England's Last War Against France

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England's Last War Against France Page 67

by Colin Smith


  351 ‘I tried to keep a poker face’: General Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk, Harper, New York, 1950, p. 69.

  352 ‘What I could not tell Mast’: ibid., pp. 68-9.

  352 ‘One would have thought that 50 dead skunks’: Langer, op. cit., p329; Clark, op. cit., p. 70.

  353 ‘I knelt at the foot of the stairs with a carbine’: Clark, op. cit., p. 71.

  353 ‘I posed as a somewhat inebriated member’: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, p. 153.

  355 ‘As some means of softening this slight to him’: Churchill, The Second World War, pp. 542–3.

  355 ‘I consider it inadvisable for you to give de Gaulle any information’: ibid., quoting Roosevelt’s message.

  356 ‘I hope these Vichy people are going to throw them into the sea,’ Williams, The Last Great Frenchman, p. 196, quoting Pierre Billotte, Le Temps des Armes, Plon, Paris, 1972, p. 29.

  356 ‘You’ll see. One day we’ll go down the Champs Elysées’: ibid., quoting Jacques Soustelle, Envers et contre tout, vol. 1, Laffont, Paris, 1947, p. 452.

  356 ‘Let us return through you to the line of battle’: ibid., quoting Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages, vol. 1, Plon, Paris, 1970, p. 250.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  360 ‘Alain explained that his father’: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, pp. 147-8.

  361 ‘If I could meet Darlan’: ibid., p. 152, quoting Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe, Doubleday, New York, 1948.

  366 ‘He was a tall man with wrinkled civilian clothes’: Clark, Calculated Risk, p. 81.

  367 ‘I thought Ike had never been so shocked’: ibid., p. 82.

  368 ‘desperately tired and worried’: John Winton, Cunningham: The Greatest Admiral Since Nelson, John Murray, London, 1998, p. 281.

  368 If not there, Sicily was their next choice: Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers, Scribner, New York, 2004, p. 269.

  368 Sergeant Stamford Weatherall was worried that some playful dolphins, et seq.: Weatherall papers, IWM 76/143/1.

  370 the American always felt that Juin would feel honour-bound: Murphy, op. cit., p. 163.

  370 ‘I have assurances’: Melton, Darlan, p. 167.

  370 ‘Allo, Robert,’ said London: Murphy, op. cit., p. 162.

  371 Murphy thought the SOE had let them down: ibid.

  372 ‘After some difficulty I was admitted’: ibid., p. 163.

  373 ‘I have known for a long time the British are stupid’: ibid., p. 165.

  373 ‘got the date wrong’: ibid., p. 167.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  375 recently the assistant warden of Minnesota State Penitentiary: Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, Abacus, London, 2004, p. 97.

  375 Their favourite was ‘There’s a Troopship Now Leaving Bombay’: ibid., p. 96.

  377 ‘quite shaken and a little slow in getting underway to disembark’: History of 134th Division, US Army’s Historical Department, Pentagon, 1943

  380 ‘I didn’t want to offend the colonel’: Leo Disher, Springboard to Berlin, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1943, p. 115. (Disher was one of four United Press correspondents who contributed to the book with his account of the disastrous assault on Oran harbour.)

  380 ‘a good chance of carrying out our mission without firing a shot’: NA ADM 196/52, quoting Peters.

  380 ‘It says landings up to now have been carried out without shooting’: Disher, op. cit., p. 116.

  381 confiding to him that he only felt properly alive: ibid., p. 93.

  381 he read in stencilled capitals: LA BELLE FRANCE: ibid., p. 118.

  383 ‘By this time the American ship started firing at us’: Laurin’s report dated 14 November 1942, Oran, VA.

  383 ‘many rounds of 37mm and 13.2mm’: ibid.

  383 ‘The blasts were so loud they hurt’: Disher, op. cit., pp. 120-22.

  384 ‘I got my elbows over the pier rim’: ibid., p. 123.

  385 this time in the buttocks: Jo Alex Morris, Deadline Every Minute: The Story of UPI, Random House, New York, 1963

  385 ‘Soon we shall all be your prisoners’: Disher, op. cit., p. 125.

  388 ‘Giraud is not your man’: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, p. 167.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  390 a major who had distinguished himself in the raid on Vaagso in Norway: Hilary St George Saunders, The Green Beret, Collins, London, 1950, pp. 130-31.

  391 ‘a volume of brisk small arms fire’: Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, p. 168.

  391 ‘hugging the wall and firing in our direction’: ibid.

  391 ‘I came up to them’: ibid., pp. 168-9.

  392 ‘He seemed to know about me’: ibid., p. 169.

  392 ‘I took him by the arm gently but firmly’: ibid.

  393 ‘How wonderful!’: ibid.

  393 ‘these Frogs were driving him mad’: Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 120.

  393 ‘a rebel chief and a felon’: ibid.

  394 ‘It is with stupor and grief’: Warner, Pierre Laval, p. 322.

  395 Laval telephoned Wiesbaden and instructed them to say yes: ibid., p. 316.

  395 ‘What price would Hitler force France to pay’: Laval, Unpublished Diary, p. 145.

