Giraud and the African Scene • Chapter 1

I have known General Giraud in two wars — one almost the smallest, the other the biggest in the world's history.

The first occasion was in August, 1933, at a time when, in the general opinion of most Americans and Britons, the peace of the world was more assured than ever before.

Minor colonial campaigns were the only form of hostilities that the present generation seemed likely to see. Accordingly, when the news arrived that the French Government were using the Foreign Legion for the "pacification" of the only still unsubdued area in Morocco, I went out there as Special Correspondent of the London Daily Mail, to watch what were expected to be the last military actions in which that famous corps would ever be engaged.

Thus it came about that, in the fierce heat of the North African summer, I was riding with a French supply convoy escorted by mounted Spahis, along a broad and barren valley through the heart of the Grand Atlas mountains, on my way to the headquarters of General Giraud.

Oddly enough, I had just left the headquarters of General Catroux. In those remote fastnesses of the Grand Atlas, these two generals, each commanding a division in a combined operation, were more closely associated than was ever the case again until they met in Algiers in February, 1943.

Their names then meant nothing to me. If the idea had crossed my mind that ten years later I should again meet both of them in North Africa, taking part in a far greater war, with American and British troops as their allies, it would have seemed like a symptom of sunstroke.

As we moved slowly along the dry, boulder-strewn bed of mountain p2 torrent, I questioned the French officers about the general I was going to see. They said he was a great African soldier.

From a Frenchman, that means a good deal. For the French Army in North Africa lived nearer to active service conditions in peacetime than any other in the world. The French Protectorate over Morocco dates back only to 1912, and the subjection of the warlike tribes in the vast, unmapped mountains of the south part of that country required a series of local campaigns of which little was heard in the world outside.

When these French officers referred to the general as Giraud l'Africain, it meant that the soldier so described had proved himself courageous, enduring and resourceful on the hard testing-ground of colonial warfare.

But it was not in Morocco alone that Giraud had distinguished himself. My companions recalled his romantic escape from German captivity in the last war.a1 They related how, at the head of his battalion of the 4th Zouaves, he had stormed and captured from the Prussian Guard the fort of Malmaison in 1917. They told me how he had saved Morocco for France by defeating the formidable invasion of tribes from the Spanish zone in North Africa led by Abdel Krim.

As they talked, I began to form a mental picture of this general, then 54 years old. I visualised a short, sturdy, tough-looking figure, a face burnt chestnut-brown by years of African service, and eyes of that faded colour that bespeaks long strain in brilliant sunlight.

At length, we rode out of the pass, descending abruptly to a green fertile plain, and there, close up to the mountain wall, lay stretched in long white rows the bivouac tents of General Giraud's division.

My French companions took me towards a rustic sort of arbour, built under some low trees just outside the camp. A long, lean form came out the shade of the roof of withered palm leaves. It moved with the deliberation that makes tall men look lazy. I saw the fresh-coloured face, heavy mental moustache, and lively blue eyes of a man who looked no more than 40. Not till I caught sight of the three stars upon his sleeve did I realise that this was General Henri Giraud himself.

p3 He welcomed me in that rather high-pitched, jerky voice in which he throws off his short, staccato phrases. I was impressed by the elegance and distinction of his bearing. Even in a rough, khaki-drill uniform, that tall, slim figure looked well-dressed, and though the temperature was 110° F., and the air full of dust and flies, General Giraud appeared as cool and comfortable as if he were on the Paris boulevards.

Close by, there towered •12,000 feet into the blue sky the vast grey mass of triple-peaked Mount Baddou, in which the last unconquered tribesmen of Southern Morocco had taken refuge with their families, flocks and herds.

Besieging them were three French divisions, one from Marrakesh, commanded by General Catroux; one from Meknes, under General Goudot, and the third from the Algerian-Moroccan border, led by General Giraud. From a military point of view these unfortunate native "dissidents," as the French euphemistically called them, had no chance. They were surrounded by 10 battalions of the Foreign Legion; 25 battalions of Algerian and Moroccan riflemen; cavalry, field-guns, mountain-guns, armoured cars — even a squadron of aeroplanes.

