CHAPTER 10

Débarquement at Dawn

The supreme battle has begun. It is the battle in France and it is the battle of France. France is going to fight this battle furiously. The clear, the sacred duty of the sons of France, wherever they are and whoever they are, is to fight the enemy with all the means at their disposal.

— Charles de Gaulle

BBC broadcast, June 6, 1944

Faces blackened with burnt cork, the sixteen men of the Fighting French 2nd Chasseurs Parachute Regiment clambered aboard the two Halifax bombers readying for takeoff from the Royal Air Force base at Fairfield in western England. Their red berets and badges bearing the Cross of Lorraine set them apart from the British airmen who had toasted them with tots of whisky and sent them off with cheers and much hand-shaking.[1] By eleven o’clock, they were over the Brittany countryside of northwestern France. The signal lights in each plane’s fuselage — first red, then green — came on and the men jumped. The two units — an officer and seven men in each — were the vanguard of the D-Day invasion. Their instructions were to engage with local Resistance and set in motion the sabotage and harassment that would delay any German attempt to move reinforcements into neighbouring Normandy, where the main landings would take place at dawn.

The unit commanded by Lieutenant Marienne, regrouping after the drop, began a stealthy walk toward its first objective. They had gone only a little way when they heard voices in a foreign language. Was it German? No, decided a paratrooper who claimed to know the language. Were they talking Breton? Corporal Émile Bouetard, a twenty-eight-year-old ex-sailor from Britanny’s Côte du Nord district, thought not. Perhaps the strange voices were German after all because whoever they were, they opened fire. The shots were returned and the paratroopers dispersed. Only later, after the two groups had reassembled, did Lieutenant Marienne learn that Corporal Bouetard had been killed in the skirmish.

A farm lad who dreamed of adventure, Corporal Bouetard had run away to become a ship’s boy at thirteen. He served in the French navy up to the Armistice and after demobilization made his way to Marseille where he shipped out on a vessel bound for the west coast of North America, ending up in Vancouver. From there, he’d made his way back to England, joined the Fighting French, and now, on this dark night in the familiar Breton countryside, he’d become the first man to die in the Allied invasion of Europe.

The dropping of the 2nd Chasseurs Parachute Regiment into Brittany might have been a minor diversionary tactic or a symbolic demonstration of French involvement in the D-Day operations. In any case, it was quickly overshadowed by the immensity of events occurring further eastward, where on the morning of June 6 the first of 155,000 men of the American, British and Canadian armies taking part in Operation Overlord — thirty-five divisions in all — were disembarking from four thousand ships onto the beaches of Normandy. By day’s end, ten thousand aircraft would be flying sorties over the landing beaches.

News of the landings travelled quickly. Outside of the battle zones, the French first heard of the invasion on the German radio, which tried to play down its significance. Captain Raymond Dronne, whose name would become attached with the first elements of the Fighting French to enter Paris, recorded the reaction:

The event that had been awaited for so long was welcomed with joy mixed with anxiety. With joy, because the French were sure that liberation was near. With concern and even skepticism, because of the fear of failure. Would the Allies be thrown back into the sea? The people could not help but remember what had happened in August 1942. Anglo-Canadian forces had landed one morning at Dieppe.… The Canadians had succeeded in reaching the centre of the city.… When the population of Paris learned via the radio of the attack, they thought the Second Front had been opened. They imagined that the tanks would arrive the next day in Paris. Dieppe is not so far away and the tanks could move so fast! That evening, the hope and enthusiasm was transformed: the German radio was singing of victory, the attempt had failed, the Anglo-Canadians had been thrown back into the sea with heavy losses.[2]

At the moment the men of the 2nd Parachute Regiment were dropping onto the moors of Brittany, Charles de Gaulle was finishing dinner with his son, Philippe, in the apartment in Seymour Place that he had kept since reaching London in 1940. De Gaulle had arrived from Algiers on Sunday morning June 4, in response to an invitation from Winston Churchill for what the general knew would be a briefing on the forthcoming invasion of Europe.

