England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  They could have spared themselves their hangovers. Neither Cunningham nor General Irwin was prepared to risk heavy casualties. There was no intention of attempting a landing on Dakar until most of the coastal batteries were silenced and that was proving far more difficult than they imagined. They were still trying to work out the precise location of all the short-range 5.4-inch guns of the kind that had hit the destroyer Foresight when she was operating close inshore the day before. The bigger and slower troop transports would be much more vulnerable.

  Dakar was a good example of the old naval maxim that ships should not take on forts that are unsinkable and invariably overlook their sea-level opponents. In his own account of the battle Churchill cites Nelson’s view that ‘a six-gun battery could fight a 100-gun ship-of-the-line’. If it had not been for the fog, Cunningham’s battleships could have kept out of range of all but air strikes and the Richelieu, her main firepower reduced to two guns after a fatal accident in her one working turret involving propellant charges. As it was, both the battleships had been obliged to come close enough to be straddled by the French 5.4- and 6-inch guns. Resolution led a charmed life but Barham was hit four times and was lucky not to sustain any serious damage, while the only fatality was unmourned, being one of the ship’s rats. Some of this fire was coming from Richelieu’s secondary armament but luckily for Cunningham her brace of working 15-inchers were no more accurate than his own which had succeeded in hitting the Richelieu only twice and doing no serious damage. And the British had eight times the firepower. French air strikes on the task force were becoming increasingly troublesome. They had not hit anything yet but there had been several near misses and Ark Royal’s Skuas seemed unable to stop them. Nor was Vichy air activity confined to Dakar.

  Over Gibraltar that same afternoon forty Vichy bombers from Moroccan airfields flying above high levanter cloud rained an estimated 150 bombs on the fortress, which the Royal Navy had been hastily reinforcing in order to keep its passage through the western Mediterranean open. Although half the bombs fell into the sea it was a much larger affair than any of the essentially hit-and-run Italian raids that had preceded it. The battle cruiser Renown, all anti-aircraft guns blazing, made a dash for the open sea and was narrowly missed by two bombs. The dockyards were hit but bad visibility seems to have benefited both sides, for the damage was slight and none of the raiders was brought down.

  By the time this Vichy revenge for the attack on Dakar was taking place the British had fired the last of the day’s 400 15-inch shells at the port to little avail. Far from terrifying the defenders into surrender it seemed to have stiffened resistance. On the Barham the humidity in the gun turrets was so bad that, looking down from the bridge during one of the lulls in bombardment, Admiral Cunningham was startled to see stark-naked gunners sitting on the top of their turret wringing the sweat out of their overalls. Men working in the airless confines of the magazine space below the turrets had been passing out with the heat, been dragged out and revived with buckets of water then gone back to work until they fainted again, when the process was repeated.

  While these exhausted nudists stood on the turret savouring the sea breeze, the wireless room had sent Cunningham a translation of an intercepted message from Pétain to Governor General Boisson praising the ‘courage and fidelity’ of his garrison. ‘France follows with emotion and confidence your resistance to the partisan treachery and the British aggression … The entire mother country is proud of your attitude and of the resolution of the forces under your command.’

  After the defection of Eboué, the mulatto governor of Chad and an ingrate if ever there was one as far as his superiors were concerned, Pétain’s message made it obvious that Vichy was inspired by Boisson’s resistance and that the governor general, basking in the accolades of the hero of Verdun, was unlikely to throw in his lot with ‘partisan treachery’. If the Anglo-Gaullists wanted Dakar they would have to be prepared to fight for every inch of it and that was never part of the plan. A lifeboat from the destroyer Foresight was sent to fetch de Gaulle from the Westernland and bring him to the Barham where Spears, who was in attendance, described the conference that followed as resembling ‘an old Irish wake at which the participants tried to pretend that the corpse was not dead’.

