No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  The legions of Hitler and of Mussolini were immediately awaiting us, Caesars the like of whom in evil the world had never seen, inhuman fiends to whom Louis XVI and George III alike were but kindly disposed old gentlemen. Was it any wonder that never had “The Star-Spangled Banner” so stirred me as when I heard it poured out that evening in the war zone in heartfelt strains as “Colors” by the sons both of France and of America!

  The last note died away, the two flags fell side by side into the hands of waiting soldiers, were swiftly unbent from the halyards and folded up. More gruff orders in two languages, bayoneted rifles swung to shoulders, the lines broke into columns of squads, and “Colors” was over. To the gay strains of “Mademoiselle from Armentières” which had power also to stir men, but in other ways, the troops marched off. A storm of cheers, seemingly from the sky, roared out after them over the Place de la Bastille.

  Looking up for the source of those cheers, I saw what before I had missed. From every window up to the roofs of the six- or seven-story buildings on three sides of the square came a fluttering of handkerchiefs and heartwarming cries of “Vive les Américains!” Every window was jammed with French men and women waving frantically and shouting after the departing soldiers.

  Here was something to write home about. Certainly this demonstration of the affection and the enthusiasm of everyday Frenchmen for their liberators was spontaneous. Men and women can be herded into vast squares to cheer themselves hoarse for their oppressors if they know what’s healthy for them. I had seen plenty of such regimented cheering of Mussolini in Fascist Italy. But by no conceivable gestapo methods could all the inhabitants of all those apartments far above the streets have been forced to their windows to cheer. These Frenchmen and their wives were cheering us because that was the way they felt about it. Otherwise the women at least would have been busy in their kitchens at that hour, far from the front windows. There could be no doubt that these people, the plain citizens of Oran, believed us when we had said on D-day,

  “We come as friends.”

  The troops vanished round the corner, the fluttering of handkerchiefs and the shouts from above started to die away. My eyes, still glued to that extraordinary spectacle aloft, came abruptly down to street level again as a raucous voice broke the spell,

  “Come on, sailor! You’re blocking the traffic! Step on it!”

  The M.P. before us was imperiously waving us on again. My jeep rolled ahead a few yards further to disgorge me, muddy and chilled through, at my billet for the night in the unheated Grand Hotel d’Oran, already bulging with the headquarters staff of the troops which had just taken Oran from these cheering Frenchmen.

  CHAPTER

  5

  ONCE AGAIN I WAS UP BEFORE THE dawn of the last day of November to be jeeped back to Tafaraoui and continue on to Algiers and Eisenhower’s headquarters.

  This time, I found I was to proceed in convoy. Packed nose to tail at one end of a runway, stood a score of twin-engined transports, embarking troops from Oran to be moved up to the fighting line now bordering Tunisia. On another runway, similarly jammed together on the hard surface ready for a takeoff, waited a dozen fighters assigned as our air escort.

  I clambered into the transport pointed out to me to find my fellow passengers there all army officers bound also for one reason or another to Algiers. Our plane, I learned, would travel eastward with the convoy only to a point well to the southward of Algiers. There while the rest of the convoy and all the fighter escort continued eastward into Tunisia, we should peel off and proceed on our own northward to Algiers without any fighters.

  One close behind another in breath-taking succession the transports roared down the runway and lifted off, each to join in an ever-lengthening circular formation over the field till all were in the air. Then we straightened away eastward in two columns at no great height, with the fighters, which had taken off more swiftly even than we, flying in tight V’s on both sides and astern of us and at somewhat higher altitude to cover us.

  Day came but no sun. It was cloudy overhead, a typically gray late autumn day. Below as we went eastward Algeria was spread out, the Garden of Allah indeed, a lovely prospect from the air after what else I had seen of Africa. In rolling agricultural country were immense wheatfields, all looking carefully cultivated; scattered groves of trees, presumably of oranges and olives; vast areas of vineyards; and here and there in the midst of what could only be plantations (they were much too large for farms) were pretentious chateaux and clusters of attendant buildings. Apparently the French proprietors had done very well for themselves in Algeria with Arab labor—only our ante-bellum South with its gracious mansions might have matched that view.

