England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  Vichy Radio responded by calling Giraud ‘a rebel chief and a felon’ who had broken his oath as an officer for, it emerged, after his escape and reception in Vichy he had been persuaded to write a letter to Pétain promising never to do anything to embarrass him. The broadcast insults had been attributed to the maréchal himself though the vocabulary sounds much more like Laval.

  The Prime Minister, holder of the portfolios for both foreign and internal affairs, had arrived in Vichy from his home in nearby Châteldon at 4.15 on the morning of the invasion. The rest of the Cabinet were also assembling and, for once, glad to see him. The first decision they made was not to wake Pétain before 7 a.m. He was obviously in for a long day. Next on the agenda was replying to a message from Roosevelt explaining that the invasion was for ‘the liberation of France and its Empire from the Axis yoke’. Under Laval’s direction, they had drafted a reply in a fair pastiche of the maréchal’s style.

  It is with stupor and grief that I learned during the night of the aggression of your troops against North Africa … I have always declared that we would defend our empire if we were attacked. You knew that we would defend it against any aggressor whoever he might be. You knew I would keep my word. France and her honour are at stake. We are attacked. We shall defend ourselves. This is the order I am giving.

  Once he was up and about, Pétain approved the draft and shortly after 9 a.m. received Pinckney Tuck, the career diplomat made US chargé d’affaires following Ambassador Leahy’s departure. Tuck was handed a copy of the message to Roosevelt. But when he rose to leave the maréchal shook him warmly by the hand, looked at him ‘steadfastly and smiling’, escorted him to the antechamber then, as the bemused Tuck later reported to Washington, ‘turned briskly back to his office humming a little tune’. Hardly the action of a man consumed by ‘stupor or grief’ but typical perhaps of the false trails laid by this vacillating old soldier who could not bring himself to part from anyone on less than amiable terms.

  It would be the chargé d’affaire’s last meeting with the hero of Verdun. Later that day Vichy broke off diplomatic relations with Washington and Tuck was packing his bags and hoping he would get out of town and across the Spanish border before the Germans arrived. All the resident diplomats in Vichy knew that the chances of Pétain’s kingdom maintaining its distinct and separate entity as an unoccupied zone free of Axis troops now hung by a thread. There could only be one German response to the loss of a neutral French North Africa and that was to occupy the south of France and ensure that the Côte d’Azur came under the firm embrace of Festung Europe. The terms of the Franco-German Armistice Agreement of July 1940 may have lasted longer than the Munich Agreement but now they were unravelling fast.

  At 12.15 a.m. on Monday the 9th, not quite twenty-four hours since the Torch landings began, Berlin had delivered an ultimatum to the French delegation at the Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden. It gave them one hour to agree to allow Axis aircraft the use of bases in Tunisia to attack the Allied build-up in neighbouring Algeria. Just before the time expired Laval telephoned Wiesbaden and instructed them to say yes, a formality it would have been useless to deny. There was no way the lack of a Vichy French permission would have been allowed to cause a threat to Rommel’s rear. As it was, U-boats and Luftwaffe units based on Sicily and normally employed against Malta were already beginning to inflict casualties on the massive Allied fleets assembled for Operation Torch. Among their victims would be the monitor HMS Roberts whose twin 15-inch guns were silenced when she was hit by two 500–kilo bombs in a Stuka attack and had to retire from the fray for extensive repairs.

  By the late afternoon of the 9th, Laval was on his way to Munich having been summoned to meet Hitler there at 11 p.m. En route he was to break his journey at the Dijon préfecture where he would be meeting Ambassador Abetz from Paris who was to accompany him.

  Laval had mixed feelings about this meeting. Apart from Doriot and the other French Nazis in Paris with their mystical yearning to be swallowed whole by the New Order, he had always been the most ardent exponent of collaboration. On 22 June, the first anniversary of the start of the war against Stalin’s Russia, he had, in a broadcast speech, gone further than he had ever gone before, declaring: ‘I desire the victory of Germany, for without it, Bolshevism would install itself everywhere.’ The shock waves had gone round the world and made it even harder for Roosevelt to maintain diplomatic relations with Vichy and keep Robert Murphy in place for Operation Torch.

