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previous: Chapter 4 This webpage reproduces part of Giraud and the African Scene by G. Ward Price The Macmillan Company, 1944 The text is in the public domain. This text has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 6

 p86  Chapter V

United States Preparations
in North Africa

The American Consul-General at Rabat, the capital of Morocco, was Mr. Robert Murphy.

When France made peace with the Axis, the French territories in North Africa became subject to the British naval blockade.

They depended on imported supplies for many essentials. General Weygand, who was Governor-General of the whole of French North Africa under Marshal Pétain, accordingly asked Mr. Murphy to organise at any rate the partial resumption of trading relations between the United States and the three French provinces. In June 1941, this was arranged.

With the agreement of the British Government, four French ships were permitted to ply between New York and Casablanca, bringing from America food, clothing, oil and other articles which had become rarities in German-occupied Europe, and taking back local products in exchange.

The American Government stipulated that such consignments should be used solely for the benefit of the population of French North Africa, but since, at that time, these French dependencies were exporting large quantities of food and other material to France, where two‑thirds of it was confiscated by the Germans at the ports of arrival, there can be no doubt that Germany derived at least indirect advantage from the supplies thus sent from the United States.

This had the effect of inducing the Germans to take a tolerant view of the continuance of the diplomatic connection between America and French North Africa. It suited the Nazi purpose that Casablanca should be, so to speak, a half-open door through which communications with the outside world could be kept up despite the British naval blockade. The Germans little suspected how much  p87 further the activities of Mr. Murphy and his colleagues extended beyond the organising of shipments of canned milk and corned beef. In actual fact, these Americans were acting as reconnaissance agents of great skill and discretion. It was their reports on the disposition of the population of French North Africa which encouraged the Allied Governments to adopt the great strategic plan of making that region the springboard for their ultimate attack upon what Winston Churchill was later to call the "soft under-belly of the Axis."

President Roosevelt stated at Casablanca in January, 1943, that the North African landing had been conceived a year previously, and was put into definite shape when the British Prime Minister visited Washington in June, 1942.

So far‑reaching were the preparations made that the ships arriving in Algiers after the end of the campaign in May, 1943, were running on a schedule laid down for them twelve months before. So well was the secret kept that when the first American troops set foot ashore, their destination came as a complete surprise to the Germans.

For some time there had been rumours of a projected American invasion of Africa, but the Nazi General Staff had made up its mind that its goal would be Dakar.

This belief was encouraged by the arrival of American forces, during the months of September and October, 1942, in the British colony of Sierra Leone and the independent Negro Republic of Liberia — equatorial territories which might have served as bases for an attack on that chief Vichy French port on the West African coast.

But Murphy and other American agents had not been idle during the first six months after America's entry into the war. As they travelled about North Africa on their legitimate diplomatic business, they were frequently approached by patriotic Frenchmen in whose hearts the association of the United States with the cause of liberty had roused fresh hopes.

Naturally, these representatives of the State Department were cautious in their replies to the enquiries made of them as to what action the United States might be prepared to take in support of  p88 anti-German activity in the French territories in North Africa, but they were able to form an estimate of the extent of such a disposition among the population, and to judge of the energy, capacity and fidelity of the men who were taking the lead in this direction.

Much ill‑informed criticism of the attitude of the French population of North Africa has been published since the Allied landing took place. They were branded as "pro‑Vichy" by many people whose personal acquaintance with conditions there began only after that event. Radio commentators and correspondents were concentrated in Algiers, a city where Jewish and Communist interests are largely represented.

These sections of the population had, in the past, played a leading part in the local administration, and had exploited that position to their advantage. The provincial and municipal politics of Algeria were largely dominated by them.

That state of affairs came to an end with the fall of France. The Vichy Government, under pressure from Germany, ordered the imposition of restrictions upon North African Jews. The initiative in this did not come from the local Christians, but Jewish resentment made them the scapegoats, denouncing them as pro‑Vichy, reactionary, even Fascist.

The United States Government was, however, better informed than the American public as to the true situation. It did not make the mistake of assuming that acquiescence in the rule of Vichy implied a pro‑German or collaborationist attitude.

The French of North Africa were devoutly thankful that the war had stopped short of their territory. It was only the ardent and courageous few, together with the high-spirited youth under their influence, who felt active resentment of the servitude to the Axis in which they found themselves. Nor can the majority be blamed for this resignation to the hard facts of their condition. They were in fact helpless, for by the terms of the armistice imposed on the Vichy Government the French forces in North Africa were deprived of nearly all weapons heavier than a machine‑gun.

But with discernment that does him credit, Mr. Robert Murphy, the senior diplomatic agent in North Africa, recognised that there  p89 was a reliable core of pro‑Ally spirit in the Chantiers de la Jeunesse. He advised the Allied Governments to place their trust in the small group of bold men at its head, who preferred the risk of reacting against the fate which had overtaken France to the safety of accepting it.

