WORLD WAR 2 IN REVIEW: A Long Voyage Home: René Malevergne and the Invasion of North Africa

Brigadier General Truscott congratulates René Malevergne after presenting him with the Silver Star for gallantry in action.

by William Noyer

When the Germans invaded France, René Malevergne wanted to fight. He tried to volunteer but the Army told him, “You’re too old.”

Monsieur Malevergne did not consider fifty too old. A retired merchant marine sailor, he lived quietly with his wife and two young sons at Mehdia, Morocco, where the Sebou River enters the Atlantic. His skill as a river pilot enabled him to earn a respectable living.

Later, when France fell, M. Malevergne joined the Resistance. His home became the last stop in Africa for the “underground railway” which helped young French and British airmen escape to England.

During the day, Malevergne piloted cargo vessels between the jetties which jutted out into the Atlantic and up the muddy Sebou to inland Port Lyautey, the site of one of the finest airdromes in North Africa. On carefully selected nights, he pushed out from the beach in a dory, rowed through the crashing waves, and delivered two or three airmen to a blacked-out ship waiting offshore.

But the Gestapo finally caught up with Malevergne. “One of our little group,” he explained, “a customs guard, turned out to be a Vichy man.”

The Gestapo drove Malevergne to Rabat and, for three terrible days, questioned him virtually around the clock. After two months of solitary confinement, he awoke one morning and was hustled aboard a plane bound for France. Four months later, he went on trial accused of ferrying French and British airmen through the surf off Mehdia. But somehow Rene, the most skilled of watermen and chief pilot of the Sebou River, managed to convince the court that it was impossible for a small boat to ride safely through that mountainous surf.

They held him another six months in France before returning him to Casablanca on parole. There the OSS soon heard of his skill as a pilot. Two agents approached Malevergne and he quickly volunteered to serve the Allied cause.

“The problem,” former OSS Col. Corey Ford later wrote, “was how to smuggle him past the French and Spanish border control posts into Tangier. Two OSS vice-consuls volunteered to run the gauntlet in their ancient Chevrolet, carrying Malevergne secreted in the trailer. The chief pilot was stashed behind some gasoline drums and covered with a Moroccan rug and a heavy canvas tarpaulin, lashed down securely. Although a vent in the canvas admitted enough air to overcome the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning, the uneasy consuls halted at frequent intervals to lift the vent and inquire in a whisper how Malevergne was doing. ‘Pas trop mort,’ he would choke gallantly.

“They passed the French border post without incident, but at the Spanish post the sentry demanded to know what was in the trailer. While one of the consuls was exhibiting the gasoline drums in the rear, the other noticed to his dismay that the sentry’s dog was sniffing at the front of the tarpaulin and bristling suspiciously. With rare presence of mind, he produced a tin of canned meat from his lunch box to distract the dog’s attention; the sentry was overwhelmed by this generosity to his pet and motioned them through the control post gates with a sweeping gesture. Safe at last in Tangier, Malevergne was helped out of his cramped hiding place, slightly stiff but otherwise intact, and flown to Washington by way of Gibraltar.”

There his extensive knowledge of the details of wind, tide, current and surf was put to good use. It helped the men who were planning Operation Torch—the invasion of North Africa—the largest amphibious operation the world had yet seen, and the first step on the long road which would one day lead to the liberation of his beloved France.

The key to the African invasion, the planners told him, was the airfield at Port Lyautey, located twelve miles up the Sebou River from Mehdia. The field, the only concrete all-weather strip in Morocco, would have to be captured, then stocked with high-octane gasoline, bombs and ammunition so that an American fighter group, catapulted from an escort carrier, could land and provide cover for bombers to be flown in from Gibraltar.

The first step in the operation would be to cut a wire net and boom which the Vichy French had installed to block the Sebou.

After that, a pilot would be needed to guide two ships up the shallow, winding river. The first, the destroyer U.S.S. Dallas, would land a raider detachment at Port Lyautey to help capture the airfield. Then a cargo vessel—identity still unknown—would steam up the river and deliver gasoline, bombs and ammunition.

Malevergne agreed to pilot both vessels.

Operation TORCH planners then had to find a ship with a draft shallow enough for Malevergne to guide up the muddy 17-foot deep channel. However, a check of available transports failed to turn up a single vessel that could do the job. Then someone remembered the Contessa, an old 5,500-ton Honduran banana boat belonging to the Standard Fruit Lines. They located the old ship in mid-Atlantic and diverted her from New York to the invasion-staging area at Newport News, Virginia.

