Tricolor over the Sahara : The Desert Battles of the Free French, 1940-1942 9780313010972, 9780313316548

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TRICOLOR OVER THE SAHARA

Philippe de Hautecloque, better known as General Jacques Leclerc, was the beau ide´al of the Free French desert officer of World War II. Here he consults with one of his lieutenants (in typical desert dress) at a remote Saharan outpost.

TRICOLOR OVER THE SAHARA The Desert Battles of the Free French, 1940–1942 Edward L. Bimberg

Contributions in Military Studies, Number 217

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bimberg, Edward L., 1919– Tricolor over the Sahara : the desert battles of the Free French, 1940–1942 / by Edward L. Bimberg. p. cm.—(Contributions in military studies, ISSN 0883–6884 ; no. 217) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–31654–6 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Africa, North. 2. France combattante. Armaˆe´. I. Title. II. Series. D766.82.B545 2002 940.54'23—dc21 2001040595 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright  2002 by Edward L. Bimberg All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001040595 ISBN: 0–313–31654–6 ISSN: 0883–6884 First published in 2002 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS Author’s Note Introduction

vii ix

1.

The Desert Before

1

2.

The Stirrings of War

17

3.

Combat—Mourzouk and Koufra

27

4.

The Ghost Raiders

45

5.

On to Tunis

57

6.

Enter, the Legion

79

7.

The Western Desert

95

8.

Looking Back

109

Epilogue

117

Appendix: Uniforms

123

Glossary

127

Selected Bibliography

129

Index

131

AUTHOR’S NOTE Because of its unique aspects, the Free French war in the Sahara needs a few special explanations. First of all, because it was so important to the Free French themselves, the reader should understand the difference between the Free French (France Libre) and the Army of Africa (l’Arme´e d’Afrique). The former includes only those units and individuals that pledged themselves specifically to Charles de Gaulle and began gathering around him from the time of his radio appeal of June 18, 1940. L’Arme´e d’Afrique, on the other hand, was composed of those French army units stationed in North Africa at the time of the armistice plus those that returned to North Africa after the defeat. They remained loyal to the Vichy government until the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. The eventual World War II French army, armed and equipped by the United States, was built around the Army of Africa and the Free French units combined. It fought as a whole, but the “Gaullists” tended to look down on the others throughout the war. In fact, Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division, composed largely of Free French Saharan veterans, preferred to fight under command of the Americans rather than be a part of de Lattre’s First French Army. The 1st Free French Division (Division Franc¸ais Libre), however, served throughout the war in France and Germany as part of de Lattre’s army, but it retained its own Free French designation as well as de Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine insignia until the end. Another confusing element is the use of the terms tirailleur and goumier by Leclerc’s forces in the Sahara. Strictly speaking, a tirailleur in the

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French army is a native infantryman (sometimes translated as “rifleman”), but in Chad and the Fezzan the term was often used for any local soldier, whether or not he fought on foot, or from a pickup truck or gun carrier or even from a camel. By the same token, a goumier is usually any member of a goum, which is an irregular company or band. Here the term is sometimes used as the designation of an orderly or soldierservant, as in “Captain X’s goumier.” “Senegalese” is another misnomer. It can be assumed that the original regiments of Senegalese were actually from the West African territory of Senegal, but the term came to be used for any African black soldier in the French service, regardless of nation or tribe. Thus one of the more important units of Leclerc’s forces was the Regiment de Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad—something of a contradiction because Chad is well over 1,500 miles from Senegal. On July 13, 1942, the Free French were renamed “Fighting French” (France Combattante), but the original title was commonly used all during the war, and for the sake of simplicity I have used it throughout the book. And as the long war played out, it has become almost impossible to equate the rapidly changing grades of some of the participants with their activities at a particular time. So if someone in the text is referred to as a colonel when at that particular time he was actually a general— my apologies. There may also be some confusion in dealing with African place names, for when translated from the Arabic they are subject to a wide variety of spellings. For instance, I originally selected the spelling “Koufra,” but have also seen the name of the oasis as “Kufra,” “Cufra,” and even “Qufra.” I know it seems strange to see it spelled one way and then quite differently shortly thereafter when used in a direct quote from another source. However, in this case, my first choice for the running text is still “Koufra” and I’m sticking with it. One other thing. In many cases the term “French” is meant to include Arab, Berber, Tibbou, blacks of different tribes, in fact Africans of every description (and others) who fought under the French flag. Honor to them all.

INTRODUCTION When my unit of the U.S. Army arrived in North Africa and was stationed near Tunis in the late spring of 1943, the war was barely over on that continent. The Allies had conquered; the sand and rock of the Sahara (as well as the green hills of northern Tunisia) were behind them, and the victorious soldiers, sailors, and airmen of a half dozen nations were taking a breather in this capital city by the sea. Tunis had all the color one would expect of a Near East metropolis, with its amalgam of time-honored oriental customs and modern French culture. There was a walled medina, a native quarter with exotic souks and blind alleys that lay hidden away from the “new” town’s palm-lined boulevards and ornate government buildings. And there was an air of mystery about its inhabitants. The contrasts in this fascinating city were remarkable. Saint Louis’ Cathedral, that citadel of French Catholicism, was right across the square from the bey’s palace, where a gaudily uniformed Beylical Guard stood continually on sentry duty, saluting every Allied officer who passed. Catholic priests and veiled Arab women swathed in white with only their kohl-blackened eyes showing, shared the sidewalks with French businessmen wearing shorts and carrying briefcases. Mysterious Arab men in flowing robes and cherry red chechias, the ubiquitous Tunisian skullcap, rubbed elbows with American Air Force officers in khakis with floppy caps (the grommet that stiffened the crown had been removed, an Air Force tradition) and cowboy boots. On the outskirts of the city, a

x

INTRODUCTION

less-well-dressed Arab might be seen holding up traffic as he herded a flock of sheep across a busy thoroughfare. The main boulevards were crowded with military vehicles that hogged all the available gasoline; the rare civilian cars and trucks were powered by weird looking contraptions that burned charcoal and left a trail of foul-smelling smoke. And there were other smells, too, particularly near the waterfront. For entertainment, there were the usual soldier pleasures of bars and brothels. The more fastidious (or less adventurous) sought out the local cinema, currently playing Les Femmes Des Musiciens—the American film Orchestra Wives. The theater also advertised the coming attraction, a stage show featuring the American entertainer, Josephine Baker, whom the French adored. Also popular were the outdoor concerts by the band of the 4th Zouaves. Here the spectators were more entertaining than the bandsmen themselves, for they included just about every North African type, civilian and military, that could be imagined. Wealthy, well-dressed Arabs crowded together with ragged Bedouin in from the bled, the remote North African countryside, while French Foreign Legionnaires joined with Senegalese tirailleurs, as well as with soldiers from every corner of the British empire. Americans were well represented, too, by antiaircraft artillerymen from the batteries defending the airfields ringing Tunis and by the flyers who daily flew their dangerous missions over enemy-held Italy. Most interesting were the legionnaires. These were members of the famous 13th Demi-brigade that had begun World War II in Norway and had been among the very first to join de Gaulle’s Free French troops en masse. They had then fought a series of campaigns across some of the world’s cruelest deserts, culminating in Bir Hakeim and El Alamein. They were tough professionals, and they looked the part. Their sunbronzed faces were in stark contrast to their snow-white kepis, and they had a belligerent air about them. When the Zouaves played that dirgelike anthem of the Legion, Le Boudin, all the legionnaires in the crowd snapped to attention and held that pose until the last notes trailed off. Most of General Jacques Leclerc’s native troops, “the nomads of glory,” whom he had led 1,200 miles across the Sahara from Chad to Tunis, had gone back to the deserts and forests of central Africa, their duties well performed. Leclerc himself, however, remained busy reorganizing the remnants of his “Force L” into what was to become the legendary French Second Armored Division. Just outside the city, work parties of German and Italian POWs were kept busy on reconstruction projects. The grim-faced veterans of the Afrika Korps still maintained an arrogant posture; they just could not believe that they were licked. The Italians, on the other hand, simply did

INTRODUCTION

xi

not care. Their attitude was an almost cheerful one, as though looking forward to a new home in a POW camp across the sea. Both knew that the war was over for them, and surely this could be looked upon with some sort of relief. The same could not be said about the Allied soldiers, for although their stay in North Africa would be just as temporary, they still had to face the horrors of battle as they eventually moved on to Italy, France, and Germany. But victor and vanquished alike, there was an intangible aura about those who had fought in the desert, a look that cannot be described. On those veterans the Sahara had left its indelible mark. This book is about the Frenchmen (and native Africans) among those desert soldiers, the men who refused to surrender to the Germans when other Frenchmen did, those who answered General de Gaulle’s call to arms in June 1940, after the defeat in France. Some of them had been rescued off the beaches of Dunkirk and found themselves in England when the call came. Others were in French colonies around the world, from Indochina to the jungles of Africa. Many were stranded in France, searching for a way to cross the channel to England, there to join the weak but growing forces of de Gaulle. Those who ended up in the desert were generally of two main groups. One group was headed by the officers whom the defeat had isolated in the central African colonies, many of them experienced in desert warfare and used to the hardships of desert life. They were eventually commanded by an escapee from France, a vicomte named Philippe de Hautecloque, who called himself “Jacques Leclerc.” For almost three years he directed the Free French in their operations against the Italians, deadly long-range raids across the southern Sahara in rattletrap civilian pickups and hand-me-down British trucks, before driving on to Tunis. The other group was that of French troops reorganized in England and sent to join the British. They were fighting in the northern Sahara (and elsewhere) while Leclerc’s people were engaged in the south. Both groups received a trickle of reinforcements from all over the French empire and from France itself, anywhere individuals could find the means to free themselves from the misery that the German-dominated Vichy government had imposed on them. And both groups were proud to serve under the name of France Libre (later changed to France Combattante) and under the symbol of de Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine. There was one other French fighting force that eventually fought the Axis in North Africa. That was the Nineteenth Army Corps, those units of the French army that garrisoned Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. They remained loyal to the Vichy government that ruled in those countries from its inception in 1940 until the Allied landings in North Africa at the end of 1942. That’s when they joined the Allies and fought hard and well against the Germans until the end of the war. They provided many

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INTRODUCTION

heroes and suffered many casualties, but they could never claim the title of “Free French,” and not a few of the original desert fighters of 1940 held a grudge against them until the end. But the Sahara itself was neutral, and generations of Frenchmen had fought against it and its tribes since the earliest days of French conquest. The Sahara was cruel, and the colonial wars were hard, and there was terrible suffering. It is a story that must also be told as a prologue to the great desert struggles of World War II.

Chapter 1

THE DESERT BEFORE Those soldiers who had fought through the desert and finally arrived in Tunis had been through a particular kind of martyrdom. The Sahara was quite literally a hell of a place to fight a war. It had every characteristic to discourage military activity—impossible terrain, an incredible daytime heat, frigid nights, flies, scorpions, snakes, an interesting selection of diseases, and just about every variety of pestiferous insect known to man. It also was cursed with a constant wind, the khamsin sometimes called the ghibli, that often turned into a raging sandstorm lasting for days and bringing all human activity to a halt. Worst of all, in all its vast area there was very little water. The Sahara is huge, the largest desert in the world. It stretches from the Atlantic coast of Mauritania clear across the African continent to the shores of the Red Sea.1 In area this immense desert is almost the size of the entire contiguous United States! In the popular mind it is often thought of as one huge sea of sand. It isn’t. In reality it is mostly rock, stones, and gravel, interspersed with huge areas of shifting sands. These dunes are called ergs, the endless plains of gravel are known as regs, and the stony plateaus that rise suddenly from the plains are hamadas. And, unbelievably, throughout this inhospitable region are vast mountain ranges of volcanic rock, some more than 10,000 feet high.2 Yet people live here and have for centuries. Not many, of course, and few of these live very well, but they survive. Most are concentrated in the scattered oases where deep wells bring water to the surface to nourish the date palms from which they make their living, and many of these

2

TRICOLOR OVER THE SAHARA

oases have grown to sizable (and sometimes prosperous) towns. But these habitable places are only tiny dots on the map of the great expanse of nothingness that is the Sahara. Besides the oasis dwellers, there are wandering nomads who drive their scanty flocks of goats, sheep, and camels from one sparce grazing ground of thornbush to another. These are the Chaamba Arabs of the north who in large part made up the personnel of the Compagnies Sahariennes, the French army camel corps that patrolled the wastelands between the oases. The largest group of nomads, spread throughout the southern parts of the desert, are the once dreaded Touareg of Berber stock.3 The Touareg made their living for centuries by managing the commercial caravans that traveled the north-south pistes (and by raiding other caravans), as well as robbing any individual travelers they might happen to meet. And even further into the remote southeastern lands are the negroid Tibbou of the Tibesti Mountain region on the Libyan border of Chad. Like the Touareg, the Tibbou are mostly nomadic herdsmen with a strange culture all their own.4 The Sahara was not always a barren land. Prehistoric cave paintings and rock carvings, some not discovered until the 1930s, show it to have been a lush savannah where hunter-gatherers tracked giraffes, hippopotami, and other animals today found only far to the south. There is evidence that these people developed into farmers who raised cattle and other domestic animals on territory where there was plenty of water and grasslands to nourish them. But centuries of drought changed all that, and by the time of the few early Roman and Greek chroniclers these lands had become the desert it remains today.5 The Sahara lay unknown to Europeans until the late 18th and early 19th centuries when a handful of British, French, and German explorers mounted expeditions or plunged alone into the desert regions of Africa. Many of them did not return. They died of fever or disease or were murdered by the Touareg or other fanatical Moslems who simply did not like Christians. The French landed in Algeria in 1831 in a punitive expedition to avenge an insult to the French ambassador. The story goes that the dey of Algiers, after some unpleasant words, swatted the ambassador with a fly whisk and the politicians in Paris blew that up into an international incident. That was the excuse for the invasion and subsequent occupation (after much fighting) of the rich coastal strip of Algeria.6 The French liked it there. The climate was pleasant along the Mediterranean, the soil was suited to agriculture and, even though the natives were not entirely friendly, the invaders decided to stay. By the latter part of the century, they were well settled in the northern section of the country and were already looking for new lands to which they could bring the blessings of civilization. Their view turned southward beyond the

THE DESERT BEFORE

3

Atlas Mountains, where the barely explored Sahara stretched away toward tropical Africa. It had possibilities. Vague plans came closer to reality when it was decided to look into the feasibility of building a railroad clear across the desert from the Mediterranean to the French colonies in equatorial Africa. An expedition was organized to explore the territory and plot a possible route. It was to be a peaceful, scientific journey with no military or empire-building aspect, a mission of exploration, not conquest. Those were the days when the European nations were carving up Africa, and the French were reluctant to let the others know of their immediate plans. The expedition, which included both scientific personnel and a military escort, was under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Francis Xavier Flatters, an officer who had some—but not much—experience in Saharan exploration. It was in the field for three months and then had to turn back when it missed a rendezvous with its Touareg guides, and the original Chaamba guides refused to enter Touareg territory.7 Back in Ouargla, Flatters argued for a second expedition to complete the work he had started, but critics in high places maintained that it was too dangerous. Flatters was determined, however, and by September he had permission to go ahead. It would have been better for him if he had not. The second Flatters expedition left Ouargla on a December day in 1880. More than 300 camels carried the supplies of 10 Frenchmen and 78 natives, including provisions for many months’ travel and lavish gifts for the chieftains of the southern tribes. Its final destination was to be the savannah country of equatorial Africa. Among the French members of the expedition were two army officers, a few French NCOs, three mining engineers, and an army doctor. In addition there were about 30 native camel drovers, drawn mostly from the northern Sahara Chaamba tribes, plus some 50 Algerian tirailleurs, native soldiers of the French army, disguised as civilian drovers. After all, this was supposed to be a peaceful mission, not a military campaign. The country through which the caravan was to travel for the last few hundred miles was virtually unknown. It was practically waterless and trackless; only the natives knew the location of its few wells and they weren’t telling. Commercial caravans had been crossing parts of the desert for centuries using a few well-known tracks, but even these were dangerous journeys. Heat, exhaustion, and disease inevitably took their toll, as did raiding brigand bands—particularly the Touareg. Colonel Flatters was actually a poor choice to lead this exhibition. Although he was familiar with parts of the Sahara, he was in his fifties, “over the hill” for leadership of such a perilous journey and worn out by the first expedition besides. He was described by the famous African chronicler Emile-Felix Gautier as having “a nervous and choleric tem-

4

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perament” and bedeviled by personal problems. He was thought by some to have been attracted to the expedition by a death wish. Far to the south were a band of desert warriors cheerfully waiting for the opportunity to fulfil that wish. They were members of the Kel Ahaggar Touareg, one of the tribes of the great Touareg confederation that roamed the desert from Insalah in the north to Chad in the south, as far east as Libya and as far west as Timbuktu. The Touareg were camel breeders and herdsmen who also organized and managed some of the caravans that carried out trade across the desert. More frequently they were camel-riding brigands who for centuries had raided oases, plundered caravans that refused to pay them tribute, terrorized travelers, and in general made a nuisance of themselves. Exceptionally tall for desert dwellers, they were lean men of unknown origin armed with unique crusader-type swords, long lances, antelope skin shields, and, more recently, rifles. They were fierce, treacherous, swaggering lords of all they surveyed. Even their appearance was terrifying. They wore long indigo robes that reached to their ankles, accentuating their height. Most strikingly, their entire heads and faces were concealed by a veil, the traditional Touareg litham, a five-foot length of blue or white cotton wound round so that only their eyes were uncovered. This gave them a mysterious menacing look that added to their reputation of ferocity.8 Flatters had sent a messenger out ahead to the amenokal (chieftain) of the Kel Ahaggar Touareg through whose territory in the Hoggar Mountains the mission had planned to pass. The chieftain, whose name was Ahitigal, was nobody’s fool. He realized what the French were up to. In some mysterious way the word was out in the desert, even in this remote corner of the Hoggar, that a railroad was being planned to cross the Sahara. To Ahitigal this was bad news; it meant French soldiers in his territory and no more caravans to raid. He sent a message back to Flatters; stay away, find another route. Colonel Flatters paid no attention. That was his first big mistake. By this time, he and his party had traveled more than 400 miles from Ouargla over some of the world’s worst territory. In spite of the burning sun and terrible heat during the day, the freezing cold at night, sandstorms, threatening tribesmen, and all the other perils of desert travel, the Flatters party had done fairly well in the month and a half it had taken them to reach the wells of Amguid. The colonel was feeling pretty good about himself, confident of the mission’s eventual success. Amguid was the entrance to the unknown country of the Hoggar Touareg. Here the party picked up two Ifora Touareg guides—the Ifora were at the time friendly to the French—and started southeast into the terrifying plains of Amrador, the barren wastes that lay between the Tassili Mountains on the north and the Hoggar on the south.

THE DESERT BEFORE

5

The veiled Touareg of the southern Sahara were expert cameleers and hardy warriors. They were also caravan raiders and thieves who were known and feared throughout the desert as “the forgotten of God.” At the beginning of the 20th century, they were still resisting the French with sword, spear, knife, and rifle.

The Hoggar Mountains are among the most unusual geologic formations on earth. Rising to 5,000 feet in places, they are mostly barren rock, extinct volcanoes that thrust skyward in fantastically shaped peaks and cones, with huge boulders strewn about between. Among the desolate landscape are the patches of scrub grass and weeds where the Hoggar Touareg feed their camels and goats. This was their land, the almost impenetrable lair from which they deployed to carry out their depredations in the less forbidding parts of the Sahara. When he learned that Flatters was drawing near, the wily Ahitigal changed his tune. He sent a message to the Frenchman inviting the expedition to come deeper into the Hoggar and suggesting that he could help it on its way south. The bearers of this message were a party of Hoggar Touareg who rode into Flatters’ camp on the Amrador plain. It was led by Ahitigal’s son, Attici ould Chikat. The tribesmen appeared friendly, and Attici volunteered help in guiding the party through the Hoggar region. He suggested that Flatters dismiss his Ifora guides, because they were un-

6

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familiar with the territory ahead and, under the circumstances, would not be of much use. The colonel agreed. That was his second big mistake. Attici and his party rode away leaving four Hoggar Touareg guides to replace the Ifora. The Flatters mission moved on, their new guides leading them ever closer to the mountains. Two days later they found themselves seriously short of water. The guides suggested that part of the expedition ride on ahead to the wells of Tadjemout taking all the baggage animals with them, the empty waterskins to be refilled and taken back to the main body. Flatters once again agreed—his third big mistake. He split his forces, setting out with a French officer, two of the engineers, the doctor, and a small complement of tirailleurs plus the Touareg guides and the camels, leaving the others bivouacked behind. This advance party reached the wells in the rocky Hoggar foothills, watered the animals, and let them graze on the sparse grass nearby, while Flatters and the others rested in the shade of the few trees alongside the wells. All seemed well when it was noticed that the guides, including the one that was holding Flatters’ horse, were edging away. Flatters called out, but by this time they had disappeared among the nearby rocks. At the same time another group of camel-mounted Touareg came charging out of a ravine straight for the colonel and his men. Flatters and the other French officer barely had time to draw their pistols and fire an effective volley when the Touareg were on them. Lance thrusts and rifle fire quickly dispatched all the Frenchmen, and the attackers savagely hacked their bodies to pieces with their swords. In the meantime the tirailleurs put up a spirited defense, but were soon overwhelmed. A few managed to slip away in the confusion and make it back to alert the main body. Flatters, all too trusting, had blundered into an ambush, and now what was left of his party was in a bad way. They were stranded in the middle of a frightful desert, in the territory of a treacherous and implacable enemy, and short of water and provisions. Even worse, they were without camels, for the entire herd had been scattered in the fighting at the wells and recaptured by the Touareg. The good news, however, was that the tirailleurs still had their weapons and plenty of ammunition to fight off any more Touareg attacks. But the deceitful masters of the Hoggar did not attack, not there and not then. They simply waited. They knew that the intruders were some 750 desert miles from their base at Ouargla, and without the camels that were so necessary to survival in the desert. They simply had to keep them in sight and wait for hunger and thirst to weaken them. Then the final massacre would begin. It was now decided by the French lieutenant, who was the only officer

THE DESERT BEFORE

7

still alive, to try to make it back to Ouargla on foot. Although he was nominally in command, many of the decisions would now depend on the Chaamba members of the party, the only ones who knew the northern desert well enough to guide the group to safety. After an unsuccessful attempt to find any of the scattered camels that had not been recaptured by the Touareg, the party started back towards Ouargla. Their first objective was the wells of Amguid, where they knew they could get enough water, and perhaps food, to carry on. Tirailleurs were immediately sent out to the flanks to scout, and soon reported that they had company. A band of about 200 camel-mounted Touareg warriors were also marching on a route parallel to that of the refugees, but keeping out of sight. There was now no doubt that the Touareg would strike before their victims reached Amguid, for these wells marked the northern border of their territory. It was a long, hard march. For days the column struggled on, the veiled warriors riding silently on their flank, waiting. Although the French mission was still armed, the men were now truly fugitives. Their strictly rationed water had all but run out, and they were literally starving, living on whatever they could find. Somewhere along the march they had rounded up a few stray camels, used them as baggage animals, and then slaughtered them for food. They were also able to occasionally snare some small desert lizards which, though not exactly gourmet fare, kept them alive. When the column was still two days from Amguid, they were surprised to have a small party of Touareg ride up to their encampment making friendly signs. Communication with the Touareg was always difficult because they had their own language and knew little Arabic, but these men seemed to show sympathy for the column’s plight and offered to bring them food. The starving men were grateful—hunger had dulled any suspicions they might normally have had. When the next day the same Touareg rode up and dropped off some bundles of dates, the tirailleurs fell ravenously on the unexpected gift. The Touareg rode off. It was typical Touareg treachery. The dates were poisoned. Among the desert tribes, the drug was called ifalezlez and caused temporary insanity, not unlike LSD. Within a short time some men went screaming into the desert, others raved around the encampment, some tried to kill themselves. The last of the French civilians in the party died from the effect. Why the Touareg did not attack when their enemies were in this helpless state is just another mystery to add to the always mysterious conduct of the veiled men. Eventually the effects of the poison wore off, and the pitiful column moved on, although many of the men were suffering great pain and some were still half crazy. At last they reached Amguid. There they were not surprised to see a line of Touareg stretched across their path, silently watching—lances,

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swords, and rifles at the ready. The tirailleurs halted, and the two antagonists simply stared at each other. Then suddenly the Touareg charged. Amazingly, the half-dead tirailleurs found the courage and discipline to meet the onslaught with a volley of well-aimed rifle fire. A dozen Touareg fell, and the rest turned back. But the tribesmen were not discouraged. They charged again and again, each time taking severe casualties. Finally they gave up the mounted attacks and settled down to sharpshooting from behind the rocks of the surrounding hilly terrain. Now the Touareg, known for their cruelty, practiced some of their primitive and savage psychological warfare. They had taken a number of prisoners in the original fight at Tadjemout and now, in full view of the tirailleurs, they slaughtered them. Some they simply pushed off the surrounding cliffs, others they beheaded. If they had not fully realized it before, the horrified spectators now knew what their fate would be if they did not fight on. The sniping continued until dark, with casualties on both sides. The remaining French officer was killed, and the last French NCO, Sergeant Jacques Pobeguin, a veteran of the Foreign Legion, took command.9 As the sniping died down Pobeguin took advantage of the sudden nightfall to lead his tattered band in a surprise detour around Amguid and its precious water and continue north, escaping their attackers but still suffering from thirst. If the escape seemed too easy, perhaps there was a reason. Possibly the Touareg simply let them escape. If any of the tirailleurs made it back to Ouargla, their terrifying experience could act as a warning to the French: Stay out of Touareg territory. At any rate, apparently satisfied that they had taught the intruders a sufficient lesson, the veiled men turned back toward the Hoggar. If the first part of the tirailleurs’ desert odyssey was a nightmare, the remaining march was sheer hell. They were still some 400 miles from Ouargla and they were starving. They had found some water along the way but little food. They were reduced to eating desert lizards and chewing on their leather belts. As they trudged along, men fell out, dying of starvation and exhaustion. At first the bodies were left where they fell, but eventually the tirailleurs turned to the ultimate horror—cannibalism. To stay alive, they simply ate the flesh of their fallen comrades. On March 28, 1881, a dozen ragged scarecrows stumbled into Ouargla. Pobeguin was not among them; he had died on the terrible trail, the last of the expedition’s Frenchmen. Over the following weeks a few more survivors, some of whom had escaped Touareg captivity, wandered into other desert outposts, and the whole sad tale of the Flatters disaster came to light. Paris was horrified, and the French public demanded some sort of action to punish the Touareg. Gradually, however, the conquest of the

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Sahara, though not actually forgotten, was put on the back burner.10 It was not until 18 years later that another attempt was made to cross the desert to equatorial Africa. This new endeavor was again ostensibly to be a scientific exhibition led by a civilian, Fernand Foureau, a seasoned traveler and topographer who knew the northern desert well. He had had previous dealings with the Ajjers Touareg, enough to know how untrustworthy and treacherous any wearer of the veil could be. Moreover, he was well aware that he needed a military escort powerful enough to discourage any Touareg attack, no matter which tribe was involved.11 Foureau found the right military man in Commandant Franc¸ois Joseph Amade´e Lamy of the First Regiment of Algerian Tirailleurs, an experienced Saharan soldier who knew just what the requirements of such an expedition might be. This time it was to have enough muscle to be successful, and by the time the Foureau-Lamy mission left Ouargla on October 22, 1898, Lamy had seen to that. It took a thousand camels to carry all the supplies and equipment needed. Included in the expedition were 4 civilians, 10 officers, 32 French NCOs, 213 Algerian tirailleurs, 50 Saharan tirailleurs and 13 spahis, the native Algerian cavalry. There were also 49 camel drovers, 20 Chaamba guides, and 6 marabouts or holy men, both Chaamba and Touareg. Added to the normal infantry weapons were two Hotchkiss 42-millimeter mountain guns, considered heavy artillery for desert warfare.12 To be even further on the safe side, a Compagnie Saharienne of the newly organized French army camel corps of Chaamba tribesmen joined the column for the first part of the journey, scouting out on the flanks. This huge caravan followed the track of the Flatters mission into the Hoggar country and right past the scene of the massacre without incident. There were no Touareg to be seen. The word was out in the desert that this new expedition was too well armed to be fooled with, and even the always belligerent Hoggar Touareg got the message. As the column traveled ever deeper into the territory of the Kel Ahaggar, it found the hastily abandoned campsites of Touareg bands, but the veiled men themselves were nowhere to be seen. There were other troubles, however. The country the expedition was now in was utterly unknown to Europeans. Foureau wrote in his diary: “This is appalling desert, desolate, treacherous, discouraging to any but the stoutest hearts. The skeletons of camels litter the route, and we add ceaselessly to their number. The figure of our camel losses over a week has risen to over 140 animals.”13 The camels of the Foureau-Lamy expedition had begun to die of exhaustion and lack of fodder and water. As it moved into the plateau of the Aı¨r, another mountainous region far to the south, most of the camels

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were gone. Because there were few animals left to carry it, much of the supplies had to be burned and extra ammunition buried. And now there was more Touareg trouble. The column reached Ighezzar, a trading center for the Aı¨r, where Lamy hoped to buy camels from the local tribes. The tribesmen of the Kel Oui Touareg, however, though appearing to be friendly, were as vacillating, untrustworthy, and uncooperative as their northern brothers. At first they agreed to sell the camels, then seeing the disintegrating appearance of the expedition, they changed their minds. Held up at Ighezzar for lack of pack animals, Lamy started building a fort there. Apparently this was too much for the Kel Oui. Some 400 strong, they attacked the French encampment in a wild camel charge with spear and sword, but were beaten off. They never returned. Evidently the Hotchkiss guns had something to do with the easy French victory. Medieval weapons against modern armament were proving unprofitable for the Touareg. Eventually the expedition acquired enough camels to move on. Perhaps some strong-arm methods were used to accomplish this, for Charles Guilleux, a French sergeant of tirailleurs, who also kept a diary, recorded: “Those cursed Touareg won’t sell us any camels and most of ours are cluttering our tracks with their carcasses. Luckily we have captured a nomad and won’t set him free except for a ransom of 50 camels.”14 That attitude plus the building of the fort seems a far cry from the peaceful intentions of the Flatters mission, but apparently it worked. They got their camels. The Foureau-Lamy expedition struggled on, enduring all the usual hardships of desert travel, including heat, sandstorms, thirst, and hunger. More camels died, and Touareg spies continually buzzed around the column, threatening to attack. They never did, and the mission was finally successful, reaching its goal at Zinder in equatorial Africa in the fall of 1899. It was a great triumph for Fernand Foureau and Commandant Lamy, but Lamy didn’t live to enjoy it for long. Some months later he was killed leading a charge against the troops of the king of Borneau, near Lake Chad. The place where he died came to be called Fort Lamy. The end of the 19th century saw French empire building at its height as the pace of Saharan pacification quickened. Colonel Pierre Lapperrine, the creator of the Compagnies Sahariennes, was named “Commander in Chief of the Saharan Oases” and the entire region became relatively quiet. Except for the Hoggar Touareg. Since the time they had massacred the Flatters mission, the Kel Ahaggar had grown more arrogant then ever. They continued their depredations, raiding outside the Hoggar and then disappearing into its fastnesses, defying pursuit. Something had to be

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done, but the government in Paris, fearing international criticism for its blatant imperialism in Africa, was reluctant to draw attention by mounting a major military effort. Instead, the authorities quietly sent out a small party of 130 Chaamba irregulars to recover some camels stolen by a Hoggar Touareg band in a raid near In Salah. It was a low-profile affair under the command of a young and obscure French officer, a Lieutenant Gaston Cottonest. Although it was a small expedition, you get the impression that it was well organized, well equipped, well disciplined, and well led. Starting out from In Salah on March 25, 1902, Cottonest and his men trailed the miscreants, never quite catching up with them. The Touareg threw every obstacle in their way, including blocking the wells that marked the trail to the Hoggar. It was more than a month after starting out that the pursuers actually sighted their quarry. Four days after this first tentative contact, near the village of Tit deep in the foothills of the Hoggar, the Touareg turned to fight. Cottenest was prepared for them. He had the high ground, and his men were dismounted and spread in line among the rocks, awaiting the attack. The Touareg, now greatly reinforced and mounted on their best camels, came on at a slow gait, so slowly that the young lieutenant thought for a moment they were not going to charge. Then suddenly, with typical Touareg recklessness, they broke into a gallop, screaming their war cries and waving their lances. In his later report Cottonest described the action: The ground allowed the Touareg to advance up to us riding their camels, with their best mounts to the fore. Barbed spears whistled toward us and the men who had hurled them from the height of their camels dismounted with a rifle in their left hand, a spear in their right and a sword at their side. They were all armed more or less the same and to our astonishment they nearly all had rifles. They were men of great height, of an imposing appearance, who marched straight ahead with a complete contempt for danger.15

The disciplined fire of the Chaamba created great gaps in the Touareg ranks, but they came on. Their overwhelming numbers pushed the French force back, but Cottonest had planned well. He suddenly withdrew his men to a prearranged position higher up among the rocks and continued his heavy and accurate firefight—which the Touareg gradually lost. At what point they decided to retreat is not recorded, but the casualty list tells the story. In the rather grandly named “Battle of Tit,” the French forces lost 3 killed and 10 wounded, whereas the Touareg counted some 90 casualties, 22 of whom were killed, according to Cottonest, “in the pursuit after the battle.”16

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Although Cottonest’s people have been described in some accounts as an ill-armed partisan band, certainly the results would indicate otherwise. It is possible that the Chaamba were French-trained veterans of the Compagnies Sahariennes; their disciplined victory against overwhelming odds in the enemy’s own territory might lead to that conclusion. After the Battle of Tit, things changed in the Sahara. That most belligerent of Touareg tribes, the Kel Ahaggar of the Hoggar, made their formal submission to the French. Others followed suit. And with the patrols of the Saharan Companies criss-crossing the desert, the French Sahara remained relatively peaceful for many years. The guarantors of that peace were the soldiers of the Compagnies Sahariennes and one French officer in particular. It takes an unusual type of European to be happy soldiering in the Sahara. The harsh conditions, the loneliness, the vast expanses, the empty sky, all tend to attract a man not only physically tough but with a broad philosophical outlook as well. Unyielding will power and enormous energy are also vital for a successful desert command. It is rare that all these qualities can be found in one person, but Henri Laperrine was just such a man. Laperrine came to the Sahara as a young lieutenant in 1881—and stayed there for much of the rest of his life. The great emptiness, the endless variety of terrain, the sand seas of the ergs, the flat, stony, monotonous reg and the volcanic mountains of the Tassili, the Hoggar, the Tibesti, the Aı¨r, and the Adrar n’Iforas fascinated him. And so did the peoples of the great desert, particularly the Touareg. Laperrine’s experience in North Africa was wide and his rise rapid. He fought rebellious tribes in the Sud-Oranais province of Algeria as well as veiled Touareg in the soudan far to the south, and he came to know and love the desert in all its varying moods. He understood its people, too. Many of the tribesmen who fought against him later became his great admirers, including Moussa ag Amastane, the amenokal of the Hoggar Touareg. After their defeat at the Battle of Tit, Moussa surrendered to Laperrine personally and became his lifelong friend and collaborator. Laperrine was “Lawrence of Arabia” without the stage makeup. No Arab burnoose for him; desert dwellers could always recognize him in his cavalryman’s parade ground uniform, kepi, tunic, boots, and breeches no matter how hot the day. A distinctive “soupstrainer” moustache and scraggly beard completed the picture. In 1901 Laperrine, then a colonel, was named “Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Oases,” in effect the ruler of the entire French Sahara. He held this post until 1910 when he was ordered back to France. There he commanded a cavalry regiment and later a brigade of dragoons. When war came in 1914, he was a general and led a division on the Somme.

