England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  Bristowe succeeded in getting beneath the high stern of his target and dropping his cargo on the spot where they were most likely to cripple the Richelieu by wrecking propellers and flooding stern compartments. As the charges splashed overboard some curious French sailors, who did not appear to be armed, peered over the guard rail on the quarterdeck then disappeared. Below them Bristowe’s crew, who had been warned that there would be no attempt to pick up anybody who was blown overboard by the explosions, clung to their cockleshell, bracing themselves for the boiling waters that would erupt as they made their getaway.

  Nothing happened. Depth charges required a certain minimum depth for their fuzes to work and the tide was not right for it. As they sped through the still waters of Dakar harbour towards the merchant ships they had to reconcile themselves to the fact that it had been a failure. As if this were not bad enough the next thing to malfunction was their single engine. For twenty minutes they drifted helplessly in the dark before they got it going again, their only consolation being the sound of an explosion which they persuaded themselves must have been the delayed action of at least one of their depth charges. Shortly afterwards they set off, for a while hotly pursued by a French launch which chanced upon them only to become entangled in its own anti-submarine nets.

  At about 4 a.m. Bristowe established radio contact with Hermes and informed Onslow that he had placed the depth charges beneath the stern almost two hours before. Fifteen minutes later, six Swordfish made night take-offs from the carrier – only three of the pilots had ever done this before – so that they would be over their target with torpedoes at first light, which would minimize the effectiveness of the French anti-aircraft barrage, not only from the Richelieu but the other ships in the harbour. All returned safely, two with minor damage. The last aircraft to attack saw four tracks running towards the battleship and two crews reported a column of smoke rising from the Richelieu.

  But once again, as at Mers-el-Kébir, the Fleet Air Arm had not got its depth and speed settings quite right. Only one of their tinfish found enough water to run true and explode close to Richelieu’s propellers which, just like the raiding party, was what they were aiming for. By an enormous stroke of luck this turned out to have been quite enough. Bristowe’s depth charges had not gone off. The explosion they had heard while trying to repair their engine was from the Richelieu but it was a harmless ‘funnel explosion’, a maritime version, while trying to work up steam, of a car’s backfire only much louder. But in a small-scale copy of what occurred in the second attack on the Dunkerque at Mers-el-Kébir, the single torpedo not only hit the 35,000-ton battleship but detonated at least one and probably all four of the depth charges that had been deposited there with so much effort. This blew a hole measuring 500 square feet in the Richelieu, ruptured her starboard propellor shaft and caused her to sink her ample stern firmly into the Dakar silt. There were no casualties, her guns were still in working order and from the air, to an untrained eye, the ship looked untouched; but she was not going to go very far until her flooded compartments had been pumped dry and repairs made that the colony was ill-equipped to make.

  Bristowe might have expected a Distinguished Service Cross, the navy’s equivalent of the army’s Military Cross, for his crucial role – Churchill thought it ‘most gallant’ – in disabling the Richelieu. Instead he got the higher Distinguished Service Order and the whole enterprise was greeted in a much more triumphalist manner than the ‘more in sorrow than anger’ tone generally adopted over Mers-el-Kébir. ‘One of the most brilliant exploits of the war on a level with the Battle of the River Plate and the Altmark,’* said the BBC Overseas Service, much to the displeasure of parts of the Foreign Office. Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Hugesse, British ambassador to Turkey where he had found the French trading community remained patiently Anglophile, cabled ‘not only in worst possible taste, but certain to exacerbate [the] feelings of those Frenchmen who sympathise with us.’

  De Gaulle, who had just established his headquarters in Belgravia’s Carlton Gardens, was toying with the idea of leaving London to sit out the war in Montreal. ‘Mers-el-Kébir was a terrible blow to our hopes,’ he said. ‘It showed at once in the recruitment of the volunteers.’ At a 14 July Bastille Day Parade in Whitehall, Churchill’s ‘man of destiny’ who was about to be sentenced to death in absentia by a Vichy court martial, reviewed some of the best or at least the most presentable of his troops: all 300 of them. Perhaps his only consolation was the presence of a large crowd of Londoners who cheered and applauded and, carried away by the band, attempted to sing the ‘Marseillaise’. The parade ended at Grosvenor Gardens where the tall générale, lugubrious-looking at the best of times, laid a Tricolour wreath beneath the statue of Maréchal Foch, commander in 1918 of the largest army France had ever put into the field.