Having secret means of communication with the Allies, van Heck was able to receive information as to their intentions. In July, 1942, after Mr. Churchill's visit to Washington in the previous month, he and his trusted comrades learnt that an Allied landing in North Africa had been decided upon. The original date contemplated was May 1, 1943, with an insurrection in France to be planned at the same time.

It came to the ears of the French patriots in Algiers that the enemy had obtained knowledge of this scheme. Part of the activities of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse was to spy upon the Gestapo agents. Van Heck had managed to place some of his young men as waiters and valets-de‑chambre in the hotels where the German and Italian officers and Secret Service officials lived. It was a theft of confidential papers organised in this way which revealed the fact that the enemy was in the secret of the Allied plans.

Similar vigilance resulted in the discovery that the Axis Powers had resolved to anticipate the Allied initiative in this respect by themselves carrying out a military occupation of French North Africa. The date on which they proposed to do this was January 1, 1943. Systematic preparations were being made in Italy all through the autumn of 1942 for carrying out this step. Ships, barges and transport planes were gradually collected in Sicilian ports and aerodromes. That is why, when the Anglo-American landing materialised, the enemy was able to counter it so quickly by pouring troops into Tunisia.

When the Allied Governments heard from their helpers in Algiers that the Germans had begun to prepare this action, they decided to hold a council of war in French North Africa itself. Risky though such an enterprise was bound to be, the Allied General Staffs felt that it was essential for a senior member of their own organisation to meet face to face the Frenchmen upon whose service  p90 and aid the success of a landing would greatly depend. They announced their intention of sending a representative secretly to North Africa, and asked their friends there to fix a place and time for the meeting.

The rendezvous was made for the third week in October near Cherchell, a village on the coast •about fifty miles west of Algiers.

Cherchell had already been chosen by the North African patriots as one of the landing-places for the coming Allied invasion. It has a long, flat, sandy beach, •two miles of which form part of the private grounds of a villa belonging to a lawyer named Tessier, who was in the confidence of the leaders of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse and of the military officers in league with them.

Tessier agreed at once to his villa being used as the scene of secret discussions with representatives of the Allied forces.

In preparation for these talks, Tarbet de St. Hardouin, the business manager of the Liberation Movement, prepared a list of all the hidden petrol and other stores which the French patriots had been able to put aside for the use of the Allied troops immediately after their landing. It would be impossible for the invaders to disembark supplies of any kind until they had gained possession of a port. For the first day or two, therefore, the success or the failure of their enterprise would depend upon the stocks which their friends ashore had been able, with much difficulty and self-sacrifice, to accumulate secretly in advance.

General Mast — in the later forties, blond, sturdy, clean-shaven, with strong, well-marked features — who commanded the French division stationed in Algiers, had worked out the strategical and tactical military problems of the landing. He had also drawn up a report, setting forth the extent to which some of the French forces in North Africa could be counted on for cooperation with the Allies; and what degree of resistance was to be expected from other French troops less favourably disposed.

General Mast furthermore provided plans of the airfields which it would be necessary for the friendly invaders to seize as bases for their own aircraft, and specified the stores and equipment which it  p91 had been impossible to provide locally, and which the Allies would be obliged to bring with them.

The forthcoming meeting was the first occasion on which the leaders of the Liberation Movement were able to have direct discussion with representatives of the Allied General Staff. Previous communications between them had been in the form of brief radio-messages in code, or through the intermediary of secret emissaries. Neither of these methods of communication had provided the opportunity to submit certain decisions which the French patriots in North Africa felt that the assistance which they were giving entitled them to lay down.

The first was that General Giraud, with whom the American Government had already been in touch by secret emissaries, should be brought over from France to North Africa and placed in supreme command of the operations immediately after the landing.

The second stipulation was that the Allies should bring with them sufficient equipment to arm the 300,000 French troops in North Africa, who had been deprived of practically all weapons except their rifles by the enemy commissions of disarmament. As events turned out, the fulfilment of both these requirements was impossible at the time, though the demand for the reequipment of the French North African Army was met some six months later.

When the meeting at Cherchell had come to its dramatic end, the leaders of the North African Liberation Movement drew up a full report of all the matters that had been discussed there.

At 5 A.M. on the morning of October 19th, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse received a message from Gibraltar, announcing that a British submarine had left there with an American general on board who would be landed at Cherchell.​a The French replied that they would be on the beach from midnight of October 21st onwards, waiting to receive him. As the submarine was travelling submerged, it took two days to cover the •five hundred miles from Gibraltar.