  We flew onward toward increasingly hilly country. In the better daylight, I looked round inside the plane. It was the mate of every other twin-engined army transport I had flown in. With all its rivets, plates, and ribs showing, it was stripped of everything inside except long aluminum-topped benches on each side on which we sat. Overhead and leading aft to the solitary exit door to port was fitted the usual rod to which paratroopers might snap their parachute release rings when jumping at low altitude.

  There was, however, one feature of this particular transport which was different. About amidships of the cabin, running on a slight diagonal from top to bottom on each side was a vertical row of neatly drilled and evenly spaced holes about four inches apart. Apparently they were unplugged rivet holes perhaps for a diagonal lifting band still to be fitted on the outside of the plane. At 160 miles per hour these were acting as unneeded ventilators on a cold morning so I asked the co-pilot who, now that we were well underway, was chatting with his army passengers in the cabin, what the purpose of those holes was and why they were not already fitted with rivets.

  The co-pilot looked at me, recognized perhaps he had with him a dumb navy passenger unacquainted with the facts of life in the air, and explained courteously enough, though briefly, without even a look at what I had indicated.

  “Oh, those? Last trip east a Nazi fighter made a pass at us from starboard. They’re the holes from his machine-gun bullets. We haven’t had a chance to patch them yet. But don’t worry; they don’t weaken the plane.”

  A little embarrassed, I shut up and our conversation ceased. But my eyes could not help traveling time and again back to those ominous rows of holes. They registered nicely with about the fifth seats from forward on the aluminum benches both port and starboard. Perhaps the plane hadn’t been weakened any by them, but I wondered about the soldiers who might have been sitting or standing last trip in way of those holes. They would have been weakened considerably. What about them? But as the co-pilot seemed not to be in a mood to volunteer any further details, I felt it impolitic to ask and the episode remained unclarified.

  Some two hours after the take-off, over fairly mountainous country, our plane peeled off from its position in the port column and with no obvious adieus to the rest of the convoy, we headed away northward by ourselves. My eyes wandered from the bullet holes on both sides of me to gaze regretfully at the fighters still flying protectively above the fast disappearing convoy. I felt like a sitting duck.

  However, I noted immediately that our pilot was evidently no foolhardy daredevil. He seemed to be no more anxious than I was to offer again his now unprotected and unarmed transport as a target to prowling Nazi fighters. Swiftly we started to lose altitude till we were below the ridges of the surrounding mountains. We became invisible to searchers except from directly overhead, and so low were we in the valley that any fighter diving on us now stood a fine chance of cracking up before he could pull out of his dive and start weaving on our tail through that irregular pass.

  So we flew on safely enough by ourselves shielded by the surrounding mountains till we emerged on the plains not far south of Algiers into an area not likely to be molested in daylight by stray Nazis. Shortly thereafter we set down on Maison Blanche Airfield some eight miles to the southeast of Algiers. In a few minutes in a
staff car, I was on my way to my final destination, six days en route from Massawa.

  There followed three hectic days at headquarters. Most of the rest of my first day was consumed in the billeting process. From my orders, it appeared I was to be a permanent addition to General Eisenhower’s staff in Algiers. The billeting officer, an army captain, shook his head dubiously. He hadn’t a permanent billet left on his list of accommodations.

  “Right now this town’s worse than wartime Washington for housing, Captain. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll run you in at the Hotel Aletti. A couple of days is the regular limit there for anybody, but I’ll stretch that a bit if necessary and maybe by then somebody around here’ll either be killed or be transferred and that’ll make a vacancy for you. O.K.?”

  My room was a very fine one indeed, beautifully carpeted and furnished, though here and there the wallpaper was strangely marred. And of all things, it had a private bath! Apparently my four stripes were paying off, at least in Algiers.