  Even before Mers-el-Kébir, de Gaulle had been having difficulty recruiting from among the estimated 21,000 French servicemen who had, for various reasons, ended up in England. Some, among them the Narvik veterans who so impressed Auchinleck, had come across the North Sea at the end of the Norwegian campaign. Others had been evacuated from Dunkirk then sent to Cherbourg or St Malo only to be returned to England along with British troops when it was decided that there was not going to be a Brittany redoubt after all. A few had arrived on stretchers from field hospitals in Belgium and northern France or been fished out of the Channel choking on fuel oil from sunken ships.

  All for a while were a captive audience and yet, though he had the firm support of Churchill and the British media and ‘countless individuals gave our enterprise a warm welcome’, de Gaulle encountered opposition from an unexpected quarter. With hindsight, he wrote about it with an empathy for his hosts that he was not always famous for:

  the British High Command, which from one day to another expected the German invasion … looked with some mistrust upon those allies of yesterday humiliated by misfortune, dissatisfied with themselves and with others and loaded with complaints. What would they do if the enemy gained a bridgehead? Wasn’t the most sensible course to ship them away as quickly as possible? And what, after all, was the use of a few battalions without cadres and crews without officers, which General de Gaulle claimed he could rally?

  One of the lowest points came after a successful day’s recruiting at Trentham Park in Staffordshire where the French Light Mountain Division had been encamped ever since their return from Norway. But after de Gaulle’s departure he was astonished to learn that the troops had been addressed by two British officers, one of them the Francophile Tory MP and author Captain Somerset de Chair, who had informed them: ‘You are perfectly free to serve under General de Gaulle. But it is our duty to point out to you, speaking as man to man, that if you do so decide you will be rebels against your government.’

  To reject the hero of Verdun for an almost unknown brigadier general, perhaps no more than an ambitious scoundrel prepared to be Churchill’s puppet, was always going to be a leap in the dark. De Gaulle himself realized this and was obviously fascinated by the sort who rallied to him, describing their motivation with a Conradian relish and exactitude:

  A taste for risk and adventure pushed to the pitch of art for art’s sake, a contempt for the cowardly and the indifferent, a tendency to melancholy and so to quarrelling during the periods without danger, giving place to an ardent cohesion in action, a national pride sharpened to the extreme by their country’s ill-fortune and by contact with well equipped allies, and above all, a sovereign confidence in the strength and courage of their own conspiracy.

  For some there were, of course, more prosaic considerations such as whether a wife and family awaited in some shattered part of France from where no letter or telegram had reached England for weeks. When this did not apply the decision could be easy. The crew of the French mine-laying submarine Rubis had been attached to the Royal Navy and sowing destruction from their base in Dundee since early in the war. Her captain and two of his officers had long since brought their wives over from Fr
ance and lived with them in rented accommodation. Rubis reacted to the armistice with the ballot box: head for Toulon or fight on with the British? All but two, including the captain, chose Dundee and de Gaulle, possibly in that order, for several members of the submarine’s young crew were already on the verge of taking a Scottish wife.

  Surcouf had about three times as many crew as the Rubis, almost a destroyer’s complement, but only fifteen of them signed up with de Gaulle. In a typescript report Capitaine Martin, the Surcouf’s commander, listed their names, ranks, numbers, marital status and if they had children, how many. By each man’s name was written: déserteur. Just over half were married and nine were skilled artificer petty officers: electricians, armourers, mechanics to whom the Gaullists usually paid a signing-up fee of £50. An exception was made for their prime catch, Premier-maître électricien Francis Jaffrey who, according to Lieutenant Crescent, was paid £400 – more than enough in 1940 to buy a semi-detached house in any part of southern England. But then Jaffrey knew how to make the Surcouf work.

