by Colin Smith
Dunkirk had marked the beginning of Somerville’s return to active service. A month before the outbreak of war it looked as though, aged 57, the admiral’s career had come to an end when he was retired with suspected tuberculosis. Admiralty rules were firm. TB was Britain’s biggest killer and a carrier on a ship was a time bomb. Regardless of rank you were out. For the navy this was an appalling loss: Somerville was a star, way ahead of his contemporaries in his understanding of radar and naval air power, and had a devoted following among younger officers. Even so, the opinion of two Harley Street specialists that his lung patches were healed had failed at first to impress the Admiralty. Then war brought its own priorities. A vague ‘consultancy’ role soon saw him in sole charge of the development of naval radar. Still officially on the retired list, he achieved in months what in peacetime would have taken years. If he had done nothing else in the war he would have done enough. But he yearned to get back to sea and the command of Force H was a wonderful prize for a man so recently invalided out of the service.
It was now almost three weeks since, on 13 June, Churchill and his Spitfire escort had taken off from a bomb-cratered airfield at Tours where, on its westward trek from Paris, Paul Reynaud’s migrating government had convened the winding-up meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council in the local prefecture. Behind them the British left the Pétainists – united in their scorn and suspicion of the proposed Franco-British Union* – to seal their triumph over the beleaguered Reynaud loyalists who wished to fight on from North Africa. It was about then that Churchill’s initial concern over what would happen to the French fleet had started to become an obsession. It was not an unreasonable one.
On the same day that Somerville was preparing to leave Gibraltar, Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke had once again been inspecting some of what stood between Britain and a successful German invasion. ‘The more I see the nakedness of our defences the more appalled I am!’ Brooke, newly knighted for his services at Dunkirk, wrote in his diary. ‘Untrained men, no arms, no transport and no equipment … The ghastly part of it is that I feel certain that we can only have a few more weeks left before the Boche attacks.’
As far as Churchill was concerned the fate of Darlan’s ships was as crucial to Britain’s survival as more barbed wire and land mines on Southern Command’s beaches. In the space of a couple of weeks Britain had just suffered the double blow of having the Italians enter the conflict and the French leave it. What if the Germans discovered that, after their losses in Norway, the only way they could pull off an invasion of England would be to requisition all the decent French ships they could find? In the circumstances, French assurances that the Germans had made a solemn pledge not to use its fleet were not all that comforting. Hitler was good at breaking solemn pledges. And the army that had so brilliantly circumvented the Maginot line might well find it even easier to discover a way through Darlan’s plans to scuttle his fleet.
Nor, for that matter, were French promises on such matters always kept. There had, for instance, been the question of the Luftwaffe prisoners. Just before the armistice Reynaud had promised Churchill he would send to Britain over 400 shot-down German aircrew in French prison camps, most of them put there by the RAF, according to the Air Ministry. Then suddenly Reynaud was no longer there to keep his promise and, as Churchill put it, ‘We had to shoot them down a second time.’
Within the secrecy of a War Cabinet meeting the Prime Minister revealed his current fears with his usual eloquence:
The addition of the French Navy to the German and Italian Fleets confronted Great Britain with mortal dangers … who in his senses would trust the word of Hitler after his shameful record and the facts of the hour? … the Armistice could at any time be voided on any pretext of non-observance. There was in fact no security for us at all. At all costs, at all risks, in one way or another we must make sure that the Navy of France did not fall into the wrong hands.
The Cabinet were in unanimous agreement. ‘You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with,’ Churchill told Somerville as his ships crept out of Gibraltar under cover of darkness. ‘But we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.’
It was a good adieu, carefully worded and equally necessary for both sender and recipient, for it would have been surprising if the Prime Minister’s confidence in Somerville was anything like as complete as he said it was. Never in the Royal Navy’s long history had one of its admirals gone into battle, certainly not against the French, as reluctantly as this one.
