No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  Ironically enough, H.M.S. Walney and Hartland and the special assault forces they were jammed with, had been shot to pieces in the initial assault in a desperate attempt to prevent the very damage I now saw. It had been their mission to seize the harbor and its covering forts before the main troop landings around Oran, and thus prevent any sabotage at all. Instead, they had become the first two of all the wrecks littering the floor of Oran harbor. And on their decks had taken place the worst slaughter in the attacks anywhere from Casablanca to Algiers—as many men in fact had been killed in those two little ships as in all the other fighting on all the other fronts together in the taking of North Africa.

  The Walney and the Hartland, two small British men-of-war of about the tonnage of large destroyers, wholly unarmored, carrying only one five-inch gun apiece and a few smaller guns, had sailed together from England under the command of Captain F. T. Peters, Royal Navy. At Gibraltar they had taken aboard their American forces. These consisted of a specially trained battalion of our 1st Armored Division, some 400 men, under Lt. Col. G. C. Marshall; and about 30 of our bluejackets and marines under Lt. Comdr. G. D. Dickey. Aside from these, there was also aboard the Walney a British Commando unit of about 50 men. Including the British crews of the Walney and Hartland, there were roughly 700 men all told in this venture; somewhat over half were Americans.

  The plan was that shortly after H-hour and before the main troop landings had alerted the French, Walney and Hartland, hidden in the darkness, were to crash through the booms forming the wartime harbor gate. Then Walney, the leader, carrying 200 American troops, part of the American naval contingent, and the 50 British Commandos, was to run the entire length of the harbor to its head, lay alongside the pier there, the Môle Centre, and discharge her assault troops. These were to capture Fort Lamoune which commanded the head of the harbor.

  Meanwhile Hartland, following Walney through the gap in the broken boom, was to go only a short distance into the inner harbor, then turn sharply to port, lay herself alongside the first pier, the Môle Ravin Blanc, and there discharge her forces. Her troops, the remaining 200 Americans, were to scale the high cliff immediately behind and capture Ravin Blanc Battery surmounting it. During all this, the naval parties on both Walney and Hartland were to board all merchantmen at the various piers and prevent any scuttlings.

  The desperate nature of this venture was clearly recognized. It had no chance of success unless complete surprise were effected and the vessels could crash through the booms into the inner harbor and get alongside the piers before the French came to and manned their guns. After that, scaling the heights in the darkness to take Ravin Blanc Battery, which certainly would by then be alerted, was still a highly dubious gamble. Rear Admiral A. C. Bennett, U.S.N., destined to be the naval commander in Oran after its capture, protested most vigorously against this plan, but was overruled. The stakes were high, the attempt was ordered. The only effect of Bennett’s protest was, so far as the American naval officers on the Hartland interpreted it, to obtain an understanding that if the essential element of complete surprise were lost, the ships would withdraw without attempting to enter.

  So matters stood on the night of November 7, when a little after midnight Walney and Hartland, jammed with their landing forces, took station at sea in the darkness a few miles off blacked-out Oran, waiting for 3 A.M., the designated moment for their assault. Farther out, shrouded in the night, lay a powerful British naval force under Commodore Thomas Troubridge, R.N.—the battleship Rodney with nine 16-inch guns, the aircraft carrier Furious, the light cruisers Aurora and Jamaica, and thirty-one other assorted warships from destroyers to mine-sweepers. These were to shield the transports steaming on through the darkness toward their landing beaches twenty-five miles eastward and thirteen miles westward respectively of Oran, where far from the heavy guns of the naval batteries at Oran, the main troop landings were to start at 1 A.M., H-hour.

  Three a.m. came. In the darkness far to the east and to the west of Oran, landing craft were already disembarking the first wave on the beaches, but around Oran itself all was still quiet and undisturbed. With Walney leading, Captain Peters started for the entrance, his own two ships completely blacked out and working hastily up to full speed for maximum impact when crashing the boom. As they straightened away for the entrance gate, they heard air raid sirens beginning to scream in Oran. Apparently the news of the landings on the distant beachheads had just reached Oran—it was being alerted. But there was no sign that they had themselves been detected. They stood on, swiftly gathering speed.