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But back in the Sahara, trouble was brewing again. Turkish agents in Libya had stirred up the Senussi brotherhood, who in turn had crossed the border from Libya and agitated among the Touareg. The cry was for Holy War, and the tribes were restless once more. In 1917 Laperrine was ordered back to the Sahara. Most of the experienced desert soldiers were fighting in France, so Laperrine had his work cut out for him. With his desert know-how and tremendous energy he put new spirit in the troops that were left and reinvigorated the camel companies. By the end of 1918, peace had returned to the Sahara as well as to Europe. Then, once again, his unusual foresight was put into play. The war had shown the importance of the airplane, and Laperrine saw how it could revolutionize transportation in the immense reaches of the Sahara. He experimented with aircraft and was a passenger in the proposed first flight over the desert from In Salah to Tamanrasset in the Hoggar. That flight never made it. A sudden sandstorm wiped out the landmarks the pilot was using to navigate, and the plane ran out of gas. It crashed in the desert. The pilot and mechanic were unhurt, but Laperrine broke his collarbone and one rib, and there may have been internal injuries as well. The three men tried to reach the nearest desert outpost on foot, but became hopelessly lost. After a few days of fruitless wandering, they decided to return to the wreckage and await rescue, which they felt could not be too far off. But rescue came too late for Henri Laperrine. Twenty days after the ill-fated flight left In Salah, he died of his injuries and heat exhaustion. The desert had claimed its conqueror. Laperrine’s greatest gift to the Sahara was the tranquillity he brought to it after its centuries of tribal warfare. The symbol of that peace was his personal creation, the French-led native camel corps called the Compagnies Sahariennes. Realizing that only desert people could police other desert people, Laperrine looked toward the Chaamba confederation of the northern Sahara for his recruits. These nomad Arab tribesmen had only recently been fighting the French tooth and nail, but as each tribe submitted to its conquerers, many of their warriors were happy to join the newly formed companies. They made excellent soldiers. They were expert camel men who understood the desert well. They were great fighters, too, and were the traditional enemy of the Touareg.17 Each Saharan Company was an independent unit under command of a French officer and a few French NCOs. The me´haristes wore their own native dress and were given money to buy two camels, which they were allowed to keep. They were issued cavalry carbines and ammunition. Their training was hard, with a maximum of long desert marches and small arms practice and a minimum of formal drill.

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The officers and NCOs were soldiers much like Laperrine himself— tough, dedicated men who loved the desert and had the knack of getting along with the natives. To join the Compagnies Sahariennes, the French NCOs had to be willing to give up their rank in other units and regain it after a trial period with the camel troops. Rather than causing resentment, this odd requirement attracted just the type of independent minded men Laperrine wanted. The Saharan Companies were an almost immediate success and continued to be so for many years. The highly mobile units criss-crossed the desert, serving as police, rescuing lost travelers, and settling disputes between the tribes. Later they even included Touareg in the ranks. The centuries-old warfare between Chaamba and Touareg was over—but even the final defeat of the latter had not quite ended the fighting in the French Sahara. While by the early part of the 20th century Laperrine’s work was beginning and European rivals in Africa had more or less conceded that France was now the legitimate ruler of the central Sahara, there were still more empty lands to the east to be conquered. Italy had laid claim to Libya,18 Great Britain was well established in Egypt and the Sudan. The French themselves had taken over large chunks of equatorial Africa, but the northern desert regions of the French colony of Chad had yet to be explored or exploited. It was still in the hands of hostile nomad tribes, led by chiefs of the powerful Senussi brotherhood. In 1903, France started to correct that condition. It sent a series of expeditionary forces into those unconquered territories of Chad—Borkou, Ennedi, and Tibesti. After nearly 10 years of sporadic desert warfare, General Largeau declared the Senussi defeated; by 1913, the pax gallica had settled over all of Chad. The French Sahara remained quiet (except for the brief period during World War I) until 1940. At the end of that year the ghibli was not the only disturbance that stirred the desert sands.

NOTES 1. Jeremy Swift, The Sahara (Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1975), 16. 2. Joseph M. Castagno, ed., Lands and Peoples, 6 vols. (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1993), 1: 25. The highest peak in the Sahara is the Emi Koussi in the Tibesti Range. 3. Edward Ward, Sahara Story (New York: Norton, 1962), 86–88. 4. L. Cabot Briggs, “The Teda,” Peoples of the Earth, 20 vols., ed. Ahmed al Shahi (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1973), 17: 80–83. 5. Swift, 52. 6. D.R. Harris, “Algeria,” The Middle East and North Africa 1972–1973, 19th ed. (London: Europa Publications, 1972), 169. 7. Ward, 65.

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8. Charles Mercer, Legion of Strangers (New York: Pyramid, 1965), 116. 9. Ibid., 116. 10. Douglas Porch, Conquest of the Sahara (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 118. 11. Ward, 72. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 73. 14. Ibid., 74. 15. Ibid., 78. 16. Porch, 261–267. 17. Ward, 104–111. 18. W.B. Fisher, “Libya,” The Middle East and North Africa 1972–1973, 19th ed. (London: Europa Publications, 1972), 522–525.

Chapter 2

THE STIRRINGS OF WAR The desert had changed little by 1939. True, the airplane had shortened the times between Algiers and the major oases and there were additional pistes that now carried motorized traffic through more parts of this barren land. But the great mass of the Sahara was still sand and reg and hamada, little known and sparsely populated. The threat of the coming war had drawn much of the French North African army into Europe, leaving a comparatively small force to guard its borders. On the west the threat was from Spain through Spanish Morocco. Although the Spaniards were not yet part of the Axis (and would never be), Hitler was desperately trying to convince their leader, Caudillo Francisco Franco, to join with the Germans and Italians in the “pact of steel,” but so far without success.1 On the eastern frontier it was another matter. There the border was a three-way division between French Algeria and Tunisia and Italian Libya. In Tunisia the French had in 1938 built a series of fortifications called the Mareth Line manned by several thousand French troops, but in the south along the Algerian-Chad-Libyan frontier there was only a line of isolated desert posts garrisoned for the most part by ill-equipped Senegalese infantry (tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise) and connected by roving camel and motorized patrols of the Compagnies Sahariennes. This was one of the wildest and most remote parts of the French Sahara, centered around the Tibesti mountains, a rocky massif with peaks over 10,000 feet high, surrounded by stony desert plains. It was a cruel land even by Saharan standards, mostly hard volcanic rock shaped by wind and water over

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many thousands of years into fantastic crags and pillars and subject to all the tortures of the Saharan climate. There was a constant, unrelenting wind that is still eroding the rock, eventually turning it into sand, a fine grit that finds its way into everything—clothing, eyes, skin, weapons, engines. Yet, in spite of the dryness, there is a modicum of surface water among the rock. Small pools of it can be found even in the most unlikely crannies of the Tibesti. Called gueltas, these hangovers from prehistoric times are a reminder that the Sahara was not always dry but was once a lush land of savannah and forest.2 By modern times the Tibesti had become mostly a mass of jumbled rock and sand, with one major piste running through an arid wilderness. The term “major,” however, is relative, for in 1939 the best trail through the Tibesti was little more than a somewhat improved camel track barely navigable by motor vehicle. And sometimes when it was covered by the whirling debris of a violent sandstorm, it was not passable at all. These frequent sandstorms driven by the prevailing winds are sometimes called khamsin and sometimes ghibli, depending on where they occur. They can halt all movement and darken the sky, paralyzing every activity. Occasionally, if circumstances are just right, they can also aid a military force by covering its attack—or by protecting a retreating army from its pursuers. And then there are the mirages, the atmospheric phenomena that distort distant vistas and make far-off objects seem what they are not. A stretch of dry sand or dusty gravel can appear to be a sparkling pool of water that disappears when approached, or a distant staff car or jeep can grow to the proportions of a mighty Tiger tank. Such distortions can prove disastrous in military operations, and there is no way to counter them. Far to the south, this same track through the Tibesti led all the way from Fort Lamy (today called Njamena) to Faya-Largeau where it split, one branch going northwest over the mountains and across the Libyan frontier toward Mourzouk and eventually to the Mediterranean at Tripoli. The other piste branched off northeast toward the great Koufra oasis and on to Benghazi on the coast. It was in the harsh desert areas along these remote pistes that the French and Italians were to fight their virtually unknown war while the major armies battled it out along the coast. But even before the war started, there was military activity along the borderline between the French colony of Chad and the Italian Fezzan, the southernmost part of Libya. The French kept a watchful eye on the Italians by patrolling the border, and the Italians returned the compliment to some extent but seemed more inclined to stay within the confines of their oases. In 1937 the French had named the tall, bemonocled Commandant Jean Colonna d’Ornano military commander of the Tibesti. His years of ser-

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vice in the Sahara and knowledge of the desert and its people had made him an almost legendary figure, and although he was well aware that his future opponents were superior in numbers and equipment, he was nonetheless ready for a fight. The same could not be said for the Italians. In spite of Mussolini’s chest pounding, Italy’s colonial efforts had not always gone well. Italy had a late start in the colony business. England, France, Spain, and Portugal, to say nothing of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, were ahead of her, having long since colonized almost all of Africa. There was little free territory left for Mussolini. One such independent region was the ancient kingdom of Abyssinia, which Italy had invaded in 1911. It was not a good start. In that same year a large force of well-equipped Italian soldiers were defeated and massacred by an Abyssinian army of barefoot, ill-armed tribesmen at a dusty flyspeck on the map called Adowa. After a few more feeble tries, the Italians packed up and left Abyssinia—for the time being. In September of that same year Italy declared war on Turkey with an eye on the Ottoman Empire’s North African colony of Libya. The Italians thought it would be a walkover because the Turks’ main forces were seriously occupied in the Balkan wars at the time. However, when Italian troops landed in Tripoli, they were met with heavy resistance by the Libyans themselves—with considerable help from the Turks. The Italians were in for a hard time. After a year punctuated by many sharp engagements that did not always go well for the invaders, the Turks, weakened by defeat in the Balkans, sued for peace. In 1912 an agreement was reached that supposedly gave “administrative autonomy” to the Libyans and tranquillity to their country.3 But making peace in that violent land was easier said than done. Though the western section of the country (Tripolitania) quieted down, the tribes of the southern desert (the Fezzan) joined those of eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) and, led by sheikhs of the powerful Senussi brotherhood,4 continued to make trouble for the Italians. By the time Mussolini’s Fascist government came into power in 1922, the Italians had been able to occupy only the coastal areas of Libya— and it was a shaky occupation at that. Now all that changed. The Fascists vigorously pursued the conquest and occupation of all of Libya. The Senussi in Cyrenaica and the Fezzan continued to resist but were eventually crushed. This was accomplished by the ruthless Marshal Rodolfo Graziani who had been appointed military commander of the Fezzan just for that purpose. His main accomplishment was the capture of the important oasis of Koufra, headquarters of the Senussi. This he did with an army of a size never before seen in the desert—some 3,000 infantry, batteries of field artillery, a squadron of armored cars, and 20 airplanes. All this was supported by a supply train of 7,000 camels and their native attendants.5 At Koufra, resistance

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was light and by 1928 the principal oases of the Fezzan were occupied and the Senussi scattered. In Rome, Graziani was acclaimed as “the lion of the desert,”6 a title he gloried in until his removal in 1941. By 1939 the Italian army had Libya pretty much under control, but it was not really ready for an all-out war on its territory. Graziani had constructed a barbed-wire fence for 271 kilometers all along the Egyptian border from near Sollum on the coast to Giarabub in the Saharan sand dunes. The wire was protected by a series of outposts, small forts with machine guns and observation towers and with landing strips nearby.7 It was not meant to be a threat to a serious invading force, but was good enough to prevent rebellious tribesmen from escaping to Egypt—or to make it difficult for any small raiding party to slip across the border and make mischief in Libya. And there were similar desert outposts, large and small but without the extensive wire, scattered along the Libyan borders with Tunisia, Algeria, and Chad. The main Italian forces were stationed in the north and included two native Libyan infantry divisions (with Italian officers) as well as regular metropolitan (all Italian) divisions and Blackshirt militia. There were also horse cavalry called savari and irregular native horsemen called spahis for border patrol. A Libyan parachute regiment was raised in 1938, but there were so many training accidents that the unit was reduced to battalion size. Later another parachute battalion was organized, but when war came, both battalions fought as regular infantry and were never used in the airborne role for which they were originally trained. The southern desert regions of Italian Libya were policed by the Sahariana, motorized desert troops who patrolled the border and kept their eye on the French. These were reinforced by the meharisti, camel mounted soldiers who also served as escorts for the civilian caravans that regularly transported goods along the desert pistes. And, of course, the desert soldiers were provided with the regular ancillary services found in every modern army—supply, ordnance, military police (carabinieri), and the like. The same preparations were being made in the French colonies just to the west and south of Libya. In the latter part of the 19th century the French had grabbed a large part of central Africa—too large and ethnically diverse to govern in one piece, so it was divided in two. Almost in the dead center of the continent was French Equatorial Africa, consisting of the colonies of Chad, Cameroun, Middle Congo, and Gabon. To the west of these colonies and stretching all the way to the Atlantic was the vast territory known as French West Africa and its capital, Dakar, on the westernmost tip of the continent. The two territories were to become bitter but not lasting enemies. Chad was the largest and most significant of the equatorial colonies. Its importance was based on its location; the capital, Fort Lamy, was

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almost in the exact center of Africa and was the site of an airport that was to handle vital wartime traffic of mate´riel and reinforcements.8 But the value of that position was not yet realized, for matters of much greater import were taking the world’s attention thousands of miles away in France. The Allied armies were taking a drubbing at the hands of the Germans in a war that had begun in 1939 but had hardly touched central Africa by 1940. As Hitler’s blitzkrieg devastated the French armies on the battlefields of western Europe, the government panicked. When the Germans closed in on Paris, Premier Paul Reynaud and his cabinet fled, first to Tours and then to Bordeaux. Reynaud had been all for fighting to the bitter end, but he was strongly opposed by a majority of his associates who wanted to ask the Germans for an armistice. Other influential defeatists were General Maxime Weygand and, above all, Marshall Henri Philippe Pe´tain, the vice premier. With such well-regarded opponents—indeed famous military heroes—putting on the pressure, Reynaud finally gave in. He resigned. Marshal Pe´tain, the victor of Verdun, immediately accepted the offer to form a new government. A short time before, Reynaud had pulled a French general away from his command of an armored division at the front and sent him to London as liaison officer to the British High Command. General Charles Andre´ Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a true professional, a distinguished veteran of World War I and a well-known military thinker. He was not popular with the French higher-ups, however, because his ideas, particularly on armor, were new and revolutionary and ran counter to those of his ultraconservative superiors.9 De Gaulle looked the part of a commander. Tall (6'5"), erect, with a thin moustache, he had a haughty bearing that often rubbed people the wrong way. But Reynaud, who had known him a long time, liked his ideas and trusted his judgment and made him an assistant minister of war before sending him to London. Now the general was back to report, arriving at Bordeaux on the very day that Reynaud resigned and Pe´tain took over. Pe´tain’s first order of business was to ask for an armistice. The Germans took their time about answering. In those few days of waiting, all France was in a state of utter confusion. Although Pe´tain had declared a cease-fire and ordered French troops to lay down their arms, there was still desultory fighting. Many Frenchmen were all for continuing the war by moving the government to North Africa and fighting from there, but the majority of parliamentarians seemed to have lost heart and were ready to accept whatever terms the enemy might offer. And when they came, those terms were tough, if you could call them “terms” at all. The Germans simply occupied the northern half of France and ordered the disbanding of all but 100,000 men of the French army.

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Thousands of French prisoners of war were shipped to Germany as slave laborers, and a heavy indemnity was laid on the French people. Pe´tain’s government, soon to be moved to the health spa town of Vichy, fell all over itself to do the will of Germany. But while most of France was in a state of shocked disbelief and overpowered by a feeling of utter helplessness, not a few Frenchmen were prepared to continue the fight against the hated boche. Among these was Charles de Gaulle. When it became apparent that the armistice was irreversible, he packed his bag and left Bordeaux. There was no one to tell him what to do. He was still an assistant secretary of war, and as such he ordered an Air Force plane to take him back to London. In the British capital, de Gaulle reported to Winston Churchill, with whom he had worked before. He had a plan, a bold but seemingly hopeless one, of raising an army of “free Frenchmen” to continue the fight. Churchill, who was fascinated by bold and sometimes crazy ideas, liked this one. He pledged to help this austere but adventurous French general in any way he could. The British prime minister eventually furnished de Gaulle with an office, and soon de Gaulle was broadcasting appeals to continue the fight against Germany. There were many Frenchmen in England who responded, survivors from the beaches of Dunkirk, escaped prisoners of war, idealistic youth who had talked Breton fishermen into making the dangerous channel trip to England through the German E-boat patrols, all anxious for revenge against Hitler’s armies. A training camp for what was now recognized as “Free French” troops was established at Stokelyon-Trent, and as de Gaulle’s message was heard all over the world, many prospective recruits made their way to England from Africa, Syria, Tahiti, and other distant parts of the French empire.10 Among this flotsam, which included veteran high-ranking officers as well as senior civil servants, was a French captain recently escaped from a German POW camp. His nom de guerre, used to protect his family whom he had been forced to leave in France, was Jacques Leclerc. His real name was an aristocratic one, Philippe de Hautecloque, and he was a fighter. The story of Leclerc’s escape from France is itself an epic. He was wounded in the battle of France, captured by the Germans, and wound up in a local hospital. He somehow slipped out of the hospital and made his way to a relative’s chateau now occupied by the enemy. Still unchallenged (the Germans were celebrating their victory and the wine flowed freely), he managed to change into civilian clothes and continue to walk toward the coast. One story has it that he soon encountered a German soldier on a lady’s bicycle, obviously looted. Thinking fast and with incredible sang froid, Leclerc accosted the man, claiming the bicycle belonged to his wife and demanding its return. The German, unlikely as

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it may seem, meekly handed it over, and Leclerc pedaled on his way. Then after a series of adventures that took him all the way to Portugal, he succeeded in finding passage to England. There he found an audience with General de Gaulle and volunteered his services. The taciturn de Gaulle, who habitually played his cards close to the vest and kept his thoughts very much to himself, saw something in this quite junior officer. Perhaps it was the boldness and determination of his escape, coupled with his excellent military record—at any rate, as soon as he had fully recovered from his wounds, he was promoted to major and sent off on a risky mission to equatorial Africa. At this stage, Africa, as well as France itself, was having its loyalty problems. French North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) was in turmoil, its military personnel split, not knowing which way to turn. Most of its officers hated the Germans and gladly would have kept on fighting, but were loyal to their oath to the government, particularly because it was now headed by the godlike figure of that ancient hero, Marshal Pe´tain. The key figure in that part of Africa was General Auguste Nogue`s, resident general of Morocco, whose long record as a soldier and administrator lent him great prestige. His instinct to fight on in spite of the humiliating armistice was at odds with his loyalty to the aged marshal, but in the end the armistice won. Nogue`s declared for “Vichy” (as the French government was now popularly known around the world), and the rest of North Africa followed his lead. The 100,000 troops in that area stayed loyal to the Vichy government until the Allied landings in November 1942. The situation in equatorial Africa was very much the same as that in the north. The governor of the colony of Chad, Adolphe Felix E´boue´, the highest ranking black official in the French empire, was at odds with his boss, Pierre Boisson, governor general of the entire territory of French Equatorial Africa. E´boue´ was all for Free France; Boisson was a determined Vichyite. The matter came to a head when Boisson was transferred to Dakar, (considered by Vichy authorities to be a more important post) and E´boue´ had a freer hand to explore the feelings of his subordinates. Convinced that the great majority of them were on his side, E´boue´, acting in conjunction with his military commander, Colonel Marchand, declared the colony to be free of Vichy and an adherent of the Free French. The date was August 26, 1940.11 The French colony immediately to the south of Chad was Cameroun (also known as the Camerouns). Whereas Chad was poor, dry, dusty, and largely desert, Cameroun was tropical, forested, and rich in timber, cotton, coffee, and rubber and had an outlet on the Atlantic. It was, in a word, valuable. That’s what de Gaulle was thinking when he sent Jacques Leclerc to Africa that previous June. On August 27, one day after Chad declared for the Free French, a tiny party of 25 Gaullist soldiers

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under Major Leclerc slipped into Douala, Cameroun’s main port. The colony was for the most part already pro-Gaullist, and there was no resistance. Nevertheless, it was a daring coup. By nightfall Cameroun was officially declared Free French and Leclerc was its temporary governor.12 The takeover of Cameroun seemed all too easy, but the de Gaulle forces were wary when it came to its Vichy-controlled neighbor, the colony of Middle Congo. The capital, Brazzaville, also served as capital of all French Equatorial Africa. Because of that it was considered of major importance. Moreover, intelligence reports indicated that the military forces there would remain loyal to Vichy and were mobilizing for a fight. It did not happen. The coup was bloodless. A small force of Gaullist troops simply expelled the Vichyite leaders, who took refuge in Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo, just across the Congo River from Brazzaville. The governorship was taken over by yet another Free French escape artist, General Edgard de Larminat. De Larminat had been caught by the armistice while serving in Syria, but he knew immediately which way he was going to turn. He was a de Gaulle man from the very beginning, and he made no secret about it. For this he was arrested and imprisoned, but like so many other French officers, he managed to escape and make his way to Central Africa. A St. Cyr graduate cited for bravery four times in World War I and with a distinguished career since, de Larminat was more than qualified for his new job.13 On the very day (August 28, 1940) that Middle Congo fell easily into the Free French camp, so did the adjacent colony of Ubangi-Shari. Both the governor and the military commander were de Gaulle sympathizers, and the pro-Vichyites were looked upon as pariahs. The transfer to official Free French territory was accomplished simply by General de Gaulle reappointing the existing administration. So far all the equatorial colonies had fallen under Free French rule without bloodshed, if not without effort. Ever since the announcement of the armistice, there had been clandestine comings and goings, cloakand-dagger maneuvering, and mysterious meetings wherever there were Frenchmen. They occurred in homes, offices, and barracks, anywhere out of sight and hearing of Vichy officials, and on one series of occasions at moonlight rendezvous on a boat anchored in the sluggish Congo River just off Brazzaville. Up until now this secret diplomacy had paid off for the Gaullists, but there was one more French colony in that part of Africa where Vichy officials still held out. Gabon, the smallest of the equatorial entities, was strongly pro-Vichy from the governor on down and could easily be used as a base from which to retake the other colonies. In fact, Pierre Boisson, now entrenched as High Commissioner of Colonies in faraway Dakar,

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was trying to keep up Vichy spirits in Gabon by sending military assistance, including some naval vessels and a force of marines. For the Free French in Brazzaville it was high time to act. A small expeditionary force under Lieutenant Colonel Parant invaded the little colony, and for two months the troops of General de Gaulle and Marshal Pe´tain maneuvered against each other in the tropical forests and tiny settlements of this “heart of darkness.” Finally, on November 10, 1940, Libreville, the capital of Gabon, fell, and the colony was officially declared a part of Free France. On November 15 General de Gaulle himself was received in the capital, a visit that symbolized the end of the struggle for French Equatorial Africa. Now with a firm base in central Africa, the Free French forces could think about invading Italian Libya from the south and pushing across the southern desert of the Fezzan to attack the Germans and Italians who were fighting the Allies along the Mediterranean coast. But at this stage, that was just a dream. To get the ball rolling, de Gaulle relieved Leclerc of his assignment in Cameroun and put him in charge of all military operations in Chad, with headquarters at Fort Lamy. When the recently promoted colonel looked around at his newly acquired military resources, he must have been more than a little distressed at the poverty of what he saw. The main force was a regimental size unit called the Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad, a light infantry outfit with black soldiers and French officers. This title was really a misnomer, because its personnel were neither exclusively from Senegal nor from Chad but were recruited from many of the varied tribes of equatorial Africa. These men were excellent and devoted soldiers. Their weakness was not in their background or in their training or in their spirit, but in their equipment, which was pitifully out of date and badly worn besides. Central Africa was at the end of a very long and tenuous supply line and was likely to have a very low priority at the best of times. And now that the Free French were considered renegades, they could expect nothing at all from the home country. Nor could they expect very much from their British allies, who were hard pressed themselves for men and mate´riel. There were other odds and ends of soldiery that fell under Leclerc’s command, including elements of the Compagnies Sahariennes and an oddball camel corps unit called the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti. The latter consisted of local Arab, Touareg, and Tibbou tribesmen under the command of a Captain Sarazac, a grizzled French camel corps officer who had made a home for himself in the Sahara and had come all the way from Timbuktu to join Leclerc. It seemed that every day new faces were showing up and reporting to Brazzaville or Fort Lamy, eager to fight but having to wait for something to fight with. The problem of supply was enormous. Chad was

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landlocked; the nearest port of any size was Pointe Noir in Cameroun, miles from Brazzaville. The one rail line was inadequate, and the few pistes could hardly be called roads. There were never enough trucks, and in this country it was hard to keep those that did exist in any kind of repair. Much of the transport was by camel, not an ideal way to supply an army. Fortunately Leclerc, who had started the war as a captain and within two years was to become a general, was up to the job. He was a man of enormous energy and great good sense, with the heart of a lion. He also had a talent that was somewhat unusual in a senior officer—he was a superb scrounger. He made himself familiar with the military byways and back alleys of Chad, where obsolete, damaged, and discarded equipment could be found and salvaged. And he had the knack of finding the right man for every job and an organizing ability to get the work done quickly and efficiently. He was soon to need every ounce of that energy and ability. NOTES 1. Eddy Bauer et al., Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia, 24 vols. (Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978), 2: 272–278. Franco, waiting to see who was going to win the war, gave the Germans a hard time with his double-talk. A frustrated Hitler supposedly remarked to an aide as they were entering a meeting with the Spanish dictator, “I’d rather be going to my dentist!” 2. Jeremy Swift, The Sahara (Amsterdam: Time-Life, 1975), 50. 3. W.B. Fisher, “Libya,” The Middle East and North Africa 1972–1973, 19th ed. (London: Europa Publications, 1972), 524. 4. Ahmed el Shakri, ed., “The Arab World,” Peoples of the Earth, 20 vols. (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1973), 17: 134–137. 5. Franc¸ois Ingold and Louis Mouillereaux, Leclerc de Hautecloque (Paris: E´ditions Litteraires, 1948), 76. Compare these numbers with the ragged Free French handful (about 400) that captured Koufra from the Italians in 1941. 6. Rex Trye, Mussolini’s Afrika Korps: The Italian Army in North Africa 1940– 1943 (Bayside, NY: Axis Europa Books, 1999), 126. 7. Ibid., 22. 8. Eve Curie, Journey among Warriors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1943), 26–28. This writer provides an eyewitness description of the airport at Fort Lamy and the Free Frenchmen who manned it. 9. Not everyone agreed that de Gaulle was the leading proponent of armored warfare of his time. For a dissident view, see Henri Bernard, “The Truth on the Doctrine of the Use of Tanks,” De Gaulle: Anachronism, Realist or Prophet? F. Roy Williams ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1967), 12. 10. Raoul Aglion, The Fighting French (New York: Henry Holt, 1943), 63–67. 11. Ibid., 124–128. 12. Ingold and Mouillereaux, 43–48. 13. Aglion, 124–128.

