Giraud and the African Scene • Chapter 3

For the first eight months of his internment in Koenigstein, Giraud suffered from the effects of his old wounds, particularly from the one which had nearly crippled him in Morocco. He could only hobble about on two sticks, and seldom left his room. But in January, 1941, he was able to walk better, and used to take a daily stroll during the hours of exercise in the garden which had been planted on one of the bastions of the castle. With the resolve to escape firmly in mind, the General began to survey his surroundings.

Since the only place outside his room to which he had access was this garden, it had to be the starting-point of his flight. A less encouraging take‑off could hardly be imagined. The garden was surrounded by a stone parapet •three feet high, over which one looked down a sheer precipice •150 feet in depth. Below this precipitous drop, the ground began to slope more gradually, and was covered with rocks and trees. At the foot of the precipice, a fugitive would find cover. Obviously the only way down was by a rope. That would be a difficult and dangerous method for a sixty-three-year‑old general, still feeling the effects of his war injuries.

But since no other possibility presented itself to Giraud's mind, he resolved to risk the descent. How was he to obtain a rope 150 feet long, strong enough to bear his weight?

Most men would have rejected the idea as fantastic, but, since no other means suggested itself, Giraud determined to make a rope himself.

For a whole year this task occupied most of the hours of every night. During the daytime he picked up every piece of string and cord on which he could lay hands. Most of his fellow-prisoners received parcels from their relatives in France. The string would be p46 flung into wastepaper baskets, which were placed outside the doors of their rooms to be emptied by the orderlies. Before that could be done, Giraud used to abstract any of their contents that would serve him as raw material.

These odd bits of string and cord he plaited and wrapped together to make a rope about two fingers thick.

"No one can teach me anything about rope-making," he says today with a smile. "I had to learn it all myself, by more than a year's practice."

Most nights, when he had enough cord to work with, he would succeed in making a piece about two yards long. In the morning, when he went out for exercise in the garden, he would hide this under his coat and bury it beneath some bushes. But soon it became evident that he could never hope by such means to manufacture a rope strong enough to bear his weight of •180 pounds.

"Fortunately," said General Giraud, telling me this story in Algiers, "I had an old friend in France with whom I had arranged a simple code for letter-writing. I did this during the winter of 1939, so that, in what then seemed the improbable event of my falling again into the hands of the Germans, I could write letters which would pass the censor, but at the same time convey what I wanted to say.

"I used this code to ask that strips of copper insulating-wire should be sent to me hidden inside tins of jam. As this material gradually arrived, I used it to strengthen my rope and also to give me a better grip upon it.

"For that purpose, too, I asked my friend to send me a pair of heavy gloves with rubber palms. Meanwhile, I was constantly pressing my wife to put more chocolate in the parcels she sent me. She couldn't understand why I wanted such quantities, for I have never been fond of chocolate. When it came, it was always accompanied by an anxious request that I should be careful not to eat too much, for fear my liver might get out of order.

"As a matter of fact, I never ate a single ounce of the stuff myself. I had discovered that one of the prison-warders was, like so many p47 Germans, corruptible. I employed him to sell my chocolate on the 'black market.'

"In this way I gradually built up a stock of money to use if I managed to get away. I accumulated altogether 600 marks. With some of this money I bought, at a wickedly high price, an old pair of civilian trousers, a battered raincoat, and a Tyrolean hat.

"I told my 'black market' agent, who got these things for me, that I needed them to save my uniform, which was wearing out, but I kept them hidden in my cell as a disguise to be worn on the first stage of my flight.

"More than a year went by in such preparations. The rope hidden beneath the bushes had gradually reached the necessary length. I had enough money to keep me going for a few days. I had a civilian disguise. I had saved from my parcels some sugar, biscuits, a piece of cheese, and half a bottle of brandy. If I could make my get‑away from the castle, I should be all right for a few days at large. But I was five hundred miles from France. How was I to get out of Germany without being detected?

