OPERATION TORCH

Intelligence work can frequently be done by men who are government officials or who have the “cover” of government officials. In time of war, of course, they operate most effectively in neutral countries, which are still carrying on trade and exchanging representatives with the warring powers. Undoubtedly, Switzerland was much more important to the Allies during the past war in her neutral capacity than she would have been had she declared war on Germany. Operation Sunrise, by which OSS engineered the early surrender of 26 German divisions in Italy could never have taken place without the neutral meeting ground which Switzerland provided.

In addition OSS uncovered a great deal of information through its contacts in Switzerland, although it must be recognized that undoubtedly the Germans uncovered some information too. Neutral countries afford a free market and free competition for the spies of both sides.

This fact is readily apparent in the story of OSS participation in Operation Torch, which was the Allied invasion of North Africa. German and American agents in Africa had equal opportunities. That the Americans were amateurs makes the final result all the more creditable.

The oasis on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert, extending both west and east of Spain, consists of a long semicircle of coastal countries whose domed cities glare white in the hot sun and succeed in averting the traveler’s eye from the festering filth of their native quarters. Tangier, Spanish Morocco, French Morocco, Algeria—theirs are comparatively minor ports of call, not particularly beckoning to the American tourist. Probably it is because of their many nationalities and their close yet separate relationship to the governments of Europe that they have frequently been chosen by novelists as the scenes of international intrigue. In the summer of 1941 they became such a scene in fact.

They were neutral. German and American officials passed each other that summer on the streets of Casablanca, Oran, Algiers, and Tunis as they did throughout the war in the international zone of Tangier. These officials were not there to decide the major issues of war. Their relationship to each other had been settled or was being settled in the seats of power to the north, in Vichy, Berlin, London, and Madrid. In Vichy, Petain had surrendered to Adolf Hitler. The old man had succeeded, for the time being at least, in keeping French North Africa to the French. The best spies in French North Africa said, however, that it was only a question of time.

In Madrid, Franco was biding his time too. The best spies in Spanish Morocco said that Hitler would attack Africa through Spain with Franco’s connivance and aid. Later, they said he would not. It was a question, and certain persons were willing to pay large amounts of money for an answer.

In London, the Churchill government fretted over all of its difficult situations, not the least of which was that in July of 1940, British warships had shelled the French Navy at Mers El Kebir, and as the result of it, Petain had broken off relations with England. Not that France was then a potent enemy—though its fleet was still worth a good deal—but it meant that all known British agents were being rounded up and thrown out of French North Africa, that there was no adequate communication system there for British spies.

It was indeed a difficult situation, for though nothing was being settled in Africa, much might be, and in any event, there was a great deal to learn there.

There was the question of the French Army. Which way would it swing? Its leadership was conservative to the point of reaction, inclined towards monarchism, extremely anti-German, almost as anti-British, on the whole loyal to Petain. If Laval came to power, it might be a different story, or it might not. The younger French officers and men, some of whom had escaped after the fall of France, were beaten, disgraced and angry, anxious to fight against Germany but suspicious of British leadership, or even of British partnership. Most of all they feared the final failure to France which might result from an abortive uprising, a half-hearted Allied attempt, the kind of action which the French spoke of scornfully as “Allied commando raids.”

There was the French Navy, jealously guarding the balance of its fleet, and particularly the proud ship, the Jean Bart. In the old naval tradition which knows no bars of nationality, it was far more conservative than the Army. Furthermore the shelling by the British in which more than a thousand Frenchmen had been killed still rankled deep.

There were the Riffs of Morocco under Tassels, willing to rise if there were money and arms to be had for it, and there were the Arabs, interested in the power politics around them, anxious to be on the winning side.

There was the Italian Armistice Commission in Tunisia, the German in Morocco, the combined commission in Algeria. They were there to see that the Hitler-Petain terms were carried out and to remind the French that they had been defeated. There was the little group of Spanish republicans who had managed to keep out of concentration camps, and there were the riff-raff spies of no nation who for years had made a good living selling secrets on the open market.