Against this powerful force of some 30,000 men, made up of troops hardened by many years of service in the mountains and deserts of North Africa, were still holding out in the caves and gorges of Mount Baddou about 10,000 desperate Berbers armed only with rifles smuggled in from the Sahara.

To attack them by direct assault would have been costly, but the weakness in their defence was their water supply. General Giraud knew that by seizing the sources of the springs on the mountain springs above him, which irrigated the Kerdous Valley where his camp was pitched, he would compel the Berbers to surrender from sheer thirst.

So, for several days, I watched his Border column attacking the caves that pigeon-holed the mountain front above the springs.

By day, the tribesmen, with their families and flocks, took shelter in these huge grottoes, across the mouth of which they had built stone breastworks. By night they crept out to fetch water.

p4 Artillery could not damage them except by a direct hit through the entrance of their caverns. The French aeroplanes cooperated by flying low and dropping 250‑lb. bombs as close to a cave-mouth as possible. The explosions caused a concussion of air that brought down the roof upon the heads of the unfortunate occupants. But the resistance on the slopes of the Kerdous Valley was finally overcome only by bombing with hand-grenades, carried out by parties of French troops which succeeded in creeping up to close quarters. Hundreds of Berber dead were found inside the caves when the 6,000 survivors surrendered to the Giraud column.

I had several talks with the General while these operations were going on. He made the impression upon me of being a hard man. One could not help feeling a certain sympathy for the mountaineers so gallantly defending their liberty against a powerful force with modern military resources. To Giraud, however, this was but the last of a series of routine campaigns for the "pacification" of Morocco.

The tribes, he said, lived only for brigandage and war. It would be impossible for the French to develop the country so long as they remained in their mountain fastnesses, capable of swooping down on the peaceful farmers of the plain.

As we sat at his headquarters in the cool dark of the African evening, he told me several stories of his adventures through many years of this Moroccan fighting, relating them in a brief, concise, matter-of‑fact way, as if he were making a military report. At the end of each tale he would give a little high-pitched metallic laugh — the laugh of one who had enjoyed his experiences, even though they had ended in serious physical injury, the laugh of a soldier for whom the risks of war were no more than the inevitable incidents of his profession.

"Well, all I can say, General," I remarked at length, "is that you have had extraordinary luck."

A more serious note came into Giraud's voice. "You are right. I am lucky," he replied "I have the baraka."

Nor did General Giraud's claim to possess the baraka depend upon his testimony alone. Throughout North Africa, among natives and p5 Frenchmen alike, he is credited with the unfailing good fortune implied by that Arab term.

In those primitive countries, primitive superstitions possess a force which they lose amid the complicated surroundings of our material Western civilization.

I met many French officers in North Africa who firmly believed that some men are protected by that special dispensation of Fate which the tribesmen know as baraka. I am sure that General Giraud believes in it himself.

I found people in Algiers still talking about General Giraud's baraka when I met him again ten years after our encounter among the mountains of the Grand Atlas, and once more the General himself referred to it, as, with the same hard little laugh, he described the way in which he broke out of the fortress of Koenigstein in Germany, and his subsequent escape from France by submarine.a2

Four times he has been severely wounded, and the occasions on which death has spared him by a hair's-breadth have been innumerable, for Giraud, until he took over command of the French forces in North Africa at the end of 1942, had always been a fighting general, making his own reconnaissances in the front line, and encouraging his troops by mingling with them under fire. That imperturbable confidence of his communicates itself to all around him, and whatever Fate may yet hold in store for this man who has become one of the leading figures of the French effort to repair the disaster of June, 1940, he will meet it with the same self-reliance as he has displayed in previous desperate situations.

In some characters, confidence develops into arrogance. The contrary is the case with Henri Giraud. As fortune opens up to him each new horizon — however unexpected, however broad its scope may be — he still preserves a modest, reserved, even-tempered attitude of mind which, at the age of 64, has kept his face unlined, of fresh complexion and well-marked contours; his body lean and vigorous as in the prime of life, his eye clear, penetrating and energetic; his will calm and unshakable; his outlook on life realistic and practical.