  397 ‘Every time a foreign Jew leaves our territory’: Laval and the Jews, all from Warner, op. cit., pp. 305-6.

  399 ‘The enemy’s first salvo (12 rounds)’: Laurin’s report dated Oran, 14 September and headed Engagement du 9 novembre à la mer, VA.

  400 Twenty-one had died on the Epervier: VA. All casualty figures from Laurin’s report.

  400 ‘I made this decision because’: ibid., p. 5.

  401 Darlan’s last call to the Admiralty: Melton, Darlan, p. 174.

  402 ‘Run your tanks through the main streets. Give them a big parade’: Clark, Calculated Risk, p. 88.

  403 ‘Having no such guardian or sensible rule of life’: Murphy, op. cit., p. 174.

  404 ‘I was charged with fighting a war’: Clark, op. cit., pp. 89-90.

  405 ‘Clark didn’t pretend to understand’: Murphy, op. cit., p. 175.

  407 ‘it may be wondered whether the occupation of France’s Mediterranean coast’: Warner, op. cit., p. 329.

  407 ‘stubby, ingratiating little man’: Clark, op. cit., pp. 89-91.

  407 ‘Clark (Murphy interpreting): It is essential that we stop this waste’: Edited Clark. Darlan dialogue from shorthand note taken at the time. Clark, op. cit., pp. 91-2.

  409 was borne off in triumph on the shoulders of a laughing, cheering, singing crowd: London Gazette, May 1943. Mentioned in his VC citation.

  409 ‘an enterprise of desperate hazard’: ibid.

  409 ‘I hate to serve under the British’: Atkinson, op. cit., p. 279.

  409 ‘I tried to imagine what would happen’: Murphy, op. cit., p. 176.

  411 ‘Like trying to hit a grasshopper with a rock’: Atkinson, op. cit., p. 133, quoting Commander Samuel Morison, the naval historian, who was on board the Brooklyn.

  412 ‘We may all be thankful if our lives’: Churchill, The Second World War, vol. iv, p. 556.

  414 ‘We’re Americans’: Atkinson, op. cit., p. 139.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  416 ‘It’s a decision of the Führer’s’: Warner, Pierre Laval, p. 336.

  416 ‘Monsieur Ie Marécbal, I have the honour’: Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, p. 5447.

  417 ‘on account of public opinion in France’: Warner, op. cit., p. 337.

  417 ‘In fact, if Admiral Darlan had to shoot Marshal Pétain’: Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, p. 575.

  417 ‘I’m not Anglophobe’: Marine du Levant No.9, October 1942. Information bulletin of 3rd Maritime Region.

  418 ‘The Armistice is broken’: Warren Tute, The Reluctant Enemies, Collins, London, 1990, p. 268.

  419 ‘At such time that those in high command lose their sense of duty’: ibid., p. 288, quoting Amiral Laborde ‘s address to his sailors in Toulon.

  420 ’French generals and admirals’: Warner, op. cit., p. 355, quoting German F
oreign Ministry files 110/115212–24.

  420 ‘I fear the French fleet will not come to us intact’: ibid., p. 356.

  421 ‘Hello, yes the Germans are all around me’: Marine du Levant, op. cit.

  422 ‘Amiral, my Colonel orders me to say he admires you’: Tute, op. cit., p. 293.

  423 ‘I am just told that part of the French fleet in Toulon has been scuttled’: Leahy, I Was There, p. 559.

  423 ‘Germany’s aim is now clear’: Tute, op. cit., p. 294, quoting I’Affaire Darlan by A.J. Voituriez.

  424 ‘I certainly could not have done it had I been a ‘dissident’: Leahy, op. cit., p. 558.

  424 ‘Soon the retching will begin’: de Gaulle, The Call to Honour, p. 352.

  424 ‘I am but a lemon which the Americans will drop’ Clark, Calculated Risk, p. 105.

  424 ‘an enlightened liberal government’: ibid., p. 106.

  424 ‘Members of uniformed fascist organisations’: A.J. Liebling, The Road Back to Paris, Michael Joseph, London, 1944, pp. 188-90

  425 ‘We must not overlook the serious political injury’: Churchill, op. cit. p. 568.

  426 known to the OSS as ‘Necktie’: Melton, op. cit., p. 209.

  426 ‘Darlan’s murder,’ admitted Churchill, op. cit., p. 578.

  EPILOGUE

  428 ‘We are not in the war’: Warner, Pierre Laval, pp. 396-7.

  430 ‘She’s always been an Anglophile and a Gaullist’: ibid., footnote, p407.

  430 ‘Scenes which can only be described as scandalous’: Manchester Guardian, 8 October 1945.

  431 ‘Without replying, he put his head under the blankets’: ibid., 16 October 1945.

  431 ‘I do not accept the sentence’: Laval, Unpublished Diary, p. 220.

  434 ‘The French sailors, Coutts remembered, treated them’: Daily Telegraph, London, 3 January 2004.

  434 ‘The French were rotten’: BBC WW2 People’s War, contributed by Jo Challacombe, June, 2005.

  434 ‘I am afraid that Tommy and I were not very polite’ Bryan Gerald, Be of Good Cheer, op. cit., p. 46.

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