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ISBN 978-1-61200-068-8
384 pages

Foreword; Preface; maps; photos; Acknowlegments; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   Philippe Francois Marie de Hauteclocque, even under his nom de guerre, Leclerc, is not exactly a celebrity in this day and age, but William Mortimer Moore, in his first non-fiction book, gives us a solid biography of the man who was a hero in France during and after the war, second only to—or even exceeding—Charles de Gaulle in popularity and respect. Where de Gaulle was prickly and temperamental, barely tolerated by his allies, a politician obsessed with returning France to its rightful grandeur, Leclerc was a soldier, simple and straightforward, who led the troops and fought the battles required to prove France deserved to be a great power. Of course, while de Gaulle went on to become an important post-war statesman and lived until 1970, Leclerc died in 1947, and mostly faded from memory.
   Moore has produced the first serious English-language biography devoted solely to the officer since 1966. It opens with the general's death in a plane crash while on an inspection tour in French North Africa, and, in the beginning, the author writes in a slightly melodramatic, emotional tone rather than a more familiar military timbre. The Preface consequently makes the book sound like a mainstream biography. The focus, despite flashbacks to wartime activities, falls on the man rather than combat operations. Of the public services for Leclerc, for example, Moore draws a touching a picture, almost like a washed out film newsreel, nearly as evocative as the funeral procession for King Edward VII that marks the opening of The Guns of August.
   Clearly the passing of Leclerc moved the French. Charles de Gaulle, never one to minimize his own importance, gave up cigarettes upon Leclerc's death. Moore quotes him on the significance of that gesture, and the stature of Leclerc. "The evening of Leclerc's death I had a terrible pain and I thought I had better manage my energies because Leclerc was no longer there to render important service to France should it be necessary. Therefore it seemed to me that I had better be fit enough to do it in his place."
   Subsequent to the Preface, covering the death and burial of Leclerc, the book circles back to the ancestors, birth, and early life of the protagonist, including his education, marriage, posting to North Africa (during which time the author describes the young, rather homesick Philippe Hauteclocque "constantly playing 'Mon coeur soupire la nuit et le jour' on his portable gramophone"), and first actions leading troops in North Africa. In Morocco, stamping out native insurrections, he won the Croix de Guerre. In 1939, he was assigned as chief of staff to the 4th Infantry Division, which mobilized and moved into the line, transferring to Montreuil near Abbeville in January 1940. By this point, the sentimental aspects of Moore's opening pages have been replaced with a much more military-oriented approach.
   Following the German invasion, the 4th Infantry Division eventually found itself cut off around Lille, where Captain Hauteclocque began the odyssey that would lead him to the Free French and a lengthy separation from his homeland and his family.

   By 8am Lille was completely cut off from the coastal pocket around Dunkirk, as well as from the rest of France. With little hope of resupply, ammunition was running low and Musse's division was disintegrating into a mob of hungry, scruffy, desperate men. There were traffic jams everywhere; only one bridge remained intact, and Lille was being pummelled by German aircraft.
   "What next?" Hauteclocque asked a colonel. "Wait and see," came the reply.
   Surveying the sea of dishevelled soldiery, and recognising that only prison camps awaited them, Philippe presented himself to the wounded General Musse. "Sir," he began. "I do not want to be taken prisoner. My role as a staff officer without troops has become useless. May I have your permission to take my chance?"
   "Entendu [agreed]," said Musse. "I wish I could go too, but I must stay with the men." With that, the bandaged general offered a warm handshake to the determined young captain. Hauteclocque returned the salute and turned about.
   Hauteclocque headed out of Lille's Douai gate, walking quietly through the wreckage of France's worst-ever defeat. Unshaven poilus were scavenging for any food and drink they could find. Terrified and hungry horses roamed loose. Abandoned vehicles littered the streets, intact but lacking petrol following the breakdown of logistics. Famished and exhausted, Hauteclocque found a baguette in an abandoned field bakery van, and then used an abandoned bicycle to ride to the southern outskirts and await nightfall. After dark he headed south to Faches et Vendeville. Emerging from the village, he heard a German Panzer column rolling towards Wattignies and hid quickly in a field of rye. The sound of distant gunfire indicated street fighting. Lying in the tall rye he contemplated the extraordinary way German machine-guns fired without cease compared to French ones.
