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## Eighteen Months of Near-Death
In June 1941, Josephine Baker became gravely ill.
The diagnosis was peritonitis — an inflammation of the membrane lining the abdominal cavity, typically caused by infection. In 1941, before widespread availability of antibiotics, peritonitis was potentially fatal. The infection required multiple surgeries and an extended period of hospitalization; she spent approximately eighteen months in medical care.
The *Chicago Defender*, a major Black American newspaper that had followed her career since her New York years, published an obituary. It was written by Langston Hughes — the celebrated poet and writer who was one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, and who had encountered Baker in the orbit of Black American cultural life. Baker, characteristically, corrected the report publicly.
She did not stop working.
From her hospital bed, Baker continued to participate in the intelligence operations that connected her to the Free French and American networks. Resistance members and intelligence contacts met with her in her hospital room; she received them, passed information, and maintained the relationships that were the operational substance of her intelligence work. The specific location of the hospital — in Casablanca — made her room a meeting point for the networks operating in North Africa.
In November 1942, Baker watched from her hospital balcony as American troops arrived in Morocco for Operation Torch — the Allied invasion she had helped prepare. The invasion’s first phase landed Allied forces on the coasts of Morocco and Algeria on November 8, 1942, in what was the largest amphibious operation the world had seen to that point. From her balcony, she was watching the materialization of the planning she had contributed to.