraltar, so, presumably, has the Commander of Operation Torch, Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Even our small G-2 detachment aboard the Ancon, headed by Colonel John Ratay, has things on its collective mind, and the same, no doubt, with Bunny on the Dickman, and Percy Black, also on the Augusta.
November 7, 1942. Midnight. The stars are out, but it’s dark as hell on deck. The Ancon’s engines are down to a slow throb. According to the timetable we should be easing into the transport area preparatory to going over the side. Elements of the 3d Division are lining up at their deck stations adjacent to the disembarkation nets. All very orderly. They seem to know where to go and what to do. They are going over the side now. The technique seems to be to step up on a stanchion and back-climb over the rail. Weighted down with sixty-five pounds of equipment exclusive of steel helmet and Tommy gun, it is something of a trick. A landing net is a mean piece of equipment. With the outward roll of the ship it swings clear. That is fine. You can get your hands and feet into the rungs. The inboard roll is something else again. The net flattens hard against the ship’s side, reducing finger and toe holds to next to nothing.
“O.K., Major,” said the Navy rating, “heave your right leg over and wait for the outboard roll.”
Right leg over. Right foot feeling for a rung. No rung. Inboard roll. Bad luck. Bad timing. Tommy gun fouled with the rail. Oversize steel helmet banging the bridge of the nose. Field glasses slipping down around the knees. Remember your training. What training? The morning constitutional from the Mayflower Hotel to the Munitions Building?
Come on, snap out of it and get going. There’s a rung. Down three. Wait. Down four. Wait. Down five. Below, dim upturned faces. The Higgins boat. Another ten feet to go. The Higgins boat falls away like a stone. Back she comes, smashing and banging against the Ancon’s steel plates.
“Jump, Major,” somebody yells. I jump. A long drop into the receptive arms of a couple of G.I.’s.
From the darkness far above, “O.K., Number Four, cast off.”
As we chugged away from the black hull of the Ancon, Major A1 Morse of our G-2 detachment looked at his wrist watch—5:42. It was still dark, and as the Higgins boat gathered speed, sheets of salt spray lashed at its occupants. After a while one got used to the lurching. At least there wasn’t room to fall down. Like a bunch of tightly wrapped asparagus our ship’s company swayed back and forth in unison. The tempo of your neighbor’s Tommy gun poking you in the back of the neck took on the same insistent rhythm as the refrain “Will the French resist?”
Ashore our agents have contacted many of the key figures of the French North African setup. In Algiers the underground is reported to have made encouraging headway, but in Morocco General Noguès, supreme ruler of the French Military Protectorate, remains an enigma. In the showdown, what will he do?
A predawn purple was creeping over the water when we got the answer. Two blinding orange flashes, almost instantaneous. Two shattering thunderclaps. The next ten or fifteen minutes made very little sense. Purple, red, and yellow tracers. Coming, going, crisscrossing. Concussions that seemed to lift the Higgins boat clear out of the water. Half a mile to starboard something long and black and spouting orange flames veered off in a wide skidding turn, the fanlike wake spreading, creamy.
“The Brooklyn” someone volunteered.
“Sounds like Treaty C,” Al Morse said.
A naval engagement is a queer thing. Suddenly all hell breaks loose and as suddenly it’s all over. As to who was doing what to whom and who paid, none of us had the slightest idea, but it seemed no reasonable time or place to be out in a small open boat.
The abrupt hush had a provisional quality as the sun, struggling through brownish haze, gradually revealed a sight long expected, yet unreal. First, the slow fade-in of the shore line. Pointing at us like a crooked finger, the Cap with its cluster of oil-storage tanks. But wait a minute—why are they a dirty rust-streaked yellow? In the Munitions Building mock-up we had lived with for so many weeks they were a nice bright aluminum. Somebody slipped up on that one. Well, never mind. Inside the Cap, the white villas and beach-front buildings are clearly visible now. Yes, that’s more like it. That’s Fedala, all right. The Casino, its terrace, its sea wall, and to the left the bathhouses, all just where they should be. Back of them the resort hotel where the German Armistice Commission is billeted. Where is the church? Sure enough, there it is. Further to the left of the Casino beach—Red Beach to us—the long run of sand surmounted by low bluff and open field—Red Beach Two, and the stand of scrub pine programed for divisional C.P. (command post).
The sun is doing better now, and the expanse of sparkling water, backdropped by the neat villas of Fedala, presents a curiously gala appearance. Regatta day. Scores of small craft chugging leisurely towards the yacht-club landing. Only no pennants and no reception committee. No parasols on the Casino terrace. Very empty and quiet. Too quiet.