"My baraka continued to stand by me. By a lucky chance I managed to get hold of a blank German identity-card. This I filled in with a description of myself as a commercial traveler in artificial silk, belonging to an Alsatian firm. To lend verisimilitude to this character, I wrote several letters purporting to come from rayon manufacturers, asking that I should call on them in the course of the tour of Germany which I was supposed to be making."

Fortunately Giraud spoke German well, and the years he had spent at Metz had made him familiar with the Alsatian accent.

But now a critical moment in his schedule approached. He was obliged to decide, months in advance, the actual date of his escape, which he would have to stick to, whatever the weather and other conditions might be.

This was made necessary by the fact that he had used his letter-code to ask his friends in France to arrange for a secret agent, an Alsatian, to be sent into Germany to meet him at a certain spot •about five miles from Koenigstein on the day that he had chosen. p48 This man was to bring a full outfit of clothes to fit Giraud's tall figure, together with a supply of money. It would consequently be necessary for the General to risk everything for the purpose of making this contact when the time came.

The date he decided on was April 17, 1942. He even fixed the hour to meet the messenger at one P.M.

During the time when the French officers were allowed to take their exercise in the garden, a sentry stood on a wooden watch-tower in the middle of it, keeping his eye on them. Giraud had discovered that one angle of the garden was out of sight of this look‑out man. He chose that point for his descent of the cliff.

In addition, there was a German non‑commissioned officer who made a regular patrol of the precincts of the castle, which brought him through the garden once every quarter of an hour. It so happened that this N. C. O. was a keen photographer. He used to take pictures of the interned French generals, and no doubt made a good thing out of selling them to the Nazi press. The one general whom he had never succeeded in persuading to pose for him was Giraud, but, at ten o'clock on the morning of April 17th, when Giraud dressed in his uniform as usual, appeared in the garden at the hour of exercise, he hailed the soldier-photographer with a genial smile.

"Well, I feel in a good temper this morning, and it's a fine day, so go and get your camera, and we'll see what can be done about it!"

The delighted guard hurried off. Giraud knew that he would not be back for twenty minutes or so. The moment for the great venture had come.

He hurried at once to the place where the rope lay. With it, on the day before, he had hidden a bag containing his civilian disguise and packet of food. Quickly he made fast the end of the rope to an iron staple in the garden-wall . . . and then, hoisting his stiff wounded leg over the parapet, this sixty-three-year‑old general started to let himself down hand over hand.

"I had to go slowly, for fear of losing my grip," he said. "Down p49 the rough surface of the precipice I slid, bumping against projecting rocks, every moment expecting a shout from above to tell that the guards had discovered my escape. The muscular strain was intense after so long without exercise. It took me four minutes to swarm down the 150 feet.

"At last I reached the ground. I hurried behind the cover of a clump of bushes, and sat there for a moment to recover my strength.

"I kept on looking up at the parapet. Still no sign of any excitement, but I had no time to lose, for soon my photographer friend would be back looking for me. I had scissors and a safety razor in my pocket, so the first thing I did was to cut away and thoroughly shave my moustache, and put on a pair of dark glasses. Then I tore off my general's uniform, threw it aside among the rocks, slipped on my civilian pants and raincoat, crushed the Tyrolean hat over my face, picked up my bag of food and scrambled through the rocks and trees down to the main road which runs past the foot of the height on which Schloss Koenigstein stands.

"By this time it was about half-past‑ten. Boldness seemed the best policy. I walked quite openly along the country road, occasionally meeting a civilian or two, who hardly looked at me.

"I was making for the railroad bridge at Schandau, •five miles away, where the agent from France was to meet me. I did not know him by sight, but he had been shown photographs of me, and my height makes me easily recognizable.

"It had been arranged in the code-letters with the friend in France who had organised this part of my escape that, when the agent saw me, he was to say, 'Morgen, Heinrich!' If he addressed this greeting to a German, it would not compromise him, whereas I should recognise the words as an identification.

"I had two and a half hours to cover the five miles to the rendezvous, and I arrived there half an hour ahead of time — at 12:30 P.M.

