GENERAL WALTER WARLIMONT had spent a long, two-day railway journey from the Ukraine to East Prussia on 31 October– 1 November polishing up an OKW appreciation entitled ‘Survey of the Overall Situation in Autumn 1942’. He and his planning team had concluded that the Wehrmacht and their allies had shot their bolt in the Soviet Union. They had run out of steam in the Caucasus, did not have their hands on the Baku oilfields, and still had not been able to take Stalingrad. Losses had once again been horrendous.
The survey also contained a detailed examination of the most likely area for attack for the Western Allies, which had to be imminent. Warlimont was convinced – and had been for some time – that French North Africa was as good a jumping-off point as any for further attacks against Fortress Europe. A mass of intelligence had been assembled: from Spain, from Switzerland, from Lisbon, from Budapest, all pointing to an imminent second front and, collectively, a growing weight of it pointing towards north-west Africa. There was, however, no hard evidence to support this and so, despite strategic and operational logic, it was rather swept to one side. In fact, for all the time and effort that had been put into it, Warlimont’s appreciation never got beyond Jodl and Keitel; Hitler certainly did not see it.
Just a few days later, Warlimont was out of a job. At HQ Area 2 at Rastenburg, his staff had received Rommel’s first signal of 2 November warning that he must fall back or face annihilation. They were not told, however, that Hitler had replied telling Rommel to stand fast. Consequently, when, a day later, Rommel signalled that he had now given the retreat order, Warlimont’s duty officer thought this was in accordance with the message of 2 November; quite understandably, he had no idea Rommel had gone against the direct wishes of the Führer. When this was discovered, the duty officer was summarily sacked by Hitler, reduced to the ranks and posted to a detention battalion, which was pretty much a death sentence.
Warlimont had tried to stick up for the unfortunate man and had been fired too. Although Warlimont had been Jodl’s principal staff officer for three years, all Jodl said was, ‘For us, the Führer’s will is the supreme law of the land.’1 Rudolf Schmundt, however, Hitler’s military advisor, immediately managed to convince the Führer of the injustice of both dismissals. The duty officer’s punishment was reduced and Warlimont was begged to return. Still incensed, he replied that he needed to think it over; he had been looking for a way out and a posting elsewhere for a long time.
With Warlimont dismissed and his appreciation left unread, it was left to Hitler alone, with his lackeys Keitel and Jodl, to assess the strategic situation. Italy’s Secret Service, the Servizio Informazioni Militari (SIM), now warned of an invasion of northwest Africa, but this was dismissed. Hitler, once again, was viewing possible Allied intentions through his own narrow world-view and preconceived attitudes to strategy; he was now most worried about Norway and north-west Europe and had, earlier in the year, ordered the construction of the Atlantic Wall – defences that would run all the way from the Arctic Circle in northern Norway down to the Spanish border. Even if the Allies were to land somewhere within the Mediterranean, he thought Libya or even Sicily more likely. The build-up of shipping was known about and on 6 November Göring, bypassing the OKW entirely, told Kesselring in Rome of Hitler’s view on the matter. Kesselring protested that north-west Africa should not be written off; he insisted that the Allied convoys should be attacked and destroyed by continuous action by day and by night. Of course, there were neither the air nor the naval forces for such attacks; the Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe were concentrated on trying to help Rommel’s retreat and, frankly, not doing very well.
On 7 November, Hitler then personally intervened, demanding that defences in Tripoli and Benghazi should be urgently shored up and ordering further reinforcements to Crete, an island so far out of the Allies’ reach as to not even be worth considering. The ineptness of the Führer’s strategic appreciation beggars belief.
The three task forces made their landings pretty much on schedule in the early hours of Sunday, 8 November 1942, along the three invasion fronts in north-west Africa. The first of the Central Task Force to land at Arzew were the Rangers, spearheading the attack. Capturing this port swiftly was considered essential, as landing heavy equipment would be impossible without it. Overlooking the port were two gun batteries and it was clear that destroying them was the first priority. The first, at Fort du Nord, was on top of a hill dominating the harbour, while the second, Fort de la Pointe, was at the foot of the hill at the north-east corner of the port.
