Right, I said I was going to write
this DAYS ago. It's a little known story about military co-operation
between the U.K and France. Back in the day, there was this bloody
enormous U.S.S.R armed force ready to come steamrolling through western
Europe from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary... The western powers
weren't entirely happy about that. They'd just had a nasty little spat
with the Nazis, and another dictatorship invading sovereign European
territories just wasn't on. The idea that the western powers should form
a super happy fun club with which to buck a potential Soviet attack was
hit upon- everyone foots the bill, an armed force to which all the
members would contribute. This was a new era of co-operation, and though
it came out of something negative, it's quite nice there was a group of
foreigners working together. Well. Apart from the French of course.
They realised they were not super, happy or fun, and as such started to
get the hump with everyone else. When everyone else in NATO was trying
to pull together, the French insisted on calling it Organisation du
traité de l'Atlantique Nord, which spells OTAN, which is, if you haven't
spotted it, the palindrome of NATO. I'm not sure that the French could
come up with a better demonstration that they are, quite literally,
backward people.
In 1958 France's premier was a bloke called Charles de Gaulle, perhaps the most self-interested ungrateful bastard to have an airport named after him. I cannot fully explain what was wrong with him without going into pages of detail, so let's work with the idea he was a tosspot. So. De Gaulle was galled by how involved the Americans were with NATO. How dare they commit loads of men and billions of dollars to defending people who most likely don't speak their language on a continent thousands of miles away. How DARE they?!? I suspect that the real issue de Gaulle may have had is that the Americans speak the same language as the British. De Gaulle never forgave the other Allies for taking the credit for liberating France. The 83,115 British and Canadian troops and the 73,000 U.S troops that landed on D-Day were just faffing about, it was clearly the mammoth 177 French soldiers that turned the tide of the battle.
Another thing of note in World War 2 is that after France surrendered to the Nazis, not all of France was occupied. The Nazis said “Basically, you can run half the country without involvement from us, as long as you round up Jews and send them to death camps.” Some French asked “Is it alright if we fight for the Nazis too? It's just that they're fighting the English, and we hate those beef eating victory monkeys.” “Oh, go on then,” said the Nazis, “as long as your capital city is Vichy.” As you may know, the war didn't end that well for the Vichy French, so when France became France again, she reluctantly put Marshal Pétain on trial. He was the leader who had collaborated with the Nazis. The judges at this trial said something along the lines of “Ah, let him off, we know it's an open and shut case but he didn't REALLY mean it”, yet the jury decided (by only one vote!) to put him to death. De Gaulle decided that this was a little bit too much- after all, Pétain had ensured the deaths of thousands of French Jews, it's not like he did anything really nasty. Pétain's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. At the time of sentence, he was 89.
Sorry, got sidetracked there. What I was meaning to say is that de Gaulle got all nostalgic for the days when France could bend over backwards for dictatorships, and if the USSR invaded, then the other members of NATO might frown a bit on a fellow member trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Soviets or surrender to them. France dropped out of NATO, but sadly the Russians never invaded so France didn't get the chance to surrender to them. The Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, but all the NATO countries thought that they were all mates now and it would be a shame to break up the party, so NATO carried on. In 2009, the French asked “Are you sure the USSR has been defeated? Really? No?” After being told that they most certainly had, the French finally put their head above the parapet and rejoined NATO, on the grounds that they could be snotty about it and not really get into the spirit of things.
So here's the little known story about the French working with the U.K. The British have an agreement with the Americans that their submarines shouldn't really be in the same place at the same time, because things might get a bit crashy. They have a system called deconfliction, which is a tad like air traffic control- the subs know roughly where each other are (if not exactly) so that they can't be dangerously close to each other. I think this approach is prudent, partially because the damage caused to submarines from being crashy doesn't just buff out like when you ding your Nissan Micra. The reason I most think it's a sensible idea, though, is because it's a teeny bit dangerous to have submarines carrying nuclear warheads not knowing where other submarines carrying nuclear warheads are.
The French disagreed. My command of French is not great, but I shall attempt to translate what I overheard from a drunk French admiral in a London whorehouse:
“I'm sure that we'll be able to see any other submarines coming even though we don't have any windows and our periscope doesn't work underwater, and that a submarine's main point is to be as undetectable as possible simply is not relevant. There is literally no way we can possibly crash into another submarine.”
