Ike's Spies

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Who was Murphy to tell this story to? The question was crucial, the options many. Whatever Frenchman or group Murphy chose to deal with would have the inside track to power in North Africa. He could go to Admiral Darlan, via his son in Algiers—Darlan was commander in chief of French armed forces and had already shown a keen interest in involving himself in such an operation. But Darlan was known to be violently anti-British, so Murphy had not followed up his overtures.* Or Murphy could approach General Alphonse Juin, in command of the French North African land and air forces, with his headquarters in Algiers. A tough patriot, a man of great integrity and spirit, and an outstanding soldier, Juin would have been the perfect collaborator. But Murphy had not reached out to him, nor any of the other leaders of the French armed forces.

  There still remained a number of options, chief of which was working with de Gaulle’s Free French, who were anxious to take control in North Africa. The British, hating Darlan and not trusting Juin, were ready to bring de Gaulle in on the operation; Churchill had said that the Free French movement was “the core of French resistance and the flame of French honour.”26 But Roosevelt neither liked nor trusted de Gaulle, who had denounced FDR for maintaining diplomatic relations with Vichy. Besides, there were few Gaullists in Algeria at this time, or so Murphy reported. De Gaulle had charged French officers who stayed at their posts after Pétain signed the armistice with treason; such officers could hardly be expected to welcome de Gaulle as their leader.

  That brought it down to Dubreuil on the civil side, and Generals Mast and Giraud on the military side. Murphy had maintained and expanded his contacts with Dubreuil and The Five, who were building an underground army in Algiers under the command of Henri d’Astier de la Vigerie, who has been described by historian Arthur Funk as “a character from the Italian Renaissance, a brilliant, persuasive charmer, fascinated with intrigue, at heart a royalist, who exercised an almost hypnotic influence on the young men he led.”27 D’Astier’s “army” was a new organization a few hundred strong known as the Chantiers de la Jeunesse. Murphy, repeating what he had heard from d’Astier, said the group was well organized and capable of decisive action on D-Day. When TORCH began, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse would take possession of such key points as the radio stations in Algiers, the police stations, and military headquarters. Then if all went well the Americans could walk into the city unopposed.

  With regard to the regular French Army, Murphy’s contact was General Mast, chief of staff to the corps commander in Algiers. Mast, a friend of Dubreuil’s, told Murphy that General Giraud was the key to success. Murphy explained to Ike and the others at Telegraph Cottage that Giraud, a one-legged hero of World War I, had escaped from a German prison camp in 1941 and was in hiding in the South of France.

  (As Murphy talked and the others listened intently, Ambassador Winant signaled to Butcher with his big Corona cigar—he had heard a noise outside the window. Butcher took his flashlight and investigated. He found only the sergeant on patrol duty, who had stubbed his toe in marching around the cottage.)

  Murphy said that Mast had told him that Giraud might be willing to come out of France to lead Operation TORCH, and that if he did come, Giraud would rally the French Army to his cause. On the face of it, that was highly improbable. Giraud had participated in the attempted Cagoulard coup of 1937, had no place in the hierarchy of the French Army, no popular following, no organization, no social imagination, no program, and no administrative abilities. But Murphy insisted that his sources were correct. Giraud was the man.

  Murphy was aware of one possible difficulty. Giraud, Mast said, would insist on having the supreme command of all Allied forces fighting in North Africa. Ike scowled, his face reddened, as it always did when he was angry. He would never hand over his command to an unknown Frenchman, even if he had the authority to do so and thought it a good idea, which he most emphatically did not. Ike told Murphy to tell Mast to tell Giraud that the Allies could not place a half million of their fighting men under a French commander.

