No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  “WE COME AS FRIENDS!”

  The Jean Bart was silenced and the Massachusetts soon quit firing at her, being fully occupied thereafter, together with our cruisers and destroyers, in taking care of various French cruisers, destroyers, and submarines which Michelier sent out from the harbor to sink the transports busily engaged in landing Patton’s troops north of the harbor.

  But, reflected Jimmy Hall, now Flag-Officer-in-Charge at Casablanca, as he gazed sadly at the wreckage, he wished the Massachusetts had stayed home. For her heavy shells, feeling alongside every quay for the Jean Bart, had sunk pretty nearly everything else then in the harbor, merchantmen mostly. The Massachusetts and her 16-inch shells had very thoroughly washed up French shipping in Casablanca.

  The fighting, both afloat and ashore, had lasted for three days, but everything was well in hand by the morning of November 11 th. By then, Patton, having surrounded Casablanca on the land side, was all set for the final assault when Darlan’s order to cease resistance came through and Admiral Michelier, recognizing his master’s voice, promptly obeyed it. However, in spite of three days of continuous fighting on land and sea and some very sharp engagements in both places, it finally happened that we lost far more men on the decks of the little Hartland alone in the assault on Oran harbor than the entire campaign in Morocco cost us.

  I said goodnight to Jimmy Hall and retired to my room at the Hotel Plaza. Being rather high up, on the eighth floor and facing the harbor, I got a beautiful night view of the harbor and all its shipping, all lighted up (except the wrecks) and spread out before me.

  Casablanca and its harbor were never blacked out. Being about 1000 miles from the nearest enemy territory in Tunisia or Sicily, and over 800 miles from Occupied France, with neutral Spain in between, it apparently considered itself beyond bomber attack range. There had never been an enemy air raid on Casablanca, though looking down from my window, I could see across the street in the dock area and a trifle to my right, a new A.A. battery manned by our troops and surrounded shoulder high by a parapet of sandbags as a protection.

  Almost directly before me I could look down on the Jean Bart, stern toward me, seemingly in as good condition as before D-day, the most brilliantly illuminated ship in the harbor. She was quite impressive, but I spent little time on her or anything else. I was too tired. Tomorrow, close aboard and in daylight, I could get a better view.

  I spent the next two days looking over Casablanca and its harbor. There was unquestionably a fine collection of wrecks in Casablanca, French warships and French merchantmen, all resting on the bottom except the Jean Bart. There were even a few of our own merchant ships and one of our destroyers, all torpedoed but all still afloat and awaiting temporary repairs so they could go home. However, after assuring myself that for our purposes the harbor was usable, I lost interest. I was getting weary of seeing wrecks; if keeping them afloat or getting them out of the way was not imperative to our war needs, then they could stay wrecks for all of me.

  In all this I was accompanied by Captain William A. Sullivan of our Navy, locally in charge of salvage. But only one thing he pointed out to me in Casablanca really caught my eye, and that was a warehouse, not a wreck. My pulse started to race madly when we entered that warehouse. There before me, already in Africa, was the realization of all my dreams—a warehouse floor covered with salvage equipment—diving suits, salvage pumps of all sizes, hose galore, air compressors, tools, practically everything I needed for the Torch theater and had been beating my brains out trying to get from America! And I had just had to rob my Americans in Oran of two of their scant supply of diving dresses in order that half a dozen of my French divers might have at least that many safe suits to dive in!

  Feverishly I started to estimate mentally how much of all that Casablanca really needed; the rest should be divided up immediately between Bône, Bougie, Philippeville, Algiers, and Oran so that we might start effectively to cover the salvage problem in the really hot war theater, the Mediterranean.

  But Sullivan, seeing me starting to count everything, correctly interpreted the reason and brought me down out of the clouds with a thud. Neither he nor all that salvage gear really belonged to Torch, he said; they were there only temporarily. His real assignment was supervising for the Navy a commercial salvage company working on the capsized Normandie in New York harbor; all the equipment I was looking at, while Navy equipment, belonged to the Normandie job also. Both he and it had been loaned only temporarily for the most urgent work in Casablanca; the patching up mainly of our own damaged vessels so they could go home. As soon as that was completed, both he and all the gear and all the American divers (he had brought plenty from the Normandie) would all have to go back to work on her. He could not permit any of that Normandie salvage gear to be taken out of Casablanca and used elsewhere; he had no authority to do so.

  I left that warehouse feeling like a man perishing of thirst in the desert within sight of an oasis of water which he knows he will never have strength enough to reach alive. I knew that never would any of that profusion of American salvage equipment get where it was most needed. The Normandie didn’t need it; that monument in New York harbor to the stupidity, ignorance, and cowardice which had caused her loss, even if raised again, could never take any part in this war. And Casablanca, already left in the backwash of war, a thousand miles away from the fighting front and next to useless now in the war effort, didn’t need it either.

