Topaz - Leon Uris [100]
The upper-class European merchants lived in luxury along wide and endless boulevards that surrounded the now all-important port. Impoverished Muslims and Jews continued life in their miserable medinas and mellahs.
Casablanca teemed with fresh, untested American troops forming an admixture with the French Marines, the colonial infantry, and the Spahi Cavalry.
Within the walled city of Bous Bir, five thousand skilled prostitutes and superb belly dancers vied for the flood of soldiers’ money in the most ancient way.
But all through the French North African colonies and in the Near East an inner conflict raged. The garrisons of a hundred thousand-odd French and colonials belonged mostly to the Vichy Government, the collaborationists of Nazi Germany.
Pierre La Croix and his Free French had fought a series of popgun invasions and expeditions under General Leclerc to reclaim French possessions from Vichy.
Starting with a landing in Cameroons in 1940, La Croix had rallied territory after territory to the cause of Fighting France: Gabon, French Equatorial Africa, Chad, Ubangi. Then in the Pacific and Far East, Tahiti and New Caledonia declared for La Croix, followed by Pondicherry and the French possessions in India.
Fearing an invasion of the Japanese, the British landed in Madagascar, and it, too, joined the swelling ranks of Free France.
Now Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Niger, French Occidental Africa, and, in the West Indies, Guadeloupe and Martinique all declared for Fighting France.
Free France entered the field with the British in the Ethiopian campaign and tasted bitter blood at Bir Hacheim in Libya, writing a chapter of glory against Rommel’s assaults.
In one of the great paradoxes of the war, Vichy France continued to be recognized by the United States despite its collaboration with Germany, and the Vichy garrisons sat tight in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
When Operation Torch opened the invasion of North Africa, the Germans were forced to retaliate by occupying all of metropolitan France and reducing the Vichy Government to the rankest of puppets. Vichy was virtually powerless.
Now it was a question of the Vichy garrisons. The American paradox became even more baffling when Vichy Admiral de St. Amertin was installed by the Americans as their handpicked commander of the former Vichy garrisons.
Pierre La Croix and Fighting France countered this by establishing headquarters and a quasi government in Algeria in late spring of 1943. From here, he continued to press his demands for recognition, the right of France to fight, the joining of his forces with the garrison forces and the formation of a joint national committee.
Free France was extremely unpopular, for the majority of Arab sympathy was for Germany and the Axis. The French colonists and settlers wanted to keep a status quo and continue the spirit of Vichy and not be dragged into the war by alignment with Free France. The major exception was the French Jewish population, who backed Free France in their personal desire to fight against the Germans.
Camp Boulhot stood midway between Casablanca and Rabat, thirty miles inland from the sea, and was filled with a collection of French and Moroccan soldiers of traditional colonial units.
André Devereaux, who had been a horseman since childhood, requested duty in a Spahi Cavalry regiment. The Spahis were a colorful lot, with their flaming red capes and high polished boots and light blue kepi hats bearing the crescent and star of Morocco.
But they were the forces of Admiral de St. Amertin, formerly of Vichy, and were to be kept by the Americans as parade-ground soldiers far from the cannons’ roar.
In the weeks that followed, André received letters from Jacques Granville and Robert Proust, who were with La Croix in Algiers. With the picture terribly clear, André sought out La Croix men who had infiltrated de St. Amertin’s ranks to recruit for Fighting France.
“L’Auberge de la Forêt” stood beyond the