General Giraud was adamant; he believed that the honor of himself and his country was involved and that he could not possibly accept any position in the venture lower than that of complete command. This, on the face of it, was impossible. The naming of an Allied commander in chief is an involved process, requiring the co-ordinated agreement of military and political leaders of the responsible governments. No subordinate commander in the expedition could legally have accepted an order from General Giraud. Moreover, at that moment there was not a single Frenchman in the Allied command; on the contrary, the enemy, if any, was French.
All this was laboriously explained to the general. He was shaken, disappointed, and after many hours of conference felt it necessary to decline to have any part in the scheme. He said, “General Giraud cannot accept a subordinate position in this command; his countrymen would not understand and his honor as a soldier would be tarnished.” It was pitiful, because he had left his whole family in France as potential hostages to German fury and had himself undergone great personal risks in order to join up with us.
My political advisers at that time were Mr. H. Freeman Matthews of the American State Department and Mr. William H. B. Mack of the British Foreign Office.7 So concerned were they over this development that they suggested placing General Giraud in nominal command, while reserving to myself the actual power of directing operations. They felt that the difference between public association and non-association of the Giraud name with the operation might well mean the difference between success and disaster. To such a subterfuge I would not agree, and adhered to my decision that, unless General Giraud could content himself with taking charge of such French forces in North Africa as might come over to our side in the fight against Germany, we would proceed with the campaign exactly as if we had never met or conferred with him. The conversation with General Giraud lasted, intermittently, until after midnight. Though I could understand General Giraud’s French fairly well, I insisted on using an interpreter, to avoid any chance of misunderstanding. When we had worn out more expert ones, General Clark volunteered to act in this capacity, and though he is far from fluent in the language, we made out fairly well. One reason for this was that after the first hour of talk each of us merely repeated, over and over again, the arguments he had first presented. When, finally, General Giraud went off to bed there was no sign of his modifying, in any degree, his original demands. His good-night statement was, “Giraud will be a spectator in this affair.” He agreed, however, to meet me at the governor general’s house the next morning. The political faces in our headquarters that night were long.
Before stopping work for the night I sent to the Combined Chiefs of Staff a detailed account of the conference and was grateful to receive prompt word from them that they fully supported my position.8 The ending of the message was garbled but we could make out, “Our only regret is that you have been forced to devote so much of your time to this purpose during a period …” How fortunate I was that I could not foresee just how much of my time in ensuing weeks would be taken up with irritating and frustrating conferences on North African political affairs!
Fortunately a night’s sleep did something to change General Giraud’s mind and at the next morning’s meeting he decided to participate on the basis we desired.9 I promised that if he were successful in winning French support I would deal with him as the administrator of that region, pending eventual opportunity for civil authorities to determine the will of the population.
In further talks with General Giraud it developed that there was a radical difference between his conception and mine of what, at that moment, should be done strategically. He was in favor of turning immediately to the attack on southern France, paying no attention to northern Africa. I showed him that even as he spoke the troops were landing on their selected beaches; that there was no possibility of providing air support for the landing he proposed; and that the Allied shipping then in existence would not provide a build-up for an invasion of southern France that could withstand the force the Germans would assuredly bring against it. Finally, I explained that the campaign on which we were embarking was backed up by such intricate and detailed maintenance arrangements that the change he proposed was completely impossible.
He could not see the need of North Africa as a base—the need for establishing ourselves firmly and strongly in that region before we could successfully invade the southern portion of Europe.
He was not aware of the lessons the war had brought out as to the effect of land-based aviation upon unprotected seaborne craft. He had probably never assessed, in terms of tactical meaning, the loss in the Southwest Pacific of the two great British ships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, when they were heedlessly exposed to attack by land-based aviation. He assumed, moreover, that if the Allies chose to do so they could place 500,000 men in the south of France in a matter of two or three weeks. It was difficult for him to understand that we had undertaken an operation that stretched our resources to the limit, and that because of the paucity of these resources our initial strategic objectives had to be carefully calculated.
During the course of the night and in the early morning hours of November 8 operational reports began to come in that were encouraging in tone. As anticipated, the landings at Algiers met almost no opposition and the area was quickly occupied.10 This was largely due to the prior accomplishments of Mr. Murphy, working through General Mast of the French Army, and to the sympathy, even if cloaked in official antagonism, of General Alphonse Pierre Juin.
Always in the back of our minds was the need for haste in getting on to the Tunis area. On the night of the eighth I scrawled a penciled memorandum which I still have. In it appears the notation, “We arc slowed up in eastern sector when we should be getting toward Bône Bizerte at once.”