All of these groups and their relationships to each other were discussed and rediscussed in the small waterfront cafés that summer where agents of all nations found that there was much to learn and that it was not very difficult to learn it.

There was, in fact, only one secret which was not for sale on the fringe of the African coastline that summer. The secret was the date, or the approximate date, when Africa would be invaded by the United States.

That it would be invaded was no secret at all. United States officials intercepted a telegram to Germany that summer which read, “There are 10 United States citizens in Casablanca who are there for the purpose of forming a fifth column to pave the way for intended Allied disembarkations in the spring.”

After all, the invasion of North Africa was a factor in Allied strategy which the Germans would have been stupid not to consider. Far to the east in Libya, the tiny British army was battling back and forth between Alexandria and Benghazi and getting nowhere. A pincers movement on Africa was therefore an obvious possibility.

The Germans might even have suspected that the idea was in the mind of Franklin D. Roosevelt before Pearl Harbor, as indeed it was. After Pearl Harbor, the idea became a definite plan which waited only for the recruiting and training of the United States Army.

In the meantime, of course, it was always possible that the Germans themselves would invade. In such an eventuality, the United States hoped that the French in Africa would oppose them. But with Britain and France at swords’ points, with British agents and British radios being tossed out of all French North Africa, if any encouragement was to be given the French, and if anything was to be found out from them, it was up to the United States to do it. The opportunity to carry on that work in Africa was the major reason why Franklin D. Roosevelt did not give way to the urgings of well-meaning citizens who wanted him to break off relations with Vichy.

Preparing for the invasion of North Africa was the first big operational task of OSS. On the success or failure of the task hinged much of the future of the organization. Yet OSS did not inaugurate the intelligence-operational program in Africa. What it did was to make use of men whom the State Department had already placed in the field. These men were vice-consuls of the State Department. That was their title. Yet they did little or nothing of vice-consular work, and their superiors, the United States consuls in Africa, did not know the real reasons why they were there or what they were doing. This peculiar situation came about in the following way:

Shortly after the fall of France, the United States had become a party to what were known as the Weygand-Murphy economic agreements. They were negotiated in North Africa between Robert Murphy, who was then counselor of the United States Embassy at Vichy, and General Weygand, whom Vichy had delegated to rule North Africa. The agreements provided that the United States ship substantial amounts of coal, cotton, gasoline, and sugar to North Africa. In return the French promised not to export these or similar goods out of North Africa. More important, they agreed to allow a small number of United States officials to enter French North Africa and to oversee the goods, to make sure that they were not reshipped to Germany. Checking these goods should not have been a full-time job for any group of reasonably efficient men, and it was not. The small number of United States officials sent to do the job were given vice-consular status and told that their real mission was to collect information.

“The plotters,” they later called themselves, and they were about as amateur a team as has ever faced big-league opposition, about as likely to be successful spies as Mati Hari was likely to be chosen president of Vassar College.

There were Stafford Reid, a construction man from New York, Sidney Bartlett, a California oil man, Leland Rounds, a business man, John Knox, who had graduated from the French Military Academy at St. Cyr, John Boyd, who had been a Coca Cola branch manager in Marseilles, Harry Woodruff and John Utter, two bankers who had lived in Paris, Franklin Canfield, a young lawyer, Donald Coster, an advertising man, Kenneth Pendar, a Harvard librarian who was later to write a revealing book based upon his adventures, Carleton Coon, a Harvard anthropologist, Ridgeway Knight, a wine merchant, and Gordon Browne, who had previously traveled in Morocco.

They arrived in Africa in July of 1941 and set to work under Robert Murphy, acquiring maps, charting fields, measuring coastlines, sounding out French and Arab sentiment, watching ship movements, and trying to make up plausible stories for their superiors, the United States consuls, which would explain their so frequent absence from their offices.