  On previous occasions Laval had always welcomed encounters with Hitler as opportunities to try to convince him to make a permanent peace with France which would include the kind of economic and political concessions that would make its citizens welcome it. Even now, there was some consolation in knowing that France and its empire had, if only momentarily, eclipsed Russia in Berlin’s immediate priorities. Otherwise, he knew that these were dire circumstances and the repercussions could be grave.

  Would Hitler believe that Darlan, as appeared to be the case, had accidentally found himself in Algiers at the eve of the Anglo-American action? Even worse, that when he did find himself there he was incapable of rallying the troops for even twenty-four hours before calling for a local ceasefire? A ceasefire that might well prove to be contagious and deliver the whole of French North Africa into the enemy camp? ‘What price would Hitler force France to pay for the desertion of an army whose chiefs and officer cadres had, for the most part, been released from the German prison camps?’ wrote Laval in an account of his thoughts before this meeting.

  And there was another problem. Shortly after he heard the news of the landings Laval had suggested to Baron Krugg von Nidda, German consul general in Vichy, that Germany should respond by declaring its recognition of all French territory, whether overseas or metropolitan France with the exception of the disputed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which the Germans would never give up. It was not long before von Nidda was back with a reply.

  Chancellor Hitler wanted to know whether, ‘in view of the latest Anglo-Saxon aggression’, the French government was now disposed to fight the Allies on Germany’s side? Merely breaking diplomatic relations with Washington would not be good enough. What was needed was a clear-cut commitment. If it got that, said Hitler, Germany was prepared to ‘march side by side with France through thick and thin’.

  But Laval did not exactly want to march with Germany. What he envisaged, and what he thought France would accept, was to march behind it. Be part of its prosperous baggage train, a well-disposed neutral cheering it on rather like the Americans had done for Britain before Pearl Harbor, though instead of supplying the tools France would donate its skilled labour. Of course, there would always be small groups of Frenchmen such as the Légion des Volontaires Français contre Ie Bolchevisme fighting alongside the Germans just as some neutral Americans had flown with the RAF. What there would not be, could not be, was any question of France becoming a co-belligerent, the fourth member of the Axis. The French people were simply not ready for it and Laval knew he was unpopular enough already.

  His reply to von Nidda had been evasive. He was, of course, grateful for the Führer’s generous offer, would do his best to persuade the maréchal etcetera, but there would certainly be problems with the rest of the Cabinet. When Abetz met Laval at Dijon on the afternoon of the 9th the German ambassador expressed surprise and concern that there had not been an outright acceptance of Hitler’s offer. Abetz acted as if he would somehow get the blame for not being persuasive enough in the past. They had known each other for almost two years now and were almost friends. But this cast a shadow on their journey.

  At dusk they entered the Black Forest. The trees already held a little snow and were pleasing to look at. Laval, chain-smoking as usual, was worrying what sort of reception he was going to get. How offended would Hitler be at the French failure to jump at his offer to become a fighting ally? Or had Darlan made it irrelevant by already making an unconditional surrender of the rest of French North Africa
to the Anglo-Americans? Pulled the rug from under his feet? Darlan had been sent a message saying: ‘As the head of government is at present away no negotiations must take place until he returns.’ But Laval did not trust Darlan. After all, he was virtually a prisoner. As soon as they got into Munich he would have to call his office for an update and risk sharing the information with the German telephone monitors.

  Then they ran into the first serious blizzard of the year and the drivers of the two cars, hardly able to see and fearful of a skid, slowed to a crawl and sometimes stopped altogether. Laval and Abetz, travelling in the same car for company, leaning away from each other in the back seat, overcoats buttoned and belted, tried to sleep, then gave up, smoked and talked about the Jewish problem. At the end of June Himmler had decreed that all French Jews must be deported. By September 27,000 had gone, 9,000 from the unoccupied zone. Laval was trying to avoid deporting the zone’s French Jews by rounding up all the foreign ones, the pre-war asylum seekers. ‘Every time a foreign Jew leaves our territory it’s one more gained for France,’ he had told a private meeting of prefects, all from the south of France. Abetz warned him the numbers leaving the unoccupied areas were not enough to satisfy the SS. Couldn’t they strip some of the more recently nationalized French Jews of their citizenship? Laval pointed out that he was already making up the numbers by insisting that the children of the foreign Jews go with them. This was not required but he didn’t think children should be separated from their parents. He had told an American Quaker protesting at the deportations that ‘these foreign Jews had always been a problem’. He was grateful that the Germans were giving them a chance to get rid of them. Laval was under the impression that the Germans were ‘setting up a Jewish state in Poland’. This is what he said.