At Oran we got ashore, but the French forces in that region, particularly the naval elements, resisted bitterly.11 Some hard fighting ensued and the U. S. 1st Division, which was later to travel such a long battle road in this war, got its first taste of conflict. In spite of incomplete training, the 1st Division, supported by elements of the 1st Armored Division, made progress and on November 9 we knew we would soon be able to report victory in that area. On the tenth all fighting ceased at Oran.12 Generals Fredendall and Terry de la M. Allen met their initial battle tests in good fashion.
We knew that the attack on the west coast was launched, but there was no news of its progress. Actually at certain points, notably Port Lyautey, fierce fighting developed.13 The treacherous sea had given us the one quiet day in the month necessary to make the landing feasible, but the period of calm lasted only a short time and later reinforcing was most difficult. I tried every possible means to get in communication with the western commanders, Rear Admiral H. K. Hewitt of the Navy and General Patton of the Army. The radio again failed and gave us nothing but unintelligible signals. Thereupon we tried sending light bomber craft to Casablanca to gain contact, but after French fighters had shot down several of them we knew that this method was futile. In desperation I asked Admiral Cunningham if he had a fast ship in port. By good fortune one of the speediest afloat was then at Gibraltar getting up steam to rush some vital supplies into Malta, and without hesitation the admiral offered her to me for the necessary time to make contact with the Western Task Force. I chose Rear Admiral Bernhard H. Bieri of the United States Navy to head a staff group, and they took off within the hour.14
On the morning of November 9, General Clark and General Giraud went by air to Algiers in an effort to make some kind of agreement with the highest French authorities. Their mission was to end the fighting and to secure French assistance in projected operations against the Germans.15
General Giraud’s cold reception by the French in Africa was a terrific blow to our expectations. He was completely ignored. He made a broadcast, announcing assumption of leadership of French North Africa and directing French forces to cease fighting against the Allies, but his speech had no effect whatsoever. I was d
oubtful that it was even heard by significant numbers. Radio communications with Algiers were very difficult but eventually a message came through that confirmed an earlier report: Admiral Darlan was in Algiers!
We discounted at once the possibility that he had come into the area with a prior knowledge of our intentions or in order to assist us in our purpose. Already we had evidence, gathered in Oran and Algiers, that our invasion was a complete and astonishing surprise to every soldier and every inhabitant of North Africa, except for those very few who were actively assisting us. Even these had not been told the actual date of the attack until the last minute. There was no question that Darlan’s presence was entirely accidental, occasioned by the critical illness of his son, to whom he was extremely devoted.
In Darlan we had the commander in chief of the French fighting forces! A simple and easy answer would have been to jail him. But with Darlan in a position to give the necessary orders to the very considerable French fleet, then in Toulon and Dakar, there was hope of reducing at once the potential naval threat in the Mediterranean and of gaining welcome additions to our own surface craft. Just before I left England, Mr. Churchill had earnestly remarked, “If I could meet Darlan, much as I hate him, I would cheerfully crawl on my hands and knees for a mile if by doing so I could get him to bring that fleet of his into the circle of Allied forces.”
But we had another and more pressing reason for attempting to utilize Darlan’s position. In dealing with French soldiers and officials General Clark quickly ran afoul of the traditional French demand for a cloak of legality over any action they might take. This was a fetish with the military; their surrender in 1940, they asserted, had been merely the act of loyal soldiers obeying the legal orders of their civil superiors.
Without exception every French commander with whom General Clark held exhaustive conversation declined to make any move toward bringing his forces to the side of the Allies unless he could get a legal order to do so. Each of them had sworn an oath of personal fealty to Marshal Pétain, a name that at that moment was more profound in its influence on North African thinking and acting than any other factor. None of these men felt that he could be absolved from that oath or could give any order to cease firing unless the necessary instructions were given by Darlan as their legal commander, to whom they looked as the direct and personal representative of Marshal Pétain.
It was useless then, and for many days thereafter, to talk to a Frenchman, civilian or soldier, unless one first recognized the Marshal’s overriding influence. His picture appeared prominently in every private dwelling, while in public buildings his likeness was frequently displayed in company with extracts from his speeches and statements. Any proposal was acceptable only if “the Marshal would wish it.”
General Clark radioed that without Darlan no conciliation was possible, and in this view he was supported by General Giraud, who was then in hiding in Algiers. Clark kept me informed of developments as much as he possibly could but it was obvious that he was having a difficult time in his attempt to persuade the French to stop fighting our troops.16 While preoccupied with all these matters, I received a message from my chief of staff, who had temporarily remained in London, which stated that, in view of the initial successes and apparently certain outcome of Torch, a high-level suggestion had come to him that we cut down our planned build-up for Torch, so as to proceed with other strategic purposes. Before the war was over I became accustomed to this tendency of individuals far in the rear to overevaluate early success and to discount future difficulty. But at that moment receipt of the message irritated me and I dashed off a prompt reply, from which the following is extracted:
“Unalterably opposed to reducing contemplated Torch strength. The situation is not crystallized. On the contrary, in Tunisia, it is touch and go. Country is not pacified completely, communications are a problem of first magnitude, and two principal ports in North Africa are seriously blocked. Every effort to secure organized and effective French co-operation runs into a maze of political and personal intrigue and the definite impression exists that none really wants to fight or to co-operate wholeheartedly.