Often they got themselves into trouble. Pendar reports that it was a poor week when one of them did not come up with at least one rumour of a German invasion. One of the men fell violently in love with a French girl who turned out to be a German spy. He had to be sent home. Yet by the time William A. Eddy arrived in Tangier to enlist them all in a joint OSS-State Department venture with Murphy and Eddy at the top, they had laid the groundwork for an intelligence system in North Africa. It was not many months after Eddy’s arrival that one of them said, in a cable to Washington: “I recommend that when the troops are ready to begin landings I be authorized to arrange for the assassination of the German Armistice Commission at Casablanca.” In the training ground of Africa, United States agents learned fast.

Eddy is a man of the highest character. Afterwards American minister to Saudi-Arabia, he was born in Syria of missionary parents, became a war hero, a professor of English at Dartmouth College, and president of Hobart College.

When he arrived at Tangier, Eddy had been told that the United States planned to invade Africa as soon as it was strong enough to do so. In aid of the landings, he was to set up intelligence posts in the principal cities. He was to establish a chain of communications between them, and with America. He was to prepare the beachheads and landing fields, and he was to try to nullify French opposition, or if possible, win French support. In the meantime Eddy was to encourage the French to resist the Germans in the event that Hitler beat the Allies to the draw by invading North Africa himself. To do the job, Eddy was to have the services of the vice-consuls working under Robert Murphy, and he himself was to direct their efforts in co-operation with Murphy.

In this difficult dual role, Eddy and Murphy worked excellently together. They ran the OSS group much in the manner of one of Eddy’s college seminars. Together they set up five secret radio stations, Pilgrim in Tunis, Yankee in Algiers, Franklin in Oran, Lincoln in Casablanca, and Midway in Tangier. Eddy spent much of his time traveling back and forth between them. At each post he would call together the OSS men who worked there, and they would sit for hours discussing the latest information and each others’ plans. At the end of the discussion, Eddy would give further orders.

The intelligence-operational mission which Eddy and Murphy set out to accomplish brought them immediately into close touch with high officers of the French Army. Everything in French North Africa centered around the French Army and Navy. Eddy and Murphy soon discovered that the Navy was a closed corporation which would have nothing to do with the Americans so long as Americans had anything to do with the British. It was the French Army, or certain high leaders in it, which was willing to share intelligence of value, and it was the Army which would resist the Germans most effectively if any resistance were to be made.

The head of the French Army in Africa was General Maxine Weygand, a strongly conservative and immensely popular leader. All the evidence which can now be gathered points to the conclusion that Weygand, who had fought the Germans unsuccessfully in 1940, was secretly planning the opportunity to fight them again. Murphy seems to have been in close touch with him. It is certain, at any rate, that Weygand’s sympathies did not appeal to the Germans, who were able to have him recalled to France in the late fall of 1941. He left behind him various staff officers who held themselves ready to lead the French against the Germans, provided they were armed and supplied, and that any American effort in Africa was a major effort and not an abortive raid. Murphy was certainly in touch with these men, and when Eddy arrived he learned about the plan too. Both wanted to accept the French proposal.

Neither Murphy nor Eddy knew when the United States landings would take place—indeed at this time no definite date had been set. But both were convinced that a German invasion was a distinct possibility, and that if the French were armed, they would resist it. Thus they believed that by arming the French, the United States might save North Africa for the Allies.

It was this conclusion, and its logical consequences, which led to Murphy’s castigation in the United States press as a dealer with fascists, and even as a fascist. It was this conclusion which led to Eddy’s fruitless arguments with Donovan, as he begged for supplies for the French. The whole matter of United States policy in respect to the African landings has been so heatedly debated, that it may be well to review the basis for Eddy’s and Murphy’s decision.

The French whom Murphy and Eddy found at the helm in Africa were about as liberal a group as might be assembled at a cocktail party given by the Chase National Bank. They represented the sympathies of the conservative colonials among the French population, a large number of whom were of Army and Navy families. There was not in the whole of French North Africa a single cell or unit which owed allegiance to Charles de Gaulle. The French Army was loyal to Petain because they were Frenchmen and Petain was the chief of France. It was a strange sort of logic which allowed many of the leaders in the Army to insist upon their loyalty to Petain and at the same time, agree to aid the Americans, even if the marechal did not go along. “It is what the Marshal would do if he could,” one of them said.