"I sat down on the parapet of the railroad bridge, opened my haversack, took out some of the biscuits that I had saved from my rations, and began to eat my lunch.

"Exactly at 1 o'clock a young man in workman's clothes appeared, carrying a small valise. I did not pay attention to him, p50 but as he came past he murmured the words 'Morgen, Heinrich!' It was my unknown confederate from France.

"Had he got the clothes and the money? I asked him. He assured me that everything was in the grip he carried. He had even thought out the next step in my flight.

"In about a quarter of an hour, he told me, a slow train would be stopping at Schandau station. He recommended me to they take that. In the first place he could buy my railroad ticket while I kept out of sight. Secondly, supervision of identity papers on slow trains was less close than on expresses. Thirdly, he suggested that the washroom of a railroad train would be a good place for me to change into the civilian disguise which he had brought.

"We got onto the train without a hitch. I told my guide to buy me a second-class ticket to Breslau. It lies due east of Schloss Koenigstein, and I wanted to move in that direction because I knew the Germans would expect me to make for the French frontier, towards the west.

"We entered the train separately, my confederate going into one compartment, and I into another. He then went to the washroom at the end of the corridor, and left there the bag that he was carrying. Directly he came out, I followed him and changed into the clothes which he had brought.

"I emerged dressed very much as one might expect a German commercial traveller to be, and wearing a pair of gold-rimmed, tinted spectacles which, together with the sacrifice of my moustache, considerably changed my appearance.

"For the next six days I was constantly on the move by train. I did not dare to take a room in a hotel, for there would be forms to fill out and passes to be examined. So when I was not in the train I slept in the waiting-rooms at stations.

"One night I was stretched out on a bench when in walked a German policeman. I pretended to be asleep. He came up to me and shook me. 'Wohin fahren Sie?' I did not speak or stir. He shook me more roughly still. 'Where are you going?' he asked again.

"By this time I had been able to collect myself for the emergency. 'Was gibt's?' (What's the matter?) I said.

p51 "The policeman lost his temper. 'What are you?' he shouted. "Polish, Czech, Chinese, or what? Don't you understand German?'

"I adopted a tone of injured dignity. 'Of course I understand German,' I said. 'I am an Alsatian, a commercial traveller, and I do not like to be addressed in this brutal way by a German official so soon after my province has been restored to the Fatherland.'

"The policeman hesitated. He evidently had misgivings about having gone too far. With an impatient snort he took himself off and did not even ask to see my papers."

The General's baraka operated in another close call. A train in which he was travelling made a long halt at a station. It soon became clear that the Gestapo were going from compartment to compartment giving the passengers a close inspection, probably as a result of his escape, for he had already seen posted up on the walls a hastily printed proclamation offering a reward of 100,000 marks, which in pre‑war official rates amounted to 40,000 dollars, for his arrest. It bore a photograph of the escaped prisoner, which, fortunately, was a very bad likeness.

The emergency was serious. The only other traveller in Giraud's compartment was a much decorated German officer, who bore on his sleeve the embroidered words "Afrika Korps," which marked him as one of Rommel's subordinates from Libya.

"He didn't look very intelligent," Giraud relates. "So, as the examiners got near to our compartment, I began to talk to him, introducing myself as an Alsatian and asking about conditions in Libya. I poured out the most fulsome praise of Rommel. Never was any general so lauded.

"My travelling companion evidently regarded my assumed enthusiasm with favour. He replied affably to my questions. By the time the Gestapo men appeared at the door we were on the best of terms. They hesitated a moment, and then, with a salute to the officer, retired without asking for my papers. They evidently would not venture to question the identity of a civilian who was apparently on friendly terms with an army officer of distinction.

"All this time I was working my way gradually towards the Swiss frontier. I knew the part where I meant to try to cross it, for I had p52 been there in peacetime on a hunting expedition. It was closely guarded, like all German frontiers. Sentries were posted at commanding points every few hundred yards, and between them patrols moved constantly.