“Rather than talk of possible reduction we should be seeking ways and means of speeding up the build-up to clean out North Africa. We should plan ahead in orderly fashion on strategic matters but for God’s sake let’s get one job done at a time. We have lost a lot of shipping in the past three days and provision of air cover for convoys is most difficult. The danger of German intervention through Spain has not ceased. I am not growing fearful of shadows nor am I crying wolf. I merely insist that if our beginning looks hopeful, then this is the time to push rather than to slacken our efforts. We are just started working on a great venture. A good beginning must not be destroyed by any unwarranted assumptions.”17
That day, the twelfth, General Clark reported that apparently Darlan was the only Frenchman who could achieve co-operation for us in North Africa.18 I realized that the matter was one that had to be handled expeditiously and locally. To have referred it back to Washington and London would have meant inevitable delays in prolonged discussions. So much time would have been consumed as to have cost much blood and bitterness and left no chance of an amicable arrangement for absorbing the French forces into our own expedition.
Already we had our written orders from our governments to co-operate with any French government we should find existing at the moment of our entry into Africa.19 Moreover, the matter at the moment was completely military. If resulting political repercussions became so serious as to call for a sacrifice, logic and tradition demanded that the man in the field should take complete responsibility for the matter, with his later relief from command becoming the symbol of correction. I might be fired, but only by making a quick decision could the essential unity of effort throughout both nations be preserved and the immediate military requirements met.
We discussed these possibilities very soberly and earnestly, always remembering that our basic orders required us to go into Africa in the attempt to win an ally—not to kill Frenchmen.
I well knew that any dealing with a Vichyite would create great revulsion among those in England and America who did not know the harsh realities of war; therefore I determined to confine my judgment in the matter to the local military aspects. Taking Admiral Cunningham with me, I flew to Algiers on November 13, and upon reaching there went into conference with General Clark and Mr. Murphy, the American consul general in the area.20 This was the first time I had seen Murphy since his visit to London some weeks before.
They first gave me a full account of events to date. On November 10, Darlan had sent orders to all French commanders to cease fighting.21 Pétain, in Vichy, immediately disavowed the act and declared Darlan dismissed. Darlan then tried to rescind the order, but this Clark would not allow. Next the news was received in Algiers that the Germans were invading southern France, and now Darlan said that because the Germans had violated the 1940 armistice he was ready to co-operate freely with the Americans. In the meantime General Giraud, at first shocked to discover that the local French would not follow him, had become convinced that Darlan was the only French official in the region who could lead North Africa to the side of the Allies. When the Germans entered southern France Giraud went to Darlan to offer co-operation. The fighting at Casablanca had ceased because of Darlan’s order; at other places the fighting was over before the order was received. The French officers who had openly assisted us, including Generals Bethouart and Mast, were in temporary disgrace; they were helpless to do anything.
After exhaustive review of the whole situation Mr. Murphy said, “The whole matter has now become a military one. You will have to give the answer.”
While we were reaching a final decision he stepped entirely aside except to act upon occasion as interpreter. It was squarely up to me to decide whether or not the procurement of an armistice, the saving of time and lives, and the early development of workable arrangements with the French were worth more to the Allied
forces than the arbitrary arrest of Darlan, an action certain to be accompanied by continued fighting and cumulative bitterness. Local French officials were still officially members of a neutral country, and unless our governments were ready formally to declare war against France we had no legal or other right arbitrarily to establish, in the Nazi style, a puppet government of our own choosing.
The arrangement reached was set forth in a document that outlined the methods by which the French authorities engaged to assist the Allied forces.22 It accorded to the Allied commander in chief, in a friendly, not an occupied, territory, all the necessary legal rights and privileges that were required in the administration of his forces and in the conduct of military operations. We were guaranteed the use of ports, railways, and other facilities.
The Allies merely stated that, provided the French forces and the civil population would obey Darlan’s orders to co-operate militarily with us, we would not disturb the French administrative control of North Africa. On the contrary, we affirmed our intention of co-operating with them in preserving order. There was no commitment to engage our governments in any political recognition of any kind and Darlan was simply authorized, by the voluntary action of the local officials, and with our consent, to take charge of the French affairs of North Africa while we were clearing the Germans out of that continent. He agreed also to place our friend General Giraud in command of all French military forces in northwest Africa.
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