Americans in New Caledonia

On 12 March 1942 seven American transports sailed into the harbour of Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia. They brought Task Force 6814, known from the island’s codename as “Poppy Force”: two National Guard infantry regiments, the 132nd from Illinois and the 182nd from Massachusetts, a field artillery regiment, a light tank battalion, anti-aircraft and coast artillery, a fighter squadron and supply units – well over ten thousand men in all. They were commanded by Major General Alexander Patch, who had flown into Nouméa a few days earlier to agree terms with the French authorities. The task force’s orders were simple: in cooperation with the forces of the United Nations, to hold New Caledonia against attack.

It is usually said that on 12 March the Americans “began landing” at Nouméa. That is so: the unloading of the convoy was only beginning that day and went on for many days, and some five thousand more troops arrived by the end of March.

An island on the route to Australia

New Caledonia, some 1,500 kilometres east of Australia, was, together with Canada, one of the world’s two largest sources of nickel and one of the main sources of chromium, metals essential for the production of armour steel. Before the war Japan had bought much of the ore, and according to the 1936 census more than 1,400 Japanese lived in the colony. In September 1940, after several months of rivalry between supporters of Vichy and of Free France, the people of Nouméa forced the colony to join Charles de Gaulle’s movement, and Henri Sautot became its governor. In May 1941 the volunteer Pacific Battalion sailed from here for the Middle East; a year later it fought at Bir Hakeim.

The colony, however, had nothing to defend itself with. Its few hundred soldiers were poorly armed, and the only reinforcements had come from Australia: a commando company that was to wage guerrilla warfare in the north of the island in the event of an invasion. The Australians, together with the Americans, were also building airfields, because the ferry route for bombers from Hawaii to Australia ran through New Caledonia by way of Fiji. After Pearl Harbor the island became one of the links in the chain of bases that were to guard the route from the United States to Australia, like Samoa, where US Marines had landed in January.

The admiral in a monk’s habit

Since November 1941 supreme authority over the French islands of the Pacific had been held by the Free French High Commissioner, Rear Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, a Carmelite friar who in 1939 had exchanged his habit for a naval uniform. He arrived with full civil and military powers and from the outset treated the Allies with suspicion. The Free French had reasons for grievance: although in November Roosevelt had extended Lend-Lease aid to them, Washington maintained relations with Vichy, and the State Department’s sharp reaction to the seizure of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in December 1941 had confirmed de Gaulle in his belief that the Americans did not respect his authority.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War de Gaulle made bases in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides and Tahiti available to the Allies, and in January 1942 the State Department accepted his terms, except for the one that the bases should be under French command. D’Argenlieu, however, knew only that the Americans were “preparing something”. On 20 January he cabled de Gaulle that the United States wanted to take everything without any compensation, that he suspected an American–Australian plot to land troops on the island without agreement, and that he would oppose this by every means. He threatened to halt ore shipments and the construction of the airfields. The matter was settled only by de Gaulle’s cable of 25 February: the general agreed to the landing, instructed that it be given the greatest possible publicity and accepted that Patch would direct overall Allied operations, although he wanted to leave the immediate defence of the colony in French hands. The American consul in Nouméa announced that his government recognised only the authority of the French National Committee in the French islands of the Pacific. After a meeting with Patch and a public handshake, d’Argenlieu reported on 12 March that, given the superiority of the American forces, only Patch could exercise command over all the troops on the island.

The convoy from New York

Task Force 6814 was formed in January 1942 at the port of New York from units that happened to be available. American National Guard divisions were then converting from four infantry regiments to three, so the War Department could draw on two “surplus” regiments without breaking up a ready division. The army’s official history called this assortment of units, which had never worked together before and did not know their commander, a “military goulash”. On 23 January convoy BT-200, the largest American troop convoy to date, sailed from New York: seven transports with more than 20,000 troops, among them some four thousand destined for Australia. Via the Panama Canal and the South Pacific, escorted by warships assigned by Admiral Ernest King, it reached Melbourne on 26 February.

There the cargo had to be completely restowed, because in New York it had been loaded in haste and with no thought of a landing. Australian dockers got the job done in eight days. In that time the Allies suffered defeat in the Dutch East Indies, and the Japanese landed at Lae and Salamaua on New Guinea. On 6 March (7 March Australian time, according to some sources) the convoy put to sea, and six days later it dropped anchor at Nouméa.

The arrival of the Americans increased the population of the main island by almost half. Their strength and route had been kept secret until the last moment, so no one had prepared quarters or warehouses for them. The rainy season was beginning, and on Nouméa’s crowded wharves mountains of crates piled up, including dismantled aircraft, which lorries carried along the only road north to the unfinished airfields. The soldiers called it the “little Burma Road”. As early as 14 March a detachment of just under five hundred men was sent from Nouméa further north to the island of Efate in the New Hebrides, where, together with a few dozen Australians, it formed the most advanced Allied outpost in the South Pacific.

The quarrel over the island

The handshake between Patch and d’Argenlieu did not end the tensions. The High Commissioner was at odds not only with the Americans but also with Governor Sautot, popular on the island as the hero of its rallying to Free France, who was keen to cooperate with the Allies. On 5 May 1942, on de Gaulle’s instructions, d’Argenlieu had Sautot shipped off to New Zealand aboard the aviso Chevreuil and four local leaders arrested. A general strike broke out in Nouméa, and settlers poured into the town from the interior. D’Argenlieu asked Patch for help in restoring order, but the American refused to use troops against the population and tried to remain neutral, which the Free French regarded as interference in their affairs. The crisis died down after a few days, but it weighed on Franco-American relations until the end of the war. The Vichy government, for its part, sentenced Sautot to death in absentia for “handing French territory over to a foreign power”.

Its place in the war

Fears of an attack on New Caledonia were not groundless. Japanese plans agreed in March and April 1942 provided, after the capture of Port Moresby, for a strike against New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa in order to cut Australia off from the United States. The defeat at Midway in June led to their abandonment. In April a third infantry regiment, the 164th from North Dakota, reached Patch, and at the end of May a new division was formed from the task force’s units. Since it did not yet have a number, Patch named it the Americal, from the words “American” and “New Caledonia”; it was the only American division of the war formed outside the United States. After the war it was officially given a number as the 23rd Infantry Division.

In July the commander of the South Pacific Area, Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, moved to Nouméa, and the island became the main supply and air base for the Guadalcanal campaign, which began on 7 August 1942. In October the 164th Infantry Regiment from New Caledonia became the first army unit to come to the aid of the Marines on Guadalcanal, and from then on Admiral William Halsey had his headquarters at Nouméa. Patch commanded on Guadalcanal in the final phase of the fighting, and in 1944 he led the Seventh Army in the landings in Provence. The American presence, which at its peak numbered, by various estimates, several tens of thousands of troops – roughly as many as the island’s inhabitants – changed New Caledonia for ever, and the quarrel between Patch and d’Argenlieu became a symbol of the difficult alliance between the Americans and the Free French.