Appointment in Africa

Franklin Roosevelt, with his great sense of historical drama, had again created history with a dramatist's breath-taking stroke. No President of the U.S. since Abraham Lincoln had ever visited a battle theater. No President had ever left the U.S. in wartime. None had ever been to Africa. None had ever traveled in an airplane. Now came Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S., to shatter all four precedents at once.

The earlier meetings between Roosevelt and Churchill--on the fogbound North Atlantic in 1941, at the White House after Pearl Harbor and again last June--now seemed like pallid curtain raisers to the drama of this fourth meeting, beneath the tropical palms of North Africa, 4,000 miles from Washington. And probably the decisions reached last week, between the President of the U.S. and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, overshadowed anything they had ever discussed before.

Dramatis Personae. This was a conference such as history had never seen. The President, with debonair disregard for proverbs about eggs in a single basket, took along Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall; COMINCH Admiral Ernest J. King; Lieut. General Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, Chief of Army Air Forces; Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell, Chief of the Army's Services of Supply; the President's alter ego Harry Hopkins. In Africa they were joined by Lieut. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the North African AEF; by Lieut. General Mark W. Clark, deputy commander; by Major General Carl Spaatz, the AEF's air commander; by Lieut. General Frank Maxwell Andrews, Commander in Chief of American Forces in the Middle East; by William Averell Harriman, the U.S. Lend-Lease expediter in London. Also present was the President's son, Lieut. Colonel Elliott Roosevelt.

Churchill's entourage was equally impressive: Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, Chief of Britain's Naval Staff; General Sir Alan Francis Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff; Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Air Staff; Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of the Commandos; Field Marshal Sir John Dill; Lieut. General Sir Harold Alexander, Commander in Chief of the Middle East; Major General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Commander of the Eighth Army (see p. 26); Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder.

For ten days, in the enclosure of a Casablanca hotel surrounded by barbed wire and bristling guards, they conferred, discussed, mulled over their problems. They were in close touch with Russia's Joseph Stalin, who was too busy with war on his own soil to join them, with China's Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. They brought together, for the first time, the two leading figures in the tangled French political situation: Fighting French General Charles de Gaulle and General Henri Honore Giraud, High Commissioner of French Africa.

There were a multitude of problems to discuss--military, political, postwar (see p. 18). The full significance of the conference was not yet known save by those who had taken part. It would unfold bit by bit, month by month.

Plot. The trip, through air in which Axis planes roamed, over waters infested with Axis submarines, was veiled in secrecy and censorship: its story was presented to the world this week as a dazzling fait accompli. Even then many of the details were kept secret. Franklin Roosevelt, for the first time since he rushed to Chicago to accept the Democratic Presidential nomination on a windy July day in 1932, had traveled by plane. But how and when were not revealed.

One clue came from Belem, an oven-hot seaport on Brazil's hump. There, one day recently, the shanty-lined streets that lead to Belem's airport were abustle with activity. U.S. jeeps and command cars crowded around the field. The Brazilian police departed; Army guards took their place. Presently, from the North sky, a great transport streaked down. It remained on the field several hours refueling, then took off toward the sea. Usually passengers scurry to the airport building to escape the heat, to sip cafezinho (half black coffee, half Brazilian sugar). But no human being left this plane, and none save authorized workmen got near it.

Belem buzzed with speculation. The plane may have been the President's--or it may not have.

Climax. Winston Churchill was the first to arrive at Casablanca; the President landed a few hours later. Their discussions began at once: the first started at 7 p.m. of Jan. 14, lasted until 3 o'clock next morning. Between conferences, the President found time to visit American troops in the field, to place wreaths on the graves where American and French soldiers lay buried at Port Lyautey.

U.S. news correspondents in North Africa were flown secretly to Casablanca for a press conference* on the tenth day. They found well-pleased Franklin Roosevelt in the garden of the villa where he had stayed: he was comfortable in a light grey suit, the angle of his long cigaret holder was even jauntier than usual.

This was the first press conference any American President had ever held beneath a protective umbrella of fighter planes. In the desert heat, beneath the roaring planes, General de Gaulle and General Giraud shook hands while photographers' flash bulbs popped. The President said this was a momentous moment.

The two war leaders lived up to the moment. They explained that they had reached "complete agreement" on 1943 war plans, that the goal was "unconditional surrender" of the Axis nations. The President remarked that their meeting had been unprecedented in history; the Prime Minister added that it surpassed anything in his World War I experience. The President had some good morale-building words for American troops abroad: "I have seen the bulk of several divisions. I have eaten lunch in the field, and it was a darn good lunch, too. . . . Our soldiers are eager to carry on the fight and I want you to tell the folks back home that I am proud of them. ..."

Denouement. The discussions were over. Back to Washington went President Roosevelt, carrying a leather-bound book signed by all the men who had taken part in the historic meeting. The news could now be announced, in a communique which hinted of the greater news to come:

"The entire field of the war was surveyed theater by theater throughout the world, and all resources were marshaled for a more intense prosecution of the war by sea, land and air.

"Complete agreement was reached between the leaders of the two countries and their respective staffs upon war plans and enterprises to be undertaken during 1943 against Germany, Italy and Japan with a view to drawing the utmost advantage from the markedly favorable turn of events at the close of 1942. . . . [A] prime object has been to draw as much weight as possible off the Russian armies by engaging the enemy as heavily as possible at the best selected points. . . .

"The President and Prime Minister and their combined staffs, having completed their plans for the offensive campaigns of 1943, have now separated in order to put them into active and concerted execution."

* Present was one woman: WAAC Captain Louise Anderson of Denver, a stenographer in General Eisenhower's headquarters.

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