  However, Casablanca was on the Atlantic and could have it, needed or not. But Bône, Bougie, Philippeville, Algiers, and Oran—all the ports that Eisenhower desperately needed now more than ever for a build-up to counter the Axis in a spring campaign—they couldn’t have it, even though American lives depended on those ports. They were in the Mediterranean, an area of British responsibility! Red tape, RED TAPE, RED TAPE! It was harder to fight than the enemy. I walked silently out of the warehouse.

  I had seen enough of Casablanca; too much, in fact, for my morale. It was December 30. I went directly from that warehouse to the army transport service to see when I could get a seat for a flight eastward to Oran. There proved to be nothing available till New Year’s morning; I put myself down for that. Till then, I might as well stay in my hotel room and recuperate from the shock I had just received. I couldn’t stand much any more. I had been about finished off when I came out of Massawa. The last month, at sea and ashore in the Mediterranean, hadn’t helped any in building me up again. Right after dinner, with the idea of spending all next day in bed also, I turned in. I was so far gone, I fell asleep immediately.

  A tremendous explosion which nearly knocked me out of bed awakened me. Everything was shaking violently; I expected next instant to feel the ceiling and the walls of the room come crashing down on me. I recognized that sound all right—a heavy bomb had hit the hotel! Instinctively I leaped through the darkness from the bed to the front wall, the heaviest one structurally and the wall most likely to remain standing when the rest collapsed; before I reached it, everything started rocking afresh from two more explosions.

  But nothing collapsed. I was right by the window; I looked out into the night. Almost under my nose so it seemed, though up a bit, was a huge four-engined Nazi bomber, zooming seaward low over the harbor!

  It had just released three bombs. I could see the dust and smoke still rising from the crater where the first had struck between me and the harbor; the nearest, I saw now, was not an actual hit on the hotel. It had landed very close by, hardly fifty feet short of that sandbagged parapet shielding the A.A. battery, peppering it with sand and shrapnel. And no doubt, wakening the men there as it had wakened me, for the guns of that battery were just beginning to fire at the tail of the big bomber streaking low across the harbor away from them.

  Hardly a few seconds more and the bombardier pulled his releases again, to let go three more bombs. But so narrow was the harbor that these three hit beyond the far side of the seaward breakwater, to explode there, damaging nothing.

  That
bombardier had thoroughly botched his job. He and his heavy bomber had caught Casablanca wholly unawares, all lighted up, a perfect target. There had been no alarm, no blackout, no smoke pots going to hide the ships, no sirens to alert the guns. He might have picked any target in the harbor or more than one and smacked it with his bombs as at target practice. But too nervous with his trigger finger, he had let go the first three bombs in an open area just short of the harbor where they did no damage, and then realizing his mistake, had quit releasing for a moment, only to make another mistake by misjudging the width of the harbor and holding his second stick of bombs till too late to hit anything with them either. All he had accomplished was thoroughly to alert a sleeping harbor; the air raid sirens were wailing now, but they weren’t needed. Every searchlight was coming on; every A.A. gun, ashore and afloat, was starting to fire at that swastika-decorated, four-engined plane which was now banking hard left to circle the harbor on the far side. Of course they didn’t hit him. It shortly disappeared into the darkness on the landward side.

  Now came the roar of more airplane engines, four-motored jobs like the first one. I stuck my head out the window and looked upward, but could see nothing. There was a solid cloud ceiling at about 3000 feet; these new planes were apparently above it and invisible. Of course, the harbor was also invisible to them. The guns from all around the harbor perimeter, plus all those on the ships before me, including the Jean Bart, were now firing at those hidden planes; radar-controlled, I suppose. That umbrella of bursting iron apparently discouraged the new attackers; none got over the harbor, no further bombs were dropped, the beat of engines died away, and in about twenty minutes the “All Clear” sounded.

  I dressed, put on my tin hat, and went up on the roof. No doubt there would be a renewal; it was only 3:30 A.M., and those planes, if not others also, would certainly come back. What the devil had happened, I wondered? Why no air raid warning before the bombers came in? Casablanca must have as good radar protection as Algiers; the radar watchers should have picked up those huge planes at least twenty minutes before their arrival and alerted everything to be ready for them.

  Had the Germans not bungled their attack, they could have flattened out all shipping in Casablanca, caught just as unawares as our fleet at Pearl Harbor. If all their heavy planes had come in at once under that cloud ceiling on the unalerted ships, the results would have been horrible; the ships would all have been flaming wrecks before they could begin to man their guns. But the Nazis, I suppose, had not believed we could be such dumbbells twice in succession. They had grossly underrated our capacity for stupidity and had sent in only one plane to scout the situation under the cloud ceiling before the main attack, and that plane had bungled its mission as badly as we our preparedness for attack.

  At 4 A.M., the second wave of bombers struck, some above the clouds, some below it. By then, of course, the defense was prepared to meet them. A literal fountain of fire covered the harbor; neither the planes above nor below the ceiling dared enter it. Particularly did it intrigue me to watch the Jean Bart, which not so long before had been flinging 15-inch shells at us, spouting tracers upward in vast profusion at the Nazis.