The French promised to show a light from the top of Tessier's villa, and to make certain flash-lamp signals from the beach when the submarine was sighted.

 p92  Tessier had sent away his wife and two children, and had got rid of his Arab servants and gardeners by sending them home for a week's holiday. They had all gone off eagerly, so that Tessier remained alone.

His chief cause of anxiety was that the main road passed close by the house. Peasants might come that way. Fortunately none did. The plotters had made up their minds to shoot anyone approaching the villa rather than run the risk that the strangers might get away and tell the police what was going on. As one of them said to me afterwards, "We couldn't afford to take any chances. If we had been caught, we should certainly have been shot ourselves, and very likely our families as well."

So at midnight on Friday, October 21st, the little group of Frenchmen who were planning no less an undertaking than the invasion of a continent — which may well prove to have been the turning-point of the whole war — gathered stealthily on the shore outside the Tessier villa, straining their eyes seawards for any sign of a submarine steering towards the light that shone from the glass belvedere on the roof of the house behind them.

Till the eastern sky grew red with the dawn at 5 A.M. they waited in vain. The surface of the Mediterranean stretched calm and unbroken before them, sparkling in the level rays of a rising sun, without a trace of the presence of any craft whatever.

Yet the submarine was there all the time. As the disappointed watchers afterwards learned, it had arrived at 2 A.M., but the captain thought it too risky to start putting his passengers ashore with only three hours in hand before daylight. So he kept his vessel lying on the sandy bottom •a mile or so out from 2 A.M. on the morning of October 22nd until after dark the same evening.

At daylight on the 22nd, the party of Frenchmen waiting on the beach got into their automobiles and drove disconsolately back to Algiers, fifty miles away. Had the Allies let them down? Had the submarine been spotted and bombed by some prowling German aircraft? Had her captain mistaken his bearings and gone to the wrong place? Upon the parley for which they had waited through  p93 the night depended all their future plans of action. If the conference did not come off, the labours and risks of the past months would be in vain. How exhausting all that secret work of preparation had been is shown by the fact that one member of the party had lost •seventy pounds in weight during the summer. It was a tired and dispirited group of men who returned to Algiers that October morning.

They prepared for their daily jobs of work, arranging to meet again in the evening to discuss how far their activities would be affected by the failure to establish personal touch with the Allies.

Just as they were about to part, a sudden exclamation came from the monitor who was listening‑in on the receiving‑set. It was a signal from the British Naval authorities at Gibraltar. The submarine they said had arrived at the rendezvous and would surface at 9 P.M. that evening.

The party's gloom was transmuted to delight. That afternoon they drove back fast to Cherchell.

The reception committee consisted of Mr. Robert Murphy, the American Consul-General; General Mast; Colonel Jousse, of the 19th Military Region in North Africa, which is the district around Algiers (he was the only French officer in uniform); Capitaine de Frégate Barjot, of the French Navy, Commandant d'Artois, from the Blida military aerodrome, Captain Lindsay Watson, of the 5th Chasseurs d'Afrique, one of the leaders of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse; Captain d'Astier de la Vigerie, of the same organisation; Tessier, the owner of the villa; and two members of the Algerian coastguard, named Le Neu and Michel, one an officer and the other a sergeant, who were to mount guard because of their familiarity with that particular piece of coastline in the dark.

The two coastguard officers posted themselves in opposite directions along the road running east and west. The others lay down on the sand, straining their eyes through the darkness to catch sight of the silhouette of the submarine against the sky.

Midnight arrived without any sign of the expected Allied emissary. The lantern at the top of the villa shone steadily out to sea.

 p94  At last flashes came suddenly out of the darkness. It was part of the prearranged signal. An electric torch was blinked from the beach in reply.

More flashes from seaward gave the countersign, and were answered with the same number.

The watchers on the beach were tensely anxious. One of the most critical moments of their venturesome scheme was approaching. A single Arab wandering along the cliffs behind the beach, looking, perhaps, for a stray sheep, could give the alarm, and within a few hours the whole party might be attacked and arrested by troops or police acting under the orders of collaborationist government officials.

The silence was unbroken, when ten minutes later a low shadowy object came into view about a hundred yards out from the shore.

"As it drew near" — one of the men who was there afterwards told me — "we could see that it was a rubber float, shaped rather like an Eskimo canoe. There were two figures in it. At first I was puzzled by the fact that they seemed to be in diving-dress. As their craft touched the shore not more than two yards from where I lay, I discovered that the headdress which had given me this impression was the American pattern of steel helmet, the first of its kind I had seen.

"Two big men sprang out the canoe as it grounded. Revolvers and hand-grenades were slung round their waists, and they carried tommy-guns at the ready, with fingers on the trigger."

Despite their American helmets these were British commando officers, Captain C. Courtenay and Captain R. Livingstone, who were attached to the Allied emissary, Major-General Mark Clark, then General Eisenhower's second-in‑command, to serve as escort and advance scouts.