Fifty yards to our right another Higgins boat seems to be racing us. In the bow a familiar figure scanning the town through his field glasses. Colonel Ratay. We are in quite close now. From the boats ahead, steel helmets and infantry packs are splashing ashore. They avoid the town, jogging across the sand strip towards the low embankment. Those water-logged packs are heavy. One man trips and falls full length on his face. With a convulsive movement he rolls over on his back, arms outstretched, and lies still.
Colonel Ratay’s boat has nosed ahead of us. It is practically in. No, it has hit a runnel of sand. Everyone piles out. Six feet of water. A couple of the boys are taking a real ducking. Our boat is in. Nice landing. Only three feet of water and a short wade ashore. The boat retracts and pulls away. So long. Good luck.
Some distance away Colonel Ratay is splashing in with a large bundle under each arm. Not bundles. They are the boys who took the ducking. Lucky for them he happened to be around.
Our co-passengers of the 3d Division were making for the embankment. Al and I took the same direction. The man lying on his back stared fixedly up at the sun. Two flies buzzed about his helmet. The rifleman ahead of us stopped, bent down, examined the dog tag, removed the slicker from his own pack, drew it over the waxen face. Strewn with equipment abandoned by the predawn assault wave, the beach had an unhealthy quality. It seemed much broader than on the bull-pen model. One felt naked. One wanted to get off it.
Whee-ee-ee, ZING!
Throughout World War I, the départ crack of the French soixante-quinze was an enjoyable sound—friendly, reassuring. The arrivée was something else again. It still is, particularly on an African beach before breakfast. There goes another one. Come on, this is getting ridiculous.
A steel helmet well heated by the subtropical sun, a slippery Tommy gun, a saturated uniform, trench coat, and full infantry pack are not conducive to speed, but it didn’t take us long to scramble up the dune to the crest tufted with coarse grass. Beyond and behind its comforting protection stretched a wide field. It presented a curious appearance. Standing and sitting in small groups, the French officers and coal-black enlisted men of the Fedala garrison. Their rifles were stacked in neat array and most of them were smoking jaunes.
“What outfit is this?” we asked a French captain.
“One Hundred Second Company of the Sixth R.T.S.” (Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais.) “We came over to your side right after H hour,” he said pleasantly.
“Is the whole garrison here?”
“No, some of them have gone back to the barracks.” He pointed to a row of low wooden buildings at the edge of the town.
“Fedala is yours,” said the French captain.
“In that case, what is all the shooting for?”
“Doubtless the Marine battery of seventy-fives out on the end of Cap Fedala. It’s a pity, but you know how it is—” he shrugged—“our Navy has always had less comprehension than the Army.”
Two small Arab boys loped up. Smiling eyes, extended palms, they had not yet acquired the cigarette, chewing-gum refrain. It was still early.
The French captain shooed them away. He was most cooperative, but he didn’t really know anything. The landing, he said, had been a complete surprise. Besides the Senegalese garrison, the only French troops in the town itself were three or four Renault tanks in charge of a Lieutenant Lefèvre, whose heart, it seemed, was in the right place. He had, the captain said, greeted our first assault wave as it landed and had delayed the giving of the alarm by at least an hour. Yes, General Noguès—the Resident General in French Morocco—had given the order to resist, and undoubtedly reserves would be arriving from Rabat and Meknes. Meantime the French Navy, in charge of all coastal defenses, are going all out.
“It is fantastic, but there it is,” the French captain said.
“And the German Armistice Commission?” Colonel Ratay asked.
“The Fedala contingent, fifteen of them, have been quartered at the hotel for some months. Assez correctes, mais de sales types au fond.”
The Colonel picked up his Tommy gun.
“Let’s go take a look at the town,” he said.
Our wet trench coats steamed in the hot sun. Peeling them off, we handed them to a Senegalese who was sitting by a stack of rifles.
“Hold on to these till we get back.” At the time it seemed sensible.
In V formation with Tommy guns at the ready the Colonel, Al, and I advanced to the edge of town. Not far from the Senegalese barracks, a palm-bordered road emerged into the field, and there, having no place to go, ended. A shiny blue and white sign—Boulevard Moulay Ismael. Residential evidently. Next, villas of white stucco, each with its neat little garden and bright-hued shutters tightly closed. At the first intersection we turned left, Avenue Gallieni. More villas. Untenanted? Maybe just very quiet tenants. Another intersection. A wider street paralleling the Boulevard Moulay Ismael. The sign read Rue de Fès. A right turn should get us into the center of the town. Another fifty yards and the Rue de Fes debouched into a small rond-point. To the right a driveway flanked by two porters’ lodges. A large sign—Hotel Miramar. Shell fire had crumbled both lodges and littered the well-kept driveway with plaster and palm branches. Inside the grounds the palms were larger and more luxuriant—except for the two which had been split as if by lightning.
