Exercise Verity

Not since the dread approach of the Spanish Armada had the people of Penzance seen so many massed ships. In one day, the blue waters of Mounts Bay were agitated by 60 British, French and Dutch warships; the air reverberated with 21-gun salutes. It was the start of week-long Western Union naval maneuvers known as Exercise Verity.

For weeks, British radiomen had been trying to learn how to pronounce French ship names like Georges Leygues (rhymes with bag) while their French opposites set out to grasp the British pronunciation of Agincourt. For three days the Western Union fleet in Penzance harbor exchanged signals--and Pommery champagne for Haig & Haig for Bols gin. In Penzance, huge trilingual signs said: WELCOME-BIENVENU-WELKOM.

British sailors in their stiff white duck hats, Frenchmen in their flat caps with red pom-poms and Dutchmen in their black streamered hats all but drank the local pubs dry. Field Marshal Montgomery, chief of Western Union's joint command, held a reception on board H.M.S. Implacable. The Netherlands' Prince Bernhard gave a cocktail party aboard the Tromp, which was named after one of the few admirals of any nation who soundly beat the British on the seas.

Then the entire fleet--among them the

British battleship Anson, the British carriers Implacable, Victorious and Theseus, the French carrier Arromanches, three British and five French cruisers, and 21 destroyers and destroyer escorts--headed in convoy for the Bay of Biscay. Submarines launched dummy torpedoes, French and British carriers exchanged air strikes, bombers roared overhead. Meanwhile, smaller craft of the Belgian navy joined other Western Union ships in mine-sweeping operations in Weymouth Bay.

Commander in chief of the exercise was 5-ft.-4-in. Sir Rhoderick ("Wee Mac") McGrigor, commander of Britain's Home Fleet. Said he: "The object of these maneuvers is to show that we are willing and able to work together in case of aggression . . . I can say straight away that it's been a very great success . . ."

This fall, the Western Union land forces under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny will hold war games to show how well the Western Union landlubbers can work together.

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