   When the firing died down he continued southwards across the German corridor until he found his path blocked again by a column of Wehrmacht vehicles between Ennerieres and Fretin. He lay down in a field for a while to watch them before continuing. Sometimes German patrols would shout out "Wer da?" ("Who goes there?"), but always too late as the thirty-seven year old French captain slipped away into the darkness. The following day he lay up in a copse near a squadron of parked German tanks whose crews were eating, drinking, singing and playing guitars and accordions. Nightfall again, with clouds hiding the Pole star, he oriented himself as best he could with neither map not compass and headed in the direction of Otchies. Avoiding any village that seemed German-occupied, Hauteclocque walked for three hours until he came to a hamlet where dogs still barked, suggesting some French inhabitants had remained. Knocking on a door Philippe learnt he was in Ostricourt, but when he asked for civilian clothes the owner refused, asking him to disappear. This area had been occupied during the Great War and the locals knew about going with the tide. Approaching another house, once again he was asked to scram -- this time with the additional threat of denunciation. Sickened and furious, Hauteclocque pushed past the man, grabbed a coat and hat off a clothes peg, and turned away into the night.
   As the sun rose he came across a couple of teenage lads who directed him towards an abandoned house. He approached cautiously, taking in the atmosphere of despair and the evidence of sudden departure. Inside he found an old jacket that just about fit him, and a bicycle in an outshed. Philippe dumped as much uniform as he could in a field, changed, mounted the bicycle and peddled [sic] away as fast as he could.

   At the end of May, making his way south to regain territory still in French hands, the young captain—wearing civilian clothes—was captured, searched, and taken prisoner upon discovery of an army pay stub in his wallet. Although the author makes no mention, Hauteclocque was probably lucky not to be shot by his German captors as a spy or saboteur. He was even luckier to talk his way out of captivity the next day and resume his journey through occupied territory. Eventually reaching French lines, he was reassigned to a newly formed armored unit, but soon wounded in an air attack and evacuated to a hospital. When the hospital fell into German hands, Hauteclocque jumped out a window and began walking again, in search of his family.
   And his family he did find, sheltering with relatives in the south. But Hauteclocque did not remain with them for long. Instead, he was determined to join de Gaulle and the embryonic Free French movement in London. Moore devotes several pages to analyzing this decision. In fact, the aristocratic Hauteclocque bore little resemblance to the "men with nothing to lose" who originally rallied to de Gaulle. Indeed, he was quite the opposite, with family (including six children) and land and a considerable amount of wealth. If anything, he would on the surface appear closer to "the sort of Frenchman who might believe in the Vichy slogan Famille, Patrie, Travail." Some strands of his earlier life indicated he held a certain "taste for authoritarian values." Yet he made his way toward Spain with forged papers in the name of "Leclerc -- a wine merchant." After several adventures along the way, he crossed the border, travelled through Spain, took a train to Portugal, and reported to the military attache at the British embassy in Lisbon. On 25 July 1940 he presented himself to General de Gaulle in London.
   To protect his family in France, Hauteclocque assumed his nom de guerre, Leclerc, from his forged travel documents. Although he arrived exhausted in London with his head wound still bandaged, the new recruit was promptly assigned a mission to Africa by de Gaulle. He departed by seaplane on 6 August with a pair of colleagues to help rally French African colonies to the Gaullists. This proved a complicated and important matter, one seldom explicated in English-language histories of the war. Moore goes into considerable detail about the swirling political issues, notably the anti-British sentiments arising from the Royal Navy's attack on the French fleet at Mers el Kebir, which made Leclerc's mission all the more difficult. Even so, in a brazen nocturnal action, Leclerc secured Douala and then all of the French Cameroons. Partly as a result, a row of colonial dominos fell to de Gaulle. One of those, Gabon, required an amphibious landing and brief battle—led by Leclerc—in order to tumble in the proper direction.