"We are friends, don't fire!" called out the party on the beach.

One of the British officers carried a piece of equipment which astonished the new French acquaintances. It was a tiny portable radio telephone‑set, hanging from his neck. He pressed a button, twirled the handle, and in a moment he had spoken directly to the submarine-commander somewhere in the darkness out at sea, reporting  p95 that the beach was safe, and that contact with the reception-committee had been made.

On this, three other rubber floats were shortly seen paddling shorewards. In the first of them was Major-General Clark, a tall figure, forty‑six years old. He held a pistol in his hand, and jumped out knee-deep into the water as the canoe approached the shore. His companion was Colonel Julius Holmes, an American officer who was once a student at Cambridge University, England. His familiarity with the most famous detective character of fiction created by the English writer Conan Doyle was indicated by the remark he made when Colonel Jousse introduced Captain Watson.

"My dear Doctor, I am so glad to see you again," exclaimed Colonel Holmes, gaily, to which Captain Watson, also brought up in England, replied, "Why, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who would have thought of meeting you here?"

Two more rubber boats brought the rest of the party.

With the exception of Lieutenant J. P. Foot, another British commando officer, all were Americans — Brigadier-General Lyman Lemnitzer;º Colonel Archelaus Hamblen,º Colonel Dostert, a French University professor in the United States who is a naturalised American citizen;​b and Captain J. Wright, of the United States Navy.

After hurried introductions, this throng on the beach picked up the four rubber boats between them and carried them into the house, where they stowed them away in the lofty cellars beneath the villa, among the great wine vats, newly filled with the produce of the autumn vintage.

It was by this time past midnight. General Clark and his party were deadly tired after three days and nights in the cramped discomfort of a submarine. They were also very hungry.

Tessier, the owner of the villa, would have aroused the suspicion of his Arab servants if, before their departure, he had ordered them to prepare a meal for his guests, so the party was dependent upon the cold food which had been brought out from Algiers. Mr. Robert Murphy, whose diplomatic status enabled him to procure supplies unobtainable by ordinary people, had provided a couple cases of Scotch whiskey, a case of gin, and several hundred cigarettes. Everyone  p96 was too weary to start any talks that night, so after a supper which ended at 2 A.M. they all went to sleep.

It was a situation probably without precedent in war. One of the senior generals of an army preparing invasion had arrived in the country he proposed to occupy, for purposes of reconnaissance and discussion.

At nine o'clock next morning, General Mast, commanding the French division in Algiers, and Colonel van Heck, the Head of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, came out by automobile from Algiers. With them was M. Rigault, another of the inner circle of the Liberation Movement.

While Captain Lindsay Watson drove into the market at Cherchell to buy bread and food, the American officers sat down with their French hosts and confederates at 11 A.M. for a formal conference on the invasion plan of campaign.

General Mark Clark produced the details of the Allied dispositions — the points at which they proposed to disembark; the strength and character of the forces but landed in each place; dispositions for air‑cover, naval support, and the disembarkation of supplies.

He announced that, since early in August, the General Staff of the British First Army had also been under orders to prepare for a landing in North Africa. This army had hitherto been known officially as the "First Expeditionary Force," and had specialised in practising "combined operations" — meaning landings from the sea.

The French patriots, who had been so long preparing to give their aid, laid before General Clark their schedule for cooperation with the Allies — the key‑points which they would seize and hold during the night of the landing; places where guides and interpreters would await the invading troops; the signs and passwords by which they would make themselves known.

A whole series of supply dispositions had to be reviewed, dealing both with preparations for meeting the requirements of the Allied army in the interval that would elapse before its store ships could begin to unload, and also with the needs of the French troops and civilians who were anxious to take the side of the Allies.

 p97  The consultations, which began at 11 A.M., continued until 2 P.M. They were resumed after a hasty lunch, and continued till 5 P.M., by which time the whole ground had been covered.

General Clark speaks French, and the talk went on in both languages.

When the Frenchmen urged the importance of carrying out the operation in a big way, since anything less would be bound to fail, Clark gave them the fullest assurances that this was going to be one of the biggest landings in the whole history of war. "La force qui sera employée me fait peur à moi-même" he said. (We shall use a strength that scares even me.) As a matter of fact, eight hundred Allied ships of different kinds and sizes took part in the landing.

Mast and Jousse both explained to Clark that Giraud expected to be in supreme command, and wanted to combine the landing in Africa with one in France. Giraud had also pressed for the date to be fixed by himself. Clark would not commit himself to this, but left the French with the impression that the operation would not take place for at least a month after the discussions which he was then conducting — that is to say, not before the last week in November.