The underground in Africa then, in the sense of a powerful, organized group which could be used against the Germans, consisted of certain leaders within the French Army. Whether they liked it or not, the French Army was the only resistance which Murphy and Eddy could find.

As soon as they had completed arrangements with the French, Eddy wired Donovan for tons of supplies. Donovan was amazed at their quantity and said so. Eddy countered with beautifully worded arguments, the essence of which was that if the French were willing to risk their lives in unloading and hiding the supplies, the Americans ought to be willing to send them. “It is my conviction,” said Eddy, “that failure on our part to give this support will be fatal to our plans to keep Morocco and North Africa strong enough to resist enemy aggression. We will not find such leaders elsewhere, and we dare not lose them now.…”

Donovan countered with talk of Australia. A fleet had been assembled for Africa in January, but had been diverted to Australia, so that nothing could be done now.

To Eddy in Africa, mention of Australia was merely an annoying change of subject. Every Allied sympathizer in Africa was excited and impatient, and Eddy and Murphy not least of all. In April, 1942, Laval had come to power. The Germans planned to enter Tunisia the moment that Malta fell. Laval would undoubtedly then surrender North Africa, and the whole French Army, still weak, would fall into Axis hands.

But it was not necessary to look into the future in order to feel downhearted. With Laval’s coming to power, the French fascist, Doriot, began a huge campaign of collaboration in Africa. The leaders in various units of the Army with whom Eddy and Murphy had made their plans, were being gradually removed and replaced by Laval men. The Axis grip on North Africa was growing tighter by the moment.

“They are taking all the risk. They will receive, distribute, and use the supplies, every step being taken with the threat of execution as traitors if they are uncovered. The least we can do is to help supply them on their own terms, which are generous and gallant … we have days, not weeks,” Eddy said, and begged for help.

His prayers were doomed. Donovan turned the matter over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who decided in that same month of April, 1942, that if the Axis intended to occupy North Africa, there was nothing in the world the United States could do to prevent it. In the meantime, they thought it best not to arm the French. Anticlimactically, they proposed that Eddy and Murphy leave the radio stations behind as listening posts and organize guerrilla bands to harrass the enemy if the Axis should invade. It seemed to Eddy when he heard that decision that the Allies had already lost the war in North Africa.

History would seem to have proved that Murphy and Eddy were wrong in their proposals to arm the French. Eddy did not realize at that time what few arms America had. The Germans did not beat the Allies to an invasion date, as Eddy and Murphy feared they would. That they did not, however, was due in large part to the work of Eddy and Murphy.

After the decision had been made, the OSS group in Africa continued to work on the French Army, trying to neutralize it, to make American friends and German enemies even without the inducement of American arms. On a low level, the OSS methods on this job have been recorded by an Austrian black marketeer known as Pinkeye, who helped the Americans:

“I would talk with people of the current situation,” Pinkeye has said, “and we would reminisce of France and speak of the French Army. After awhile, I would make some slight observation uncomplimentary to the Germans. If that was taken up, I would go a little further, making the bridge between the Germans and Vichy. After a meeting or two I would begin to form an idea of whether a man was worth something.”

In the meantime OSS men scattered throughout Africa at the various radio stations continued to watch shipping and cargoes, sketch defenses, and pass back their information. Frequently ships were spotted and sunk by British submarines on the information of OSS men who watched the harbor and the ships which sailed.

The United States consuls, who did not know of these clandestine activities on the part of the men whom they considered their assistants, sometimes caused trouble. Once, the radio station which had been secreted on the roof of the consulate in Tangier had to be moved because the consul’s wife complained of “tapping noises on the roof at night.” Another time Murphy had to intervene with the State Department to save an OSS man whom the consul had proposed to dismiss because he was not “paying any attention to the affairs of the consulate.”

Always the OSS men were asked by the French, “When are the landings coming?” Always they said there would be no landings. As time went on people began to believe them. Eddy himself first learned of the approximate date of the invasion on July 24 in a hotel room at Claridge’s in London.

