At the beginning of June, Brest had become crowded with French troops escaping from Dunkirk or returning from Norway, as well as British troops en route to the east—100,000 men in all, in four weeks. It was the duty of Admiral, West, to protect this heavy traffic and to keep open the sea-lanes which fed France from the Atlantic. The last thing he had time to think about was what was going on inland.
The Commandant of the Naval District and Governor of Brest counted on the Breton Redoubt to stop the enemy, at least for several days. He was confirmed in this impression by the passage through Brest, on June 15, of General de Gaulle, who was on his way to London on a mission. General de Gaulle gave out no information regarding his trip, and the authorities at Brest naturally imagined that he was going to work with the British on an interallied organization for that famous redoubt.33
General de Gaulle’s actual mission was to obtain ships from the British to evacuate as many French troops as possible to Africa.
The first note of alarm that reached Admiral de Laborde was a message from the French Admiralty on June 16. The message directed Admiral, West, to load onto Admiral Cadart’s auxiliary cruisers, then in port, all of the gold of the Bank of France, as well as the reserves of the Banks of Belgium and Poland. These gold reserves, which had been collected at Brest and Lorient, were to be sent to safety in French West Africa.44
It is perhaps thanks to the French Admiralty that the gold of the Bank of France remained on French territory. In early June, 1940, Paul Reynaud, President of the French Council, had negotiated with the American Ambassador at Paris for the evacuation of 200 tons of French gold to the United States. American warships were to take this gold aboard at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Concerned over the risks of such a transfer in an open roadstead, the French Admiralty loaded this gold on the French auxiliary cruiser Ville d’Oran at Pauillac on May 29, and transported it to Casablanca, where on June 10 it was transferred to the U.S. cruiser Vincennes. This was the only transfer of gold to a foreign country for the sake of security, all the rest of the gold reserves being entrusted to French overseas possessions. It was thus that approximately 1,000 tons of gold were transported to Dakar, in French West Africa, without the loss of a penny.
In addition to this worry, Admiral, West, had the problem of the British troops who were falling back to Atlantic ports, abandoning their weapons and supplies, and making ready to take English transports back home.
Admiral, West, wondered whether the requested armistice would be effected before the worst occurred.
He had not long to worry. At 1100 on June 18 the telephone rang in the office of Vice Admiral Marcel Traub, the Naval District Commandant. The call was from General René Altmayer, at Rennes, who wished to speak with Admiral de Laborde. The General reported that he was already a prisoner, but the Germans had carelessly forgotten to cut his telephone wire. The important part of the message, however, was that a German motorized division was passing through the city unopposed—and that there were no French troops between Rennes and Brest.
A glance at the map showed that the Germans could be in Brest before 9 o’clock that evening. It was useless to expect any real defense at the close-in lines which General Jean Charbonneau had been trying to develop over the wishes of the civil authorities. There were just ten hours left. Ten hours in which to clear from the port 83 men-of-war and 48 French merchantmen, plus 10 English and 18 Dutch, Belgian, and Norwegian. Ten hours in which to get 159 ships to sea, either under their own power or under tow—or else to scuttle them. Ten hours in which to wreck the workshops, blow up the gates of the locks, set fire to the petroleum stocks—destroy everything that could be of use to the enemy if left behind.
Such a task usually requires detailed preparation. In this case the measures to be taken were totally unexpected by those who were to carry them out—a complete surprise. Several years later, when Admiral de Laborde was being tried for scuttling the Fleet at Toulon, and was asked why he had failed to answer the call to arms of General de Gaulle from London on that June 18, his answer was quite understandable, “That day, I had other things to do besides listening to the British Broadcasting Corporation.”
Seventy-four out of the 83 warships in port were able to get away to sea. The Paris, being repaired after damages suffered at Le Havre, was rushed out of drydock. The precious Richelieu was one of the first to leave; it departed at 1600, with all of the midshipmen of the French Naval Academy on board. The large submarine Surcouf, undergoing machinery overhaul, got under way with one diving rudder jammed hard over and with only her electric motors for power. Some ships departed at the end of a tow line.
Only nine ships had to be destroyed to save them from falling into German hands. Among these were four submarines and the redoubtable Cyclone, which had escaped from Dunkirk with her bow blown off, only to be destroyed now by her crew at the Brest navy yard. The sloop Vauquois struck a German magnetic mine off the town of Le Conquet as she reached the seaward end of the Brest channel, and was blown up.
Of the merchantmen in port, all escaped except one, which had to be scuttled. Of the others only one was sunk by enemy action on the way out. Before sailing, three of the transports took aboard, at the last moment, 6,000 men of General Béthouart’s brigade who had just returned from Narvik a few days earlier.
After a heroic but utterly ridiculous defense of a small, untenable defensive position at Landerneau, the city of Brest capitulated in the evening of June 19. When German Vice Admiral von Arnaud de la Périère, the commander of U-35 in World War I, arrived to take over the command, he found nothing afloat but an old six-stack cruiser which had been used by the Air Training Command, and a few old wooden lighters belonging to the apprentice seamen’s school which it had not been thought worthwhile to scuttle.
Winston Churchill was considerably in error when, in his memoirs, he wrote that at the time of the German invasion, “Not one French warship moved in order to place itself out of reach of the German troops.” 55
French edition, Book II, Volume I, page 228.
Following Cherbourg and Brest, all of the other French Atlantic ports were engulfed in that same German tide. And in every case, despite the Government’s request for an armistice, and despite a hasty proclamation declaring all cities of more than 20,000 to be “open cities,” the French naval authorities had orders to defend the military ports—something which they resolutely tried to do, regardless of how limited were their means of defense.
For instance, at the repair and construction center of Lorient, there were 15 warships and 35 sweepers or patrol craft. All put to sea on June 18, except three which had to be scuttled. Admiral Hervé de Penfentenyo de Kervéréguin, the naval commandant of the port, remained behind to hold the Germans off for three more days of heroic but hopeless resistance—an act which won the respect of even the Germans themselves.
At Saint-Nazaire, the measures taken by Admiral André Rioult permitted the British transports to evacuate 40,000 British soldiers and 2,500 men of the Polish division. Despite heavy enemy bombing, the multitude of merchant ships crowded into the harbor and roadstead were gotten safely away—including three precious cargo ships which had just arrived from America with full loads of airplanes.
The most spectacular escape, however, was that of the battleship Jean Bart, commanded by Captain Pierre Ronarc’h. That escape is now legendary. The uncompleted ship, with workmen’s scaffolds still covering the decks, was afloat in an open basin separated from the ship channel by an earthern dike. This dike had to be dredged out before the ship could reach open water.
In normal years there would have been ample time to complete the dredging before the ship’s scheduled departure in October. But without waiting for orders the commanding officer had begun dredging on May 25, when the military situation had begun to turn worse. From then on it was a race against time.
But even with the dike dredged away, it would be necessary to get the ship out on the high tides between June 18 and 22, or else to wait weeks for the next ones. And there could be no waiting. The high tide of the night of June 18 was selected for the departure. But within that short time it would be possible to dredge only to a depth of 8.1