The Cross of Lorraine in the South Pacific Australia and the Free French Movement 1940-1942 John Lawrey The Cross of Lorraine in the South Pacific Australia and the Free French Movement 1940-1942 John Lawrey c: 0 0 � Cl> ·� (/) � c: 0 "' => Q) > 0 u Canberra, The Journal of Pacific History © John Lawrey 1982 This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Typeset by Anita Scandia, School Services, Research Schools of Pacific Studies and Social Sciences, Australian National University. Printed by ANU Printing Service. ISBN 0 95954 77 1 1 To The Memory Of HENRI SA UTOT Compagnon de la Liberation Governor of New Caledonia 1940-1942 Contents Maps and Illustrations v1 Preface vu Introduction 1 1 New Caledon£a under the Thfrd Republic 3 2 From the French armistace to the ralliement of New Caledonia 20 3 The ralliement and its aftermath 41 4 The v£ew fr om Carlton Gardens 60 5 Vichy, the United States and the French Pacific Territories 74 6 The American involvement in the South Pacific 82 7 The d 'Argenlieu crisis 100 8 'Drive northwestward from the New Hebr£des ' 113 Appendix - No. 3 Independent Company, AIF, in New Caledonia 123 No tes 126 Index 139 Maps and illustrations Operational areas 194 2 viii New Caledonia 6 HA1A. SAdelaide Vichy French sloop Dumont d'Urville 37 B. C. Ballard, Australian Government Representative at No umea Captain H.A. Showers, RAN 43 GovernorSa utot flanked by members of the de Gaulle committee, 19 September 1940 Gaullist demonstration, 19 Septmber 1940 48 Australian Prime Min£ster R.G. Menzies at No umea, May 1941 63 H£gh Commissioner d'Argenlieu and Governor Sautot outside Noumea Cathedral, a fe w hours befo re Sautot 's arrest, 5 May 1942 104 Sautot and Georges Dubois inspecting home guard, 5 May 1942 108 Georges Dubo£s addressing gathering at War Memorial, Noumea, 18 May 1942, flanked by d 'A rg enlieu 's just-released prisoners 111 Major General A.M. Pa tch, USA, at Noumea 119 Maps drawn by Manlio Pancino, Department of Human Geography, ANU. vi Preface THIS STUDY ATTEMPTS to set the development of the Free French movement in the Pacific, and Australia's cooperation with it, in the context of the contemporary political and strategic situation. Having, as a very young man, spent more than two years at Noumea between 1940 and 1943 as assistant to the Australian government's representative there, I witnessed and on occasion participated in some of the events discussed. I have striven, however, to keep fallible memory in its proper, subordinate, place; the account now given is founded essentially on the extensive documentation now available to researchers in the Australian, British and United States archives and on such trustworthy French sources as I found accessible despite the 50-year rule still applied to French official records. The work has been written in the hospitable and stimulating environment of the Department of Pacific and Southeast Asian History in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. I could never express adequately my gratitude for the friendship, help and good counsel so generously given me, first as a Foreign Service officer on sabbatical leave and now a second time following my retirement, by all members of the academic and support staff of the Department. Among so many, I must mention particularly- Dr Deryck Scarr, who first welcomed me to the Department, and Mrs Jennifer Terrell, to whom my special thanks are due for her skilful and patient editing of the manuscript. I am grateful also to Dr Dorothy Shineberg of the Department of History, The Faculties, ANU, who was kind enough to read and comment helpfully on the draft of the first chapter. Canberra, October 1981 John Lawrey vii 145° <) 155° 160° 165° OPERATIONAL AREAS 1942 50 50 :;��"· '""'·:·· )v NEW GUINEA �''"'" �\\. 1.r ;., ,,o: '\) � •• 1 ..bel Now G�•g�� � I · \\.M al••ta Tulag1 -u'- � <::::::i I Gu•d•IC8nal � ·�·lne Bar �S.n Cristobal .'> I CJ Santa Cruz Islands ·�(;:> I � C 0 R A L S E A 81.Ul�•n<I• 0 0 Eapom1tu S•nto� .:?Q New !:;'\ 0 Hebrides � � � (;}Ef•t• Vila 0 500 km � () 20° 020° Loyalty AUSTRALIA �L1fu a lsands Mare 145° Rockhampton 155° 160° Introduction ON A HILL overlooking Noumea stands a monument in the form of a tall Cross of Lorraine. The date carved on its base - 19 September 1940 - commemorates the overthrow of the Vichy government's authority in New Caledonia and the territory's adherence to General de Gaulle's Free French movement. This ralliement to the French external resistance movement was precipitated by the action of a majority of the local French population and carried through by one colonial official from the New Hebrides, Henri Sautot, who at de Gaulle's instance placed himself at their head. But it