  Throughout the morning de Gaulle had been listening to the ‘rather lively cannonade’ being exchanged between the British and his countrymen with mounting despair. Nonetheless, Admiral Cunningham and Generals Irwin and Spears would all be impressed by his display of grace under pressure on the bridge of the Barham where the consensus was that Operation Menace had become Operation Muddle and Free France had lost. The only sign of any private anguish was de Gaulle’s chain-smoking. Most soldiers quickly learned that the Royal Navy’s upper decks were as sacrosanct as any parade ground. A fascinated Spears observed the Frenchman flick one butt after another onto timber whitened by daily scrubbing, while the appalled Cunningham silently provided spent antiaircraft shell cases as ashtrays only to discover his visitor was as bad a shot as his gunners.

  While Spears watched the admiral watching cigarette ends ‘with all the hypnotised attention of a Wimbledon fan’ de Gaulle came up with a face-saving idea: since an opposed landing would lead to the kind of pitched battle between Frenchmen he was trying to avoid, Dakar should be informed that, at his request, they were stopping the bombardment. This was agreed, though another proposal that the British should maintain their blockade of Dakar and deny the Vichy warships freedom of movement was turned down. There were not enough ships: guarding against invasion in home waters, hunting the U-boats trying to starve Britain into surrender in the Atlantic and supporting the army’s defence of Egypt and the Suez canal against the Italians by dominating the Mediterranean had to come first. There could be no question of the Royal Navy keeping a permanent squadron off the West African coast.

  And that might have brought down the curtain on Operation Menace had it not been for a couple of things. First of all, after de Gaulle had returned to the Westernland believing it was all over, late night forecasts indicated that the fog might disperse. The prospect of good visibility tempted the British commanders to inform the Admiralty that they would make another attack on ships and forts in the morning though they added: ‘Should inadequate result be obtained we recommend the adoption of de Gaulle’s proposals.’ Second, this despatch crossed with a querulous message from Churchill who was plainly finding it difficult to comprehend how a puny force of Vichyites could successfully defy a Royal Navy Second Fifteen however arthritic its battleships.

  Why do you not land in force by night or in the fog or both on the beaches near Rufisque and take Rufisque for a start …? At the same time, if the weather clears, you could hold down batteries on Goree Island in daylight by long-range sea fire, and if there is fog you would not need to do so. It should be possible to feed force, once ashore, by night. This force, once landed, ought to be able to advance on Dakar … Pray act as you think best but, meanwhile, give a reasoned answer to these points. Matter must be pushed to conclusion without delay.

  Next day was all the weatherman had promised it would be. Clear blue skies had replaced the fog. All night Cunningham’s ships had been circling south of Dakar and out of range of French guns. At 6 a.m. they began to move north towards their bombardment positions, the Barham and the Resolution in the lead. For the first time the French gunners would be able to see what they were up against. Furthermore, the battleships would have their spotters up and be able to shoot straighter. At first light Ark Royal flew off reconnaissance and anti-submarine aircraft with Skuas flying fighter cover.

  The bombardment plan was for Resolution to attack the immobile Richelieu while the Barham and the cruiser Devonshire would take on the forts. Meanwhile, the Australia, the other cruiser, would go after her two French equivalents, the Georges Leygues and the Montcalm which were in Dakar harbour. Spotting for the Australia was her own Walrus float plane, an even slower biplane than the Swordfish, whose three-m
an crew were launched by catapult and their aircraft winched up from a sea landing by crane. It found the cruisers easily enough, lost them briefly under a smoke screen, located them again and had just directed the Australia’s fire so that it was straddling the targets when a Curtiss Hawk dived through intense anti-aircraft fire from the battleships and shot it down before crashing itself. None of these four aircrew, French or British, survived.

  As more Curtisses began to chase away the Swordfish and Skuas, some badly holed and lucky to get back to the carrier, Cunningham’s ships began to find themselves, despite the good visibility, back in the familiar position of firing blind. This gave Pierre Lancelot, commander of the submarine Bévéziers which had rescued the wounded Swordfish observer ‘Goon’ Cunningham the day before, his chance to try to avenge the loss of the other two submarines in his flotilla.