The hotel itself, a white stucco affair with green tiled roof, appeared at first glance to be undamaged. The kind of place from which one would expect a couple of uniformed doormen and a flock of chasseurs to swoop forth and relieve you of your luggage. Not this morning. We mounted the entrance steps leading past the broad bougainvillaea-covered veranda, and entered through wide-open doors a high-ceilinged lobby in which our footsteps echoed even more hollowly than in the streets of the phantom town. Empty. Very empty.
No one at the reception desk, or in the dining room, or in the smoking room. In the bar a radio was spluttering softly. I turned the knob.
“Aliô, Maroc. Aliô, Maroc. Le Président des États-Unis, Monsieur Franklin Roosevelt, s’est adressé cette nuit au peuple français.”
The familiar voice of Lieutenant Fernand Auberjonois of our Psychological Warfare Section broadcasting from the Texas. His perfect Geneva French was coming over fine.
“I repeat the integral text of Monsieur Roosevelt’s message: ‘My friends, my friends who suffer night and day under the crushing Nazi yoke, I speak to you as one who in 1918 was in France with your Army and Navy....All my life I have held a deep friendship for the people of France. I know your farms, your villages, your cities. I know your soldiers, your professors, your workers....We arrive among you with the sole objective of crushing your enemies. We assure you that once the menace of Germany and Italy has been removed we shall quit your territories. I appeal to your realism, to your self-interest, to French national ideals. Do not, I pray you, oppose this great design. Lend us your help wherever you can, my friends, and we shall see again that glorious day when liberty and peace once more reign over the world. Vive la France Éternelle!’
“You are listening to a broadcast of the American Forces, Moroccan Sector....Aliô, Maroc. Aliô, Maroc. Le Président des États-Unis, Monsieur Franklin Roosevelt, s’est adressé cette nuit...”
I snapped it off.
“Let’s take a look around,” the Colonel said.
Down the entrance steps again and around the building. What appeared to be the kitchen wing had been hit. The whole end caved in. As we passed a basement window something within moved. The Colonel with a catlike thrust jabbed the muzzle of his Tommy gun through the pane.
“Come up out of there!” he shouted.
Two frightened faces—a man and a woman.
“If you will be so kind as to go around to the other side,” the man said in French, “I will let you in.”
As we got to the basement door, the man was opening it and we burst in. Catching sight of our small Stars-and-Stripes armbands, his eyes grew round.
“Americans?” he stuttered, unbelieving.
“Naturally.”
He couldn’t take it in. “We heard it was an Axis invasion,” he said. “Germans and Italians.”
“Who are you, and who are these people?” the Colonel asked, pointing to the woman and an elderly man who had wandered uncertainly in.
“I am the manager of the Hotel Miramar,” he said. “Rougeron is the name. Madame and Monsieur here are trusted employees of long standing.”
Turning to his dazed assistants, he clapped his hands sharply. “But what are you waiting for? A bottle of champagne for these gentlemen. And faster than that.”
Glasses, bottles, the popping of corks, and amidst the debris of the Miramar’s kitchen we clinked foaming goblets to the long life of America and France, and the confusion of the Axis powers. It was all very cozy.
“And now about the German Armistice Commission,” the Colonel said.
“Ah, yes,” said Monsieur Rougeron sadly, “we were obliged to house them here. Fifteen in all. On the whole they were correct, mais au fond étaient de sales types. They left suddenly this morning before daylight.”
“How?”
“By car—several cars.”
“In what direction?”
“Presumably in the direction of Rabat.”
“In uniform?”
“Yes.”
The Colonel put down his glass, wiped his mustache, glanced at his wrist watch, and addressed Monsieur Rougeron. “As of now the Hotel Miramar is the official headquarters of the United States Western Task Force.”
Donning his helmet, he turned to Al and me. “Come on,” he said. Ten minutes later we were on the outskirts of the town. By the side of the road a German one-and-a-half-ton truck guarded by a young American lieutenant.
“Your name?” the Colonel asked.
“Lieutenant Dent, C Company, Seventh Infantry.”
“What’s the story?”
It seemed that in their flight the German Armistice Commission had split into two groups. The first had presumably made good their get-away. The second group had run smack into C Company, by that time across the Boulhaut Road, and had made the mistake of trying to shoot it out with them. Result: four wounded—three of them mortally—and seven captured.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant, on the first German casualties to be inflicted by American troops in World War Two,” the Colonel said. “Where are the prisoners?”
“They were sent back to the beach.”
“Get them up to headquarters at once,” the Colonel said. “Also that truck.”
High noon.
From the bank up which we had clawed our way—could it be only a few hours ago?—the beach appeared to have changed its personality. Gone was the early morning mist. Whitecaps sparkled on an animated sea whipped by the strong, gusty breeze. The long, insistent rollers broke high, boiling up the incline of wet yellow sand. Beached landing craft sidled helplessly in the swash of back-sucking waves.