He had been ordered there to meet General George V. Strong, chief of the Military Intelligence Service. He was introduced to Strong and to General George Patton by Colonel Edwin Buxton, Donovan’s executive officer.

As chief of G-2 Strong had always been anything but partial to OSS. It was up to Eddy to impress him. Eddy must have been an impressive figure. He was wearing his Marine Corps uniform with the five rows of ribbons he had won in the Fifth Marines during the last war, and he had a noticeable limp from old wounds. Even Patton did not yet have five rows of ribbons. “Do you know Bill Eddy?” Buxton said, introducing him to Patton.

“Never saw him before in my life,” said Patton, shaking hands, “but the son of a bitch’s been shot at enough, hasn’t he?”

They took chairs in the room, and Eddy began to talk about Africa. Before he could get fairly under way, Strong interrupted him.

“Now wait a minute, Eddy. I’m G-2 of this Army, and I’m going to tell you something. If you’re going to tell us what you think instead of what you know, you might find yourself contributing to the murder of thousands of your own countrymen. Now for God’s sake, tell us the facts.”

Eddy began again. He told about the French Army, the possibility of its nonresistance to a landing and of its support. He named the groups he had trained outside the Army, and his plans for them. He told of his own organization and of the intelligence on ship movements and defenses which his group had already assembled. Halfway through his explanation, Patton rose and dashed out of the room, saying, “I want Jimmy to hear this.”

He came back in a few minutes with General Doolittle, and Eddy continued, telling, for Doolittle’s benefit, all about the airfields in Africa, and estimating the possibility of their delivery intact to a landing force.

He talked without interruption until one o’clock. When he had finished, Strong rose and held out his hand. “I am very much impressed with you,” he said, “I think you know what you’re talking about.”

The next day Eddy saw Eisenhower. He returned to Africa with more definite plans in mind than he had ever had before. The date set for the landing was now four months away.

The kind of work which the OSS group was to do from that time on, the organizing and training of special forces to take over key points, the gathering of every conceivable piece of information about landing points, the smuggling out of Africa of various persons who might be useful to the Allied plan, the encouraging of the German belief that the landings would take place at Dakar—none of this lends itself readily to description. Perhaps two incidents which involved only three of the men will best describe the field work accomplished during the last four months before the invasion. The first has to do with the Dakar Cover Plan.

The idea that the Allies would land at Dakar and then proceed westward had widespread credence in Africa. It had some logic in itself. Dakar was strategically important and a previous attempt to take it by a British-French force under the leadership of De Gaulle had failed miserably. What was most important about the idea, from the OSS standpoint, was that Dakar was many, many miles from the point where Allied troops would first touch French soil in Africa. OSS men did everything possible to encourage the rumor. One such effort was made by the husky, immaculate Donald Coster, of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, and Radio Station Lincoln at Casablanca.

Coster had been asked by an acquaintance in London to look up two French friends who had escaped from France to Africa. They were known to Coster as Freddie and Walter. As soon as he met them, Coster decided that they were interesting. Freddie was blond and romantic. He had been a moving picture star in France. Walter was dark and muscular but smoothly so. He had once been middleweight boxing champion of Austria. Both had fought in the French Foreign Legion and in the Loyalist army in Spain. They had been placed in a Vichy concentration camp, and had escaped through a remarkable coincidence. Freddie was an extremely good friend of the German diplomat Teddie Auer. They had met in the salons of Paris before the war when Auer had been a military attaché. In Africa, Freddie remarked, Auer had arranged for both of them to be released from prison. Seated across from the two Frenchmen at the Café de la Gare in Casablanca, Coster heard that fact and blinked. Teddie Auer was attached to the German Armistice Commission.

Coster cultivated his new friends. Eventually, on instructions from Eddy sent through Coster, Freddie and Walter were sent to General Auer to sign on as his spies. It was easily done. They told him that they knew Coster, who was an American spy, and that they could get valuable information from him. Auer agreed to hire them and to pay them well. Coster began to feed them correct information, little things such as the numbers of the American agents’ license plates, the dates when Eddy or Murphy would be in Casablanca. Freddie would go off at night to see the German general, and the next morning would call Coster to say, “Your friend from the hospital wants to see you.”

