National Geographic : 1941 Jan
Martinique, Caribbean Question Mark BY EDWARD T. FOLLIARD FROM the porthole of the high-flying baby Clipper, Martinique looked very much like the other islands that fence in the Caribbean-like Trinidad, which I had left at 10 o'clock that October morning, and like St. Lucia, past which I had flown a half hour or so before. First there was the glimpse of mountains, moss-colored peaks rising from a blue-green sea; and then, as the plane drew nearer, the view of narrow valleys and fields of sugar cane, fringed here and there with clusters of coco nut palms. That much was familiar in the West Indies. But a few minutes later, the Clipper nosed down over the harbor of Fort-de-France and I was reminded of the changed and melancholy status of Martinique as a New World colony of vanquished and blockaded France. Below us, anchored fairly close together, were two gray warships, a tricolor drooping from their jack staffs. One was a fat and ungainly vessel, which, I knew, would be the much-talked-about air craft carrier Bearn. The other was a true man o'-war, the sleek cruiser Emile Bertin, one of the fastest warships afloat. A few sailors, their white caps surmounted by pompons, moved about the decks, but on the whole there was remarkably little activity on the two ships. I got the impression that their anchors had taken a firm hold, that their masters didn't expect to go anywhere for a long time; and this impression was strength ened when I took up my sojourn on the island. Planes Without a Country I heard the story of how the Bearn happened to be at Fort-de-France. She was in mid ocean, traveling from Halifax to a French port with 100 American-made warplanes, when France capitulated. Suddenly she got orders to put about and head for the West Indian colony, thus keeping the planes out of the hands of France's conqueror. Admiral Georges Robert, bearded French High Commissioner of all France's possessions in the Caribbean-Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Martinique-received me at his headquar ters in an old villa overlooking the harbor. The Biarn and Emile Bertin were at Mar tinique to protect the colony, nothing more, he said. The American-made planes, he added, had been ordered from the Bearn to remove any suspicions about their intended use. "There is no flying field in Martinique," Admiral Robert told me. "We have no plans to build a flying field. The proper sign for these planes would be 'Rest in Peace'." Would Admiral Robert permit me to see the much-discussed planes? Yes, and with pleas ure. He summoned Captain Jean Lainez. To gether we traveled over a new military road on which large, muscular island women were busily engaged as builders, wielding picks and shovels with the greatest ease. The car stopped and we walked down a steep hill. A moment later I saw the planes. They were arrayed in neat formation on a slope overlooking a lagoon. "You see," said Captain Lainez, "as a mem ber of the French Purchasing Commission, I helped buy these for France," and he mo tioned toward the strange array (p. 50, 51, 54). In the first line, confronting the lagoon, were camouflaged Brewster fighters. Once owned by the United States Navy, they had been turned back to the factories which pro duced them, and the manufacturers, in turn, had consigned them to the Belgian Govern ment. They still bore the Belgian emblem on their wings. Those in the next line, painted green, were Curtiss fighters never used except in test flights. These were intended for France. Beyond, row on row, stood camouflaged Cur tiss dive bombers, made available by the United States Army in those exciting days of the Nazi drive through the Low Countries. With the sun glinting on their war colors, the planes made a dazzling picture. They also aroused a feeling of sadness such as one might experience in seeing wild geese tethered to the ground. Had France been able to hold out two weeks longer, those planes probably would have been in battle. Another wartime sight on Martinique was the strange spectacle of French sailors busily engaged in farming, and enjoying the task. Commandant Robert Battet and his sailors of the Emile Bertin have created a model farm around the old French fort at Pointe des Negres, from which French soldiers journeyed to Mexico to help install Maximilian as Em peror during the Civil War in the United States. There I saw French sailors-men who walked with the rolling gait of the sea and who were veterans of the spectacular fight in which the Emile Bertin participated at Narvik working serenely in the fields. Radishes, to matoes, corn, carrots, cabbages, peas, turnips, and onions raised their heads in even rows. A detail of sailors was tending cattle, four cows and three calves.