Off shore, like newly risen volcanic peaks, the transports formed a group of dark islands, the intervening water a seascape of small craft doggedly chugging their loads of supplies and ammunition to the beach.
One is landing now, directly below us. It hits a runnel. The occupants, all but the helmsman, leap out into the swirling eddies. The helmsman reverses. The screw churns raucously. No go. Stuck fast. The ammunition bearers pull and haul at the cases, heaving them up onto the dry sand. Leaving the helmsman to his own devices, they load the cases on their shoulders and are making their way across the beach.
A fast Navy crash boat heading for a point about twenty yards away hits the same runnel and shudders to a halt. A tall figure vaults over the side of the crash boat and splashes ashore.
“Come back here!” he roars. A couple of ammunition bearers turn their heads uneasily.
“Yes, I mean you. All of you. Drop that stuff and come back here. Faster than that, goddam it. On the double.”
Once more he is waist-deep in the water, his shoulder to the bow of the beached landing craft.
“Take hold here. You two, over to the other side. Wait for the next wave. Lift and push. Now! push, goddamit, push.”
The screw churns, bites the water, and the landing craft backs away.
The bearers gaze incredulously at the tall dripping figure.
“Don’t you realize that boat has other trips to make?” he snaps. “How do you expect to fight a war without ammunition? Now go and take that stuff up to the dump. On the double.”
A shell whistled high overhead, exploded dully in the town beyond. Near the embankment an infantryman, his Tommy gun beside him, lay face downward on the sand. With a speed surprising in so large a man, the tall figure raced to the recumbent soldier, snatched up his Tommy gun, and leaning over him, shouted, “Yea-a-h.”
The soldier half turned over, shielding his face with his arms. “Go ‘way and lemme sleep,” he said.
“Yea-a-h.”
The barrel of his own Tommy gun was boring insistently into the pit of his stomach as the soldier decided to open his eyes. His glance climbed slowly up the cavalry boots, the wet trouser leg, the pearl-handled revolver, the deep-chested torso. Behind the butt of the Tommy gun, gray eyes blazing from an inexorable face surmounted by the dripping helmet with its two stars.
“Jesus,” he said simply.
Stepping back, General Patton examined the lock of the Tommy gun. O.K.
“Get up, boy,” he said gently.
The soldier scrambled to his feet, swaying uncertainly.
“Are you hurt?” the General said.
“No, sir.”
“I know you’re tired,” the General said. “We’re all tired. That makes no difference.”
He put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “The next beach you land on will be defended by Germans. I don’t want one of them coming up behind you and hitting you over the head with a sockful of silt.” Only that was not quite the word he used.
The man grinned.
“Here’s your gun.” The sharpness returned to the General’s voice. “Now, get going.”
Beyond the eastern extremity of the Casino’s sea wall, a small bathing cabana had been rigged up with a field telephone. On its diminutive piazza overlooking the ocean, General Patton was receiving reports from the Beachmaster and a 3d Division liaison officer.
As we approached this hastily improvised command post, a French Dewoitine banked steeply over Cap Fedala and, straightening out, made a leisurely run down the beach. Opposite the Casino a bunch of ammunition bearers were assembling a supply dump. Dipping slightly, the French plane’s machine guns rattled a slow burst. A crackle of retaliatory rifle fire. One or two of the boys, obeying their reflexes, flattened themselves on the sand. The distance from cabana to dump was perhaps a hundred yards. The General made it in ten flat.
“On your feet!” he shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you men anyway? What do you think you’ve got guns for?”
The faces of the recently prone expressed equal parts of sheepishness and incredulity.
“You heard me,” the General said. “You’ve got guns. Use them.” And as he turned away, a parting shot: “If I see another American soldier lying down on this beach I’ll court-martial him.”
As the General turned to regain the cabana, the Dewoitine made a U turn over Fort Blondin and headed once again for the beach. Higher this time. Along the line of flight a sustained tattoo of rifle fire. Here and there an imperceptible sagging of the seat of the pants, but no one lay down. The General did not even look up. Over the dump the plane waggled its wings, then with a left bank turned inland. From the forward window a gloved hand waved.
Standing straight and tall on the piazza, the General was in high spirits. “A bit of cussing-out always does me good,” he said. “Should have come in sooner. Would have if I hadn’t got caught in a goddam naval battle. Quite a show. A great show. Hello, Ratay, what’s the dope?”
“Sir, your headquarters have been established at the Hotel Miramar. It is undamaged except for the kitchen.” Indicating Al and me, the Colonel added, “This is Major Morse and Major Codman.” Even on D day the Regular Army remains punctilious.
The General nodded twice. “All right,” he said. “Tell them to have cold supper and accommodations for forty at six o’clock. And now”—turning briskly to the Chief of Staff—“I want to go up to Anderson’s C.P. and find out what the hell’s going on around here.”