  Then Captain Peters, peering from the Walney’s bridge into the darkness at the breakwaters starting to loom up through the night in the water ahead of him, saw to his dismay that he had misjudged his approach. He was too close inshore and would miss the entrance gate by perhaps a quarter of a mile. He dared not slow and make an oblique approach—he must hit that boom squarely and at full speed if he were to smash through and not hang up in it. He had but one option: he must make a 360° circle at full speed and come back better lined up for the impact. With no slacking of speed, hard right went the Walney’s rudder. She heeled sharply to the turn, her stern began to skid sidewise through the water, creating a wide wake. Close behind her, the Hartland had no choice but to turn and follow, still further widening that fatal wake which was glowing now through the darkness in brilliant phosphorescence where only the black waters of the Mediterranean had been a moment before.

  That widespread phosphorescence, suddenly illuminating the sea almost beneath their eyes, was enough for the surprised naval garrison of Battery Ravin Blanc, a moment before alerted by the air raid sirens. They had till then no reason to suspect danger from the sea in front of them. The sky above was the natural danger area when the air raid sirens gave an alarm, but as yet no sign of planes or sounds of engines in the sky had reached them.

  Now, however, beneath them and a little beyond the harbor entrance was that startling glow in the water. Instantly a searchlight switched on, trained on the gleaming wake, followed along it naturally enough to its source, and the Walney swiftly stood fully revealed in the searchlight beam. All chance of surprise was gone!

  Instantly the 130-millimeter guns of Battery Ravin Blanc opened up. But though the range was short for naval guns, hitting a target changing deflection as rapidly as does a ship in a hard turn, is next to impossible. Not a shell landed on the Walney, which as yet had completed only a quarter of her circle. Still at full speed, she continued turning to starboard.

  Behind her steamed the Hartland, uncaught by the searchlights concentrating on her sister, unmolested by gunfire. To the American officers on the Hartland, following the Walney in her turn, watching the exploding French shells sending up geysers close aboard her, the show was over. Surprise was gone. As soon as the Walney had finished a half turn, she would head out to sea away from Oran, zigzagging then, of course, to dodge shells and hoping for luck in eluding them. And they, zigzagging also, would follow her out to sea as prearranged if surprise were lost. The anti-sabotage problem of Oran harbor would have to be left now to the heavy naval forces placed well at sea about it but out of sight in the darkness, and to the Army now landing in force some distance away on both sides.

  Still under fire, still illuminated by the searchlights, the badly heeled over Walney finished her half turn away from Oran. But if there was no longer any surprise left in the situation for the alarmed French, there still was a sharp surprise remaining for the Americans watching from the Hartland. Instead of beginning to straighten up as would be normal on the Walney as she eased her rudder to stand straight out to sea away from Oran, she continued heeling to port as much as ever, kept turning in as tight a circle as before. In another moment her intention was clear. Surprise or no surprise, Captain Peters on the Walney was completing a full circle, still clearly bent on crashing the boom into Oran harbor!

  Astounded by this change from the plan as they understood it, both Col. Marshall and Comdr. Dickey wat
ched the Walney come full circle, and still followed by the Hartland, straighten away at full speed for the boom close ahead. Captain Peters was going to crash into Oran harbor with every gun there, every searchlight, every warship inside, ready and waiting now for his two little ships. History was repeating itself. As at Balaklava nearly a century before, someone was blundering into an even more suicidal charge, and another commander was leading 700 men this time instead of 600 into the point-blank fire of unnumbered naval guns. It was going to be murder.

  Helped by stray light from the searchlight beams centering on her, which to a degree also illuminated nearby objects, the Walney on this approach correctly located the boom, smashed squarely into it, broke through, and then with no loss of speed, hit and broke through a second barrier composed of a string of barges. But with this success, the Walney’s luck ran out. From then on, she must travel practically a straight course down the narrow harbor, a perfect target. No more circling, no zigzagging to avoid enemy fire was possible. Now came hell itself.