Colonel William Darby had decided to split his force into two. Major Herman Dammer would take two companies and capture both the harbour and Fort de la Pointe, while the rest, including Darby himself and Sergeant Bing Evans, would land on a small beach around the headland and then climb the hill to take Fort du Nord from the rear.
Dammer’s force was in the harbour, unchallenged, by 1.30 a.m. and, clambering up on to the quay, swept past one sentry then opened fire on another. These were the first shots fired. Sirens then began wailing, but the Rangers were now already at the gates of the Fort de la Pointe and successfully charged the gun positions. Inside the fort, the French had been caught napping and forty-two men were swiftly captured, including the commandant, who had been in bed with his mistress.
Meanwhile, Darby and the rest of the Rangers had set off in just two LCAs. Bing Evans had made sure he had studied and memorized sand-table models and aerial photographs and now, as they sped towards the shore, felt a mounting sense of exhilaration. ‘This is what we had trained for,’ he said, ‘and I felt anxious to get on with it.’2 Their beach marker was a buoy, but Evans reckoned they had missed it and told Darby. And so they had but, swiftly turning back, they soon found it. ‘That,’ said Evans, ‘was the only hitch we had.’3
By 1.30 a.m. they were ashore and an hour and a half later reached the fort, where they quietly set up some heavy mortars and began cutting the wire around it. When the defenders in the fort opened fire, the Rangers fired their mortars, rushed the battery and were in among the French before they knew what had hit them. After preparing the guns for demolition, they sent up a green flare, which informed those watching out at sea, including Major-General Terry Allen, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, that the battery and fort had been secured. Soon after, the two Ranger forces made contact. The port and both forts had fallen.
Commanding all US ground forces for the Western Task Force was Major-General George S. Patton. He had been aboard the USS Augusta with the Western Task Force, and at 2 a.m. on the morning of the 8th had been up, dressed and looking immaculate, as was his way, and out on deck. Patton had waited all his life for a moment such as this. It was, he believed, his destiny to achieve military greatness, and this war was going to help him reach it. Already one of America’s best-known generals, his first taste of fame had come in 1916 when he led a raid that killed three of Pancho Villa’s Mexican bandits. A year later he had been sent to France, where he had become the first officer assigned to the US Tank Corps. Badly wounded in the groin, he had still been recovering when the armistice was signed.
He had remained in the US Army – it was his life, not just a career – and spent the 1920s and 1930s thinking deeply about the future of warfare. Like General Tuker, he had also written a number of far-reaching papers, including a prophetic piece on the possibility of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. While the US Army had been stagnating – especially America’s armoured capability – Patton had been one man desperately trying to buck the trend. For him, these had been long, frustrating years.
Patton was a man of many contrasts and contradictions. Tall, with fierce, pale eyes, he none the less had a high-pitched, rather squeaky voice at odds with his bullish demeanour. A noted horseman and champion swordsman, he had come fifth in the pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. He was also something of a poet, was utterly devoted to his wife and family, and to God, and yet was also, despite his obvious charisma, prone to bouts of self-doubt. As a leader of men, he was tough, uncompromising, but utterly inspiring.
Now, as he stood and watched the lights of Casablanca and Fedala, he sensed a great crusade was beginning. ‘The eyes of the world are watching us,’ he’d written to his troops from Augusta, ‘the heart of America beats for us; God is with us.4 On our victory depends the freedom or slavery of the human race. We shall surely win.’ He urged them to remember their training, to attack with ‘speed and vigor’ and told them retreat was unthinkable. ‘Americans,’ he added, ‘do not surrender.’
Back at the Rock, Eisenhower, Clark and Cunningham were waiting anxiously for news. At 2.38 a.m. a signal arrived saying the Eastern Task Force assault had been successful and that landings had been made on three beaches at Algiers. Around half an hour later, it was announced that Sidi Ferruch had been captured too, another objective for the Eastern Task Force.
