Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History)

by Alexander M. Grace

  At the same time, Palmer knew that down the coast a pair of freighters flying the Polish flag would be easing into the approaches to the massive naval base at Toulon. To avoid any possible clash with the French fleet, no Allied warships were nearby, and no troops were carried, only dozens of anti-aircraft guns and tons of ammunition with which the French could beat off any intervention by the Luftwaffe in the morning. In every port, small or large, along the coast from San Tropez in the east to Perpignan in the west, small packets of transports would be pulling up to the quays, unloading a battalion or a regiment as well as mountains of supplies, making use of every foot of dock and every crane, both to speed the unloading and to avoid offering enemy air power any single target for their bombing runs. Full-scale amphibious landings were also taking place over the beaches at Frejus, hard up on the Italian-occupied zone near Cannes, and at Agde in the west, to seal off the coastal road into either end of the lodgment area, the quickest route of enemy intervention.

  Seconds ticked by, then hours, and, as the first glow of dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, Palmer could see a pair of transports, already unloaded, being guided away from the pier, making room for the next relay of ships. The Allies were back on the continent in force, with over 100,000 men in this first wave alone, and, so far, not a shot had been fired.

  “This just might work after all,” Palmer shouted over the growling of the waves among the rocks at his feet, clapping Martin roughly on the back.

  The Frenchman just nodded, hut Palmer could see that his cheeks were streaked with tears.

  0200 HOURS, 19 DECEMBER 1942

  OVER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

  RAF Flight Sergeant E. P. H. Peek gripped the controls of his twin-engined Mosquito fighter-bomber firmly as the aircraft was buffeted by strong gusts of air. He was flying low, low enough that the spray from the rough water in the Channel spattered against his windscreen, and hopefully low enough that German radar would not spot them. It seemed to him, however, that such drastic measures were hardly necessary, as the Germans certainly had other things to worry about tonight.

  Off to his right, Peek could see the dull red glow that lit up the undersides of the scattered clouds overhead. That would be the town of Cherbourg, its defenses, and probably much of the city itself, engulfed by flames from the waves of Wellington and Lancaster bombers that had plastered the port earlier that night. It had been the largest effort of the war for the RAF, with hundreds of planes aloft, some of them, like Peek’s, rushing across the Channel for a quick strike at a target near the coast, then back home to rearm and refuel for a second run. Even obsolescent Sterlings and Hudsons had been loaded up and coaxed into the air with every aircrew that could be scratched together, including training cadres and new fish fresh out of the schools. But, instead of massive thousand-plane raids that the Air Marshals had seemed to favor since Cologne earlier that year, there would be dozens of smaller raids, none of them deep into the German heartland, but all scattered across northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

  It was a gross violation of the principles of air warfare, as Peek had heard the officers talking about them. They should have been focusing on crippling the enemy’s capability to wage war by destroying factories, refineries, and by striking terror into the civilian population. Instead, the air force was being reduced to a form of flying artillery, striking tactical targets in direct support of a ground war.

  The only benefit that Peek could see was that he wasn’t facing the curtains of flak and swarms of Me-110 night fighters, since most of their targets tonight would be far short of the main defensive networks the Germans had set up to screen the borders of the Reich. But these had proven to be a minimal threat to single Mosquito bombers, painted matte black and equipped with the latest “oboe” navigational and blind bombing device. Unlike the thundering clouds of heavies that charged through the enemy flak and fighters, British by night and Americans by day, the Mosquitoes flew alone, and the Germans had yet to shoot one of them down. They were just too hard to find and presented too small a target for flak to have a high chance of hitting. Of course, a single light bomber could only cause so much damage, but, with precision aiming, they could certainly throw a spanner into the operations of a single factory, one that might not merit the attentions of several wings but one that should not be allowed to continue producing ball bearings, or machine fittings, or some other vital component of the Nazi war machine. There was also the nuisance value of demonstrating to the Germans that no city, no town, was safe from air attack. The residents of Hamburg or Berlin might have come to terms with living in a bullseye, but Peek and his colleagues had the job of making sure that no one in Germany could settle down to sleep without thinking about the quickest route to the air raid shelter first.

