Casablanca, Morocco, and had there suffered a heart attack, which nearly killed him. By the time he’d spent nine months in the hospital, France had fallen and an upstart, six-foot-six brigadier general of tanks, Charles de Gaulle, who had gotten out of France at the last minute, had appointed himself chief of the French government in exile and commander in chief of its armed forces.
The majority of French officers still on French soil considered themselves honor-bound to accept the defeat of France and the authority of Marshal Pétain, the aged “Hero of Verdun” who now headed the French government in Vichy.
Admiral de Verbey did not. He considered it his duty as a French officer to continue to fight. He managed to pass word to de Gaulle in London that he approved of de Gaulle’s actions. He announced further that as soon as he could arrange transportation (in other words, escape house arrest in Casablanca), it was his intention to come to London and assume command of French military and naval forces in exile.
So far as the admiral was concerned, it was as simple as that. Once he reached London, he would be the senior officer outside Vichy control. He had been an admiral when de Gaulle was a major. If de Gaulle wanted to pretend that he was head of some sort of government in exile, fine. But the commander of Free French military forces would be the senior officer who had not caved in to the Boches—in other words, Vice Admiral d’Escadre Jean-Philippe de Verbey.
Brigadier General de Gaulle was not pleased with the admiral’s offer, which he correctly believed would be a threat to his own power. De Verbey’s very presence in London, much more his assumption of command of Free French military forces, would remind people that de Gaulle was not anywhere near the ranking Free French officer and that his self-appointment as head of the French government in exile was of very doubtful legality. He couldn’t have that.
Admiral de Verbey shortly afterward received orders—signed by a major general, in the name of Charles de Gaulle, “Head of State”—ordering him to remain in Casablanca, “pending any need for your services to France in the future.”
Early in 1942, de Verbey, furious, took the great risk of offering his services to Robert Murphy, who was American consul general in Rabat. The Americans, he told Murphy, could use him in any capacity they saw fit, so long as it was concerned with getting La Boche out of La Belle France.
Murphy related the information to Washington, where eventually it reached C. Holdsworth Martin, Jr. Martin knew de Verbey, and suggested to Donovan that the old man be brought to the United States. It might be useful to have a lever available if de Gaulle—who already showed signs of being very difficult—became impossible.
Donovan was aware that since Roosevelt looked fondly upon de Gaulle, he was safe in his self-appointed role as head of the French government in exile. Further, even if they were to have a de Gaulle replacement waiting in the wings, he felt they could find someone better than a long-retired admiral with a serious heart condition. He had not then rejected Martin’s recommendation, however. But he believed that he would ultimately decide that getting the admiral out of Morocco would be more trouble than it would be worth.
But later there came the necessity of bringing out of Morocco the French mining engineer who knew about the stock of uranitite in the Belgian Congo. That operation had a very high priority and was top secret. Which meant they would need good cover for it.
Donovan’s deputy, Captain Peter Douglass, USN, had suggested, and Donovan had agreed, that should something go wrong with the snatch-the-mining-engineer operation, the Germans would begin to suspect an American interest in atomic fission. If, however, the operation had the escape of the admiral as its cover and the operation blew up, there was at least a reasonable chance the Germans would not suspect what was really up.
Thus C. Holdsworth Martin, Jr., had been told that Donovan had decided to bring the admiral to the United States. He had not been told about the mining engineer. The operation had been a success. The admiral and the engineer had arrived at the Brooklyn Navy Yard aboard a submarine, which had picked them up fifteen miles at sea off the Moroccan coast.
The admiral and the engineer were then taken to a seaside mansion in Deal, New Jersey, where they could be