The orderliness of his mind is reflected in his personal habits. The tidiness of his work-table bespeaks the habit of dealing with every p6 problem immediately and thoroughly the moment it presents itself. Though he wears the simplest possible uniform, without a single decoration on his breast, his appearance is meticulously neat. The straightness of his tall, upstanding figure singles him out in any company. His brown hair is tinged with grey only above the temples; a fresh colour and a well-brushed cavalry moustache give him an air of alert vitality.

French generals tend to conform to a well-marked type, for their military calling is a vocation that absorbs the whole of their energies. The intense theoretical training through which all French senior staff officers have passed at the Ecole Militaire develops their intellectual faculties to a higher degree than is common in the American and British armies. They usually talk well, and show a predilection for dialectics.

Though they seldom take an active part in politics, men exercising high authority in an army of such great traditions generally incline towards the Right. They are poorly paid, and, except in their official capacity, occupy as a rule a modest social position. Moreover, to achieve promotion in the French Army, it is generally necessary, as in the case of Giraud and Catroux, for an officer to have done a good deal of service in French territories overseas, where they acquire a simple standard of living.

These circumstances combine to produce a mentality which, though highly efficient for military purposes, is sometimes not so well adapted to cope with political and administrative problems.

In the case of General Giraud, there can be no doubt as to his singleness of purpose, and absence of any motive of personal ambition. But the task to which he succeeded in North Africa on the death of Admiral Darlan was one without precedent in his own experience. He brought to it an enterprising, logical and orderly temperament, and a will accustomed to have its conclusions accepted and implemented without resistance or discussion.

Military administration is simplified by army discipline. In political affairs, on the other hand, allowance has to be made for obstruction offered by private interests and individual ambitions. Whereas p7 a general commands, the head of a political organization has to "manage."

Lack of experience in this diplomatic art of persuasion, and a tendency to expect personal decisions to be accepted without question, were handicaps to General Giraud in his assumption of supreme civil as well as military control of French North Africa.

These deficiencies account for the criticism directed in the United States and Britain to some aspects of his regime in its early stages.

He was forced, at first, to accept political aid from any quarter qualified to give it. Since, under the conditions existing at the moment, such assistance was available only from men like M. Peyrouton, who had played a conspicuous part in the collaborationist policy of Vichy, Giraud came under suspicion of reactionary tendencies from which fuller understanding abroad of local conditions in North Africa would have protected him. One could be sure that he was greatly relieved when, after long negotiations, an agreement was reached with General de Gaulle, which brought to the conduct of economic and political affairs in North Africa the cooperation of trained experts in such matters, like M. Philip and M. Massigli.

Another quality for public life with which Giraud's long military experience had not equipped him was eloquence. His commanding figure gives him distinction on any platform, but he lacks that power of oratory which is possessed to a high degree by General de Gaulle. The memorable speech made by Giraud on March 14, 1943, which opened the way to an agreement with De Gaulle, and was delivered to an enthusiastic audience in the large assembly hall of the Algerian Government building, was read from manuscript. One cannot imagine his restrained, phlegmatic personality practising the art of rhetoric.

He is more at ease in speaking to a small audience, where he adopts a slow, reflective style which gives the impression that he is thinking aloud rather than addressing his hearers.

The exclusion of all emotion that marks his public utterances extends to his private conversation. He refers to the fact that his wife has been interned by the Germans as a reprisal for his activities in p8 North Africa, or that one of his daughters and her four children were carried off as hostages from Tunis to an unknown destination, in the same even tone as he discusses ordinary matters.

One of his nephews in France, arrested for a black‑out offence, was labelled "Communist" and shot a week later with other hostages.