"At one o'clock in the morning, when the night was pitch-dark, I managed to creep to within twenty yards of the border, and hid in the heart of some thick bushes. I had hardly got inside them when two of the frontier guards came tramping along and halted within a few yards of me.

" 'If only the "Grosses Tier" (the "big shot") would come our way tonight, he, Hans!' said one of them. 'We could do with that 100,000 marks, couldn't we?'

" 'What a hope!' was the reply. 'He has the whole of the frontier of Germany to get out over. There's not much chance of him choosing our beat!'

"I lay as still as a corpse," said General Giraud, with that staccato, dry, high-pitched laugh of his. "It was six in the morning before those two guards moved. Then one yawned and said to the other, 'Well, he won't come tonight anyway, and it's time for breakfast.'

"Directly their backs were turned I made a rush of a hundred yards or so straight before me. Then I breathed again. I was on Swiss soil, and safe!"

In Switzerland, Giraud reported his arrival to the French Legation at Berne, who arranged for him to continue his journey into France.

To justify in the eyes of Germany its action in allowing him to pass through Swiss territory, the Government of that country published a communiqué stating that, since an escaped prisoner is not an armed combatant, he is not liable to internment, nor, as in the case of a common‑law criminal, can he be detained for extradition. On April 25, 1942, eight days after his daring escape from Koenigstein, General Giraud was once more with his family in France.

The original German version of General Giraud's escape from Koenigstein was that he had been allowed certain privileges, as an elderly officer partly invalid as the result of earlier wounds, and p53 took advantage of these to slip away. It was suggested that he had broken a parole which in fact he had never given.

As soon as Giraud was back in his own country and able to tell the true story of his escape, the Germans dropped this baseless charge, but they did not relax their efforts to recover possession of so determined and distinguished a fugitive. Their hopes on doing this were based on the fact that their creature, the corrupt French politician Pierre Laval, had, almost simultaneously with Giraud's arrival in France, succeeded, with German backing, in getting himself recalled to the Premiership by Maréchal Pétain. The first service which the Nazi Government demanded from its nominee was the return of Giraud to Koenigstein.

When the General reported himself to Maréchal Pétain at Vichy on April 27th, he was invited to lunch, and the two remained together throughout the afternoon. In the course of their conversation, Giraud impressed upon Pétain the conviction, derived from what he had heard and seen in Germany, that the Axis Powers would lose the war. He urged the Marshal to avoid as far as possible becoming further involved with the Germans.

To this Pétain replied: "I entirely share your opinion, and I beg of you to give your views to Laval when you see him."

But when Giraud proceeded to pay a visit to the Premier, he found Laval in no mood to listen to his estimate of the future course of the war. Laval began by brusquely telling him that his escape had "interfered abominably" with French policy. He bluntly demanded that Giraud should return to Germany. This suggestion met with an equally blunt refusal.

Six times within the following month did the Quisling French Premier renew this pressure, sometimes in the form of persuasion, sometimes by threats. He pretended that he had been on the point of securing the release of a large number of French prisoners-of‑war, and that the effect of the General's escape had been the cancellation of this arrangement by the Germans. If Giraud had any feelings of patriotism, he said, or any sympathy for the sufferings of hundreds of thousands of French families separated from their captured relatives, he would give himself up.

p54 The Germans were aware that the news of the bold exploit which Giraud had accomplished was stiffening the French spirit of resistance. They felt that their prestige as the conquerors of France would be diminished if they could not regain the custody of the man who had set them at defiance.

The German "Ambassador" to Paris, Abetz, suggested that some concession about prisoners might be made if Giraud would come and see him at Moulins, which was in the German-occupied zone. This invitation was conveyed to Giraud by Laval. The General agreed to go to the meeting only if Admiral Darlan and Laval himself went with him, as a guarantee that he would not be kidnapped and carried off by the enemy.

Abetz received them in the presence of the German general commanding the troops in that district. Throughout the interview his manner was deliberately insolent and provocative. He evidently hoped to goad Giraud into making some angry retort which might be twisted into an excuse for detaining him.

