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the side of my bed and said, “Don’t be frightened, the Herr Doktor is merely going to examine you, and it will be over very quickly.”’ Von Weber conducted the examination, kicking Dr Lévy out of his way, but Drue was bleeding too much for him to make a diagnosis. Sylvia Beach and Sarah Watson feared she might die. Drue wrote, ‘Dr. Lévy was worried, not only about me, but about his family, of whom he had had no news. He took to walking up and down the corridors of the hospital most of the night, the sisters told me, and they were afraid he would lose his sanity.’

As winter set in, some of Drue’s friends from the Hôtel Central made regular visits to see her and to enjoy the central heating their rooms lacked. One was Noel Murphy. When Dr Lévy saw her in Drue’s room, he left. Noel said, ‘I think it’s a disgrace to have you, an American woman, taken care of by that Jew! I loathe the man!’ To protect herself and Dr Lévy, Drue did not respond.

On 8 November, Dr Rolland ran into Drue’s room. ‘The Americans have landed in North Africa!’ He beamed. Sylvia Beach and Sarah Watson rushed in as well, and they held a small celebration. Outside in the corridor, Dr Lévy was singing.

Just before midnight on 7 November, the BBC broadcast a message to North Africa, ‘Allo Robert, Franklin arrivé.’ In Algiers, Robert Murphy understood. Franklin Roosevelt was at last committing the American army to battle. ‘So, for two hours before American forces were supposed to enter Algiers,’ Murphy wrote, ‘I signaled full speed ahead for our local operation. Our resistance groups began to seize key points in Algiers, taking over quietly and with little opposition.’ Of the 540 young men who seized Algiers’ government that night, 450 were Algerian and French Jews. A. J. Liebling, the New Yorker correspondent who met the résistants afterwards, wrote that they ‘seized the telegraph office, the municipal power plant, the Préfecture of Police, and other nerve centres, and arrested the ranking army officers who were not in on the plot and Admiral Darlan himself’. After the American invasion force missed its 1 a.m. deadline to enter Algiers, Vichy soldiers took back the buildings held by the résistants. ‘The troops outnumbered them and had artillery,’ Liebling wrote. ‘After a resistance during which several of their number had been killed, the pro-Allied civilians had surrendered. They had held Darlan for four hours, and it is easy to understand how much their attack had served to distract attention from our landing.’ But where, the pro-Allied French wondered, had the Americans landed?

Charles Bedaux was in a deep sleep at the Hôtel Aletti. His Medinal tablets, combined with noise-blocking wax in his ears, left him impervious to events. His third-floor suite had been commandeered that day by a Wehrmacht general on the Armistice Commission, forcing Bedaux into a room on the second floor that he had to share with a German named Captain Wurmann. Charles Emile recalled knocking on his father’s door to inform him of the invasion. He and his father went up to room 305, where Pierre-Jérôme Ullmann and Georges Rimailho were staying, for a better view. Before dawn, a hotel waiter saw Charles Bedaux drinking brandy on the balcony with Captain Wurmann, while tracer bullets passed overhead. The French Resistance passed on a report to the Americans about Bedaux’s valedictory drink with the German officer.

Vichy French troops arrested not only the agents who had seized government buildings, but Murphy himself. ‘By that time,’ Murphy remembered, ‘I was experiencing grave doubts, owing to the non-appearance of American soldiers or any word from the “vice consuls” posted on the assigned beaches to receive our troops and guide them into the city.’ The Royal Navy, blaming navigational errors, had landed the troops at the wrong beaches. This delayed American entry into Algiers by thirteen hours, when Admiral Darlan agreed to a ceasefire. Murphy suspected the diversion had been deliberate, because the British distrusted the French Resistance units whom Murphy had informed of