The three would meet at noon for coffee in the Café de la Gare and Coster would receive and give information. Freddie and Walter lived well on the money Auer paid them. Not once did they ask Coster for so much as a franc.

Once, the scheme which Coster had in mind nearly fell through. He received a frantic telephone call from Freddie saying that Auer was acting up. He had told Freddie that he had never seen him in the company of Coster, and that he suspected Freddie was getting his money for nothing. Walter suggested a plan. He, Freddie, and Coster would meet that night at a large café and have dinner in public where the Germans could see them. Coster agreed.

That night at a center table in the café, the three men had black-market steaks and quantities of wine, while they told loud stories and slapped each other’s backs. “As a matter of fact,” Coster recalls, “we got pretty fried.” From a side table, the entire German Armistice Commission with Auer seated in the center, watched in comparative silence. Herr Auer was evidently convinced. Next day, Freddie presented him with the bill for the dinner. He paid it with thanks.

It was in August that Coster planted the information to which all his work had been leading. “Tell Herr Auer,” he said to Freddie, “that you have just learned from me that the final invasion plan has been settled. American and British troops will land on Dakar sometime this fall.” Freddie passed the information on to General Auer that night. Auer was delighted with it. Next morning Freddie reported that he had sent off a special massage to German headquarters at Weisbaden.

The Dakar Cover Plan was a huge success. Three months later, the largest armada the Allies had ever assembled landed in Africa. Yet, it was not once attacked by submarines until four days after the landings had been made. Those four days constituted the exact time that it took the entire German fleet in the South Atlantic to rendezvous off the coast of Dakar and then return to Africa again.

How much Coster’s plotting had to do with this success and how much should be attributed to others, to the invading fleet’s feint toward Dakar, and to the mistakes of the German intelligence will probably never be known. Nevertheless, for the rest of his life Coster will delight in remembering the first conversation he held with a Frenchman on his return to Africa. He had gone back to England and come in again with the invasion forces. When he landed at Oran, he walked up to an old acquaintance, the Vichy French colonel in command of the Oran airfield. Coster extended his hand. The colonel grew red and angry. “Pourquoi êtes-vous ici?” he asked. “Nous vous attendions à Dakar.”

Another example of OSS work in the field was known later as the “Malverne Exfiltration.” Eddy had received a request from invasion headquarters for a pilot to guide the Allied convoys to the beaches. Such a man had been previously offered to David King in Casablanca. His name was Malverne and he was the chief pilot of Port Lyautey.

Malverne had been expelled from France for anti-German activities. He was perfectly willing to be exfiltrated. The question was how to get him across the border, past the French and Spanish authorities into Tangier. Eddy wired King to put him in the baggage compartment, meaning that King should smuggle him out, and not try to bring him through under false passports. King delegated Gordon Browne and Franklin P. Holcombe, who happened to be in Casablanca at the time, to make the trip in their Chevrolet, and hide Malverne in the trailer.

Malverne was fitted in behind some gasoline drums. Two gunny sacks and a Moroccan rug were thrown over him, and across the whole a heavy canvas cover was lashed down, with just enough slack to let in the air. Malverne took up this position and with Browne and Holcombe in the front, set out for Tangier.

It is a long journey from Casablanca to Tangier and the roads are rough. Browne and Holcombe knew that their passenger was taking a terrible beating, but what they worried about most was monoxide from the gasoline drums and the exhaust in the rear. At frequent intervals, Browne would draw up on the side of the road, and walk leisurely to the back of the trailer, pausing to kick the tires as though making a cursory inspection. When he reached the right rear tire, where there was a large gap in the canvas cover, he would inquire in a low voice for Malverne. As though from the bottomless deep, the answer would come. “Tout va bien, pas trop de monoxide.” Browne would go back to his seat and start out again.

