by Ray Lambert
With a population of about two hundred thousand, the city was defended by nearly seventeen thousand Vichy French and colonial troops; besides coastal defenses, there were destroyers in its harbor and an estimated one hundred aircraft at the nearby airfields. There was hope that the city and nearby troops would surrender—the Allies had been negotiating with officials there, who were none too keen about their German overlords—but with no agreement as we approached, we couldn’t count on hope.
The 16th Infantry Regiment and its roughly 3,300 men formed the core of Regimental Combat Team 16, designated to land near Azrou on a peninsula some twenty miles by air east of Oran. Our battalions were on two ships, the Bedford and the Warwick Castle; my brother and his unit happened to be on the latter. Our escorts included one battleship, three aircraft carriers, three cruisers, and a number of destroyers, all of which would provide us with firepower when we landed. The first wave was set to hit the beach—“H-Hour”—at 0100—1 A.M.—on November 8, or as we wrote in the military, 8 November 1942.
It Starts
Some units, including those from the 16th, did get off on time. Others were hampered by the usual confusion and disorder that arrive to baffle nearly every military operation a few minutes before they step off. The waves were stronger than anticipated; there were sandbars where none were expected; the men steering the landing craft got confused about where they were supposed to go.
We went ahead anyway.
The landings took place on both sides of Oran; the idea was to form a noose around the city, eliminating forces on all sides before tightening the rope and entering. My battalion was tasked to land near Azrou, on the eastern side of Oran. We were held in reserve, reinforcements who would be used after the beaches were cleared, or in the event plans had to be changed.
The initial assault was under almost ideal weather conditions, despite some wind and temperatures ranging from 40 to 50 degrees. The surf was high, with six rows of breakers, some five feet high; wading through that, especially from a couple of hundred yards out after your boat hit a sandbar, wasn’t a lot of fun. But the first wave was lightly opposed; by the time I went ashore around two o’clock in the afternoon, what little resistance there might have been on the beach was over.
It was a different story inland to the south, where we encountered a hell of a fight from Vichy French and colonial forces still loyal to the Germans. They continued to resist, fighting at times in isolated pockets and even counterattacking. But our men pressed toward Oran, reaching the outskirts early in the morning of November 10; by one in the afternoon our troops were in the city.
Moving our battalion aid station, manned by myself and four other medics, to keep up with the fighting took some imagination as well as legwork. Poor planning and difficulty in getting the landing craft to the right spots played havoc with our supplies and logistics. We were supposed to have vehicles to move our medical gear, but the Jeeps were nowhere to be found. So I improvised.
The area east of the city was a farming community, and there was a small farm near the road. I found the owner, who seemed to understand English—or enough to say that we could use one of his horses and a two-wheeled cart to move our medical equipment. I gave him a receipt, and we used the cart to get our medical chest and supplies all the way into Oran, which by that time had been occupied by our troops.
While the resistance had been light, we did have casualties to care for. I remember putting only two fellows into the cart, neither with life-threatening injuries. Others in the 16th weren’t as lucky. Private First Class Albert F. Smith of E Company may have been our first man killed in action (KIA); his remains lie today at the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial in Carthage.
The regiment’s casualties totaled twenty-five KIA, with seventy-nine wounded. That is the terrible math of war—even in “light action” or “small resistance,” as the fighting at Oran is often described in the history books, real people die.
For a first engagement, and especially a first landing under fire, we had done well. We’d been prepared for more casualties; it was a blessing that we didn’t get them.
The first casualties my guys treated were, fortunately, not blown apart or very seriously wounded. So it was a relatively easy introduction to the realities of combat.
As for myself, my earlier training at the hospital had taught me how to distance myself from my patients so I could work. Now I saw what death during war looked like, at least in some of its more common varieties. I would see much more as we went on.
The one thing that I was surprised and concerned about soon after we landed was the power lines. Lines had fallen into ditches along the road; electricity still ran in some of them, and we found one or two men who’d unknowingly stepped in the ditches or jumped in because of gunfire. They’d been electrocuted, something we had neither encountered nor thought about. The problem was that you couldn’t tell from looking at a ditch or a wire whether it was a hazard or not. And the only indications when you’d see someone in the ditch were scorches on the body and clothes.
* * *
Our Jeeps came in a few days later, and we returned the farmer’s cart and horse. I think he was the most surprised man in all of Africa when we turned up with it.
* * *
The landings in Africa are often overlooked in histories about the war, but they were important for many reasons. We learned a lot from them. There were very specific lessons, like the fact that syrettes containing premeasured doses of morphine were the best way to administer the drug in combat, and that transfusions with blood plasma could save a large number of lives on the battlefield. While the nature of plasma had been known for centuries, it was only first used during our war.
Most important, we found out what it meant to be shot at for real.