General Giraud seldom makes any allusion to these private afflictions. He mentioned them to me only once, and then almost incidentally, but I heard him on another occasion tell a group of Algerian civilians that his wife and the daughters who are with her were short of food. "They are living mainly on bread and radishes," he added. "They have not tasted meat for two months, but though my wife, children, friends, and interests are all in France, I base my own action upon the words inscribed on the statue of Fabert at Metz, of which city he was Governor nearly two hundred years ago.b They run like this: 'If the king ordered me to defend the town, I would put my person, my family and my fortune in the breach, and would die before giving in.' "

There can be no doubt, however, that separation from his wife and family lies heavily on General Giraud's heart. He had had a happy domestic life. Madame Giraud is a tall, handsome, slender woman, whose social gifts were especially manifested when her husband was Governor of Metz before the war. She accompanied the General to his various posts abroad, and long association with his adventurous career has taught her to share the confidence which he feels in his own lucky star.

When the General's escape from France was being prepared, involving, as it did, a number of hazards, she showed no anxiety whatever. "She was much calmer than I was," one of the officers with Giraud at that time told me. "The only thing she said was 'The plans have been well laid. They must succeed.' "

The Girauds have seven children — four daughters and three sons. One of the sons, André, met his death in a flying accident on August 14, 1935, as a captain in the Zouaves, and the youngest is a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment.

The eldest daughter was married to Colonel Granger, in command p9 of a French battalion in Tunis when the Germans arrived there in 1942.

The second daughter is the wife of Lieutenant Marguet, who, at the outset of the war, was an instructor in the military college of St. Cyr. The two youngest girls are eighteen and fifteen years old. They, together with Madame Marguet and her children, now share the internment of Madame Giraud at Vals.

The General's home in France was at Dijon. While he was a prisoner in Germany, the German authorities of the occupied zone in which it stands left it untouched. Directly the news of his escape from Koenigstein arrived, they looted the house to the last scrap of furniture.

Giraud has two brothers. One of them lives at Aix-les‑Bains. The other was mayor of a small town near Loches. It is in unoccupied France, and M. Giraud finallyº declined to use his municipal authority in support of the collaborationist policy of the Vichy Government. When Laval, as Premier, tried to get French workmen to volunteer for labour in Germany, Mayor Giraud refused to exhibit the placards in his commune.

This led to reprimands from the Prefect of the Department, who suggested that he would have the posters displayed on his own authority, thus relieving M. Giraud of any responsibility for them. But, like his famous brother, the General, M. Giraud would have nothing to do with compromise. He was accordingly turned out of his office as mayor.

For three months he went into hiding to avoid possible arrest. Then came the news that his brother had landed in North Africa and, upon this, M. Giraud found means to follow him there.

From earliest boyhood General Giraud has always had the reputation of being what the French call a "sportif." He was born in Paris of an old bourgeois family on January 15, 1879, and was educated, first at the Roman Catholic Collège Stanislas, then at that most famous of all schools in the French capital, the Lycée Louis-le‑Grand, many of whose pupils have risen to the highest positions in the country. Giraud was there a contemporary and friend of Paul Reynaud, p10 who was French Premier during the early part of the war.

As a boy, Henri Giraud was impulsive, spirited, audacious and athletic. He distinguished himself in games, was a fast runner, and after leaving school played three-quarter back for the Rugby football team of the Racing Club de Paris, one of the best in France. In the year 1898 he entered the Military College of St. Cyr, leaving it in 1900 to take a commission as sous-lieutenant in the 4th Zouaves. It was by his own choice that he joined the French North African Army, and most of his career was to be spent in that continent.

From early youth he had been destined for the profession of arms. "My father constantly impressed upon me as a boy," he says, "that it was my duty as a Frenchman to revenge the defeat of France in 1870, and to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine."

In North Africa he was stationed for years at Tunis and Bizerte, where he led the carefree and agreeable life that in those days were the lot of a young French officer. He excelled in horsemanship, and was renowned for his skill in those equestrian contests known as haute école. But the energy and enterprise of his character led him also to take a practical interest in aviation from its very beginning, and he gained his certificate as a flying observer in the year 1912. The automobile, too, has held a great share of General Giraud's attention. Later on, when he had a command in Morocco, he made that country a testing-ground for the motorisation of the army.

In his own yellow Renault car, with an aeroplane compass mounted on it, he led a column of armoured vehicles for •1,250 miles across the trackless desert of Mauretania, which is the western section of the Sahara, right down to Senegal.

