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By Root 2587 0

Robert Murphy, US Embassy counsellor in France and President Roosevelt’s special representative in North Africa. Murphy had recently returned from Washington, where FDR assigned him to General Eisenhower’s staff as political officer for Operation Torch, the impending Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa. It was unusual for State Department personnel to serve on an American military staff, but Roosevelt wanted to afford General Eisenhower the counsel of a diplomat who knew the politics of French Africa. Murphy’s transfer from the State Department to the military remained confidential, even to his colleagues. If the posting of FDR’s chief North Africa specialist to the Supreme Allied Commander’s staff became known, Germany would draw the obvious conclusion that the United States planned to invade, not continental Europe, but French Africa. On 15 September, Roosevelt sent Murphy from Washington, disguised in a US army uniform as ‘Lieutenant-Colonel McGowan’, for a secret rendezvous in Great Britain with Eisenhower.

When Murphy’s plane landed at Prestwick, Scotland, on 16 September, his cover was almost blown. In the air terminal, a familiar voice called out, ‘Why, Bob! What are you doing here?’ Donald Coster, the former ambulance driver who escaped from France in 1940 thanks to Sumner Jackson, was one of Murphy’s vice-consuls supervising American aid deliveries in Morocco while sending intelligence to the Office for Strategic Services (OSS). Murphy did not get the chance to ask Coster why he was not in North Africa, where he would soon be needed: ‘The bewildered man suddenly found himself being rushed off under arrest, and he was kept incommunicado … Coster’s innocent error was that he almost betrayed my presence in England, which was supposed to be top secret.’ For the next day and night without interruption, Murphy conferred with Eisenhower’s staff of American and British officers at the general’s country retreat, Telegraph Cottage, near London at Kingston-upon-Thames.

The question confronting General Eisenhower was: would the French army of 125,000 regular soldiers and 200,000 reservists in Africa resist an Anglo-American landing along a 1,200 mile front from Tunis to Casablanca? If they did, it would mean death for thousands of Americans in their first big engagement of the European war. If they cooperated, the divisions would be intact to take on Rommel’s Afrikakorps in Libya from the west while the British attacked from Egypt. Murphy, who spent most of the previous year in North Africa gathering intelligence with the assistance of his twelve ‘vice-consuls’, knew which French officers and civilian officials were pro-Allied. Persuading the rest not to resist an invasion of the French Empire would be a delicate and crucial exercise. To Murphy’s surprise, Ike’s staff knew almost nothing about North Africa. The general asked whether his soldiers would need warm underwear, and Murphy explained that the Atlas Mountains froze in winter. Politics were more complicated than logistics: ‘I explained how seriously French officers took their oath of fidelity to Marshal Pétain and how they feared that Americans would underestimate the strength needed to establish themselves in Africa. I explained that these factors indicated we might encounter French resistance in several places.’ The military planners, American and British, ‘were unanimous in their insistence that surprise was of the essence’. That meant Murphy could not tell his allies in North Africa the date of the proposed invasion, which would limit their ability to help.

Murphy’s return to Algiers on 16 October began a period of meticulous planning for an invasion whose date he dared not reveal. The Allies promised to drop arms for Resistance units to use if the French Army opposed the landings. Murphy established clandestine communications to Eisenhower’s temporary headquarters in Gibraltar from hidden radio transmitters. Contacts were being made with prospective French leaders, especially General Henri Honoré Giraud. In April 1942, Giraud had escaped from a German