   Following his successes in rallying Equatorial Africa, Leclerc returned to a more strictly military capacity. Operating from the firm French colonial base in Chad, he began conducting raids against Italian outposts in southern Libya during 1941 and 1942, operations explained by Moore in two chapters. Edward L. Bimberg covers the same events in a weak, derivative volume with little to recommend it. In contrast to Bimberg, Didier Corbonnois performs a much better job following Leclerc's campaigns from Gabon through Tunisia, with far more military detail, but he writes exclusively in French. By comparison, Moore, while not skimping on the raids, focuses more on Leclerc and his accretion of comrades, lieutenants, troops, weapons, vehicles, and publicity in the cause of Free France. These episodes, fascinating for the "Beau Geste" quality of small bands skirmishing in the limitless desert, proved invaluable to the political rise of de Gaulle, as he could point to French territory under his control actively fighting against the Axis.
   With successful raiding under their belts, increased strength, and the victorious advance of Montgomery's Eighth Army after the Second Battle of Alamein, in January 1943 Leclerc's men began the final push to the north. The Italian outposts in the Fezzan were taken one-by-one in a campaign more notable for its vast distances than its intense combat. Advancing across mostly trackless desert, the ragged troops under command of the dapper French aristocrat arrived in Tripoli shortly after the leading elements of Eighth Army. The months of remote campaigning in the scarcely relevant backwaters of Africa reached a conclusion, and Leclerc's men took their place as a brigade fighting alongside their allies.

   As planned, Leclerc offered to place his force under British command. "Well, you can never have too many soldiers," Montgomery replied, to the point as ever. Then they chatted in his caravan for forty minutes, exchanging anecdotes and laughing loudly before emerging smiling and in good humour. Montgomery and Leclerc had considerable character traits in common: austerity, seriousness and personal conviction. Girard [Leclerc's aide] remembered Montgomery as being small, with grey hair and a large nose, particularly remarking on an "air of craftiness and sympathy!" After the meeting, Montgomery's GSO 1, Colonel Charles Richardson, took Leclerc to one side and asked him if there was any kit he wanted to continue with operations. The Frenchman took out a small piece of paper from his coat pocket.
   "Deux camions," said Leclerc.
   "Oui, mon General, c'est possible," replied Richardson.
   "Cinq [auto]mitrailleuses?" Leclerc asked, looking at Richardson as if he thought the British colonel might turn down his modest request to augment Savelli's clapped Marmon-Herringtons. In fact, the British agreed to all Leclerc's wishes and more.
   Whereas Montgomery was usually scathing about the Free French or any of the various foreign units bolted onto Eighth Army, Leclerc undoubtedly left a good impression, eliciting "he was a very English Frenchman really," from Colonel Richardson, and a nasal "I think we can do something with these men," from Montgomery himself....
   This was only the beginning of Eighth Army's generosity to its new French unit. Montgomery personally ordered his quartermaster's department to send Leclerc a new British Army battledress. Leclerc spent the morning of 28th January in conference with the British High Command, discussing his equipment needs and how his force could join in British operations. In the end, Eighth Army supplied considerably more than the modest list Leclerc first gave to Richardson. Once the desert's attrition of la Colonne's vehicles had been assessed more fully, Eighth Army provided thirty Bedford lorries, and agreed to exchange la Colonne's captured Italian anti-tank guns for British. Eighth Army also added to Leclerc's numbers by bolting on a squadron of eighty British Royal Engineers and the tiny "free" Greek contingent. Colonel Gigantes' "Sacred Squadron" had served under the Eighth Army since the fall of Greece in 1941, and were now mounted on SAS-style pink Jeeps with Lewis machine guns. Lastly, Leclerc received the 159th anti-aircraft battery, Royal Artillery.
   Chad was now behind them. Though he prevailed on Colonel Bernard to garner a few souvenirs (ebony and ivory carvings as presents for his loved ones), Leclerc's main concern was the future role of his men. Girard, Guillebon and Bonnafe enjoyed a few brief days of civilization, living like flat-sharing bachelors in their sea front flat, cooking their own food and seeing the sights while Leclerc held several conferences with Montgomery. As a result, his Free French became "Force L" and would enter Tunisia on Eighth Army's left, inland, flank.

   After being partly outfitted with British weapons and equipment, Force L took part in the remainder of the campaign, notably at Ksar Rhilane, with success.