As soon as he arrived in Gibraltar, Somerville’s old friend Admiral Sir Dudley North, the last senior officer to have a face-to-face meeting with Gensoul, lost no time in telling him that using force against the French fleet ‘should be avoided at all costs’. North arranged a meeting with Holland and the two lieutenant commanders, both lately employed as liaison officers with La Marine Française, who would be working under him as Force H’s emissaries when they were lying off Oran and Mers-el-Kébir. They were all convinced that force should be avoided, pointing out that it would transform the French ‘from a defeated ally into an active enemy’. Holland, wearing the ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur recently presented to him by Darlan himself for his liaison work, was particularly emphatic.
There can be no doubt that this is exactly what Somerville wanted to hear. He and North and the three former liaison officers were at one in feeling that the politicians in the War Cabinet were asking the Royal Navy to do something that was as dishonourable as it was unnecessary. So much so that he did something that only highly regarded admirals who know their own worth, and don’t give a damn, can do on the eve of a major operation: he queried his orders, putting forward the views of his emissaries and proposing that they negotiate without the threat of force. ‘I felt that I should be failing in my duty if I did not represent as fully as possible the very strongly expressed views of officers who had been so recently in contact with the French.’ Their Lordships at the Admiralty took a long afternoon to digest this then told the distinguished sailor to get on with it.
Its code-name was Operation Catapult and Somerville’s orders were simple. He was to deliver Gensoul a note from His Majesty’s Government which, after a brief preamble concerning Britain’s determination ‘to fight to the end’ and its need to ensure that ‘the best ships of the French Navy are not used against us by our common foe’, listed three options:
(a) Sail with us and continue to fight for victory against the Germans and Italians.
(b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews will be repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by you, we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war, or pay full compensation if they are damaged.
(c) Alternatively, if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans or Italians unless these break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies – Martinique, for instance – where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated.
If you refuse these fair offers, I must, with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within six hours. Finally, failing the above, I have the orders of His Majesty’s Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships falling into German or Italian hands.
These orders were far more explicit than ‘whatever force may be necessary’. They read: ‘It is the firm intention of His Majesty’s Government that if the French do not accept one of the alternatives … their ships must be destroyed.’
By the time the mist had cleared and the startled Enseigne de vaisseau Bezard got his first glimpse of Foxhound, the British destroyer had already been in the vicinity of the steel mesh torpedo net at the entrance to Mers-el-Kébir harbour since shortly aft
er seven that morning. After they had gone through the preliminaries of identifying themselves and asking permission to enter, Holland had sent a message in French flashed by a Morse signal lamp explaining why he was there. Ostensibly, it was intended for the flagship Dunkerque but Holland knew that every duty signaller on every ship in the squadron would pick it up and Gensoul’s sailors soon learn what was afoot.
THE BRITISH ADMIRALTY HAS SENT CAPTAIN HOLLAND TO CONFER WITH YOU – STOP – THE BRITISH NAVY HOPES THAT THEIR PROPOSALS WILL ENABLE YOU AND THE VALIANT AND GLORIOUS FRENCH NAVY TO BE BY OUR SIDE – STOP – IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES YOUR SHIPS SHOULD REMAIN YOURS AND NO ONE NEED HAVE ANXIETY FOR THE FUTURE – STOP – A BRITISH FLEET IS AT SEA OFF ORAN WAITING TO WELCOME YOU – STOP
This was the message, immediately relayed to Darlan’s headquarters, which enabled it – with the time difference – to alert Surcouf and the other French warships in southern England that they were likely to be boarded. Meanwhile, at Mers-el-Kébir any hopes Somerville had pinned on the mutual admiration that had developed between Gensoul and Holland during last winter’s North Atlantic crossings were soon dashed.
As most British liaison officers were only too aware, formal dealings between the two navies were often dogged by a French awareness that theirs was the smaller fleet with the less successful history and patronizing slights could be detected where none was intended. Gensoul may well have had some affection for Holland but he did not think he was senior enough. ‘The first time, they sent me a Vice Admiral [North’s visit],’ he told one of his staff. ‘Today it is a Captain; tomorrow it will be a midshipman.’