Oran
I don’t remember seeing any civilians on the road into the city. I guess when they caught wind of what was coming, they sought cover or fled. Once the fighting was over, though, they returned or showed themselves. Life in the city—well, I can’t say it returned exactly to normal, but people began going about their business again. This would become a routine not only throughout Algeria, but also Africa and beyond.
Our battalion was assigned to provide security in the city. We set up shop in an old French fort. Our role as medics meant we were responsible for the general health and well-being of the troops. That turned us into inspectors—of food and sanitation, and what back in the States would be called “houses of ill repute.”
Whorehouses would be the cruder but more accurate term.
I went out on these inspections, escorted by the local gendarmes. Most of these places, which had apparently been functioning for quite a while before our arrival, were located on a single street, with a handful of others sprinkled nearby. We’d inspect the houses themselves for cleanliness, then line up the girls and check them for sores and other telltale signs of disease. They all had, or were supposed to have, doctor’s papers declaring that they were healthy. Without those, they couldn’t work.
I remember designating one house off-limits, but otherwise every place we checked was in order.
I also had to designate one home for officers, where enlisted men would be barred. That was easy. The officers got the house with the ugliest women.
During one of the inspections I came across a woman who was an American, and easily recognized as such from her clothes as well as her accent. We chatted a bit; she said she’d been trapped by the war, and turned to prostitution to make money. And apparently she did very well. She told me that she was saving her earnings, and when the war was over would return home—Chicago, as I recall—and no one would know.
It wasn’t my place to argue.
It may seem shocking to some, but prostitution was an accepted and expected part of the war, and even before. In fact, I remember one town near Fort Riley in Kansas where there were so many prostitutes, you could hardly drive through without being propositioned if you were in unifor
m.
While we didn’t inspect such places where there were functioning civil authorities like in the States or England, we did set up stations to check men for venereal diseases. “Short arm inspections”—you can work out what that means—were a necessary part of the job. We set up what were called “pro stations” where men would come in for inspections, which could include not very pleasant probes.
Kits with sulfa drugs as well as condoms were routinely issued to GIs throughout the war, along with pamphlets that probably told them everything they already knew about the dangers of diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis and how to avoid them.
* * *
I did not partake of any such services. There was never a case overseas that I went to bed with any woman.
For the record.
* * *
With the city secure, the “funny boys” came in—headquarters people, quartermasters, and the troops assigned to work with the local government. We called them funny boys because unlike us, their uniforms were always clean.
Once they were in place, the 16th began moving east with the rest of 1st Division. We took a several-hundred-mile “jump” to Guelma, Algeria, some forty miles south of the coast.
As big as that movement was, the Big Red One and its units were still well west of the Eastern Task Force, which was driving from its landing area in Algiers toward Tunisia. Under the command of British First Army General Kenneth Anderson, this force of British and Americans aimed to take Tunis, where it would hook up with the British troops under Montgomery. From there, the Allies would push the remaining Germans northward toward Bizerte, where the last survivors would be captured or destroyed.
Life in the villages we passed through seemed primitive, even by Alabama standards. The farmhouses were small huts, and if there was a pen for animals, it generally opened into the living structure, something that struck me as odd.
This was also my first exposure to Muslims. One thing we quickly realized—women here had few rights and seemed to be treated with little respect. They walked while their husbands rode, and even when walking together, they stayed several paces behind, as if in the second rank. Women had to wait for the men to finish eating before they could start; they got the leftovers. A man could have as many wives as he wanted, another foreign concept.
We were careful not to insult the locals, or even get into too much conversation. I’d been told that if I admired something a local possessed, he might very well give it to me—and expect the same from me. I didn’t have much to give; all I could think of was having to turn over my wedding ring. So I kept my distance.
* * *
While the local French government had mostly stopped resisting and was now officially supporting the Allies, the Germans were desperately moving men into position to oppose us. Their forces were relatively small, but the Germans had good air support, and in some instances still had French and colonial soldiers willing to fight for them.
When most people think of northern Africa, they picture flat, dry land. Much of it is that way—but the area that the Eastern Task Force was moving through into Tunisia was neither flat nor particularly dry. The hills and mountains were inundated with rainstorms, turning the roads and fields into mud and hampering our advance. The Task Force had its own problems with logistics, and despite forcing the Germans to retreat deep into Tunisia, bogged down in December short of its objectives.
As the spearhead stalled, so did the entire offensive. That stopped us as well. While we didn’t have nearly as much fighting in our sector, we still had our share—which was more than enough for some guys.
Self-Inflicted Wounds, Company Men
Sometime after leaving Oran, our staff sergeant and one of the other medics went out to check on some of the companies. While there were no large enemy units in the area that we knew of, there were still places where machine guns or snipers would set up to oppose us. We were constantly having to check on small huts and villages to make sure the enemy wasn’t lurking there.