   Integrating Leclerc's Free French troops with British Eighth Army, however, proved far easier than integrating the Free French unit with the officers and troops of the Army of Africa which had remained loyal to Petain and Vichy. Leclerc himself could barely stomach the thought of joining together with those who had failed to rally to de Gaulle, even when he had no choice in the matter. As Force L became an armored division equipped by the Americans, it needed far more men than could be found among the Free French ranks. The shortage of veteran Gaullist troops became all the more acute when, in the face of political necessity imposed by the Yanks, the black troops of colonial France were removed from the new, US-style armored division. In the end, bowing to reality, Leclerc, by now promoted to general, reluctantly accepted the "impure" troops who had served under Petain. Moore devotes quite a few paragraphs to describing and discussing the general's strong opinions in that regard.
   During the course of those paragraphs—and throughout the book, notably on the pages explaining how Leclerc chose to travel to London and join de Gaulle despite his own background—the author reminds readers that Leclerc was an aristocrat with a strong-willed, authoritarian streak. Moore also, without citing a source, quotes Leclerc: "The English, you see, are people I recognise and appreciate in combat...but I take no pleasure in seeing them afterwards. I feel a closer affinity to the Germans. But don't tell anyone I said that!"
   In any event, unlike the other new French divisions, reformed from the units of the Vichy Army of Africa and earmarked for operations in Italy and the south of France, Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division was chosen for a different task. The remainder of the new French units would ultimately serve together in a homogeneous French army. Leclerc's division, on the other hand, would serve under American corps and army commanders in a different part of France with considerably more symbolism. To that end, after a year of reorganization and training in Africa, the division began arriving in England in April 1944.
   Following more training—especially tank gunnery practice—in England, the French 2nd Armored Division began coming ashore in Normandy on 1 August at Utah beach, much to the delight of local residents. After years away, Leclerc was back on the soil of France, ready to take his place in the campaign to drive out the Germans and reunite with his wife and children. As the Germans withdrew in August, the French armor played its role competently enough. It might not have been the most heavily engaged of Allied divisions, but it didn't languish in reserve. During this period of the division's existence, Moore paints a picture of Leclerc as a strict disciplinarian, relieving one senior officer, threatening to dismiss others, spending much time at the front, and constantly driving his men forward.
   While Leclerc purportedly eschewed politics and theatrical gestures, and sometimes rolled his eyes at de Gaulle's stiff-necked antics, he understood why he commanded the only French unit among the American armies, and he complained bitterly when he received orders that threatened to carry 2nd Armored away from Paris rather than toward the city. Indeed, de Gaulle had already appointed him interim Governor of Paris. Leclerc continued to complain when his division was ordered to provide battle groups to support American infantry, rather than remaining concentrated for the march to the capital.

   Reluctantly, Leclerc allocated GT Langlade to support the US 90th Infantry. Leclerc was, nevertheless, most unhappy. He wanted to keep the 2e DB as intact as possible for marching on Paris, and, since talk in Patton's HQ was that Paris should be bypassed, he was increasingly coming to the conclusion that he might have to take unilateral action. In the meantime, the 2e DB was under American command and had to be seen to obey.
   "We are visiting the headquarters of the US 90th Infantry Division," Leclerc informed Langlade. "You salute. You listen to their orders. You simply say 'understood.' You don't ask for any explanations and you leave. Then you wait for me at your Jeep."
   Langlade's orders were to act as flank guard and cut his way towards Trun. Just as Leclerc told him, he replied "understood" and then returned to his Jeep where he found Leclerc.
   "It is necessary for us to be in Paris in forty-eight hours," Leclerc told him. "I will go to General Bradley to have this decision [the diversion to support 90th Division] overturned. It is essential that you are not involved in a scrap that you will be unable to disengage from, or in which you might come off badly."

   Arranging for his American liaison officers to be taken on a tour in the opposite direction, and emphasizing to his subordinates that they must skirt American forces along the route to avoid raising suspicions, Leclerc, without informing any superior HQ, sent out a column to march directly toward Paris. Finally, as insurrection broke out in the city, after many conferences, threats, and counter-threats, Leclerc was unleashed with Eisenhower's reluctant approval. "I don't want any fighting in Paris," General Omar Bradley told the Frenchman when delivering the news from Ike. "It's the only order I have for you. There is to be no heavy fighting in Paris."