Just as the conference came to an end at five o'clock in the afternoon, there was a scare that it had been discovered by the French authorities.

The patriots had had one of their agents posted as a scout in the office of the local French Police Commissioner at Cherchell, •twelve miles away. This man now telephoned anxiously to say that about midday an Arab who had seen the party landing in the darkness had gone to the police-station there to report it. Fortunately, the Commissioner was out for lunch, and the Arab, fearing to be cheated of his reward for the information, would not give it to the sergeant on duty.

The Commissioner did not return till 4 P.M. and it was only at 5 P.M. that he received the Arab's report of the mysterious arrival on the beach by night of a party of strangers.

He began at once to organise a descent in force upon the spot where the landing had been reported.

 p98  When this warning from the patriots' agent reached the Villa Tessier, a hurried council-of‑war was held. To reembark the American party on board the submarine was impossible in daylight. Lying on the surface, the vessel would attract the attention of the people in the Arab villages scattered on the cliffs up and down the coast, or indeed of any enemy aircraft that might pass within •fifty miles of the place. Yet it was vital that the police-raid should be prevented or at least delayed till nightfall.

In the hope of forestalling it Le Neu, the coastguard officer, got on his motor-cycle, and boldly rode into Cherchell to see the Commissioner. Being himself an official, he was told about the stealthy landing. Le Neu ridiculed the story as being the invention of an Arab peasant hoping for reward. He had come along the coast road himself, he said, and had seen no signs of anything suspicious.

For the moment, this reassured the police official, but he still maintained that he must satisfy himself by making a personal inspection of the Villa Tessier the same evening. Le Neu cast about desperately in his own mind for some device to delay action. He had managed to cut the telephone wires leading into the police-station, but there was a motor-cycle belonging to the post that might be used for purposes of reconnaissance.

So Le Neu covertly immobilised his bicycle and then, on the pretext that it had broken down, asked for the loan of the one at the station. Setting off on this, he deliberately ran it into a tree, and by that means deprived the Cherchell police of all motor transport for reconnaissance purposes.

During these attempts to gain time for the landing-party to make their get‑away, there had been another scare at the villa. One of the look-outs posted round it reported that a half-battalion of Algerian Tirailleurs were marching along the road from Cherchell towards the house.

It looked as if the game were up, and that the Algerian authorities had had sufficient warning of what was going on to turn out a military force for the purpose of rounding up the Anglo-French confederates. If that were so, it meant court-martial and probably the death-sentence for all the Frenchmen concerned, while General  p99 Mark Clark and his staff would be lucky if they met no fate worse than being sent to a German concentration camp.

The doors of the villa were hastily barricaded. The British commando officers acting as escort to the party took up position with their tommy-guns at windows commanding the approaches to the house. The rest of the party also looked to their weapons, and prepared to meet the expected attack.

The road from Cherchell passes within full view of the villa windows. In the distance the column of marching troops could be seen approaching, its commander on horseback at the head, and a string of mules carrying machine‑guns and ammunition in the rear. On it came, like a visibly advancing doom.

Strained eyes were watching for the troops to halt, deploy, and advance in skirmishing-order to surround the house. Steadily they plodded nearer, and it was with intense relief that the men inside, who would have been at their mercy, saw them march slowly past the gates on their way up into the hills. The column was only on its way to routine-exercises.

As soon as it was out of sight, most of the French party lost no time in getting away.

General Mast, Colonel Jousse, and Colonel van Heck started back to Algiers. Mr. Murphy, in his automobile bearing the "C. D." sign of the Diplomatic Corps, set off for the same destination by a wide détour, so as to avert suspicion if he were recognised.

Watson and d'Astier were the last to leave, and their departure was hastened by a telephone call from the friendly agent in Cherchell just after dark, announcing that the Police Commissioner was on the point of setting out for the villa.

In twenty minutes or so he would arrive. There was no time to get the Americans into their rubber boats and off to the submarine. They were accordingly hurried downstairs into a small and stuffy cellar underneath the main living room of the house, where they huddled together, hardly daring to breathe. Tessier remained upstairs, amid the confusion which his large party of guests had left. Soon the Police Commissioner with four armed gendarmes was knocking at the door. Tessier opened it.

 p100  The Commissaire addressed him politely, as being one of the leading local residents.

"I regret infinitely, Monsieur Tessier," he said, "that I find myself obliged to inspect your villa. Reports have been reaching me today that something special has been going on here, about which it is my duty to be informed."

It was impossible to conceal the traces of the presence of strangers. The dining-table was littered with empty bottles of gin and whiskey, and piled with cigarette stubs.

The Police Commissioner seized upon this evidence with avidity.

"Whiskey! Gin! American cigarettes! All of them things unprocurable in this country! How do you account for them being in your house?" he asked sternly of Tessier.