Although under contract to the U.S. Maritime Commission, the British-built ship flew the Honduran flag. Her captain, William H. John, was British; the first mate, Italian-American; the second mate, Norwegian; the third mate, American. The first engineer was British; the second, German-American; the third Honduran. In the crew were Filipinos, Swedes, Danes, Estonians, Mexicans, Peruvians, Belgians, Brazilians, Finns, Arabs and Australians.

The ship, built many years before in Glasgow and designed to haul bananas and coconuts from Caribbean ports to the U.S., had been drafted at the outbreak of the war to ply the stormy and dangerous transatlantic route. The call to report to Newport News found the Contessa completing her twelfth Atlantic crossing. The constant pounding of Atlantic storms had left her salt-caked and rust-stained. Water poured in through her leaky seams and rose steadily as her wheezing pumps labored to keep up.

The Contessa finally reached Newport News on Friday afternoon, 23 October, just as Gen. George S. Patton’s invasion convoy—an armada of over one hundred ships carrying 33,000 troops—prepared to sail.

Following their usual custom, the fruit company drew money from the bank and paid off the crew. Most of them, with months of transatlantic drudgery and danger behind them, scattered for a well-deserved rest. Captain John was also preparing to go ashore to meet his wife, whom he hadn’t seen for six months, when he received orders to proceed to dry dock. Neither he nor his crew knew anything about the airport up the Sebou or the job for which the Contessa had been booked.

It was not until the Contessa, with only a skeleton crew aboard, limped into dry dock that Capt. John learned that they were due out Monday morning for an undisclosed destination. He immediately issued stand by orders but most of his 76-man crew had already departed. Wires were sent to those who left addresses, but most of the men could not be reached.

Meanwhile, shipyard workers swarmed aboard the old ship. But they only had time for the most essential repairs. So they pumped out her holds, tightened her leaky plates and loose rivets.

On Sunday morning, 25 October, she came out of dry dock and sailed to her loading berth at Pier X. That night, in the midst of a drenching rain and sleet storm, bombs and steel drums filled with high test gas were loaded on board. A Navy gun crew came aboard to man her guns.

By Monday morning the old ship was loaded and, except for the problem of an incomplete crew, ready to sail. The Navy solved that problem by approaching authorities at the Norfolk City Jail and offering freedom to inmates who would sign on the Contessa. Eighteen men, who were serving time for minor offenses, volunteered and were released for duty. One engineer and four oilers were secured from the tanker Gloria which was docked at the naval operating base.

Since the convoy had already departed, Capt. John volunteered to sail his ship, unescorted, across the U-boat infested Atlantic. The Contessa could not carry any papers or charts that, in the event they fell into enemy hands, might endanger Operation TORCH. This meant that all instructions would have to be memorized.

That assignment fell to Lt. Albert V. Leslie, a Reserve officer who had been assigned to command the Navy gun crew. Leslie, a veteran seaman, had been around the world twice, including a trip around Cape Horn; had helped to pick up survivors of the Yokohama earthquake in 1923; had enlisted in the Coast Guard in Prohibition days as a boatswain’s mate, first class. Only he would know their destination.

In preparation, he spent a day in the office of Commodore Lee P. Johnson at the old Nansemond Hotel at Ocean View, which had become headquarters of the Amphibious Force. Commodore Johnson handed him charts, maps and navigational instructions.

As Leslie later wrote, “The Contessa was to load as much cargo as would place her off Port Lyautey with a draft of 17 feet, the greatest draft which it was estimated could be carried over the bar at the entrance of the Sebou River. I accumulated the necessary intelligence data to carry out my mission. This involved going over the sortie plans, communication plans and intelligence data concerning the navigation of the Sebou. In this connection it was expected that a pilot would be available who knew the river and would cross with a vessel in the task group—but it was decided that, in any event, the river would be run without a pilot if necessary.

“My orders to Captain John were that we were to head for Gibraltar…”

And so, on Monday morning, 26 October, three days after her arrival in Newport News, the Contessa turned her bow toward Africa and her appointment with history. She was loaded with 900 tons of bombs and 400 tons of high-octane gasoline, a cargo that would later lead Rear Adm. Henry Kent Hewlitt, the invasion convoy commander, to call the old ship a “Roman candle.”