Chapter 3

COMBAT—MOURZOUK AND KOUFRA What the Free French lacked in modern arms and equipment they made up in fighting spirit. There were such men in Chad as Lieutenant Colonel Jean Colonna d’Ornano, military chief of the Tibesti; Commandant Dio, veteran camel corps commander, who ended the war an armored force general; and Captain Jacques Massu, the hawk-nosed fighter who later gained fame as the general commanding the notorious 10th Parachute Division in the “battle of Algiers” in 1960.1 It was ironic that these seasoned desert warriors would have to rely on their Allies for transportation in the first of the sensational Free French raids in the Fezzan in 1941. But that’s the way it was. While Leclerc was busy scrounging equipment from the junk yards of Chad, the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was practicing its deadly skills along the pistes that threaded through the remote Saharan regions of Egypt and Libya. The LRDG was a strange outfit. It was the brainchild of Major Ralph Bagnold, a career officer and prewar desert explorer, a man who really knew the Sahara. Early in 1940 he had conceived the idea of organizing motorized reconnaissance companies to scout behind enemy lines and patrol areas where they were not expected to appear. With the approval of General Archibald Wavell, commander in chief of the Middle East theater, he started to work out the details. In this he was aided by Captain P.A. Clayton, another Sahara veteran who had worked for 18 years in the Egyptian desert survey.2 In their prewar work, Bagnold and Clayton had discovered many little

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Leclerc’s operations from Fort Lamy to Tunis.

tricks of motorized desert travel, and Bagnold was credited with a number of important inventions, including an improved sun compass and a condenser that preserved engine coolant that would have otherwise boiled away in the desert’s intense heat. Now, although they would accept whatever vehicles they could get, they preferred Chevrolet or Ford pickup trucks of a certain type. In long, exhausting experimental desert journeys they learned the best ways to pack the necessities—what weapons to take, how much food, how much ammunition, how much gasoline, and, most important of all, how much water. They also learned the importance of oversized tires (and plenty of spares), extra leaves for the springs, and the long steel channels that are an absolute necessity for getting out of the inevitable sand traps.3 Only volunteers were accepted in the LRDG, and only true desert lovers volunteered. These are the same sort of people as you would find in the French desert forces, individualistic loners, yet men who could work closely with others and who appreciated the beauty of the desert without fearing its hardship and danger. They came from many corners of the British Empire, but Britons and New Zealanders predominated. They were types who hated the petty military annoyances that British soldiers called “square bashing” and Americans referred to as “chickenshit.” It was inevitable that although their home bases were many hundreds

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of miles apart, the paths of such desert wanderers as Clayton and d’Ornano would cross, and by the latter part of 1940 they were plotting a joint raid on the Italian oasis fortress of Mourzouk in the desert north of Chad. The Frenchmen knew the territory, and the Britons had the desert-worthy vehicles.4 The leaders met at Fort Lamy and worked out an operations order. It was a daring plan that called for the attackers to strike directly into the heart of enemy territory. The main target, Mourzouk, was an important oasis and a crossroads on the way to the coast.5 It was also a garrison town with a strong Italian force, a sizable fort, and a small airfield. The principal occupation of the civilian population was tending the palm groves that surrounded the town. The operation was planned simply as a hit-and-run raid; there was no thought of holding the place. The idea was to surprise the garrison, shoot up the fort, wreck the airfield, and disappear into the desert, leaving the Italians frightened and bewildered, not knowing where these ghost raiders would strike next. But first the British had to rendezvous with their French comrades at some mutually convenient location. The spot selected was a fly speck on the map called Kayuga in the Tibesti, and the term “convenient” is only relative, because the rendezvous point was a good 10 days’ travel from the LRDG starting point in Cairo, and the Frenchmen, although a shorter distance away, had to get there by camel. The LRDG party consisted of two companies called “patrols.” Major Clayton commanded “T” Patrol, and Captain Creighton-Stuart led “G” (for Guards) Patrol. In all there were 76 men and 23 light trucks, and Clayton was the overall boss. On December 26, 1940, the party left Cairo. Outside the city, they stopped to meet a British officer named Anderson with the fascinating title of Senussi Liaison Officer and his charge, Sheikh Abd el Galil Seif en Nasr. The Senussi was the religious brotherhood that had resisted the Italian occupation so long and so hard, and the Sheikh was its most prominent member. He had been an enemy of the Italians for many years and had led Marshal Graziani a merry chase until he was finally driven into Egypt in 1931. Now the British were bringing him out of exile and back into Libya with the LRDG. The emergence of el Galil had two purposes. The first was to use him as a guide, for Mourzouk had been a hotbed of anti-Italian dissidence in days gone by and el Galil knew the area intimately. More importantly, it would make the local tribesmen aware that a heroic leader was back— and that would make the Italians very nervous indeed. As the expedition moved out into the desert, this proud and noble looking man in his sixties could be seen sitting up front in the convoy, a symbol of hope and strength for the Italian-hating natives. The 10-day trek across the desert to the rendezvous point was itself

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an epic, but by this time journeys like it had become almost routine to the adventurous souls of the LRDG. They made it to Kayuga without incident, avoiding enemy patrols and unseen by Italian airmen. At Kayuga, Clayton left the column and drove south to meet the French who were coming up over the Tibesti Mountains from Bardai in a camel caravan that also carried gasoline for the LRDG. The French detail that joined the British column at Kayuga was led by Colonel d’Ornano himself. Because of his rank and importance in the Free French scheme of things, he really should not have been on such a wild adventure, but he was a fighter and no one could have kept him away from this dangerous mission. His very appearance impressed his new comrades in arms; he was tall and dramatic looking in his me´hariste burnoose—and the ever-present monocle in his right eye added to the picture. D’Ornano’s party included Captain Massu, fierce looking and tough, whose regular job was commander of a company of tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise out of Zouar in the Tibesti; Lieutenant Eigenspieler from Fort Lamy; two French sergeants; and five tirailleurs.6 On January 8, 1941, the Clayton-d’Ornano party checked their vehicles and weapons once more and started out for Mourzouk. They took the least-traveled piste; it was tough going, but they had picked this route because it was the most remote and they were less likely to be seen by wandering nomads. No such luck. The very next day the raiders saw in the distance three Tibbou tribesmen on camels. They sent one of their tirailleurs, himself a Tibbou, to try to convince them that the column was actually an Italian patrol. Then all they could do was hope that he was believed and they were not reported to the nearest Italian post. Although most of the Tibbou of the Tibesti region were loyal to the French, here in the borderland one could never be sure. Then, on January 9 when they were still almost 150 kilometers from Mourzouk, the column ran across vehicle tracks, obviously those of an Italian patrol. This was alarming, but the allies formed their 23 trucks into single file and drove in each other’s tracks, hoping it would appear to be only one vehicle passing through. Then the men attempted to brush out any extra tracks.7 It all seems rather futile. In the desert a sudden ghibli might cover or blow away any tracks almost as they’re made. On the other hand, in another remote area the tracks might lie undisturbed for months. The column moved on. On one occasion an Italian plane passed overhead, but the vehicles were halted and it was doubtful if they were seen. That was another desert trick. There was seldom any real cover in the open desert, but if a vehicle simply stopped, it could often escape notice from the air. Movement attracted the eye. It was reasonable to think that if any attack on Mourzouk was ex-

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pected by the Italians, it would be from the south. Therefore the raiders decided to make a wide swing around and move in from the north. On January 11 they hit the Sebha piste just 10 miles north of Mourzouk and bivouacked for the night. Again an enemy plane flew over, but apparently they were not seen or were mistaken for a friendly unit. The following morning, after the usual check of equipment, the raiding party started down the track that led into the main street of Mourzouk. This was a critical moment: Had the garrison been warned of their approach? Apparently not, for as the invaders entered the town, the people on the street gave them the Fascist salute, arms outstretched, thinking them Italians.8 It seems that all desert soldiers in their dust covered khaki looked alike. To the people of Mourzouk, both military and civilian, the attack was a complete surprise. They didn’t recognize their assailants until they were actually fired upon. As the carefully laid plans of the raiders were put into effect, the attacking forces were split, one group heading for the fort while the other made for the airfield on the outskirts of town. The Guards Patrol engaged the fort with rifle, machine-gun, and mortar fire, while Clayton and d’Ornano did the same at the airport. D’Ornano was last seen firing away with his auto-mitrailleuse—one can imagine his monocle still screwed in his right eye. At the airfield the raiders’ heavy fire was from their Vickers machine guns, the mortars, and the one Bofors 40 mm automatic cannon. The fire was at first returned by the field’s own machine guns, but the defenders were soon overpowered. They surrendered, a white flag displayed over the roof of the hangar. The survivors were taken prisoner and the three bombers on the field doused with gasoline and set afire. As the Frenchmen drove off, the roof of the hangar crumbled to the ground. The fort was a tougher nut to crack. Its thick walls were impervious to the light weapons of the raiders and too high to scale; the rifle and machine-gun fire of the Italians was hot and heavy. However, the attackers’ mortars had set the fort’s tower on fire and the flag went down in the conflagration. It was time to go. Clayton gave the order to move out, and it was then discovered that d’Ornano had been killed. His body was found in the back of the truck from where he’d been firing, shot through the neck. In the fierceness of the fight it seems that nobody had witnessed his death, but Lieutenant Colonel Jean Colonna d’Ornano, scion of an old Corsican family, had become an early martyr of the Free French cause. He was not the only Allied casualty of Mourzouk. A New Zealander of the LRDG and three tirailleurs were killed. Several others were wounded, including Captain Massu who, with two bullets in his foot, refused to be sent back to base. Always the tough guy, he later picked the slugs out with a pocket knife and cauterized the wounds with a

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lighted cigarette!9 The Italians suffered, too, with several dead and wounded, and perhaps there were more casualties inside the fort. After they had distanced themselves from the town, the raiders turned most of their prisoners loose. This annoyed the French members of the party who, according to an LRDG witness, would have “happily cut their throats.”10 This points up a difference in attitude between the two allies: The LRDG soldiers took it all as a sort of game, albeit a grim one; the French, with a brutal enemy in their homeland, felt only a cold, implacable hatred and a desire for revenge. It was a feeling that would last throughout the rest of the war. As for booty, the raiders captured plenty of Italian weapons. And there was more. One of the prisoners had been the town postman; Major Clayton kept this poor, frightened man’s bicycle with the expectation that it would come in quite handy around Cairo. That it was the major’s personal prize was simply a case of R.H.I.P.—in the time-honored custom of the army, rank has its privileges.11 Safely away from Mourzouk, the column pulled over to the side of the piste and, with a sandstorm blowing, buried its dead. A respectful, if hasty, military service was conducted. Then they were on their way again. Their mission was not yet over and they still had just enough gasoline and ammunition left for a bit more mischief. That night they bivouacked at Dlem, where the local townspeople welcomed Abd el Djelil enthusiastically and treated him with profound respect. It was another defeat, albeit psychological, for the Italians. The next stop was at Traghen, a pitiful little Italian post with a dilapidated mud fort and a tiny garrison of Royal Carabinieri, the African branch of the famous Italian police. This was a post without radio communications and it had no way of knowing about the events at Mourzouk. As a result, it was taken completely by surprise and surrendered without a fight. The raiders broke open the office safe, took the files, and wrecked what little they could find to wreck. Then they departed. There was no room for more prisoners, so the carabinieri were left where they were, disarmed, embarrassed, dejected, but glad to be alive. The column moved on to Oum el Araneb, took one look at its solid stone fort and, after exchanging a few shots with its well-armed garrison, decided to continue south to Tedjere´, where they were to meet with Captain Sarazac’s camel mounted Groupe Nomade du Tibesti. The original plan had been for Sarazac’s people to raid Tedje´re´, but things had gone wrong. Sarazac’s guides were Tibbou tribesmen who had relatives and friends living there, and they conspired to keep the war away from that area. The garrison was warned, and the Frenchman was led astray.12 He didn’t even find Tedje´re´ until after dark, and a night attack failed. The Clayton-Massu party was now running dangerously low on gasoline and ammunition. It was decided to sidetrack their next target, the

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Captain Sarazac traveled all the way from the Vichy-controlled Timbuktu area to take command of the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti, one of the last of the Free French camel-mounted units. Although slower than motorized formations and more vulnerable to enemy fire, the camel companies were invaluable for reconnaissance and patrol in desert country too rugged for wheeled vehicles.

post at Gatroun, and continue home to their base at Zouar in the Tibesti. It was there that Massu treated his wound with the end of a lighted cigarette “and said no more about it.”13 From the peripatetic nature of the raiders’ wanderings you might think the distances involved were not so very long. Not so. It’s a good 400 desolate, desert miles from Zouar to Mourzouk, and desert traveling is not easy, even for Saharan veterans. In describing that first raid, Saharan chronicler Edward Ward writes: The ground was hard and strewn with sharp stones which played havoc with the tyres of the little group’s transport. Time and again wheels had to be changed hastily in the pitiless heat of the desert. The stones gave way to soft sand in which the vehicles were constantly bogged down. The guides, recruited locally, were accustomed to slow camel caravans, lost their bearings continually and became confused over their landmarks, sometimes a camel’s skeleton as white

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as chalk, sometimes a slight irregularity in the ground only they would notice. Night would come down like a drop curtain and the nights were bitterly cold.14

And these conditions would exist throughout the rest of the desert war. The raid on Mourzouk was the first of a series by the Free French, and as we have seen, it was not accomplished alone. The handful of Frenchmen were virtually hitchhikers with the larger body of British desert troopers and used their transport exclusively. Each learned from the other—the French about motorization in the desert, and the Britons added to their own knowledge of Saharan lore. And each gained respect for the other, a highly valuable asset for the future. The French determination and elan, even when they were so poverty stricken, was, you may be sure, reported to British headquarters in Cairo, and would mean something when British (and American) equipment and supplies were eventually forthcoming. The Italians learned something, too. They discovered that in spite of the armistice, there were Frenchmen who were still willing to fight—and were still able to do so, even without the proper means. It meant that they had better keep some of their troops down in the southern desert, rather than send them north to stop the British. It made them begin to think that perhaps they had made a mistake in getting into this accursed war. And it kept them from taking the offensive across the border into Chad. The next venture of Leclerc’s people would be a more ambitious one, and it would be under the direct command of Leclerc himself. The newly minted colonel had proven himself a valuable officer. De Gaulle had given him the assignments of first securing the colonies of equatorial Africa for the Free French (in which he had already played a large part in accomplishing) and then taking the Fezzan away from the Italians, which he was now working on. And de Gaulle knew he had the right man for the job. The Vicomte Philippe de Hautecloque was born to be a soldier.15 He first saw the light of day at Belloy-Saint Leonard in Picardy on November 22, 1902, the scion of a noble family. He graduated from the Jesuit college of Providence d’Amiens and, like so many French officers, was a deeply religious Catholic all his life. A country boy, he was already an accomplished horseman when he entered the military academy at St. Cyr in 1922. After graduation, he polished his skills for a year at the famous cavalry school at Saumur, and from there was assigned to the 5th Cuirassiers. The young lieutenant’s life with the cuirassiers was like that of any cavalry officer of his time, a continuing round of training exercises, interspersed with horse shows and races from which he collected more than his share of ribbons and cups. At 23 he was married and eventually fathered six children.

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Life was pleasant in the 1920s for a cavalry officer in France, but the most advantageous place for a patriotic and ambitious soldier to gain honor and glory was Morocco. That tortured land in North Africa was a French protectorate with primitive tribes in savage revolt, resisting to the death the attempts of the French army to “civilize” them. De Hautecloque volunteered for service there, and as an officer of spahis, the native cavalry, he soon found himself in the midst of combat. His leadership of a sabre charge at Colomb-Bechar on the Algerian border earned him the Croix de Guerre with palm, and he began to be noticed in the army. Upon his return to France he was again assigned to Saumur, this time as an instructor. But as most people who have spent any time there know, North Africa acts as a magnet, and de Hautecloque soon felt the pull. Before long he was back in Morocco, this time as head of a goum, the company-size unit of irregular Moroccan mountaineers who served in the more remote hill country as scouts and police. He led this group during the difficult days of the Rif war. By the time World War II came about Captain de Hautecloque was a seasoned warrior—but one thing he had not experienced was defeat. When the Germans rolled over France in 1940, he was not only chagrined by this unexpected reversal of fortune but boiling mad as well. When his unit was surrounded in the Battle of France and about to surrender, the indomitable captain refused to give up. Always the disciplined soldier, he went to his commanding officer and asked for official permission to absent himself from the regiment so that he could continue the fight elsewhere. Permission granted, he started off on foot, traveling south with the intention of joining any French unit that had not yet caved in to superior German force and tactics. In that quest he was disappointed. The roads were crowded with refugees—and Germans. What followed was a series of hairbreadth escapes from enemy patrols, more combat along with French units that were still intact, a serious head wound, hospital, capture and escape, and finally a border crossing into Spain with the intention of somehow getting to London to join the Free French. But in Spain he had more difficulties. According to Spanish regulations he had too much money in his possession, and he was arrested. It was not until he had once again wiggled out of the hands of the authorities and escaped, this time to Portugal, that he felt he could take a deep breath. There at the British embassy in Lisbon he met with a sympathetic hearing, and was put on a ship bound for England.16 That’s how Captain de Hautecloque came to be standing in front of General de Gaulle, volunteering his services. De Gaulle, a shrewd judge of humanity, knew a good thing when he saw it; he signed up this wounded, exhausted junior officer, who then changed his name to

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Jacques Leclerc to protect his wife and children at home in occupied France. After some days’ rest and a promotion to major, the new Leclerc was sent on to Africa. Now, in January 1941, as the Mourzouk raiders straggled back over the border from their first mission into the Fezzan, Leclerc was in the little oasis of Faya-Largeau in the foothills of the Tibesti, organizing another expedition into Italian territory. “Faya” was the original name of the place; the “Largeau” part was stuck on to commemorate the name of the officer who had defeated the Senussi near there in 1913. But no matter what it was called, Faya was not a pleasant place. First of all, it was hot—more than 100⬚F every day. Although it was larger with better facilities than such other French posts as Zouar, Ounianga, or Wouk, it was subject to a continual ghibli, which frequently broke into violent sandstorms sometimes lasting for days. And it was also a penal colony, a prison to some of the most violent criminals in French equatorial Africa. Nevertheless, because of its position on the main pistes, it was a logical jumping-off place for Leclerc’s next objective, the largest and most important oasis in southern Libya—Koufra. Koufra, which had been occupied by Graziani’s troops in 1931, was actually a series of oases near the Egyptian border. The main military feature of this stronghold was a sizable fortress called El Taj and its nearby airfield, which served as a communications link between the Italian colonies of Libya and Abyssinia. It was of great value to the Italians, a symbol of their power in the southern Sahara, and it would be extremely difficult to conquer. One of the main problems for the attackers would be the matter of distances. Koufra, right in the middle of one of the more treacherous stretches of the Sahara, was even more isolated than most oases.17 The nearest water available to any attacking French troops was at Tekro, a French border post in Chad, 365 dry miles from Koufra. The intervening wells at Sarra and Bishari on the Libyan side of the border had been filled in by the Italians, with the thought of just such an assault in mind. The Italians had long known that Koufra would be attacked sooner or later. Not only was it logical, but French security was generally considered poor, and not only in the desert. De Gaulle continually complained that he was not let in on Allied secrets; the Allies replied that it was because his headquarters leaked like a sieve. That was certainly true in Leclerc’s command. “To Koufra!” was a greeting frequently heard on the streets of Faya-Largeau and as a toast in the officers’ mess. It was certainly no secret.18 The troops trained hard at Faya, but the big problems were supplies and transport. Leclerc had established a headquarters in the dusty little town and spent much of his time there, scrounging for vehicles and equipment. He had somehow acquired some 20 Bedford trucks, hand-

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me-downs from the British, and a few even older and more dilapidated Matsons. Some of the latter were cannibalized for their parts, which were used to keep the others running. The vehicles needed to be in as good a shape as possible, because the distances they would have to travel, to say nothing of the desert conditions, were daunting. It was 565 desert miles from the advance base at Faya to Koufra. Most of the supplies would have to come all the way from headquarters in Fort Lamy; some came from Brazzaville in the Congo and arrived at its final destination by boat, truck, and camel. Major Clayton’s two LRDG patrols thought they’d be going back to Cairo after the Mourzouk raid, but instead were placed directly under Leclerc for the Koufra operation. He decided to use them as an advance guard to reconnoiter the enemy oases, not only because of their experience but also because of their superior equipment, particularly their radios and the first-rate training of their operators. At this time communications gear and instruction were not up to par in the Free French forces. The two LRDG patrols left Faya-Largeau on January 26, 1941, driving north to the border post of Tekro in the inevitable sandstorm. They crossed the frontier into Libya, and while “G” Patrol remained in reserve at Sarra, Clayton and “T” Patrol moved up to Djebel Sherif, just 60 miles from Koufra. It was there that disaster struck. They were attacked by a strong Italian patrol. Clayton had 11 cars and 30 men, the Italians 5 cars and 44 men. But the latter also had a complement of Breda 20 mm guns—and three accompanying airplanes—and that made the difference. In the first salvo, Clayton was wounded and captured, his vehicle destroyed. Two other LRDG men were also taken prisoner along with Clayton, and one had been killed in the initial burst. Another LRDG vehicle exploded, but its crew, led by the driver, a tough New Zealander named Moore, escaped and hid among the nearby rocks. The rest of the patrol fell back toward Sarra. For whatever reason, the Italians did not follow for the coup de grace, but themselves withdrew toward Koufra.19 That left Moore and his companions, some of them wounded, wandering around the desert, lost. They split up and tried following vehicle tracks, but these were soon covered by the usual blowing sand. They were without food or water for several days and were at the point of death when they were finally rescued. At that point Leclerc reckoned that the LRDG had done its duty and more. He decided to send the survivors back to Cairo, their job well done. Their return trip was as long and dangerous a journey as any, and when the two patrols came within sight of the Pyramids, they figured they had traveled 4,300 desert miles in the preceding 45 days. It was an epic accomplishment, even for the LRDG.20

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They had left Leclerc a valuable souvenir, however—one patrol car complete with crew, radio, and sophisticated navigational instruments. This would be at the heart of the reconnaissance group the French had organized for the actual attack on Koufra. And the information the LRDG had brought back from their ill-starred scouting trip toward the enemy oases was of great value, too. The French reconnaissance party that then set out from Faya was the usual nondescript group, typical of Leclerc’s desert expeditions. There were 60 Europeans and 30 natives in the force, transported in 15 more or less desert-worthy Bedford trucks, plus the LRDG navigation and radio vehicle. They arrived at Djebel Zurgh, just five miles south of Koufra on February 7, ready to scout out the enemy’s defenses. That night a party of 25 men on foot, under Captain de Geoffroy, slipped into the town of El Gioff, the administrative center of the oases. There were no sentries—at least none that were awake. They found what passed for a town hall and oases headquarters. It was empty, but they rifled the safe, then broke into the radio direction center and wrecked it. Meanwhile, Captain de Guillebon, Leclerc’s chief of staff, “tall, silent, blonde, efficient . . . one of the most able men in the oddly assorted Tchad force,”21 led another small raiding party onto the airfield. There was only one plane there, and that was set afire. At last the defenders awoke and the shooting started. Soon the night was criss-crossed with tracers, and green Very signals fired by the Italians shot into the air. This was their alert signal for the fort. By chance it was also the attack signal for the French, and in short order 15 Bedfords came charging onto the airfield, headlights blazing. Almost at once they hit a soft patch and many of them were stuck in the sand. To add to the confusion, the LRDG navigation vehicle hit a rock and overturned. Its crew escaped serious injury. By dawn the firing had died down, the Bedfords had been unstuck and the wreck of the LRDG truck burned to cinders. The order was given to withdraw, and the French column started back down the piste toward Tekro, harassed by Italian planes. It was just beyond Sarra on their return trip that the raiders found Moore and his companions, more dead than alive. By the time they rejoined the main force, they had suffered additional casualties, but the intelligence they brought back was of considerable value—including details of the mighty Italian fort of El Taj. Leclerc was now ready for the main effort. He had been preparing for months, flying back and forth between Faya-Largeau and Fort Lamy, conferring with his officers and always trying to beg, borrow, or steal sorely needed supplies and equipment for his troops. He was a familiar figure in the khaki shirt and serouals, the baggy Arab trousers, that was the uniform of choice in the torrid daytime climate of Chad. His usual aerial transportation was the old French Potez he had acquired when he

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had invaded Cameroun back in 1940. There were a few other planes available, too, several rickety old British Lysander monoplanes and some not-quite-so-ancient American twin engine Martins, all courtesy of the RAF. The planes had seen better days, but the French pilots, experienced in desert flying, were very good indeed and their skill made up, in large part, for the sad condition of their machines. Leclerc sent his operations officer, Colonel Hous, with a small reconnaissance party to check on the accuracy of the maps that traced the pistes toward Koufra, a difficult task not only because of the nature of the terrain but also because of the increased frequency of Italian patrols. Earlier maps had been checked by a sous-officier of the me´haristes who had recently traveled over the territory, and he had marked certain sections “terrain excellent.” The words should have been added “for a camel”—but not for vehicles, according to Colonel Ingold!22 Supply dumps had been set up at points along the pistes, the one at Ounianga containing 20,000 liters of gasoline. Leclerc remarked that he would have felt better had it been 150,000 liters, but beggars can’t be choosers. The French expedition started out toward Koufra in the early part of February 1941. There were 101 Frenchmen and 295 natives, Tibbou from the Tibesti region, nomad Touareg, and black tirailleurs from the local tribes. Their weapons included 26 fusils mitrailleuses, light machine guns similar to American Browning automatic rifles (BARs), four heavy machine guns, four 81 mm mortars, and—the pie`ce de re´sistance—the expedition’s artillery, a lone 75 mm mountain gun, carried on a truck. Transportation for men and mate´riel were the usual faithful old Bedfords. The Frenchmen’s uniforms were pretty casual and varied—sun helmets, kepis, bush hats, bush jackets, long pants, shorts, serouals, whatever they could find to replace their worn out uniforms. The nomads favored their comfortable native garments, loose-fitting robes, turbans, and the only sensible footwear for the desert, sandals. The Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad, more military as befitted regular troops, wore its worn khaki with pride. But Frenchmen or natives, all had one thought in mind—to close with the Italians. The advance guard under Captains de Geoffroy and de Rennespont left Sarra on February 17, 1941. The next day, nearer to Koufra, they ran into a reinforced enemy Auto-Sahariana company, and a fierce firefight ensued. These specialized Italian companies were originally planned in 1937 with the same desert reconnaissance mission as the LRDG, but appeared to have been better thought out, better armed, and better equipped than the British units—on paper. According to the regulations, an Auto-Sahariana unit not only contained armored cars and trucks but was supposed to have a meharisti platoon and an infantry platoon as well as an aviation section of three airplanes.23 In actuality they usually fell

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short of this ideal. What they did have, however, were those wonderful Breda 20 mm machine guns and the accompanying aircraft and now, near Koufra, the French were feeling their sting. What the Italians did not have, however, was the fighting spirit of their enemy. The French had that cold hatred of the Axis engendered by the occupation of their homeland. They particularly loathed the Italians, who had stabbed them in the back by declaring war against the French after they had already surrendered to the Germans. The Italians, now feeling victory slipping from their grasp and becoming disillusioned with their German allies, were beginning to realize that Mussolini’s belligerence was all bombast. They were losing what little appetite for combat they may have once had. But now, in defense of what they considered Italian territory, the 19th Auto-Sahariana Company seemed to be getting the better of the French. The first bursts of 20 mm tracers had set several of the Bedfords on fire. The French were badly outnumbered and were being attacked from three sides, but somehow they managed to turn the tables. In spite of continued air attack, they inflicted enough casualties on the Italians to make them back off, and the next day the Auto-Sahariana company had disappeared into the desert toward Tazerbo. The French patrol then entered Koufra itself. Captain de Geoffroy took prisoner the only Italian soldier who was not in the fort, a radio operator, while de Rennespont visited the airfield and destroyed the two planes there. Then the reconnaissance party started back to Ounianga where the main French body was assembling. On the way, they were strafed and bombed by Italian planes. Lieutenant Arnaud was badly wounded, and one tirailleur was killed and three wounded. A little further on, while passing the area of the Djebel Sherif battle, they came upon the bodies of an LRDG New Zealander and an Italian soldier. They buried them where they had fallen and continued on to report to Colonel Leclerc. The information they presented to the colonel was of great value, particularly on the condition of the tracks, but Leclerc had received considerable contradictory reports from other sources. For instance, this most recent reconnaissance had estimated the garrison of the Koufra fort of El Taj to be about one Libyan battalion of 580 men with six or eight 20 mm guns, but a previous report from higher headquarters had put the Italian manpower at 1,200. A later notice, also from above, announced that the Italians had abandoned the entire oasis! To offset the paucity of reliable intelligence, Leclerc ordered his tiny air force of antediluvian planes to bomb El Taj, with the hope that this might soften up the garrison, no matter what its size.24 Then he gave the order to his waiting ground troops, “En avant!” and the long columns started down the dusty piste toward Koufra.

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The track to the distant oasis was as full of difficulties as any desert journey. There were the usual blown tires, overheated engines, broken springs, and other mechanical troubles as well as the inevitable heat, sandstorms, and mirages that plague every Saharan traveler. But most of the vehicles made it down the piste and into the deserted streets and surrounding palm groves of El Gioff—and there the fun began. The fort, a huge square building with bastions at its four corners, was situated on rising ground that gave it uninterrupted observation and excellent fields of fire in every direction. When the French came within range, heavy fire erupted from its walls. This made things hot for the invaders, but eventually they managed to dig into position and return the fire with machine-gun and mortar. The siege of Koufra lasted for more than a week. On the French side it featured the usual dashing characters—Dio, Massu, de Geoffroy, de Rennespont, de Guillebon, and their tirailleurs, using tactics orchestrated by Leclerc himself. During daylight the area around the fort reverberated to the sound of rifle, machine-gun and mortar fire, and the occasional, but repeated, crash of artillery from the solitary French 75. At night the air was lit by criss-crossing tracers, lending an almost holiday aura to the scene. But it was no holiday for the sweating, bleeding men on the ground; casualties were not light on either side. Occasionally some bizarre incident broke the pattern of volley and countervolley, as when Commandant Dio found an Italian officer’s horse to carry the “commence firing” order to the French “artillery,” the lone 75 mm mountain gun that was to regularly shell the fort. To do this, he had to gallop through a wall of machine-gun fire in wild west movie fashion. He accomplished this feat with all the e´clat of the typical French officer demonstrating that theatrical nonchalance the French army seems to love. He came through unscathed, and the bombardment began.25 Dio later led a daring but unsuccessful hand grenade assault on the gates of the fort, and then was badly wounded in an Italian aerial attack. Perhaps the true hero of Koufra was the unassuming French artillery officer, Lieutenant Ceccaldi, who was in charge of the mountain gun. The accurate and continued fire of the 75 had so unnerved the defenders that it was considered a main cause of the fort’s eventual surrender. Day after day the shells crashed into the fort, hitting the officers’ mess, destroying the radio room, exploding in the courtyard and knocking down the Italian flag that had flown so proudly over the walls.26 The banner was never replaced. Leclerc knew that the Italians were weakening when they sent a native under a white flag, to request a cease-fire for a parley. Leclerc, always formal and correct, sent back word that only an officer could make such a request. Then, when an Italian officer arrived to suggest that the French cease firing on a section of the fort that was supposedly being used as a

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hospital, the colonel knew he had them. He refused the request and demanded unconditional surrender. The bombardment continued. The following morning at dawn, March 1, 1941, Captain Massu, sweeping the ramparts of the fort with his field glasses, was caught by the sight of a white flag fluttering from a makeshift flagstaff. He immediately reported this to Colonel Leclerc who, with Captain de Guillebon and two lieutenants, was admitted through the great gates of the Fortress of El Taj. Sure enough, it had surrendered. A formal surrender ceremony was arranged, with the Italians piling up their arms, and victor and vanquished saluting each other as the Italians evacuated the fort and were marched off as prisoners of war. Such niceties were a specialty of European military tradition, and Colonel Leclerc was not a man to ignore tradition, even in the remoteness of the Sahara. The morning after the surrender, the French troops assembled in the courtyard of El Taj for another ceremony, the formal flag-raising ritual. As the Free French tricolor with its distinctive Cross of Lorraine emblem rose to the top of the staff, Colonel Leclerc faced it and saluted. Then he intoned the pledge that was to become known throughout the French army as the Serment de Koufra. “We will not stop fighting until the French flag also flies over Metz and Strasbourg.”27 In time, the “Oath of Koufra” became a symbol of French resistance everywhere. The capture of the oasis of Koufra was a remarkable feat. Not only was it accomplished by a ragtag force with inferior equipment, but it occurred at the end of a long, exhausting trek over some of the worst desert terrain in the world. When the Italians, after their surrender, saw the material weakness of the enemy that had defeated them, they were amazed. They were particularly impressed that the French artillery consisted of a single cannon; they had been convinced that many more guns had been firing at them, perhaps an entire artillery battalion. Another unique accomplishment, particularly under the circumstances, was the aerial evacuation of the French wounded. The two old Lysanders were used for this job, directed by Medecin-Capitaine Mauric and the pilot, Lieutenant de Thiery, flying from the nearby airfield at El Zurgh. After the surrender, Doctor Mauric set up a field hospital in the fort where he treated both French and Italian wounded. Whereas later in the war Civil Affairs was a major function of every army, at this stage it was virtually unknown—except to the Free French. In the Koufra oasis and the surrounding territory Leclerc himself was the Civil Affairs Officer. In his years in Morocco, particularly in his service with the goums, he had learned how to treat the local natives, respecting their customs and religion and understanding their point of view. This now paid off in mutual goodwill and cooperation and often ended in increased local enlistment in the French service. It also provided

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valuable intelligence about the native attitude toward their Italian masters—by and large, they hated them. During the actual fighting at Koufra, the inhabitants of El Gioff, entire families with their animals, evacuated the village by day to work in the palm groves, which were patrolled by the French. Then, if possible, they returned to their homes at night when the firing at the fort had died down. They appeared to hold no rancor toward the invaders. But what were the French to do with their prize, now that they had it? Continual occupation would just tie up scarce troops. Leclerc decided that the fort was hardly worth holding; it had served its purpose as a notification to friend and enemy alike that the embryo Free French forces were capable of a serious military effort, and if they received additional recognition and equipment they could do much more. The British were impressed, and General de Gaulle was pleased. Leclerc believed that the Italians were too occupied on the coast to attempt to recover Koufra, so, leaving a skeleton force, he sent his troops on the long journey back to their posts in Chad. Eventually the LRDG used Koufra as an advance base, and it was garrisoned by the Britishled Egyptian Defense Force. Typically, Leclerc demanded that the fort continue to fly the Free French flag, and this was done. The Italians never returned.

NOTES 1. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 187–189. Horne presents a thumbnail sketch of Massu, including an insightful description, “the square-set jaw and the aggressive all-dominant nose, and the rugged features that altogether looked as if they had been hewn like a Swiss bear out of a block of wood.” That fits the young captain in the Tibesti just as much as it does the general in Algiers 20 years later. 2. John Connell, Wavell: Scholar and Soldier (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), 244. 3. W.B. Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group, new ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 22. 4. Raymond Dronne, Le Serment de Koufra (Paris: E´ditions du Temps, 1965), 59. 5. Shaw, 54. 6. Dronne, 59–60. 7. Henry Maule, Out of the Sand: The Epic Story of General Leclerc and the Fighting Free French (London: Oldham’s Books, 1966), 86. 8. Dronne, 61. 9. Maule, 86. 10. Shaw, 62. 11. The bicycle never reached Cairo; it was destroyed in the later engagement at Djebel Sherif.

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12. Dronne, 62. 13. Shaw, 67. 14. Edward Ward, Sahara Story (New York: Norton, 1962), 144. 15. Franc¸ois Ingold and Louis Mouillereaux, Leclerc de Hautecloque (Paris: E´ditions Litteraires, 1948), 13. 16. Ibid., 39. 17. Dronne, 65. 18. Maule, 89. 19. Ibid., 95. 20. Shaw, 74. 21. Ibid., 75. 22. Franc¸ois Ingold, L’E´pope´e Leclerc au Sahara 1940–1943 (Paris: E´ditions Berger-Levrault, 1945), 87. 23. Ibid., 53. 24. Dronne, 67. One Blenheim was lost in the raid, and its wreckage was not found until 1958 in a remote corner of the desert, with the mummified bodies of its crew inside. 25. Maule, 100. 26. Dronne, 85–86. 27. Ibid., 90.