They reached the border-control posts at dusk. The French post was run by a friend of David King’s, so the Spanish post was the dangerous one. Holcombe went up to the office with the passports for Browne and himself to have them stamped, while Browne walked casually around the trailer, getting some exercise and keeping an eye on the canvas cover.

One of the customs officers asked him what was in the back, and Browne answered easily, “Gasoline.” It was at that very moment that he noticed the black and white bird dog which belonged to the customs officials. The dog had taken up a position in the rear of the trailer and was pointing Malverne in championship style. Browne picked up a rock and threw it at him; then patted him until Holcombe appeared.

A few minutes later they were driving past the control posts ahead, and eventually they reached Holcombe’s house, high over Tangier. Malverne was let out of the trailer and remarked that such journeys were all very well for the type sportif, but he made an even more dangerous journey later when he took an American destroyer up the Sebu River to Port Lyautey, a task which most Navy men thought could not be done, and for which he received America’s Navy Cross.

Browne has written a report on his journey that night which ends with a note on his own feelings: “It turned out to be an easy job,” he says, “but it wouldn’t have been so good if we had been caught. It would have meant the recall of the vice-consuls in Africa, but worse than that, it would have pointed a sure finger to the landings. That is what we thought about on the dark road to Tangier.”

While all this was going on, Eddy and Murphy were still working hard to ensure as little resistance as possible to the landings. The outlook was not altogether bright. At German insistence, the French Navy and its air force were being given larger defense areas, areas which at the time of the invasion were to cover in some places as much as 40 miles inland. However, the Army leaders with whom Murphy and Eddy had constantly been in touch were still trying. Not long before the invasion, they put forward General Giraud as their logical leader, and again asked that they be taken into full partnership in the invasion. Giraud had escaped from prison and secretly established communication with Murphy from France. He suggested to Murphy that the main force land in the south of France, where he would prepare the ground, and that the African expedition be a sideshow. General Mast, Giraud’s representative in Africa, also pleaded the case to Murphy.

Allied headquarters stood firm, however. On the grounds of security, it would not reveal to the French the time nor the place of the invasion. Eisenhower was willing, however, to send representatives to meet with Giraud or Mast if it would help to neutralize resistance by the French, and if headquarters could get some intelligence from them. But not until the invading fleet had already sailed were Giraud and Mast told even that there would definitely be an invasion.

On October 20, Eddy received a message from Gibraltar: “General Clark and four officers will rendezvous at point agreed on 21 October. Reception party should be at rendezvous, 2100 hours, prepared to remain until dawn. In the event weather fails, arrange alternate plan to meet aboard submarine.…”

Murphy had arranged the meeting, and had set its location. It was to be held at the farmhouse of Jacques Tessier, near the shore, 75 miles west of Algiers. General Mast, Colonel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Murphy, and Ridgeway Knight, Eddy’s OSS representative, arrived at the farm on October 20. At dusk, the signal light was lit, a white electric bulb hanging in a window looking out on the sea. Knight spent the night on the beach, waiting to guide Clark’s party from the submarine, but no one came. In the morning Murphy and the French went back to Algiers, and the next night they tried again.

At midnight, halfway through another lonely vigil, Knight saw a kayak bobbing in the water, a little way offshore. He waited until it beached and he saw a man get out of it; then he stepped forward and identified himself. The man was a British commando officer, and he winked a flashlight to signal three more kayaks out of the darkness. They carried Clark, General Lemnitzer, Colonel Hamblin, Colonel Holmes, Captain Wright of the United States Navy, and two more British commando officers. The party shouldered their kayaks and carried them into the house.

The next morning the French arrived and Clark held staff talks with them until evening. Mast gave Clark details on the ports, tonnage capacities, and dispositions and strengths of the French Army. He insisted that the Americans hold off the invasion for six weeks or more because Giraud’s organization in southern France was not yet ready. It was a difficult situation for Clark because he could not tell Mast that the fleet had already sailed, that it was going to land in Africa and not in France, and that the troops were British as well as American. When Mast outlined the French preparations in France and Africa, Clark could only say that they were satisfactory.