Giraud stated that he would be prepared to return to Germany on certain conditions. Abetz asked what these conditions were. The reply was that the Germans should release all the married French prisoners-of‑war whom they held in captivity, amounting to about 500,000 men. Abetz was furious. "Are we the conquerors in this war, or are you?" he demanded in a bullying tone.

Abetz turned away with a snort, indicating that the interview was at an end. He said good‑bye to Darlan and Laval with exaggerated affability, taking both the latter's hands into his own. Giraud he dismissed with a scowl and a curt bow. At that moment, as the three Frenchmen were about to leave, the German general, who had taken no part in the conversation, came forward and deliberately held out his hand to Giraud.

Following on this interview, Abetz announced that Hitler would be satisfied with a pledge from Giraud that he would not join De Gaulle. The General refused. Abetz then asked for a promise that he would not fight against Germany. This also was refused.

Then Laval, acting as Germany's agent, tried to achieve his purpose p55 through Marshal Pétain. The sense of discipline in the French Army is strong, and he counted on the fact that Giraud might make some concession to a military superior which he would not yield to a politician.

The General was accordingly asked to go to the headquarters of General Campet, the senior French officer in Lyons, near to which place he was staying with his family. There he was presented with the typewritten draft of a letter addressed to Pétain, which he was told the Marshal wanted him to sign for the purpose of satisfying the Germans.

Lyons, May 4, 1942,

Monsieur le Maréchal:

Following upon our recent conversation, and to prevent any misunderstanding as to my attitude, I want to express to you my sentiments of entire loyalty.

You and the head of the Government have explained to me the policy you intend to follow towards Germany.

I am entirely in agreement with you. I give you my word as an officer that I shall do nothing which might interfere with your relations with the German Government, or obstruct the work which you have charged Admiral Darlan and Premier Laval to carry on under your supreme authority.

My past is a guarantee of my loyalty.

This letter Giraud, in deference to the Marshal's wishes, copied out and signed.

Immediately after doing so, he pointed out to a friend who had been waiting for him in the anteroom that he had only committed himself to approval of the Marshal's policy as it had been explained to him, and that he had not restricted his own liberty of action if that policy underwent any change in the future.

After this, the only contact that Giraud had with the Germans was on the occasion of a visit which he received from Otto Rahn, a member of Abetz's staff. The emissary came to put the proposal that Giraud should return voluntarily to Koenigstein, where he would at once be liberated on parole. Rahn said: "I, as a member of p56 the Ambassador's staff, will go with you to Koenigstein, as a pledge of your immediate release. If you are kept there, I will stay at Koenigstein with you. I promise that I will not leave the fortress till you do."

Giraud's reply was: "I do not trust any German. However, as I told Herr Abetz, I am willing to return to Koenigstein and stay there if Hitler will liberate 500,000 French prisoners, but he must do it first, because I will not take his word."

All this time Giraud had no inkling of the intention of the American and British governments to send an expeditionary force to Africa. This only took concrete form some weeks later when Winston Churchill visited Washington in June, 1942.

All that the General desired was to be left in peace, but Laval and the Germans were uneasy about his possible influence on public opinion, and they had him closely watched. The Gestapo and French police cooperated to supervise his movements, on which a report was made to the Chief of Police in Lyons every day.

It may seem surprising that in the middle of a great war the Germans should have worried so much about the escape of a single general. The French Army, so far as its defensive power against Germany was concerned, had at that time ceased to exist. Back at home in France, Giraud now well on in his sixties, might have been expected to settle down into that twilight of retirement which is the anticlimax of so many active military careers.

The eclipse of a French Army chief en retraite is generally complete. I recall paying a visit to General Sarrail after he had left the active list. I had known him previously, first as the Commander-in‑Chief of a group of Allied armies, and then as French Resident-General in Syria. In both of these official capacities he was surrounded by not a little dignity, and it seemed incongruous to find him living in a small flat in an unfashionable part of Paris.