Chapter 4

THE GHOST RAIDERS After Koufra, the next Free French plan was an ambitious one. It was to attack due north from the Tibesti into the Italian Fezzan with all the force Leclerc could muster. The idea was to smash across more than 1,000 miles of barren, almost waterless desert, sweeping the Italians before them, to hit the main Axis forces on their southern flank at the same time that the British Eighth Army was attacking from the east. Of course this would require the most precise timing and the utmost coordination with the British. Then Leclerc’s people would put themselves under Eighth Army command and join the British in pushing the Germans and Italians westward into Tunisia and eventually to defeat. It was a big order, and at the time it seemed to many to be only an impossible dream. Not only did the French need to replenish their supplies, but an enormous amount of work had to be done on their vehicles and weapons, to say nothing of further recruiting and training. Besides that, the arrival of German troops in North Africa had reversed the advance of the British along the North African coast, and British empire troops had been drained away to fight in Greece,1 with dire results in Africa. It would be a long while before the British could fight their way to Tripoli where Leclerc thought it would be possible for the Free French now in Chad to join them. In the meantime, the French troops could train at Faya-Largeau and other posts in the Tibesti to improve their desert warfare techniques, while their senior officers could reflect on their strengths and weaknesses at their Fort Lamy headquarters. Their main vulnerability, as it had al-

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ways been, was in their equipment. They had gained great confidence from the success of their desert raids, particularly at Koufra, but their weapons left much to be desired. The prewar French arms, which was all they had, were poorly adapted to desert conditions. The model 1924– 1929 auto-mitrailleuse, the basic light machine gun, habitually jammed, the heavy Hotchkiss machine guns were old and worn, and much of the ammunition of the lots of 1936–1938 was defective. The French were not bashful about using captured Italian arms, particularly the Breda 20 mm machine gun that the LRDG had found so useful. And they still had the old 75 mm mountain gun that was so effective at Koufra, and the Bofors that had blown the roof off the hangar at Mourzouk. Their firepower had recently been increased, however, by the addition of a 25-pounder howitzer, a very welcome gift from the British.2 The men were still experimenting with training methods, practicing in vehicles (when the gasoline situation allowed) and on foot. One of the greatest handicaps to vehicular movement was, as always, the treachery of the desert terrain. Tracks that looked perfectly navigable often proved to be otherwise. A vehicle proceeding over a seemingly solid stretch of piste would suddenly find itself hub deep in sand and immobile. There is a French word for this, all too often used by the desert soldiers— ensable. It means “covered by sand,” and it occurred countless times in every journey. When it did, everyone in the truck had to man the shovels and push. Nor could the crews of other vehicles often dare to stop and help, for that would risk an ensable´ment for them, too. Even the most careful planning and reconnaissance could seldom avoid these contretemps. Sometimes the longer, more traveled way would prove quicker than that which seemed shorter on the map, simply because of the terrain. Moreover, Saharan maps were notoriously inaccurate, and much of the great desert was completely uncharted, particularly in the Tibesti region. This pause for training proved invaluable to Leclerc’s people, but there was a limit to it. Without combat, fighting men become stale. Leclerc, now promoted to general, reasoned that the longer the Italian posts in the Fezzan were left alone, the stronger they could become. As the weeks stretched into months, it became obvious that the British had their hands full with Rommel, and the day that Leclerc would march across the desert and join Montgomery in the final African battles was still far off. But something had to be done now. It was decided to shake up the Italians with a series of heavy raids. These would be fast, hard-hitting, get-in-and-get-out affairs, and would give the new men experience and sharpen up the veterans. It would also test new tactics and prepare for the push to the coast.3 The targets would be the Italian posts in the Fezzan at Gatroun, Tedje´re´, Ouigh el Kebir, Brack, Sebha, and whatever other targets of opportunity could be found.

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Ensable´e! Leclerc’s multicultured Free French soldiery struggle to free their rattletrap combat car from the soft sand in which it’s stuck—a frequent occurrence in any desert journey. To help solve the problem, steel channels (or woven mats) for traction under the wheels were standard equipment in most Saharan vehicles. .

Most of these objectives were similar—small forts set amid palm groves and native villages, manned for the most part by Libyan soldiers commanded by Italian officers and NCOs. There were so many of them that it might seem that the desert was becoming a bit overpopulated. It must be remembered, however, that these operations were to be carried out over an area almost as large as France itself! The raiding party was composed of some 500 men in 100 vehicles, and was divided into sections. The first four sections, designated A, B, C, and D in the LRDG manner, consisted of 10 combat vehicles each, Chevrolet or Ford light pickup trucks fitted out for desert service, plus five Bedfords each for rations, ammunition, gasoline, and emergency water.4 Obviously, each patrol would be very much on its own, out in the bled without supervision from above, and each commander would have to exercise a very high degree of initiative. As usual, Leclerc had chosen his leaders well. He had picked three seasoned campaigners; “A” Patrol was commanded by Captain de Geoffroy, “B” and “C” by Captain de Guillebon, and “D” by Captain Massu.

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In addition, there was a powerful “attack group” composed of the Groupe Nomade de Borkou, without their camels, but now equipped similarly to the other patrols. It was also in charge of the raiding party’s big gun, the 25-pounder howitzer. The leader chosen for the attack group? That other beau sabreur, the former me´hariste, Commandant Dio. And yet another favorite to get his chance to command in the field was Leclerc’s veteran operations officer, Commandant Hous, now leading De´tachement Hous, two platoons of tirailleurs in 12 combat vehicles, plus the usual complement of Bedford trucks for supplies. The rest of the raiding party was made up of a headquarters company and Captain Sarazac’s Groupe Nomade du Tibesti, 120 desert warriors on camels. They were divided into two platoons, one at the disposition of Dio to patrol in the Tedje´re´ region, the other to patrol around the French advance base near Uigh el Kebir. The raiders also had their own air force—four Lysanders, four Martin bombers, two Potez ambulance planes, and a Potez 540.5 The airmen had already performed valuable service with their aerial photography, a method of mapping the proposed routes of the expedition without arousing enemy suspicion of the coming attacks. The first section of the raiding party started out from Chad in early February—“A” Patrol led by Captain de Geoffroy. He had the furthest to travel initially, taking his column of combat vehicles and cargo trucks over the Tibesti Mountains and through the lofty Korizo Pass, across the Libyan border and into the Fezzan. His primary goal was the furthest north of any of the raiders, the crossroads area of Brack, Hon, and Sebha, where the main pistes branch off toward Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria. He was supposed to arrive there on February 18, but that was a most optimistic estimate. There were more than the usual sandstorms, breakdowns, and faulty maps to slow him down, so de Geoffroy’s convoy didn’t reach its destination until March 1. However, his was not the only detachment to be held up; they all were. The main cause of the delay could be found near the starting point, at the wells of Yedri, the initial watering point for the entire expedition. Apparently the sudden drain on the facilities caused problems, and the flow was much slower than expected. Filling up the jerry cans (and the vehicles) took infinitely longer than usual, one of the many unexpected circumstances that comes with desert operations. And in the Sahara, water is everything. The only section that arrived at its first objective on time was De´tachment Hous.6 Commandant Hous and the first platoon of his column, under Lieutenant Dubot, rolled up to within 500 yards of the Italian fort at the oasis of El Gatroun the morning of February 28. He had been lucky; his approach march had not been observed. Although they were right in the middle of the palm grove, there was no one around, not a soul.

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Hous surveyed the walls of the fort through his binoculars but could see no sentinel. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. At that moment an Italian civilian wandered by, all unsuspecting. Apparently it never occurred to him that this detachment of dusty desert soldiers could be anything but fellow Italians and their native troops, perhaps a patrol from another post. He learned otherwise only when the Frenchmen grabbed him. The Italian turned out to be the secretary of the post. He was utterly astonished to find himself in the hands of the enemy, but he was not unwilling to talk. However, he couldn’t shed much light on the mystery of the empty oasis. And, he insisted, there was always a permanent sentry on the highest part of the fort. Once again Lieutenant Dubot carefully examined the fort through his field glasses, but could see no one. Just then a native, a local peasant, wandered out of the post and walked right into Hous and his men—and the mystery was solved. According to their captor, much of the population of the little town, except those who were working in outlying palm groves, were inside the fort. It seems that a camel caravan of dates and other commodities had come to town and was being unloaded in the interior courtyard. The arrival of a caravan was a special occasion in this isolated outpost for both the soldiers (including the missing sentry) and the townspeople. They were all inside helping to unload, gossiping with the caravan people and catching up on the local news. It immediately occurred to Hous that now was the time to strike, when the enemy was otherwise occupied. He picked some 10 men of Dubot’s platoon and ordered them to advance on the post—but to do it casually, so as not to be noticed. So it was that a handful of French soldiers, some of them natives in native dress and some of them Frenchmen in partial native dress, could be seen (if anyone bothered to look) sauntering toward the fort at El Gatroun at 4:00 on an overcast afternoon in February. By great good fortune (for the Frenchmen) it happened that every day at this time the post’s goat herd that had been grazing in the outer reaches of the oasis was brought back to the fort, and the barbed-wire barricade at the entrance was displaced to let the animals and their herdsman in. Corporal Garcia, wrapped in his djellaba and looking like a native, slipped in with them. Nobody noticed him. In the courtyard of the fort everyone was unloading camels or otherwise busying themselves, confident that there was not an enemy within 150 miles. With his submachine gun under his robes, Garcia discovered the office of the post. He entered to find an Italian officer at his desk counting out the money to pay the caravan merchants. When he heard Garcia enter, he didn’t even bother to look up. Engrossed in his work, he simply growled “Imshi,” get out! His head came up fast, however, and so did his hands, when he felt Garcia’s gun barrel pressed against him.7

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Similar scenes were being played out in other parts of the fort as more Frenchmen gained entrance. Taken completely by surprise, most Italians and their askaris, as they called their native troops, surrendered without a fight. In a few instances the French had to open fire, but by the time Hous and the rest of his men arrived on the scene, the post of Gatroun was taken, and three Italians and 12 askaris were prisoners of war. In addition to their individual arms, the booty included a machine gun, some rations—which the raiders could certainly use—and 45 camels, which they certainly could not. Any other troops who might have been in the area had simply melted away, and the French had no time to chase after them. It was all over so fast that the Italians were unable to radio an alert to the other posts, and the raiders captured not only the radio but the code books and aircraft recognition panels as well. The next morning at the airfield, which Lieutenant Dubot’s men were hurriedly wrecking, a twin-engined Ghibli of the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian Air Force, came in to land. But before his wheels touched the ground, the pilot apparently became suspicious and pulled up. In an attempted ruse, the Frenchmen laid out the captured signal panels to form the code for the words, WE NEED AMMUNITION. But it was no use. The Italian airman was not fooled. He circled around the airfield a few times and then came in with machine guns blazing. The Frenchmen and their vehicles were safely hidden away among the palms and couldn’t be seen—except for two pickups ensable, stuck in the sand and totally exposed. The Ghibli made short work of them with machine guns and bombs, and then flew back toward the north. The raiders knew that it was time to move on before the inevitable Italian patrols arrived. As darkness fell, they set fire to the post and set out over the desert. Hous and his detachment regrouped some 20 miles from Gatroun, well camouflaged in a palm grove, to await further orders. Now the other raider detachments were swinging into action. As we have seen, de Geoffroy and “A” Patrol had reached their ambush position in the vicinity of the Hon-Sebha-Brack crossroads, camouflaged their vehicles, and settled down to wait. Toward midnight they heard the noise of engines in the quiet desert air. After a long wait, two big trucks came rattling down the track from Hon, headlights full on. When they came near, the Frenchmen pulled them over. To find the enemy so deep into what was thought to be a thoroughly secure rear area was a shock to the Italians, and they gave up without a fight. One truck was a Fiat five tonner carrying 5,000 litres of aviation gasoline, the other held 32 crates of 50 kilo bombs. Along with the four Italian prisoners, it was a very welcome haul. The trucks were driven off to a central point away from the track. The gasoline truck, which was in excellent condition,

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became part of “A” Patrol, the other was destroyed. The patrol stayed at its ambush position and waited for more victims. A few days before, far to the south, Commandant Dio’s Groupe d’Attaque found themselves facing a huge wall of sand, the infamous ramla that blocked the way to their assigned goal of Tedje´re´. Dio had skirted Uigh el Kebir in late morning of February 28 and soon ran into these steep sand dunes that threatened his mission. He ordered his vehicles to try to climb the mountain of sand by charging at it full speed (an approved method in certain circumstances), but the shifting dunes would not hold and the trucks slid back, until many of them were ensable´ed. Digging didn’t help, and using the metal channels in the conventional way proved useless. Finally a method was worked out to place the channels under all four wheels in a continuous line, almost like railroad tracks, and the convoy slowly, torturously, made it to the crest of the dunes. Then, once at the top, they had to just as carefully let themselves down the other side. It took many hours, but at last the notorious ramla that isolated Tedje´re´ was conquered. It was nightfall by the time Dio’s column reassembled on the other side of the dunes, and under a bright moon moved as cautiously and as silently as possible, without lights, across the desert toward Tedje´re´. But in spite of every caution, in the silence of the desert night the column’s engines could be heard. As the raiders approached closer to the enemy, a green Very light arched into the sky from the walls of the fort, the Italian alert signal. Dio knew then that any hope of surprise was lost. The next morning, March 1, dawned cold and foggy with a ghibli blowing, and Dio immediately took advantage of the poor visibility to move his vehicles to a less exposed position several kilometers from the fort. Care was taken to wipe out the tracks of this move, and a single vehicle was dispatched to make false tracks leading to another palm grove many kilometers to the north. By 11:00 the sandstorm had died down, the fog had lifted, and an Italian Savoia was circling the area. Apparently Dio’s ruse had worked, because, seen through field glasses, the occupants of the post seemed undisturbed, quietly going about their normal duties. The fake tracks reported by the Savoia had fooled them. They believed that the French had left the area and were probably now far away. Satisfied that all was well, the Savoia flew off. Now Dio’s howitzer was brought into position with Lieutenant Ceccaldi, the artillerist of Koufra, once again in charge. This time the weapon was a 25-pounder, the Royal Artillery version of 105 mm, considerably more powerful than the 75 mm mountain gun the French had at Koufra. Ceccaldi gave the order, and the howitzer opened up. Although ammunition was limited, the steady fire of the howitzer was devastating, as shell after shell crashed into the post at regular intervals. The garrison, the Meharisti della Sciati, broke out of the fort with their

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camels, while Dio’s nomads of the GNB attacked on foot. A lively firefight followed, but in the end the combination of shell fire and infantry assault was too much for the Italian forces. The meharisti broke and fled, abandoning their camels, their dead, and their wounded. Captain Meneghetti, the post commander, his arm shattered by the shell fire, was captured in the village, along with the medical officer. French losses were light, one dead and six wounded. A bullet had grazed Dio’s kepi and a burst had shattered the pistol grip of SergentChef Theuillez’s auto-mitrailleuse. Only two Italian machine guns and four submachine guns were taken, but the captured rations were much appreciated, gourmet fare compared to the regular French diet of rice, dried foods, and dates. The next day a section of the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti arrived on patrol just as an Italian plane flew overhead looking for targets, but the me´haristes got themselves and their camels under cover before any damage could be done. Then, at midday, a Bedford truck arrived, and out of it leaped General Leclerc himself. He was incensed to find that the French flag had not yet been raised, and he quickly led Theuillez and some tirailleurs into the gutted, bloodstained interior of the fort to look around for themselves. Then the troops were assembled and the usual flagraising ceremony performed. Tedje´re´ was now officially French—at least for the time being. March 2 found de Geoffroy still in ambush at the crossroads, awaiting another Italian convoy to pounce upon. But the one he now saw approaching in the distance was different, for it was comprised of no less than a dozen trucks. He ordered the attack, but as Lieutenant d’Alaurent started out, an Italian plane, a Ghibli, came upon the scene and warned the convoy of the ambush. At the same time Geoffroy saw several Sahariana combat cars approaching, powerful and dangerous desert fighting vehicles, the best the Italians had. Others soon came into view until the Frenchman could count at least 20. When another Italian airplane arrived, he knew he was in trouble. He was being attacked by at least a full company of Sahariana, and there were probably more on the way. The French patrol was no match for this powerful force, and de Geoffroy ordered a retreat. The column headed south with the Italians in pursuit, but the Frenchman soon saw that he was being herded toward a dangerous ramla and could be either stuck in it or pinned against it. He turned the patrol west and then north, with the Sahariana still following, but cautiously and at a respectful distance. Shots were exchanged, and the lead Italian vehicle was hit and came to a halt. Then, while crossing a dry stream bed, a French vehicle was ensabled and struck by 20 mm fire. It had to be abandoned, but its passengers and armament were saved. (Leclerc’s army, being in the condi-

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tion it was, probably considered the salvage of the armament of the highest priority.) The running fight continued for another 20 miles until “A” Patrol finally lost its pursuers. De Geoffroy, still full of fight, turned south again and headed for the Italian post at Ouaou el Kebir. He arrived there after nightfall. The post appeared deserted, and he decided to make a personal reconnaissance. Leaving the vehicles, and accompanied by a native soldier, he approached the fort on foot. The two intruders crawled through the wire barrier to find the defenders without sentries and apparently asleep. This was too good an opportunity to miss. De Geoffroy sent his companion back to bring up the patrol for an attack. Then the raiders’ luck ran out. As they approached the post, a tirailleur stumbled in the dark and discharged his rifle. The shot awoke the garrison and soon a heavy fire was pouring from the fort. Surprise lost, de Geoffroy called off the attack. Was he right to do so? Probably, because his men were undoubtedly tired from their previous long journeys, and another hard fight may have been too much. A quick surprise attack could possibly have been successful, but a long, drawn-out siege was not a promising prospect. The problem of dwindling ammunition may also have been a factor. At any rate, the Frenchman was lucky to get his men back to their vehicles and lead the column out into the desert. At least he had shaken the garrison up a bit. A few days before, Captain de Guillebon’s “B” and “C” Patrols had arrived, late in the afternoon, in sight of their assigned goal, the oasis post of T’messa. De Guillebon decided to attack at once. He was unaware that a detached platoon of that same company, the Meharisti della Sciata that Dio had blown away at Tedje´re´, was on patrol with their camels and was now passing through T’Messa. The Frenchmen may have been surprised, but the meharisti were much more so when they were suddenly attacked with rifle, machine gun, and grenade. They simply ran away into the desert. Apparently the post had no other defenders, for the raiders walked into the office without opposition, rifled the files, and set everything on fire. Then they returned to their vehicles and drove off, bound for their next objective. The flames from T’Messa could be seen in the desert all night long. De Guillebon led his column toward Ouaou el Kebir unaware of de Geoffroy’s unsuccessful attempt there two nights before. His chances of success were better; his men were fresh and feeling good after their easy victory at T’Messa, and they had two 81 mm mortars, the type that had proven so successful in previous desert raids. The arrival of de Guillebon at Ouaou el Kebir stirred an immediate firefight. The defenders were ready. They fought back savagely, but the French heavy mortars appeared to be causing enormous damage. The destruction prompted a deserter from the fort to make his way into

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the French lines with an offer to try to negotiate a surrender. The French agreed, but the Italians refused to capitulate and the fight continued. So did the mortar bombardment, and it was not long before the white flag was seen waving over the fort’s bullet-pocked walls. The garrison of Ouaou el Kebir had surrendered. After the usual pillage of the post, de Guillebon and his two patrols moved north across the desert to Zuila. Parking their vehicles under cover, they approached the post on foot, only to be met by a wall of fire. Night had fallen, but there was a full moon and the desert was bright as day. The attackers were all too visible, and the fire from the fort was deadly. Sergeant Mahamet, in the lead of his detachment, was killed. Lieutenant Villaume, trying to recover Mahamet’s body, was also hit and mortally wounded. It was soon obvious that the French were outgunned and had a very good chance of being slaughtered, so de Guillebon gave the order to retire. Fortunately, there were periods when clouds covered the sky and the raiders were able to get back into their vehicles under a shield of darkness and disappear into the desert. While all this was happening, Captain Massu and “D” Patrol was making the long march from Zouara through a particularly difficult ramla to Oum el Araneb. On March 1 they attacked the oasis with their usual e´lan. But like de Guillebon at Zuila, they had run into a hornet’s nest. Lieutenant Martin’s platoon had closed in to within 200 meters of the post when the Italians opened up with the heaviest fire yet. Captain Bergeron was killed, and a French NCO and two tirailleurs were wounded. Then three Italian planes showed up, two Savoias and a Ghibli, bombing and strafing. Massu decided to leave, and when darkness fell, the French pulled out. On March 2 Massu’s people spent the day patrolling in the vicinity of Zuila, reporting on enemy movements and gathering information that would be useful in the eventual long-planned advance to Tripoli. As evening fell, they moved back toward Oum el Araneb, intending to bivouac in the relative security of a gara that Massu had seen on the way toward Zuila. They never reached the gara. As they approached it, they were greeted by a sheet of heavy fire—they had run into the Sahariana company from Oum el Araneb with its heavy-duty vehicles and powerful weapons. One French vehicle was hit and burst into flames. Aspirant Levy and Private Verot were wounded and taken prisoner. Once again the French were outgunned by a larger, more powerful force, and Massu knew it. He ordered a retreat and headed for Gatroun, now strongly occupied by French troops. The Italians did not pursue. Arriving at Gatroun on March 3, Massu, now directly under command of General Leclerc, was ordered to form a more powerful attack force built around two platoons of the 1st Compagnie de De´couverte et Combat,

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with the heaviest weapons that could be assembled. The purpose was to return to Oum el Araneb and challenge the Sahariana that were headquartered there. That phase of the mission turned out to be a failure. March 5 found Massu with his new, more powerful patrol pounding on the bulletsplattered walls of Oum el Araneb, but in vain. The Italians refused to sally out and fight. The Frenchman knew that Italian planes would be on the way soon, so it was once again time to retire from this frustrating battlement. On Massu’s reluctant order, “D” Patrol moved out. In fact, General Leclerc knew that it was time to bring the entire operation to a close, and all the Free French raiders in the Fezzan were ordered home. The long trek back to the Tibesti started, with Captain Massu’s troops providing the rear guard. Their principal mission was to protect the very vulnerable camel-mounted nomads of the GNT from the expected attacks by heavily armed motorized Italian units. Actually, the Italians stayed within their fortified compounds, and only the Regia Aeronautica harassed the retiring columns. Altogether, nine vehicles were hit by bombs and strafing, and there were some casualties, including the deaths of Marechal des Logis (cavalry sergeant) Debeugny and four tirailleurs. By March 14 all the raiding units were back in Zouar.8 The raiders had accomplished their mission. In spite of every handicap—dilapidated vehicles, worn and obsolete weapons, enormous problems of supply and transport—the Free French had made their presence felt, even in the most far-off reaches of the greatest desert in the world. And for the first time the fledgling Free French air force, puny as it was, had been able to flex its muscle by providing aerial photographs of enemy installations and unknown pistes to guide the ground forces, as well as by bombing Mourzouk and Oum el Araneb. An inspiring message was sent out over Free French radio during the height of the raids: Tedje´re´ is taken, the garrison is in flight. Gatroun, 70 kilometers to the northeast, is on fire, Oum el Araneb, 200 kilometers to the north, has been attacked, T’messa, 240 kilometers to the northeast is completely destroyed. At the crossroads at Brock, 500 kilometers north of Tedje´re´, Captain Geoffroy’s patrol is rampaging in the night, ready to assault an enemy convoy.

This was heady stuff, and at the conclusion of the raids the morale of Leclerc’s army was at a high point. Leclerc himself had been promoted to General of Brigade some time before, but had not been able to locate the silver stars of that rank anywhere in that part of Africa. The raids solved that particular problem: In the Italian army two silver stars denoted the rank of lieutenant, and there was more than one lieutenant among the POWs.9

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No doubt about it, the raids had penetrated deeply into the Fezzan and thrown the Italians into disarray. But more than that, they had provided unparalleled training in desert warfare for the soldiers of Leclerc’s army. In the not-too-distant future they would need that know-how more than ever. NOTES 1. John Connell, Wavell: Scholar and Soldier (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1965), 277. 2. Raymond Dronne, Le Serment de Kufra (Paris: E´ditions du Temps, 1965), 94. 3. Ibid., 101. 4. Franc¸ois Ingold, L’E´pope´e Leclerc au Sahara (Paris: E´ditions Berger-Levrault, 1945), 128–132. 5. Jean-Noel Vincent, Les Forces Franc¸aises dans la Lutte Contre l’Axe en Africa 1940–1943, 2 vols. (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre, 1983), 1– 277. 6. Dronne, 105. 7. Ibid., 106. 8. Jacques Massu, Sept Ans avec Leclerc (Paris: Plon, 1974), 53–58. 9. Ibid., 59.

Chapter 5

ON TO TUNIS Once again for Leclerc’s people, there was a lull in combat, if not in activity. Leclerc himself had been promoted to command of all Free French troops in central Africa, and his headquarters had been transferred from Fort Lamy to Brazzaville in the Congo. He was replaced by Colonel Franc¸ois Joseph Jean Ingold, a thoroughly experienced officer and a man with all the qualities necessary in a desert soldier. Not that Leclerc had disappeared from the scene in Chad. His frequent inspection trips kept the troops on their toes but were never resented, for the general had the sure touch of the born leader. He could encourage without nagging, and he understood the problems of his officers. This was particularly true of his relations with Colonel Ingold, for he had been there himself and thoroughly understood the frustrations of fighting a shoestring war in the worst desert in the world. The advent of spring brought new problems to the troops in Chad. One of these was the weather, always dangerous in the Sahara, but seemingly worse in 1942. The days were hotter than ever, the nights were colder, and the lines for sick call became longer. There was an increase in intestinal illnesses and respiratory ailments, and minor cuts became infected quickly. Even insect bites were potentially serious. There seemed to be much less resistance to the effects of snakebite, not infrequent in the viper infested desert. And the sick needed more of the precious water, at least 10 liters a day normally, up to 20 liters in special cases.1 One bright spot in this darkening picture was the increased desertion of Vichyite soldiers into Free French territory, some of them traveling

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amazing distances to achieve their goal. Lieutenant Orel came to Chad from Niger by camel, crossing the vast stony reg of the dreaded Tenere´ by way of Bilma; in another case three sous-officiers traveled for 12 days, also by camel, to throw in their lot with the Free French. Perhaps the record distance was accomplished by Lieutenant Corlu, commanding officer of the Groupe Nomade d’Agades, who journeyed 700 desert kilometers by camel through Niger, circumventing Vichy posts and dodging Vichy patrols until he reached Chad. Though these welcome additions to their forces lent heart to the Free French, there were simply not enough of them to make up for the increased Italian patrol activity along the border that suggested the possibility of an Axis invasion of Chad. This caused the French command to increase the pace of its defense buildup in the northern part of the country. To Leclerc and Ingold “defense” meant an active defense, which in turn meant an even greater strengthening of the patrol units in the area. The principal forces in this category were the two DC (De´couvre et Combat) companies that had proven so useful in the previous raids. These heavily armed super patrols now numbered a total of 200 Europeans and 300 Africans in 95 vehicles. They were based at Faya-Largeau where their training continued. A smaller but nonetheless effective force was the GNB, the Groupe Nomade de Borkou, the former camel corps unit now completely motorized and thoroughly seasoned by their participation in the recent raids. They were stationed at Kindimi, 80 kilometers west of Faya in their home territory of Borkou. This was rugged country, background for a string of villages that served as watering points between rocky plateaus to the north and endless dunes to the south. There were 35 Europeans in the Borkou group. Among the officers and NCOs were some old me´haristes who knew the desert, but most were young escapists from German-dominated France who made up in hatred of the enemy for what they lacked in fighting experience. The 200 or so natives who were the backbone of the GNB were mostly veteran me´haristes, tough, experienced, and used to the hard desert life. They had also become used to their new mounts, 25 Ford pickup trucks refitted for desert duty. Most of the actual driving, however, was done by a different breed of soldier, volunteers from Cameroun. These men were very proud of being drivers and seemed to have a special talent for it. There was no love lost between the forest-dwelling animists from Cameroun and the Chadian me´haristes who were Moslems, but they managed to bury their differences “for the good of the service.” There were also a handful of Fezzani goumiers, irregulars from the border country, who had proven their usefulness as guides and would continue to do so in future operations. The armament of the GNB as they prepared for the next operation was

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varied, and some of it was outdated, but all of it was useful. The unit was divided into three sections of fusiliers-voltigeurs (light infantry) with their personal weapons, plus five of the cranky FM 24–29 light machine guns, now rechambered and with new ammunition to fit (a combination considered experimental); four Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, archaic but still deadly; one British Boye antitank gun; two Brandt 81 mm mortars; one 13 mm Hotchkiss twin-barrel antiaircraft gun mounted on a pickup; and two Italian 47 mm cannon with antitank and antipersonnel ammunition. Further to the south, other units were being formed and in training. Chief among these were the four companies of the 1
Bataillon de March, (First Provisional Battalion), with a total of some 700 Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad, under command of Lieutenant Colonel Delange. To support these troops, more artillery was coming into line, and there was a considerable reserve of trucks ready to move supplies and men when needed. There were also the camel corps units, the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti (GNT) and the Groupe Nomade de l’Ennedi (GNE), still riding their evercomplaining but indispensable mounts. There were 200 me´haristes in each group, the toughest of desert soldiers. In addition, there were groups of Libyan irregulars, whose knowledge of the country and desert skills were equalled only by their fierce desire for revenge against the Italian colonizers whose treatment of them over the years had been less than kind. Leclerc’s miniature air force, recently reorganized as the Bretagne Squadron, now boasted five Blenheim bombers, three Martin bombers, five Lysanders, two Lockheeds, one Potez 540, and one Beechcraft.2 This unit did more than just train during the summer and fall of 1942; they were busy over the Fezzan, keeping track of Italian measures to improve their defenses, taking photos and often bombing and strafing targets of opportunity. For the Leclerc forces it was now a waiting game. The high command at Brazzaville had conferred with the British and decided that when the forces on the coast advanced as far as El Agheila, Leclerc would make his move toward Tripoli. In October, Montgomery attacked at El Alamein, and the slow withdrawal of the Axis forces began. Many of the French troops in Chad were now concentrated at Zoure´, about 80 kilometers west of Zouar where, although the terrain was difficult, there was enough water for a large force. On December 3, Leclerc issued some preliminary general orders to the advance guard preparing for the trek north: Don’t attack minor enemy positions as long as they don’t bar the route. Bypass them.