The two staffs had just finished their talks and were sitting down to dinner, when a young French officer burst in at the door. “Gendarmes, gendarmes!” he shouted, waving his hands in a circle. The French officers seemed to vanish. Clark and his staff ducked into a wine cellar. The civilians immediately emptied their pockets of money, laid it on the table, and poured themselves glasses of wine. Somebody produced a pack of cards, and in a moment the farmhouse was the scene of what looked like a drunken poker game.

Someone had told the police to investigate the suspicious arrivals at the lonely farm. It was Murphy who thought of a plan to forestall them. “Go and tell the police,” he told the young French officer, “that there is a member of the American State Department here who is buying a little black-market wine. Tell them he has a girl friend, and is having a little party. Tell them if they break it up, it will create an international incident.”

The French officer left armed with that story, and in an hour was back again. He had convinced the police. General Clark, somewhat cramped and damp, was let out of the cellar.

At four that morning, after three attempts which failed, Clark and his party succeeded in launching their kayaks in a rough sea. By that time, everyone was wet to the skin, and most of the group had taken off their clothes. When the last kayak was lifted onto the waves, with the officers inside, Murphy was so happy he did a dance in the sand. Then everyone went back to Algiers, leaving the French farmer to rake the beach of footsteps.

The meeting between Clark and the French was in a sense the last of the preparations for the invasion. Gaining French support, or at least nullifying French opposition, had been Eddy’s and Murphy’s primary concern from the beginning. They were not to be completely successful. But the principal opposition to the invasion was to be furnished by the French Navy and its air force, and this opposition had been a foregone conclusion from the beginning. Wisely or unwisely, Eddy and Murphy had not been allowed to make as much use of the French as they had desired. Nevertheless, the fact that only 900 men were killed out of the 109,000 soldiers who landed on the beaches was largely due to the fact that most of the French Army did not fight.

There were still jobs to be done after the Clark meeting. Eddy had arranged a commando force of 132 men to eliminate the German Armistice Commission, but the order to do so was canceled at the last minute. Murphy was to get in touch with Admiral Darlan in a final effort to silence the guns of the French Navy. The OSS infiltration of Spanish Morocco to contact native chiefs and help ensure the left flank of the invading troops still went on. A guerrilla force was alerted to seize the key points in Algiers. Men were nominated to stand on the beaches and guide the landing parties in to the shore. And intelligence still poured in from Yankee and Franklin, Lincoln, Midway, and Pilgrim.

It continued to come in up to the very last moment, ensuring that every Vichy ship and every Vichy outpost was spotted for the landing of troops. There was only one slip-up. At the last moment, OSS men learned that the French Army command in Oran had decided to fight. By radio, they tried to warn the ships to prepare for action and come in fighting, but the message was never received, or if received, was not acted upon.

On the night of November 8, Eddy was in Gibraltar. So was General Eisenhower, who had arrived under the name of “Howe,” and General Clark whose alias was “Mark.” Murphy was in Algiers arguing with Darlan. Everything was as ready as it ever would be. The secret had been well kept. The Germans had not even tried to close the Straits of Gibraltar. Allied ships had long been at sea.

On that night, Eddy and Carleton Coon and several others went to the United States Consulate in Gibraltar, where they sat up late with Colonel Holcomb, the military attaché, who did not know what was about to happen, and was a little surprised at the lateness of the visit. They ate sandwiches and drank beer and listened to the radio.

Coon said he remembered the German most clearly, for it broke a sudden silence in the room: “Achtung, Achtung, Achtung! Ein amerikanische Kraftsheer ist auf den nordwest Kust Afrikas! Achtung, Achtung, Achtung!”

Then, before Franklin Roosevelt made his broadcast to the world, came the final message for the secret radio stations which OSS had begun operating in Africa 15 months before. It was a fitting last word: “Écoute, Écoute, Yankee, Franklin, Pilgrim, Midway, Lincoln. Robert arrive. Robert arrive.”

“Robert” was arriving. America’s first big invasion had begun.