Late in life — during the time he was Commander-in‑Chief at Salonica — he had married a young wife, and the shrill squeals of an infant rang through the apartment, which was an oddly modest background for a man of the General's distinguished bearing.

Similarly, General Giraud might have resigned himself to an uneventful p57 existence, in which his only campaigns would be fought out over the coffee cups with a few friends in the evening.

But the Germans take pains to study the personality of anyone whose activities may affect their national interests. They realised that Giraud, back in France, represented a potential center of resistance. A man who, at his time of life, had escaped by the dangerous method he employed could not be written off as too old to count.

They possibly even feared the stimulating effect of his ardent personality upon such poor-spirited leaders of the French nation as Marshal Pétain himself.

If the German Government had these misgivings, their apprehensions were justified.

Directly he got back to his own country, the General set himself to plan its liberation and reconstruction. With the thoroughness characteristic of him, he first set himself to examine the causes of the French defeat. Investigation of the reasons why France had failed in the past appeared to him the best preparation for avoiding similar errors in the future.

On these matters he had reflected long and deeply in the loneliness of his cell at Koenigstein. By the time he returned to France, he had come to definite and clear conclusions about them. His first step was to set down on paper a searching analysis of the factors which had brought about his country's fall. In so doing he cleared his own mind to plan constructively for the future. When he had completed this assessment of the defects to be remedied and the dangers to be avoided, Giraud sent a copy of it to Marshal Pétain.

The Germans had their agents at the headquarters of the Vichy Government, and it may be that in this way they learnt of the energy with which Giraud was addressing his mind to consideration of the best means for restoring France.

In their eyes this alone would be enough to constitute the crime known to their Japanese allies as "dangerous thinking." The place reserved for France in Hitler's "New Order in Europe" was that of a highly skilled but hardworked and harshly treated craftsman, purveying wines, dresses, perfumes, and other luxuries to the conquering p58 German nation. Independence and prosperity were alike excluded from the Führer's plans for the French people.

How different — and therefore, from the German point of view, how obnoxious — was General Giraud's attitude may be best appreciated by considering the following summary of his trenchant indictment of that period of progressive political decay which had prepared the downfall of France.

In the 17,000‑word memorandum on this subject which he presented to Pétain, Giraud began by seeking the root-cause of the disaster which had befallen France.

Even if the war had not come, he pointed out, France was on the downward grade. Rich though her resources were, the country was becoming progressively depopulated. The maintenance of her agriculture and industries required each year a larger importation of foreign labour to replace the young people that French parents refused to bring into the world.

Self-indulgence had become a national principle. Sport had developed into a large industry, but it was spectacular sport, not the kind in which the people themselves participate. The French race, formerly solid and resistant, was contaminated by drink and disease. Neither from the point of view of training nor that of physical endurance did the soldier of 1940 equal his predecessor of 1914.

In all grades of society the main aim of life was amusement. Egotism and special well-being had become the supreme goal of existence. Idealistic and spiritual factors had disappeared from the mental horizon of the average Frenchman. Atheism was widespread.

The supreme military and civil authorities of France alike failed in their national duties.

The soldiers had responsibility, but were deprived of power. Their political chiefs exacted silence, smothered criticism, and hid the facts of France's danger from the eyes of the nation.

"Power cannot be delegated," is one of Giraud's maxims. "In France, between 1919 and 1939, the authority of the State steadily crumbled away.

"The interests of the nation were stifled by personal self-seeking, p59 nepotism and extravagance. Everyone gave in to his own appetites, and success went to the most dishonest and the most cunning."

In Giraud's judgment it was lack of authority and discipline that brought France to her downfall in 1940.

In foreign policy, her record during the twenty years of precarious peace between the wars was one of dreams, illusions, weaknesses and errors.

"We succeeded neither in preventing the reconstruction of Germany's power nor in collaborating with her," he says.

"We were able neither to lead the small nations of Europe nor to enlist them in our support.