  While the large bomber formations used pathfinder squadrons that would mark their targets with incendiary bombs and “Christmas tree” flares, the “oboe” system could only be used to guide a single aircraft to its target. The idea was that a radio transponder in England would send out a signal. A circle would then be drawn around the transponder location that would pass through the location of the target. An operator at the “oboe” site could then guide an aircraft to the target, giving course corrections if the pilot drifted off the path. Since the path was only some ten meters wide, this allowed for very accurate navigation, which was, of course, supplemented by visual observation of landmarks such as rivers. The “Gee” system could guide unlimited numbers of aircraft and was used for large formations but was not nearly as accurate at this stage in the war. Since “oboe” could only handle one aircraft, it would be used for pathfinders, who would mark targets with incendiaries for the follow-on bombers, or for single plane missions such as Peek’s.

  On this kind of mission, all of the responsibility and pressure was, therefore, on the pilot. Peek was terrified every time he climbed into his Mosquito, but he had learned a trick as a child, a way to win the “staring game” of turning his face into a mask of ice. It would not do to let his co-pilot or anyone else know just how nervous he was during every moment of a mission. The ultimate compliment that one of them could earn was the disbelieving testimony of a colleague that he had ice water in his veins. Consequently, Peek merely grunted in reply, glad that his flight gloves did not permit anyone to see that his knuckles must have been bone white as he grasped the steering wheel with all his might.

  They passed the juncture of the Sarthe and the Loire, and Peek dropped down even lower, right into the riverbed. There would be no chance of missing the bridge at this height, although he might crash into it if he didn’t see it soon enough. They roared over a small skiff in midstream, and even in the ghostly moonlight Peek clearly saw a small figure dive into the bottom of the boat.

  “I’ll bet that shook the cobwebs out of his head,” Peek chuckled. “Teach him that the worm is not the only thing that the early bird is likely to get.”

  They followed the river in a gentle bend around to the northeast and, suddenly, there was the bridge, a tall double span with the squat forms of flak towers at either end. Peek jerked the steering column up and to the left, soaring over the treetops and angling to approach the bridge from the north. The only way to have a decent chance of hitting a bridge was to run along its length rather than perpendicular to it, so that bombs dropped a little short or long would still have a chance of damaging the structure. He banked hard again and lined up along the rail line that ran over the bridge, the rails dully gleaming in the moonlight, and armed his bombs for release.

  The bridge was easy enough to find now, since the garrison had obviously heard the approach of the Mosquito, and now golden fingers probed the sky as searchlights swept back and forth seeking a target. Peek had had to gain altitude so that his aircraft would not be shredded by the blast of his own bombs, and this would give the enemy a chance to pick him out against the sky. But there were only seconds to go now. Peek pressed his forehead against the rim of the bombsight and turned control
of the aircraft over to his copilot, watching the ground rush by below as streams of yellow and red tracers crisscrossed all about them. Then he released the toggle switch, and the plane bucked upward, suddenly relieved of four thousand pounds of dead weight, and, only seconds afterward, it bucked again as the shock wave of the explosion reached them.

  Peek should have immediately dropped back down to treetop level to effect his escape, but he couldn’t resist one last high bank over the river to study his handiwork. There would be too many targets hit tonight for his to rate a visit by a Spitfire equipped with reconnaissance cameras, and he needed to know if a second raid would be required. He could see a fire raging at one end of the bridge, possibly where a bomb had caught a vehicle in the act of crossing, but the most important result was that one span of the bridge could be clearly seen slumped into the churning water of the river. No enemy troops would be using this bridge for some time. Peek smiled even as a burst of flak peppered the side of his fuselage, and smoke began to pour from his starboard engine.

  He grimly grasped the controls once more and began the long process of nursing his injured ship back home.

