The French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Boyd

  Although having no great reason to love the British, Monclar decided that since they were the only allies offering a chance of redressing the shame of defeat, it was best to conceal his feelings and attempt to get on with his often unwilling hosts. To weed out those who disagreed with him, he encouraged a repatriation movement by officers who had fought bravely at Narvik. It seems that a factor in their decisions was resentment at the prejudices of the uninformed local inhabitants – summed up in the phrase, ‘The French let us down.’

  Their dilemma was that if De Gaulle lost, his supporters would be traitors without a country. On the other hand, what was the point of being repatriated to the emasculated Armée de l’Armistice, whose main function was to guard the demarcation line between the German-occupied zone and Vichy France? The war, temporarily stalemated with the Germans unable to invade the British Isles and the British unable to do anything except sit tight, was obviously going to last several years, during which married men would not see their wives and children. A neighbour of the author, Marcel Verliat was serving as a reservist in the French navy. Landed at Portsmouth, he ate one meal of sausage and mash, washed down by a mug of long-stewed tea, in the RN barracks there. Having sampled English food, he marched back up the gangway with most of his shipmates and stayed on board until the moorings were slipped and they could return to the pleasures of la cuisine française. Many decisions made during this time were thus determined by personal or family reasons that had nothing to do with what was morally or politically ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.[319]

  Oddly enough, Legion recruiting seems not to have ceased immediately after the Armistice. Journalist and author Arthur Koestler, although holding a Hungarian passport, had been a war correspondent for the London News Chronicle during the Civil War in Spain, where his articles earned him a spell in a fascist jail. Having been lucky not to collect the last cigarette and twelve bullets which both sides of that conflict usually awarded irritating foreigners, he had no desire to see the inside of a Gestapo prison. On hearing of Pétain’s surrender on 17 June 1940, Koestler re-invented himself as Albert Dubert, a German-speaking Swiss taxi driver from Berne, and ‘volunteered’ for the Legion, making it plain to the sympathetic recruiting sergeant that he wanted a ticket out of France, ostensibly to join the ‘real Legion’ in North Africa.

  Having received no direct order in the general chaos to cease recruiting, the sergeant therefore signed Koestler on and issued a travel warrant. Other Central Europeans used to joke that a Hungarian was a man who could follow you into a revolving door and come out in front of you. Koestler qualified by somehow making his way through the chaos of three million refugees on the roads and competing for what little public transport there was. Heading for Marseilles, he was in one respect better off than the civilian refugees, who were dependent on volunteer food kitchens, because his enlistment papers at least guaranteed him a bunk and food at army camps on the way.

  Reaching the Legion depot at Fort St-Jean in Marseilles on 11 August – a six-week journey that would have taken a day in normal circumstances – he was already officially an ex-legionnaire, all French forces in the Free Zone governed from Vichy having been demobilised under the terms of the Armistice agreement that took effect on 25 June. Although Marseilles was in the Free Zone, even refugees with entry visas from countries willing to accept them were not being granted exit visas to leave France until they had been screened to make sure the Germans had no objection. Koestler therefore ingratiated himself with four British soldiers on the run in civilian clothes. Together, they bluffed their way onto a ship leaving for Oran, where Baron Rudiger von Etzdorf, an anti-Nazi German ex-naval officer, spirited them away to neutral Lisbon and London.

  Among less famous temporary legionnaires was Miroslav Liskutin, one of fifty qualified pilots from Czechoslovakia who escaped to France after the German occupation of their country, abandoned by its British and French allies in October 1938. Volunteering to fly for France, he was enlisted first in the Legion and then posted nonsensically to 1 REI in bel-Abbès. Transferred into the Air Force in May 1940 Legionnaire 84202 Liskutin found himself at the time of the Armistice among a small number of French and other pilots trying to steal aircraft at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport, in which to fly to Britain and continue the fight. The ground crews, having no such option, refused to fuel aircraft for take-off, so it was by ship that these pilots finally reached the UK – in Liskutin’s case to end the war a Squadron Leader sporting both the DFC and AFC.