"Bit by bit, the Allies of 1918 were dispersed and dissociated, whereas the Germans skilfully and tirelessly shook themselves free from their bonds."

It might have been thought that the discipline of military service would correct some of these defects. Unfortunately, at a time when Nazi Germany was steadily stiffening her military training, the French Government, under parliamentary pressure, introduced the one‑year period of service.

For practical purposes this meant that recruits had no more than about four months' training in the ranks. During the rest of the time, they were engaged in acquiring the mere rudiments of soldiering. Their brief and hurried period of instruction hardly gave them time to learn the names of their officers, and was certainly not long enough to enable mutual reliance to be established. In many regiments the commanding officer was the only one with regular military experience.

Moreover, since 1920, the French Army had never been organised for the offensive. Positional defensive warfare was the role allotted to it. An entirely disproportionate confidence was placed in the Maginot Line. Once that line was turned, and the French Army found itself confronted by an enemy equipped and organised for attack, and led by dynamic commanders whose energy and daring inspired their troops, the static, half-trained French forces were first p60 stupefied and then stampeded. Some divisions, indeed, fought well, but they were not enough to atone for the deficiencies of others who fled in disorder.

"I say that the army of May 10, 1940, was less ready for war than the army of September, 1939," asserted Giraud. "In France, and above all in England, the opinion took root that the war was really a war of blockade, more economic than military. Little by little the fighting spirit of the nation was demobilised."

Giraud pointed out that the outstanding defects of the French Army were lack of aircraft and tanks. Not until the opening months of 1940 were steps taken to form two armoured divisions, and when the German onslaught started in May these were still incomplete.

Yet in 1938 Germany had already used four armoured divisions in occupying Austria. To seize Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939 she employed six such divisions, and against Poland eight, of close on 500 tanks apiece.

Although Germany's strength in tanks had thus been well-known to the French Government before the war, the French Army was supplied neither with tanks nor with anti‑tank guns.

The decline of the French Air Force became swift and serious from the year 1936 onwards.

It had been powerful and efficient at the end of the last war. At the beginning of the present one it hardly existed at all. When the war started, it may have been too late to begin building bombers, but between September, 1939, and May, 1940, France could have done much to develop her strength in combat-planes.

Anti-aircraft guns were as lacking as anti‑tank artillery. One second-line division had none of these weapons, while another possessed only 39 anti‑tank guns.

The cause of this shortage of equipment lay in years of revolutionary activities, sabotage and industrial lethargy.

The German Army, on the other hand, was not only completely equipped with simple, strong and effective weapons designed for a war of movement, but it also had an abundance of spare parts, and p61 mobile workshops with trained mechanics to follow the troops into the field and keep their armaments in good condition.

Modern war is not fought with clenched fists. It needs material and munitions. France had neither. "The price we have paid," declared Giraud, "is many thousands of dead, destruction amounting to hundreds of millions of francs, and finally the fall of France itself."

He went on to ask: "Could our General Staff have done more with the means at its command? The answer is Yes, if we had had as many men of character as we had men of intelligence.

"I know that the German attack was not expected until 1941. Those who predicted an attack in 1940 were regarded as crazy. Nevertheless, we should have been ready in 1940.

"The Polish Army had disappeared in September, 1939. The other ally of France, Great Britain, had sent 9 divisions to fight alongside the French Army of 80 divisions. Out of these only about 30 were properly trained and equipped.

"The most reasonable plan would have been to hold a number of frontier strong-points and form a substantial mass of manoeuvre in the interior of the country, which could have been used anywhere between Switzerland and the Channel coast.

"Along that eastern frontier of France, the weak sector was the border between ourselves and Belgium.

"Belgium refused to admit Allied troops to ensure the defence of her own eastern frontier against Germany until the day when that frontier was actually attacked. It was then too late for such intervention, and to advance into Belgium, as we did, was a fatal error.