His dinner with Philippe brought de Gaulle a welcome respite from the difficult meetings he’d had with Churchill and General Eisenhower. An English valet available to everyone in the building served them “a very English dinner” of soup, boiled beef, and cabbage sprinkled with beer, followed by a cream dessert. De Gaulle cautioned Philippe the man was “without doubt an agent of the intelligence service.” They talked mostly of family, of Philippe’s mother and sisters in Algiers, and his uncles, Xavier and Jacques de Gaulle, who had managed to reach Switzerland with their younger children. More uncertain was the fate of General de Gaulle’s sister, Marie-Agnès, or her husband, Alfred Cailliau, or of Pierre de Gaulle and Philippe’s cousin Geneviève, all of whom had been arrested and deported.

Philippe gave an account of his days at an infantry officers’ training school in Worcestershire and spoke of his posting to the Fighting French 2nd Armoured Division. He was surprised at how long the dinner went on, as his father was normally not one to linger at the table. Philippe was about to leave when de Gaulle’s face took on a serious look. After a glance at a clock on the wall that showed eleven, de Gaulle whispered in a hoarse voice, “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Philippe asked. “The debarquement!” de Gaulle answered. “At this moment, our 2nd regiment of paratroopers is in the air! In addition to our thousands of Maquis fighting underground, these French are the first of the invasion force to land in France. The British and Americans are about to go into Normandy, taking with them our marine commandos.” After swearing Philippe to secrecy until six o’clock next morning, de Gaulle told him he was living a day that had been four years in the making. Philippe asked if he believed the landing would be successful. “Of course, I trust in its success. If it is not, there will be a second, and if necessary a third, until the Reich finally falls.”[3]

De Gaulle had flown to London in a Royal Air Force four-engine York troop transport loaned to him by the prime minister. The aircraft had been converted into a flying conference room and given the nickname Ascalon. De Gaulle was welcomed at Heston airport by an RAF honour guard and a band that played “La Marseillaise.”[4] It was an occasion far different than the almost anonymous debut he’d made on June 17, 1940, and, de Gaulle would have reflected, one that suited his new position as president of the Provisional Government of France. The French National Committee had bestowed the title on him only the day before in Algiers. Thus, de Gaulle could congratulate himself on what he’d achieved since leaving France four years before as little more than a fugitive from a defeated country. He was at the top of his game. Yet he was perturbed on this overcast and storm-threatened morning by the further discourtesies of the Allies toward the Fighting French. The latest insult had been the ban on the transmission of coded French messages through the Allied communications system. De Gaulle had been forced to resort to courier packages to send instructions from Algiers to General Koenig, his military chief in London and the man in charge of the French Forces of the Interior — les Forces françaises de l’intérieur.

As de Gaulle would write in his Mémoires de guerre, France’s sword might still be short but the Fighting French had marshalled 230,000 men in combat readiness. Four divisions of the Corps Expéditionaire Français under General Alphonse Juin were fighting their way alongside American and Canadian armies up the boot of Italy. Word would come this day of the fall of Rome. General Philippe Leclerc’s 2nd Armoured Division, encamped in English bases after having helped conquer German and Italian armies in North Africa, was impatiently waiting to play its role in the coming liberation of the continent.

As de Gaulle completed his inspection of the honour guard, he was handed a letter from Winston Churchill. It was an invitation to lunch on the prime minister’s train, parked on a siding near General Eisenhower’s headquarters outside the English Channel port of Portsmouth. The letter promised details of “momentous and imminent events.”[5] The 140 members of de Gaulle’s staff had scattered throughout London while he travelled down to the coast with his ambassador to Britain, Pierre Viénot. They found Churchill waiting on the tracks outside his railway car, spreading his arms wide in welcome. In the party was the prime minister of South Africa, Marshall Jan Christian Smuts, who had earlier rubbed de Gaulle the wrong way by suggesting that as France was no longer a great power, it should join the Commonwealth. De Gaulle found Churchill in a buoyant mood as he vividly described the “enormous military enterprise” that would unfold in the next days.[6] The fact de Gaulle was being told of the invasion only at the last minute came as no surprise; he had known for months that President Roosevelt was insistent on exclusion of the Fighting French from D-Day planning.

During lunch, talk turned to post-invasion arrangements. Churchill suggested the two work out a plan for civilian administration in liberated territory, and that de Gaulle take it to Washington for Roosevelt’s approval. The president would be sure to “recognize your administration in one form or another.”