  Not till I was dressed again after a lukewarm bath did it strike me that someone had neglected to raise the window shades and open the inside shutters of my room to let in some daylight. The only light in that completely shuttered room came from a not very powerful electric ceiling lamp, a very evident waste of electricity in broad daylight in a city which could not have any surplus of fuel for power generation in wartime. I went to the window to open the shutters and raise the shades before I turned out the light.

  The shutters on the inside easily folded back, disclosing the fact that there were no shades, either up or down, though the room remained as innocent of daylight as before. The reason was obvious. Every pane of glass in both top and bottom windows was smashed and over the empty window frames cardboard had been tightly nailed from the outside. I raised the lower sash of the blanked-off window and looked out.

  Directly across a narrow street facing me was a gutted six-story building. Its roof and the upper floors had collapsed. Through the gaping windows in the still standing walls I could see the dismal wreck of the interior where a Nazi bomb had exploded not fifty feet away. No wonder my window had no glass. I understood now also the half dozen or so holes marring the plastered walls of my room to which I had given little thought before. They must be shrapnel holes from fragments of the bursting bomb across the way. Soberly I closed the window again to shut out the wind and the cold, though simultaneously, of course, I again shut out the daylight. And for what little good they might be in stopping future shrapnel, I carefully also secured the wooden shutters inside. Apparently being billeted in the Hotel Aletti had drawbacks. Its beautiful location beside the harbor put it right in the path of straying bombs aimed (but none too accurately) at the ships alongside the quays.

  Next morning, dressed in my one and only blue uniform which I had not worn before in Africa, I went to report to headquarters. Headquarters was the Hotel St. George, a vast, rambling, antique tourist hostelry topping the steeply sloping hillside overlooking the sea against which much of Algiers was built. The St. George, now no longer serving as a hotel, had been taken over, lock, stock, and barrel for offices for all the assorted nationalities and armed services which Eisenhower was endeavoring to weld into a single coordinated fighting unit.

  It was clear that it was useless in that maelstrom at G.H.Q. to try to report directly to General Eisenhower, though my orders stated that. Even getting by the sentries into the St. George without a headquarters identity card, in spite of my regular naval pass, had been difficult enough. I decided it would be best to make contact first with some junior who might know the ropes, his army aide perhaps.

  I was overjoyed then to learn at the inquiry desk that the Commanding General’s personal aide was, of all things for a general, a naval officer, a lieutenant commander. Here was luck indeed. Certainly I could get in to see any two-and-a-half-striper without trouble, and since he was a naval officer as well as Eisenhower’s personal aide he could brief me on the details of that “urgent salvage work required in all North African ports” for which I had been rushed out of the Red Sea.

  Lieutenant Commander Butcher greeted me cordially enough, but I soon learned that he was a social not a naval aide. I learned further that I couldn’t see Eisenhower that day. At midnight of the day before he had just returned from the muddy front in Tunisia with a bad cold. Lest it turn into flu, his surgeon had stowed him away in bed. And even when he rose, I probably couldn’t see him for a day at least; he would be wholly engaged in matters of state with Darlan and various other French dignitaries, including Giraud. It seemed the Commanding General was trying to get them to see the Axis as the only enemy while the only enemies they really seemed to recognize were each other and General de Gaulle (who was in London).

  “There’s nobody in our Navy actually attached to the headquarters staff here, Captain,” Butcher told me. “The Royal Navy’s responsible for the Mediterranean, and their Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham runs the naval show, reporting to Ike. So our naval staff here is all British too. But there are a couple of Americans in Algiers on liaison work for the Navy Department back home, and I’m sure they know. You probably know them. There’s Jerry Wright, a four-striper, who’s been with us some time and’ll probably stay, and Rear Admiral Bieri who’s bound home soon.”

  I knew them both, particularly Bieri, who had been a first classman at the Naval Academy the year I entered in 1910 as a plebe. With a G.I. guide called back as escort, I was soon on my way to see Bieri. Before I left, Butcher promised to let me know at my hotel when I was to report officially.