As a general in the field during his campaigns against the Moroccan tribesmen, he used to carry out his own reconnaissances in person. His habit of accompanying the advance-guard of any column under his command, either mounted or by automobile, inspired a caricature, published in 1930, which depicts him sitting on horseback inside an armoured car.

Giraud's keenness is an infectious quality. His troops always knew that he would be satisfied with nothing but the maximum effort from them. Once, when a commander of a mounted regiment objected p11 that his horses were too tired to undertake a night march through mountain passes, Giraud's acid retort was: "It is not the horses that are tired, but the colonel." That regiment not only made the march, but ended it with a gallop of •two miles.

It was Giraud's daring that helped to spread the reputation for possessing the baraka, or talisman of good luck, with which his name is associated in North Africa. Yet it has always been controlled by sound judgment.

"In war it is necessary to run risks," he said once to André Maurois, "but they must be reasonable ones. The method that I prefer is one of calculated boldness. Take, as an example, the attack delivered by General Mangin at Villers-Cotterêts, in July, 1918.

"I had to prepare the entry into action of one of his armoured divisions, in which I was serving as Chief of Staff. For the success of the attack, surprise was essential, and to achieve this I saw that there was only one way to go about it.

"It was to assemble all the tanks belonging to my division on a narrow front, so that they could be launched into action together. This, however, involved great risk. It meant massing the tanks at ten yards' distance from each other, and keeping them there throughout the night before the battle began. If the enemy had happened to open a bombardment on that part of our front, our entire force in tanks would almost certainly have been annihilated.

"I determined to take the risk. We were due to advance at 4:35 A.M. For three hours before that, my tanks were ready in their close-order position. Never have I known the hours of darkness pass so slowly. Every five minutes I was looking at my watch.

"4:30 came at last, and not a single shell had been fired. I began to breathe more freely. Still the risk was not entirely over. One minute went by, then another. Finally, it was only a question of seconds, and, on the tick of 4:35, with a formidable roar, my massed tanks set out, with devastating surprise-effect, against the enemy. My baraka had protected me again!"

Another story which he related to André Maurois is characteristic of Giraud's methods:

"In action," he said, "speed is everything. When I was campaigning in Morocco, I found myself up against a p12 tribe that lived at the top of a peak in a sort of eagle's nest. I called my chief engineer and said to him, 'Look here! You see that steep cliff! All right! Now, you must build me, in three days, working only at night, a road that will take us right up to the top of the peak!'

"Politely but firmly, the chief engineer answered: 'Impossible, mon général. It will take three months to carve such a road in the cliff!'

" 'Very good,' I said, 'I cannot ask you to do the impossible. You will not build the road, but I will!'

"I sent for the colonel of the Foreign Legion, gave him the plan of the road I needed, and asked him to make road-builders out of his own men and all the men of the other regiments in the neighbourhood. He was the right sort. Three days later I had my road. Result: we were able to attack that tribe in a spot they had thought impregnable, and we conquered, without loss, the most dangerous stronghold of the Atlas. Moral: the best element of surprise is to attempt the seemingly impossible, and to act quickly."

If the ground were too rough for any means of transport, Giraud would reconnoitre out in front of his troops on foot. He has a granite constitution, and is so enduring a walker that the young officers whom he took with him on such expeditions often had to give up exhausted before their general showed any signs of fatigue. The steel-shod walking-cane which he carried on these excursions came to be regarded by his staff with apprehension. In their minds it was associated with •thirty-mile hikes over rough mountain tracks under the burning African sun.

At the age of 64, his vigor as a pedestrian has been reduced, not so much by the passage of years as by the fact that an old wound in the leg has begun to affect his sciatic nerve, which sometimes gives him acute pain.

In such leisure as he has, Giraud is a great reader. Works on history and military commentaries are the books he likes best. For card games he has a positive detestation. He is an excellent talker, with a dry, whimsical wit; bold in his ideas; calm and convincing in the expression of them.