  With that, the meeting broke up, Butcher driving the guests home. At breakfast the next morning, Ike and Murphy talked again, about civil affairs, about the need to bring in food and other supplies for the native population, and so on. Over coffee, Murphy suggested that Ike secretly send a high-ranking officer to Algeria, possibly by submarine, so that he could confer with Murphy’s French Army friends about fifth-column activities at strategic points, such as seizure of airfields, the designation of coast artillery to be silenced by the French conspirators from the rear, and signals to the convoys by lights as to whether or not opposition should be expected. Ike mused that if such an officer were captured, it would be a tip-off to the enemy. Still, the idea of a surreptitious landing by submarine of an American general on the French North African coast appealed to him and he promised to think it over. Murphy then left, to be driven by Butcher to a nearby British airfield where a waiting plane carried him to Prestwick, whence he got on a TWA Stratoliner bound for Washington. After reporting to the President, he flew across the Atlantic again, back to Algiers.28

  Two days after Murphy left London, Eisenhower reported to Marshall on his reactions to his first spy. “I was very much impressed by Mr. Murphy. We had an afternoon and evening conference on the most secretive basis possible, and I believe much good was accomplished by his trip to this country.”29

  *

  * Eisenhower’s insistence on control of his own theater was nicely illustrated in November 1942 when movie producer Darryl Zanuck arrived in Algiers to make a movie about the invasion. He acted as if he could go where he wanted, when he wanted, filming whatever he wished. Ike told his subordinate, General Mark Clark, to tell Zanuck “that he will obey my orders as long as he is in this theater, or I will have him out of here so fast he won’t know what’s happening to him. I am not going to have a bunch of free-lancers dashing around here and flouting established authority. Please tell him this in no uncertain terms.”8

  * And remained so. After the war, Murphy wrote, “Dubreuil, his charming wife and two fine children, all anti-Nazi and eager for the French to resume combat, were a source of inspiration and comfort to me.”18

  * As early as April 14, 1942, Murphy had reported that he had talked at length with Admiral Darlan’s son Alain and Admiral Fenard. Murphy said they expected and would welcome an Allied victory, and that they were anxious to throw in on the Allied side at the right moment. “I was greatly encouraged by their apparent eagerness, sincerity, and desire for Franco-American collaboration,” Murphy wrote.25

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lighting the TORCH

  DAWN, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1942. A month after Murphy’s departure. Eisenhower arrives at his office at 20 Grosvenor Square, in the middle of London, within walking distance of Hyde Park and 10 Downing Street. So completely have the Americans taken over Grosvenor Square that Londoners call it “Eisenhowerplatz.” Ike picks up a series of messages that had come in overnight from Murphy, reads them, and immediately telephones Clark.

  “Come up,” Ike tells him. “Come up right away.”

  EISENHOWER’S CHIEF OF STAFF, Bedell Smith, was already there. When Clark joined them, the three American generals began a lively discussion of Murphy’s messages.

  Murphy had two requests. The first was to send a senior American general, accompanied by a small staff, to a secret rendezvous on the North African coast, near Cherchel. They were to land on a lonely beach about seventy-five miles west of Algiers. At the home of a close friend of Henri d’Astier’s, who was the head of the underground resistance movement called the Chantiers de la Jeunesse and a member of Dubreuil’s group, the American team would be met by French General Charles Mast, who had insisted on the meeting. Mast had convinced Murphy that if the Americans took him into their confidence, and if they brought General Giraud in on the conspiracy as commander in chief of the French and Allied forces, he could arrange a peaceful reception for TORCH. Clark took one look at the message from Murphy and
blurted out, “When do I go?”

  From the point of view of a professional intelligence service, it was obviously a terrible idea. If Clark were to be captured, the Vichy authorities in Algeria would certainly turn him over to the Germans. Clark, Ike’s deputy, knew everything about TORCH. But to ignore Mast’s request, or to send a low-ranking subordinate, could—according to Murphy, Ike’s chief spy—jeopardize the whole operation. So Ike grinned as Clark asked when he could leave and replied, “Probably right away.” It was already the morning of October 17 and Mast had scheduled the meeting for the evening of October 20.1 Harry Butcher, who saw him later in the day, said “Clark was as happy as a boy with a new knife.”

  In another message, Murphy reported that Mast remained unhappy with the idea of Giraud serving under Ike and proposed instead that Ike retain command of the American troops while Giraud became supreme commander. The French knew the terrain, Giraud outranked Eisenhower, and with Giraud in command the Allies could enter Algiers without firing a shot, Mast claimed.