  I was certainly glad to see Bieri again. As befitted his task as liaison officer between Admiral King (our C-in-C and Chief of Naval Operations) and General Eisenhower, he knew what had happened in the naval assault and the French resistance, and so far as anybody knew, why those things had happened, and what was necessary to remedy them. What nobody knew for sure, he had already made some shrewd guesses at, and he very willingly gave me the benefits both of his knowledge and of his estimates.

  There had been nothing “token” about the French naval resistance either at Oran or at Casablanca. Both ports had been the scene of fierce naval actions, particularly bloody and disastrous to us at Oran. The harbor of Casablanca, though still usable, was as a result a wreck from our heavy naval shells. But the harbor of Oran was the major problem. After inflicting on us heavier casualties there both on land and on sea than anywhere else, the French admiral at Oran before capitulating to our land forces under General Fredendall had sabotaged the harbor and everything in it most thoroughly. He had sunk block ships at the entrance and scuttled everything else alongside the main quays. Oran was a mess.

  There were only two major harbors in the Mediterranean capable of supporting a heavy offensive against the Nazis in Tunisia. They were Oran and Algiers. Casablanca on the Atlantic, damaged or not, was too far away from Tunisia to be of much help. It had been seized for other purposes now accomplished—to insure the neutrality of Spain and to counter Franco’s joining with or permitting the Nazis to sever our Mediterranean lifeline at the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. Swashbuckling Patton at Casablanca had already settled those problems.

  But the swift restoration of sabotaged Oran to full usefulness was imperative, both because Rommel was falling back on Tunisia, and even more so because the Nazis already had thrown a large new army under von Arnim into Tunisia from Sicily and were feverishly reinforcing it. Unless Eisenhower managed to knock out von Arnim before Rommel joined him, the elimination of their joint forces would require a build up from overseas of Eisenhower’s army in Algeria far beyond the original 107,000 men with which he had seized Algeria and Morocco. Eisenhower’s needs for unfettered port facilities to permit this were bad enough already.

  On top of everything else, the need would soon be much worse when Montgomery’s Eighth Army chasing Rommel, also entered Tunisia in his wake. By then Montgomery would be 1500 miles over desert roads from Cairo—overly far from his Egyptian b
ases. Montgomery must then be supplied at least partly from near by North African ports, or Rommel, resupplied from Tunisia, would turn on him, and he might find himself not much better off than von Paulus at that very moment hamstrung and being cut to pieces before Stalingrad at the end of a similarly overstretched supply line. Exactly that had happened twice before already to British armies which had driven deep into the Libyan Desert from Egypt.

  To make the picture complete, Bieri threw in the further fact that the Nazis knew as well as ourselves the importance to us of the Mediterranean ports—their night bombing attacks to knock them out had caused damage enough already and were getting worse. We had been handicapped in air defense by mud on most of our fields (that I already knew), by lack of night fighters, and by insufficient radar equipment for good night control of the A.A. batteries we did have. Since D-day, we had taken an awful licking from the air in ships bombed and sunk all the way east from Algiers to Bône just behind the fighting line. I would shortly see that. And now to top it all off, U-boats were becoming decidedly more active with their torpedoes off the whole north coast.

  Between bombed ships, torpedoed ships, and scuttled ships, the Mediterranean was a very hot area. There was plenty of salvage work required already, there was going to be plenty more, and that was why I had been taken out of the Red Sea. But still the most urgent problem was unquestionably Oran and its sabotaged harbor; it must be restored immediately.

  “That sounds worse than I expected, Admiral, though I’m no optimist,” I had to admit when Bieri finished. “Now tell me, what salvage forces are there to tackle all this with?”

  “Not much,” replied Bieri soberly. “In a naval way, the Mediterranean by agreement between London and Washington is a British responsibility. You’ll have to look to the British. You’ll find a few American divers in Oran and some diving suits, I guess, but nothing else of ours. There’s a British salvage ship there, sent from Gibraltar; a good one, I’m told, though she’s got no divers at all. And that’s the whole story. Sorry.”