  0230 HOURS, 19 DECEMBER 1942

  CORNWALL, ENGLAND

  Colonel William C. Bentley, Jr., commander of the 2nd Battalion, 509th Airborne Infantry was jerked out of an exhausted sleep as the engines of the C-47 roared to life, and the heavily laden machine began to lumber over the airstrip in Cornwall, picking up speed. The rush of cold air through the open doorway was a relief after hours of sitting, crammed into the cargo bay of the plane along with twenty-two other paratroopers, waiting for word that the operation was “go.” The plane had been filled with the stench of sweat, aviation fuel, and the results of at least one of the men having a nervous stomach, so even the frigid draft was welcome. He craned his neck and could see out the door, row upon row of C-47s and C-46s, everything that could be made airworthy, as they taxied into position for take-off.

  This would not be the kind of invasion that Bentley had envisioned, or for which his troops had been training for months. They would not be dropping into France after all but would land and disembark on supposedly friendly airfields, like a batch of damned passengers, Bentley thought disgustedly. While this meant that the paratroopers would not have to be burdened with the weight of two chutes each, this was small comfort to Bentley, since the extra cargo capacity was made up now with bundles of ammunition, demolitions equipment, and fuel cans, all of which would explode if given half a chance. And heading out across the length of occupied France in an unarmed plane loaded with pyrotechnics and no chute was distinctly not what Bentley had signed up for.

  He knew that the Luftwaffe would, theoretically, be kept busy by the largest air operation in history, with hundreds of bombers and fighters fanning out to hit airfields and troop concentration areas all across Northern France and to blast a path through Nazi anti-aircraft positions all the way through to the target. Dozens of other fighters would be accompanying the troopships to take up position at new fields inside France, but it still all seemed like a lot of trouble to go to just to place himself and his men right in the path of the expected onrushing tide of the Wehrmacht. It would be their job to buy time, alongside the ragtag French “Armistice Army,” for the ground pounders to get ashore and establish a beachhead in the south.

  The plan was to land the hastily organized American 82nd Airborne Division, to which the 509th was attached, and the British 1st Airborne in a rough ring comprising about half of unoccupied France. The two divisions were reinforced with engineer, anti tank, and light artillery units to a total of well over 20,000 men, the largest airborne operation in history, but their role would be in a multitude of isolated, individual actions, scattered over hundreds of miles. The paratroopers would help the French set up roadblocks in the rough terrain shielding the Mediterranean coast and to drop dozens of bridges over the rivers which crisscrossed the area in order to slow up the advance of German troops from the north and the Italians from the east. The British would be centered in the gap between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central around Carcassonne, blocking off access to the lodgment area from the west, and the 82nd would be concentrated in the narrowest point in the broad Rhone River valley near Valence-sur Rhone, the most obvious avenue of invasion for the Germans coming from the north, with detachments positioned at key road junctions throughout the Massif Central and the French Alps. Between the 82nd and the French, it was hoped that they could put up enough resistance to force the Germans to halt and deploy and maybe make an assault river crossing or two, which would, ideally take enough time for advanced elements of the 2nd Armored Division to race north from Marseille and back them up.

  Unfortunately, the French Army had virtually no armor or artillery, the very things that airborne forces also traditionally lacked, and the very things most necessary to give the defenders some chance in a stand-up fight against the German panzers. When the plan had first been laid out to the paratroopers some weeks ago, this situation had prompted Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, the newly-promoted commander of the 82nd, to comment that it appeared the paratroopers were not just being asked to die, but to take long enough doing it that a line could be established behind them.

  The plan also called for the paratroopers to fall back if necessary in the face of overwhelming enemy pressure. The problem with this, Bentley knew, was that, while airborne forces possessed great strategic mobility, being able to deploy from England to the center of France in a matter of hours, once they were on the ground, they reverted to their role as the straightest of “straight leg” infantry, with virtually no motorized support. Although much of their initial line from Le Puy-en-Velay in the west to Grenoble in the east, some ninety miles or more, was protected by the fast-moving Isere River, if the German panzers ever broke through at any point, the paras would never be able to move quickly enough to avoid being surrounded and cut off.