At the Miramar things seemed to be looking up. Behind the reception counter Madame was verifying the row of heavy keys, each hanging from its individual letter slot. At the counter itself Monsieur Rougeron was leafing through the hotel register.
“Glad to see you are opening up for business,” Colonel Ratay remarked. “This evening you will have forty guests.”
“Ah, yes, forty guests.” Monsieur Rougeron’s tone was professional. “It will be a little difficult—so near the end of the season. We will do our best. But, alas, there is no water.”
“Why not?”
“The tank on the roof, the entire water supply, foutu. Two shells. Your Navy. Direct hits.”
Outside on the spacious veranda under the watchful eye of one of our M.P.’s, a dozen or so French prisoners, officers and non-coms, sat primly erect about the small cane tables.
“Codman, get their stories,” the Colonel said. “I have a priority matter to attend to.” And he went down the steps.
Seated cross-legged on the lawn below the veranda, the half dozen oddly assorted Germans whom Al Morse had herded up from the beach to the hotel grounds formed a glum, nondescript circle. Individually and collectively they presented no distinguishing feature—except one. Their rumpled uniforms. Familiar. The sickly gray-green, the cloth headgear with the little round insignia, the Iron Crosses. Twenty-five years ago, on taking French leave of a Bavarian prison cage, I had hoped not to see that uniform again. It just goes to show, one never knows.
So these were members of the celebrated German Armistice Commission, the enforcers of the humiliating terms of June, 1940, the presumed forerunners of the Wehrmacht and of total German occupation of North Africa. Since the fall of France their number had increased to around two hundred—two hundred locusts diligently engaged in stripping North Africa bare. The main group in Casablanca had by now almost certainly flown the coop, but the gentlemen of the Fedala chapter had miscalculated. They had, in fact, made a serious error. And now they compounded it. Intent on registering an admixture of indifference, boredom, and defiance, they failed to note the approach of Colonel Ratay. At ten paces the Colonel stopped short. His mustachios bristled. His eyes flashed dark fire.
“Achtung!” he roared.
During his years of service as Military Attaché the Colonel had not wasted his time. For the next fifteen minutes the members of the German Armistice Commission responded as good Germans should to the staccato peals and guttural chimes of their native Manual of Arms—close-order drill, a lesson in snappy saluting and military courtesy. And when, to the enchantment of Monsieur Rougeron and his staff, the Colonel marched them through the lobby at regulation goose step, and up the stairs to their second-floor quarters, there remained in the minds of the erstwhile star boarders of the Hotel Miramar no doubt whatsoever as to the authenticity of their master’s voice.
Throughout the Colonel’s review of troops the conduct of the French on the veranda had been exemplary. By not so much as the flicker of an eyelid did they evidence awareness of the Teuton presence. The absent treatment. The same technique which over the past two years had baffled and infuriated the German Armistice Commission. Had not General von Wulisch in exasperation complained to Weygand that the entire French North African Army were deliberately attempting to create a vacuum around the persons and activities of his commission with consequent impairment of said commission’s efficiency?
“They behave,” Consul General Auer had fretted to Monsieur Laval, “as if they didn’t like us, as if we weren’t there.”
The senior officer of the French group, who appeared to be a lieutenant colonel of Artillery, arose at my approach. I saluted. He saluted. The rest got up and stood at attention. A short exchange of civilities and they sat down again. Polite. Noncommittal. The Lieutenant Colonel and I made for a small table at the extreme end of the veranda, the circling-around and sitting-down process allowing each of us to take discreet inventory of the other’s ribbons. Unlike the British, the French make no bones about their predilection for ribbons. Napoleon saw to that.
“I see, mon commandant, that you also have fought with us,” the Lieutenant Colonel said, accepting a cigarette. The use of the formal “mon” and the barely perceptible stressing of the next to the last word were nicely managed.
The next two hours, while adding little to our store of strictly military intelligence, served to illumine—at least in part—a state of mind shaped by two years of humiliation, wounded pride, conflicting loyalties, and clandestine struggle—two years during which the banked fires of revenge burned low but steadily.
On June 22, 1940, the Armies of Metropolitan France capitulated, and at Rethondes before the ancient railway carriage of 1918 the Führer danced a jig. Within forty-eight hours there sidled into the Casablanca dock a small vessel, the Massilia, and down the gangplank marched Monsieur Mandel and the diehards of Bordeaux, bent on transferring the Government of France to North Africa and from there continuing the war. Their efforts failed. In the heart and mind of General Auguste Paul Charles Albert Noguès, disciple of the great Lyautey and since 1936 Resident General of France in Morocco, the flame of patriotism flared for a moment brightly. But his plea to the homeland for continuance of hostilities—C’est avec mon cœur de soldat que j’adresse cet appel à mon chef’—had fallen on deaf ears and he had now resigned himself to carrying out his oath to the aged marshal to defend North Africa against all aggressors. With more than half of France occupied by the Germans, Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité were replaced by Travaille, Famille, Patrie. Like Lord Gort and Duff Cooper, Mandel and his colleagues were brushed aside, and Noguès settled down to his long battle of wits with the German Armistice Commission. The silent struggle for North Africa was on.