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Do attack key positions like Oum el Araneb, where the French knew that mobile troops (Sahariana) were quartered. Try to lure them out to fight—and destroy them. Install successive bases in captured territory, so the main forces can advance with security. Find enemy air bases as soon as possible and capture them. Unsettle Italian forces by attacking from unexpected directions. Make maximum use of the air force for reconnaissance and bombing of their main air bases, such as that at Sebha.3

On that same date, the preparatory order for the entire operation was issued to Colonel Ingold—in essence: Drive the Italians out of the Fezzan! Also on December 3, a patrol of the LRDG made up almost entirely of Rhodesians arrived to join the French troops. Its mission was to act in a liaison role with Montgomery’s army when the contact was finally made. All this activity built up the tension, as the advance guard made its final preparations for the big move. The leading element of the drive into the Fezzan was divided into four sections, echeloned one behind the other so that there would be several hours’ traveling time between them. The first section would be Groupement Dio; the second, the GNB; the third, half of the motorized 12th Company of tirailleurs, with artillery and a train de combat (supply column); and the fourth, the other half of the 12th Company, similarly organized. On December 16, Leclerc arrived to inspect the troops in the Zouar area. He was in an obviously cheerful mood, a portent of big things happening soon. Indeed they were, for he announced that Jour J, the French equivalent of D Day, was to be the very next morning. The advance guard was ready. Before dawn, December 17, Groupement D, Lieutenant Colonel Dio’s assault force, started out toward Uigh el Kebir, its first objective. Dio’s orders were to take the area as quickly as possible, prevent the garrison from alerting other posts, and establish an advance supply base to service the French units that followed. The first day out of Zoure´ was a tough one. The terrain was horrible. There was ensablement after ensablement, and some units didn’t travel more than five miles before nightfall. Then things improved. For a while the track was reg, the hard, gravelly surface that enabled the vehicles to make good time. The column traveled in radio silence, and now as it drew nearer to the Libyan border, in darkness as well. The fear was of Italian planes, and the French moved only at night, hiding among the rocks and sparse vegetation and the occasional palm grove by day. Eventually they reached the notorious Korizo Pass, where Lieutenant Christol had gone ahead two days before to set up an advance base for

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water and gasoline. The pass had a bad reputation because of the tricky terrain. It was a narrow, stony piste running between high walls of rock, with a difficult ramla at the northern end, but the Dio column had little trouble with it. On December 21, the French convoy rolled into Italian territory. Now the fear of Italian planes became even more acute, and measures to avoid detection had become that much more important. Because they were now traveling exclusively by night, navigation was more difficult; the very efficient British sun compass was useless without the sun, and in these circumstances the French had to rely on the stars, a not always easy or accurate method. When the stars were invisible, the Fezzani goumiers with the column could sometimes be relied upon as guides. And then there were times when navigation came down to little more than a hunch.4 But one way or another, on December 22 they reached their first objective. Uigh el Kebir was not a definite place or town, but rather an area where a caravan might stop for the water of its wells. It was a good place for an advance base for the entire French expedition. It had one big disadvantage, however. It was dominated by a mountain called the Domaze, known to be the site of an Italian observation post. This would have to be taken before Uigh el Kebir became useful to the French—and taken quickly, before it could spread the alarm. The most important element of the attack on Domaze was surprise. So far, Dio had been lucky. Traveling at night, without lights, his group was unseen, and the Italians hadn’t a clue that the enemy was anywhere other than hundreds of miles away, well across the border in Chad.5 The French plan was for Dio and the two DC patrols to strike the Domaze from the north while the GNB attacked from the south. The column split up, and now the troopers of the GNB were well on their way to their goal on the mountain—in complete darkness. Suddenly, lights flashed across the desert ahead of them. An Italian patrol? The French column hurriedly deployed into the surrounding territory and waited. The lights grew nearer, and presently a motorized column came into view, headlights blazing. But it wasn’t the enemy. It was Colonel Ingold with his chief of staff and the British LRDG patrol! The French of the attacking forces were furious. There was no hope of surprise now, and the word must have gone out to the Italians throughout the Fezzan that the French were attacking. What had happened? Obviously there was a mixup in orders, poor liaison between different elements of this very difficult operation and, in general, what was known in the American army as a “snafu.” No matter. There could be no continuing recrimination; the attitude of all the participants was, eventually, “Forget it—let’s get on with the war.” On December 22, the French took possession of the Uigh el Kebir area,

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chasing the Italians off the Domaze. The construction of an advance base was begun immediately. Radio interception revealed that the Italians had, indeed, now been alerted to the French presence. As if to verify the message, Italian planes were over the area from the first day, bombing and strafing. General Leclerc arrived on December 23 to hear reports and give orders. He repeated his previous instructions to reconnoiter and perhaps throw a few shells at Gatroun, but not to waste time investing it, but then go on to Oum el Araneb and give that more important outpost the full treatment. He then left for pressing duties at Zouar. Air raids at Uigh el Kebir were particularly bad on Christmas Day, and to make matters worse, the Bofors was out of action with a missing part. The part was eventually replaced, and the additional 40 mm antiaircraft fire finally gave some relief from the Italians’ constant aerial attention. Dio spent December 24 and 25 gassing and watering at Uigh el Kebir for the next stage of his attack. He would have with him two DC platoons, the GNB with its artillery, half of the 12th company of the RTST, leaving the other half at Uigh el Kebir as advance base guard. Ingold and his command post, and the LRDG patrol, were also a part of the attacking team. Just as the column was about to depart, two Savoias showed up to bomb and machine-gun. Luckily the bombs hit nothing, but fell in between the French vehicles, and their effect was smothered in the soft sand. Three Lysanders came to the rescue, much slower and older than the Savoias, but the Italians didn’t realize this and departed. The French column moved out through very bad terrain and when darkness fell, halted. Then, with the rise of the moon, it moved on again. Early on December 26, Dio sent a DC platoon and the LRDG patrol to harass Gatroun and look for Italian patrols in that area. They found no Italian mobile elements in the vicinity, fired a few shots at the fort just to badger the garrison, and then moved on to rejoin the Dio column. However, Italian airmen spotted their tracks, and shortly after midday they were attacked by two Savoia bombers and five Fiat fighters. Two Bedfords were put out of action, one man killed and several wounded before the enemy flew off. In the meantime, Dio had intercepted a radio message that indicated that the Italians believed that an all out attack was about to be made on Gatroun. Which, of course, made it the ideal time to pull a surprise attack on the unsuspecting garrison of Oum el Araneb. On the night of December 26 at moonrise, the Dio detachment moved out again. The next morning it was attacked by a German Heinkel that came in strafing, but the Bofors was soon in action and the enemy plane flew off. Aerial attacks continued at intervals throughout the day, with

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several Savoias and as many as a half-dozen Fiat fighters taking part. This plague from the skies was the only enemy action, but it was serious, and there were many casualties. The French columns sought refuge in the palm groves, where they could effectively camouflage their vehicles and weapons. At night, they moved out into the desert again—and right into the infamous ramla that guarded the approaches to Oum el Araneb. The usual terrible struggle to drive through the dunes followed, an effort that started at 3:00 A.M. and was not over until the last vehicle made it, long after dawn. The exhausted troopers got their vehicles under cover of a palm grove on the outskirts of Oum el Araneb before any more Italian planes arrived. Looking out on the horizon from this new position, Dio could see the gara where Massu had been discovered and pursued by the Sahariana in the previous winter’s fighting—not a very good omen. In the meantime the expedition’s forward artillery, two vintage 75s, were emplaced in a well-camouflaged position outside Oum el Araneb, while a fire direction center was established on a high dune overlooking the guns. It was all commanded by Commandant Cre´pin, an enthusiastic artillerist who had formerly been on Leclerc’s staff. All was ready. There was one serious difficulty. No one was quite sure of the exact enemy position. The Italians no longer appeared to be basing their defense on the fort at Oum el Araneb, but rather on an elaborate, recently developed series of trenches outside the town proper. French intelligence was aware of this, but was not yet quite able to pinpoint the location of the strong points. The next few days were busy ones all around. Dio was moving about, scouting out the enemy positions and deciding on the most advantageous direction from which to attack. His first choice was from the north, but a thorough reconnaissance found the terrain too difficult. Then a sudden emergency interrupted the planning. The French artillery observers saw moving dots on the horizon, coming from the direction of the gara. It was the Sahariana on the attack, at least 20 vehicles, approaching fast. As the French artillerymen gave the alarm, two Savoias joined the fray, but every possible antiaircraft gun in the French arsenal opened up— the Bofors, the twin Hotchkiss, the Breda 20s. They held the Italian planes at a respectful distance, while the Sahariana kept coming on. The Italian vehicles now opened fire with their 47 mm cannon and their own Breda 20s. Captain Combes’ DC platoon was ordered out against the Sahariana, but his vehicles hit a bad patch of sand, and many were disable. It appeared that the French were getting the worst of the fight, when Commandant Cre´pin’s 75s came into play. They made all the difference. One

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of the Sahariana vehicles was hit and abandoned, along with its Breda 20 and its dead and wounded personnel. The heavy fire from the 75s was too much for the rest of the Italian mobile forces, and their vehicles turned tail and disappeared back into the Italian position. The air attack continued, however, and several tirailleurs were wounded. At that point General Leclerc arrived with a DC platoon under Captain d’Alaurent, and decided that the direction of the attack should be from the stony reg, and not from the treacherous sand. The GNB was selected for the initial assault and advanced on foot in a crescent formation. A bombardment of the Italian lines by the Bretagne Squadron revealed in detail the previously vague outlines of the main positions. As the Italians opened up with machine guns and artillery, the GNB could clearly see the enemy lines at 1,800 meters. On the right of the French line the terrain was impractical for vehicles, so that flank was relatively secure, but on the left it was all firm reg and particularly vulnerable to attack by mobile forces of Sahariana—that never came. Once again Commandant Cre´pin brought his 75s into action, with deadly effect. He also called for the howitzer, somewhere in the rear, to be brought up. As the battle progressed, the Italians increased the fire of their powerful 77s, but the soft sand smothered the bursts and lessened the effect. Now the French howitzer was put into position, and its fire added to Italian woes. The battle heated up, and Dio was slightly wounded by shell fragments—to which he paid not the least heed. It was determined that the Italian arsenal included four 77 mm guns, three or four other smaller artillery pieces, and many mortars and machine guns. They were being used to good effect, but the pressure on the defenders was tremendous. There were heavy casualties on both sides, with the Italians obviously getting the worst of it. By January 1, 1943, the Italian outer defenses were abandoned and Oum el Araneb itself was besieged. On the night of January 1 and 2 the Sahariana left—one might say deserted—Oum el Araneb, leaving the rest of the defenders demoralized, but still fighting. At this point Leclerc decided that further attacks by the advance detachment would be too costly. There was no hurry; the enemy would collapse eventually. He ordered Dio to ease up on the pressure, just hold and wait for the French main body to close up and take over the siege. Then he was to prepare De´tachement D to move north to Sebha and Brack. January 2 and 3 found the defenders of Oum el Araneb totally disheartened and confused. Their mobile forces had fled, two of their 77s were out of action, and their air force seemed to have disappeared. (Actually, the important Italian air base at Sebha had been bombed by the Bretagne Squadron, putting the Regia Aeronautica hors de combat at

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the height of the Oum el Araneb battle.) To make matters worse for the Italians, their askaris were deserting en masse and giving the French valuable information on Italian positions and minefields. On the night of January 3 and 4, Captain d’Absac patrolled into the village itself and took it over with remarkable ease. The villagers were heartily sick of Italian rule, and very willing to believe that the French were their friends and were making war only on the Italians, not on the natives. While the Italian garrison decided among themselves whether or not to surrender, Cre´pin kept up the fire, increasing the pressure on the weak spots. Finally, on January 4, after much discussion as to terms, the Italians surrendered and the French tricolor at last flew over the post of Oum el Araneb. Next on the list, but considered much less important, was Gatroun. It had been originally invested by De´tachement M, Leclerc’s main body, shortly after Dio had sent the patrols to reconnoiter and harass it. The GNT, Sarazac’s camel corps, had then taken over the siege, to allow De´tachement M to relieve Dio at Oum el Araneb. The main body had left one of its 75s with Sarazac, and its bombardment provided the principal reason for the post’s surrender; the garrison returned the fire, but feebly, and soon gave up. The white flag was flown on January 6, after a section of the GNT under Lieutenant Bazaraine had cut off the post from any hope of relief, and a French Lysander made a few strafing runs. The booty was considerable for such a minor post, but it will be remembered that the Italians had thought it would be a primary target and apparently reinforced it accordingly. Among the spoils were two 77 mm cannon, two 37 mm cannon, 5 Breda 20s, 3 heavy machine guns, 20 light machine guns, 4 trucks, 20 tons of automobile and aviation gasoline, and a large supply of food and ammunition. There were also 177 prisoners, including 6 officers and 56 other Italians.6 Five hundred miles to the north, Captain d’Alaurent’s DC platoon had occupied Brack, with orders to prevent the enemy from using the piste between Brack and Hon, one of the more important Italian military centers. It had been a remarkable journey, undertaken on Leclerc’s spur-ofthe-moment orders when Dio’s advance detachment, worn out by heavy fighting and lacking sufficient supplies, fell behind schedule. Of course, because d’Alaurent’s group was only a platoon, it was much easier to supply and put on the road. Nevertheless, leaving Oum el Aranib on January 2, traveling that enormous distance through primitive desert, and arriving at Brack on January 6, was a more than considerable accomplishment. The fact that so small a unit, deep in enemy territory and so far from its base, was in constant peril adds even more credit to the achievement. The Frenchmen, in spite of their vulnerability, were never attacked.

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The garrison of Brack had cleared out before their arrival, without bothering to destroy the arms they could not take with them. There was plenty of loot, and the local natives seemed glad to welcome their erstwhile enemies to their territory. Dio’s detachment arrived a few days later, making the occupation of Brack complete. A sidelight of all this was the cooperation of the U.S. Army with Leclerc’s Free French. Colonel Cunningham, American liaison officer from the army air force, made good use of his Douglas C-47 transport plane in ferrying supplies up to Brack and eventually returning to base with prisoners and wounded. It was a harbinger, for later in the war Leclerc was to work very closely with the Americans, with his Second Armored Division as part of Patton’s Third Army. Back in Oum el Araneb, the French received a delegation of native notables who informed them that most of the askaris at Mourzouk had deserted and the rest of the garrison was in a state of disorder. A detachment of the 1
Bataillion de March under Captain Guena was immediately dispatched to that not-too-distant oasis to take advantage of the situation. When Guena arrived at Mourzouk on January 8, he found that the garrison had fled and was thought to be on the main piste, traveling north by truck. He was ordered to pursue and capture the retreating Italians. There followed one of the strangest incidents in a singularly bizarre campaign. When Guena’s convoy struck out north along the piste in pursuit of the Mourzouk garrison, it was preceded by a lone French plane piloted by Captain Mahe´ of the Bretagne Squadron. Mahe´ discovered the Italians on the track about 50 miles north of Mourzouk. Circling low overhead, he managed to make them understand that he wanted them to turn their vehicles around and return to the oasis. When they hesitated, a few bursts from his machine guns convinced them of the wisdom of obedience. They headed for Mourzouk, herded along by the low-flying French plane—and drove right into the arms of the advancing Captain Guena and his men, to whom they surrendered. It was a considerable bag, 110 Italians including 11 officers, plus 7 askaris. And it was certainly one of the rare instances in the history of warfare of a sizable ground force being captured from the air by a single aircraft! Two days later a memorial service was held in Mourzouk at the grave of Lieutenant-Colonel Colonna d’Ornano, the French officer who was killed in that very first Free French raid on an Italian stronghold in the Fezzan back in 1940. Among the many French soldiers honoring the early Free French martyr was Commandant Jacques Massu, who had been wounded fighting at his side in that daring foray. Now, with Mourzouk solidly in French hands, revenge was sweet.

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Impatient, hard driving Leclerc was coming ever closer to his longheld goal of joining the British along the North African coast. In January he named Colonel Delange military governor of the now occupied Fezzan and turned his eyes toward Tripolitania, the Italian province just to the north. Tripoli, its principal city, lay 500 miles from Mourzouk. It was all open desert in between, sprinkled with Italian strongholds, but now at last, reaching it seemed a possibility. And the British were only 140 miles from that long-sought port, and advancing slowly. At the beginning of January, Leclerc received a call from General Alexander, the British middle east commander, “An advance, even by small elements, on Sebha, Sciuref, Mizda can be of great use to the Eighth Army.” Leclerc immediately set out to oblige. Without even waiting for the main units of Dio’s detachment to arrive in Brack, he ordered Captain d’Alaurent’s platoon off to Sciuref.7 D’Alaurent left Brack at dawn on January 8 and arrived before the post at Sciuref, a little more than 300 desert miles away, in the morning of January 10. He attacked at once, and after a short engagement and an even shorter parley, the Italians capitulated. The white flag went up just after noon. The French column was soon spotted by enemy aircraft, however, but they moved under cover before any damage could be done. D’Alaurent’s next action, to engage the Italians and keep them from attacking the advancing British, was to establish an ambush on the Hon track. That done, things soon heated up. On January 11 the platoon was attacked from the air, machine-gunned and bombed, and lost a vehicle. It was a serious loss for so small a unit so far from home. Undaunted, the next day d’Alaurent set up a new ambush, operating out of the cover provided by some small garas, again overlooking the Hon road. That morning they saw from their hidden observation posts a large Italian convoy of some 40 vehicles, including a few tanks, coming down the track from Hon. It seemed like suicide to pit a mere platoon against such a superior force, but d’Alaurent remembered his orders (and Alexander’s plea) that even a small attack would be of great help to the British advance. He waited for most of the convoy to pass, then gave his men the order to attack its rear. The Frenchmen fully expected to have a heavy fight on their hands and perhaps be severely punished by the vastly superior Italian force, but at least they would have slowed up any contemplated attack on the British. Instead, the Italian column kept right on going past Sciuref and away from the coastal fighting. That was the last Captain d’Alaurent was to see of any large Italian force for a while; his platoon had accomplished its mission and could take a short but much needed rest. The advance toward Hon, an important Italian military center, was assigned to Lieutenant Eggenspiller and his DC platoon. He left Brack

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on January 8, pushed past Bir el Giof, and ran into an enemy patrol near Socna. In a brief firefight he destroyed an Italian vehicle and captured a wounded NCO, but by the time the French reached Hon, British patrols were already there. Leclerc now turned his attention to his next leap forward, toward Mizda. Here he hoped to capture much equipment and many prisoners, and use this sizable town as a base for the move on Tripoli, his principal goal. He could only spare light forces for this, for the logistics problems raised by the incredible march from Chad had brought much of his main force to a temporary halt. Resupply, particularly gasoline, was the chief consideration, but troops and mate´riel also had to be spared for the administration of the occupied Fezzan.8 The fact was that the Free French advance through this vast territory had been too swift for efficient administration and supply, and the poverty of the entire expedition complicated the situation that much more. There was a political side to it, too. Although they were allies in the war, Great Britain and Free France were colonial rivals, and it rankled de Gaulle that he had to rely so much on British generosity. It was also a petty annoyance that although Koufra had been taken by the French, it was now occupied by British empire troops—even though the French tricolor continued to fly beside the Union Jack over the fort of El Taj. So, looking at it from a practical viewpoint, Leclerc (and Ingold) decided that the troops that would be sent against Mizda would be only those that could be relatively sure of logistical support. The units selected were a single DC platoon of Groupement G, with one lone 75 mm gun, and three platoons of Groupement D, with two 75s.9 Dio’s party would provide the main assault force; de Geoffroy’s platoon would be counted on for diversionary attacks. On January 19 Dio’s group left Sciuref over somewhat better roads, built by the Italians. Here in the north the desert was not quite as harsh as the cruel, almost waterless wasteland the French had been battling in for the past three years. Not that it was not still a vast and ruthless desert, but one that now showed occasional signs of civilization. It was just for that reason that Dio decided to leave the track and continue on a little-traveled hamada where there was less chance of being discovered. The climb to the plateau was gentle, and the going on top was relatively smooth—bien roulant in the jargon of the French army. The column made good progress until it came to the end of the hamada, which was actually a steep cliff with a perilous Italian-built road leading down to a narrow valley at its foot. All the vehicles were at the base of the cliff by nightfall, and were now only about 75 miles from Mizda. Dio waited for moonrise, and then continued on. It was nearly 4:00 A.M. when the lead vehicle was stopped by a cliff, a vertical wall of stone dead ahead of them. They turned to the right

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and ran into another cliff. Reconnoitering in the dark, they seemed surrounded by cliffs, and no matter which way they turned, the scouts could not find a way out. They waited for dawn, but when it came, they found that they were right in the middle of an Italian position! The Italians had already found the French column, and suddenly a wall of fire enveloped Dio’s group. The enemy was firing everything they had—cannon, machine guns, mortars, rifles. But the firing was wild, and fortunately for the French a heavy fog had descended on the valley and visibility was near zero. The Italian fire was ineffective. The Italians were in no mood for an extended fight, and they knew their way out of the valley. Toward evening, when a heavy thundershower gave them the necessary additional cover, they made their way out. Noting their direction, Dio was not long in following, and soon the French column was back on the piste toward Mizda. January 22 found the French in front of Mizda. On the south the town was dominated by a mountain barrier, and all other access roads were covered by Italian positions. The battle began. The main attacking force was the DC platoon of Captain Farret, and that was held up by a single camouflaged artillery piece. The French 75 was quickly brought into position by a young artillery officer (right in the open, much to the agitation of Captain Farret), but its fire silenced the Italian gun. It was later discovered that a freak French round had gone right down the enemy gun barrel splitting it in two! Dio gave the order to attack, and the French entered Mizda that afternoon. The Italians had evacuated the town, leaving not only mate´riel—artillery, machine guns, munitions, rations, 20,000 liters of oil, 4,000 liters (Allah be praised!) of gasoline, always in short supply—but their dead and wounded as well. The French settled in. At Mizda they were still in the desert, but so near the Mediterranean they could almost smell the sea air. It was time to contact the British Eighth Army, marching westward up the coast. Two DC platoons of De´tachement D were sent north to Garian on January 23, where they met a British advance guard who were there a few hours before them. The first part of Leclerc’s dream was realized, liaison with the Eighth Army. The next day the Dio party left Garian, heading straight for Tripoli. Now, the desert behind them, they traveled over excellent roads, through lush countryside and cultivated fields. On January 26, late in the afternoon, the grizzled, desert-weary Frenchmen drove their rattletrap, bulletscarred combat cars into the sparkling white city of Tripoli. And, finally, they actually saw the sea. To the Frenchmen in the party, the Mediterranean shore was a giant step nearer home. To the Africans, the vast blue waters, the likes of which they had never imagined, were a wonder of God. To General

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Leclerc, having his people there after three years of planning, scheming, and fighting was a triumph of the soul. But hundreds of miles southwest of Tripoli, still in the terrible desert, there was more work to be done. Where the southern tip of Tunisia molded into both the eastern edge of Algeria and the western border of Libya, lay the ancient oasis of Ghadames. Holy to the Moslems and long a city of mystery forbidden to outsiders, it was now in the hands of the Italians—and because of its strategic position, it could not be allowed to remain that way. However, Ghadames lay some 800 kilometers from the nearest concentration of available unengaged Free French troops at Brack, and any attack would have to be in very capable hands. Leclerc gave the job to Captain d’Absac. He quickly assembled a section of the GNB under Second Lieutenant Hebert and a DC platoon led by Lieutenant de Bagnoux, and started out for Ghadames. They left Brack on January 22, taking the main piste north to Sciuref and El Ghiriat and then west across more than 400 kilometers of open desert, itself something of an epic march. D’Absac’s party arrived at Ghadames on January 26, to find that the Italians had fled. However, the Frenchmen did manage to round up two Italian officers and about 100 askaris as POWs. More importantly, they contacted a body of French Foreign Legionnaires who had orders to invest Ghadames from the west, not knowing of the arrival of d’Abzac. These troops were ex-Vichy, part of the French colonial Army of North Africa that had joined the Allies a scant two months before. It was an historic occasion, probably the first liaison between ex-Vichy and Free French troops in World War II. They would fight together against the Germans many times in the future, although some Free Frenchmen (including Leclerc) might not like the idea.10 Once again it was reorganization time. Leclerc’s forces were scattered, some throughout Libya, some still in Chad. They were either enjoying a much needed rest, or working on their weapons, or repairing their battered vehicles. There was certainly no rest for Leclerc. He was off to Cairo to meet the now famous General Bernard Law Montgomery, and offer the services of his Free French desert corps to the British Eighth Army. Leclerc was an instant hit with the man whom everyone in his army called “Monty.” They were cut from the same cloth—aggressive, hard driving, single-minded, professional. Montgomery agreed to have Leclerc’s troops as part of the Eighth Army and pledged to supply them with uniforms, arms, and equipment. As a symbol of that promise, he presented the Frenchman with a new set of British battle dress to replace the tattered, combat-worn uniform Leclerc had worn in his desert battles. And they spent a considerable amount of time discussing tactics and strategy for the coming campaign. After Leclerc had left Cairo to return to his headquarters at Mizda, Montgomery remarked to his aide, “I can

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use a chap like that!”11 It was a somewhat restrained comment, perhaps, but high praise from the often caustic British general who was not known for lightly given accolades—particularly to other generals. Back in Mizda, Leclerc immediately started planning the reorganization of his troops along the lines discussed with Montgomery for the attack on southern Tunisia. Leclerc’s first mission in the Eighth Army was to be on its left flank, deep in the desert, because Montgomery appreciated the Saharan experience of the Free French troops. Leclerc’s people were now assembled into a motorized brigade called “Force L” with Leclerc as its commanding officer and Ingold as his adjutant. It consisted of the following: • The First and Second DC Companies • Groupement V (under Commandant Vezinet), composed of the GNT and the GNE (also now motorized), the Second Company, Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad and some artillery • Groupement D (under Lieutenant Colonel Dio), composed of the GNB, the 12th Company, Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad, and a section of British engineers • The “Sacred Squadron,” a new and truly unique unit of Greek volunteers, distinguished by their bushy black beards and unusual name, taken from an ancient military unit of classical Greece. It was commanded by Colonel Gigantes, a graduate of the French Ecole de Guerre, and was equipped with American jeeps, at that time the latest example of cross-country mobility.12

Force L was to be armed with British two pounder antitank guns, some Marmon-Herrington armored cars, and the not-too-popular Bren gun carriers, described by the British themselves as a “small, slow, underpowered tracked vehicle . . . with just enough armour to give the crew a measure of false confidence,”—but, alas, no tanks. However, the French were grateful for this beautiful new equipment, which to them was sheer luxury. They also appreciated the British battle dress (and tropical khakis) as well as the steel helmets with which they were now supplied. And the tirailleurs from the jungles and deserts of central Africa were particularly impressed with the regulation army footwear that replaced their wornout sandals—many of them had never worn shoes before. On February 15, Leclerc revealed to his officers what their first mission in the drive on southern Tunisia would be. The objective of the Eighth Army was the Mareth Line, a series of fortifications originally built by the French as protection against a possible Italian invasion from Libya. It was now occupied by the retreating Axis forces, who had stopped running and turned around for a last-ditch stand. These formidable enemy positions stretched westward for 22 miles from the Mediterranean to the Matmata Hills, a series of rugged desert peaks considered impassable to motorized troops. At its Mediterranean end, there were the

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original French fortifications, reinforced, plus a dried river bed, the Wadi Zigzaou, reconstructed into a giant tank trap, complete with protecting pill boxes, wire, and mines. The main attack was to be against this defense line by three British divisions, with a reserve force of New Zealanders backed up by the Free French.13 On February 20, Force L left Mizda, bound north for Ksar Rhilane in southern Tunisia, another godforsaken desert post somewhere northwest of Foum Tatahouine, itself “a desolate spot reputed to be the worst French peacetime garrison, where troops were only sent as a punishment.”14 It was a position on the extreme left flank of the Eighth Army’s proposed attack on the Mareth Line, between the rugged Matmata Hills and the quite impassable Grande Erg Orientale, the endless sand dunes across the Algerian border. Montgomery had assigned this remote defensive position to Leclerc’s Free French ostensibly because they were considered expert in desert warfare, but perhaps there was more to it than that. Was it because of the weakness of Force L, with its outdated equipment and worn-out vehicles—even with its new but limited British mate´riel—that it found itself relegated to a comparatively quiet spot? Actually, Ksar Rhilane was not that quiet. When the Force L advance guard of Captain Farret’s DC platoon and the Greek Sacred Squadron arrived there on February 22 and pushed reconnaissance patrols to the north and east, they ran into German tanks—and suffered casualties. And not long after, when Groupement V arrived, so did the Stukas, catching the French by surprise just as they were dismounting from their vehicles. Among those killed in that initial raid was Captain Orel, who had made the epic escape from Vichy Niger across the desert by camel, and had become the commander of the GNE. Also dead were AdjudantChef Fer, one of the original Leclerc warriors, and some 15 tirailleurs. There were many wounded as well.15 Force L dug in at Ksar Rhilane with orders to prevent any German units from breaking through to the south. While the French artillery and antitank guns were being emplaced and camouflaged, the DC platoons and the Greeks continued their constant patrolling, and the British sappers were mining the surrounding areas. And everyone was suffering losses from enemy mines and booby traps. The GNB lost a vehicle that struck a mine with six tirailleurs killed, and several jeeps of the Sacred Squadron were also destroyed in the same way, with accompanying casualties. The Frenchmen soon learned to sandbag the floors of their vehicles to reduce the effect of the German Teller mines on personnel, but little could be done about the nasty little booby traps that were everywhere. Typical was the “schu” mine that could blow off a foot and the “bouncing Betty” S-mine that sprung up waist high before exploding.

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The only defense against these horrors was extreme caution until the sappers winkled them out. On March 5, intelligence reported the appearance of about 60 German tanks and some 80 trucks and half-tracks at Wadi Hallouf, only 40 kilometers northeast of the French positions at Ksar Rhilane. A few days later Leclerc was called to Eighth Army headquarters where it was suggested that, due to the powerful concentration of Germans so near, the French with their largely worn and obsolete equipment should move south about 80 kilometers, out of harm’s way. It was another example of British reluctance to believe that the French could hold their own against the Germans. Leclerc, of course, demurred. He pointed out that Force L was more likely to be destroyed by German tanks on the road than it was in its present field fortifications, and he was positive that he could hold off an enemy attack if he could just be assured of aerial support. The logic of Leclerc’s argument and his cool, confident demeanor convinced Montgomery. He sent the French general back to Ksar Rhilane with the promise that the RAF would be there when he needed it. Force L hunkered down to await its first German attack. It did not have long to wait. At 7:00 A.M. on March 10, the first German armored vehicles arrived in view, tanks of the 21st Panzer Division with accompanying infantry. They approached cautiously, knowing that the enemy was somewhere in the vicinity but not aware of their exact positions. The French, dug in, camouflaged, and invisible, held their fire. The Germans opened fire tentatively, the rounds falling harmlessly into the dunes. The French still did not fire. Suddenly the Germans opened up with everything they had—and at almost the same time the Luftwaffe came roaring in, some 30 Stukas with their terrifying dive bombing. Still no French reply. Encouraged, the Germans advanced, firing, infantry behind tanks. At that point Force L received the order to fire, and every weapon in the French arsenal opened up—rifles, machine guns, mortars, the 75s, the howitzers. Then, in the midst of all this shot and shell, good to the British promise, the RAF appeared. Streaking low over the desert, they blasted the German attackers with machine guns, bombs, and cannon fire. This was the early days of air-ground cooperation, and at Ksar Rhilane both ground and air elements were learning their lessons well—so well, in fact, that a little after 8:00 the German attack from the north was stopped. But the Germans were not about to give up that easily, and Leclerc knew it. He reasoned that he would now be attacked from the south, and he sent out patrols to verify his suspicions. This they did, with the loss of one vehicle and two dead, but the intelligence was confirmed and the French were prepared for the next attack. It came soon enough. At midday, German tanks infiltrated the French

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positions from the south, and the battle was on again. This time the GNB took the brunt and suffered considerable losses, as a dozen Stukas attacked to open the way for the German ground forces. On the ground French AT guns took a toll, but the tanks were too much for them. The situation appeared desperate, when once again the RAF swept in to blast the enemy armor to a standstill. Half a dozen tanks were hit and burst into flames, while the heavy fire from the French positions took care of the German infantry. But the Germans made another try, this time from the east. Force L fought back hard, but now they appeared to be weakening. Once again low-level RAF attacks came to the rescue, and German tanks exploded and burned. While fierce battles raged in the air between British Spitfires and Hurricanes and German Me-109s and Stukas, the French recovered on the ground and the Germans began to fall back. By nightfall they were in full retreat, leaving burned out tanks, trucks, and half-tracks littering the battlefield. The ragtag French army from Chad had met the Germans for the first time and, with the very powerful aid of the RAF, beat them. In an order of the day to Force L, Leclerc proclaimed, “Your first contact with the Boche has been a victory. The others will be also.”16 And Montgomery telegraphed his congratulations as well, a laconic British “Well done.” It was now Monty’s time to resume the offensive. On March 20 in the evening, a tremendous artillery barrage announced the opening of the Eighth Army’s drive against the Mareth line. At first the British made good progress with some infantry getting across the Wadi Zigzaou, but after two days of bitter fighting, it became obvious that tanks just couldn’t make it through the wadi’s defenses, and Montgomery decided to change his plans. He now directed General Brian Horrocks, one of his most successful corps commanders, to take the Second New Zealand Division plus the First Armored Division and the Eighth Armored Brigade, in a wide 150-mile swing around to the west, drive through to El Hamma and hit the German line from the rear. Force L was assigned to cover the flank of the New Zealanders, who were commanded by the famous Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg, a veteran warrior and holder of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest decoration for bravery. Due to the extremely difficult terrain, it took the New Zealand division more than a week to get into position west of the Matmata range, for after struggling through the hill country, they hit soft sand—but along with the accompanying French, they finally made it. Leclerc always seems to have gotten along famously with his allies, both personally and professionally, and his relations with the New Zea-

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landers were no exception. The following account, taken from Richard Collier’s War in the Desert, is an illustration: Once, Freyberg halted the advance after spotting Germans on a spur of a mountain range that stood in his path to El Hamma. He summoned a Free French general in command of a unit providing cover for the New Zealanders and asked him: “Do you think your chaps could clear the Germans off that mountain?” The French officer, a viscount whose name was Jacques Phillippe de Hautecloque but who used the name Leclerc, raised his eyebrows mildly and replied: “But of course—but would it not be better to clear them off the whole range?” For the next two days, bayonet-wielding Senegalese troops led by French officers flushed the Germans from the crags and crevices of the mountain range, taking no prisoners. The path to El Hamma was again free of obstructions.17

The author has caught the Leclerc spirit of cooperation very well indeed, but the operation itself was a bit more complicated. Actually, there were two mountains to conquer, and Leclerc gave the job to Groupement Dio. On the night of March 18–19, the Dio Column started out for the base of the first mountain, Djebel Outid, reinforced by an armored car squadron of Free French Moroccan spahis that had been fighting with the British. They soon ran into a wadi, and in crossing, the lead vehicle bogged down in the sand. The troopers dismounted to dig out, only to discover that the crossing had been mined. The result was four dead and several wounded before the sappers could clear a path through the mines. Then, as the French column hit the mountain, there was a savage artillery duel with the armored car squadron adding the weight of its machine-gun fire to the fight. By the end of the day, Djebel Outid was occupied and the way to El Hamma was open.18 Force L’s next mission was another mountain, Djebel Matleb, that barred the way to Gabes, a Mediterranean port with a decidedly French atmosphere. Djebel Matleb was topped by a series of crests, the first of which fell to the French without a fight. The rest were not so easy, but fierce hand-to-hand battles with bayonet and grenade finally brought the mountain under French control. The toll was 17 dead and many wounded. On March 29, Force L marched into Gabes with the Eighth Army and was greeted with a riotous French welcome—it was the first French city in North Africa to be reoccupied by Free French troops. The next few weeks were a quiet time for Force L. While the Eighth Army fought the battles of Wadi Akarit, Enfidaville, and Takrouda, the Free French were stranded out on the extreme left flank where there were no Germans, and Leclerc was unhappy. However, Force L was soon on the move again, and by April 12 it had passed through the holy city of Kairouan and was well on its way to Tunis, the final goal. As the war

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in Africa wound down and various elements of the Axis forces surrendered, Leclerc and his men found themselves at the foot of Mount Zaghouan, one of the last Axis holdouts. But there the last-ditch defenders had to give in to French pressure, and the war that had set Africa aflame for the past three years was over in that ravaged land. May 20 was the day of the great victory parade through the streets of Tunis, and every unit of the victorious Allied armies was represented, including the ragged but proud veterans of Leclerc’s epic fighting march from Chad. As for the general himself, the oath he had taken so long ago at Koufra was not yet fulfilled. He was still burning for revenge, and planning for the day when it would finally be his.

NOTES 1. Raymond Dronne, Le Serment de Kufra (Paris: E´ditions du Temps, 1965), 118. 2. Ibid., 128. 3. Ibid., 136. 4. Ibid., 141. 5. In daylight the Free French had made desert camouflage an art. There was just enough scrub grass and camel thorn in some of the open areas of the Sahara, just enough hiding places among the rocks and garas of the hilly parts, enough palm trees in the oases, and even enough contrasting light and shadow in some sand dunes to keep men and vehicles from being discovered by the enemy— sometimes. But the night was still the best camouflage of all. 6. Jean-Noe¨l Vincent, Les Forces Franc¸aises dans la Lutte Contre l’Axe en Afrique, 1940–1943, 2 vols. (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre, 1983), 1: 299. 7. From this incident alone it can be seen why Leclerc’s always cooperative attitude made him popular with his allies. 8. There had been a fairly serious squabble between the British and the French over the governance of the Fezzan before the issue was finally settled. See Charles de Gaulle, The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 3 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 2: 69–70. 9. Vincent, 201. 10. At the time, however, when individual Vichy soldiers, including those at Ghadames, asked to join the Free French they were welcomed with open arms. See de Gaulle, 97. 11. Henry Maule, Out of the Sand: The Epic Story of General Leclerc and the Fighting Free French (London: Oldham’s Books, 1966), 148. 12. Vincent, 320–321. 13. Eddy Bauer et al., Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978), vol. 8, 1079–1080. 14. Brian Horrocks, Escape to Action (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960), 151. 15. Vincent, 321.

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16. Dronne, 188. 17. Richard Collier et al., The War in the Desert (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977), 171. 18. Dronne, 190.