Giraud never smokes, but has a hearty appetite, and relishes a p13 bottle of good wine. It is at the dinner table that his social qualities appear to best advantage. He enjoys nothing better than to draw upon his ample stock of reminiscences in the company of a few close friends.

By religion Giraud is a devout practising Catholic. Amid all his preoccupations and responsibilities at Algiers he never failed to attend Mass every Sunday morning.

Under the Third Republic, Catholic generals were held by their political chiefs in strong suspicion of reactionary tendencies. I once heard General Giraud deal with this matter frankly to a delegation of trade union leaders whom he had convoked on May 1st — Labour Day — to his headquarters at the Palais d'Été in Algiers for the purpose of thanking them for their contribution to the Allied war effort in North Africa.

It was a curious scene, for the Palais d'Été is a romantically picturesque Moorish building of fretted arches, polished cedar-wood ceilings, walls covered with patterned porcelain tiles, and fountains playing in court yards overhung by lissom palm trees.

In this exotic setting were gathered forty or fifty French artisans and craftsmen, grouped in some embarrassment among their unfamiliar surroundings upon the rich rugs covering the floor of the central hall of the palace. The tall figure of the General towered above them as he paced up and down, his hands thrust into his pockets, his eyes bent on the ground before him, talking in an intimate, thoughtful way which conveyed the impression that he was speaking the things that were in his mind without hesitation or restraint.

He was dressed in a plain khaki tunic, with the five metal stars of a full army general upon the lower sleeves. He wore a stiff white collar and black tie, riding-breeches and leather gaiters. In that civilian company his long, bristling, dark-brown moustache and the authoritative glance of his piercing light-blue eyes would have sufficed, without any uniform, to mark him out as a soldier. He began by talking of his own career in a dry humorous tone.

"Ever since I left St. Cyr," he said, "I have fought for France. I have not made a fortune. I have gained a certain number of wounds p14 — and not many decorations, as you can see." This was a sly allusion to the absence of any medal ribbons on his tunic, for the General has made a vow never again to wear them until he reenters Metz as a victor.

Then he went on to address himself to a subject which he well knew must be in the minds of his hearers, most of them members of the French Socialist Party.

"I don't hide the fact that I am a clerical, but I am not a bigot," he said. "The only day on which I went outside the castle of Koenigstein during my captivity there was when I and some brother-officers attended a Mass for the repose of the souls of our dead comrades.

"I do not ask what your religious opinions are, and mine are my own affair. I consider Christians, Moslems, and Jews on the same footing. For me, you are all Frenchmen."

There was nothing reactionary about the economic views which Giraud proceeded to express to the Labour delegation before him.

"This war," he said, "is the end of a Thirty Years' War, which began in 1914, and will end in 1944. When it is over, the capitalist regime will be over too. It must be transformed not into Communism or any other 'ism' but into a system of participation. It will no longer be possible for the profits of industry to go all to one set of people, while the benefits of others are restricted to their wages.

"At the same time, it cannot be tolerated that the people engaged in any industry have opposing interests.

"When an undertaking is prosperous, the reason is that the people at the head of it know their business thoroughly. When I order an attack, it succeeds because I know the difficulties in the way, and experience enables me to adapt the means employed to the end which is their objective.

"The solution of the social problem will be found in the participation of all in the profits of industry, each according to his value. The ordinary workman cannot expect to receive as much as the highly skilled specialist, and among the workmen themselves the most efficient and diligent should get the highest pay.

"There must, of course, be a minimum wage which will suffice to p15 keep a family at a reasonable standard of living — but if the head of a family is a first-class worker, so much the better for his household.

"When this minimum standard of living has been assured, the surplus profits of industry should be divided according to the merits of those engaged in it, and in that participation the capitalist, who has risked his money in the enterprise, must also have his reward.

"When the war is over, it must be our policy to improve conditions of life for the deserving, and to reject the pretensions of the idle and discontented. The conception of levelling from the bottom up is absurd. At the same time, we must just as firmly eliminate from industry the incompetent and ignorant employer."