  Individual non-German refugees hiding in French uniform were small fry at that moment, but many German- and Austrian-born legionnaires were on the Gestapo’s wanted list. On 17 and 20 August and again 6–9 September, a Special German Control Commission insisted that they all be handed over under the terms of Article XIX of the Armistice agreement, on the spurious grounds that they were pro-Nazi fifth columnists illegally imprisoned by the French! There were also numbers of German and Austrian legionnaires and ex-legionnaires who wanted to join the German side, whether from personal conviction or to avoid reprisals on their families in the Reich. Accordingly, at Fuveau, between Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, ninety pro-Hitler ex-legionnaires were handed over to a Luftwaffe search team. Similarly, small parties of Italian officers were trying to locate Italian-born legionnaires for repatriation under the terms of the separate Armistice agreement signed with Mussolini. In North Africa, 320 German legionnaires demanded repatriation in August. Isolated in the punishment camp of Koléa, they were in a state of mutiny, shouting down any officer who tried to give them orders with repeated yells of ‘Heil Hitler!’ On 26 September and 9 October two groups totalling 996 Germans were thus assembled for repatriation, although how many were pro-Nazi and how many were coerced or volunteered for the sake of their families living in the Reich, is impossible to say.

  The disparity between Berlin’s estimate of the total numbers of Germans and Austrians in the Legion and the numbers actually handed over was reflected in Goebbels’ personal diary as late as 8 March 1941. He was explicit that the laggards should be formed into ‘rehabilitation’ units to fight in Africa – in other words, penal battalions to punish them for not deserting in 1933, when the Nazi campaign of defamation of the Legion began.[320]

  Whilst all the Axis-born legionnaires who wanted repatriation were allowed to depart, an uncounted number of legionnaires who did not want to return were administratively ‘lost’. Legio patria nostra is much more than a slogan, and no Legion officer would hand over to the Gestapo legionnaires wanted for anti-Nazi activities back home or who had any other reason to think they would suffer for serving in the Legion. A ‘phantom column’ was therefore formed without the knowledge of Vichy or 19th Division in Oran, under whose control Sidi bel-Abbès fell. With their personal records torn up and burned, these men were given civilian clothes and became ‘European Workers Detachment No 1’ under 2/Lt Chenel, the youngest officer in 1 REI, who was fresh out of St Cyr. In trucks, they travelled from bel-Abbès to Aïn Sefra and on to the punishment battalion depot at Bechar in the far south. Through Saharan sand-storms they pushed on in the suffocating heat to Bourem on the Niger River in what is now central Mali. The next stage to the French base at Bamako was relatively unadventurous. There, a special train was waiting to take them to Louga in Senegal, where a second phantom column from Fez was waiting. Its commander, Capt De Winter was delighted to hand his charges over to Chenel and return to base.

  In closed railway carriages attached to a civilian train, the ‘European workers’ travelled to the port of Dakar, where they were hidden in a dockside warehouse, their clandestine journey already totalling nearly 4,000km. Embarked without papers on the Cap Padaran, they had ahead of them a voyage of another 20,000km around the Cape of Good Hope to Vietnam, where they constituted the last reinforcements 5 REI received until the end of the war. Curiously, the regiment that now protected them took its orders from the colonial government of Vietnam, which was loyal to Vichy in an uneasy cohabitation with the Japa
nese occupying forces under the Agreement of 30 April 1940. This recognised French sovereignty, but conceded ‘certain facilities’ to Japan.

  On 1 July 1940, 636 of the 1,619 officers and men at Trentham Park boarded trains for Bristol, having opted to return to French North Africa. It was an emotional parting, with Monclar offering his hand to each of the thirty-one departing officers as they saluted him with last-minute excuses.[321] The occasion was marred by the guard of honour refusing to present arms as those leaving marched past. In a final sad note, when British police delivered to Bristol the 300 incarcerated Spanish legionnaires, they lay down on the dockside rather than walk up the gangway of the Meknès, fearing that once in Morocco they would be handed over to Franco and shot.

