England's Last War Against France

by Colin Smith

  50 engine room artificers … refused to budge: Talbot’s report, NA ADM 199/822.

  52 ‘I took a pace forward’: Lieutenant de vaisseau Bouillaut, from his report to Capitaine de corvette Martin commanding the submarine Surcouf, dated Walton Hospital, Liverpool, 25 July 1940. VA, Document 284c.

  53 not kneeling but lying on his stomach: from Talbot’s description of what he could see of the gunfight from the Command Post. NA ADM 199/822.

  53 squeezed off one ineffectual shot as he fell: Crescent’s report, VA, Document 267c.

  53 hanging onto the ladder to the Command Post: Talbot’s report, NA ADM 199/822.

  53 travelled down the inside of his right arm, entered his chest: from Copie de certificate d’origine de blessure du Lieutenant de Vaisseau Bouillaut, Le Nistour papers, VA.

  53 ‘there were no English capable of fighting left’: Bouillaut’s report. VA, Document 284c.

  53 Bouillaut had heard more shots: ibid.

  53 ‘Things are getting hot’: Le Nistour’s report on the evacuation from Brest and his stay in England. (In colloquial French the expression is, ‘Ça va barder!’) VA.

  54 ‘The English sergeant [Webb] rushes towards us with his fixed bayonet’: VA, Document 267c. Le Nistour was convinced Webb was a soldier or a marine, not a sailor, and insists he was wearing khaki. He was probably confused by the khaki webbing holding his ammunition pouches.

  55 ‘we can’t let them do this to us’: Bouillaut’s report, VA, Document 284c.

  55 saying, ‘Finis’: Talbot’s report, NA ADM 199/822.

  55 ‘the impasse was resolved by Crescent suggesting’: Crescent’s report, VA, Document 267c.

  55 ‘I told them to wait’: Le Nistour’s report, VA.

  55 ‘25 minutes before the doctor reached Commander Sprague’: Talbot’s report, NA ADM 199/822.

  56 ‘seven separate bullet wounds’: surgeon commander’s report, NA ADM 199/822.

  56 ‘An English officer, bareheaded very agitated’: Dr Adrian Carré, VA, Document 1406.

  56 ‘How sad, how sad’: ibid.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  57 thinking about the day’s sporting activities: Bezard papers, IWM, Misc 2, Item 38.

  61 ‘The more I see the nakedness of our defences’: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries 1939–45, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2001, p. 90.

  62 ‘We had to shoot them down a second time’: Churchill, The Second World War, vol. ii, Their Finest Hour, p. 203.

  62 ‘The addition of the French Navy to the German and Italian Fleets’: ibid., p. 205.

  63 ‘I felt that I should be failing in my duty’: Somerville’s report on Operation Catapult, NA ADM 399/192.

  63 ‘a) Sail with us and continue to fight for victory’: ibid.

  64 ‘THE BRITISH ADMIRALTY HAS SENT CAPTAIN HOLLAND’: NA ADM 199/391.

  64 dogged by a French awareness that theirs was the smaller fleet: author’s interview with Patrick Whinney, Guernsey, 2002.

  64 ‘The first time, they sent me a Vice Admiral’: Philippe Masson, La Marine Française et La Guerre 1939–45, Paris, p. 143.

  64 completed by dusk: NA ADM 199/391.

  64 ‘I refused to receive Captain Holland’: Gensoul’s report to Darlan dated 9 July 1940, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  65 ‘In no case will French ships’: ibid.

  65 ‘any time, anywhere, any way’: Holland papers, Greenwich Maritime Museum, London.

  65 ‘French ships will use force to defend themselves’: Donald MacIntyre, Fighting Admiral: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville, Evans, London, 1961, p. 67.

  65 ‘three fair offers’: ibid.

  65 ‘this veritable ultimatum’: Gensoul’s report, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  66 decrypts of German naval codes: FH. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, OUP, Oxford, 1994, p. 2.

  66 ‘I tackled him on the question of Admiral Darlan’s hands being tied’: Force H war diaries, NA ADM 119/391.

  66 ‘the first shot fired against us’: ADM 199/391.

  66 ‘They’re mad – absolutely mad’: Jean Boutron, Mers-el-Kébir à Londres, Plon, Paris, 1980, p. 26.

  67 ‘But we are not beaten’: ibid., p. 14.

  67 ‘unacceptable ultimatum’: ibid., p. 28.

  67 ‘The bloody Armistice, we haven’t finished paying for it’: ibid., pp. 42-3.

  68 great doorsteps of sandwiches: Alan Coles and Ted Briggs, Flagship ‘Hood’: The Fate of Britain’s Mightiest Warship, Robert Hale, London, 1988, p. 76.

