[Peter Ansoff]

We are flying the French flag at half-staff today to remember more than 1200 French sailors who died for their country in the battle of Mers El-Kebir on July 3, 1940, during World War II. Almost 1000 of them died aboard the battleship Bretagne when she capsized and sank during the battle. One writer has compared the sinking of the Bretagne to the loss of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor the following year.

The shells that sank the Bretagne were not German or Japanese, but British. The French Army had just surrendered to the Germans, and the British government faced the possibility that the French fleet might be taken over by the Axis and used against them. The surrender terms had explicitly stated that France would *not* hand the ships over to Germany, but the British were not about to rely on Hitler's willingness to adhere to the agreement.

The battle itself was completely one-sided. The British attacked the French fleet at anchor, and only one major ship, the Strasbourg, was able to get underway and escape. Several of the other French ships suffered major damage. There were no British casualties.

There has been a lot of "what if" speculation about what either side might have done to avoid the battle, but the bottom line is that both did what they felt they had to do. The French Navy firmly believed that its role should be non-political, and that it should follow the orders of its civilian superiors in the government. The British felt that they had no choice but to eliminate a mortal threat to their country's existence.

At a memorial service for the French dead, Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul said to his men, "If there is a stain on a flag today, it is certainly not on yours." Prime Minister Churchill expressed his horror at having had to fire on a former ally. However, as he stated in his memoirs, the attack "made plain that the British . . . feared nothing and would stop at nothing" to defeat the Nazis. While the story had a happy ending in a sense -- Britain and France ended the war as allies against the Axis -- it was far too late for the men of Mers El-Kebir. May the memory of their sacrifice promote greater international trust and understanding in the future.

Peter Ansoff

[Peter Ansoff]

As often happens, I hit the "send" button too quickly! Obviously it's Mers El-Kebir, not "Mirs" and "Kbir." Sorry about that.

Peter Ansoff