Chapter 6

ENTER, THE LEGION Now let’s go back to 1940, and a place far from North Africa. The ice and snow of Scandinavia may seem a strange background for a famous desert-bred fighting force, but that’s where the 13th Demi-brigade of the French Foreign Legion found itself in the spring of that year. Originally scheduled to help the Finns fight the Russians (at that time the Soviets still had a pact with the Germans), the Legion’s mission was switched to Norway when the Finns surrendered to the Russians in March. Why Norway? The Norwegian ports near the Arctic Circle were shipping points for Swedish iron ore sent to Germany, and the Allies sought to cut off this vital supply.1 The 13th was part of an expeditionary force consisting of French Chasseurs Alpins, a Polish mountain unit and Norwegian troops, sent in to attack Narvik, the principal ore port, now held by the Germans. The Demi-brigade de la Le´gion E´trange`re (DBLE) was a strange outfit, yet in some ways typical of the Legion. It was composed of some 55 officers, 210 NCOs, and 1,984 other ranks, mostly volunteers for the Finnish campaign.2 The majority were regulars, tough veterans of African tribal wars, mercenaries without strong ideological commitments. Yet there was also a minority of others in the ranks, largely veterans of the recent Spanish civil war, refugees from Franco’s Spain, as well as many Poles, Czechs, and Jews, all of whom had ample reason to hate the Germans. The leader of this diverse group was Lieutenant Colonel Raoul Magrin-Vernerey, wounded 17 times in World War I, and a legion veteran since 1924. In true legion tradition he was a bit of an eccentric, a

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hard-bitten warrior and stern disciplinarian, but with a sense of humor. When asked why the 13th was being sent to Norway, he was said to have replied with the “not to reason why” logic of the professional soldier, “Who knows? For the iron ore, for the anchovies, for the Norwegians? I haven’t the faintest idea!”3 The 13th DBLE fought well at Narvik and chased the German forces almost to the Swedish border. Then, suddenly, they were recalled to France. The German offensive there had pierced the Allied lines, and every French soldier was desperately needed at home. The Legion abandoned its pursuit and sailed for France. The troopship landed at Brest on June 13. In France the legionnaires found nothing but confusion. They were ordered to set up a defensive line in Brittany, but found it impossible. When Charles de Gaulle appealed for Frenchmen to join his cause in England, Colonel MagrinVernerey made his decision. He sent the word to his widely scattered command in the field to drop out of the fight and, in any way they could, rejoin him in England. Strangely enough, this actually happened. Magrin-Vernerey and some of his officers managed to find passage to England, where they established themselves in the newly founded Trentham Park camp for Free French troops at Stokeham-on-Trent. When they arrived, they found some of their troopers already there! Soon others began to filter in, and before long nearly the entire surviving 13th DBLE had been reassembled. It was then that they were asked whether they wished to remain with the Free French in England or return to the Vichy-controlled legion in North Africa. Some 600 or so of the 1,619 legionnaires now at Trentham Park opted for Africa, which meant no more war for them—for awhile. On July 1, they entrained for Bristol and the ship that would take them back to the Legion’s “home” in North Africa. The remainder of the demi-brigade marked time in England for the next two months, training and enjoying the hospitality of their generous English hosts. During this period, discipline became somewhat lax, but by August 25 when the Legion was reviewed by King George VI, it had been tightened. The review went off very well indeed, and the king was impressed. Now rumors were floating around that the demi-brigade had been selected for a special mission, but what it would be was anyone’s guess. On August 29, Lieutenant Colonel Dimitri Amilakvari, a Georgian prince who had spent much of his life in the Legion and who commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 13th DBLE, lined up his men and gave them their orders. They were to roll their packs and be ready to move out that evening; where they were going he did not say.4 That night the men were marched to the railroad siding and crowded onto trains, which a few hours later deposited them in Liverpool. There

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they were marched up the gangway of a former liner now serving as a troop transport, one of a large convoy riding at anchor in the harbor. A powerful convoy of British warships, including an aircraft carrier, stood by. This was obviously to be an important journey. Just how important they did not find out until the ships were at sea, and they discovered they were on the convoy’s command ship—with Charles de Gaulle himself! De Gaulle’s mission was to land under a flag of truce at Dakar, chief city of the French colony of Senegal on the west coast of Africa, a Vichy stronghold. There he expected to talk the governor general of French West Africa, Pierre Boisson, a staunch Vichyite whom we have met before, into changing sides and joining de Gaulle in continuing the fight against Germany. After two weeks at sea heading south, it became obvious to the troops that their objective was somewhere on the west coast of Africa, but it was not until the ships had dropped anchor within sight of the harbor of Dakar that they knew exactly where. They expected action, but no orders came. Instead, four senior officers including Capitaine de Fregate Thierry d’Argenlieu, a Catholic priest who was one of de Gaulle’s highest ranking naval officers, headed toward the gangway where a launch was waiting for them. John F. Hasey, an American in the 13th DBLE, tells what happened next. A white flag of truce and a French flag had been raised on the motor launch, and the quartet walked down the steps and stepped into it. The launch chugged away from the transport toward the two jetties that formed the harbor. We stood on deck and watched it curiously. It moved away, closer to the shore, and when it had covered about half the distance to the shore, there were white puffs on the shore; water spurted up around the launch, and seconds later the faint reverberation of shelling came across to us, and there were disappointment and consternation among the officers on deck. The launch was under fire, and it was clear that a plan had gone wrong. The shelling continued. Spurts in the water came closer to the launch as gunners found range. One shell almost upset it, and we saw two of the officers slump in their seats. The launch zigzagged for a moment indecisively, and apparently an order was given. The tillerman threw the rudder over; the boat described a semicircle and headed back for our ship.5

The mission was a failure. Boisson had refused to parley, and Captains d’Argenlieu and Perrin were gravely wounded in the attempt. De Gaulle then tried to appeal to Boisson, and indeed to the whole of Dakar, by radio, but to no avail. Finally, if there was to be no acknowledgment by a certain time, he threatened to have the warships bombard the town. In the meanwhile, three airplanes took off from the carrier and flew toward the shore. There was an immediate answer from both the

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antiaircraft guns on the ships in the harbor and those on the ground. Two of the planes were hit and went down, and the other returned to the carrier. The guns of the British warships opened up. The ships in the harbor and the shore guns returned the fire, and soon there was a lively naval battle in progress. The transports weighed anchor and moved south some miles down the shoreline, halting off a little town called Rufisquie. The next morning the 13th DBLE was ordered to prepare for battle and sent over the side in the lifeboats that then rode in the water alongside the transport, awaiting the word. Action at at last! But no. The men stayed in the lifeboats hugging the sides of the ships, without further orders. They remained that way for hours. Finally, after dark, the order was given—to return to their quarters on board. The legionnaires, disappointed and chagrined, were lifted back aboard, and the transports weighed anchor once more and sailed down the coast away from Dakar. Rather than have Frenchmen fight Frenchmen, de Gaulle had given up the idea of including the territory of French West Africa in his Free France—at least for the time being. The transports with their escorts continued south along the coast, giving the general the opportunity of inspecting those colonies that had already pledged themselves to his cause. The first of these was Cameroun, and here the Legion disembarked at Douala, where they were greeted by the governor of that colony, our old friend Jacques Leclerc. (Remember, this was still 1940.) Douala was uncomfortably hot and unbearably boring, and those elements of the Legion stationed there hated it. The same could be said for Yaounde´, the capital, where other units of the 13th DBLE found themselves in training. There were malaria and other tropical diseases, and there was nothing much to do, because even the routine training was restricted by the heat and the jungle. Then, on Christmas day they received the news that they were moving out. They didn’t know where they were going, and they didn’t care, just so long as they were leaving Cameroun. Soon they were back on the transports and heading south again, along the African coast. Although they weren’t aware of it, they were bound for the other side of the continent, Port Sudan on the Red Sea, there to join the British in their attack on the Italian colony of Eritrea. The trip around the Cape of Good Hope was long and tiresome, relieved only by a three-day shore leave at Durban, South Africa. Then it was back on the ship again for a long journey north through the Indian Ocean, then the Straits of Aden, and into the Red Sea. And as they traveled north, it became progressively hotter. On February 14, the 13th DBLE arrived at Port Sudan along with other Free French troops of the Brigade Franc¸ais d’Orient (BFO). They immedi-

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ately entrained for the three-hour trip to Suakim, deep in the eastern Sahara (and the home of Kipling’s “fuzzy wuzzies”). Now the old sweats of the Legion felt right at home, but to Lieutenant Hasey, a relative newcomer to the desert, it was Hell itself. He writes of the intolerable heat and the merciless sun and the sand that was everywhere and into everything, “our first and natural enemy.” It was under these circumstances that the Legion, out of condition after the months on shipboard, were hardened once again by long marches in the desert under full pack, and simulated warfare against an imaginary enemy. It was a tough schedule, but it did the trick. In less than two weeks, when certain items of new equipment caught up with them, the legionnaires were ready for action. On February 25 they left Suakim for Eritrea. The big picture was the invasion of Italian East Africa and the recovery of those parts of the Sudan and British Somaliland that the Italians had taken over in June, right after they entered the war. The overall Allied commander was Lieutenant General A.P. Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, with headquarters in Cairo, and the launching pad for the operation was the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Wavell had big problems. He was facing a formidable enemy in the western desert, was short on troops and transport, and had just been ordered to send some of those scarce fighting men to Greece to try to help stop the German invasion of that land. In addition, he had Winston Churchill on his back, second-guessing his every move. Wavell was a brilliant soldier with but one major fault—he simply could not get along with the prime minister. The British leader on the ground was General W. Platt, whose first job was to retake two points in the Sudan, Kassala and Gallabat, which had been captured by Italian forces in an initial attack across the border from Eritrea and Ethiopia. This he did with a small, mobile force—larger forces would expend too much in logistics, which he could not afford. It was called “Gazelle Force” and consisted of some mechanized columns of the Indian Army and machine-gun units of the Sudan Defence Force, plus artillery. Under attack by Gazelle Force, the Italians at Kassala beat a hasty retreat across the desert toward Keren, a mountainous stronghold that was the key to Eritrea and the entire northern part of Italian East Africa.6 Once they hit the mountains, the Italians were in an almost impregnable position. The town of Keren was surrounded by precipitous peaks and sharp ridges with well-dug-in positions manned by some of the best troops in the Italian army, Alpini, Bersagliere, and Grenadiers with adequate equipment and high morale. The British, Indians, and Africans of Platt’s pursuing army were about to face some of the toughest fighting of World War II.

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In the meantime, the eager troops of the 13th DBLE were heading back from their desert training ground to Port Sudan. Here they boarded small coastwise vessels and traveled for two days, south to Mersa Taclai, a tiny port in Eritrea just over the border from the Sudan. It was their first view of Italian territory, recently captured by the Allies. At Mersa Taclai they were put on trucks that took them southwest across the desert to a town with the curious name of Cub-Cub, where the legionnaires dismounted and readied themselves for a long night march through the mountains toward Keren. This trek through the hill country actually went on for three nights, and was Hell itself, even to the toughest of legionnaires. Stumbling through the rocks and brush of the desert mountain, always upwards, carrying heavy packs, it was exhausting, and the terrible heat and scarcity of water made the planned daytime rest all but impossible.7 Finally, the Legion battalion, barely 500 strong, reached the area around Enghiat, a fortified position 7,000 feet high, the back door to Keren. It was manned by some 1,500 crack Alpini mountain troops, different soldiers than the reluctant conscripts so often met in previous battles. A company of the Legion was sent forward to reconnoiter the enemy positions. It was immediately ambushed, and the fight was on. The next three days were an ordeal that would be long remembered in Legion annals. The battles raged back and forth, the legionnaires attacking and being beaten back, then defending their positions with rifle and grenade. The casualties were heavy on both sides, and the precipitous terrain made the evacuation of the wounded extremely difficult. To top it all, the African sun beating down on the bare rock, the ever-present swirl of dust and sand, the paucity of water—to say nothing of the periodic mortar and artillery bursts—made every hour seem like an eternity to the Legion. But the Alpini were having it just as hard. In addition to fighting the French, they were feeling the pressure from the British attacking from the west on the other side of the mountains. Gradually the trickle of Italian troops retreating before the British onslaught became a flood that flowed right into the arms of the Legion. There was more heavy fighting, but little by little the Italian will was sapped and the POW bag grew. As the enemy weakened, the Legion gathered strength, managing to solve its own severe water problems. When its advance guard charged with fixed bayonets into the approaches of Keren itself, they found their mission to be little more than a mopping up operation. The Italian defenders had run out of steam and were soon finished.8 At last the exhausted legionnaires had a chance to rest—but not for long. Soon they were bundled into trucks and driven off toward Massawa on the Red Sea due east of Keren. Massawa was a major port, and as such was of great value to both sides. The Italians held it, the British

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wanted it, and it was up to the combined Allied forces, including the Free French, to get it. The main obstacle to its capture was the strongly defended Fort Victor Emmanuele, just outside the city limits. That stronghold was soon invested by units of the 13th DBLE, just arrived from the fighting at Keren. Their first job was to eliminate the numerous machine-gun nests that seemed to be emplaced on every hill surrounding the fort. This they did the old-fashioned way, by crawling up to each one separately and lobbing in grenades—in the time-honored infantry manner. They took considerable casualties, but once the machine guns were wiped out, the leading troops could come close enough to the fort to scale the walls and drop inside. Having the enemy among them within the fort seemed to take the heart out of its defenders, and the Italians quickly surrendered, first one by one and then in droves. Soon the fort was entirely in the hands of the Free French, and the rest was comparatively easy. The road to Massawa was open. Colonel Monclar (the nom de guerre Magrin-Vernerey had assumed to protect his family in France) led a few truckloads of legionnaires into the city, where he received the surrender of its military governor, Admiral Bonetti. In a dramatic gesture, the admiral had thrown his sword out of his office window into the waters of the harbor rather than hand it over to Monclar, but a legionnaire witnessed the act and fished it out.9 Although there were a few sunken ships in the port, Massawa itself was scarcely damaged, and as the war ended in Eritrea, it became a pleasant leave town for the soldiers of the Legion and the other Free French troops of the BFO. But all good things must come to an end, and on May 2 the 13th DBLE found itself on a transport in the Red Sea, heading north. It was the end of the Legion’s Eritrean adventure, and the beginnings of a new one. Though the world-famous Foreign Legion was the most prominent of the Free French troops fighting in Eritrea, other units shared the glory and the pain. Among the very first of these were a handful of horse cavalry, about 80 strong, officially the 1st Squadron of the Re´giment de Marche de Spahis Marocains (1 RMSM). The spahis were the brilliantly uniformed Arab horsemen organized into regiments by the French and used with great success from the earliest days of the conquest of North Africa. Their colorful dress uniforms (red and white burnous over scarlet oriental style waistcoat for the Algerian and Tunisian regiments, blue and white for the Moroccans) were well known to tourists, for they often did guard duty in front of government buildings in the principal cities of North Africa. They also performed in spectacular trick riding exhibitions on ceremonial occasions. Now, in khaki, but still with their native Barb horses, they were going

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Charge! Jean Ballarin, a young French NCO of the RMSM leads his detachment of mounted Moroccan spahis in a charge against an Italian bivouac in the desert at Umbrega in Eritrea. It was said to be the last charge ever of French cavalry. The date was January 2, 1941; a few weeks later Ballarin’s unit was mechanized.

about the grim business of war—and these Moroccan soldiers were very good at that, too. On duty in French mandated Syria when the armistice came about in June 1940, Captain Paul Joudier, commander of the 1st Squadron, decided to throw in his lot with de Gaulle, and led the majority of his unit across the Lebanon border and into British mandated Palestine. Now, as Allies, they were sent to Egypt where they spent some time patrolling the Suez Canal. Their next destination was Kassala in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and from there they crossed the frontier into Italian Eritrea.10 In Eritrea the spahis were attached to a battalion of Mahrattas of the 5th Indian Division, where their mission was to patrol the desert areas and harass any Italian units, wherever they found them. This led to a number of bloody contacts with the enemy, but the one most remembered happened on January 2, 1941, and it was recalled as the last cavalry charge in French military history. It was not much of an engagement. A platoon of spahis under a young French NCO, Jean Ballarin, stumbled onto a numerically superior unit

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of Italians on the dusty plateau of Umbrega. The spahis drew their sabres and charged, taking the enemy by surprise and scattering them. One native askari in the Italian force was killed and several wounded, but apparently Ballarin and his men escaped injury. It was a minor skirmish for the spahis, and they were to survive many more serious engagements, but the “last cavalry charge” aspect lent it prominence. When, in a review on March 31, General de Gaulle presented three Croix de la Liberation medals to the spahis, Jean Ballarin was among the recipients. And when retired Lieutenant Colonel Ballarin died in Paris in 1999 at age 84, he received an admiring obituary, not only in the French press but also in the New York Times.11 Not long after the charge, the 1st Squadron of Spahis was mechanized and fought all across Eritrea in armored vehicles. It took part in the capture of Onagen, Barunti, and Biacundi and joined the BFO in March, just as the fighting in Eritrea was nearing its end. The second Free French unit to see action in Eritrea was the 3rd Bataillon de Marche (BM 3) of Senegalese tirailleurs. It was raised in Chad and sent halfway across Africa through the great desert to the Red Sea, a considerable feat in itself. Its men were recruited mostly from the warrior tribes of that central African colony, and were proud to be French soldiers. Their commanding officer was Chef de Bataillon Garby.12 From Port Sudan BM 3 traveled south along the Red Sea coast to take part in the capture of Mersa Taclai in Eritrea, and then swung southwest across the desert toward Cub-Cub, which was the entrance to the high mountain regions of Keren and Enghiat. It was here that the Senegalese earned the reputation among their British allies for savage aggressiveness. Cub-Cub was surrounded by a ring of low hills held by the Italians, and BM 3 formed the right hook of an attacking Allied force. According to British Colonel A.J. Barker, when the Senegalese charged, “they are reported to have shown little regard for the normal tactics employed in such an assault but their bloodthirsty yells must have completely overawed or cowed the defenders, who for the most part stayed dazed in their trenches. By the evening it was all over.” Cub-Cub had been a supply depot for the Italian forces, so there was plenty of booty. It was also the location of important wells, and for the rest of the fighting in Eritrea the Free French troops regarded the Senegalese as the guardians of the water. As the battles moved up into the high mountains and water was even harder to find, the Senegalese became expert in locating it. The water points they established became known as the puits des Se´ne´galaise, and the black soldiers from Chad were celebrated for delivering it under fire. And in the heat, dust, and exhaustion of combat in those sun-scorched mountains of rock and sand, water was life itself.

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The Free French Senegalese tirailleurs from Chad were considered experts with the bayonet, as this Italian Bersaglieri machine-gunner learns in the rugged mountains of Eritrea.

In one of the last French drives in Eritrea the Senegalese of BM 3 played a typical fighting part with a savage diversionary attack that swept the last of the Italian defenders before them. Also in this final push was a unit of French marines, the 3rd Company of the 1st Bataillon d’Infanterie de la Marine (3/1 BIM), just arrived from Egypt. The marines considered themselves very tough customers, indeed, and seem to have been in perpetual rivalry with the Legion; that they had the opportunity of living up to their reputation in their short stay in Eritrea would appear questionable, but they were willing and fought well. Nor should we overlook the work of the Free French service units, operating under fire. In the mountains the quartermaster companies had a daunting job to keep the frontline troops supplied with food and ammunition, but they managed. From Cub-Cub on into the peaks and valleys of Keren and Enghiat, all supplies had to be packed on camels, and to get it to the forward outposts, it had to be backpacked by humans, often under enemy observation. To avoid this, most trips had to be made at night, an incredibly hazardous journey in the dark over the rocks and chasms of the unmapped mountains. It took strong, brave, and determined men to deliver the goods.

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The French medical services were similarly challenged. An advanced light surgical team under Medecin-Colonel Fruchard was established in a valley adjacent to the peak known as “Grand Willy.” The effort of bringing the emergency surgical equipment into the high mountain area by camelback proved worthwhile, and many lives were saved by the quick action of the unit’s skilled surgeons. The next step in bringing the wounded down the mountains was accomplished by the medical evacuation team of Commandant Lott, operating at the junction where camel track met motor road. More advanced care was provided at the hospital and operating rooms established under tents at Cub-Cub and supervised by MedecinCommandant Vernier. When the fighting ceased in Eritrea, virtually all the Allied troops— British, Indian, and Free French—were moved north into Egypt and its Western Desert, leaving much of the occupation duties to the Sudan Defense Force. But one late-arriving Free French unit, the 4th Bataillon de Marche (BM 4), came from Syria in July, and saw service in the desert around Gondar in northern Ethiopia, where some diehards were still holding out. After leaving Massawa, the 13th DBLE passed through the Suez Canal and finally ended up in Palestine, and again went into training. Soon the legionnaires received word that their next action would be across the border in Syria, where a sticky situation was developing. German representatives, diplomats, and military attache´s were little by little getting a stranglehold on the weakening Vichy mandate in that strategic country. Syria’s geographic position provided a key to the entire Mideast. If controlled by the Germans, it could serve as a base for a flanking movement that could threaten Egypt and the Suez Canal, and combined with a direct attack from Libya could control the entire area—and Mideast oil. There was no question but that the Germans wanted to take over the country, and felt they could do so more easily by diplomatic negotiations with its Vichy masters than by military action. To this end they flooded Syria with a series of so-called “cultural agents,” including some 40 “archeologists” suddenly interested in studying Syria’s ancient civilizations—as well as outright military and aviation experts who were anxious to obtain the use of the airfields. They were successful. The Vichy authorities granted landing facilities to the Germans in May 1941. Soon thereafter more than 100 Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica bombers, fighters, and transports were in Syria.13 This was more than the Allies could bear, and there were immediate plans to invade the country. But there were complications. The first of these was logistical; there were simply not enough men or mate´riel in Wavell’s hard-pressed Mideast command to launch an invasion with any reasonable chance of success if the Vichy government opposed

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it. After all, the Vichyites had some 35,000 troops in the area, plus tanks, artillery, and aircraft. Then there was also the possibility of diplomatic arrangements that might forestall any military action. The British still had some tenuous diplomatic relations with the Vichy people as well as with the Free French. But the Gaullists were anxious to get into Syria, preferably with the military assistance of the British but without their diplomatic interference. They suspected “perfidious Albion” of wanting to take over the Syrian mandate for themselves—and in this they may not have been far wrong. The Germans, of course, were delighted to see the French, both Vichyite and Gaullist, at odds with the British, and were at this time attempting to keep a low profile. They were also making a considerable effort to stay on the good side of the local Arabs who trusted neither the French nor the British, and were in general pro-German. But in spite of all this cloak-and-dagger maneuvering, an Allied force invaded Syria from Palestine and Transjordan on June 8, 1941. It was made up of a British expeditionary force of the 7th Australian Division, the 1st Cavalry Division, and a brigade group of the 5th Indian Division, plus the Free French contingent, now known as the 1st Brigade Franc¸ais Libre (1 BFL). The entire force was commanded by General Maitland “Jumbo” Wilson.14 The French brigade was composed mostly of veterans of the Eritrean campaign. Besides the 13th DBLE, it included the Chad tirailleurs, the marines, the spahis, and a new element—four cavalry squadrons of Cherkesses, refugee horsemen from the Caucasus, Circassians who had fled into Syria after the Russian revolution and become part of the French forces there. Commanding the total Free French contingent was General Paul Legentilhomme, who had been commander of troops in French Somaliland at the time of the armistice and had decided to join de Gaulle almost immediately. Missing from the Free French forces was Colonel Montclar. He had declared his reluctance to fight against other Frenchmen, and was assigned to other duties. This was a privilege allowed by the Free French enlistment contract, but in the 13th DBLE only Montclar and one other officer took advantage of it at the time of the Syrian affair. The French, assigned to a place behind elements of the 5th Indian Division in the line of march toward Damascus, were somewhat delayed in getting started, due to the late arrival—and condition—of the vehicles that were to take them on the approach march. It appears that these were even in worse shape than the ragtag trucks of General Leclerc’s desert raiders in the Fezzan, and reflected the poverty of all the Free French forces. Lieutenant Hasey of the 13th DBLE tells the story:

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As we prepared for invasion, a fleet of 200 or more busses was assembled, a nondescript Coxey’s Army motor transport unit of ancient, wheezing American jitneys and jalopies. In the United States, they would disgrace a respectable junk pile. Probably most of them came from American second- and third-rate auto yards. Some of them had hairpins and paper clips for cotter pins. Windshields were stuck together with adhesive tape. Tires were worn thin and were ringed with white, flat patches of bare fabric . . . and these were to take an invasion force into Syria.15

The approach march across the desert was only the beginning of another nightmare, equal to that of Eritrea. The troops were out of the Sahara now, but although it was much smaller than that great wasteland, this Mideast desert was just as hot, just as sand-blown, just as dry, just as miserable. The men were jammed into their rattletrap vehicles, bathed in sweat, suffering from thirst with very little relief offered by their tiny ration of water. Just as in Leclerc’s wilderness of sun and sand, the vehicles became ensable, or they broke down mechanically and had to be constantly worked on by an army of “magician mechanics” who drove alongside the columns and kept them moving. This went on for three days, the troops sleeping a few hours each night in the desert where, just as in the Sahara, the freezing cold took over as the sun descended, interrupting what little sleep they could get. Finally they arrived at Kisque, where they dismounted and relieved the Indian troops who had already engaged the Vichy troops and seen some sharp fighting. The great tragedy of the Syrian campaign was that it now saw Frenchmen fighting Frenchmen. The commander of the Vichy forces in Syria was General Henri Dentz, a quite competent officer who was determined to put up as much of a fight as he could with everything he had. To make matters worse, one of his staunchest units was the 6th E´tranger, the regiment of the Foreign Legion that had been garrisoning Syria for years. It seemed inevitable that it and the 13th DBLE would meet, brother regiments facing each other in combat. Of course, being the Legion, there would be bizarre circumstances surrounding their meeting—or at least bizarre stories, difficult to authenticate, about it. In his extremely well-documented history of the Legion, Douglas Porch tells of one such encounter between the 6th E´tranger and the 13th DBLE at Kadam, a suburb of Damascus. After a brief firefight with an outpost of the Vichy legionnaires, Major Amilakvari had the bugler blow the “Boudin” [the legion’s traditional anthem] which was answered by the bugler from the defensive position. Amilakvari ordered a cease-fire and approached the enemy position, which he discovered to be held by a sergeant and several legionnaires from the 6th. When the sergeant told the major that his orders were to hold his position until one o’clock in the morning, Amilakvari agreed not to advance until then.16

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Another version has it that when two patrols of the 6th E´tranger and the 13th DBLE met, the Vichy group actually presented arms—and then took the other legionnaires prisoner.17 But regardless of the details, there is no doubt that the two legions clashed in bloody combat before Damascus, and that the Vichy forces tried to make use of their slight advantage in armament in the process. Vichy planes bombed the 13th with impunity, while the Free French had few planes of their own to retaliate, and no antiaircraft artillery to speak of. However, when Vichy tanks charged the legionnaires, ancient Free French 75s were trundled up in the nick of time and spoiled the attack.18 In the end the Free French prevailed. The 13th DBLE and the Indians fought their way into Damascus and beyond, while the Australians, attacking on the left, captured Beirut. Dentz, reeling, tried one more offensive, but Wilson countered, using reinforcements dredged up from the meager British troops in Iraq. That proved too much for the Vichy commander, and he asked for an armistice. One of de Gaulle’s purposes in taking Syria and the Levant was to gain more soldiers for the Free French cause. In this he was not at once successful. The terms of the Syrian armistice, signed at Acre on November 3, allowed General Dentz to return to France or North Africa and take as many of his men who wished to go with him. In a hasty referendum held by the 6th E´tranger, it appeared that virtually the entire regiment (or what was left of it after suffering severe losses in the fighting) elected to return to Vichy-held territory with their commander, Colonel Fernand Barre. However, in the long run, some 3,000 Vichy soldiers in Syria decided to throw in their lot with de Gaulle. Among them were many men from the 6th E´tranger, who, after thinking it over, had eventually decided to switch to the 13th DBLE and continue the war as soldiers of Free France. NOTES 1. Eddy Bauer et al., Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia, 24 vols., (Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978), 1: 75. 2. Douglas Porch, The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992), 466. 3. Howard Swiggett, March or Die (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953), 174. 4. John R. Hasey, Yankee Fighter: The Story of an American in the Free French Foreign Legion (Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1944), 195. 5. Ibid., 201. 6. John Connell, Wavell: Scholar and Soldier (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), 366 7. Hasey, 236. 8. Ibid., 243. 9. Porch, 474.

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10. Jean-Noe¨l Vincent, Les Forces Franc¸aises dans la Lutte Contre l’Axe en Afrique, 1940–1943, 2 vols. (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre, 1983), 1: 67. 11. Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., “Jean Ballarin Dies at 84; Led French Cavalry Charge,” New York Times, February 16, 1999. 12. Vincent, 71–80. 13. Raoul Aglion, The Fighting French (New York: Henry Holt, 1943), 217–218. 14. Bauer, 603. 15. Hasey, 263. 16. Porch, 478. 17. Charles Mercer, Legion of Strangers (New York: Pyramid, 1965), 242. 18. Hasey, 271–273.

Chapter 7

THE WESTERN DESERT The area known as the Western Desert was a stretch of the Sahara that extended from within the borders of Egypt westward through the eastern part of Italian Libya. It was to be the main battleground of the North African campaigns of World War II. The Mediterranean lapped at its northern edge, and it reached anywhere from 40 to 150 miles or so south. Except for a cultivated strip along the coastline, it was pure desert, sand, rock, heat, dust, mirages, sandstorms—and dry as a bone. Along with the British troops that were stationed there, a small contingent of Free French marines had been serving in that part of Africa, under British command, almost since the time they had thrown in their lot with the Gaullists, shortly after the armistice. They were the men of the 1st and 2nd Companies of the 1st Bataillon d’Infanterie de la Marine (BIM).1 Known as “tough guys” to the French public, the marines were eager to get in their licks against the Boche. Toward the end of 1940, however, there were no Germans yet in North Africa—but plenty of Italians. There were almost 250,000 of them in the colonial army when Mussolini declared war on Great Britain in June of that year, whereas the British forces in Egypt numbered only 36,000.2 The British sent out patrols to harass the enemy, but for the most part, well aware of their own numerical inferiority, they dug in and waited for an attack. It came soon enough. Mussolini, with ambitions that far outweighed his capabilities, ordered his commander in Libya, Marshal Rudolfo Graziani, to advance across the border into Egypt and push as far as he

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could. He had his eyes on Alexandria, 300 miles away. Graziani, “the lion of the desert,” whose only previous victories were against barefoot, ill-armed natives, was reluctant. He knew the weakness of his own forces in mate´riel and training, and tried to forestall the Italian dictator’s overoptimistic plans. Indeed, in the border skirmishes with the many small detachments of patrolling British troops, the Italians suffered overwhelming losses. But Mussolini was adamant, and at dawn on September 13, 1940, a sizable Italian army under General Mario Berti was launched across the border into Egypt. It met with little heavy opposition but much harassment by elements of the 7th Armored Division, and four days later it arrived in the Sidi Barrani area—where it stayed. The British main forces had withrawn 80 miles to Mersa Matruh, and now the two antagonists faced each other in defensive positions. It was the beginnings of the see-saw war across the desert that would characterize the conflict in the west for most of the next three years. And the Free French marines would be a part of the fight right from that beginning. After a suitable period of training in desert warfare, the motorized 1st Company of the 1st BIM under Captain Savey found itself in the desert south of Buq Buq. It was attached to Brigadier W.H.E. “Strafer” Gott’s Support Group of the 7th Armored Division, one of the units that had been badgering the Italian forces all during their advance to Sidi Barrani.3 In fact, taking part in that harassment had been for the French marines a postgraduate course in desert warfare. The marines were not to remain in the Buq Buq area for long, however, for a weakness had been spotted in the Italian defenses of Sidi Barrani. A complex of seven fortified and mined outposts had been strung in a wide semicircle around the eastern approaches to the Italian occupied town, but British patrol activity and aerial reconnaissance had discovered a 15-mile gap between two of them. When this was reported to Wavell, he ordered an attack by the two available divisions, the 4th Indian and the 7th Armored, with the aim of slipping through the gap and attacking the Italian positions from the rear. General Graziani was quite content to keep his troops in those defensive positions indefinitely, but Wavell, although vastly outnumbered, had already been thinking of a limited offensive even before the gap in the enemy’s line had been revealed. On November 9 the British force set out on what at first Wavell had meant to be only a four- or five-day raid.4 The mission of the French marines in the attack was the protection of the left flank of the armored division’s Support Group, in the area between the coastal road and the sea. It was also to maintain liaison among the units adjacent to it, including the 60th King’s Royal Rifles and the 11th Hussars. The marines played these roles competently as the British

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crashed through the Italian defenses and took back Sidi Barrani, along with a huge bag of prisoners. As the offensive continued, it all seemed too easy; even Wavell himself was surprised at the rapidity of the advance. The next major objective was the heavily fortified port of Bardia, across the border in Italian territory. The BIM, now enlarged by the addition of the 2nd marine company under Captain Giraud, joined the British Rifle Brigade in attacking the airport, defended by a wasps’ nest of machine-gun positions. Again, the Italian troops, already tired of a war they didn’t really want, surrendered in droves. But still the town itself was taken only after a threeday assault by the 6th Australian Division, supported by a heavy artillery, air, and naval bombardment. The Italian commander, Lieutenant General Annabale “Electric Whiskers” Bergonzoli (so-called after his flaming red beard), made his escape. The British forces, along with the French marines, were now well past Buq Buq, which was the furthest extent of the “raid” as originally planned, but Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor, the commander in the field, received the go-ahead from Cairo to press on, while further plans were being made to fit the new circumstances. The next important objective was the key port of Tobruk, 75 miles west of Bardia. Once again the main attack was in the hands of the 6th Australian Division, which had relieved the 4th Indian Division (sent as reinforcement to Eritrea). Tobruk was a major prize, and the Italians were expected to fight fiercely in its defense. On January 21, as the Australians assaulted the city itself, the French marines were given the task of taking out five blockhouses in the southeast sector, all protected by minefields and wire. The marines attacked with their usual vigor, but were driven back, suffering five dead in the attempt. A second effort, aided by the 25-pounders of the British artillery and with Bofors 40 mm antiaircraft guns used in direct fire, succeeded. The marines captured 850 Italians, including 30 officers.5 The defense of Tobruk had not been as strong as expected. After Tobruk the Italian retreat turned into a headlong flight along the coast road, with the Australians in pursuit, while the 7th Armored Division raced out into the desert toward Mechili in a desperate attempt to cut off the enemy columns. Time was now important, for the British had received intelligence that the Germans were about to come to the aid of their hard-pressed Italian allies in North Africa. General O’Connor, considering that possibility, wanted to have all Cyrenaica, the eastern province of Libya, in his hands before they arrived. In the 7th Armored Division the word was out—speed was of the essence. Bursting out of Mechili and rolling day and night, the vehicles of the French marines bounced over the desert as flank protection for the artillery of the armored division’s Support Group. The task had all the characteristics of

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any normal desert movement—burning heat by day, freezing cold at night, choking dust, blinding sandstorms, mechanical breakdowns, and frequent ensables. But after 150 miles of torturous desert travel, the marines reached the Mediterranean shore, along with the British armored division, just north of Beda Fomm. The coast road was cut, the Italian retreat intercepted. It was just in the nick of time. Hardly half an hour after the division had straddled the road, the Italian columns came into sight. There was a fierce battle, but after a day and a half it ended as all the others had, with a complete Italian defeat. The prisoner bag was enormous, and one of the post-battle chores of the French marines was as POW guards. Among the prisoners was “Electric Whiskers” Bergonzoli, the general who had escaped at Bardia only to be recaptured at Beda Fomm. Wavell’s “raid” that had turned into a campaign was ended by the early part of February, and the strange calm that always seems to come after a desperate battle settled over the final battlefield. Cyrenaica belonged to the British. The 7th Armored Division was relieved by the fresh but half-trained and understrength 2nd Armored Division, and sent back to Egypt for rest and repair, but the French marines, now attached to the 17th Australian Brigade, stayed on in Libya. Then a strange thing happened: The marines were bombed by enemy planes, and two French sergeants were killed. That was not so odd, because half-hearted Italian air raids were fairly frequent. This time, however, the planes bore on their wings the black crosses of the Luftwaffe— at last the Germans had come to the rescue of their Italian allies in the Western Desert. It was a harbinger. Soon intelligence reports were telling of German troop landings at ports in Tripolitania,6 the western province of Libya, as well as of considerable Italian reinforcements, all under command of an aggressive German general named Erwin Rommel. Rommel had already made a name for himself as commander of the German 7th Panzer Division, nicknamed the “Ghost Division,” in the Battle of France, not so many months before. Now, as leader of the newly organized “Afrika Korps,” he intended to drive the British back into Egypt—and he had a good chance of doing it. The British army in Cyrenaica was weak, with a large part of its strength siphoned off to the forces in Greece. And it had a new commander in Cyrenaica, Lieutenant General Philip Neame, who had not yet found his legs (O’Connor had gone back to Cairo, slated for a higher command). Without waiting for his entire Afrika Korps to disembark, on March 24, 1941, Rommel attacked El Agheila, the high-water mark of the British occupation of Cyrenaica. It was not heavily defended, and the garrison was ordered to retreat to Mersa Brega. Here the British put up a stiff fight, but were overwhelmed and fell back.