Sure enough, in the same year that France rejoined NATO, she crashed one of her submarines into HMS Vanguard, and both were carrying nuclear warheads. This could have been a catastrophic encounter- both subs might have sunk and the missile casings could have broken and caused the irradiation of the Atlantic. The French submarine shrugged its shoulders, brushed herself down and said “Well, you should have been lookeeng where you were go-eeng, English.” The British sub had to put back into her home port to try and rid her of the garlicy smell she had inexplicably picked up. Hmm. If it's one thing I've learned from all of this, it would be that the French think that risking poisoning a great big chunk of the food chain is an acceptable price for not having to work with the Royal Navy. Still, they DID make Asterix in Britain, and that's a great film.
Today's Tune
In 1958 France's premier was a bloke called Charles de Gaulle, perhaps the most self-interested ungrateful bastard to have an airport named after him. I cannot fully explain what was wrong with him without going into pages of detail, so let's work with the idea he was a tosspot. So. De Gaulle was galled by how involved the Americans were with NATO. How dare they commit loads of men and billions of dollars to defending people who most likely don't speak their language on a continent thousands of miles away. How DARE they?!? I suspect that the real issue de Gaulle may have had is that the Americans speak the same language as the British. De Gaulle never forgave the other Allies for taking the credit for liberating France. The 83,115 British and Canadian troops and the 73,000 U.S troops that landed on D-Day were just faffing about, it was clearly the mammoth 177 French soldiers that turned the tide of the battle.
Another thing of note in World War 2 is that after France surrendered to the Nazis, not all of France was occupied. The Nazis said “Basically, you can run half the country without involvement from us, as long as you round up Jews and send them to death camps.” Some French asked “Is it alright if we fight for the Nazis too? It's just that they're fighting the English, and we hate those beef eating victory monkeys.” “Oh, go on then,” said the Nazis, “as long as your capital city is Vichy.” As you may know, the war didn't end that well for the Vichy French, so when France became France again, she reluctantly put Marshal Pétain on trial. He was the leader who had collaborated with the Nazis. The judges at this trial said something along the lines of “Ah, let him off, we know it's an open and shut case but he didn't REALLY mean it”, yet the jury decided (by only one vote!) to put him to death. De Gaulle decided that this was a little bit too much- after all, Pétain had ensured the deaths of thousands of French Jews, it's not like he did anything really nasty. Pétain's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. At the time of sentence, he was 89.
Sorry, got sidetracked there. What I was meaning to say is that de Gaulle got all nostalgic for the days when France could bend over backwards for dictatorships, and if the USSR invaded, then the other members of NATO might frown a bit on a fellow member trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Soviets or surrender to them. France dropped out of NATO, but sadly the Russians never invaded so France didn't get the chance to surrender to them. The Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, but all the NATO countries thought that they were all mates now and it would be a shame to break up the party, so NATO carried on. In 2009, the French asked “Are you sure the USSR has been defeated? Really? No?” After being told that they most certainly had, the French finally put their head above the parapet and rejoined NATO, on the grounds that they could be snotty about it and not really get into the spirit of things.
So here's the little known story about the French working with the U.K. The British have an agreement with the Americans that their submarines shouldn't really be in the same place at the same time, because things might get a bit crashy. They have a system called deconfliction, which is a tad like air traffic control- the subs know roughly where each other are (if not exactly) so that they can't be dangerously close to each other. I think this approach is prudent, partially because the damage caused to submarines from being crashy doesn't just buff out like when you ding your Nissan Micra. The reason I most think it's a sensible idea, though, is because it's a teeny bit dangerous to have submarines carrying nuclear warheads not knowing where other submarines carrying nuclear warheads are.
The French disagreed. My command of French is not great, but I shall attempt to translate what I overheard from a drunk French admiral in a London whorehouse:
“I'm sure that we'll be able to see any other submarines coming even though we don't have any windows and our periscope doesn't work underwater, and that a submarine's main point is to be as undetectable as possible simply is not relevant. There is literally no way we can possibly crash into another submarine.”
Sure enough, in the same year that France rejoined NATO, she crashed one of her submarines into HMS Vanguard, and both were carrying nuclear warheads. This could have been a catastrophic encounter- both subs might have sunk and the missile casings could have broken and caused the irradiation of the Atlantic. The French submarine shrugged its shoulders, brushed herself down and said “Well, you should have been lookeeng where you were go-eeng, English.” The British sub had to put back into her home port to try and rid her of the garlicy smell she had inexplicably picked up. Hmm. If it's one thing I've learned from all of this, it would be that the French think that risking poisoning a great big chunk of the food chain is an acceptable price for not having to work with the Royal Navy. Still, they DID make Asterix in Britain, and that's a great film.
Today's Tune
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