  A third message from Murphy said that Admiral Darlan had again conveyed to Murphy his willingness to cooperate with the Allies. Murphy had good reason to believe Darlan meant it, as the word came from the admiral’s son, with whom Murphy had been in contact for over a year. Murphy said he had raised with Mast the possibility of bringing Darlan in on the conspiracy with Giraud, Dubreuil, and The Five, but Mast would have none of it. He denounced Darlan as a skunk, a traitor, an opportunist, and a man without a following. “The Army is loyal to General Giraud,” Mast declared, “and it will follow him, not Darlan. The Navy will fall in line with the Army.”2

  Murphy wanted a directive on Darlan. So did Eisenhower. Whatever Mast said of him, Darlan was the man in command of the entire Vichy military establishment, including the North African Army and Navy, while Mast was a one-star general who commanded nothing—he was only chief of staff to an officer who was not part of the conspiracy. Moreover, even the uninformed and naïve Americans at Grosvenor Square had to wonder if French military discipline had so far collapsed that the army was ready to ignore its established hierarchy to follow the lead of a man, Giraud, who had no official position at all. But Mast insisted that it was so, and Murphy believed Mast. Still, one could not ignore Darlan.

  Eisenhower mused that sooner or later the Allies would have to pick between Darlan and Giraud as “our chief collaborator,” but he hoped that it would be possible to “secure the advantages accruing to us” if both men would cooperate. These were, however, not military matters, but political and foreign policy problems. Ike needed authoritative direction from his bosses, one of whom was the Prime Minister.

  It being the weekend, Churchill was at his country home, Chequers. Clark got through on the phone to Churchill’s personal chief of staff, General Sir Hastings Ismay. “We’ve got a hot message here,” Clark said.

  “How hot?” Ismay asked.

  “Well, it’s too hot for the telephone.”

  Ismay gave the phone to Churchill, who growled, “What do you have? This phone is secret.”

  Clark handed the phone over to Ike, who said the message was too important to talk about over the telephone. Churchill growled again—he hated having his weekend interrupted. Would Ike come to Chequers to talk about it? There was not enough time, Eisenhower replied.

  “Damn!” said Churchill. Then, formally: “Very well. Should I come back to London?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, I’ll meet you at Number Ten late this afternoon.”3 When Eisenhower and Clark arrived at the Prime Minister’s residence, Clark recorded, “There was about as dazzling an array of Britain’s diplomatic, military and naval brains as I had yet seen.” Clement Attlee was there, along with Lord Louis Mountbatten, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, plus Churchill. It was, in short, the British Government and its top military establishment, answering an impromptu summons from an American lieutenant general and his two-star deputy. One might have thought that such an august group would brush aside the details about a highly romantic secret rendezvous with obscure French officers off the African coast in order to concentrate on the deadly serious subject of whether or not to deal with Darlan. It was not to be.

  Like Clark and Ike, Churchill was keen for high adventure. Clark said the P.M. “was as enthusiastic as a boy with a new electric train.” Consequently, the meeting concentrated on trivia, Churchill advising Clark on what clothes to wear, how much bribe money to take, how to carry the money, and so on. Churchill got Admiral Pound to agree that the Royal Navy could have a submarine waiting that night in Gibraltar for Clark. “The entire resources of the British Commonwealth are at your disposal,” he said solemnly to Clark, shaking hands gravely.4

  There was one brief discussion about command problems. Ike said he proposed to have Clark tell Mast that eventually military command in North Africa could pass to a French officer, but that Ike would retain the right to decide when the switch could be made. To soften the blow to Giraud’s ego at losing the top military command, Ike said he would place Giraud at the head of the government of French North Africa (Eisenhower did not need to say that his power to do so was based solely on the right of conquest). Perhaps Darlan would accept a position in a Giraud government as commander in chief of the North African armed forces. Churchill rather casually agreed to these proposals, then turned back to the more exciting subject of Clark’s mission.5 For the first time, but not the last, Eisenhower learned that where the dark arts are concerned, heads of government are sometimes more interested in cloak-and-dagger covert operations than in sophisticated political and military analysis. To echo Butcher and Clark, secrecy brought out the little boy in nearly all of them.