However, there had been more resistance there than at Arzew. In fact, the entire TORCH landings were a strange combination of bitter but brief resistance in certain places, utter fiasco in others, and of almost no opposition at all elsewhere. In Algiers itself, for example, the fighting had been really quite heavy, as Sergeant Ralph Schaps soon discovered. He had been aboard the British destroyer HMS Broke for the assault along with the rest of the 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry. Shore batteries had opened fire as they approached, and another ship, HMS Malcolm, had been badly damaged. Then the Broke had rammed the harbour boom, although Schaps, crammed on board with the other assault troops, had barely noticed it. However, the ship was taking hits. ‘We were getting a little uneasy,’ recalled Schaps.5 ‘In fact, we were scared shitless.’ Soon after, however, they managed to berth and hurriedly disembarked. Daylight was spreading from the east and small-arms fire was coming in towards them.
They moved on to the Mole Louis Billiard, where there were large piles of wood and baled straw, and, rather than try to go on the offensive, immediately prepared for defence instead in the hope that those landing to the west of the city would soon come to their rescue. However, those troops had landed further west than intended and so now had a greater distance to travel into Algiers. Meanwhile, the unfortunately named HMS Broke was hit several times more and sounded the recall siren. Schaps and his fellows, however, had no intention of reboarding under the current fire. French tanks appeared and, although the Americans had some bazookas, the range was too great for them to be much use. Casualties were mounting; Schaps lost one of his buddies, a medic named PFC Mel Lien, who was killed trying to tend a wounded officer.
In the circumstances, the battalion CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Swenson, who had not been privy to Patton’s assertion about never surrendering, decided it was best to do just that and raise the white flag. ‘The French treated us real good,’ wrote Schaps.6 ‘We stacked arms in a park and in a couple of hours we were drinking wine in a bistro.’
Despite this rather surreal scenario, their captivity – for want of a better word – did not last long. Général Mast had managed to mount a successful coup in the city, rounding up key Vichy officials, including, most importantly, Général Alphonse Juin, the Vichy C-in-C in all of North Africa.
Back at the Rock, more signals were arriving. By 6 a.m., the Western Task Force under Patton was reported to be landing successfully and in calm waters, while by 7.45 a.m., General ‘Doc’ Ryder, commander of the 34th Red Bulls, signalled that the all-important Maison Blanche airfield near Algiers had been captured.
Elsewhere, Oran harbour itself was the scene of brief but bloody and bitter resistance. There, Mast’s resistance operation largely failed, while the harbour had been far bigger and better protected than that at Arzew. Not only was it bristling with guns, but the Royal Navy ensigns fluttering from the two assault ships, Walney and Hartland, had only stirred bitter memories of the destruction of the French Navy at the hands of the British back in July 1940. Although both ships had crashed through the boom, they had been met by heavy fire at almost point-blank range. In the carnage that followed, 364 American and nearly 200 British troops were killed or wounded.
Further to the west of Oran, however, the Bowles twins landed without trouble with the 2nd Battalion, 18th RCT, as part of the second wave, and followed behind the 1st Battalion towards Saint-Cloud, a village 7 miles inland. Whatever nerves they may have felt soon melted away; they had simply stepped from their landing craft on to the beach and kept going. Not a single bullet had whizzed past their ears or one shell exploded.
One of the day’s fiascos was with the airborne operation, which had been due to capture La Senia airfield south of Oran. Both the British and US airborne arms were still in their infancy, but both countries had seen what the Germans had achieved in May 1940 and were rather dazzled by this exciting new form of warfare. That large numbers of transports had been destroyed in the process and that for every success there had been a high-casualty failure had been rather glossed over. Airborne troops were all volunteers, young, keen, highly motivated and definitely among the best-trained in both armies. Unfortunately, no concurrent plan had really been thought through as to how they would be transported. The result was hastily adapted civilian aircraft such as the DC-3, now renamed C-47 or ‘Dakota’ by the British, which were flown and navigated by the bottom tier of aircrew emerging from the flying schools. In other words, the best-trained troops were being delivered to the battle zone by the least-trained and skilled aircrew.