  Two planes below the ceiling, caught in the searchlights and plainly visible—whirling propellers, wide-spread wings, swastika markings—were so low and so huge it seemed one could hardly miss them with a rock. And yet a heavy volume of tracer fire concentrating on them as they circled the harbor, afraid to get over it, wasn’t hitting either of them—it was all falling short astern their tails.

  On its second circuit, the tracers did start to creep up on the tail of one of those planes flying about half a mile inland of the harbor. The crew of that Nazi plane must have come to the conclusion that our men were learning a little something; shortly the guns might catch up. At any rate, they decided to lighten up and get out; suddenly they let go all their bombs in one stick right where they were.

  Down came the shrieking bombs to land in the native quarter of Casablanca, explode with a terrific series of detonations, and light up the skies with an unearthly white fire which lasted some twenty minutes—incendiary bombs, evidently. The plane itself, suddenly lightened up, streaked away inland in the darkness, apparently unhit.

  That ended the second attack.

  About 5 A.M. came a third wave, but by now the bombers were wary. They stayed high up, dropped their bombs at random well clear of the harbor and even of the city, and did no damage. Shortly they disappeared also, the “All Clear” sounded again, and the first and last enemy air raid that Casablanca ever had, was finally over. I went below and turned in again.

  The raid changed my plans. Instead of spending December 31 in bed, I went out after breakfast to inspect the damage. I learned a lot.

  First I learned that it had been the blundering at Pearl Harbor all over again. A false sense of security had once more let the enemy in on an unsuspecting harbor full of ships. The army radar watch had picked up the first wave of four-engined bombers north of Port Lyautey, over ninety miles and at least twenty minutes flying time away. Without checking, without forcing an identification, and of course without giving any alarm, the officer in charge of the radar watch had assumed the planes were friendly and had done nothing at all save track them southward all the way to Casablanca. Those first three exploding bombs had been his first inkling that his conclusions were erroneous. That Casablanca harbor was not completely destroyed as a result was not his fault.

  I ran into General Patton and his aides out inspecting damage also. We met on opposite sides of the considerable crater in the roadway near the sandbagged A.A. battery. His aides were busy salvaging bomb fragments from the hole; Patton seemed absorbed in studying the blast and shrapnel effect on the impromptu parapet around that battery. Then he moved off inland to see what the bombs had done to the native quarter while I went in the opposite direction toward the shipping to see if any damage at all had resulted there.

  The raid turned out to be a draw—we had hit no planes, the planes had hit no ships. Except for some eighty inoffensive Arabs killed and many more wounded by that Nazi bomber jettisoning all its bombs over the native quarter, there was no damage discoverable on either side. But military circles were seething over our being caught unawares.

  As Georgie Patton put it at the time in a letter (later published) to his wife, in which naturally he had to be reticent,

  “About ten o’clock I had a meeting of all aviators and antiaircraft officers to discuss the scheme of defense and to make the necessary corrections. We were of the opinion that everything had gone satisfactorily, but that a few changes were desirable. These have now been made.”

  If I knew anything about Patton, I had little doubt that the “necessary corrections” and the “few desirable changes” exploded about the heads of the derelict radar watch officers and of the ineffective A.A. gunnery officers with a blast to which that of the first bomb was but a firecracker. That last sentence of his, “These have now been made,” was significant in its very brevity. Next to the dead Arabs, I believe those officers of his comprised the major casualties in the raid.

  Having taken care of his own men at ten o’clock that morning, Patton turned next to consideration of the Arabs. The man who had the reputation of never opening his mouth in public without putting his foot into it; of being “Old Blood and Guts,” an inhuman warrior; of having not the slightest glimmering of political sagacity, on this occasion at least rose to the heights with a bit of humanity that endeared him to every native in North Africa and a diplomatic stroke that Talleyrand himself might well have envied.

  The Arabs all over North Africa, whether in Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia, had been on the fence ever since D-day, neither helping us nor opposing us. On the face of things, our entrance into the picture could only result in riveting a tottering French rule more firmly on their countries; they were the vast majority. On the other hand, Hitler’s agents had been wooing them (as well as Egypt), promising a bright and independent Ara
b future should they assist him. What should they and their Emirs, Pachas, and Sultans do? They had as yet come to no conclusion about it. When Georgie Patton got through with them after that air raid, they promptly made up their minds.

  First, that day he personally visited the smashed Arab quarter to condole with those who had escaped and to mourn with the relatives of those who had died; then he went to the hospitals to cheer the wounded.

  But that was not all. Kind words alone heal no wounds, feed no orphans. Out of his own pocket, with no hope whatever of reimbursement from his government, he gave the sum of 100,000 francs for the immediate relief of the wounded and the families of the dead, that then, that very day, not weeks or months later, they might have aid, food, bandages, attendance.

  The more immediate needs of the distressed Arabs having been taken care of by him, he launched his master stroke. Who shall say that when necessity arose, George Patton was not as good a diplomat as the best America ever produced, Benjamin Franklin, for instance? He issued a ringing proclamation to the Arabs, till then wavering in indecision as to which side they should favor. It was brief, it was to the point, it was decisive. It took the form of an open letter to the Pacha of Casablanca which was broadcast over the Arab world: