Cloaked by the North African darkness, eight men watched breathlessly for the signal light. At the appointed hour no light showed. In grave danger of capture, possibly of execution as spies, the men waited on. Finally, at a second prearranged hour, the light gleamed from a darkened house. Breathing more easily, the eight strode forward into the light and into the house jammed with French Army officers.
Towering, rawboned Major General Mark Wayne Clark, fresh from a submarine, had led his men into the house on a dangerous mission: to extract as much information and win as much support from the French Army as possible. The time was mid-October, three weeks before the U.S. Army planned to invade. All that night and all next day Mark Clark and his men talked and argued with the French officers. All went well until word came that Vichy-controlled police, informed by an Arab servant, were nearing the house.
"I never saw such excitement," said General Clark later. "Maps disappeared like lightning. A French general changed into civilian clothes in one minute flat, and I last saw him going out of a window. They were going in all directions." The Americans hid in a wine cellar, Clark with a revolver in one hand and 15,000 francs in the other, "to shoot them or bribe them." After an hour the police went away. The Americans escaped.
Returning across a nearby body of water their precious rubber boat capsized. Cried one: "Damn the generals, save the boat." Most of their clothing and $18,000 in gold were lost. But they saved all the important papers, and, shivering, half-naked, they crept through woodlands to a secret rendezvous with an Allied ship.
Last week the U.S. learned of Mark Clark's daring expedition* and of the intricate military and diplomatic groundwork that preceded the invasion of French North Africa. The U.S. also heard the much fuller account of how last fortnight the A.E.F., building on that groundwork, had swept to a quick, clean victory. Within four days of the first landing, all official French resistance had ceased on orders of Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, chief of Vichy's armed forces. Algiers, Oran, Rabat, Casablanca and the rest were in American hands. So was Admiral Darlan.
The occupation of French North Africa had been accomplished with Blitzkrieg briefness, utilizing expert coordination of planes, ships, tanks, trucks, guns and courageous men. In spots it was easy. In others resistance was bitter, though brief.
Algiers. Two U.S. Ranger officers and a newspaperman, scrambling ashore with the first assault force near Fort Sidi-Ferruch, 15 miles west of Algiers, were met by a friendly French officer. Twenty minutes later, still dripping with surf, they were inside the fort shaking hands with the garrison commander, who showed them instructions received the previous evening for cooperating with the Americans.