  Lancelot was among those French officers who before the armistice had worked closely with the Royal Navy and knew its flag signals. Lurking at periscope depth some 3,000 yards from the two battleships, he saw that Cunningham’s flagship Barham had hoisted the ‘Blue 7’ signal instructing Resolution to ‘turn to bombardment course’. He waited until the helmsmen had begun to bring their 30,000 tons of warship around in synchronized turns to starboard then discharged four torpedoes at them. Lookouts spotted the white froth of their tracks almost immediately and the ships began frantic turns back to port in order to get their bows pointing towards the tracks so that they could become a much thinner target and steam between them: a manoeuvre known as ‘combing’.

  Barham just made it but one of the torpedoes hit Resolution amidships, flooding her port boiler room and starting fires. One able seaman was mortally wounded. Speed was halved to 12 knots and she was listing almost 13 degrees to port before the pumps could stop it. With two destroyers attempting to hide her plight in a smoke screen, the battleship tottered away while a third destroyer, the Foresight, dashed down the direction of the torpedo tracks and began depth-charging as soon as her Asdic operator thought he heard a telltale ping.

  Foresight’s captain was convinced he had avenged the four dead from his own ship on their first day at Dakar but he was mistaken: Lancelot had got clean away, the hero of the hour as far as Vichy was concerned, for he had brought Operation Menace to its inevitable end. Half an hour after London had learned what had happened to the Resolution Churchill was cabling Cunningham: ‘We have decided that the enterprise against Dakar should be abandoned, the obvious evil consequences being faced.’

  A crippled capital ship that might never reach dry dock was far more than the Admiralty ever intended to invest in Général de Gaulle; to risk further losses was inconceivable. As it was, Vichy aircraft had just raided Gibraltar for the second time in twenty-four hours and there were a lot more of them. Anti-aircraft gunners claimed to have shot down three but an armed trawler used for anti-submarine work had been sunk alongside the south mole and bombs on shore had killed several civilians, one of them the secretary of Admiral Dudley North. Some British officers insisted that enough bombs had hit the sea to indicate that not all the French flyers had their hearts in it but at this stage of the war people who should have known better still had very exaggerated ideas about the accuracy of aerial bombing.

  In Franco’s precariously neutral Madrid, France’s naval attaché would shortly be making it plain to his British counterpart that they would bomb Gibraltar again if the attacks on Dakar continued. There was not much chance of this in the immediate future. Cunningham’s 15-inch gun power had been reduced by half and his ships were returning to Freeport, the Resolution towed by Barham. ‘Bloodshed has been avoided at the cost of honour,’ Captain Waugh wrote to his wife Laura from the Ettrick. By which he meant Royal Marine blood. In all the British lost about 20 killed, casualties more or less equally divided between the Fleet Air Arm and the sailors. Probably as many were wounded. Vichy lost 166 of whom 92 were Europeans and the rest African. Wounded totalled 340, almost 70 per cent African, which was hardly surprising after just over two days of heavy naval bombardment with the overs falling into the crush of the urban poor.

  ‘A very gay journey back. Very drunken evenings in the officers’ mess. The troops less light hearted about their reverse,’ Waugh confided to his diary, notions of lost honour having apparently become less troublesome. In their own bar the warrant officers and sergeants of Waugh’s battalion, a professional if mostly untested brotherhood who had been anticipating their battle debut with all the usual feelings of dread and fierce fascination, had composed a new song. In the morning most of them could only remember the chorus:

  We went to Dakar with General de Gaulle.

  We sailed round in circles and did bugger all.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vichy lost no time in turning Dakar’s defiance into a famous victory. A number of French newsmen, including a cinema newsreel cameraman, had either been in the port from the beginning or got there in time to photograph the defenders artfully arranged amid the ruins. Six weeks later magazines such as L’Illustration were still running big black and white pictures of the commander of the destroyer L’Audacieux greeting the more photogenic of his wounded crew on a hospital verandah and of their gallant ship herself, beached and burnt out with a couple of respectful camels in the foreground. There was also a trophy: an almost intact Swordfish to which, written on a piece of cardboard and dated 24 September 1940, some wit had pinned a ‘Communiqué anglais’ claiming all British planes had returned safely.