The dangers of this approach were demonstrated with alarming clarity on 8 November. Of the thirty-nine aircraft that had set out from southern England, seven never reached Algeria at all; of these, one landed in Gibraltar, two in French Morocco and four in Spanish Morocco. Twelve dropped their men at least a day’s march away, while sixteen landed in the Sebkra Salt Lake, some way to the south-west of Oran. A further four aircraft dropped their men in Algeria, but too far away to be any use at all; they were promptly taken prisoner.
None the less, as Clark and Eisenhower at Gibraltar were consoling themselves, they had prepared for greater resistance and, all things considered, the landings had got off to a pretty good start. What’s more, by evening Algiers was in Allied hands – and Joe Schaps and the men of the 3/135th Infantry released once more – so Eisenhower told Clark he should fly over the following day and establish Allied headquarters in the city right away. First, however, they had another tête-à-tête with Giraud, and this time he was starting to co-operate. Not only did he agree to become C-in-C of all French forces in North Africa, he also offered to fly over right away and play his part in stopping any further resistance. Suddenly, now that the landings were proving successful, Giraud was becoming a little more helpful.
‘Darling B,’ Patton wrote to his wife, Beatrice, later that morning.7 ‘We have had a great day so far. We have been in a naval battle since 0800 and it is still going on.’ Patton had feared there would be no fighting at all, but he need not have worried. In Morocco, French guns had opened fire from Safi at 4.55 a.m., while there was also fighting at Mehida. The third landing, at Fedala, had gone a little awry, with many of the LCAs landing as much as 6 miles from where they should have been. Meanwhile, offshore from Casablanca, the USS Massachusetts had been shelling the French battlecruiser Jean Bart. Although immobilized since 1940, there was not much wrong with her 15-inch guns and so the US Navy was keen to make sure they were not brought to bear. Then, at around 7.15 a.m., seven French destroyers had emerged but, seeing the invasion fleet out to sea, quickly turned around and hurried back to port for reinforcements. Half an hour later, a cruiser and two larger destroyers appeared and so had begun the naval battle Patton had written to his wife about.
In fact, on board Augusta, General Patton had just placed his kit in the landing boat – including his brace of pearl-handled revolvers, which was swinging from its davits – when the ship suddenly surged forward and opened fire. The blast rocked the landing craft and the General’s landing party lost all their kit except the precious six-shooters – a huge relief to all concerned; if his revolvers had gone overboard there would have been hell to pay. Shortly after, an enemy shell landed close to Augusta and Patton, still on board, was drenched from the spray. The naval exchange continued until around 11 a.m., when the French ships moved back into Casablanca harbour. Coastal batteries had also been firing, but a bridgehead had, by now, been established and by the afternoon the battle was all but over. General Patton finally stepped ashore around 1.20 p.m., his pistols now safely strapped to his waist.
By mid-afternoon, the French coastal guns had been silenced all along the invasion front and the first two US squadrons of Spitfires from Gibraltar had landed at La Senia and Tafraoui airfields. Yet the battle was still not entirely over, even despite the fall of Algiers. South-west of Arzew, the 18th RCT were held up at Saint-Cloud. Tom Bowles spent the night in a cemetery; he’d also now seen his first dead American soldier. ‘I saw him lying there,’ he said, ‘and that made a big impression on me.8 I thought, this is for real now.’ The following morning, all three battalions of the 18th RCT launched an attack, but the defenders were proving dogged. Unable to break through, it was not until the afternoon of the 9th that the 2nd and 3rd Battalions were able to bypass the town and advance on towards Oran.