  The guns of Battery Ravin Blanc above, at a range of 500 yards only, began to register on their target. For a quarter of a mile, the Walney took this, came then opposite the Môle Ravin Blanc. Between this môle and the Môle Millerand next beyond, two French submarines lay moored, the Cérès and the Pallas. The instant the Walney cleared the end of Môle Ravin Blanc, exposing her port side to them, these two submarines at a range of 200 yards only opened on her with machine guns and their 75-mm. A.A. guns—so short a range that nothing could miss.

  Still the Walney staggered on up the harbor, helped a little now by the fact that the guns and searchlights of Ravin Blanc had at last discovered the Hartland and shifted fire to her. As a further blessing, the outer end of Môle Millerand now coming abeam to port, interposed to shield her from the hail of bullets and shells streaming from the Cérès and the Pallas.

  Then came a crushing misfortune. Close ahead, from the Walney’s bridge was made out a large French destroyer, of all things in that harbor that was supposed to be taken by surprise, already underway and standing for them! In desperation, the Walney swung sharply to starboard in an attempt to ram her, but at this instant, shells from no one knew which of their many enemies, shot away their bridge and ruined the maneuver.

  At a range not exceeding 100 feet, that destroyer as she passed abreast of them let go with full broadsides from her five 138-mm. guns. If the range had been a little greater so the French guns might have struck lower at full depression, they would have torn the ill-fated Walney to pieces on the spot. As it was, those broadsides, raking her decks and topsides, spelled finis to any chance now of landing enough men alive to assault anything.

  The French destroyer, not daring to stop or back in such close waters, drew astern of them, while the doomed Walney, steering now by emergency wheel, kept doggedly on for her objective, the Môle Centre only 300 yards ahead. At that instant a shell, probably from the destroyer astern, exploded in her boiler room and deprived her of all further power for her propeller.

  A completely helpless wreck, under only what momentum she still had, the Walney slowly drifted onward for the right side of Môle Centre, her planned disembarkation point. But lest the measure of disaster to the Walney be not already full, pressed down, and running over, along that side of the Môle Centre, one ahead of the other, lay two more large French destroyers, Épervier and Tramontane! Both now opened up with everything they had, five 138-mm. guns, four 130-mm. guns, their machine-guns, even their A.A. guns, on the helpless target literally drifting right up to the muzzles of their guns. Nothing missed, nothing could miss.

  With her decks heaped high with the dead and her compartments below a shambles, the remains of the Walney, disintegrating in an inferno of bursting shells, drifted lazily onward to collide gently broadside to broadside against the first of the two French warships which was firing into her now at no range at all. She had arrived at last at her objective at Môle Centre.

  A handful of survivors managed to leap from the shell-swept deck of the Walney to the destroyer at the moment of impact, there to be taken prisoner immediately. Before more could jump, the Walney bounced off, drifted a little clear. Whoever else could still move, leaped overboard to try to swim to the nearby quays. Soon thereafter a sharp explosion tore what was left of the Walney apart, she capsized and went down, carrying with her both the dead and the dying. Three-quarters of all those aboard, when she had crashed the boom at the harbor entrance a few minutes before, were casualties, soldiers and sailors alike, most of them dead now inside the sunken hulk off the Môle Centre, hard by the walls of that Fort Lamoune they were to have captured. The remnant, all unarmed swimmers who had made the quays, were themselves captives.

  Meanwhile her consort, the Hartland, was having no better luck. Traveling 600 yards astern of the Walney, she had initially escaped detection by the searchlights, both in the turn outside the harbor and in the approach which followed. But she paid for her immunity. The stray light of the searchlight beams centered on the Walney which had dimly outlined the harbor entrance jetties for her, was not there to mark them when the Hartland steamed up. Having made the 360° turn not quite so tightly as had the Walney, she was a little further shoreward. Instead of coming through the gap which the Walney had left in the barriers, she missed in the darkness and her bow ran up on the sloping jetty forming the inshore side of the entrance and hung there.