The proprietor of the villa was a man not only of courage but resource. "I will tell you, Monsieur le Commissaire," he replied. "You are fully entitled to know. But in your own interest, as well as in mine, and in that of other important people, I must ask to be alone with you when I give you the information you demand."

Mystified by Tessier's significant tone, the Commissaire ordered his gendarmes outside.

"I will be perfectly frank with you," said Tessier then, "but, as a lawyer, I cannot sufficiently impress upon you the importance, which I am sure you will recognise, of displaying in this matter the maximum of discretion. The fact is," he went on, sinking his voice to a whisper, "that Mr. Robert Murphy, the American Consul-General, and Captain Lindsay Watson, whom you know as an officer of cosmopolitan character and experience, have been enjoying an intimate little party. They did not come alone. They were accompanied by two ladies, one of whom is the daughter of a member of our Council of Ministers, while the other is the wife of a distinguished French General. As a man of the world, Monsieur le Commissaire," Tessier concluded impressively, "you will realise the necessity of maintaining complete silence about this visit. As you shrewdly noticed, the drinks and cigarettes on the table are all of American origin, which is in itself proof that the American Consul-General has been here."

 p101  The Police Commissioner muttered uneasily that there had been reports of a landing from the sea. Tessier scoffed at the idea. The emptiness of the beach, he said, was proof that no one had come ashore.

Whether or not the policeman had his suspicions, but thought it prudent to suppress them, is his own secret. He went away with his four men and drafted a report, which he sent to the Prefect of Algiers, recording that he had personally investigated rumours of strangers being observed to come ashore near Cherchell, but was satisfied they had arisen from the holding of an intimate party at a villa on the coast, during which, for the purposes of ensuring privacy, all the servants of the house had been sent away. This report was seen in the police files by a member of the patriot organisation some time afterwards.

The Police Commissioner accepted a glass or two of Scotch before he left. To General Clark and his party, crouching in the darkness of the cellar below, it seemed that he would never go. They could hear the voices of Tessier and his unwelcome guests through the floor. One of the men in hiding developed an almost uncontrollable cough, which would have given them away if General Clark had not hurriedly produced some chewing‑gum as an antidote.

When at last the Police Commissioner took his departure the fugitives in the cellar lost no time in making their escape. The submarine was lying submerged •three and a half miles off shore, but they were able to ask her, by radio-telephony, to come in closer on the surface.

When the Americans carried their canoes down to the beach, they found to their consternation that the wind had sprung up since darkness fell, with the result that the sea was running too high for them to launch the fragile rubber boats. This was an unexpected predicament.

General Clark and his companions conferred in the darkness. The Americans had brought with them a large amount of money, including several bags of French gold. Someone suggested that the only solution was for one of them to drive into Cherchell and buy a motor-boat, in which to take the party off. Tessier pointed out that  p102 trying to buy a motor-boat in a hurry after dark would seem so extraordinary to the fishermen of Cherchell that they would certainly inform the police at once, which would make a second raid a certainty.

It had to be the rubber boats or nothing — and as General Clark was the most important member of the party, they put him in the first. Three attempts were made. Each time the boat turned over in the breakers, and General Clark was thrown into the water. A lot of the money in his pockets fell out and was swept away by the waves.

Being soaked to the skin, he borrowed the clothes of each of the two junior British officers in turn, leaving them reduced to cotton vests and pants. At last the canoe managed to ride the waves, and with the experience thus gained it was possible to launch the other three boats as well. Once out of the surf, the party had no difficulty in reaching the submarine, which in a few minutes was on its way back to Gibraltar, carrying with it arrangements big with fate for French North Africa.

Strange though it may seem, the news of this war conference at Cherchell seems never to have reached the Germans, despite the fact that so many people knew of its occurrence. General experience shows that when a secret is known to more than a few people, it gradually leaks out, though possibly only in a distorted form, as a result of the piecing together of indiscretions insignificant in themselves. But though there were five hundred German Gestapo agents in Algiers alone, concealed under all sorts of false names, roles and occupations, the fact that direct contact had been established between the Anglo-American General Staff and Allied sympathisers in North Africa never became known to the enemy until some of the facts of the story were published by the Allies themselves, subsequent to the landing of which this council of war had been the prelude.

Shortly after General Clark got back to Gibraltar and made his report to General Eisenhower, the trusty little group in Algiers was informed that the Allies would arrive on the night of November 27‑28. Instantly the French patriots in North Africa began intensive  p103 preparations. They had only a month in which to complete them. More of the members of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse had to be informed of the plans for cooperating with the Allied troops. In a far‑stretching area like North Africa, over a thousand miles across, with scanty communications, and those largely supervised by enemy agents, it was difficult to make personal contact with the various key‑people in so short a time.