In respect to another struggle, that for the French Navy, the British were neither inactive nor silent. In the general confusion the Richelieu had managed in 1940 to slip away from Brest and safely reach Dakar. The uncompleted but formidable battleship Jean Bart had been surreptitiously moved to Casablanca. At Mers-el-Kebir, the naval harbor of the Mediterranean port of Oran, rode two battleships and the 26,500-ton cruisers Strasbourg and Dunkerque. Within a fortnight of the fall of France—it was July 3—their commander, Admiral Gen-soul, was handed an ultimatum. He was then and there given the choice of (1) sailing his ships to British ports or to a French port in the West Indies, (2) placing them under U.S. trusteeship for the duration of the war, or, finally, (3) sinking them. The ultimatum was backed up by the grim silhouettes of His Majesty’s Hood, Valiant, Resolution, Ark Royal, two cruisers, and eleven destroyers. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Admiral Gensoul refused and twelve hundred French sailors lost their lives. Two months later General de Gaulle’s ill-fated expedition to Dakar rubbed salt into French wounds and strengthened the conviction of French-African governors that automatic resistance to aggression from any quarter was preferable to having the Germans take over the job for them.
The U.S. approach was more subtle. As yet we were not, of course, in the war, but the importance of keeping North Africa out of German hands was obvious. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1940 the able and wily counselor of our embassy at Vichy, Mr. Robert D. Murphy, was dispatched to North Africa. There he conferred with General Weygand, recently designated by Vichy as Delegate General to North Africa with an over-all directive to organize and strengthen the defenses and economy of the entire area and to maintain cordial if firm relations with the Moslem population. From their meeting of minds flowered the famous Murphy-Weygand Accord of February, 1941, the somewhat moot policy of U.S. economic aid to North Africa, and the activities of our attendant control officers, familiarly known as “Bob Murphy’s Vice-Consuls.”
Shortly before Pearl Harbor, the Germans, suspicious of Weygand’s activities, had effected his recall. Murphy’s men had meantime made contact with the French underground resistance movement in Algiers. Through them, in the spring of ‘42, liaison was established in southern France with General Giraud, recently escaped from the German fortress of Königstein. To their necessarily veiled hints in regard to possible U.S. intervention in North Africa, Giraud responded by appointing as his undercover representative in Algiers his friend General Charles Mast, another alumnus of Königstein. In Morocco he named as his proxy General Émile Béthouart, leader of the French expedition to Narvik and presently commanding the Casablanca division. One thing, however, was evident. General Béthouart’s plans had gone awry.
“Do you know the General commanding the Casablanca division?” I asked the Lieutenant Colonel.
“I know him,” he replied stiffly.
It was slow going, but a piecing together of the talk on the veranda and subsequent conversations produced a scenario something like this:
“Early in the summer General Béthouart was informed by the Algiers underground that an American expedition to North Africa was in the making. No mention of places. No date. On the evening of November 4 he received word that the moment was near at hand. On November 6 at 7 P.M. a scrap of paper left on his desk announced, “The operation will take place during the night of the seventh-eighth.”
Short on time and information, Béthouart went to work. Assuming that the principal landing would take place at Rabat, the capital and nerve center of French Morocco, he lost no time in dispatching to Rabat a battalion of the Colonial Infantry Regiment, commanded by his friend Colonel Magnan, with instructions to be prepared to surround the Residence. He hoped to talk Noguès over to his side, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Or so he thought.
November 7. Midnight. Before the headquarters of the Casablanca Division, General Béthouart’s car was in readiness. At 12:02 the General and two members of the underground stepped into it.
“If anyone attempts to stop us my orders are to shoot,” the General said.
After leaving les Roches Noires and the sea, the Casablanca-Rabat road winds through hilly country before descending again to the plain and paralleling the shore line. To the General’s eyes, straining westward, the dark Atlantic revealed exactly nothing. And now the outskirts of Rabat, the double-arched entrance through crenelated walls, and soon General Béthouart was sweeping up the main stem of the capital. Beyond the palace of the Sultan of Morocco, and a few hundred yards below the Residence of General Noguès, the car came to a stop. Followed by his companions, General Béthouart entered the État-Major, military headquarters of General Lascroux, commander of all Moroccan ground forces. Earlier in the evening Lascroux by prearrangement with the underground had been kidnaped and spirited away to Meknes. Meantime Magnan’s men had quietly infiltrated the gardens of the Residence, which was now surrounded. At the État-Major all military and civilian telephone lines had been rendered inoperative. So far so good. The time was 2 A.M. Béthouart was in charge and Noguès virtually a prisoner incommunicado. But was he?