  Backing furiously to get clear, the Hartland churned up so violently the phosphorescent waters of the Mediterranean that she instantly attracted attention from the heights above. A searchlight swung inquisitively in her direction, picked her up as she managed to pull free. Leaving the doomed Walney to the warships below, all the guns and searchlights of Battery Ravin Blanc immediately shifted from the Walney to the Hartland.

  In a perfect hell of fire from the French gunners who had by now got their hands in tuning up on the Walney, the Hartland came on again for the entrance, cleared it this time. She had only a quarter of a mile further to go to turn in alongside the Môle Ravin Blanc, the landing point for her assault forces, most of whom were stowed in the compartments below to shield them as well as possible to the last moment.

  But it was a terrible quarter of a mile. Before they could fire more than three shots in their own defense, bursting shells from above had wiped out all of Hartland’s gun crews and silenced her return fire. Still she kept on, came abeam the head of Môle Ravin Blanc, turned to port to berth herself there, port side to.

  Immediately she cleared the head of the môle, the two submarines, the Cérès and the Pallas, which had previously riddled the Walney, opened on her, much closer aboard than they ever had been to her sister. The Hartland had not even a machine-gun left in action with which to answer.

  As if this were not enough, the same evil luck which the Walney had encountered at the Môle Centre, now fell on the Hartland. Alongside the Môle Ravin Blanc, at the very spot where the Hartland was to unload, lay another large French destroyer, the Typhon, which, for whatever reasons, had not fired a shot at the Walney as she went by. But to make up for that omission, she was more than ready now, and there was the defenseless Hartland only a few hundred feet away. A perfect torrent of 130-mm. shells poured from the merciless guns of the Typhon to burst inside the unarmored Hartland. Immediately the Hartland lost all boiler power, all steering control, and was set heavily on fire below.

  Completely helpless, the battered Hartland started slowly to drift broadside away from the Môle Ravin Blanc toward the Môle Millerand. All the while the Typhon poured shells into her till the Hartland had drifted a few hundred yards. Then the Typhon had to cease fire lest some of her shells, going clear through the Hartland’s thin sides without exploding, should strike other French ships now in line beyond.

  But this did the Hartland slight good. She was already a raging furnace below. The assault troops packed into the compartments there (those still alive, that is) were driven to the decks above to escape roasting. And
as they came on deck, the machine-guns of the Pallas and the Cérès, very close aboard now, cut them down.

  Afire below, her topsides blazing, with incessant streams of machine-gun bullets sweeping her decks, there was no longer the slightest hope for the Hartland or her mission. Half those aboard were already dead. Those still able to, heroically pausing under heavy fire to put life jackets on the wounded, first pushed them overboard and then followed themselves, to swim to the adjacent quays where they were promptly taken prisoner as they hauled themselves or the wounded from the luridly illuminated waters.

  The Hartland, manned now only by the dead, continued to burn fiercely till a terrific explosion tore her apart, scattering her steel plates over the near by quays. What was left sank to join her sister, the Walney, on the bottom of Oran harbor.

  The assault was over. More than four hundred men had died in vain.

  CHAPTER

  10

  HUDDLED OUT OF THE COLD RAIN in a miserable shack knocked together from such stray dunnage boards as they had been able to gather on the quay, near the head of Môle Ravin Blanc I found the quarters of the little American naval salvage party which had entered Oran on its surrender November 10th. I introduced myself.

  Lieutenant George Ankers, U.S.N.R., the senior officer, was in charge of twelve American divers and mechanics, two ensigns as his assistants, and another homeless officer, Lieutenant William Reitzel, U.S.N.R., whose original invasion task had apparently evaporated.

  From Lieutenant Ankers (and later from Lt. Comdr. E. White, R.N.V.R., the displaced British salvage officer whom Admiral Cunningham had mentioned to me) I pieced together the tangled local salvage command situation which I had been ordered to rectify immediately.