"The Belgian and Dutch armies proved unable to hold out long enough for the Allied forces to come into line alongside them. Meanwhile, the French front was broken on the Meuse, at Sedan, at Mézières, at Givet, and afterwards at Dinant.

There were no counterattacks. There were no reserves. The French High Command miscalculated its resources. It pitted reserve infantry divisions against German armoured and motorised divisions. p62 It scattered its tanks in small detachments up and down the front.

"In three weeks of fighting the best French units were put out of action. By June 1st the war was lost for France. Inferior in dispositions and equipment alike, the retreat of the French Army rapidly became a rout.

"As a soldier who has commanded other soldiers on many battlefields, and often in the gravest circumstances, this is my most honorable memory. Never until then, whether as captain, major, or colonel, had I beheld panic in the next of the French Army. It is to me a bitter mockery that the French soldier, who endured the bombardments of the attack on Verdun in 1916, should have fled from the enemy artillery fire on the Meuse in 1940."

Giraud recalled how the sweeping movements of the enemy tanks disorganised and defeated the attempts of the French General Staff to make stands on fixed positions such as the line of the Aisne and the Somme, followed by those of the Seine and Loire. He went on to ask two questions: 1. Whether war could have been avoided? and 2. Whether France could possibly have won?

His answer to the first speculation was an emphatic No! Sooner or later, said Giraud, France was bound to be challenged by Nazi aggression. He even advances the theory — somewhat surprising in view of his admissions about French unpreparedness — that it would have been better for France to fight Germany in 1938 than in 1939, and better still in 1937 than in 1938.

As to the possibility of a French victory, Giraud holds the view that this might have been achieved by means of a more energetic and offensive spirit.

"On September 1, 1939," he wrote, "the Germans had little or no strength on the left bank of the Saar, the river that runs parallel with the Maginot Line a few miles inside the German frontier." According to him, the French Army could have occupied the Saar Valley and dug itself in before Germany, engaged as she then was with the conquest of Poland, could have counterattacked.

More strongly still does he hold the view that, directly the war started, the French and British armies should have marched together p63 into Belgium, to hold the line of the Meuse. He points out that from the German point of view a quick victory was essential, whereas the only hope of the Allies depended upon the war being a long one.

So far as France was concerned, this quick enemy victory was achieved. Fortunately, the fact that Britain held on, and that ultimately the United States entered the war in support of the Allied cause, gave the French another chance.

Giraud concluded his memorandum by urging Marshal Pétain to make the best use of that chance for the restoration of France.

In writing this long analysis of the basic conditions of the decline and fall of the French nation, Giraud was revealing not only the defects of his fellow-countrymen but — unconsciously and by implication — his own qualities as a leader.

There is a great deal of the "old Roman" in Henri Giraud. Were he to find himself called upon to lead a reconstituted French Government, it would be against his will, as it was in the case of Cincinnatus, who was twice summoned from the plough to the dictatorship, and each time, as soon as his task was done, returned to his farm.

Like him, Giraud would be eager to resume private life, but, if ever he is entrusted with political power, as he was for a short time in Algiers, he can be relied on to display those ancient Roman qualities of discipline, frugality, modesty and justice.

Hateful as war is, there can be no denying that the life of an army officer tends to develop the best elements in the character of any nation. Even the German officer appears a somewhat less evil type than the Nazi Party boss. In England the qualities of sportsmanship, good manners, and courage, which the national instinct rates highly, are exemplified in the commissioned ranks of the army. The American officer, who in peacetime has small reward in the way of pay or prestige, nevertheless develops a distinction of character of which the foundations are laid with great efficacy at West Point.

So also the professional French soldier displays in a high degree the best traits of the mental and moral make‑up of his countrymen — intelligence, logic, power of expression, gallantry, urbanity, and self-respect.

p64 Such idiosyncrasies are well-marked in the temperament of General Giraud. At a most critical moment of French history they have enabled him to render memorable service to his country, with tact and efficiency, and without desire of reward.

p45 Chapter III The Gamecock Flies the Coop

p45 Chapter III

The Gamecock Flies the Coop