The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2014 47 free world’s champion bombed a friend and ally. In the end, with perseverance and wise counsel, Yost won the support of Gen. Twining. His suc- cess was an example, as he later recounted, of how facts could persuade an intelligent person despite his core beliefs. On a crisp morning just three days before Christmas 1959, Amb. Yost walked up to the stairs of Air Force One at Nouasseur Air Force Base in Casablanca. He and the king had come to greet President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had commanded “Operation Torch” 17 years earlier and was now returning to sign a joint communiqué ending the crisis. U.S. military forces would be withdrawn over the next four years. As the New York Times reported it, the accord “concluded by the United States Ambassador, Charles Woodruff Yost, and King Mohammed, was something of a triumph for royal diplo- macy.” Yost had weathered the greatest crisis that he might have expected to face as ambassador to Morocco. But the respite would not last long. A Tragedy and New Challenges The night of Feb. 29, 1960, the second day of the holy month of Ramadan, was clear in the seaside town of Agadir, 342 miles south of the capital. But as families who had broken their fast at sunset greeted friends in the streets, they began noticing the animals’ odd behavior: a cat who yowled so loudly she drowned out a radio; donkeys whose withers started shivering nonstop; and the echo of countless dogs howling across the starlit night. At 11:40 p.m. the town suffered a magnitude 5.7 earthquake. The ground shook for just 15 seconds, followed by a massive tidal wave, but that was all it took for fire and brim- stone to consume the town. Due to poor design and use of shoddy materials, many areas were completely obliterated. Some 15,000 people died, and twice that many were injured. A phone call alerted Amb. Yost to the disas- ter, and he immediately launched a massive American relief effort. The official residence became a hub for U.S. and other assistance, and soon filled up with any container that could hold clothes, blankets, canned goods, bandages, water jugs or cooking utensils. Even chickens were deposited on the doorstep. Less than 12 hours after the quake, a Navy transport aircraft, with Yost aboard, led a con- voy of UF-1 Albatrosses (amphibious search- and-rescue flying boats) to the site. Even from a distance they could see the havoc wreaked on the seaside community, the enormous fissures in the earth into which whole city blocks, entire families, and herds of camels and donkeys had simply vanished. An outing in Middle Atlas, Morocco, in 1959. From left to right: Cas Yost, Irena Yost, Charles Yost, Nick Yost and Felicity Yost, with the family dog, Geronimo. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, at right, greets Irena Yost at Charles Yost’s swearing-in as U.S. Ambassador to Morocco on July 24, 1958 at the State Department. Courtesy of Felicity O. Yost Meyle