  After some weather delays, Clark got off at 6:30 A.M. on October 19, wearing a lieutenant colonel’s insignia, flying in a B-17 whose pilot, Major Paul Tibbets, was generally regarded as the best flyer in the U. S. Army Air Forces (Tibbets was Ike’s personal pilot for much of the war; in 1945 he was the pilot of the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima). Eisenhower went to Scotland to inspect a field exercise, which would help pass the time as he worried about Clark.

  Two days later, Ike received a message from Gibraltar. Clark’s submarine had arrived too late for the rendezvous of October 20 and would have to lay offshore all through the day, submerged, and hope to spot the correct signal light that night. It put Ike in a “state of jitters.” Thinking aloud in Harry Butcher’s presence, he said that if there were treachery, Clark and his party might go ashore never to return, but if the conference led to French cooperation, the whole operation was virtually assured of success. If it did not work, Ike concluded, “we will have one hell of a fight on our hands.” On October 22, Butcher recorded in his diary, “Ike greatly concerned about Clark. A further message from ‘Colonel McGowan’ [Murphy] had indicated the meeting would take place tonight.”

  By October 24 there was still no word from Clark. Eisenhower kept himself as busy as he could, but it did little good. Finally he shut up the office at Grosvenor Square and announced that he was going to drive out to Telegraph Cottage that night. He was not sure of the way, had never driven in England before, and had no driver’s license, but he started the car and zoomed off. “When last seen,” Butcher reported, “he was going down the middle of the road, veering a little bit to the right and a bit uncertain.”6

  At midnight, the phone rang. One of Eisenhower’s aides reported that a message had come in from Gibraltar, from General Clark. His meeting with Mast had been broken up by French police. Clark and the American group had been forced to hide in an “empty, repeat empty, wine cellar.” There was one other misadventure. In getting into the rubber boat for his trip back to the submarine, Clark had lost his pants and the gold coins he had taken with him. He had taken off his pants and rolled them up, hoping to keep them dry. But he was safe in Gibraltar and would be in London later that day. Butcher, using the metapho
r once more, said Ike was “as pleased as a boy” and eager to hear all about Clark’s adventure.

  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn could not have enjoyed telling or listening to a tale more than Clark and Ike did this one. Clark described his flight to Gibraltar, the submarine trip to the rendezvous point, the long submerged wait through the day after he missed the first appointment, practice drills at dusk getting into the canvas boats that took them to shore (the British commando who showed them how to do it fell on his fanny, to everyone’s vast amusement), and finally the coming of total darkness, the blinking signal light, and the trip ashore.

  Mast was there, along with some of his staff officers, accompanied by Murphy. They started talking at 10 P.M. and kept at it through the night. Shortly after dawn, the police arrived—Arabs had reported footprints in the sand. Mast and the other French officers fled through the windows and disappeared into the brush along the beach. Clark and the Americans hid in the wine cellar. Murphy, his aide, and the Frenchman who owned the house stayed to meet the police. They broke out some brandy, sang songs, and acted very jovial, while Murphy identified himself as the American consul in Algiers and hinted that a little party was going on. The girls were upstairs, he said, and he hoped the French police would not embarrass him. Ike gave out one of his big hearty laughs when he heard that one.

  Anyway, Clark went on, the police finally left and the Americans dashed pell-mell down to the beach, where they had an awful time trying to launch the flimsy canvas boat against a heavy surf. It was in this process that Clark lost his pants and his money. But he made it, got back on the submarine, returned to Gibraltar, and flew back to London with Major Tibbets that afternoon. There were many other details—Butcher, who was present when Clark reported to Ike, filled eight single-spaced typewritten pages in his diary with Clark’s escapades—but the fact that mattered was that Clark had established secret contact with the French.7