Holland knew there would be no tomorrow. They were working against the clock. One way or the other the Admiralty wanted Operation Catapult completed by dusk and Somerville had already decided that, unless they looked on the brink of a breakthrough, his deadline would be 3 p.m.
But Gensoul was as yet unaware of any deadlines and even if he had been it is unlikely to have made any difference. ‘I refused to receive Captain Holland and sent a launch with my gunnery officer, Lieutenant de vaisseau Dufay who speaks English and, moreover, is a longstanding friend of Captain Holland,’ he would tell Darlan.
For the next two and a half hours Holland had to negotiate in an agonizingly slow fashion through Bernard Dufay whom he had got to know well during his time in Paris. Gensoul had given his gunnery officer permission to use his amiral’s barge with its polished brass and gilded woodwork. Holland had Foxhound’s more workaday destroyer’s motor-boat. Their meetings took place at a point between the anti-torpedo boom net and the jetty where the Dunkerque was moored with the other big ships.
At their first encounter Dufay read Holland a brief message from Gensoul which repeated the assurances given Admiral North that, ‘In no case will French ships fall undamaged into the hands of the Germans and Italians.’ For good measure Dufay told Holland that ‘in no case’ could be read as, ‘any time, anywhere, any way and without further orders from the French Admiralty’. However, if this was not good enough, having been presented with an ultimatum, ‘French ships will use force to defend themselves.’
According to Dufay, Holland took the last part of Gensoul’s reply ‘as if it had been addressed to him personally’ and confessed that he himself found the British note, ‘somewhat maladroit in substance and form’. He gave Dufay the impression that he was unsure of himself, ‘hesitant and pale-faced, perspiring heavily’ and despite his normal fluency ‘unable to find French words’. Diffidence and self-deprecation are perhaps very English traits, especially if the Englishman wants something badly enough, and when Dufay reported back to Gensoul he seems to have misinterpreted them, for it made him think ‘there was still a possibility of further negotiations’.
Holland pleaded to be allowed a personal audience with Gensoul, saying it was imperative they met face to face. But Dufay insisted that this was impossible and Holland settled for handing over a sealed envelope and said he would wait for a reply. The envelope contained a typed copy of Somerville’s ‘three fair offers’ and expressed his ‘profound regret’ for the awful consequences that would follow if none of them was taken up.
The barge went away to return some forty minutes later with a written reply from Gensoul scrawled in pencil on the kind of printed signal pads officers in both navies used for writing radio messages. Gensoul reiterated the assurances given to Admiral North: French warships would not be allowed to fall into German or Italian hands; but he warned that ‘this veritable ultimatum’ the British had delivered could only be answered by meeting ‘force with force’.
Holland responded by crossing over to the barge and asking Dufay to ‘discuss the matter as old friends’. Then, once seated around its cabin table, the emissary played what he evidently regarded as his ace in the hole. First he persuaded Dufay to hand over to his amiral a typed copy of what he had intended to say at the audience Gensoul had declined to grant him. It began with a bold assertion that only two days before, the worst suspicions of the British government had been confirmed ‘beyond all doubt’. The Axis was preparing – ‘as soon as a favourable opportunity occurred’ – to seize the French Navy. ‘This intended action is a dastardly trick which reacts as much against us as it does against you.’ The allegation was quite untrue but so glaringly unsourced that it was probably hoped that the French would assume it was based on decrypts of German naval codes, for they knew the British had enjoyed some success with these during the Norwegian campaign.
Certainly, the second thing Holland had to say to Dufay gave the impression that they had not lost their skills in that department.