One quality which Giraud possesses is indispensable to all who aspire to leadership. He is a good picker of men. He always showed unerring judgment in choosing the most efficient officers to serve under him in Morocco. Unhappily the gallantry which also distinguished them led to not a few meeting their end in unrecorded actions against fierce tribesmen of the kind that Giraud was fighting when I first made his acquaintance. Such was the fate of Bournazel, Penfentenyo, Brincklé, Faucheux, and Binet — all names still remembered in the French Army. General Leclerc, whose advance from the territory of Lake Chad against the right flank of Rommel's army in Libya was one of the most picturesque maneuvers of the North African campaign, had early been picked out for advancement by General Giraud in Morocco.

He is the kind of chief who not only selects good subordinates but secures and retains their devotion. Directly he arrived in Algiers, three senior officers — General Devinc,c Colonel Lardin, and Colonel Kientz — who had served on his staff when he was Governor of Metz before the war, hastened to join him, despite the difficulties of escaping from France.

Giraud's reputation in his own country is not so widespread as that of De Gaulle, because for two full years the Free French organization in London had a monopoly of the radio in addressing the French people.

During the period of over two years between the collapse of France in June, 1940, and Giraud's arrival in Algiers in November, p16 1942, General de Gaulle's brilliant and stimulating broadcast harangues had become a national institution with the depressed and humiliated French nation. They heard of him touring the French Colonial Empire and organising its contribution to the Allied cause, from which alone they could hope for liberation. It was natural that to them De Gaulle should seem to be the incarnation of their most ardent hopes, and the symbol of the ultimate restoration of their freedom.

For the greater part of that time, Giraud was cut off from the outside world as a prisoner of war in Schloss Koenigstein. Nor did the people of France hear by what well-planned, energetic and daring action he regained his liberty in April, 1942.

Laval, who, as French Premier, has always been the lackey of his German masters, was even base enough to hold Giraud up to contempt as one whose freedom had been secured at the price of the cancellation by Germany of a promise to send home a large contingent of rank-and‑file French prisoners-of‑war.d

When Laval made his broadcast speech on June 22, 1941, gloating over the news of the loss by the British Army in Libya of its long-defended fortress of Tobruk, he went out his way to throw upon Giraud blame for "frustrating the hopes of French prisoners," and declared that his refusal to return to captivity at Koenigstein had aggravated the Germans into imposing more hardships upon the French soldiers they had captured.

It was therefore with no such personal prestige as General de Gaulle had won for himself that Giraud arrived in Algiers on November 9, 1942, and began his cooperation with the Anglo-American forces.

By the younger generation of French people, at least, his name was at that time almost forgotten. It did, however, carry weight with officers of the French Army everywhere. In military circles, the general opinion of Giraud was that which had been well expressed by his former schoolmate, Premier Paul Reynaud, who said of him, "He is the most astonishing specimen of a fighting animal that I have ever met."

An equally striking commendation came from Marshal Lyautey, p17 the great founder of French rule in Morocco, whose skill as a judge of men was demonstrated by the brilliant achievements of his administration. Of Giraud he remarked: "Take a good look at him. He is big in every way."

In America, too, a just appreciation of Giraud's character was shown. As the New York Times wrote on April 30: "He is admired and loved for his personal qualities, his resourceful courage and gay imperturbability. There is something in him of Baron Trench, Edmond Dantes,º of Bayard, of the Cid, of Roland and Oliver, and the heroes of the Chansons de Geste."

Thayer's Notes:

a1 a2 General Giraud's book describing his three escapes (one in World War I, two in World War II) is onsite in full: Mes évasions.

b Marshal Abraham Fabert died in 1662; the text should read "nearly three hundred years ago"; I don't know whether the mistake is Giraud's or merely in the book's proofreading.

c So the printed text. I can find no officer by that name (nor Devine) in Algiers during the war; in view of all the author's other loose spellings, I suspect one more, but have been unable to repair it. If you have good information, please drop me a line, of course.

d For the details, and Giraud's defense of his escape in view of the German attempt at extortion, see his own Mes évasions, pp185‑188, 196‑198.

p1 Chapter I Personal Background

Thayer's Notes:

p1 Chapter I

Personal Background