De Gaulle, having nursed for months his resentment at the president’s scheme to impose an Anglo-American military government on France, exploded. “Why do you seem to think that I need to submit my candidacy for the authority in France to Roosevelt? The French government exists. I have nothing to ask, in this sphere, of the United States of America or of Great Britain.” Thoroughly worked up, he had no intention of surrendering either autonomy or authority. De Gaulle went on to complain about monetary arrangements the Allies had undertaken for post-liberation France. The scheme to issue “so-called French currency … [which] will have compulsory circulation on French territory” was especially maddening.[7]

Even the British press was onto this questionable exercise to put into circulation five billion of “unbacked” francs, headed “Emis en France,” but bearing no mention of the French Republic or other authority. A Daily Mail journalist, Alastair Forbes, was writing that “issuance of Allied paper francs completely unbacked by anybody is as inept a piece of unintelligence as the Allies have been guilty of in this war.”[8]

These Yankee francs looked very much like U.S. dollars and de Gaulle thought they would be “easy to counterfeit.”

De Gaulle told Churchill he would not be surprised to hear Eisenhower proclaim he is taking France under his own authority, with approval of the prime minister and the president.

“And you!” Churchill retorted. “How do you expect that Britain should take a position separate from that of the United States? Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall choose Roosevelt.”

This was more than a mere personality clash. At the root of the disagreement was President Roosevelt’s determination to ensure that the French people after the war would have the opportunity to choose a government other than that of Charles de Gaulle. Distrustful of de Gaulle’s faithfulness to democracy and doubtful of the degree of support the general enjoyed in France, Roosevelt fought against letting the Fighting French establish civilian control in liberated areas.

A “School of Military Government” had been set up at the University of Virginia in 1942 to train officers to manage civil affairs in former enemy-occupied lands. Out of this came the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT) that by early 1944 was in operation in Italy. Agreements were reached with governments in exile of Norway, Holland, and Belgium for American civil affairs officers to work alongside local personnel, but no such agreement had been made for France. How Americans who had no knowledge of the French language or culture could be trained in two months to act as prefects in French cities, with responsibility for utilities, railroads, the post office, and policing was a stunning question to which no one had an answer. These “sixty-day marvels,” as they came to be known, would face insurmountable tasks without the support of French administrators. Military government, the French feared, would lead to precisely the anarchy in which communism thrives, and which the Provisional Government was determined to prevent.[9]

To de Gaulle, “the president’s intentions seemed … on the same order as Alice’s adventures in Wonderland.”[10] France, in the war more than two years before the United States, had no intention of changing one form of oppression for another.

Despite the president’s opposition to de Gaulle, the tide was beginning to shift in the general’s favour among senior Allied officers. General Eisenhower had promised de Gaulle in December 1943 that he would “recognize no French power in France other than your own.”[11]

De Gaulle, speaking to him in English, replied: “You are a man.”

Eisenhower may have been basing his judgment on military intelligence as well as his own experience with de Gaulle, both of which were more favourable to the Fighting French than anything coming from Washington.

In January 1944, the U.S. Military Intelligence Service produced a report affirming that the French Committee of National Liberation “enjoys extremely large popular support in Metropolitan France, among all classes of society.” It added:

Vichy has lost all vestiges of popular support except among the small but powerful pro-German group. Pétain is regarded as a senile figure without any real power, hated by most, pitied by a few. Laval is considered a clever intriguer and unscrupulous opportunist and is thoroughly despised.… All evidence confirms that tremendous changes have taken place in French morale and that in the last year there has been a veritable national revival, animated by lofty ideals of patriotism and by a mysticism akin to the crusading spirit. Gaullism has a tremendous psychological appeal to the French.

The Resistance groups form a powerful and united force although they suffer from lack of arms and from constant attempts on the part of Vichy and the German police to break them up.… The acceptance by the Resistance movements in France of the leadership of General de Gaulle and the French National Committee is confirmed by the statement made by General de Lattre de Tassigny on 9 November 1943, to Admiral Stark, that the “Resistance movement naturally and inevitably accepted the leadership of de Gaulle as the present political head of the French national revival.”