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Rommel, a hard-hitting master tactician, followed each blow with another, and soon had German columns streaking eastward across the desert and along the coast road, with the British retreating before them. The French marines, guarding the local airfield below Agedabia, felt the German pressure in the sharply increased air raids, and a patrol of the 2nd Company was ambushed and captured by armored cars of the Afrika Korps. It was obviously time to leave. The 1st Company BIM was ordered to retreat toward Agedabia on April 1, but things started to go badly wrong. By this time the Allied forces were a bit jittery, and as the Frenchmen pulled out, they were mistaken for the enemy and suffered “friendly fire” from British artillery and the machine guns of the Northumberland Fusiliers. The error was quickly rectified, but shortly afterward the French column was attacked by Messerschmitt 109s, causing casualties and confusion. Finally, the Luftwaffe having departed, the marines were on the road again, driving into the desert. The 2nd Company received its orders the same day, but was menaced by German tanks. It was unable to join the 1st Company until both units, caught up in the general retreat, passed Antelot and arrived at Msus. The marines then headed for the coast again and joined the retreating British columns on the main road between Benghazi and Barce. It was jammed with traffic and slow going, but better than crossing more desert; at least there was gas and water. They continued on through Derna on April 6. That same evening Generals Neame and O’Connor (the latter had returned from Cairo to advise Neame) blundered into an advancing German column near Derna and were captured.7 But now the Axis forces were having logistics problems, and the German pursuit slowed down. In addition, the 7th Armored Division had returned from its reconditioning in Cairo, along with other reinforcements, and that made a considerable difference in balancing the odds. Moreover, Rommel had reached Tobruk, the fortress city now garrisoned by the 9th Australian Divison. The Afrika Korps bypassed the town and its extensive fortifications, and they ground on to take Fort Capuzzo, Sollum, and Halfaya Pass, but with Tobruk threatening its flank and rear, it could go no further. Rommel was furious that Tobruk had not fallen, and he ordered an all-out attack on the vital port city. The attack failed, with heavy German losses. And in spite of repeated attacks, Tobruk remained Rommel’s beˆte noir for many months to come. In the meantime, the French marines had escaped the German pursuit and rejoined the 7th Armored Division. General Gott, the former chief of the division’s Support Group and now commander of the entire division, personally welcomed them back to the fold and assigned them to guard the airfield at El Adem, in the desert south of Tobruk. From

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there the 1st Company went on to Halfaya Pass and the 2nd Company to Sollum, both points on a front that had now been stabilized. The opposing forces were back almost where they had started in February, dug in and staring at each other across the desert. The marines did not remain there long. In early May they were ordered back to Cairo, and from there went on to Syria to join the 1st Brigade Franc¸ais Libre (BFL) in that unhappy fratricidal fight with the Vichy forces.8 Although when the 1st BFL returned to North Africa in January 1942, the Germans had been pushed back all the way to El Agheila, they still had some forces left in possession of Halfaya Pass. Now the Frenchmen’s initial order was to retake the pass, which was protected by a sole German battalion. The attack never came off; the order was revoked, and the brigade was sent on toward Derna. However, before that happened, a French reconnaissance party had the opportunity to study the German defenses at Halfaya. It was the first time the brigade’s officers had come upon the Afrika Korps’ clever tactical use of minefields in conjunction with artillery, machine guns, and wire, a revelation that would be put to good use by the Frenchmen in future combat. Before the French reached Derna, the orders were changed again, and a British liaison officer met the BFL column with a new directive, this time to proceed to Mechili, which was threatened by German forces on the move again. There the Frenchmen joined the Polish Carpathian Brigade, and for eight days operated in the desert around that oasis town. From there they went on to Alam Hanza, where, on February 15, 1942, they were ordered to relieve the 150th Indian Brigade at Bir Hakeim. It was a fateful order, for Bir Hakeim became the great epic struggle in the Free French history of World War II. To blunt any further German advances, the British had established a string of strong points, called “boxes,” that stretched across the desert from Gazala on the Mediterranean to Bir Hakeim, about 40 miles inland. Bir means “wells” in Arabic, but it was a long time since any well water had been enjoyed at Bir Hakeim—the broken down cisterns were quite dry. The setting was a most desolate part of the desert, a flat stretch of sandy waste dotted with camel thorn, that at one time had been a station for Italian camel corps meharisti. It had been abandoned until recently, when it was occupied by the British Indian troops whom the BFL was now relieving. The Free French Brigade was at its strongest ever. Its core was the 13th DBLE, two Legion battalions under Colonel Amilakvari, now designated BLE 2 and BLE 3 (there was another Legion battalion, but because there was not enough equipment to go around, it was not sent to Bir Hakeim).9 There was also the 2nd DBS (Demi-brigade Se´ne´galaise), commanded by

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Lieutenant Colonel de Roux, made up of BM 2 (Bataillon de Marche de l’Oubangui), hard-fighting black soldiers from the jungles of Central Africa, and BP 1 (Bataillon Pacifique), whose memories of the gentle ocean breezes and swaying coconut palms of Tahiti would soon be lost in the crash of gunfire and the bloody scenes of combat. There were other important units among the French forces at Bir Hakeim, including a regiment of artillery, 75 mm guns under Lieutenant Colonel Laurent-Champrosay, which was to be a mainstay of the battle. There was also an antitank company, a separate company of North Africans, and Commandant Savey’s marines. The engineering chores were supervised by the 1st Compagnie de Sapeurs-Mineurs; antiaircraft defense was in the hands of another group of marines, the 1st BFM (Bataillon de Fusiliers Marins) with 12 Bofors 40 mm cannon and a complement of antiaircraft machine guns, under command of Capitaine de Corvette Amyot d’Inville. These were reinforced by a British battery of six more Bofors guns. And of course there were the usual medical, supply, and administrative personnel to complete the garrison.10 All told there were 3,703 men (and at least one woman) on the roles of the 1st BFL at the beginning of the battle, all under command of General Joseph Pierre Koenig. Forty-four years old at the time of Bir Hakeim, Koenig had been an officer since age 19, a veteran of World War I, and in World War II a Foreign Legion officer of the 13th DBLE. He was young (for a general), tough, knowledgeable, hard-working, and experienced; he was also lucky to have had three quiet months to prepare the defenses of Bir Hakeim for the hard days ahead. When the BFL arrived at the dried-up wells, they discovered that the previous British garrison had not had time to complete the engineering work that could protect Bir Hakeim from the superior forces arrayed against it. Koenig immediately set his infantry to work digging trenches, siting machine-gun nests, and constructing dugouts and pill boxes, while the artillerymen carefully laid out positions for their 75s and Bofors. The legionnaires were particularly useful on the construction projects, for many of them had experience at such tasks in prewar days, when the Legion built roads, tunnels, and forts in North Africa.11 There was a fury of mine laying and wire stringing, too, and minefields erupted all over Bir Hakeim. But the field fortifications were only a part of the tactical plan of the Gazala line, which curved around the ancient Bir Hakeim fort at its southern end and then extended northeast toward the British box called “Knightsbridge.” Just as important were the “jock columns,” the powerful mobile forces that patrolled between the boxes with the mission of discovering and destroying any enemy that might be seeking to attack anywhere along the line.12 The French jock columns were somewhat different from those of the

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A low-flying RAF Blenheim light bomber escorts this “jock column” of Free French Bren gun carriers on their desert mission of reconnaissance and combat. As fighting vehicles, the carriers received mixed reviews from their British originators, but the French appreciated the mobility provided by their full tracks and the partial protection of their light armor—particularly when compared to the wrecks the Frenchmen had previously been using for transport.

British. Typically, they might be based on a half company of truck-borne infantry, a battery of field artillery, and a few antiaircraft guns. Additional mobility and firepower could be furnished by the Bren gun carriers, the small British tracked vehicles with which the Legion and the Senegalese had been generously equipped. These were no match for German tanks, however, and the lack of heavy armor was the great deficiency of the Free French forces. Nevertheless, the jock columns with their excellent radio equipment kept headquarters supplied with valuable intelligence, and their artillery managed to make them a very real threat. The Free French box at Bir Hakeim was roughly triangular in shape

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and measured a good 16.5 kilometers around its perimeter. De Roux’s Senegalese were positioned at the northwest end; the Pacific Battalion manned the southwest. At the point of the triangle, to the east, the legionnaires of BLE 2 were the defenders. Koenig’s headquarters, BLE 3, the artillery, and the supplementary troops were encamped in the center, ready to reinforce any part of the box as needed.13 By now the whole picture in the Western Desert had changed. While the 1st Free French Brigade had been in Syria, Rommel had been pushed back as far as El Agheila, but then, reinforced, he had advanced again, outwitting the British at nearly every turn. Wavell, out of favor with Churchill, had been sent off to India and replaced by General Claude Auchinleck as Commanding Officer, Middle East. Auchinleck, in turn, had named General Neil M. Ritchie as commander of the Eighth Army, the new designation of the desert troops. Ritchie had intended to launch an attack against the Axis forces from the Gazala line, but he was too late; Rommel beat him to the punch. On May 27, 1942, the German general launched his offensive, intending to feint against the north of the line but actually to move against the south. The Free French at Bir Hakeim stood in his way. Armored probes tried to pierce the French positions—and failed. When Rommel discovered the determination of the Bir Hakeim garrison, he sent two Italian divisions, the Ariete Armored and the Trieste Motorized, to smash these impertinent Frenchmen once and for all. They failed. The French artillery and antitank guns took a fearful toll of the attackers, destroying or severely damaging 32 tanks and capturing almost 100 prisoners. The Italians retired. Their German masters then decided that Bir Hakeim would have to be thoroughly whipped before the battle of the Gazala Line could be won. The next two weeks were sheer hell for the defenders, for Rommel threw everything he had at the stubborn French stronghold that stood in his way. It started off with an Axis attack that cut through the British lines above Bir Hakeim, completely isolating the French. Then two Italian officers were sent under a white flag to Koenig’s headquarters. With heel-clicking politeness they demanded that the garrison surrender—or be exterminated. Just as courteously the French replied that such an action was out of the question. The emissaries departed.14 Shortly thereafter a tremendous salvo of artillery hit the French camp. It was returned by Laurent-Champrosay’s 75s, and soon a lively artillery duel was in progress. It lasted for several days, off and on, and finally slackened to allow another white flag party to approach Koenig with a second surrender demand. This time the only answer was a burst of artillery fire.15 But by now the French were weakening. Even with their superb gunnery skills, their 75s were no match for the heavier German guns, and

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Bir Hakeim! A legionnaire and a captain of the 13th DBLE await another savage attack by the Afrika Korps and the Luftwaffe. The Legion provided a third of the garrison for this desert “box” of French marines, Senegalese, south sea islanders, Moroccans, and others who defied Rommel’s overwhelmingly superior forces in the famous ten-day siege.

the constant Luftwaffe raids added to the unrelenting pressure.16 Some of that pressure was temporarily relieved when the British attacked in that area north of Bir Hakeim that came to be known as “the Cauldron.” When the attack had run its course, Rommel once again turned his attention to Bir Hakeim itself, and an intense assault was launched against the French positions by the 90th Light Division. It was beaten back by heavy artillery fire, but the devastating aerial bombardment continued. Other factors led to the further deterioration of the French defense. Supply was a problem; the defenders were running out of ammunition, food, and water, and as the German ring tightened, supply trucks were unable to find a way into the French encampments. The RAF tried resupply by air, but most of the parachute drops were recovered by the Germans. Finally, as the garrison showed signs of collapse, an Axis staff car drove into the command post of BLE 3 one night, headlights blazing. Its occupants had a third surrender demand from Rommel, and asked to speak to the commanding general. Koenig refused to see them and gave them five minutes to get out. Nevertheless, the Axis representatives insisted on reading aloud Rommel’s demand by the glare of the headlights, while the snickering legionnaires made rude remarks.17 Then the enemy party left.

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In spite of his defiance, Koenig knew that his brigade was in bad shape and would soon have to sortie from Bir Hakeim and flee eastward to where the British had been pushed back to a new line. He reported his intentions to General Auchinleck, who asked him to hold out for just a few more days to give the British a chance to reorganize. Koenig agreed. Those last few days were an inferno. From June 8 to June 10 the battered French troops withstood a frightful pounding. Not only were they subject to all-out infantry attacks and artillery bombardment, but clouds of Stukas and Heinkel 111s bombed and machine-gunned them unmercifully. The RAF did what they could to protect them from the aerial assault, but the Luftwaffe was just too strong for the British fliers. By June 10, it became obvious that the BFL could hold out no longer. Koenig gave the order to the individual units to evacuate the area and try to reach the new British lines to the east. At 11:30 that night the evacuation began, with orderly columns moving out in the darkness. The withdrawal soon became a rout, however, as the Germans closed in. Tracers streaked through the night, grenades exploded, and rifle and machine-gun fire crackled everywhere. But somehow or other, in spite of the wild confusion (or perhaps because of it), a majority of the French brigade made it to safety with the British. General Koenig himself escaped, along with Colonel Amilakvari, in the general’s car.18 It was driven by Susan Travers, an English volunteer ambulance driver in the 13th DBLE, the only woman in the French Foreign Legion. By September the battered and bloodied 1st BFL was back in Cairo, brought up to strength and re-equipped. The brigade’s heroic stand at Bir Hakeim, in spite of the beating it had taken, had enhanced the reputation of the Free French in the eyes of the world.19 Now the name “Free French” was changed to France Combattante—“Fighting French”— and even the greatest doubters among the British began to show respect. It was well deserved, for the sacrifice of Koenig’s people had given Auchinleck just enough time to complete the new defensive line from El Alamein on the coast south to the edge of the Qattara Depression, the impenetrable swampy mass that protected the British left flank. It was to be the base for a renewed British attack—but might also turn out to be the site of a last stand in defense of Alexandria, just 50 miles to the east. Now the 1st BFL had joined with the re-equipped 2nd BFL (which had been busy with support and defensive missions while the 1st was at Bir Hakeim), to form the Groupe de Brigades under General de Larminat. The 1st was attached to the 7th Armored Division at the extreme south of the line; the 2nd came under orders of the 50th Infantry Division at Alam Halfa. Once again the high command of the Middle East theater had been

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relieved at the behest of Winston Churchill.20 Auchinleck was replaced by the patrician General Sir Harold Leofric Ruppert Alexander; the new commander of the Eighth Army was the peppery and offensive-minded Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery. Soon “Monty’s” fighting spirit had suffused the entire army as the general let it be known that there would be no more retreats and that a big push was in the offing. That enthusiasm filtered down to the BFL as Major General A.F. Harding, the new commander of the 7th Armored Division, presented Koenig with his mission for the coming offensive. The Fighting French, deep in the desert on the edge of the Qattara Depression, were to scale the escarpment of Himeimat, a strong point on the Axis side of the Alamein line, and attack the enemy there. The attack was to take place at night, always a difficult manuever. The defenders were the paratroopers of the Folgore Division, said to be the best troops in the Italian army. And they were entrenched in almost impenetrable fieldworks. To add to the difficulties, the objective was protected by extensive minefields and heavy artillery, including the famous “88s,” the antiaircraft gun the Germans had learned to use in an antitank and field artillery role with such deadly effect. Montgomery had chosen October 23 as the date of the big offensive (there was a full moon that night), and Koenig had selected the two Foreign Legion battalions to spearhead the assault on Himeimat. H-hour was projected for 11:30 P.M., but because the Legion’s approach march to its attack position on the southern end of the El Alamein line was a good 15 kilometers, the trucks and Bren gun carriers started out earlier. From the beginning everything seemed to go wrong. The approach march was over some of the most difficult of the desert terrain, and ensables were frequent and serious. Several of the vehicles hit mines and were disabled. Then, just as the roar of the guns announced the opening of Montgomery’s El Alamein drive with the biggest barrage yet in the desert war, the 1st BLE’s radios went out. The resulting confusion doomed the Legion’s attack. With their radios dead, the legionnaires were unable to communicate with their headquarters or with the other battalion, nor could they call for the artillery support they so desperately needed. German Mk. IV tanks closed in, and some of the French 75 mm ammunition was found to be ineffective against them. The fighting went on all night. Then at dawn the fighters and bombers of the Luftwaffe arrived to add to the Legion’s already considerable losses. By full light of the morning of October 24, Koenig realized that his part of the battle of El Alamein was turning into a slaughter. He ordered a withdrawal. As Colonel Amilakvari was supervising the retreat, an enemy shell crashed nearby. Displaying his usual contempt for death, the colonel was wearing his kepi rather than a helmet, and he suffered

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severe head wounds. The Georgian prince, whose life had been the Legion, was rushed to the nearest aid station, but in spite of all efforts, he couldn’t be saved. His death was the last crushing blow for the Legion at Himeimat.21 The battle of El Alamein went on for many days, but the French, with a few exceptions, had little part in it. The 2nd Brigade Franc¸ais Libre performed patrol duty in a southern part of the line called the “Hogsback,” and the Legion was pulled out of the line in early November. The BIMP (the marines combined with the Pacific units), however, drove all across North Africa with the victorious Eighth Army and fought in the battle of Medenine in the desert of southern Tunisia. The Moroccan Spahis came back into combat attached to the British 4th Light Armored Brigade, and took part in the actions at Medenine and Foum Tatouine. Those were the last significant battles of the Free French forces in the deserts of Africa. While the BFL (including the 13th DBLE) eventually fought right up to the gates of Tunis, the combat was in the green hills of northern Tunisia and no longer in the hellish, wind-driven sands of the Sahara. NOTES 1. Jean-Noe¨l Vincent, Les Forces Franc¸aises dans la Lutte Contre l’Axe en Afrique, 1940–1943, 2 vols. (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre, 1983), 1: 104. 2. For a breakdown of British and Italian strengths at this time, see Eddy Bauer et al., Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia, 24 vols. (Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978), 2: 268. 3. The 7th Armored Division under General Creagh became famous as the “Desert Rats” later in their long service in the Sahara. In 1942 General Gott, after a distinguished desert career, was shot down and killed while on his way to taking command of the Eighth Army from General Auchinleck. 4. John Connell, Wavell: Scholar and Soldier (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), 278. 5. Vincent, 111. 6. For a German view of the arrival of the first Afrika Korps troops in Tripoli, see David Irving, The Trail of the Fox (New York: Avon Books, 1978), 80–81. 7. A dramatic account of this incident can be found in Connell, 400. 8. Vincent, 114. 9. Douglas Porch, The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992), 481. 10. Vincent, 124. 11. Perhaps the most famous of these construction projects is the tunnel through the Atlas mountains at Foum Zabel in Morocco. The legionnaires dug through solid rock, using only pick, crowbar, and shovel. At the entrance they placed a plaque that read, “The mountain barred the way. Nonetheless the order was given to pass. The Legion carried it out.” See John Robert Young, The French

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Foreign Legion: The Inside Story of the World Famous Fighting Force (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 31. 12. These mobile columns were named after Colonel “Jock” Campbell, the legendary British officer who perfected the technique of such forces in the Western Desert. 13. Vincent, 128. 14. Bauer, 784. 15. Vincent, 155. 16. Porch, 482. 17. Vincent, 161. 18. Porch, 483. 19. For an enemy perspective of Bir Hakeim, see Irving, 209–213. 20. Churchill, always impatient, was notoriously rough on his generals. Since the war, historians have generally regarded both Auchinleck and Wavell as fighting generals doing the best job possible under the circumstances and deserving of better treatment from the Prime Minister. 21. Porch, 484. Amilakvari has become a legend, almost a saint, in the annals of the Legion.

Chapter 8

LOOKING BACK How much did the Free French effort in the Sahara contribute to victory in World War II? It can be argued that a camel raid on an Italian post in a dusty oasis town in the remote desert of southern Libya can hardly be called a major military conquest. On the other hand it can also be said that such an operation as the heroic defense of Bir Hakeim, although it ended in a French defeat, held up Rommel long enough to keep him from taking Alexandria, and perhaps Cairo and Suez, and surely helped turn the tide of the war itself in North Africa. Certainly the sum total of Leclerc’s raids, although each seemed a mere pinprick compared to the battles in the north, added up to more than just an annoyance to the Axis. The sudden appearance of French troops deep in the Sahara so soon after their total defeat in Europe must have seemed like an awakening of the dead to the surprised Italians. If no irreparable physical damage was done, the raids had a morale-shattering effect on Mussolini’s colonial troops that was of no small benefit to the Allies in those desperate early days of World War II. And of primary importance to the war effort was the establishment and defense of the great airfield at Fort Lamy in Southern Chad. This Free French facility maintained a steady flow of military personnel, diplomats, journalists, and supplies across Africa on the TakroudiKhartoum-Cairo air corridor that was vital to the support of the Allied effort in the northern Sahara throughout the war in Africa.1 That the Free French were able to bounce back from the stunning defeat of the French armies in 1940, the stultifying effect of the German

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occupation of their homeland, and the unremitting enmity of the puppet Vichy government can be looked upon almost as a miracle. No less so was the establishment of the seat of a Free French government deep in the center of Africa at Brazzaville in the Middle Congo. In addition, a military headquarters was set up at Fort Lamy and an advance base was created at Faya-Largeau, some 500 miles to the north. And Brazzaville, formerly a sleepy colonial village, became a modern town with all the facilities of government, including a major radio station and factories for the manufacture of uniforms and other military necessities. It also provided up-to-date medical services, based on the Brazzaville Hospital and the local Pasteur Institute.2 And in February 1941, just outside Brazzaville, a Free French officers’ training school was established that continued to turn out leaders for the remainder of the African war. It was named Camp d’Ornano after the martyred hero of that first Franco-British raid on Mourzouk, and its graduates were among the officers in most of the subsequent Free French campaigns. This regeneration of the French military spirit in the face of so many discouragements could have been accomplished only under an exceptional group of officers. First and foremost of these was, of course, Charles de Gaulle himself. In those early days de Gaulle was almost entirely alone, but determined to raise a new army to continue the fight against Germany. Here’s how his arrival in England was described by the contemporary Free French writer, Raoul Aglion: General de Gaulle stepped out of the plane at Croydon airfield in the gentle morning air of June 18, 1940, without money, without his family, without the slightest knowledge of the English language, without assurance that the British government would support his self-imposed mission. His wife and children were caught in France and did not know what he was going to do. His intimate contacts with the British leaders were all of rather recent date. As a whole, Anglo-French relations had never been more complicated and dubious. Only his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Geofroy de Coursel, formerly of General Weygand’s general staff in Syria, was at his side. So scant were the preparations for receiving him that he had to put up at a mediocre depressing hotel. He was limp with fatigue when he finally dropped his bag—which contained only a picture of his family, a pair of trousers, and four shirts.3

De Gaulle’s rise from this low point in his career to leader of an army and eventually a nation is, indeed, the measure of the man. At his side, at least figuratively, during much of this travail was another soldier whom we have not yet mentioned, General Georges Catroux. This aged warrior, 80 years old when he joined the Free French, was serving as governor general of Indochina at the time of the armistice. As soon as he expressed his desire to fight on, his Vichy superiors re-

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placed him. That was fine with General Catroux, and he made known his feelings to de Gaulle. In December 1940, he showed up in Egypt in command of the odds and ends of Free French troops that were gathering there. Catroux was no stranger to North Africa, for after active service in World War I he had served in Morocco and Algeria, and he knew the Sahara well. A typical colonial soldier, he was just the type de Gaulle wanted. From Egypt he went to Syria as delegate general and plenipotentiary for the Free French, and successfully negotiated the various treaties and arrangements vis-a`-vis the British, the Syrians, and the defeated Vichy forces. Thereafter he was a troubleshooter for de Gaulle whenever and wherever he was needed in Free French territory. Another desert soldier on whose shoulder de Gaulle leaned heavily was General Edgard de Larminat. A colonel on the staff of General Mittelhauser, the military commander in Syria at the time of the armistice, he refused to knuckle under to his Vichy superiors and was imprisoned. He escaped and made his way across Palestine, Egypt, and the Sudan to become the Middle Congo’s first Free French governor general at Brazzaville. He later commanded Free French troops in Libya. He is known to history as one of de Gaulle’s most valuable aides. The name of General Paul Louis Legentilhomme is another that is bound to arise in any discussion of Free French desert fighting. Legentilhomme was among the very first of the key officers to declare for de Gaulle. He was commanding troops in French Somaliland at the eastern end of the Sahara when Marshal Pe´tain asked the Germans for an armistice, and the very next day he made known his intention to keep on fighting no matter what its terms. For this he was relieved from duty and ordered to return to France. He refused and made his way to join de Gaulle in London. He was eventually appointed to command the Free French forces in the Syrian campaign, where he was wounded. Subsequently he was named Free French Commissioner of War, a minister in the new French government. Also among the generals were Jacques Leclerc, whom we already know and who started out with de Gaulle as a mere captain, and Joseph Pierre Koenig, the legionnaire whose name is forever linked with the defense of Bir Hakeim. All these military men were not just ordinary functionaries but trusted officials, some with high diplomatic responsibilities—and fighting generals as well, with their feet in the sands of the Sahara. The men they commanded were a colorful lot—officers like Dio who in his me´hariste days would dismount from his camel each noon at the imagined striking of the Angelus and kneel in prayer; or like Massu who cauterized his wounds with a cigarette; or Amilakvari, the Georgian prince who so willingly gave his life to the Legion and France. The units these men led were equally exotic, such as the black Senegalese infantry,

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experts with the bayonet, some of whom had never before worn shoes; the hard-drinking, hard-fighting exiles of the Foreign Legion; and the camel riding nomads of the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti; and other local militia. Particularly outlandish were the nomad groups, many of whom were recruited from the strange Tibbou people of the wild, remote Chad districts of Tibesti, Enneri, and Borkou. The Tibbou (also called Teda) were a black people of unknown origin, distinct from the Negroid tribes of Central Africa. There were about 10,000 of them, all told, at the time of World War II, most of them living a seminomadic life centered around their camel herds. Mixed in among them in the nomad groups were Arabs and Touareg and, of course, their French leaders, who were often as offbeat as the men they commanded. Not quite so strange were the Moroccan Spahis. Their oddity lay in the fact that for much of this modern mechanized war they were sabreswinging horse cavalry of the old school. Eventually, however, they suffered the fate most feared by all true horse soldiers—they were mechanized, and spent the rest of the war fighting from vehicles. The men who were really strangers to the desert but adapted very well indeed were the Free French marines. Many of them were Breton fishermen who had enlisted in this branch of the naval service, never thinking that they would end up so far from the sea they loved, and certainly not right in the middle of the biggest desert in the world. But whether they were patrolling in armored vehicles in the northern Sahara with Captain Savey or manning antiaircraft guns under Capitaine de Corvette Amyot d’Inville at Bir Hakeim, the marines, “tough, swaggering, untamed,” were an important part of the Free French forces. In general, the relations between the Free French and their British allies were both ambiguous and unusual. This held true at all levels. At the top, Winston Churchill, even before there was a Free French cause, offered to join Great Britain to France in a political union much closer than any previous alliance. France, although in desperate straits in the war against Germany, refused. Then, when the armistice brought de Gaulle to London, he signed a memorandum with the prime minister, binding the two together in an agreement that had the Frenchman raising an army of “Free French” and the British offering to arm it. From then on the alliance seemed to be a love-hate relationship. The Free French fought to the very best of their abilities and did a magnificent job considering the paucity of arms and equipment and just about everything else, while the British did their level best to live up to their part of the bargain—not so easy a task in view of their own shortages. De Gaulle seemed to be complaining constantly, particularly about being left out of British planning; the British retorted by pointing out the many French security leaks.