Men on the shore, watching the lift of the Contessa’s ungainly stern, shook their heads. Before her lay the wide Atlantic with its floating mines, lurking submarines, and, beyond that, patrolling enemy planes.

At sea, the weather turned clear and the Contessa zig-zagged along with ease. “For the major part of the crossing,” Lt. Leslie wrote, “there was little to report except occasional submarine scares and target practice. We encountered moderate weather until the longitude of the Azores. Our logged speed averaged about 15.8 knots. This rate of advance placed us about twenty-four hours ahead of my desired arrival at rendezvous off Mehdia. Therefore, when abreast of the Azores, I disclosed our destination to Capt. John and, since we had no knowledge of the convoy’s whereabouts, hove to overnight in a moderate northeast gale at a point about eighty miles south of the Azores …”

The next morning, they continued toward North Africa. At dawn on 6 November, about sixty miles off Cape Spartel, a Gibraltar-based British Sunderland challenged them. The Contessa did not have a code identification, nor had she been furnished with challenges and relies. The Sunderland circled about two hours and, although apparently less than satisfied, left without attacking.

On 7 November a destroyer approached and the Contessa, with the aid of visual communication, managed to make her position clear. But it was dusk before she finally found her proper place in the invasion fleet. As far as the eye could see, transports and warships covered the water.

The invasion was set for 8 November. Long before dawn, a net-cutting party of fourteen sailors and three officers cast off from a transport in a scout boat and headed for the Sebou. They passed between the two jetties that had been built out into the Atlantic to confine the current and partially protect the river mouth from silting. They soon reached the wire net and boom, which blocked the river inside the jetties, and started to work.

However, machine guns at the foot of the Kasba, an old Portuguese-built fortress which guarded the mouth of the Sebou, soon opened up and they were driven off.

This brought about a change of plans for Pilot Rene Malevergne and the destroyer Dallas, an old “four-piper” of 1919 vintage whose masts and much of her superstructure had been shorn to save weight and accommodate troops on deck. Malevergne had been scheduled to guide the Dallas upriver at dawn to the Port Lyautey airdrome with a raider detachment. Instead, at noon the Dallas attempted to ram the boom but shells from shore batteries twice drove her off.

It was not until the early morning hours of 10 November that a net-cutting party, under command of Lt. Mark W. Starkweather, successfully cut the inch-and-a-half wire of the boom. But they paid a heavy price—machine gun fire from French forces along the shore inflicted at least one wound on every member of the group.

A half hour after the net had been cut, Malevergne started the Dallas toward the jetties in heavy rain and darkness. Although the seas were high and breaking, making the Dallas yaw badly, the sturdy, quiet little pilot took the destroyer through the surf and between the jetties.

Machine gun fire opened up on them, but by dawn they had passed through the jetties and could see the boom. Malevergne was dismayed at the sight. It had been cut on the north side, where the water was too shallow for the Dallas. They would have to ram the boom where it crossed the channel and hope that it would part. Before reaching that point the destroyer ran aground and began to pound in the swell that washed in from the sea. By turning on full power, Malevergne managed to barely move the ship through the soft mud. At that moment, French 75-mm guns in the Kasba opened fire. A big shell hit the water dead ahead as the Dallas approached the boom, and another lifted her stern off the mud. The Frenchman turned up 18 knots, hit a point on the boom midway between the two floats, swept it aside, and promptly reduced speed to 15 knots to steam up the river.

Although Malevergne had not seen the Sebou for more than two years, he could still remember with some exactness how the sand bars tended to change from season to season. Today he would face an additional hazard—the French had sunk eight cargo ships in the channel.

Twice the Dallas touched bottom as Malevergne skillfully guided her around the sunken vessels. Shells from artillery in the Kasba fell all around as she made her slow and careful way inland. As she rounded the final bend, bullets from machine guns guarding the airport began to whistle and whine around her, but the Dallas answered with her own 3-inch guns. She contacted the river bottom again, but the imperturbable Malevergne called for full speed ahead and the Dallas’ keel cut a trench in the soft sand.

A few moments later, they saw the airport dead ahead. The Dallas came to a stop in midstream and, although still under heavy fire, placed her 75-man raider detachment—a company of the 60th Infantry Regiment trained as Rangers—ashore without a single casualty to them or to the ship.