Inasmuch as the principal Resistance groups in Metropolitan France consider themselves a part of the French forces of National Liberation represented in Algiers by the French Committee, there appears to be little possibility of effective liaison through any other agency.[12]

The good sense of this stunningly well-reasoned analysis was reflected in two letters written by the American assistant secretary of war, John J. McCloy, to Henry L. Stimson, the secretary of war, on January 13 and 20. The first noted that U.S. relations with the French Committee “have not been good” and argued that the time had come to “deal with the Comité as the organization responsible for civil affairs in liberated areas of France.” The Committee has declared, McCloy added, “its intention to restore free democratic government in France and has proposed a specific plan to accomplish this end.” To this, McCloy added an ominous warning: “It would be ‘dynamite’ to intervene in the internal affairs of France as we used to do in small central American states.” In his follow-up letter, McCloy set out to demolish arguments that American support for de Gaulle could “prejudice the eventual establishment of a French government based on the free and untrammelled selection by the French people.” Deciding what group to support in each region would be to take sides “in French politics just as much.” It was important to “lose no time” in obtaining authority to consult with the Committee on “basic plans for the administration of civil affairs” in France.[13]

In the face of such admonitions, President Roosevelt bent only slightly. He continued to rely on the advice of Admiral William Leahy, his former ambassador to Vichy, who now was head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. “When Allied troops enter France,” Leahy advised the president in February, “the most reliable person to whom we could look for help in rallying the French [is] Pétain.”[14]

A month later, Roosevelt telegraphed General Eisenhower advising him that “you may consult with the FCNL, and may authorize them in your discretion to select and install the personnel necessary for such administration.” He was not, however, limited to dealing with only the committee. He was further cautioned that “such dealings shall not constitute recognition.”

Despite the rancorous exchange between Churchill and de Gaulle at lunch, the two men ended by toasting each other, with Churchill raising his glass “to de Gaulle who never accepted defeat.”

Feeling well-fed, the party, led by the prime minister, who was dressed in a blue Royal Air Force uniform that fitted him somewhat snugly, set out for General Eisenhower’s headquarters in the nearby New Forest. Eisenhower had been up most of the night weighing the weather forecasts of his meteorologists. On their advice, he had ordered a twenty-four-hour postponement in the invasion; any further delay would force the whole operation to be put off at least two weeks before there would be another favourable conjunction of the moon and the tides.

Eisenhower, perhaps more concerned with being considerate than in actual need of counsel, asked de Gaulle what he thought of the gamble on the weather. “I will only tell you,” de Gaulle said, “that in your place I should not delay.”[15]

These pleasantries soon vanished as talk got around to the radio broadcast Eisenhower would make after the landings. The discussion began with Eisenhower, displaying what de Gaulle detected as “evident embarrassment,” handing over a copy of his talk.[16] De Gaulle reacted with distaste as he read it. He didn’t like the part asserting that the French would be required to carry out Eisenhower’s orders and that civil officials should “carry on in the exercise of their functions” until “the French themselves should choose their representatives and their government.”

Especially objectionable was the lack of recognition of the French authority that for years had been arousing opposition to the Germans, and had now assembled a substantial army it had willingly put under Eisenhower’s command. Clearly, the statement — written by officials in the State Department — was designed to reinforce the Rooseveltian strategy to blunt and deter any assumption of power by de Gaulle’s provisional government: “I, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower … call on all Frenchmen to obey the laws that I … promulgate.” It made it sound as if Eisenhower would be taking control of the country — a “summons to obey a foreign general.” De Gaulle explained his objections. Eisenhower sounded accommodating. “It’s only a draft I am ready to change according to your remarks,” the American general told him.[17]

De Gaulle reworked the draft at his headquarters at Carlton Gardens later that day, and on Monday morning sent a revised text to Eisenhower. Word came back that it was too late to make any changes, which was about what de Gaulle had expected. For once, Eisenhower had been less than truthful, but there were other issues today to occupy everyone’s mind. With all of southern England a vast military camp, the concentration of forces in the Channel ports had reached a point where the invasion fleet either had to go, or be retired for an indefinite period.