  These thoughts, as well as memories of home, crowded Bentley’s mind during the bumpy flight across the Channel. The aircraft were flying low in an effort to avoid detection by enemy radar, and, between dozes, he thought he could see the occasional lights of a town passing by in the darkness below. He squinted at his watch and estimated that, if they stuck to their flight path, they should be landing just before dawn. There would be just time enough to unload and get the precious C-47s refueled and aloft again, and hopefully well on their way home before the Luftwaffe got wind of what was afoot and chewed them to pieces on the ground. Ideally, those aircraft that survived the return flight would then be available to ferry in reinforcements and supplies, although Bentley had little hope of such flights getting through a second time. They would be lucky if they made this one trip, having taken the Germans by surprise, but it would be too much to ask to expect a repeat performance. No, if there were going to be salvation for the airborne, it would be coming up the road from the south.

  The C-47 heeled over in a stomach-wrenching turn as the pilot lined up on the landing strip, and Bentley gripped his M-1 carbine tightly. He had heard from the pilot that there had been reports over the radio that a flight of British troop carriers had run into fighters near Bordeaux and had lost some planes, but their own group had arrived on target unscathed. It now only remained to land on a grass strip, lit only by the headlamps of trucks lined up on either side, and Bentley could see a number of his men nervously crossing themselves or cupping folded hands to their chins in prayer. There was a risk in any night landing, especially with no control tower for guidance, no one to keep the dozens of arriving planes from plowing into each other, but even so, they had it lucky. Some of the men and most of the heavier equipment, the 75mm howitzers and anti-tank guns, would be landing in the large Waco or Horsa gliders towed by C-47s. Any irregularity in the ground could send one of the big planes cartwheeling end over end, smashing everyone and everything aboard in seconds.

  Then, with a sudden bounce, they were down. Bentley levered himself upright in the doorway, wat
ching the grassy field pass by more and more slowly. He leaned out the door and could see the shape of a small car bouncing along ahead of the plane, a red filtered flashlight waving wildly out one window as it guided the pilot to a parking area at the edge of a grove of trees.

  As soon as the aircraft pirouetted to a stop, Bentley was out the door, banging on the side of the fuselage with his rifle butt and shouting for the men to grab their gear and head out. They stumbled off under impossibly heavy loads of supplies and ammunition to where each company commander was rallying his men. Considering the chaos around him now, with the roar of airplane engines layered over that of the shouts of hundreds of men and the rattle of their equipment, the semi-darkness, and the unfamiliar terrain, Bentley could only imagine the confusion a night drop into hostile territory might bring, platoons scattered over miles of ground, many of them injured by the fall or tangled in trees, with enemy troops hunting them down all the while. Perhaps he could wait to experience that sort of thrill after all. He took one final glance in the cargo bay of the aircraft, then gave the “thumbs up” signal to the crew chief. The man smiled broadly and reached out to shake Bentley’s hand even as the co-pilot tossed down the hose of a tanker from the wing, where they had hand-pumped a few precious gallons of fuel for the return flight, and the plane began to taxi for take-off. Bentley hustled to get out of the way of the tail and then jogged over to a well-lit cluster of farmhouses where the division command post was being set up.

  There were already half a dozen battalion commanders gathered around a long table set up in a bam. The table was covered with maps, and General Ridgway, looking too young for Bentley’s peace of mind, stood at one end in a hushed conversation with his deputy commander and what appeared to be a senior French officer. Bentley had heard voices shouting in something other than English out on the airfield, and he had assumed that the trucks out there had been driven by Frenchmen, but this was his first clear sight of their new allies. The officer looked to be in his early fifties and wore a neatly trimmed moustache, one of those stiff, round kepi hats, and a dress uniform bedecked with medals. The Americans looked like a mob of janitors in their baggy green fatigues by comparison, and they hadn’t even been in combat yet.