A few hours later, the Jeep roared back into the aid station where I was.
“Staff sergeant’s been shot!” yelled the medic at the wheel.
We got him out and brought him over to the treatment area. He’d been shot in the foot, and it was obvious from the powder burns and condition of the wound that he had been shot at very close range, almost surely by himself.
There’s no record of his casualty in the unit medical listings that I still have, so I’m not sure how the incident was officially recorded, if it ever was. The result, though, was this:
He went home. I was promoted to staff sergeant.
The truth was, the change in the insignia on my sleeve wasn’t a big deal. I’d already been doing a lot of his job.
Our structure in Africa was essentially the same as we’d had before combat. The one big change: where once we’d had only a single doctor with us, now we often had two. The extra doctor would rotate in from the regimental medical team, in effect the echelon above us. Dr. Morchan remained with us throughout most of the campaign, and would continue to do so through Sicily. I trusted him a great deal, but all our doctors knew their jobs and did their best.
And they pretty much left me to do mine.
I knew most of the rest of the medics very well, since the majority had been with the unit since 1940. I did things a little differently than some of the other sergeants. In most medical units, the men had very specific roles and stuck to them throughout the campaign. A company medic was always a company medic, a litter bearer always a litter bearer. I rotated my guys as much as possible. Besides keeping them fresh, I was spreading the risk.
There are no safe jobs in the war zone, and the front line is a place where life expectancy can often be measured in minutes, not decades. But one of the most dangerous jobs in the army is being a company aid man—the medic who rushes to help a freshly wounded soldier in battle.
The reason is simple: you can’t dig in. You have to be seen. You have to keep yourself visible so the infantry guys know where you are. They have to know that if they go down, someone is going to rush to their aid.
I’m not saying men won’t fight without that knowledge. I am saying that they will fight harder and better if they know “Doc” will rush up to help them if they go down.
Picking a company aid man was more art than science. He had to be qualified to give first aid, obviously. More than that, he had to have the stamina to keep up with the rest of the rifle company whether they were marching or on the battlefield. He had to be able to mix in with the infantrymen he worked with; be liked. Getting along with different types of people under potentially catastrophic conditions is not easy. He had to be brave under fire, and even rarer, able to concentrate on his job despite the worst chaos around him.
I remembered to say he had to know first aid, didn’t I? That was his primary job. He’d assess the wounds, decide how bad off the injured man was. If the soldier was bleeding, he tried to stop it, bandaging or tourniqueting as necessary. He’d give the soldier a shot of morphine. Then, if the unit was in heavy action, the company aid man would move on to the next casualty.
Maybe he’d get a chance to duck in between. Often not.
Litter bearers didn’t have it easy, either. They, too, were often exposed to gunfire. Working in pairs, they would take the wounded man from the front line and bring him back to the aid station, where the doctor and a small group of medics would work on him.
While ideally it was away from direct gunfire, our aid station had to be relatively close to the fighting. That meant fifty yards on occasion. Two or three hundred was probably more common, but the terrain always had to be taken into account.
The aid stations weren’t necessarily safe. Most often, they were subject to artillery and mortar fire; occasionally they were within range of a rifle bullet, generally one that missed its mark. But they were comparatively safer than the other positions. So I rotated the guys and gave them a bit of a break. Medics who worked in
the aid station with me would go out as company guys while the others took their place for a while. I felt it was fair that way, so no one was constantly exposed to direct fire or artillery, hand-to-hand fighting or whatever.
We all have our own level of stress; every job in the military does as well. Medics are unique. I won’t compare our stress to that of an infantry rifleman; all I can say is both jobs are very intense experiences under combat.
They became more so as we moved east toward Tunisia and the fighting in Africa progressed, because the German sharpshooters started aiming at medics.
The red crosses we wore on our helmets and armbands now made us prime targets. The enemy was aiming to cripple our troops’ morale by taking us out. It was a deliberate policy, a war crime. Snipers gunned down a number of us before Command issued a warning and most of us removed the armbands.
We were also authorized to carry weapons, something we hadn’t done to that point.
I put my Red Cross symbols away and holstered a .45, just in case.
Learning to Kill
The 1st Division was sent into action just before Christmas in a fresh effort to break the German line. This offensive bogged down within a day, tormented by rainstorms as much as by the German defenses. It was the latest in a series of setbacks, especially disappointing given the earlier momentum following the landings.
We didn’t know it in the field, but back in Washington the Allies’ slow progress, and especially the sluggish showing by the Americans, set all kinds of alarm bells ringing. This eventually led to big changes at the top of our chain of command. In the meantime, the division took up positions in the Ousseltia Valley, part of II Corps under Major General Lloyd Fredendall.