The Churchill Series – Aug. 31, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

In November, 1942 American and British forces executed Operation Torch, a series of amphibious landings in North Africa. It was the first combined Anglo-American operation involving large numbers of ground, air and naval forces. In Martin Gilbert’s Churchill and America we read:

In the early hours of November 8 …American troops landed in French North Arica, capturing Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, and overthrowing the French Vichy regime there.

[Churchill’s son Randolph] was among the British troops who landed at Algiers. That morning he reported to his father: “All goes well between us and the Americans.”

By nightfall it was clear that the landings had succeeded.

“Let me congratulate you,” Churchill telegraphed to [Army Chief of Staff George C.] Marshall, “on all the news so far received of the great events taking place in French North Africa,” and he added with foresight: “We shall find the problems of success not less puzzling though more agreeable than those we have hitherto surmounted together.”

Speaking in London two days later, Churchill declared that Britain’s victory in the Western Desert and the American victory in North Africa constituted “a new bond between the English-speaking peoples and a new hope for the whole world.” (p. 231)