At 3:30 that morning, General Eisenhower had awoken in his trailer, dressed, and was driven through driving rain to naval headquarters. The meteorologists presented him with the “astonishing declaration” that “by the following morning a period of relatively good weather, heretofore completely unexpected, would ensue, lasting probably thirty-six hours.” The choice was clear: “OK, let’s go.” The invasion would take place at dawn Tuesday, June 6.[18]

The dispute between Eisenhower and de Gaulle renewed itself in more ugly fashion later in the day when Charles Peake, the U.K. Foreign Office delegate to the Fighting French, arrived at Carleton Gardens to discuss the radio broadcasts to be made after the landing. First the rulers of Norway, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg would speak, followed by the prime minister of Belgium, then Eisenhower, and finally, de Gaulle. This scenario would not “play,” de Gaulle told Peake; if he spoke right after Eisenhower, he would appear to be sanctioning what he had said. Worse, it would mean accepting “a place in the succession unsuitable to the dignity of France.” If de Gaulle were to speak, “it could only be at a different hour and distinct from the series.”[19]

The reverberations of de Gaulle’s declaration rocked Whitehall when Peake reported his refusal. Churchill, in a late afternoon Cabinet meeting at No. 10 Downing Street, flew into a tirade. Reinforced by several whiskies, he launched into a long, emotional diatribe against de Gaulle, concluding by calling him an “obstructionist saboteur.” At a point where his anger seemed about to get the better of him, Churchill received word of a second Gaullist insult: the general was refusing to allow French liaison officers to embark with the invasion force. It had been intended they would work with British and American officers in restoring public services in liberated communities. It was all too much for the prime minister — a betrayal of loyalties and an act of “monstrous ingratitude” that could not be condoned.

Charles de Gaulle may have suspected the depth of the ruckus now enveloping the upper echelon of the Allied command, but if so he kept it from his son during their dinner at Seymour Place. At about ten o’clock, Anthony Eden, now foreign secretary in the Churchill government, summoned Pierre Viénot, de Gaulle’s ambassador to London, to the Foreign Office. Viénot was at pains to deny that de Gaulle would not speak, only that it would have to be at a time of his choosing. As for the liaison officers, yes they had been withdrawn; “Fighting France could not associate itself with an ‘occupation’ of the national territory.”

For the rest of the night, Viénot moved back and forth between the two camps. At two o’clock in the Connaught Hotel, he told de Gaulle of Churchill’s diatribe against him. “They wanted to trick me, I will not be tricked,” de Gaulle declared. “I deny their right to know whether I shall speak to France.” Then de Gaulle turned on his messenger and Viénot was forced to endure what he called “the worst dressing down of my life.”[20]

When the ambassador returned to the Foreign Office to confirm that de Gaulle would speak but that the liaison officers would not leave, he found Churchill sitting in Eden’s office. Another furious argument ensued. Churchill accused de Gaulle of “treason at the height of battle.”[21] He then strode across to No. 10 and roused his officials with instructions to tell the American military to “put de Gaulle in a plane and send him back to Algiers — in chains, if necessary. He must not be allowed to re-enter France.”[22] He dictated a letter to de Gaulle ordering him out of the country and told an aide, Desmond Morton, to deliver it in person. Instead, Morton took it to Eden, who phoned Churchill and somehow convinced him to back off. Eden burned the letter. By the time Viénot got back to de Gaulle, he found the general had resumed his usual “icy calm.”

The longest night before the longest day was almost over. By dawn, more than twenty thousand airborne troops had landed in France; they were followed by seventy thousand British and Canadian troops and nearly sixty thousand American soldiers who disembarked from landing craft at beaches designated as Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. A man attentive to every possibility, General Eisenhower had prepared two statements. The first was to be issued if the landings were successful, the second only if Allied forces failed to gain a foothold. In it, Eisenhower had written that he would bear full responsibility for the devastating turn of events.

General Eisenhower found the first reports “most encouraging” and by mid-morning it was “apparent that the landing was going fairly well.”[23] He would not have to release the statement he had prepared in case of failure. Casualties, while substantial, were not more than expected: seven thousand by the time the invasion force had breached the first bastions of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall that day.