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All this bickering drifted down to lower levels, and the soldiers in the desert, too, had their gripes. Even in their cooperative patrolling there was a certain amount of discord. The British charged the French with poor radio discipline, and the French accused the Tommies of being careless in camouflaging their vehicles and positions. Sometimes the wrangling became heated, as when certain Frenchmen maintained that the British had deserted them at Bir Hakeim and that the occasional accidental “friendly fire” of the RAF had been pure indifferent carelessness on the part of the British fliers. There are other accounts, however, that reflect more sweetness and light. It is reported that after Bir Hakeim, General Koenig sent the British a message “Merci pour le RAF” to which the RAF replied “Merci pour le sport.”4 Of course, in addition to the support of the RAF the Free French also had their own air force, but it was at first restricted to a few patched-up British Lysander reconnaissance planes and Blenheim bombers, as well as American Martin bombers and French Potez transports, the latter often used as aerial ambulances. As more planes and personnel became available, they were organized into the Lorraine Group operating with the British in the northern desert, and the Bretagne Squadron in Chad supporting Leclerc’s forces in the south. The Free French desert fighters were unique among the airmen of World War II. The special skills needed could only be learned by flying over the desert itself. The dangers were many. There were the constant sandstorms and the treacherous thermal conditions over the mountainous areas that made aerial journeys especially perilous. A forced landing in the Sahara, even if the people involved were unhurt, could be only the beginning of a frightful trial by sun and sand. Add to this the condition of the ancient Free French planes, and the dangers of flying over the desert were increased many times.5 Although any desert fighting was particularly dangerous, the work of the desert commandos was even more so. The adventures of the British Special Air Service (SAS), guided in their desert raids by the LRDG, is a twice-told tale, but the fact that there was also a Free French SAS is not so well known. The French SAS were men trained by the British, and the story of this one particular mission was, to say the least, bizarre. They were attached to an outfit called the Signal Interrogation Group (SIG). This name was simply a cover for a unit of German Jews from Palestine disguised as German soldiers. Each SIG man was provided with a German uniform, a false name, a paybook, and dog tags and was ordered to speak only German throughout the entire operation. Their mission was to raid a German airfield near Derna, do as much damage as possible, and then escape. Transportation was provided by two captured German trucks in each of which were three fake Germans

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and, hiding in the back, five French SAS commandos. The drivers were real Germans, anti-Hitler POWs who had volunteered for the job and were trusted by the British planners. The entire oddball expedition was commanded by British Captain Herbert Buck who had been a prisoner of the Germans and escaped and, of course, spoke fluent German. It was a daring—some might say harebrained—scheme, but it almost worked. This strange crew bluffed their way through a few sentries until they were right in the middle of a German encampment—when the engine of the first truck suddenly died! The POW driver dismounted and lifted the hood, ostensibly to try to find the trouble. Then, when he had enough curious armed Germans around him, he exposed the entire plot, as he had intended all along. Finding himself in the midst of his compatriots, he had simply killed the engine. The raiding party, surrounded by the enemy, was quickly captured.6 The betrayal of the SIG raid, predictable as it should have been with the use of POWs, was a hard blow to the Free French SAS and its British masters. Fortunately, however, on that same evening another French SAS party was more successful. It raided a German airfield at Berka, near Benghazi, destroying 11 enemy bombers, so some faith was restored. The Italians, like the French, had their somewhat strange auxiliaries. The meharisti and the askaris formed an exotic part of the Italian fighting forces but were never anywhere near the equal of the French native troops. Although there were many instances of individual courage, too often when the chips were down, there was hasty surrender or mass desertion on the part of the Libyan soldiers. There was no lack of bravery, but simply a general deficiency in basic leadership throughout the Italian army that trickled down to its colonial troops. The mass of Mussolini’s army had little heart for this useless war in a faraway place, and it showed. Compounding the Italian leadership problem in the field was the almost unbelievable incompetence in the higher staff levels. One instance of this was the case of the misshipment of field guns. Although Italian artillerists were considered quite good, one shipment of artillery pieces especially altered for use on the Russian front was sent by staff error to North Africa. The technical alteration that had been made on these guns allowed the heat of the muzzle blast to be retained after each firing, a useful feature in the icy conditions of a Russian winter but hardly advisable in the Sahara Desert. The result was that after each firing under the African sun, the guns would jam. They were quite useless.7 The French, too, as we have seen, had their own equipment problems, but they seemed to be able to solve them well enough. In Leclerc’s southern desert they became expert at salvaging the wrecks of Ford and Chevrolet pickup trucks from the junk yards of central Africa and adapting them to desert warfare. They also made full use of captured enemy ve-

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hicles, as did the British—so much so that the wags declared the Italian army to be the real “arsenal of democracy.” Consider also that those well-worn vehicles must travel enormous distances. In the back-and-forth war in the north the stretch from El Alamein to Mareth measured well over a thousand miles, and there was only one decent highway, the coast road along the Mediterranean. Further south in the desert where Leclerc’s forces were fighting there was nothing that could be called a road at all, only the sandy pistes that might be wiped out by a few hours’ ghibli. And the battleground in that part of the desert covered an area the size of France itself! These vast distances, with their different peoples, languages and interests made military intelligence a particularly difficult task. But the French and British were lucky; they had the cooperation of the locals, particularly of the Senussi brotherhood and its followers. The Senussi was a Moslem religious order founded in the 1840s by Sayyid Mohammed ibn Ali as Senussi. Its original purpose was missionary work among the desert Bedouin, the nomad tribesmen who were backsliders from the stricter traditions and customs of the true faith. The leaders of the organization were peaceful in their intentions and managed to get along well enough with the Turkish rulers of that time, but when the French fought their way into the Sahara at the turn of the century, the invaders met with armed Senussi hostility. Subdued by French guns, the order was rapidly losing influence among the tribes when the Italians invaded Libya in 1911. This so enraged the Bedouin that they rallied to Senussi leadership and the order experienced a comeback. Although eventually forced to submit, they continued to lead an underground movement against the Italians that emerged into the open at the beginning of World War II. All through the desert fighting, Senussi-led tribesmen continued to aid the Allies by serving as guides, helping escaped prisoners, rescuing lost travelers, acting as spies, and actually serving as goumiers—irregular soldiers—in the Free French forces. Without the aid of the Libyan natives inspired by the Senussi, the work of the Allies throughout the desert war would have been even more difficult. In all the desert operations of World War II the visible inspiration for the fighting men of Free France was the Cross of Lorraine. Derived from the battle flag of Joan of Arc, this unique symbol was displayed on the sides of vehicles, on Free French aircraft, as shoulder patches on the uniforms of legionnaires and tirailleurs. Fashioned in silver, it was even offered as souvenir jewelry in the souks of North Africa. Looking back, the Cross of Lorraine was more than a mere symbol. It came to represent the sacrifices of those heroes who, against all odds, kept hope alive in a mother country under the heel of a tyrannical enemy, even when its own government had let it down. It preserved the

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memory of battles lost and won in the sands and rock of the Sahara where that battered band of Frenchmen and their native allies redeemed the honor of the French army and of France itself. NOTES 1. Eddy Bauer et al., Illustrated World War II Encylopedia, 24 vols. (Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978), 5: 592. 2. Raoul Aglion, The Fighting French (New York: Henry Holt, 1943), 137. 3. Ibid., 54. 4. Ibid., 240. 5. For a British view of the Free French air force and its pilots see W.B. Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 81–82. 6. Russell Miller et al., The Commandos (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977), 85. 7. Rex Trye, Mussolini’s Afrika Korps: The Italian Army in North Africa 1940–1943 (Bayside, NY: Axis-Europa Books, 1999), 69.

EPILOGUE The end of the desert war did not mean the end of the term “Free French” to distinguish the Gaullists from the Vichy Arme´e d’Afrique. When the latter joined the Allies after the Anglo-American landings in North Africa in 1942, the followers of de Gaulle were disdainful of what they considered “johnny-come-latelies” in the renewed war against Germany. That attitude continued in some areas up to the very end of the war in 1945. After all, the Free French had been fighting desperately and suffering cruelly while General Juin’s North African army had been marking time under the Vichy government in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia for the past two and a half years. Not that most Frenchmen in North Africa did not have the same hatred of Germany as their Gaullist compatriots, but the true feelings of most officers were repressed by their oath of office to what they considered the legitimate government of Vichy. In fact many had taken action against the Axis by defying the Italo-German commission that had been sent to North Africa to make sure the terms of the armistice were carried out. Forbidden arms were hidden; refugee soldiers in the Foreign Legion were sent to far-off posts, safe from deportation to concentration camps; strength reports were juggled; and the commissions in most cases were completely bamboozled. The real break came, however, when the government in North Africa, now under Admiral Darlan, joined the Allies, and the Arme´e d’Afrique fought side by side, figuratively speaking, with the Free French in Tunisia. In January 1943 at the Casablanca conference, Roosevelt and Chur-

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chill tried to make peace between de Gaulle and General Giraud (whom they backed), but were not quite successful. A bigger accomplishment at that meeting was the agreement of the United States to arm and equip a French Expeditionary Corps (FEC), which they hoped to eventually build up to 11 divisions for the assault on Europe. This sounded like great news for the French, but there was a fly in the ointment. The United States insisted that for the sake of cohesion and ease of supply the new divisions be organized along the same lines as American divisions. This entailed the elimination of some historic and traditional French fighting units and their absorption into divisional service companies and battalions. American divisions had a far larger administrative “tail” than the French were used to, and the latter resented the fact that some of their crack regiments were “wasted” as quartermaster, ordnance, and transportation units. After all, they were used to doing without such elaborate support in their colonial wars in the rugged mountains and deserts of Africa. However, the Americans insisted, and the French eventually agreed, settling down to training for modern warfare. The newly equipped French regiments were not quite ready for the invasion of Sicily, but General Patton, who led the Americans in that operation, wanted to have a token French battalion among his forces. His particular choice was the Moroccan goumiers, whom he had seen in action in Tunisia, and the 4th Moroccan tabor was selected. They fought alongside the Americans throughout the Sicilian campaign.1 By the time the Allies had penetrated into Italy, however, the new French army was ready. Among the units that fought with General Juin’s French Expeditionary Corps was the 1st French Motorized Division (whose name was later changed to 1st Division Franc¸aise Libre) under Major General Diego Brosset,2 an entirely Free French division of desert veterans that held itself somewhat separate from the rest of the FEC, which was composed of Arme´e d’Afrique units. The FEC in its entirety fought magnificently in Italy and is credited with opening the way to Rome. The Free French division further distinguished itself as a part of a specially organized pursuit group chasing the retreating Germans north of Rome—a group commanded by another old desert fighter, Major General Edgard de Larminat.3 The fighting there was fierce and, among many others, two well-known Free French Saharan fighters were lost, the artilleryman Colonel Laurent-Champrosay and the marine Capitaine de Fregate Amyot d’Inville, both of whom had served so well at Bir Hakeim. The Free French troops were withdrawn from the Italian front in July, along with the rest of the FEC, to prepare for the invasion of southern France. De Larminat later became the commander of French I Corps in that First French Army landing. The renamed 1st Division Franc¸aise Libre

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fought hard and conquered in the bitter battle for Toulon, and continued on through the terrible winter in the Vosges, and then across the Rhine and into Germany. It ended the war covered with glory—and with many heart-stirring memories of desert raids and mountain victories. At the same time Major General Jacques Leclerc was leading his new command, the French 2nd Armored Division, into battle. Where once he had led a rattletrap circus of broken-down pickup trucks across a barren desert, now he commanded scores of American tanks and an arsenal of powerful weapons. Nor was his objective a sand-blown mud fort in a remote oasis. This time his orders were to enter the City of Light, Paris itself, and flush out any Germans who remained there. This he did under Eisenhower’s orders and with encouragement from de Gaulle, who now established himself as head of the French government. And General Koenig, the Free French commander of Bir Hakeim, was named military governor of the newly liberated capital. After Paris the 2nd Armored Division continued to sweep across Europe with the Americans, under orders of General Patton’s Third Army. This command arrangement was unique. The other French Divisions served under the aegis of de Lattre’s First French Army and (with the exception of the 1st Division Franc¸aise Libre) had their origins in the Arme´e d’Afrique. Leclerc preferred the present order of battle for his own division; he had no love for de Lattre nor any French unit that hadn’t joined de Gaulle and the Free French from day one. The key figures in his division were mostly old Free French desert baroudeurs like Dio and Massu, and his vehicles still bore the Cross of Lorraine emblem. A high point of Leclerc’s career was certainly his entrance into Paris, but perhaps of even more symbolic importance was the fall of Strasbourg. When the tricolor again flew over that city, it could truly be said that the Serment de Koufra, the oath the young general swore so long ago in that dusty Saharan town, was at last truly fulfilled. Philippe de Hautecloque, better known to history as General Jacques Leclerc, ended World War II at the head of his division and full of honors. He served with distinction in Indochina, but his career was cut short when he was killed in an airplane crash. He was made a Marshal of France posthumously, the highest military honor possible. The Foreign Legion’s 13th Demi-brigade, after leaving the desert, fought on in the mountains of northern Tunisia, until the Germans surrendered. After marching in the victory parade in Tunis (the Free French marched with the British Eighth Army rather than with their compatriots in the Arme´e d’Afrique), the 13th became part of the 1st Division Franc¸aise Libre, and fought with that Free French division in Italy, France, and Germany until the end of the war. Like most of the Foreign Legion, the 13th DBLE served in the losing wars in Indochina and Algeria, but unlike much of the rest of that fa-

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mous corps, it did not settle down to French garrison life after leaving North Africa. Instead, it returned to the sands of the Sahara, to duty in Djibouti on the extreme eastern edge of the great desert. This tiny independent country was the former French Somaliland and still depended on France for almost everything, including defense. So it happened that toward the end of the 20th century the 13th Demi-brigade of the French Foreign Legion, still displaying the Free French Cross of Lorraine on its uniform, was once again patrolling the godforsaken reaches of the sunscorched desert—where the Legion has always managed to feel right at home.4 Another irony in the postwar dissolution of the French empire was the relationship of Charles de Gaulle, by that time a world renowned statesman, with Jacques Massu, the eternal French professional soldier. They were both aware of each other from the very beginnings of the Free French movement, General de Gaulle as its originator and leader, and Captain Massu as the man of action, the beau sabreur, the desert raider who carried out the orders. De Gaulle had followed Massu’s career with interest and admiration down the years, and Massu had always been fiercely loyal to the Free French cause and almost worshipful of “le grand Charles.” After the usual postwar service in Indochina and then in the brief and disappointing Suez incident, Major General Massu arrived in Algeria with the 10th Parachute Division, which he had raised and trained himself. Massu’s paras put down the early revolt of the Moslems in the Algiers casbah, and thus he became the darling of the pieds noirs, the French settlers who controlled the country. As the Algerian revolt grew, Massu came to think of himself more and more as one of the settlers. When de Gaulle came out of retirement to become president of France and attempted to settle the Algerian question by making concessions to the Moslems, he found himself face to face with his old friend Massu. Publicly sympathizing with the pieds noirs in their riotous demonstrations against the government put Massu directly against de Gaulle—and put the president in a tough spot. Perhaps out of “remembrance of things past” he hesitated to press the other man too hard, but when Massu naively gave a newspaper interview critical of the government and hinting at mutiny, de Gaulle knew he had to act. He relieved Massu of his Algerian command and brought him back to France. After letting him stew for awhile without an assignment, he placed him in command of the garrison of Metz, a job much beneath an officer of his rank and experience. Massu took the “punishment” with good grace. Realizing that he had been foolish and out of line, the old desert raider made his peace with his commander-in-chief, assuring him that he was still a soldier and not a politician—and “toujours Gaulliste.”5

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The 1960 de Gaulle-Massu conflict was one of the last echoes of the Free French desert campaigns of World War II. But neither the oasis raids nor the major Saharan campaigns are likely to be forgotten, even though most of the happenings were in remote areas thousands of miles from the centers of power. They are in the history books and burned in French memories. There are reminders even in the everyday flow of a major metropolis: A stroll along the Seine in Paris brings the visitor to a plaque noting a spot where a soldier of the Chad Regiment fell in the fighting in 1944—and there is a Metro station in the heart of the city called “Bir Hakeim.” Tirailleur or spahi, legionnaire or marine, the Free French desert warriors of World War II will be remembered not only in Paris but wherever the French tricolor flies. NOTES 1. Edward L. Bimberg, The Moroccan Goums: Tribal Warriors in a Modern War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 38–43. 2. Chester G. Starr, ed. From Salerno to the Alps: A History of the Fifth Army (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1948), 188. 3. Ibid., 279. 4. John R. Young, The French Foreign Legion: The Inside Story of the World Famous Fighting Force (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 124. 5. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 358.

APPENDIX: UNIFORMS The troops that served in the Saharan regions before World War II were, of course, clad in the regulation between-the-wars uniform of all French forces—up to a point. Being at the end of a long, tenuous supply line led to certain irregularities; the soldiers in the bled, far from the eyes of senior officers who might be sticklers for regulations, tended to dress more for comfort than for style, and desert conditions often caused them to “go native” in a hurry. The desert nomads in their loose, flowing clothes always appeared comfortable in spite of the daytime heat and nighttime cold; the wise Frenchman who wanted to survive in the Sahara copied them. As a result, many prewar French soldiers, particularly those of the camel-mounted units, looked very much like their native charges. Common dress, even for the desk-bound officers in places like Faya-Largeau, was often short sleeved shirts and either serouals, the baggy native trousers, or shorts. And sandals, of course, the only sensible footwear in the desert. Senegalese troops, the black soldiers from central Africa, were more formally clad in khaki, topped by the traditional red tarbush of the native tirailleur. On ceremonial occasions they wore a red sash around the waist under the regulation belt and cartridge pouches. Shorts and sandals completed the costume, occasionally with the addition of the spiral puttees of more northern climes. Their officers wore similar uniforms, sometimes with a tropical sun helmet to replace the typical black kepi. When war came, the flow of supplies from Europe was considerably

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1. A Tibbu tribesman of the Groupe Nomade, whether on a camel, in a truck, or on foot, made a dangerous enemy whom the Italians feared. Here one is shown in handed-down French tunic and native serouals, his head protected from the elements by the ever-present cheche, and his feet clad in desert sandals. 2. Somewhat more elegant but just as informal as befits a desert soldier is this senior French officer. Bush jacket and the cool and comfortable Arab serouals were a common uniform among Europeans in the Sahara. 3. The strapping Sara warriors of equatorial Chad were among the best of the Senegalese tirailleurs. Intensely proud of being soldiers, they clung to the uniform and traditions of the prewar French army—although shoes do not seem to be part of the African version.

reduced. The uniform situation deteriorated, and by the time of the armistice the uniforms of the French-led troops deep in the Sahara were pretty well worn. Then the birth of the Free French movement resulted in the cutoff of all supplies from the Vichy government, and the central African troops had to make do with what they had. In Chad, where most of them were in training, the desert-bred native soldiers wore bits and pieces of uniform items mixed in with their native dress, and sometimes the French army leather equipment worn over their loose robes was their only regulation gear. Their head covering was frequently a cheche, that

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4. This 13th DBLE drummer in equatorial Africa wears British summer khakis but retains the roll-down socks of the Legion’s Narvik service. Later these gave way to British gaiters. Sometimes on parade the Free French legionnaires would replace their kepis with their Narvik berets just to distinguish themselves from the Arme´e d’Afrique Legion that had served Vichy. 5. The battle dress and web equipment are British, but the blue sailor hat with its red pom-pom reveal the wearer to be a Free French marine. His weapon is the often malfunctioning French light machine gun FM 24/29. In spite of their naval designation, the marines were quite at home in the desert; much of their service in times past was as colonial soldiers.

ubiquitous desert veil wound around the head and face to keep out sun and sand. The Free French troops who fought under British command fared better in the way of uniforms, for they were issued fresh woolen battle dress or summer khaki when they first came under their new orders. However they retained their typical French headgear and insignia (including the Cross of Lorraine) as well as a shoulder patch that read “FRANCE,” so they remained unmistakingly French in appearance. The 13th DBLE also kept for a time the white ankle socks they had worn as part of their

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Norway expedition uniform, and occasionally paraded in their Norway berets just to show that they were the Free French Foreign Legion and not the legionnaires of l’Armee d’Afrique who had served Vichy. Most of the time, however, they wore their white kepis with pride. The uniform situation for the entire French army was somewhat alleviated when American equipment began to arrive, but that was long after the mass of Free French troops had left the Sahara.

GLOSSARY Afrika Korps: German troops under General Irwin Rommel originally sent to North Africa in 1941 to aid the Italians. Arme´e d’Afrique: French troops of the XIX Army Corps stationed in North Africa. These were under Vichy control until the Allied landings in 1942. askari: Native soldier of the Italian colonial army. BFO: Brigade Franc¸aise d’Orient—Free French expeditionary force serving in Eritrea and Syria. BIM: Bataillon d’Infanterie de la Marin—Free French marines. BLE: Bataillon de la Le´gion E´trange`re—Free French Foreign Legion Battalion. bled: The remote North African countryside. CS: Compagnies Sahariennes—Originally camel corps patrolling the Sahara, later motorized. DBLE: Demi-brigade de la Le´gion E´trange`re—Foreign Legion half-brigade. DC: De´couvre et Combat—Discovery and Combat, an extra-heavily-armed motorized company in Leclerc’s army. DFL: Division Franc¸aise Libre—A specifically Free French division, part of the American-equipped French army organized for service in Europe in World War II. erg: Extensive area of sand dunes. gara: Small Saharan plateau, usually with enough rock formation and vegetation to afford some concealment. ghibli: Constant Saharan wind, causing sandstorms.

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GLOSSARY

Ghibli: Type of Italian combat aircraft. GN: Groupe Nomade—French-led camel corps composed of Saharan tribesmen. Some groups were later motorized. GNB: Groupe Nomade de Borkou. GNE: Groupe Nomade de l’Ennedi. GNT: Groupe Nomade du Tibesti. hamada: Extensive Saharan plateau. LRDG: Long Range Desert Group—British unit organized to patrol desert areas. me´haristes: French army camel soldiers. meharisti: Italian army camel soldiers. ramla: Small sand dune area. reg: Gravelled Saharan plain. RMSM: Regiment de Marche de Spahis Marocains—Provisional regiment of Moroccan cavalry. RTST: Regiment de Tirailleurs Se´ne´galaise du Tchad. Senegalese infantry regiment recruited in Chad. Sacred Squadron: Unit of Greek volunteers under French command. SAS: Special Air Service—British and Free French commandos.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Aglion, Raoul. War in the Desert. New York: Henry Holt, 1961. ———. The Fighting French. New York: Henry Holt, 1943. Barker, A.J. Eritrea 1941. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. Bauer, Eddy, et al. Illustrated World War II Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: H.S. Stuttman, 1978. Bimberg, Edward L. The Moroccan Goums: Tribal Warriors in a Modern War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Castagno, Joseph M., ed. Lands and Peoples. Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1993. Collier, Richard, et al. The War in the Desert. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. Collins, Catherine, and Miggs Pomeroy. The Great Sahara Mousehunt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963. Connell, John. Wavell: Scholar and Soldier. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965. Curie, Eve. Journey among Warriors. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1943. Dansette, Adrian. Leclerc. Paris: E´ditions de l’Empire Franc¸ais, 1948. De Gaulle, Charles. The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. D’Esme, Jean. Les Nomades de la Gloire. Paris: E´ditions Colbert, 1924. Dronne, Raymond. Le Serment de Koufra. Paris: E´ditions du Temps, 1965. Ferrandi, Jean. Le Centre-Africain Franc¸ais. Paris; Charles-Lavauzelle, 1930. Fisher, W.B., et al. The Middle East and North Africa 1972–73, 19th ed. London: Europa Publications, 1972. Hasey, John R. Yankee Fighter: The Story of an American in the Free French Foreign Legion. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1944.

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Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962. Revised ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. Horrocks, Brian. Escape to Action. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960. Ingold, Franc¸ois J. L’E´pope´e Leclerc au Sahara 1940–1943. Paris: E´ditions BergerLevrault, 1945. Ingold, Franc¸ois J., and Louis Mouillereaux. Leclerc de Hautecloque. Paris: E´ditions Litteraires, 1948. Irving, David. The Trail of the Fox. New York: Avon Books, 1978. Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Pyramid Books, 1989. Massu, Jacques. Sept Ans avec Leclerc. Paris: Plon, 1974. Maule, Henry. Out of the Sand: The Epic Story of General Leclerc and the Fighting Free French. London: Oldham’s Books, 1966. Mercer, Charles. Legion of Strangers. New York: Pyramid Books, 1965. Meynier, O. Les Conquerants du Tchad. Paris: Flammarion, 1924. Miller, Russell et al. The Commandos. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1977. Porch, Douglas. Conquest of the Sahara. New York: HarperCollins, 1984. ———. The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force. New York: HarperPerennial, 1992. Reibell, Emile. L’E´pope´e Saharienne. Paris: Plon, 1931. el Shakri, Ahmed, ed. Peoples of the Earth. Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1973. Shaw, W.B. Kennedy. Long Range Desert Group. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000. Starr, Chester G., ed. From Salerno to the Alps: A History of the Fifth Army. Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1948. Sumner, Ian, and Francois Vauvillier. The French Army 1939–45. London: Osprey, 1998. Swift, Jeremy. The Sahara. Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1975. Swiggett, Howard. March or Die. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953. Trye, Rex. Mussolini’s Afrika Korps: The Italian Army in North Africa 1940–1943. Bayside, NY: Axis Europa Books, 1999. Vincent, Jean-Noe¨l. Les Forces Franc¸aises dans la Lutte Contre l’Axe en Afrique, 1940– 1943. Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Arme´e de Terre, 1983. Ward, Edward. Sahara Story. New York: W.W. Norton, 1962. Young, John R. The French Foreign Legion: The Inside Story of the World Famous Fighting Force. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

INDEX Absac, Capt. d’, 65, 70 Abyssinia, 19, 36. See also Eritrea Afrika Korps, 98–100 Air Force, British. See RAF Air Force, French, 22; action at Koufra, 38–40, 42, 48, 55; Bretagne Squadron, 59, 64, 65, 66 Air Force, German. See Luftwaffe Air Force, Italian. See Regia Aeronautica Alaurent, Capt. d’, 65, 67 Alexander, Gen. Harold, 67, 106 Algeria, 2; borders of, 17, 23, 35, 48, 70, 72; spahis on duty in, 85, 120 Amilakvari, Col. Dimitri, 80, 91, 100, 105–107, 111 Amyot d’Inville, Capt., 101, 118 Askaris, 50, 55, 66, 70, 87, 114 Auchinleck, Gen. Claude, 103, 105, 106 Auto-Sahariana Companies. See Sahariana Ballarin, Lt. Col. Jean, 86, 87 Bataillon Pacifique, 101, 103, 107 Beda Fomm, 97

Bergonzoli, Gen. Annabale, 97, 98 BFL (Brigade Franc¸ais Libre), 90, 100, 101, 105–107 BFO (Brigade Franc¸ais d’Orient), 82 BIM (Bataillon d’Infanterie de la Marine), 88, 95, 96, 99; Bir Hakeim, 100–103; sortie from, 105, 111, 112, 119; Metro station, 121 Brack, 46, 48, 50, 65–67, 70 Brazzaville, 24–26, 37, 59, 110, 111 Cairo, 32, 34, 37, 70, 83, 97–100, 105, 109 Catroux, Gen. Georges, 110, 111 Ceccaldi, Lt., 41, 51 Chaamba Arabs, 2, 3, 7, 9, 11 Chad, 2, 4, 14; political climate in, 23, 25–27, 29 Cherkesses, 90 Churchill, Winston, 22, 82, 103, 106, 112, 117 Clayton, Capt. P.A., 27, 29–32, 37 Colonna d’Ornano, Capt. Jean, 18, 27, 29–31, 66, 110 Compagnies Sahariennes, 2, 9, 10, 12–14 Cottonest, Lt. Gaston, 11, 12

132 Cross of Lorraine, 115, 116 Cyrenaica, 19, 97, 98 Dakar, 20, 23, 24, 81 DBLE (Demi-brigade de la Le´gion E´trange`re), 79, 82; at Bir Hakeim, 100–105; in Eritrea, 84, 85; at Himeimat, 106, 107, 111, 119; in Syria, 87–92 Dentz, Gen. Henri, 91, 92 DFL (Division Franc¸aise Libre), 119 Dio, Lt. Col., 27; advance to Tripoli, 67–69, 71, 75; heroism at Koufra, 41, 51, 52, 60–65 Djebel Sherif, 37, 40 Domaze, 61, 62 Douala, 82 Eggenspiller, Lt., 67 Egypt, 27, 29, 36, 95. See also Cairo Eighth Army (British), 45, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73–75, 103, 107 El Agheila, 59, 98, 103 El Alamein, 59, 105, 106, 115 El Gioff, 38, 43 El Taj, 36, 38, 40, 42, 68 Enghiat, 84, 87, 88 Eritrea, 82, 83, 85–87, 89 Ethiopia, 83, 84, 90 Faya-Largeau, 18, 36–38, 45, 58, 110 Fezzan, 18, 25, 27, 34, 36, 45, 46; heavy French raids begin, 48, 53, 56; invasion of, 60, 61, 66, 68 Flatters, Lt. Col. Paul, 3–6 Force L, 71–75 Foreign Legion. See DBLE (Demibrigade de la Le´gion E´trange´re) Fort Lamy, 18, 20; airfield at, 109, 110; Leclerc headquarters in, 25, 29, 37, 38, 45, 59 Foureau, Fernand, 7, 10 French Equatorial Africa, 24 French Medical Service, 89 French West Africa, 20, 81 Fruchard, Col., 89

INDEX Gabes, 75 Gabon, 20, 24, 25 Gatroun, 33, 46, 48, 50, 54, 55, 62, 65 Gaulle, Gen. Charles de, 21, 25, 31, 35, 43; attempt at Dakar, 81, 82, 86, 87, 92, 110–112; meets Giraud at Casablanca, 118, 120, 121; rivalry with British, 68 Gazala Line, 100, 101, 103 Gazelle Force, 83 Geoffroy, Capt. de, 38–41, 47; raids into Fezzan, 48, 50, 52, 53, 55, 68 Ghadames, 70 Ghibli, 1, 18, 30, 51, 115 Gott, Gen. W.H.E., 96, 99 Graziani, Gen. Rodolfo, 19, 20, 29, 36, 95, 96 Greek troops in Sahara. See Sacred Squadron GNB (Groupe Nomade de Borkou), 48, 52; completely motorized, 58, 60–62, 70; platoon to Ghadames, 71, 72, 74 GNE (Groupe Nomade de l’Ennedi), 59, 72 GNT (Groupe Nomade du Tibesti), 25, 32, 33, 48, 52, 55, 65, 112 Guillebon, Capt. de, 38, 41, 42, 47, 53, 54 Halfaya Pass, 99, 100 Hasey, Lt. John F., 81, 83 Hautecloque, Philippe de. See Leclerc, Gen. Jacques Himeimat, 106, 107 Hoggar Mountains, 4–6, 8–12 Hon, 48, 50, 65, 67, 68 Hous, Col., 39, 48, 49 Illness of troops, 67 Ingold, Col. Franc¸ois, 39, 57, 58, 60, 61, 68 Jock columns, 101, 102 Joudier, Capt. Paul, 86 Keren, 83–85, 87, 88 Kisque, 91

INDEX Koenig, Gen. Joseph, 101, 103–106, 111–119 Korizo Pass, 48, 60 Koufra, 18; conquest of, 36–41, 43, 45, 46, 51, 68, 76 Ksar Rhilane, 72, 73 Lamy, Colonel Franc¸ois, 9, 10 Laperrine, Pierre, 12–14 Larminat, Gen. Edgard de, 24, 105, 111, 118 Laurent-Champrosay, Col., 101, 103, 118 Leclerc, Gen. Jacques, 22–24, 27; directs Koufra attack, 36–43; directs raids into Fezzan, 45–47, 55, 57–59; early life of, 34, 35; Legentilhomme, Gen. Paul, 90, 111; meets Montgomery and organizes Force L, 70–76, 82, 111; orders advance into Libya, 60, 62, 65, 67–69 Libya, 2, 13, 14, 17; colonization of, 18– 20 LRDG (Long Range Desert Group), 27, 28; raid on Mourzouk, 29–32, 37, 38, 40, 43, 46, 47; Rhodesian patrol in, 60–62, 113 Luftwaffe, 62, 73, 74, 89, 98, 99, 104– 106 Magrin-Vernerey, Col. Raoul, 79, 80, 85 Mareth Line, 17, 71, 72, 74, 115 Marines. See BIM (Bataillon d’Infanterie de la Marine) Massawa, 84, 85, 89 Massu, Capt. Jacques, 27, 30–33, 41– 43; commands new DC, 54, 55, 66, 111, 119 Middle Congo, 20, 24 Monclar, Col. See Magrin-Vernerey, Col. Raoul Montgomery, Gen. Bernard L., 46, 59, 60, 70–72, 74, 106 Moroccan troops. See Spahis Mourzouk, 18, 29–34, 46, 55, 66, 67, 110 Mussolini, Benito, 19, 95

133 Neame, Gen. Philip, 98, 99 O’Connor, Gen. Richard, 97–99 Ornano, d’. See Colonna d’Ornano, Capt. Jean Ouigh el Kebir, 46, 50 Ouinanga, 36, 39, 40 Oum el Araneb, 32, 54, 55, 60, 62–66 Palestine, 86, 87, 90 Pe´tain, Marshal Henri, 21, 25, 111 Platt, General W., 21 Pobeguin, Jacques, 8 Port Sudan, 82 Qattara Depression, 105, 106 RAF, 73, 74, 104, 105, 113 Regia Aeronautica, 50, 55, 64, 89 Rennespont, Capt. de, 39–41 Ritchie, Gen. Neil M., 103 RMSM (Re´giment de Marche de Spahis Marocains). See Spahis Rommel, 46, 98, 99, 103, 104, 109 Sacred Squadron, 71, 72 Sahara Desert, 1, 2, 17 Sahariana, 20, 39, 40, 52, 54, 55, 60, 63, 64 Sandstorm. See Ghibli Sarazac, Capt., 25, 32, 48, 65 SAS (Special Air Service), 113, 114 Sebha, 30, 46, 48, 50, 60, 67 Senegalese troops. See Tirailleurs (Senegalese) Senussi, 13, 14, 19, 29, 36, 110, 115 Serment de Koufra, 42, 119 Seventh Armored Division, 96–99, 105, 106 Sidi Barrani, 96, 97 Spahis, 9, 75, 85–87, 90, 112, 121 Special Air Service. See SAS (Special Air Service) Syria, 22, 89, 90, 92, 100, 101, 111 Tahiti, 22, 101 Tedje´re´, 32, 46, 48, 51, 52, 55 Tekro, 36–38

134 Tibbou, 2, 30, 32, 39, 112 Tibesti Mountains, 2, 17, 18, 27, 29; raiders meet in, 30, 33, 45, 48 Tirailleurs (Algerian), 3, 6–10 Tirailleurs (Senegalese), 25, 30, 39; at Bir Hakeim, 90, 100, 101, 103, 111, 121; in campaign to Tripoli, 59, 60, 62, 64; in Eritrea, 87, 88; as part of Force L, 71, 72; in raids into Fezzan, 48, 52, 53, 55 Tit, Battle of, 11, 12 Tobruk, 97, 99 Touareg, 2–14, 39, 112 Travers, Susan, 105 Tripoli, 67–70 Tunisia, 17, 20, 23, 45, 48, 70; Force L crosses into, 72, 85, 117

INDEX Uigh el Kebir, 48, 51, 60–62 Umbrega, 87 Uniforms, French, 39, 70, 71 Vernier, Medecin-Commandant, 89 Vichy government, 23–25; desertions from army of, 57, 58; in Syria, 89– 92, 111, 117 Wavell, Gen. Archibald, 27, 83, 89, 96, 97, 103 Western Desert, 95, 103 Wilson, Gen. Maitland, 90, 92 Zouar, 30, 33, 36, 55, 59, 62 Zoure´, 59, 60

About the Author EDWARD L. BIMBERG is an independent researcher. He entered Federal service with the National Guard cavalry regiment just prior to World War II. Five years later, after serving overseas in North Africa, Corsica, and Italy, he returned to civilian life, working as an advertising copywriter and penning free-lance articles on military and equestrian subjects. For the past thirty years he has owned a series of riding schools in New Jersey, while continuing to pursue his writing. He is the author of The Moroccan Goums: Tribal Warriors in a Modern War (Greenwood, 1999).

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