I tackled him on the question of Admiral Darlan’s hands being tied … then asked when they last had a signal from Darlan? He said a couple of days ago. I asked if it had the special code word on it? He seemed surprised at my knowing this and said that Darlan had not used it for some days. I pointed out the whole of the foregoing pointed to Darlan’s hands being tied and begged him to stress this point of view, which was ours, to the Admiral. He was evidently impressed and returned to the Dunkerque at 10.50 a.m. with my typescript.
Twenty minutes later Dufay was back, this time accompanied by Capitaine de vaisseau Danbé, Gensoul’s Chief of Staff. But if for a moment the sight of this fresh face raised Holland’s spirits he was about to be disappointed. Danbé delivered another handwritten note. It made no demands to see proof of Axis plots or dastardly tricks. It made no mention of them whatsoever. It simply said that Amiral Gensoul could only confirm what he had said in his previous note and would defend himself by all the means at his disposal. Meanwhile, he wished to point out to Admiral Somerville that ‘the first shot fired against us will have the result of immediately putting the whole French fleet against Great Britain’. As Holland and his team made their way out of the inner harbour and back towards the Foxhound deck awnings were being furled, funnel covers brought down and steam raised: the French were preparing to sail. Curious sailors looked at the little boat below them, the large white ensign on its stern beginning to pick up the slight breeze. Most of them, officers included, still had little idea what it was all about.
On the deck of the battleship Bretagne Lieutenant Jean Boutron, a merchant navy reservist who was in charge of the forward gunnery control post, encountered his captain for the first time that morning.
‘They’re mad – absolutely mad,’ said Capitaine de vaisseau Le Pivain by way of greeting.
‘Who’s mad?’ enquired Boutron.
Le Pivain said that the English were mad to think that they’d join them and stomped off. It was the first Boutron had heard about it.
He was not surprised Le Pivain had not lingered to discuss the matter. Like most of the senior officers the captain had accepted the armistice. It was a catastrophe but he accepted it: duty and discipline required nothing less. But aboard the Bretagne, Boutron was one of its most outspoken critics and Le Pivain thought that, for the sake of morale, he ought to shut up.
‘But we are n
ot beaten. Do you feel beaten, with our Bretagne intact?’ Boutron had asked when they first received Darlan’s outline of the armistice terms. ‘The Provence alongside, is she beaten? And the Dunkerque and Strasbourg – brand flaming new and full of guns and shells – are they beaten? And the rest of the Navy? In any case, I am not beaten. And I’m not going along with this.’
It was sweltering on deck. After his brush with the captain Boutron went down to the officers’ wardroom for lunch. Somebody told him that he had seen a squadron signal from the amiral announcing that the English had presented an ‘unacceptable ultimatum’ and force would be met by force. Nonetheless, Bretagne was not yet at her highest state of readiness or they would not have been allowed to gather there, scuttles open and ceiling propeller fans churning the cigarette smoke.
The wardroom was packed. Everybody who was not on duty wanted to be there, for, like a rabbit out of a hat, the mess president had produced an important guest. It was none other than Lieutenant de vaisseau Bernard Dufay, the man who knew almost as much about what was going on as Gensoul himself and normally took his lunch three ships down the jetty at the Dunkerque. After a hurried meal Dufay gave them most of what he knew of the morning’s events: his comings and goings with his old friend Holland; the British fears that their excellent ships would fall into German hands; their determination to sink them if they did not agree to one of the options on offer. Just before he came to lunch Holland had flashed a message saying that Amiral Godfroy, who commanded the French squadron at Alexandria from the battleship Lorraine, had agreed to demobilize his ships in that port.
When Dufay finished speaking there was silence. Then somebody asked when the ultimatum would expire. He told them Somerville had given them until three o’clock, about two hours’ time. Originally it had been 1.30. Boutron suggested that scuttling might be worth considering and there was an immediate outcry. Didn’t he realize this would contravene the armistice which stated that French ships must return to France? ‘The bloody Armistice, we haven’t finished paying for it,’ Boutron told the table. ‘It’s only just beginning. If the English behave like swine today, we also behaved like swine by capitulating to Hitler.’