  Within twenty-four hours of the British boarding their submarine most of the crew had found themselves, along with hundreds of other French sailors, at a vast tented camp – at one point it would hold about 5,000 men – being set up on Liverpool’s Aintree racecourse, home of the Grand National. They had got there after a twelve-hour train journey north packed into locked carriages guarded by some of the Royal Marines who had been in the boarding parties. The Royal Navy had not wasted any time; it was as if they feared that if they did not put some distance between them the French might break out and recapture their ships

  Before the Surcouf’s crew departed they were briefly allowed back onto the submarine, either in small groups or in the case of the officers one at a time, in order to collect a few items of personal kit for the journey. ‘An English sub-lieutenant gave me his word of honour that all our belongings would be packed up and sent to us,’ complained Dr Le Nistour. ‘Another false word of honour!’ Some of the French officers had kept elegant wardrobes – Capitaine de corvette Martin had four dressing gowns on board – and when they failed to turn up they accused the English of looting, a vile calumny according to the senior sailors involved who whispered to the Admiralty that it was the Royal Marines. Both Le Nistour and Bouillaut, the ringleaders of the resistance on the Surcouf, eventually submitted lists of all they had lost. Along with a wallet containing 500 francs, 1,000 Gauloises Bleu, two pairs of pyjamas, three sweaters, a service cap, and five books on navigation, Bouillaut included ‘1 pistolet automatique (marque MAB police calibre 7.65) et deux chargeurs.’ He had, after all, paid good money for it.

  When the others had been allowed back on board the Surcouf prior to their departure for Aintree, the lieutenant had been unable to recover any of his personal effects because he was in Plymouth Naval Hospital recovering from his wound. Bouillaut made rapid progress and on 8 July, five days after he had been shot, was judged fit enough for the train journey up to Liverpool where a bed awaited at the city’s Walton Hospital because he needed more treatment and convalescence before he could join the others under canvas on the racecourse. ‘I must say that I was very well cared for, both at the Walton hospital and the one in Plymouth,’ he would report.

  Bouillaut’s discharge from the naval hospital happened to coincide with the burials of the men fatally wounded on the Surcouf including Ingénieur mécanicien Daniel, the single French fatality bayoneted by the dying Leading Seaman Webb. They were all being buried with full military honours at the city’s Weston Mill Cemetery where there were already some naval graves from 1914–18. As the only officer from the Surcouf left in Plymouth, Bouillaut felt he should attend and the day before the hospital’s Chief Medical Officer had informed him this would not be a problem. But when an army lieutenant turned up at the hospital next morning it was with travel warrants for himself and Bouillaut to depart for Liverpool on the next train. ‘I protested vehemently, demanding to go to the funeral of my comrade,’ said Bouillaut. ‘I asked him to telephone the Admiralty in Devonport to clear up what I was certain was a misunderstanding. His orders were confirmed in the strongest terms and we left for Liverpool.’

  French outrage at this decision was exacerbated when a few days later they read a newspaper account of the funerals which commented on the absence of mourners from the Surcouf. Perhaps if anybody other than Bouillaut had been available the Royal Navy might have relented. He was, after all, the man who had killed two of their own for what could only ever have been a token gesture. The idea of Bouillaut, his lucky wound sling advertising his role in the affair, rubbing shoulders around their gravesides with the widows of the men he had shot may well have been too much. Nor had he for one moment expressed the slightest remorse for it. On the contrary, he wanted his gun back.

  In any case, immediately after Mers-el-Kébir, the deaths of three members of the Royal Navy were hardly enough for most of La Marine Française. The murderous behaviour of the English had made the men angry,’ said Crescent. But he noted that despite the discomforts of the tented camp, its outdoor kitchen and washbasins open to England’s frequent summer showers and the absence of wine (though Dr Le Nistour thought this beneficial), morale remained high at Aintree and this was not when the defections began.