  In the British press, obliged to accept censorship in its war reporting but still able to bite on its comment pages, contempt for the ‘Dakar fiasco’ was universal, ‘MAJOR BLUNDER!screamed the Daily Mirror’s headline over an editorial that spoke of ‘the lowest depths of imbecility’ and declared the Norwegian campaign now looked like a distinguished naval exploit. ‘We have lost a golden opportunity,’ observed the Telegraph. And the Daily Mail warned, ‘a fiasco which will discourage our friends and give joy to our enemies’.

  None more than Pierre Laval. France had routed the Anglo-Gaullists. The French were no longer on their knees. They had proved they had something to offer. Here was leverage. All Laval’s formidable bargaining powers had been roused and Pétain, despite growing reservations about his slippery deputy, knew he was the right man to use Dakar to try to extract concessions out of Germany: allow them to send more soldiers and ships to defend their African possessions. By the evening of the second day of the action, a good twelve hours before Lancelot torpedoed the Resolution, Laval was already in Paris and telling Ambassador Abetz, ‘France is contributing her modest share to the final overthrow of England.’

  For the Germans, the collapse of France had been dreamlike enough. Understandably, the prospect that it would then go to war with England had not entered their calculations. But now things began to move fast. This was not only because of the Laval-Abetz meetings but due to parallel talks being held between Général Huntziger, who since leaving the Armistice Commission had become Pétain’s Minister of War, and Feldmarschal Walter von Brauchitsch, then Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht. ‘France and Germany have an armistice, but it is also a fact that France is fighting with Germany against Britain. This anomalous situation must be settled,’ Huntziger told him.

  Soldier to soldier the two got on well together. This was more than could be said for Brauchitsch’s relationship with Laval which had not survived their first meeting. At the end of August Laval had attempted to acquire extra French troops to recapture the new Gaullist enclaves in French colonial Africa by hinting that, if Germany played its cards right, France might declare war against England. ‘We don’t need your help, which would be practically nil in any case,’ snapped the handsome Prussian aristocrat, one of the architects of the summer blitzkrieg and entirely unprepared for Laval’s practised insolence. And that was the end of that. Others were less fastidious. When it came to the big breakthrough the former premier, the man who was once getting at least as many column inches in th
e international press as Adolf Hitler, was Germany’s first choice as the obvious go-between for a new understanding with France.

  On 20 October 1940 Laval was in Paris when Abetz announced he had arranged a meeting with Ribbentrop but he must not tell anybody. Laval knew he risked an almighty row with Pétain if he met the German Foreign Minister without informing him and persuaded Abetz to let him make a brief return to Vichy for a private chat with the maréchal.

  Even at this early stage the Vichy regime was beginning to break up into clearly identifiable camps, the main divide being between Laval’s pro-German faction and Foreign Minister Baudouin who, with all his banker’s caution, advocated strict neutrality and a policy of attentisme: wait and see. On the edge of this group was Général Maxime Weygand, at 73 some ten years younger than Pétain and twice as cantankerous, a xenophobe who disliked the British but disliked the Germans more and felt Churchill’s surprisingly prolonged resistance might yet profit France. Weygand had just taken command of the French troops the Axis had allowed to remain in North Africa and, though he agreed it was sometimes tactically necessary to collaborate with Berlin, he had plans to reinforce them secretly so that they might ultimately provide the springboard for liberation. As for Laval, he thought he ‘wallowed in defeat like a dog in filth’.

  On the morning of the 22nd, the object of Weygand’s scorn was back in Paris and meeting Abetz at the German Embassy. As instructed, he was carrying an overnight bag. Accompanying Laval was the aristocratic Fernand de Brinon, a decorated war veteran and right-wing journalist, whom Laval would ultimately persuade Pétain to appoint as Vichy’s representative in German-occupied France. De Brinon had long advocated rapprochement with Germany and had been the first French journalist to interview Hitler when he came to power in 1933. A scoop made even more remarkable by de Brinon’s marriage to Lisette Franck, a Jewish divorcée and airhead society hostess.