  They eventually got into Munich at 5 a.m., six hours after the meeting was scheduled. Abetz was informed that Hitler would see them at 8 a.m. Count Ciano, Mussolini’s Foreign Secretary and son-in-law, would also be there. They would not have much time to catch up on any sleep.

  Laval called his office in Vichy. He learned that Darlan had not extended the ceasefire to Oran or Casablanca and Pétain was about to send him another telegram. The contents were read out to him and anybody else who happened to be listening. ‘I issued orders to resist the aggressor. That order still stands.’

  ‘Tell the maréchal that he has once again saved France,’ said the Prime Minister. Then he went to see Hitler.

  Off Oran the ships that had so severely punished the old US Coast Guard cutters Walney and the Hartland for their impudent scheme had resisted the aggressor for the last time. At 9.22 a.m. on Monday the 9th Capitaine de frégate Laurin was told to take the Epervier and Typhon to sea immediately and ‘sailing as a group make for the most favourable port in Metropolitan France’. His orders came from Amiral Jacques Moreau, the man who had interrupted Darlan’s dinner with Juin and Fenard with alarmist talk of an armada gathering offshore.

  Laurin called on board Capitaine de corvette Abgrall, the commander of the Typhon, and they confirmed the plan which, expecting these orders, they had discussed over dinner the night before. Both men knew that the odds were against them. Their best hope was that a haze on the horizon would reduce visibility and keeping close to land would blur their outline. If it did they might just be able to show the English a clean pair of heels.

  In 1940 the Strasbourg had got away with something similar when she made her famous dash from Mers-el-Kébir and a battle cruiser was a much bigger target. But then Admiral Somerville had had nowhere near as many ships at his disposal. And Strasbourg had all her boilers firing. Only two of Epervier’s four were working because the others were waiting for parts from France. All the fuses had been removed from the depth charges on their sterns to reduce the chances of them being detonated by a lucky shot, the fate of the Mogador at Mers-el-Kébir. Laurin made it clear that, as far as he was concerned, it would not be a suicide mission. If they were blocked by superior forces they would break off contact and return.

  They left Oran at 10 a.m., the Epervier in the lead, heading steadily due north through a Mediterranean beginning to wear its brief winter greyness with useful fog banks here and there. Their luck held for almost an hour. Then three Fleet Air Arm Fulmar fighters and an Albacore flew over them, also on a northerly bearing, presumably returning to their carrier and too low on fuel to make a closer investigation. Nonetheless, they had to assume they had been spotted and plotted and Laurin ordered a change in course to the west.

  Shortly afterwards his lookouts began to report ships on his port, seaward side but some distance away. They were heading towards the Epervier on a parallel course. By 11 a.m., with about 16,000 yards between them, they were identified as a mixed force of cruisers and destroyers. A Walrus seaplane, a type the Royal Navy used as gunnery spotters, flew around them in long, high circles well out of anti-aircraft range. Laurin again changed course, this time to the east, and his ship began to work up to as many knots as half her boilers could produce. It was not the 36 knots her full complement of four might have yielded; but slowly she began to lose the cruisers, which showed no interest in matching their change of course, and faded into the haze on their port side.