  These started in August following the closure of the racecourse camp and the transfer of the Surcouf’s and other crews from the seized ships to Barmouth, a Victorian resort town on North Wales’s Mawddach river estuary which had boasted Tennyson and Darwin among its paying guests. Here they were billeted in the small hotels and guest houses that normally catered for those who came to the town for its unspoilt sands and Snowdonia backdrop. ‘With rare exceptions they all praised their hosts,’ said Le Nistour, who had been provided with a surgery and a little four-bed sick bay. ‘The local lady charity workers came to see us to enquire what they could do to make things more comfortable. The state of our health was so good our team scarcely realised what efforts were being made to help them.’

  Afterwards the doctor concluded that the British had sent them to Barmouth and its professional hospitality so that they could be softened up for the Gaullist recruiting sergeants who came calling. Since Mers-el-Kébir their task had been made a little easier by the trigger-happy commander of German motor torpedo boat S27. Despite arrangements via the Red Cross to ensure safe passage, off Portland on 24 July S27 had stopped then torpedoed the fully lit French steamer Meknes repatriating the first 1,277 of Darlan’s marooned sailors. British destroyers rescued almost 900 of them but, including crew, 416 Frenchmen perished and the Gaullists made sure that those intent on taking a similar trip heard all about it. For some waverers it was enough. ‘I don’t want to be torpedoed on my way to France. I prefer to remain in England,’ the Surcouf’s Lieutenant Crescent was told by one of his petty officers.

  Apart from the Meknes factor, Crescent gives several reasons for poor morale. At the top of his list is the lack of mail which he was convinced was an Anglo-Gaullist plot rather than a combination of the collapse of the French postal system, German or Vichy censorship and the inevitable delays incurred when letters had to be forwarded through a neutral country. Whether no news from home made a man more or less likely to want to get back might also depend on distractions nearer at hand. Crescent mentions ‘propaganda spread by women’ and cites the case of the femme fatale who won Maître armurier Pottier for de Gaulle, though her nationality is not revealed nor whether she was considered a professional or an enthusiastic amateur. But mostly he thought that the Gaullist junior petty officers and seamen who regularly visited Barmouth were the most effective advocates for their cause.

  They presented the following arguments: Maréchal Pétain secretly agrees with de Gaulle; French sailors would never be repatriated and, even supposing they left England, they would be torpedoed like the Meknes; our seamen would be really stupid to stay in Barmouth without money or clothing when the Free French forces could provide both.

  Nonetheless
, by the end of July de Gaulle had, by his own account, recruited no more than a third of the French servicemen in Britain; Mers-el-Kébir and homesickness had turned the rest into ardent Pétainists yearning for repatriation, and only a trickle would come over from those who remained. Even so, de Gaulle knew how to make the best of a poor hand. RAF Bomber Command was persuaded to let a few Free French aircrew participate in an attack on the Ruhr. At this stage of the war the RAF was inflicting little damage with these raids and it is unlikely that this one was any different. But its value to de Gaulle was immense. He was able to announce to the world that at least some Frenchmen had returned to the fight.

  In Vichy Colonel René Fonck, a 1914–18 fighter ace with seventy-five confirmed kills, responded to this with the news he had signed up some 200 French aircrew who, in order to avenge Mers-el-Kébir, were willing to join in Luftwaffe air raids on Britain. France, it seemed, would be the only country whose airmen would be attacking ground targets on both sides of the Channel, possibly even passing each other in mid-air. But Fonck’s offer was declined.

  Chapter Eight

  Fonck’s attempt to persuade his old Richthofen Squadron adversary Hermann Goering to let his volunteers retaliate for Mers-el-Kébir by flying with the Luftwaffe was typical of Vichy’s enthusiasm for a fresh start with Germany. From the beginning it strove to present itself as worthy of its place in Hitler’s New Europe: not, as Ambassador Bullitt had predicted, as a vassal state but almost as an equal with the armistice replaced by a proper peace treaty and the government returned to Paris. Only the English, whose pig-headed stubbornness was prolonging the war, were holding this up but they would soon be put in their place.