  68 a man who was not about to wait much longer: ibid., p. 78.

  68 ‘I HAVE NO INTENTION OF PUTTING TO SEA’: Gensoul’s report, N0.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Defense, VA.

  68 ‘PASS TO GENSOUL’: Coles and Briggs, op. at., p. 79.

  68 ‘AM PREPARED PERSONALLY’: Gensoul’s report, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  69 ‘it was my intention to use force if necessary’: Somerville’s report, NA ADM 199/391.

  69 ‘to gain the advantage of darkness’: Gensoul’s report, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  70 ‘If God judged that my salvation’: taken from the statement made on the death of Grall by Ingénieur mécanicien Albert Borey at Cherbourg on 4 January 1945 in support of his citation for a posthumous Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. VA.

  71 ‘You – priest – fuck off – now!’ (and above): Boutron, op. cit., pp. 92-3.

  CHAPTER SIX

  73 ‘tantamount to a declaration of war’: Holland’s report to Somerville, NA ADM 199/391.

  74 ‘I explained most carefully to him’: ibid.

  74 ‘Admiral Gensoul however remained stubborn’: ibid.

  75 ‘IF ONE OF THE BRITISH PROPOSALS’: Somerset’s report to Somerville, NA ADM 199/391.

  75 ‘CAN GET NO NEARER’: Holland’s report, NA/ADM 199/391.

  75 ‘1. The French Fleet cannot do otherwise’: ibid. Original note in pencil.

  75 ‘if they had anything to communicate’: Holland’s report, NA/ADM 199/391.

  75 They would all be massacred: Boutron, Mers-el-Kébir à Londres, p. 101.

  76 ‘There is a sudden loud explosion close by’: ibid p. 102

  77 Ingénieur mécanicien en chef Egon, Xavier Grall, another ingénieur mécanicien named Quentel: Borey’s report on Grall’s death included in Amiral Ortoli’s recommendation for a posthumous award. VA.

  77/78 ‘All the men in that section were shredded’: VA. The damage report is Appendix One of Contre amiral Ortoli’s recommendations, dated Paris, 12 February 1945, for posthumous awards for Grall and others, to which he added the note: ‘If one considers that, in the Breton village where Mr Grall’s widow lives, public opinion has not shown this officer the respect due to those who died for their country, one would understand why Madame Grall, now wonders if her husband’s sacrifice was but a cruel delusion.’

  78 ‘men come up onto the deck and jump into the water’: Boutron, op. cit., p. 106.

  79 ‘give the French an opportunity to abandon their ships’: Somerville’s report, NA ADM 199/391.

  80 ‘a fire extinguisher in his hands’ and all description of the damaged Mogador: from Bezard, IWM Misc 21, Item 38.

  80 ‘the water suddenly stirred’: ibid.

  80 ‘The Volta’s done for!’ ibid.

  80 ‘planned to double back with Le Terrible’: ibid.

  81 ‘the conditions required by the English were being met’: Gensoul’s report, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  81 ‘UNLESS I SEE YOUR SHIPS SINKING’: Somerville’s report, NA ADM 199/391.

  82 shell splinters had blinded an able seaman: letter home from Able Seaman Bernard R. Williams, IWM 92/27/1.

  82 at least 100 of the smaller 4-inch and 6-inch shells: ADM 199/391.

  83 ‘At about 1910, while at 12,000 feet, 9 French fighters’:
ibid.

  84 waiting for the first bomb to be dropped: ibid.

  84 ‘It was a fine sight’: de Winton papers, IWM 85/44/1.

  86 ‘One or two hits were possibly obtained’: ADM 199/391, quoting Hodgkinson’s report.

  86 its track was spotted by Poursuivante: Gensoul’s report, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  86 ‘the possible loss of British ships was justified’: NA ADM 199/391.

  86 ‘I would not have any of my destroyers sunk’: Maclntyre, Fighting Admiral, p. 69, quoting Somerville papers.

  87 ‘At about eight o’clock the first of the rescuers’: Borey’s statement supporting a citation for the Légion d’honneur for Grall, dated 4 January 1945, Cherbourg. VA.

  88 After various malfunctions in the shallow water: Arthur Marder, Operation Menace: The Dakar Expedition and the Dudley North Affair, Oxford University Press, London, 1976, pp. 257-8.

  88 ‘the unskilled butcher of Oran’: Maclntyre, op. cit., p. 189.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  89 ‘If there is a stain on a flag today’: Gensoul papers, No.154 E.M.3, Service Historique de la Défense, VA.