In his pretty villa hard by the Rabat Cathedral, Colonel Jean Piatte, Chief of Staff of General Noguès’s Military Cabinet, was peacefully asleep when the telephone by his bedside jangled. The voice of General Noguès. “Come up at once to the Residence.”
Within three minutes Piatte was on his way downstairs.
“Be as quiet as possible when you come back,” Madame Piatte murmured sleepily, “and don’t wake the children.” In reply, the click of the front door, followed by the dull clang of the grilled gate.
At the end of his street Piatte turned left up the main boulevard. As he passed the second palm tree, two men stepped from behind it. One of them stuck a gun in his ribs.
“Come along quietly,” the other said.
At the État-Major Colonel Piatte stood at attention before General Béthouart.
“You are out late, Colonel,” the General said.
“I was on my way to the Residence, mon général.”
“I will see that you get there,” the General said. “Sit down.”
Colonel Piatte sat down.
“At five this morning,” the General said, “the Americans will make landings in force on all the beaches of Morocco.”
“Splendid,” Colonel Piatte said. “What do we do now?”
“You will go to the Residence,” the General said. “In his heart Noguès is a patriot. He will listen to reason. He must be made to see the light.”
Colonel Piatte, flanked by his two chaperons, made his way up the gentle incline of the curving boulevard. On either side the windows of the white administration buildings stared blankly as he passed. Fifty yards from the rear entrance of the Residence four armed figures barred the way. The password was given and received. A whispered consultation. His escorts stepped aside, motioning him to proceed.
At the rear entrance, no one. Colonel Piatte entered. Passing his own office, he followed the narrow corridor, with its straw wall matting, through the orderly room and the small double doors giving access to the office of the Resident General of France in Morocco. Except for the light on the spacious table-desk, the large high-ceilinged room was in semidarkness.
General Noguès pushed away the papers he was examining and leaned against the high back of his chair.
“Ah, it is you, Piatte,” he said. “You have taken your time.”
“I was unavoidably detained,” the Colonel said.
To Piatte’s account and to his presentation of the case the Resident General listened stonily. As the Colonel paused for breath, Noguès, with a sudden movement, leaned across the desk, his pale face now contorted with ill-suppressed excitement.
“So Béthouart thinks I should join his movement. Well, just take a look at these,” he rasped, shoving the papers in Piatte’s direction. “I am ‘cordially invited to join in the liberation of my country.’ On the strength of what? Documents without signatures, without dates, without places, names. ‘The Americans are landing in force.’ What force? No indications, no figures, nothing. A commando raid? Another Dieppe fiasco? Another Saint-Nazaire? A trap? And tomorrow the Germans on our necks. Ah, no. It would be too stupid.”
“Who brought these?” Piatte asked.
“Captain de Verthamon, aide to General Béthouart—and,” General Noguès added bitterly, “my nephew.”
“He is here?”
“In the next room. Under arrest.”
The muscles of General Noguès’s face were twitching as he reached for one of the two telephones on his desk. There was no response. He put back the receiver.
“Still dead,” he said. “For a dissident General, Béthouart is efficient in his way, but there is one thing he has overlooked.”
Picking up the other receiver, General Noguès spoke crisply. “Get me Admiral Michelier.” And during the ensuing pause added, “He seems to have forgotten the private line.”
Another minute and Vice-Admiral F. C. Michelier, in command of all the naval forces and coast defenses of Morocco, was on the wire.
“Michelier”—Noguès’s voice was tense—“have you anything further to report?”
“Nothing, mon general.”
“You are sure?”
“For a hundred miles out in the Atlantic there is nothing, absolutely nothing.”
General Noguès carefully replaced the receiver.
“You see?” he said.
At the État-Major, General Béthouart looked at his wrist watch. One hour and twenty minutes to go. Further down the boulevard the black guards at the entrance to the Méchouar gazed impassively across the empty square. Within the vast walled enclosure the palace of the Sultan slumbered, dark and inscrutable, as twenty miles off shore, the convoys, shepherded by half a hundred American warships, lowered their landing craft to the black surface of the sea.
4 A.M. The telephone on General Noguès’s desk buzzes insistently. He whips the receiver off the hook. The Admiralty. “Fort Blondin reports the sound of high-powered marine engines at an estimated distance of five miles.”
“Impossible,” the General mutters to himself. “It is impossible that the Americans can be ready before spring. If there were anything serious afoot Bob Murphy would not have failed to tell me.”
Restlessly he paces the floor, his shadow gigantic on the far wall. Above him the polished cedar beams bearing the lofty ceiling are hardly visible. Black streaks across a somber firmament.
4:28 A.M. Again the buzzing of the telephone. Again the Admiralty. “Fort Blondin has just flashed its searchlight out to sea, only to be met by a hail of machine-gun bullets.”