Lindsay Watson and D'Astier set off on a high-pressure automobile tour of the country, covering •750 miles a day. They relieved each other at the wheel, but d'Astier, through sheer weariness, fell asleep, and drove the car into a tree. Both men received head injuries, though not serious enough to prevent them from carrying on their vital work after a few days in hospital.

This sudden spurt of activity on the part of the French patriots attracted the attention of the German secret agents in Algiers. They may not have guessed at first what it portended, but by this time they knew its general purpose, and the people chiefly concerned.

One way of putting a stop to whatever might be on foot was to murder those planning it. The Gestapo made several attempts upon the lives of leaders of the Liberation Movement. Twice, rifle-bullets were fired through the window of Captain Lindsay Watson's office from the roof opposite. Two holes in the wall behind his desk remain as souvenirs of enemy intentions towards him.

On November 1st, while plans for aiding the landing fixed for November 27th were still behindhand, a startling message suddenly arrived from Gibraltar. The date of the landing had been advanced by three weeks. It was to take place on the night of November 7th‑8th instead of November 27th‑28th.

The Allied General Staff were growing uneasy about the fact that they had been obliged to take the French patriots into their confidence. They could not know to what extent the German Intelligence Service in Algiers had succeeded in getting access to their secrets. By thus suddenly advancing the date of the arrival of the Allied troops, they hoped to dislocate any arrangements the Germans might have made to cope with a landing on November 27th.

The Germans had got information that an Allied force was about  p104 to occupy North Africa. From one of their counter-spies the heads of the Liberation Party learnt at the beginning of November that the chief official of the Gestapo in Algiers, a German who passed under the name of Poirier, had got possession of the plans for the Allied landing, together with details of the preparations which the members of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse and some of the French troops in North Africa had made to cooperate with it.

The one fact which he did not know was that the Allies had antedated their timetable from November 28th to November 8th.

As Poirier sat in his room at the Hotel Aletti, with his information spread out on his desk before him, he must have felt that he was the greatest intelligence agent in the whole shady history of espionage. Here, in his hands, were the plans of the first big offensive operation which the Allies had undertaken. It was information whose value was beyond all price. Conveyed to the German General Staff, it might enable them to inflict such a setback on the British and American armies as wed alter the course of the whole war.

As "M. Poirier" looked off from the windows of his room in the Hotel Aletti across the blue waters of the Bay of Algiers, he realised that, rightly used, this information might transform his whole career. Could there be any limits to the gratitude of the Führer towards the man who delivered his enemies into his hands?

"M. Poirier" reflected prudently that it would be essential for Herr Hitler to be left in no possible doubt as to exactly where the individual credit for this magnificent piece of intelligence work belonged. He knew, from long experience of a service where double-crossing, betrayal, misrepresentation and bluff are the most elementary qualifications, that, if the report in his possession were transmitted through any intermediary, the renown which he was entitled to expect for it would probably be stolen from him.

He decided to take these invaluable documents back to Germany himself, and to present them if possible to the Führer, or at least General Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht, in person. He applied for a special aeroplane to take him straight from Algiers to Berlin, believing that there was time for him to make the journey and hand over his report on the Allied plans before the expected landing took place.

 p105  "M. Poirier" was not, however, so clever as he believed. A serious deficiency existed in his information. As regards the dispositions made for French cooperation with an Allied landing it may have been complete. What he did not know was that the French patriots in Algiers had learned that this vital information was in his hands, and were prepared to take extreme measures to prevent him passing it on. As the ill‑starred Poirier indulged his day‑dreams of promotion, recompense and glory, two or three young French civilians were unobtrusively collecting in the paved garden which lies on the shoreward side of the Hotel Aletti.

This cream-coloured, stone-and‑plaster building is the newest hotel in Algiers, built in that modern cosmopolitan style of architecture which leaves no impression other than one of mass.

It makes up a whole block, between the Marine Promenade and the network of narrow streets on the lower slopes of the steep hill that begins to rise only a few hundred yards inland.

The hotel occupies one‑half of this block, while the other contains a gambling casino with dance rooms, restaurants, and, on the ground floor, what are probably the two biggest American bars in Africa. Outside the wide entrance hall of this part of the building is a colonnade, filled every evening with people drinking apéritifs.

The Aletti is the busiest and most cosmopolitan public resort in Algiers. To enter it without being noticed would not be difficult, and the young men who had met outside were able to slip unobserved upstairs to "M. Poirier's" room. When they came down again — at intervals, and by different routes — the fatal report about the Allied intentions was in their possession, and "M. Poirier" was dead.

They had accomplices inside the hotel who had persuaded "Poirier," on the pretext of a leaking water-pipe, to move to another room, where the sounds of a possible struggle were less likely to be overheard.