  89 ‘The impression which emerges from these conversations’: Bullitt, For the President, p. 481.

  90 ‘Headstrong, spoiled, spectacular, something of a nabob’: New Yorker, April 1938.

  90 ‘I am fully prepared to pay for them myself’: Bullitt, op. cit., p. 455.

  90 ‘Every precaution should be taken to avoid publicity’: ibid.

  91 threatening to shoot the trespassers: ibid., p. 477.

  91 ‘a very foul specimen of double crosser’: NA FCO 371.

  91 ‘one of the most remarkable and revealing documents in the entire annals of this great war’: Langer, Our Vichy Gamble, p. 69.

  91 ‘Darlan went on to say’: Bullitt, op. cit., pp. 484, 486.

  92 ‘even some of the Amis de Darlan were unprepared’: Melton, Darlan, p. 85.

  92 ‘soft silky manner’: Churchill, The Second World War, vol. ii, p. 159.

  92 ‘Little stands between French acts of war against the British’: Bullitt, op. cit., p. 481.

  92 French naval officers informed Murphy: Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, Collins, London, 1964, p. 78.

  92 ‘no prior knowledge of the naval attack and deplored it’: ibid., p. 78.

  92 ‘a tragic blunder’: Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Macmillan, New York, 1948, p. 798.

  92 ‘Even if there was only the remote possibility’: Marder, Operation Menace, p. 282, quoting Francis Charles-Roux’s Cinq mois tragiques aux affaires étrangères, Gallimard, Paris, 1947, p. 130.

  92 had been urging Bullitt: Bullitt, op. cit., p. 306.

  93 ‘the British mean to win’: Raymond E. Lee, The London Journal of General Raymond E. Lee, 1940–41, Hutchinson, London, 1972, p. 12.

  93 Approval, often mingled with astonishment, was widespread: NA ADM 199/192. Foreign Office telegrams were copied to the Admiralty. The quotes from the Swiss press were sent by the British consul in Berne.

  93 ‘still has the ruthlessness of the captains and pirates’: Marder, op. cit., quoting Ciano’s Diary 1939–43. Edited by Malcolm Muggeridge.

  94 ‘stir up the heavy dough’: John Lukacs, The Duel: 10 May–31 July 1940: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill and Hitler, Bodley Head, London, 1990, p. 32.

  95 ‘The Prime Minister expects’: Churchill, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 211.

  95 tears of joy: Jenkins, Churchill, p. 625, quoting Harold Nicolson’s diaries.

  95 ‘a scene unique in my own experience’: Churchill, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 211.

  96 painted a matt black for the occasion: NA ADM 234/318.

  96 ‘meet attacks from the English enemy with the utmost ferocity’: Churchill, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 210.

  98 ‘One of the most brilliant exploits of the war’: NA ADM 199/822. From Knatchbull-Hugessen’s 10.7.40 Ankara-Foreign Office despatch copied to the Admiralty.

  98 ‘Mers-el-Kébir was a terrible blow to our hopes’: Charles de Gaulle, The Call to Honour, Collins, London, 1955, p. 97.

  98 attempted to sing the ‘Marseillaise’: Williams, The Last Great Frenchman, p. 121.

  99 ‘looked with some mistrust upon those allies of yesterday’: de Gaulle, op. cit., p. 94.

  99 ‘You are perfectly free to serve under General de Gaulle’: ibid., p. 94.

  99 ‘A taste for risk and adventure’: ibid., p. 98.

  101 ‘I pistolet automatique (marque MAR police calibre 7.65) et deux chargeurs’: Bouillaut papers, VA, Document 287c.

  101 ‘I protested vehemently’: ibid.

  102 ‘I don’t want to be torpedoed’: Crescent report, VA, Document 267c.

  103 ‘They presented the following arguments’: ibid.

  103 ‘a few Free French aircrew participate in an attack on the Ruhr’: de Gaulle, op. cit., p. 86.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  104 a dream come true for every Frenchman who was anti-Semitic enough: Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, Stanford University Press, California, 1995, p. 3.

  105 the word émigré a fashionable insult: Patrick Marnham, The Death of Jean Moulin, John Murray, London, 2000.

  106 ‘Then he led me into the great drawing room’: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, pp. 82-3.

  108 estimated by the British embassy at £2,000 a month: NA FOHXI.

  109 the only publication to be successfully closed down: Carmen Callil, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland, Jonathan Cape, London, 2006, pp. 185-6.

  109 ‘Neither a thug nor a fool’: Alexander Werth, France 1940–1955, Henry Holt, New York, 1956, p. 79.

  109 Towards the end of August Laval was back in Paris: Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–44, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001, p. 60.