For a moment General Nogués stops dead in his tracks. Then he turns to his staff, his mouth a white line. “Everyone to his post.” Each word is rapped out as on an anvil. “S’il se produit quoi que ce soit, résistez.”
The fatal order to resist is given. The die is cast.
At the elbow of the waiting Béthouart the telephone rings. The voice of Noguès, cold as ice. “Within an hour General Leyer will have you encircled with tanks. If you do not immediately call off the men who now surround the Residence, all the officers will be shot as rebels.”
“I have no wish that French blood should be spilled,” Béthouart replied. “If you have decided to resist the Americans, my own role is terminated. I will come to the Residence.”
Within an hour General Béthouart was under arrest and on his way to Meknes for imprisonment and trial.
It was half past four in the afternoon when the last French officer affixed his signature to the required slip of paper, saluted, and descended the steps leading from the veranda of the Hotel Miramar.
“I engage myself on my honor”—it sounded less stilted in French—“to hold myself at the disposition of the American Military Authorities, and to present myself twice each day (9 hours and 16 hours) at Headquarters, Hotel Miramar, Fedala, to the person of Major Codman.
(signed) CAPITAINE UNTEL
Fedala, November 8, 1942”
The French lieutenant colonel’s suggestion; it seemed simpler and cheaper than building a prisoner-of-war stockade.
In the hotel lobby Monsieur Rougeron was reassuring Colonel Ratay.
“Naturally,” he was saying, “the General will have the best room in the house—the room of Captain von Verder, Chief of Mission, no less. The chambermaid is changing the sheets. In a small quarter of an hour it will be ready.”
In the empty bar, the radio kept on talking to itself.
“Aliô, Maroc. Aliô, Maroc. We rebroadcast an important communication from General Dwight Eisenhower.”
Out there on the Texas, Lieutenant Auberjonois still going strong.
“‘The forces under my orders,’ says General Eisenhower, ‘come to you as friends. We count on your cooperation. I invite you to comply with the following instructions: By day, fly two—I repeat, two—French flags, one above the other. Or else both the French Tricolor and the American Stars and Stripes. By night, beam your searchlight projectors vertically. I repeat, by night, point your searchlights to the sky. In order to avoid the useless shedding of blood, follow these instructions to the letter.’ You are listening to a broadcast of the American...”
The radio began spitting like an angry cat, then without transition broke into a slow insistent tango. The Rabat station trying to jam our stuff. Through the strains of the violins, Auberjonois’s voice barely audible.
“Aliô, Maroc. Aliô, Maroc. This morning Radio Algiers broadcast a declaration of General Giraud. I repeat, the glorious General Giraud, finally escaped and now the head of French land forces in Algeria. General Giraud said, in substance, ‘Today America offers her loyal and disinterested support. This is our chance to live again. I ask you to have confidence in me as I have confidence in you. We have but one goal, that of final victory.’ You are listening to a broadcast of the American Forces, Moroccan Sector.”
Giraud in Algiers. O.K. With communications virtually non-existent, Algeria might have been on the other side of the world. Only later did we learn of General Eisenhower’s stormy session with Giraud in the Rock of Gibraltar and of the fortuitous appearance in distant Algiers of Admiral Francis Darlan, Commander in Chief of all military, naval, and air forces under Marshal Pétain. For the time being, Western Task Force in Morocco was on its own.
A jeep flying the colors and a white flag swung into the hotel driveway, crunching to a stop before the entrance. Colonel Hap Gay, General Patton’s Chief of Staff, slapping the dust from his uniform, came briskly up the steps. Close behind him, Colonel Wilbur, Chief of Special Activities G-2, appropriately named, since they already included during the past twelve hours two dashes to Casablanca and the capture of that noisome battery of 75’s out on the end of Cap Fedala.
In answer to Ratay’s inquiries, Colonel Gay shook his head.
“The French Navy seems determined to slug it out with us,” he said.
Colonel Gay is the laconic type. It took time to piece together his shorthand account of their wild ride through the French lines into Casablanca, where enthusiastic crowds engulfed the flag-bedecked jeep and showered its occupants with sincere if incoherent tributes in French, Arabic, and Berber; of the call at French Military Headquarters only to learn of Bèthouart’s arrest; of the visit to the Admiralty, where Admiral Michelier refused even to receive them; of the scene in the outer office, the Admiral’s aide standing stiffly at attention, while, to the rumble of our naval guns, the Chief of Staff of Western Task Force, unarmed and a dozen miles behind the French lines, stated the case for Reason and Common Sense.
“No use,” Colonel Gay said. “I had just about finished talking when the big eight-inch guns of the El Hank coastal battery let go with a salvo that damn near blew out the windows. ‘That,’ said the Admiral’s aide, ‘is your answer.’”