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Helen Roberts Williamson
Col. Char T. Williamson
Rabat 4/77 - Xmas letter 1977

X From L.Is. Mitchell Air Base - friendship thru War II until End of War in present possession
X HM Jenkins letters
from Col. Robert Patterson War II X

SUNDAY, APRIL 23, 1978
The Atlanta Journal and CONSTITUTION
7-A

[[map labelling PORTUGAL, SPAIN, Mediterranean Sea, Kenitra, MOROCCO, Marakech, ALGERIA, MAURITANIA, MALI, 0-300 MILES]]

WHERE PATTON STRUCK VICHY FRANCE
U.S. to Quit Military Base in Morocco

KENITRA, Morocco (AP) - The stars and stripes will be coming down at the last American-run military base in Africa, ending an uninterrupted U.S. military presence that began when Gen. George Patton's GIs stormed ashore to battle the forces of Vichy France on Nov. 8, 1942.

X The U.S. naval base in Kenitra - nominally under Moroccan control since 1965 - is to be "dis-established" on Sept. 30. At a ceremony on that day, the American flag will be replaced by the green-starred red flag of Morocco.

At the height of Kenitra's importance in the 1950s, more than 2,000 American military men and their dependents lived on or near the base. It was a major arms depot, staging point and communications center in the global network of American bases built up during the Cold War of the 1950s.

After French colonial rule ended in 1956, Moroccan leftists and nationalists mounted a campaign against the base, accusing the United States of provoking a possible Russian strike against Morocco by stockpiling nuclear bombs at Kenitra.

To meet this criticism, the base was formally transferred to Morocco in 1963, but the effective control remained American and the U.S. flag continued to fly at the base headquarters building.

X Patton's troops were the first American soldiers to gain a permanent foothold in Morocco. More than 100,000 Americans landed in Morocco and Algeria - then controlled by the Vichy French government established by the Germans - in Operation Torch, an Allied invasion later regarded as one of the major turning points of World War II.

French troops under the Vichy regime's resident-general in Morocco, Gen. Charles Nogues, bitterly resisted the American landing around the huge French naval base then known as Port Lyautey, 20 miles north of X the capital, Rabat. In a three-day battle, Americans and many hundreds of French
X were killed. Patton took control of Port Lyautey on Nov. 11, 1942. X

When the French left Morocco, the Americans stayed behind at Port Lyautey - then renamed Kenitra - under a special agreement with the new Moroccan government.

The base was extended and equipped with huge ordnance storage depots and the most sophisticated modern communications equipment. U.S. naval intelligence set up an important listening post in Kenitra.

But because of increasing political pressure in Morocco, Kenitra was down-graded in 1965 to a "communications facility." In a much-publicized exchange with Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in Moscow, Morocco's King Hassan blandly asserted that there was no such thing as an American base in Morocco. Moroccan officials referred to Kenitra as a "training base" and claimed the hundreds of Americans stationed there were exclusively employed to train Moroccan troops.

The Americans made vigorous efforts to present a low profile. No one was allowed outside the gates in uniform. Dependents were encouraged to live inside the base, and the private automobiles of American military men were issued ordinary Moroccan license plates to make them inconspicuous in the streets.

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