ATTACK ON ORAN

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 87, 14 April 1941, Page 6

ATTACK ON ORAN

FRENCH BITTERNESS

UNJUSTLY DOUBTED.

RELEASED FROM PROMISES.

(By JAY ALLEN). ALGIERS, (Algeria). February 28,

In the high-walled village cemetery at Mers-EI-Kebir. this correspondent saw the graves of 400 of the 1200 to 1300 French sailors, officers ajid men who died on July 3 and July 6, 1840, "Pour la France,'' as the simple plaque says. Over these graves. Admiral Gensoul, who rejected British Admiral Somerville's famous conditions, said, "If there is a spot on a flag, it is not 011 ours. - '

With one of the officers of the destroyer Mcgador, which was struck by a she-11 in the attack on July 3 and had her stern blown off becausc the shell exploded depth charges stored there, this correspondent went over the scene of one of the strangest naval engagements in history. From the heights of the fort of El Santon, we looked down 011 the uncompleted breakwater that partly shields the open bay. This was chosen a few years back as the least vulnerable l«fc: in French Xorth Africa. Along this jetty the warships Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Provence and Bretagne and the seaplane carrier Commandant Teste were moored, facing the shore when, on the hot morning of July 3. Somerville's fleet appeared in the offing. 800 Bodies Still In Mud. My guide showed where, after cruising up and down while the pourparlers went 011, the British finally took up a position at .>.30 in the afternoon, out of sight of the French Fleet, and began to lob rhells over the point of land below the fort with terrible accuracy.

I sow fragments from .the Hood's 15inch guns which had been fired at the old guns of the forts. The fort's guns had been put into commission hurriedly. The Hood's shells had struck near but, being armour-piercing raher than high explosive, did no damage.

Dimly, in the,jade waters of the bay, we could discern the keel of the Bretagne. Divers report there arc still 800 bodies wedced between her deck and the mud.

Xo one is in Oran any more except cats, crabs and lobsters. Around the guns of El Santon. since dismantled by the Armistice Commissions, butterflies drifted in the hot sun. The only sound that came to Oran was the spatter of riveters at work on the Dunkerque far below. My guide showed 111 c where, on July 6. British seaplanes swooped down through the valley from the land side, too low for the guns in the hills to get them in range. The planes eased a torpedo into the Dunkerque's flanks. Near by arc the funnel and masts of a tug that was lying beside the DunkerqUe. It had been loaded with grenades that got the lirst impact of the torpedo and blew out the ship's innards.

From El Santon, it was easy to sec how tlic Strasbourg and Provence made their skilful cscapc off to the right, along past the port of Oran and close along the coast. The British, down on the left, busily lobbing shells into the supposedly immobile warships moored at the jetty, were blinded by their own smoke screen until it was too late to catch up with the fugitive dreadnoughts.

The naval officer who was in command at El Santon had a set of photographs of the memorable event. Everybody there has, and even the most bitter will discuss eagerly the purely technical aspects of the British '"attentat." The officers I met all showed iron restraint.

One doesn't prod the wounds of men, but I managed to ask two questions of all the officers I met. First, did they think the British really intended to fire? All agreed they had not thought so until about a half hour before the expiration of the British ultimatum. Second, what other way could it have ended once the ultimatum had been delivered? All agreed, in tones ranging between anger and pride, that it could not have ended otherwise.

An Order To Scuttle. Very clear was Hoar-Admiral Marcel Jarrv, superintendent of the naval base at Mers-el-Kebir since December, 1939. At Fort Lamounc, in a simple whitewashed office looking out across the bay to the jetty and the sharp silhouette of El Santon, the rear-admiral spoke his mind.

Late in 1939. he was at Dakar, and there won his admiral's stripes in the search for the (Sraf Spee. He is in his forties and has a future as well as a past. He knew what was going on in America, unlike many others hereabouts, and was in no way surprised at what he was told. He wanted to talk of what happened out there in the bay. He did. and his words, like his eyes, seemed of

"What wounded us to the quick was that the British did not take our word," he said. "We said we would never hand over the fleet. We never would have. e had an order to scuttle in case they did not believe

His jaw. too", seemed of metal. I remembered, the officers of H.M.S. Hermes talking with admiration of the then Captain .Tarry during the hunt for the Graf Spec; they should see his jaw

"Bccau-e of what they did July 3 and •Tuly 6. they themselves released us from our promises to them. By what they did. by refusing to take our word, they opened a gulf between us. That gulf it is up to them to bridge."' Ho stopped and. looking at me intently, said. "Have you undcr.-tood me':" J .-aid I thought I had.

General Maximo Weygand and Admiral .lean Marie Abrial. GovernorGeneral of Algeria, -cent to get along well together in harness for a soldier and sailor. They have in common the days of late May and early June, when Abrial. at Dunkirk, took orders from Generalissimo Weygand. The admiral lives at what is called the summer palace in a semi-tropical garden in a modern quarter in the hills above town. Weygand occupies the winter palace, an eighteenth eenturv Turkish affair next to the cathedral, hard by the native town with its picture postcard glamour and its squalour. 1 here Arabs congregate by the hundredto watch him come and go in vice-regal style.—Auckland Star"' and X.A.X.A.