The officers on the bridge relaxed and congratulated Malevergne. But the stocky little Frenchman had no time to rest. Bidding them a hasty farewell, he hurried back to Mehdia in an American jeep, boarded the Contessa, and, at 1500 hours, started upstream again through the winding, narrow, mud-choked channel. Unfortunately, high tide had passed an hour before and the Contessa, with her 17-foot draft, touched heavily on a sand bar at half speed. As Lt. Leslie later described the scene: “Pilot Malevergne ran her full ahead but she did not respond quickly enough, and we hit the breakwater on our port bow. Everything held but the Contessa was holed in the fore port of her number one hold and soundings within two minutes showed thirteen feet of water, with pumps going. We continued up river under occasional sniping by rifle fire until we were abreast of the scuttled ships Batavia and St. Emile. These vessels had been scuttled at a sharp river bend. The only way we could pass them was under a full bell. We managed to pass through but hit the bank again at full speed. This drove the bow approximately fifty feet up on a soft mud bank. As it was now about 1830 hours and half tide and the vessel hard aground, we had to wait for the morning tide.”

The men settled down for a restless night. As war correspondent Bertram B. Fowler later wrote, “Now the men listened more closely to the distant roar of the heavy guns and the flat, hard hammering of machine guns. A single hit might turn the trick and make a memory out of the Contessa and her crew. But no one left her. No one thought of seeking refuge ashore. To the last man, to the newest recruit out of the Norfolk jail, they waited for the tide and the Contessa’s last chance.

“Most of them shivered with the Contessa as the rising tide swirled around her. Their hearts pounded to the tempo of the laboring pumps. Then, below decks, the engines speeded up and shook the ship with their thunderous beat. The clinging fingers of the mud released their hold and the Contessa began to swing slowly. She swung until her bow pointed down the stream …”

As she floated free, Malevergne rang to the engine room for full speed astern.

“Slowly,” war correspondent Fowler continued, “inch by inch, the Contessa backed off the mud bank, her bow low in the water. Yard by yard she backed up the river … toward the airfield.”

Then, within eight hundred yards of the airport, she settled heavily on the river bed. Although hard and fast aground, the Contessa had reached her destination.

Lighters, fishing boats, scows—anything that would float—were commandeered and rushed down the river. Crew and GIs became longshoremen as they labored to unload the precious and volatile cargo. A cheer went up as the weary men saw the first U.S. Army fighter planes, some of the seventy-seven P-40Fs ferried across the Atlantic on the Navy carrier Chenango, coming in to land.

With her cargo unloaded, the damaged, sea-weary Contessa rode a little higher in the muddy channel, then slipped quietly downstream to deep water to join the Dallas—their missions accomplished.

Malevergne, his work as a pilot finished, requested permission to return home to the wife and family he had not seen for nearly two years. Were they alive or dead? He did not know. His apprehension grew as he approached the little white house that nestled against the side of the Kasba. As he drew closer, he marveled at the accuracy of the American gunners—their 14-inch shells had torn into the old fort and the hillside without touching his small cottage.

He walked around it twice before daring to look inside. It was empty. Fear clutched his heart. Then he turned. A head showed from a door to the cellar.

“C’est papa!” his son cried, and the pilot ran down into the cellar for a joyous reunion with his family.

A few days later, in a field close to the ruined fort, American soldiers stood at attention as Brig. Gen. Lucien K. Truscott Jr., commander of the Northern Attack Group which had landed at Mehdia, pinned a Silver Star on Malevergne’s jacket “for gallantry in action.”

Then Malevergne and Truscott stood at attention as the troops passed in review. The two men saluted as the Stars and Stripes and the French Tricolor was carried by.

After the troops had left the field, Malevergne looked up at the Kasba. He saw a blue and white flag with five stars in the center flying proudly over the old fort. The flag looked familiar. After a moment, the pilot smiled and added another salute for the five-starred flag of the Honduran merchant marine—the Contessa’s flag.

Captain John, the Contessa’s skipper, received commendations from the Secretary of the Navy; from Maj. Gen. George S. Patton; from the Commander of the Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; and from Adm. E. S. Land, chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission.

Lieutenant Leslie received the Silver Star, was promoted to lieutenant commander, and assigned as port captain at Port Lyautey.

Lieutenant Commander Robert Brodie Jr., commanding officer of the Dallas; Lt. John N. Ferguson Jr., executive officer and navigator of the Dallas, and Lt. (j.g.) Norman Clark Smith, engineer officer of the Dallas, all received the Navy Cross.