could not have happened had not the wartime Australian government become involved, 'unwillingly at first but with increasing zest', as Paul Hasluck has said, in support of the Gaullist movement. This help was manifested by the presence in Noumea harbour during the critical days of an Australian cruiser, HMAS Adelaide. Her captain, H.A. Showers, after seeing Sautot landed, negotiated the withdrawal to Inda-China of the Vichy sloop Dumont d 'Urv£lle and of officials professing allegiance to P�tain, thus putting an end once for all to the Vichy presence in the Pacific. Finally Showers - in consultation with the Australian government's official representative at Noumea, B.C. Ballard, and the honorary British consul, W .A. Johnston - crowned his conduct of his mission by confronting the local de Gaulle committee and giving them a stiff warning against any action that might upset the peaceful solution agreed between himself and the Vichy commander. This resolution of a problem left in Australia's immediate vicinity by the fall of France marked the beginning of a phase of cooperation between Australia and Free France which set the scene for the part later played by New Caledonia in the first American counter-offensive in the Pacific Ocean war. It was, no doubt, a small affair but, if the complications caused by a 'neutral' Vichy r�gime in the French West Indies are considered, it was not unimportant, and this rare success by a Commonwealth country in dealing with Vichy made a contrast with the Dakar fiasco which was happening almost simultaneously. The bloodless outcome of the operation was the 2 THE CROSS OF LORRAINE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC more astonishing, and the greater credit to the handful of Anglo-Saxons participating in it on the ground, in the light of the scanty knowledge of the French Pacific with which it was undertaken. It is my purpose here to examine the background and consequences of the ralliement. 1 New Caledonia under the Third Republic IN 1941 THE Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett wrote, in the intro­ duction to a lively book on New Caledonia, For many years this island has been but a name to most of us. In Australia it was a name that featured once or twice a year as the goal of a tourist cruise to the South Seas; in America a name that appeared on the schedule of Pan­ American Airways' Trans-Pacific Air Service; in the rest of the world the name New Caledonia - if it suggested anything at all - vaguely recalled the site of a particularly odious convict prison. 1 Doubtless he had in mind mainly the English-speaking world, but in France too this remote Pacific colony was now little known and little regarded. New Caledonia had been annexed in 1853 by Napoleon III's government, 'which had long desired to possess localities overseas capable if need be of accommodating penal stations' .2 The first convicts did not arrive in the new colonly until 1864, when problems had been encountered in French Guiana, the site of the first attempt to apply the then widely held theory of the merits of penal colonization. The experiment as carried out in New Caledonia cannot be called a success, though hopes of success were obstinately cherished for some time in the light of inaccurate judgements of the foundations of Australia's growing prosperity. Henri Riviere, the vigorous naval officer who played a leading part in the suppression of the Melanesian uprising of 1878, had Australia very much in mind when in 1881 he drew a utopian picture of the prospects of convictism in New Caledonia if its aims were properly and whole-heartedly pursued. He admitted that things were not going well: he calculated that the number of free colonists in 1877 was still only 2,752, occupied largely in providing for the needs of a 'relatively unproductive population' of 3,032 military and civil personnel, 3,836 deportees (the Paris communards whose passage left little trace in the colony) and 6,000 convicts. Nonetheless, he thought, it was a foundation on which a prosperous colony could be developed if time-expired convicts were unequivocally restored to full civil rights and given scope to develop 'that individualism which alone is powerful and fruitful in the early stages 4 THE CROSS OF LORRAINE IN THE SOUTH PACI FIC of a society '. Free colonists should be limited to people with capital ready to make a place for themselves through their initiative and intelligence, not poor folk pursuing the mirage of distant wealth. Perhaps in such circum­ stances the free settlers could be brought to adopt vis-a-vis the freedmen 'that philosophical indifference which the British have in everyday life' and drop their attitude of smug superiority.