  To erase the shame of 1 July, 13 DBLE was renamed 14 DBLE, and so remained until 4 November, when it reverted to its original designation. Caught in all this manoeuvring, James Williamson returned to camp from leave on 13 July and was advised to get rid of his French uniform and join the British army. Doing so, he became a deserter as far as the Legion was concerned – a situation only rectified when he was officially discharged on 5 April 1966![322]

  Monclar’s command was now down to twenty-eight officers and 900 men, who included Maj Koenig and the Georgian prince Lt Amilakvari. Even their confidence that they had made the right choice must have been badly shaken after the British Admiralty ordered Adm Somerville in Gibraltar to implement Operation Catapult on 3 July. This was the destruction of the French fleet in harbour at Mers el-Kebir, near Oran.

  It was the first time since Waterloo that British weapons were trained upon French servicemen.

  The decommissioning of the French ships was under way, with the boilers cold, gun turrets without power and munitions removed to stores. Reservists with homes in North Africa had already been demobilised. French navy planes had mostly been disarmed and the shells and breech-blocks removed in the coastal batteries protecting Mers el-Kebir.

  Swordfish aircraft from Ark Royal first mined the harbour exits, to prevent any ship leaving. Somerville then presented Adm Gensoul with the ultimatum that he and his crews must either sail immediately and fight on the British side, or scuttle their ships. In fact, Admiral of the Fleet Darlan had already ordered the sea-cocks manned night and day, the officer-of-the-watch having standing orders to open them at the first attempt by Axis forces to board the vessels – as happened later in Toulon harbour.

  Aboard HMS Hood, Adm Somerville obeyed orders as slowly as possible. At 1625hrs local time the first shell was fired by Hood. Although the French warships had steam up by then and could return fire with what munitions had been brought back on board, no manoeuvring was possible in the confines of the harbour without hitting each other. They were thus sitting ducks for the Royal Navy bombardment that killed a total of 1,297 French sailors, with several hundred wounded. Whilst their comrades were shrouding the corpses, three flights of Swordfish from Ark Royal roared in at deck level with cannons blazing, to add to the casualties.

  Operation Catapult was tailor-made for Vichy propaganda. The message on posters everywhere in both zones of France was, How can any Frenchman trust the English who did this? Nevertheless, a trickle of newcomers reached Trentham Park from occupied France. None would have taken the risks unless highly motivated, like 2/Lt Pierre Messmer, destined to become De Gaulle’s Minister of the Armed Forces 1960–69 and Prime Minister 1972–74. At first it was hard, even for officers of this calibre, to maintain discipline – as it would be in any unit after such a traumatic schism. A frequent problem was men going AWOL due to local girls becoming more than ‘just good friends’.

  Gradually, contact with the locals softened both sides’ prejudices, and the choice of going or staying had weeded out the most anglophobic officers and men. De Gaulle’s aloof lightning visit at the end of June had done nothing for the men’s morale, but the visit to Trentham Park of shy, stammering King George VI on 25 August was an excuse to show the British monarch just how smart and disciplined French servicemen could be. It was therefore in somewhat better spirits that Monclar’s little army embarked a few days later at Liverpool, destination Africa.

  Chapter 29: Which side did you say, Miss?

  West Africa, 1940; Eritrea and Syria 1941; Western Desert 1942

  Saturday 31 August 1940 was one of those nights when the controllers of Britain’s air defences were baffled as to how Luftwaffe bombers were finding their targets without a moon to help them.[323] The day had been the worst so far of the Battle of Britain, with forty-one RAF aircraft lost. For the fourth consecutive night, bombs were falling on the residential quarters and docks of Liverpool but, to protect his night vision, the captain of the unarmed Dutch liner SS Pennland was not looking back at the fires raging there. He was just praying that their glare did not reveal the wake of his ship to the German pilots overhead.[324] Incoming on his starboard beam as he made to the west past the shoals of the old wreckers’ coast of the Wirral peninsula was Convoy HX 66 from Halifax, Nova Scotia – fifty-one vessels that had made it safely to the beleaguered British Isles past the U-boats and the Luftwaffe flying out of Norway.