As a matter of fact, "Poirier" was asleep when they opened his door with a master key. He never woke.

They broke open the drawers in his table. A few moments later the vital report, with many details of the forthcoming Allied landing, was in their hands.

 p106  They could not discover how "Poirier" obtained possession of it, but the main thing was that they had got it back. For once Gestapo methods had been turned against their practitioners.

This exploit of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse had been preceded by a similar attack on a French yacht lying in the harbour. It contained some rifles and automatic pistols, and was under the charge of members of the Parti Populaire Français, Doriot's pro‑Nazi organisation, the direct counterpart of the Chantiers. This yacht was raided at night, the arms seized, and the young Doriotists guarding the boat knocked on the head and thrown into the sea.

The headquarters of the French Liberation Movement had been moved, as the time for the landing approached, from Colonel van Heck's house in the suburb of El Biar, on the hill behind Algiers, to a more central place. This was the large two‑floor apartment of Dr. Aboulker, a Jewish lawyer who was a sympathiser with the movement.

It stood in the Rue Michelet, the most important thoroughfare in Algiers. This winds in sweeping curves for •two or three miles from the low ground by the harbour, past the University and up the hill to the pinewoods on the high ridge behind the city, skirting on the way the grounds of the Moorish villa which later became the headquarters in turn of Admiral Darlan and General Giraud, and passing by the foot of the subtropical gardens of the Hotel St. George, a favourite resort for more than a generation of American and British visitors to Algiers.​c

The greatest worry of the leaders of the 3,000 young men embodied in the Chantiers de la Jeunesse was that they had practically no weapons for them. Colonel van Heck, Captain Lindsay Watson, and the others of the small inside circle felt a confidence, which was fully justified by subsequent events, in the courage and patriotism of their followers. They knew that, when the time came, they needed only to tell the members of this organisation that the chance had come for them to strike a blow for France against Germany. The spirit and ardour of the young men themselves would carry them into instant action — yet, without arms, such action would hardly be effective.

 p107  The Americans who came over to the secret conference at Cherchell had promised to send in a shipload of rifles by night to some point on the Algerian coast, but now that the date of the landing had been fixed for November 7th‑8th there was no time for this to be done.

The leaders of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse had promised that their young followers should deal with any civilian opposition in the early critical moments before the Allied troops were organised for action ashore — but no one knew exactly from what quarter it might be expected.

The likeliest sources of such opposition were:

1. The 500 agents of the Gestapo, all armed and plentifully provided with motor-cars;

2. The French Popular Party (Parti Populaire Français) — followers of the former Communist but now rabidly pro‑German politician Doriot;

3. The Service d'Ordre Légionnaire, which had been organised by Laval as a militia of ex‑soldiers.

All these were potential sources of trouble, and it remained also to be seen how the French troops of the garrison would react to the surprise of an Allied landing. Commanding officers such as General Juin, in Algiers, and General Noguès, in Morocco, had no advance knowledge of the crisis that was so soon to burst upon them. What orders would they give to their soldiers? Would they look upon the approaching British and American penetration of French North Africa as a step toward the liberation of France, or as a violation of her integrity?

Enough praise cannot be given to the gallantry of the little group of Frenchmen in Algiers who, in the presence of all these unknown and formidable factors, went forward undismayed with their work of organising help for the Allied expedition.

---

Thayer's Notes:

a See also the account of this landing told from the viewpoint of the Americans and the British commandos who landed them, in Saunders, Combined Operations, pp147‑152.

b Language expert Prof. Léon Dostert, who at the time of this meeting was serving as General Eisenhower's personal interpreter, would become the organizer of the first ever large-scale use of simultaneous interpretation — at the Nuremberg trials in 1945‑1946; and a decade later, a pioneer in the field of machine translation. A good and fairly detailed biographical sketch of him, focusing on his work at Nuremberg, can be read in the Fall 2015 issue of Occidental, the campus newsmagazine of Occidental College from which he graduated in 1928.

(He was my mother's boss at the Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, and as a pre‑teen I met him several times: I eventually wound up working twenty years as a simultaneous interpreter, but knew nothing of his career until I transcribed this book in 2021. One more missed opportunity for me to regret in my life!)

c It also became General Eisenhower's headquarters; now the Hôtel el‑Djazaïr, where a commemorative plaque has been placed. In 1973‑1974, I worked for a very discriminating boss whose favorite hotel it was in Algiers, and as a result I stayed there at least twice: with its elegant Moorish architecture and tile-work, and its beautifully maintained gardens, the St‑Georges, in a discreet pocket of quiet on the farther hills ringing Algiers, was still by far the place to stay, despite the very luxurious Hôtel el‑Aurassi, then brand-new, a modern concrete behemoth of a building occupying a commanding position on a much more central hill.

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