Raid in the Desert

Of all the fantasies which unfolded in Africa last week, the most dramatic was described over the radio by General Georges Catroux, former Governor General of French Indo-China, now right-hand man to Free Frenchman Charles de Gaulle:

About a month ago a small Free French force left the great swamp known as Lake Chad (see map, p. 23), heading north. They passed through nightmarish, weird, surrealistic terrain--along an enormous dry river bed, past sudden oval valleys with lush black soil floors, across a stark desert of slippery sand and sharp stones, across an eroded tableland, through the magnificent mountain peaks (highest: 11,200 ft.) of Tibesti, along the edges of 1,000 ft.-precipices looking down on valleys full of bulrushes, across wastes of crumbling volcanic rock. They drank from sweet wells and pools bitter as quinine from the stalings of endless camels.

As they went they recruited an army even stranger than the land--a corps of Tuaregs, tall muscular men of reddish-yellow skin, long and silky black hair, small noses, delicate hands, Berbers whose women go barefaced but who themselves wear dark blue veils. They ride the extraordinary Mehari camel, which can travel 125 miles a day. They arm themselves with a straight, double-edged sword almost four feet long, daggers bound to their left forearms, and spears and leather shields.

This anachronistic force tagged along behind a string of Free French tanks and trucks as it crept into southernmost Libya. The caravan pushed 200 miles across the desert to el-Gatrun, which the Free Frenchmen took without so much as seeing an Italian. They went 100 miles further to the more important outpost of Murzuch, where there was both garrison and airport. When the Free French were sighted, all the Italians went into the post and shut the gates tight. The Free French men surrounded the post in mock siege, spent a day leisurely destroying hangars and planes. Afterwards they razed the post.

This picturesque raid was not likely to sway the fortunes of the African war, but it had excellent propaganda value. It was the first successful independent operation of Free Frenchmen against anything but other Frenchmen. Three days after General Catroux's announcement, General de Gaulle addressed a call to arms to the pro-Vichy armies under General Maxime Weygand in North Africa and Syria: "Are you going to remain inactive with arms at your side, humiliated, broken-spirited, when the fate of France and her Empire is being decided within range of your guns? . . . The game is not finished." General Weygand deemed the challenge worthy of a reply. Next day he broadcast : "You have heard an appeal to take part again in a struggle that was ended by France with the conclusion of the Armistice. I appeal to you not to leave the path of order and discipline."

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