  On board the blacked-out Pennland were the officers and men of 13 DBLE. Her sister ship SS Westernland bore among its passengers Charles De Gaulle and a unique eyewitness to the ups and downs of Operation Menace – his bid to seduce the French West African colonies away from allegiance to Vichy. The only woman ever to serve with the Foreign Legion, 30-year-old Susan Travers was described as a garcon manqué by those who knew her.[325] Daughter of a Royal Navy officer, she was bilingual as a result of growing up largely in France, and had a reasonable grasp of German and Italian – all spoken ‘with a plum in her mouth’. Her natural middle-class authority and habitual lack of feminine airs and graces ensured she was known to legionnaires of all ranks respectfully as ‘La Miss’.

  Travers was a better than good amateur skier and tennis-player, but what was to win her a unique fame were the steady nerves and instinctive skills that make a first-class driver. Although travelling on board Westernland as a nurse, her only experience of nursing had been gained in Finland with a small group of French Red Cross volunteers.[326] At the time it had seemed to her the only way to get involved in the war but, although she would do it when necessary, tending the sick was not where her tomboy heart lay.

  The unarmed transports rendezvoused in the Irish Sea with their escort: HMS Barham and HMS Resolution, several destroyers and the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal as flagship of Adm Sir John Cunningham. The course they followed was a generous loop out into the Atlantic to avoid German seaplane patrols from the French Atlantic coast and reduce the risk from U-boats. After calling at the Royal Navy base in Freetown, Sierra Leone, they anchored a quarter of a nautical mile off Dakar, the capital of Senegal, in thick fog on the morning of 23 September. Things went badly from the beginning, not helped by the Vichy authorities knowing from aerial reconnaissance that Ark Royal – of all ships in the Royal Navy – was lurking just over the horizon. After two sets of De Gaulle’s emissaries had been wounded in defiance of universal military protocol, the shore batteries started shelling Cunningham’s little fleet, obliging it to move out of range on 25 September. A detachment of Free French marines attempted to land and rally the local population along the coast, but were driven off after being strafed by Vichy planes.

  Having been condemned to death for treason by court martial on 2 August, De Gaulle knew that his political credit was at its nadir. Should he fail to win over the African colonies, his claim to represent anyone other than himself would be proven hollow and he would join the ranks of the exiled Polish and Czech politicians in London, whose soldiers were simply enlisted in the British forces. After the humiliating rejection in Senegal, he kept to the privacy of his cabin as the convoy headed out to sea and sailed another 4,000km to the southeast.

  At Douala in Cameroon he and 13 DBLE bade farewell to Cunningham’s escorting force on 8 October and were welcomed by the locals, bo
th French and native, with rapturous enthusiasm. De Gaulle heaved more than a sigh of relief, well aware that Churchill had been prepared to dump him. He then departed for Chad and other French equatorial territories that had declared for him against Vichy, but at Yaoundé in Cameroon and Libreville in Gabon, 13 DBLE had to subdue the Vichy garrisons by force of arms. Firing on other Frenchmen reduced Monclar and many of the legionnaires to tears, but it was a job that had to be done.[327]

  Other Free French forces under Col Jacques-Philippe Leclerc had prepared the way for De Gaulle in the equatorial territories. Promoted to general by him, Leclerc now led his men on an 1,800km odyssey from Chad to Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast, reducing Italian garrisons on the way to link up with British 8th Army. Having secured French West Africa with the exception of Senegal, 13 DBLE sailed right around the Cape of Good Hope and up the east coast of Africa. At Port Sudan on the Red Sea they learned that they were to take part in a little publicised campaign to drive Mussolini’s forces out of Eritrea, from where they could have caused problems for the British in Egypt and Allied traffic passing through the Red Sea.

  On 8 April 1941 a mixed Anglo-French force seized the main port of Massawa, where Monclar demanded the surrender of the senior Italian officer. Admiral Bonetti threw his parade sabre sulkily into the sea, rather than graciously hand it over, only to see it rescued at low tide by an observant legionnaire and presented to Monclar as a trophy. This small campaign was important in re-building unit pride for the next theatre in which 13 DBLE was to see action against 6 REI in Syria/Lebanon in defiance of the Legion principle that legionnaires never fired on legionnaires. Travers was not bothered by the thousands of men in Massawa with time on their hands and some money in their pockets. This had less to do with her rank of Legion warrant officer than Col Monclar’s priority of opening a BMC, or bordel mobile de campagne, staffed by local women and two Italian whores.[328]