De Gaulle spoke on the BBC at six o’clock. After his stirring pronouncement of the “supreme battle,” he made it clear that his provisional French government would be in charge of areas liberated by the Allied armies:

The orders given by the French government and by the French leaders it has named for that purpose [must be] obeyed exactly. The actions we carry out in the enemy’s rear [must be] coordinated as closely as possible with those carried out at the same time by the Allied and French armies. Let none of those capable of action, either by arms, or by destruction, or by giving intelligence, or by refusing to do work useful to the enemy, allow themselves to be made prisoner; let them remove themselves beforehand from being seized and from being deported. The battle of France has begun. In the nation, the Empire and the armies there is no longer anything but one single hope, the same for all. Behind the terrible heavy cloud of our blood and our tears here is the sun of our grandeur shining out once again.[24]

There was no mention of the struggle for control over liberated territory, or of other frictions that had marred the relationship between de Gaulle and his Allies. His speech was a clear, inspiring call to renewal of the French fact in France. Listening to it in his office at No. 10, Churchill was caught up in the emotion of the moment. As Lord Ismay, his chief military advisor, looked on with astonishment, tears began to roll down Churchill’s cheeks. The prime minister looked up with a jerk, uttering words “Pug” Ismay could hardly believe he had heard: “You tub of lard, have you no sensitivity?”[25]

In the days following the invasion, de Gaulle consolidated his position. In the first hours of D-Day, Resistance units — General Koenig’s French Forces of the Interior — destroyed nearly one thousand targets, including railway lines, bridges, and telecommunications facilities. The 2nd Armoured Division awaited impatiently in North Africa for orders to sail to England, while the Fighting French expeditionary force in Italy was helping clean out the last German defensive positions in Italy.

A week after the landings, Allied forces had penetrated to a depth of thirty kilometres on a front 160 kilometres wide. Field Marshal Rommel, who had been visiting Hitler in Berchtesgarden when the invasion began, puzzled over where the next Allied push might come. He still expected a large-scale landing on the Channel coast east of Normandy, and consequently dispersed his forces rather than concentrate them for a decisive counterattack. In all, Rommel had command of twenty-eight infantry and eleven panzer divisions, but they would not be enough to hold back the Allied forces. Within a month, twenty-five divisions — almost one million men — had landed and the Allies had won command of the air after wiping out nearly all the German radar stations and landing fields.

In Vichy, collaboration gave way to consternation. “German and Anglo-Saxon armies are at war with each other on our soil,” Marshall Pétain lamented. “We are not in the war. Your duty is to maintain a strict neutrality.”[26]

Frenchmen did not really feel that way, as correspondents with the invasion forces soon found out. “All the French people with whom I have talked in the countryside, in the villages and in the townships of the liberated areas,” wrote British United Press correspondent Richard D. McMillan, “are surprised at the idea there is any difference of opinion among the French on support of General Charles de Gaulle. ‘We are solidly behind our leader de Gaulle,’ they all said.”[27]

In contrast to the favourable news from France, “the diplomatic firmament cleared only very slowly,” de Gaulle would write of this period.[28] He was in no mood to negotiate away civil administration in France and the discussions, begun in a sense of accord, ended in stalemate. On June 10, the general went public to attack the fausse monnaie being circulated in France and to stress he had no intention of allowing his administrative officers to fall under command of the British and Americans. The Fighting French were not going to “contribute to the usurpation” of their authority. De Gaulle had other plans for resolving the issue of civil administration in France.

By now, de Gaulle was anxious to return to France. Winston Churchill had made a brief visit to the landing zone on June 12. He was met on the beach by Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery as he scrambled out of a landing craft while waves lapped the beach. Churchill lunched in a tent with his field commander, caught glimpses of the front line five kilometres distant, and reported he “slept soundly” on the four-hour return voyage to Portsmouth.[29]

The prime minister was not, however, as sanguine about permitting the leader of the Fighting French to step foot on his native soil. When he grudgingly gave in to de Gaulle’s insistence that the general go ashore for a visit to the town of Bayeux, it was as if he were setting out instructions for a night out by a teenaged daughter: “It would not be possible for de Gaulle to hold a public meeting there, or gather crowds in the streets,” Churchill wrote to Anthony Eden. “He would no doubt like to have a demonstration to show that he is the future president of the French Republic. I suggest that he should drive slowly through the town, shake hands with a few people, and then return.…”[30]

Charles de Gaulle had a different approach in mind. He would go to France to do more than simply affirm the strength of support he had there. He would use the visit to put an end to President Roosevelt’s scheme to establish a government of military occupation in France.