Lieutenant Mark W. Starkweather and his net-cutting party—Shipfitter Second Class Frederick L. Arsenault, Lt. James W. Darroch, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Roy B. Dowling, Gunner’s Mate First Class William R. Freeman, Machinist’s Mate First Class Ernest J. Gentile, Machinist’s Mate First Class Joseph Greely, Boatswain’s Mate Second Class Andrew J. House, Shipfitter Third Class Raymond E. Johnson, Shipfitter First Class Richard W. Joyce, Electrician’s Mate Second Class William A. Music Jr., Gunner’s Mate Lucas J. Perry, Boatswain’s Mate First Class Richard G. Shelley, Boatswain’s Mate First Class Edwin Sperry, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Arthur Wagner, Seaman First Class Edward L. Wisniewski, and Machinist’s Mate First Class Czeslaw Zymroz—all received the Navy Cross.

The men of the U.S.S. Dallas were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation.

Bibliography

Bykosky, Joseph, and Harold Larson. The Transportation Corps: Operation Overseas. U.S. Army in World War II. USGPO, Washington, D.C., 1957.

Ford, Corey. Donovan of OSS. Little, Brown, Boston, 1970.

Fowler, Bertram B. “Twelve Desperate Miles,” Saturday Evening Post, 1943.

Funk, Arthur L. The Politics of TORCH. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 1974.

Howe, George F. Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West. U.S. Army in World War II. USGPO, Washington, D.C., 1957.

Karig, Walter. Battle Report: The Atlantic War. Rinehart, New York, 1945.

King, Elizabeth W. “Flags of the Americas,” National Geographic, 1949.

Leighton, Richard M., and Robert W. Coakley. Global Logistics and Strategy: 1940-43. U.S. Army in World War II. USGPO, Washington, D.C., 1956.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Little, Brown, Boston, 1948-53.

Potter, E. B., and Chester W. Nimitz. The Great Sea War. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960.

Tunley, Lt. (j.g.) Roul, USNR. “A Frenchman Returns,” Sea Power, 1945.

Wheeler, Maj. William R. The Road to Victory. N.p., Newport News, Va., 1946.

Sketch of Mehdia-Port Lyautey Area.

Map of the Battle of Port Lyautey.

Port Lyautey Airdrome, within the “U” made by the wide loop of the Sebou river.

Jetties and mouth of the Sebou.

The Kasba as seen from the deck of the Dallas.

The scuttled French freighter in the river.

USS Dallas (DD-199) in the Wadi Sebou, off Port Lyautey Military Airfield, Morocco, 11 November 1942, the day after she made her way up the river to land U.S. troops at the airfield. Note U.S. Navy landing craft beached at the facility's waterfront and French military planes between the hangars. Seaplane hangars and shops are in the foreground, and aircraft assembly plant is in the background.

The mouth of the Sebou River, opening onto the Atlantic, as seen from the north wall of the old fortress dubbed the Kasbah. On the road to Port Lyautey, seen passing beneath the fort, Colonel Demas T. Craw was killed in a French ambush.

After three days of shelling and dive bombing by U.S. Navy planes, the Kasbah lies in ruins. The U.S. Army, which suffered more than three hundred casualties in the attack on Mehdia and Port Lyautey, conceded that “the final assault had touches of Beau Gestse.”

Dallas, piloted by René Malevergne during Operation Torch.

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the
PRESIDENTIAL UNIT CITATION to the
UNITED STATES SHIP DALLAS
for service as set forth in the following
CITATION:
“For outstanding participation in the capture of Port Lyautey Airfield, French Morocco, November 10, 1942. With a U. S. Army raider detachment embarked, the DALLAS, crossing a treacherous bar against heavy surf in order to reach the mouth of the Sebou River, broke through a steel cable boom obstructing the channel, forced he course ten miles upstream under hostile fire, and successfully landed troops without material damage or loss of life. Her distinctive fulfillment of a difficult and hazardous mission contributed materially to the victorious achievement of the Northern Attack Group.”
For the President,
/s/ Frank Knox
Secretary of the Navy

Aircraft carrier USS Chenango with P-40 pursuit planes on deck, November 1942.

Brigadier General Lucien K. Truscott, Jr., commanded the attack force that invaded Mehdia in northern Morocco and later ran General Eisenhower’s forward headquarters during the battle for Tunisia. Chesty and slightly stooped, he had protruding gray eyes, a moon face, and a voice as raspy as a wood file.

Letter in French from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox acknowledging the extraordinary heroism of Rene Malevergne as pilot of the USS Dallas, 10 November 1942.