Meanwhile, the political situation was rapidly evolving. The previous evening, word came from Robert Murphy that Amiral Darlan wanted to negotiate. He also wanted to meet Eisenhower face to face. ‘Kiss Darlan’s stern if you have to,’ Admiral Cunningham advised Ike, ‘but get the French Navy.’9
Clark and Giraud, heavily escorted by Spitfires, flew low – and separately – over the Mediterranean to Algeria. Clark’s departure, however, was delayed by bad weather and so he didn’t get going until nearly noon. Travelling in a B-17 called Red Gremlin at just 500 feet over the sea, he decided to open the panel above the radio area and, in goggles and helmet, stuck his head out and watched the approach to Africa. They landed at 5 p.m., just as a dozen German Ju88s flew over at around 6,000 feet. Anti-aircraft guns, already in place, started pumping shells into the sky as the bombers dived on the harbour. As Clark clambered out of his plane, he could hear the dull crump of bombs exploding. Then the Spitfires were upon them. ‘Everywhere around us,’ noted Clark, ‘Americans and British ran out onto the field, yelling and cheering the Spits on.’10 He watched one of the Junkers belch black smoke and plunge down, then ran into the aerodrome building just as a stick of three bombs landed within a few hundred yards of Red Gremlin.
Clark now hurried into the city and made for the St George Hotel, conscious of a very palpable sense of uncertainty and turmoil in the air. At the hotel, he met a grim-faced General Doc Ryder, who said, ‘I’m glad you’re here.11 I’ve stalled them off about as long as I can.’ Robert Murphy appeared, urging a greater demonstration of force throughout the city. He wanted tanks, but these had yet to arrive; air power would have to suffice. Clark also quickly learned that neither Darlan nor Juin, nor a number of other French commanders, were willing to see Giraud; his standing was falling rapidly. Rather, it was crystal clear to Clark that it was Amiral Darlan who was the pre-eminent Frenchman in Vichy North Africa.
Formal talks, however, did not begin until the following morning, 10 November. The meeting was long and protracted. Clark thought Darlan seemed nervous and uncertain, anxious about which peg he should hang his coat on. He was also worried about taking responsibility for the inevitable German occupation of the rest of France. Eventually, however, late in the morning, he agreed to issue an order for all French troops in North Africa to observe an immediate ceasefire.
Soon after came word from Vichy that Darlan had been sacked as C-in-C in North Africa, which then prompted an immediate change of heart from the Amiral on his earlier pledge. ‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ Clark told him firmly, and placed him under immediate house arrest.12 Uneasy peace now reigned in Algeria, but fighting was continuing in French Morocco, where Général Charles Noguès had been named by Pétain as Darlan’s successor. ‘The only tough nut left is in your hands,’ Eisenhower signalled to Patton on the 10th.13 ‘Crack it open quickly and ask for what you want.’
Now armed with Eisenhower’s signal, Patton decided it was time to do just that. Sherman tanks from Safi approached the southern outskirts of Casablanca, while his infantry were to the north. Offshore, US warships and aircraft carriers waited. He was prepared to reduce the city to rubble early the following morning. ‘God favors the bold,’ he scribbled in his diary that evening, ‘victory is to the audacious.’14
Patton was in his hotel in Fedala when, at around 4.20 the following morning, 11 November, news arrived that the airfield at Port Lyautey had finally fallen and that a dispatch had arrived from Général Noguès announcing that a general ceasefire had been ordered. Patton’s staff wanted him to call off his planned attack on Casablanca, but he was having none of it – not until the French Navy made it clear they would honour the ceasefire too.
The French took it to the wire. US Navy dive-bombers had already taken off and the American warships’ guns were primed and ready, when, at 6.40 a.m., the French Navy finally surrendered. Soon after, US troops marched into Casablanca. ‘A nice birthday present,’ noted Patton. He was fifty-seven.
With that, the invasion was over. French North Africa was now in Allied hands once more. The fighting had been patchy and, at times, a little sticky, but as a feat of logistics and planning, it proved the Allies were already in a league of their own. It had been achieved in an incredibly short time and over truly astonishing distances. Nothing like it had been attempted by any force ever before, and yet in little over three months an embryonic plan had evolved into an operation involving nearly 700 ships, 70,000 troops and over 1,000 aircraft. Unquestionably, many hard lessons had been learned, but it was a monumental achievement by new coalition partners working together in a way that two independent nations had never attempted before. The level of co-operation and the sheer scale of troops, but particularly materiel, involved was a warning to the Axis of what was to come.