  The relief this must have brought was short-lived. At 11.20 a.m. Laurin had just ordered a resumption of their northern course when the bridge was informed that a British light cruiser was astern of them starboard and closing fast. No Vichy French ships had radar and the lookouts had failed to spot the stalking cruiser coming from the landward side, her outline broken up by black and white zigzag camouflage stripes. For Laurin this was a very nasty shock indeed. It meant that they were almost surrounded. He decided to get back to Oran before they were cut off. Epervier and Typhon leaned into the kind of tight U-turns destroyer captains only dream about in peacetime, sending men and everything else not tied down flying. At 11.23 the cruiser, now on their port side, opened fire. Laurin, in a report written five days later, could appreciate another professional. ‘The enemy’s first salvo (12 rounds) was perfectly grouped but overshot us by about 100 metres. The second salvo was about 50 metres short, the third bracketed us. The enemy guns were perfectly fired with only a weak dispersion.’

  The French ships had come up against HMS Aurora, flagship of Captain Sir William Gladstone Agnew who, at not quite 44, was the commander of Force K. This was a mixed force of cruisers and destroyers that terrorized Axis transports to Africa. Exactly a year ago to the day Agnew had sunk in a night action an entire Italian-German convoy of seven ships plus one of its destroyer escorts. In one blow Rommel lost 18,000 tons of fuel oil, 35,000 tons of munitions and over 700 new vehicles. Agnew gained an instant knighthood, a reflection of the contribution he was considered to have made to the Afrika Korp’s (temporary) departure from Tobruk and the rest of Cyrenaica. The Italians eventually got their revenge with a clever mines ambush. Force K lost a cruiser and a destroyer and Aurora had been badly damaged. She was now not long out of dry dock in Liverpool where she had acquired her distinctive fresh coat of zebra war paint.

  Naval gunnery was Agnew’s main maritime passion: he had been a senior instructor in it. What better way to celebrate the first anniversary of his greatest triumph than balancing the books against La Marine Française who, in the last twenty-four hours, had sunk three of the Royal Navy’s ships and damaged a fourth at no loss to themselves? Within twenty minutes Aurora’s 6-inch gun had almost reduced Epervier to a hapless hulk. One engine was knocked out, most of her guns out of action, her torpedo platforms wrecked, the officer in charge of them among the dead on the demolished gunnery bridge. From the port side HMS Jamaica, Agnew’s other cruiser, and the destroyer Brilliant had closed in and engaged the Typhon, which was trying to keep them at bay with her 5.7-inch guns. Epervier’s gun crews had also been busy but they had been taking such violent evasive action there had been little chance of hitting the cruiser.

  By now Laurin had given up all hope of getting his ship back into Oran harbour and dec
ided to beach her below the cliffs at Cap de l’Aiguille where coastal batteries offered some protection. Epervier’s stern was well alight and small explosions were coming from the storerooms located there. The fire crew who had been trying to deal with it were among the latest casualties though the Aurora’s fire was becoming less accurate because the Typhon, which seemed to bear a charmed life, had managed to hide her crippled companion in a smoke screen. Even then, seconds before her keel scraped the beach, a shell stopped her last working engine. ‘As we ran aground the ship was completely disabled,’ reported Laurin. ‘No engines, no steering, no electricity, no boilers and the fire was spreading forwards.’

  Agnew edged a little closer to take a look but came under fire from a shore battery and withdrew. (There were probably few Royal Navy captains who could not recite Nelson’s dictum: ‘A ship’s a fool that fights a fort.’) Partly covered by her own smoke screen Typhon slipped away and back into harbour despite another encounter with the cruiser Jamaica, which at last did some serious damage. With most of his guns and engines out of action Capitaine de corvette Abgrail was ordered to scuttle his ship in the harbour’s best navigable channel. Sharing the seabed not far away was what was left of the minesweeper La Surprise which was sunk along with her captain and about fifty crew when the destroyer Brilliant had hit her magazine.

  Twenty-one had died on the Epervier but by the time she was beached Laurin’s surviving crew could find only twelve of them. The other nine were either in those parts of the ship that were too hot to get to or had been blown overboard. Laurin got his dead and thirty-one wounded off then began to behave as if he were already on a hostile shore by seeing to it that anything that was salvageable was rendered useless. Wireless equipment and anti-aircraft machine guns were thrown overboard, firing pins removed from the 5.7-inch guns. Anything that might be of value to the Allies or, even worse, the dissident Gaullists was wrecked.