DESERT ROMANCE

Libya is much in the news today, indeed as much as it was in the news 69 years ago in 1942. The names of places have meaning to anyone who is familiar with the story of the North African campaigns of the Second World War; Benghazi, Tobruk, Sidi Barrani, El Alamein. Whereas we now have the siege of Misurata in the western part of the country, we than had the various sieges of Tobruk. Since 1944 Hollywood and other studios have featured the battles in and around Tobruk - The Rats of Tobruk 1944, Ice Cold In Alex 1958, Un Taxi pour Tobrouk 1960, Tobruk 1967, Quella dannata pattuglia (The battle of the damned) 1969, Overrun 1970, Raid on Rommel 1971,  Gli eroi (The heroes) 1973, Tobruk 2008 – to name but a few. 

In reviewing the events of today the 26^th May, I find a reference to the Battle of Bir Hakeim. It was remote oasis in the Libyan desert south of Tobruk, and had been the site of a Turkish fort. During the Battle of Gazala (situated further north between Derna and Tobruk) the Free French Division of General Marie Pierre Koenig defended the site from 26^th May 1942 to the 11^th June 1942, against attacking German and Italian forces directed by General Erwin Rommel.  Their resistance for 16 days, against overwhelming odds (3703 men against 45,000 Axis troops) gave the retreating British Eighth Army enough time to reorganise and halt the Axis advance at the First Battle of El Alamein.

General Rommel near Bir Kakeim

General Koenig with his superior

 officers at Bir Hakeim

                                                                                                                                                                           The Free French Forces are not always given much credit for their part in defeating the Hitler and Mussolini; however, as with all war stories there are heroic love stories, usually involving an English Nurse. In this case that lady was called Susan Travers. Her story is the stuff of movies.

Susan Travers (23 September 1909–18 December 2003) was an Englishwoman who was the only woman to serve officially with the French Foreign Legion. Travers was born in Southern England, the daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, but grew up in the south of France, where she was a semi-professional tennis player.

At the outbreak of WWII, Travers joined the French Red Cross as a nurse, but later became an ambulance driver with the French Expeditionary Force in Finland. With the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, she retreated from Denmark to Finland. She then escaped by ship to Iceland and returned from there to England where she joined General de Gaulle’s Free French Forces.

By 1941, she was the chauffeur for a medical officer of the 13^th Demi-Brigade of the French Foreign Legion, during the Syrian campaign in which Vichy French legionnaires fought Free French legionnaires. She was nicknamed "la Miss" by the legionnaires. She then travelled to North Africa via Dahomay and the Congo. During that journey, she had a brief affair with Georgian nobleman and Foreign Legion officer Dimitri Amilakhvari, who was subsequently killed. She was then assigned as driver to Colonel Marie-Pierre Koenig and also became his lover.

In late May 1942, as the Afrika Korps prepared to attack Bir Hakeim, Koenig ordered Travers and other women out of the area. The Germans attacked on 26 May. Not long after, Travers joined a convoy into the rear area and Koenig agreed to her requests to return to Bir Hakeim.   Koenig's forces were almost pounded to dust by Rommel's Afrika Korps in what became one of the greatest sieges in the history of the Western Desert campaign. With Stuka planes, Panzer tanks and heavy artillery at their disposal, the Germans expected to take the fort in 15 minutes. In what became a symbol of resistance across the world, the Free French held it for 15 days.  The Luftwaffe flew 1,400 sorties against the defences of Bir Hakeim, whilst four German/Italian divisions attacked on the ground. During the bombing, a piece of shrapnel tore a hole in Koenig's car and Travers (with the assistance of a Vietnamese driver) carried the part to a field workshop where mechanics fixed it. Refusing to leave her lover's side Susan Travers, stayed on in Bir Hakeim, the only woman among more than 3,500 men. Her fellow soldiers dug her into a coffin-sized hole in the desert floor, where she lay in temperatures of 51C for more than 15 days, listening to the cries of the dying and wounded. When all water, food and ammunition had run out, Koenig decided to lead a breakout through the minefields and three concentric rings of German tanks. (see plan below)

On 10 June,  as Keonig’s driver, Travers was ordered to take the wheel of his Ford and lead the midnight flight across the desert. The convoy of vehicles and men was only discovered when a mine exploded beneath one of their trucks. Under heavy fire, she was told by Koenig: "If we go, the rest will follow." She floored the accelerator and bumped her vehicle across the barren landscape.

"It is a delightful feeling, going as fast as you can in the dark," she said later. "My main concern was that the engine would stall."

Under heavy machine gun fire, she finally burst through enemy lines, creating a path for the rest to follow. At 10:30 on 11 June, the column entered British lines. Travers' vehicle had been hit by eleven bullets, with a shock absorber destroyed and the brakes unserviceable. Her affair with Koenig ended after this battle, when he returned to his wife. Almost 2,500 troops had escaped with her. Koenig was promoted to the rank of general by de Gaulle.  Travers stayed on with the Legion seeing action in Italy, Germany and France driving a self-propelled anti-tank gun. She was wounded after driving over a mine.

After the war, she wanted no other life and applied formally to the Legion to become an official member, omitting her gender on the application form. The man who rubber-stamped her admission had known her in Bir Hakeim. After creating her own uniform, Travers became the first and only woman ever to serve with the Legion, and was posted to Vietnam during the First Indo-China War.

It was there that she met and married a fellow legionnaire, Nicholas Schlegelmilch, who had also been at Bir Hakeim. In 2000, aged 91, assisted by Wendy Holden she wrote her autobiography, Tomorrow to Be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion, having waited for all the other principals in her life story to die before writing it.  

Susan Travers was decorated with the Légion d’honneur, Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire. She died at the age of 94. She was survived by a son, Thomas, and two granddaughters, Adela and Eleanor.

Now that's what I call a war story.  Here is a short French tribute.