   The race to Paris, not at all bloodless, is told in rapid-fire, almost breathless prose by Moore, cranking up the drama. Weak vanguards of 2nd Armored moved as quickly as possible, suffered casualties, bypassed strongpoints, and found local inhabitants to guide them through the maze of streets in the suburbs and outskirts. The rush into the city, the Geman surrender there, and the huge victory parade ensued. For Leclerc, these moments must have been extraordinarily moving, even more so than for Frenchmen in general and those in the rest of the world who received constant radio and newspaper reports from correspondents who flocked to Paris. The reputation, the popularity, and the legend of Leclerc swelled to enormous proportions.
   For all the pages devoted to the liberation of the capital, Moore writes less than two pages regarding Leclerc's reunion with his family. Leclerc flew to a field close to his home in territory newly gained by Montgomery's 21st Army Group, and the general and his wife—in a scene worthy of the cinema—raced toward each other on bicycles, meeting for the first time since his departure in 1940. His two eldest sons insisted on joining 2nd Armored. His elderly father "...blew his top the following day when he learned...his son was going to keep the name 'Leclerc.'"
   The liberation of Paris and the general's reunion with his family—despite the brevity of the description of the latter—serve as the dramatic climax of the book. Should anyone produce a film of Leclerc's life, that might be the point at which to bring the movie to an end. In reality, of course, the war continued, dragging on through the autumn and winter and spring, with intensified fighting for 2nd Armored Division. Leclerc found himself in the middle of more military and political whirlwinds, notably the contretemps about withdrawing from newly liberated Strasbourg. Further issues arose regarding the French axis of advance and occupation zones. In a puzzling episode not thoroughly explicated, Leclerc apparently ordered the execution without trial—murder?—of French prisoners from the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. As the war ended, Leclerc remained in the service of France, travelling to Indochina to oversee the restoration of French control. From that restive colony he transferred to North Africa, where the population increasingly desired an end to French colonialism. There, as related in the rather melancholy Preface, Leclerc died, after so many battles, in a plane crash in 1947.
   In 1966, Henry Maule wrote Out of the Sand about Leclerc and his campaigns, and that book closely matches the arc of Moore's work. Maule's volume contains no footnotes or bibliography. Moore's book has both, although the author acknowledges he didn't contact the Leclerc family until after he completed the manuscript. In any event, in the intervening years many additional sources for the story of Leclerc's life and battles became available, sources that would not have been available to Maule, including those written by men who served closely with the general.
   However, for all his research and all his composition and all his thoughtful analysis, Moore never quite brings Leclerc fully to life any more than Maule did. Why? Because both authors apparently found very little in the way of primary source material that came directly from Leclerc. There seems to be little or nothing in the way of letters or journals or scribbled notes penned by the general. Moore includes many quotes from Leclerc, but they come via secondhand sources, and in some ways they pack little punch. Unlike de Gaulle, for example, who wrote extensively (and perhaps boastfully, but certainly with elegance) about his part in the war, Leclerc, dying unexpectedly at a young age, must not have found the time to begin putting his memoirs together.
   That's a shame, and puts a bit of a dent in the book, but Moore can't be accused of skimping on other sources or failing to bring together a full measure of interesting material. Free France's Lion is far more detailed, factual, and balanced than Out of the Sands. It's true that this book is not always the most polished or sophisticated, and the author makes a few errors (such as identifying General Walter Bedell Smith as "Bedell-Smith, Roosevelt's chief of staff"). On the other hand, Moore does a good job, in particular, of allowing readers to feel sand in the nostrils when Leclerc is raiding with his tiny band of Gaullists in the desert, and also allowing readers to feel the swelling sense of pride, excitement, and drama when the veterans of Chad and the Fezzan race into the boulevards of Paris in 1944.
   In the 21st Century, not many remember the man, what he stood for, and what he accomplished. Moore demonstrates conclusively that Leclerc truly served as a lion of Free France. Anyone who mocks the French for lack of fighting spirit would do well to read this book about a fine soldier and his men, and learn a little of history.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Casemate.
   Thanks to Casemate for providing this review copy.

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Reviewed 11 December 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Bill Stone
May not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Stone & Stone