  110 ‘I see no compelling grounds for the continuation of this war’: Lukacs, The Duel, p. 190, citing Der grossdeutsche Freiheitskampf: Reden Adolf Hitlers, vol. ii, Munich, 1941.

  110 ‘It developed that Laval had sent the German embassy’: Murphy, op. cit., pp. 84-5.

  110 ‘We find ourselves in a situation without precedent’: Paxton, op. cit. p. 70.

  CHAPTER NINE

  113 ‘He could never accept’: Edward Spears, Two Men Who Saved France: Rétain and de Gaulle, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1962, p. 144.

  113 ‘Dakar wakes up’: de Gaulle, The Call to Honour, p. 121.

  114 he had written a letter asking to be relieved of his command: Holland papers, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

  114 her new plumbing which, despite the latitude: Marder, Arthur, Operation Menace: The Dakar Expedition and the Dudley North Affair, OUP, London, 1976.

  115 the ‘nurses’ were not really nurses at all: papers in Royal Marine Museum, Southsea, Hampshire.

  115 Susan Travers admitted to starting an affair: Susan Travers, Tomorrow to be Brave, Bantam Press, London, 2000, pp. 50-51.

  115 playing in the salon where the officers dined: papers in Royal Marine Museum, Southsea, Hampshire.

  115 ‘At about 5pm the cruiser Fiji next to us’: The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (ed. Michael Davie), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1976, pp. 479-80.

  115 refused to sail unless sufficient champagne and foie gras were included in their rations: Philippe Masson, La Marine Française et la Guerre 1939–45, p. 203.

  116 ‘I had no doubt whatever that the enterprise should be abandoned’: Churchill, The Second World War, vol. ii, p. 427.

  116 ‘There was no mistaking their sympathies’: Emden papers, IWM 86/59/1.

  117 ‘I learned some very vulgar French words’: Friend papers, IWM 86/37/1.

  118 ‘Français de Dakar! Joignez-vous à nous pour delivrer la France’: ibid. (Friend lost his own copy when the Ark Royal was sunk in 1941 but remembered the headline.)

  120 ‘You have a nice little fleet here’: Marder, op. cit., p. 112, quoting Histoire de la Fra
nce outre-mer, 1940–45, Paris, 1949, pp. 112-13.

  121 He gave the sergeant an ungodly kick in the balls: ibid., p. 113.

  121 Amiral Landriau had changed his mind: ibid.

  121 ‘If fire continues on my ships’: ibid., p. 118.

  122 A single 9.4-inch shell … holed the ship about 6 inches above the armour plate: Emden papers, IWM 86/59/1.

  122 ‘We felt generally fed up’: ibid.

  122 ‘My action station was in the wheel house’: IWM 61/39/1. From ‘Five Years of My Life’ privately published autobiography of Commander James Anthony Syms, DSC.

  124 ‘I know some French, sir’: author’s interview with Stuart Farquharson-Roberts, Steep, Hampshire, September 2009.

  125 ‘I had a French mother and it was a French ship’: Christopher Somerville, Our War, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998, p. 57.

  CHAPTER TEN

  126 ‘a shark-infested sea’: Spears, Two Men Who Saved France, p. 201.

  127 ‘even the minimum required for brave men to dash for an objective’: ibid., p. 200.

  127 he planned to give up as soon as his position became dangerous: Marder, Operation Menace, p. 125.

  128 intended a token resistance before surrender: ibid., p. 126.

  128 ‘I shall defend Dakar to the end’: Irwin papers, IWM 139.

  129 ‘As we lined up to dive bomb the Richelieu’; Half conscious, he surfaced with a broken arm and his mouth tasting of petrol: Friend papers, IWM 86/37/1. (Richardson told Friend his story when, both civilians, they bumped into each other in London shortly after the end of the war.)

  132 Over Gibraltar that same afternoon: Raymond Dannreuther, Somerville’s Force H, Aurum, London, 2006, pp. 48-9; also Marder, op. cit., p. 175; other details of the air raid from Gibraltar sources.

  132 ‘courage and fidelity’: Marder, op. cit., p. 135.

  133 ‘an old Irish wake’: Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, p. 205.

  133 ‘rather lively cannonade’: de Gaulle, The Call to Honour, p. 131.

  133 Spears observed the Frenchman flick one butt after another onto timber: Spears, op. cit., p. 208.

  134 ‘Why do you not land in force by night or in the fog’: IWM 139. Full text of Churchill’s message contained in General Irwin’s report on the Dakar expedition.

  134 Australia’s fire so that it was straddling: first-person account by Midshipman Mackenzie J. Gregory, Naval Historical Society of Australia.