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

by Alexander M. Grace

  0630 HOURS, 19 DECEMBER 1942

  AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

  Major Creighton W. Abrams, executive officer of Combat Command A of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, sat atop the turret of his MS Stuart light tank, staring back along the tight column of tanks, half-tracks, and tank destroyers which filled the narrow street leading to the Route Nationale 7, the road to Avignon. He slapped his palm nervously against the armor of the turret and swore under his breath, but it was still difficult not to enjoy the moment.

  The street was clogged with throngs of cheering men, women, and children, hurling bouquets of flowers at the American column that inched its way painfully forward. Girls leaped into open jeeps or scrambled up the sides of the tanks to hug and kiss the delighted GIs, while old men with rows of dusty medals pinned to their coats stood to rigid attention along the curb, saluting as tears streamed down their faces. Important men in dark suits with broad tricolor sashes appeared, Abrams assumed them to be local officials, and they kept trying to step into the roadway to stop the column and give speeches, but the vehicles kept rolling and they had to scurry aside to avoid becoming roadkill.

  With men and equipment pouring off the ships in the harbor, the key thing was to get as far away from the port as quickly as possible to avoid the inevitable German air attacks that would be coming soon. The flyboys would obviously do their best to hold them off, but the Allies were jumping right into the Luftwaffe’s backyard, and only a handful of aircraft could operate from the carriers, and it would be some time before the French air bases could be up and running to receive the fighter squadrons that would be stationed there.

  It was also vital to drive as far inland as possible as quickly as possible. Abrams could imagine the carnage if they had had to fight their way ashore and then struggle for every yard of progress against a determined and experienced enemy. His own men were, of course, totally green, and it remained to be seen how well they would do in their baptism of fire. They key thing was that that baptism should happen as far from the coast as possible, to give them room to maneuver, even to retreat, if necessary. Every second that they could advance without enemy resistance saved American lives, and Abrams would have rather have been rolling at 30 miles per hour instead of walking pace.

  Abrams had done his job, stripping his unit down to the bare essentials, just the fighting vehicles, each one crammed with as much fuel and ammo as it could carry, and he had drilled his men in the order of march until they dropped from exhaustion. He had even wangled a section of heavy wrecker trucks to haul out mired vehicles and had the drivers trained in pushing disabled vehicles out of the roadway, anything to keep up the pace. What they had never counted on was the unbridled enthusiasm of the “liberated” population.

  At every village and crossroads from the outskirts of Marseille to Aix, barely fifty miles, the column had been mobbed by delirious Frenchmen and women. Abrams had been obliged to pass orders back along the line of vehicles for officers to keep an eagle eye out and to collect the bottles of wine that the people were forcing on his men at every turn. There was some grumbling at this, the assumption of the troops being that the wine was being reserved for the brass, but the last thing Abrams wanted to do was face the Wehrmacht at the head of a bunch of raw, inexperienced, and drunk troopers. There would be time for celebration later.

  Abrams had been on the radio with CCA’s commander, Lt. Col. W.M. Stokes, who had in tum been on with division command and all the way up to Patton, and they were supposedly talking with the French authorities. Now that the sun was fully up, there didn’t seem much choice but to find a wooded area, possibly just north of Aix, in which the column could take cover until a cordon of police could be established along the route of march to prevent this sort of thing. Abrams knew that a stationary column would be easy meat for enemy Stukas, and, if they were surrounded by hundreds of dancing civilians, well, he didn’t even want to picture such a thing.

  The good news thus far was that there was no word that the Germans had crossed into Vichy territory yet, and, from his own experience at trying to get unalerted armored units onto the road, it would be some time before they could load up, fuel up, and get moving. The paratroopers would just have to hold on a little longer.

  0700 HOURS, 19 DECEMBER 1942

  VICHY, FRANCE

  The town of Vichy had never been designed to be the capital of a nation, but at least it was designed for handling an influx of as much as eight times its permanent population of 25,000. Hotels abounded to house the thousands of people who came annually to “take the cure” at the town’s famous thermal springs. Still, having the Ministry of Interior housed in the baccarat hall of the Grand Casino did take away something of a government’s dignity.

  As bustling a place as Vichy had become since its conversion to the capital of the rump of “unoccupied” France in 1940, its streets clogged with dark-suited government bureaucrats and diplomats along with generals and admirals with their braid-trimmed uniforms, it was apparent this morning that something special was taking place. A pair of black police vans inched their way across the Pont de Bellerive over the Allier River toward the center of town. Most of the traffic was trying to head south, out of the city, but every intersection was jammed with cars impatient to make it through from all directions. Finally, a policeman at the north end of the bridge, recognizing the vehicles and uniforms of the Garde Mobile, managed to halt the stream of cars and trucks long enough for the two vans to pass through. The officer in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle threw him a snappy salute as they rolled past.

  The semi-circular drive in front of the Hotel du Pare, which Marshal Petain had made his residence, was filled with black Citroen sedans and army trucks. A steady stream of men hustled through the tall oak doors of the hotel carrying bundles and boxes, almost like the last day of summer vacation, except that these boxes were filled with government documents and even packets of currency belonging to the treasury. The two police vans rolled slowly past the building, attracting little attention from the handful of soldiers lounging near the entrance, their rifles slung over their shoulders.

  Colonel Otto Skorzeny tugged at the rough collar of his Garde Mobile uniform and anxiously examined the cars parked closest to the building. Despite the chill outside and even a dusting of snow on the clipped hedges of the hotel grounds, it was uncomfortably warm inside the van, even though there was no heater. The combined body temperatures of eight sturdy commandos of the Brandenburger Regiment, coupled with having to wear French greatcoats on top of their camouflaged German uniforms had all of the men sweating, even apart from the tension of the moment.

  Skorzeny and his assault team had landed by glider in the small hours of the morning in a field near the town of Cusset, just east of Vichy. They had quietly gathered and seized the local Garde Mobile barracks, leaving the handful of sleepy policemen bound and gagged in the basement and equipping themselves with stolen uniforms and the two vans. This had all been foreseen as part of Operation RAVEN, and Skorzeny himself had reconnoitered the various operational sites and the routes between them in the preceding weeks.

  Canaris, the author of the plan, had determined that, in the event of open hostilities with the Vichy government, it was of the utmost importance to gain control of the person of Marshal Petain. Loyalty to the hero of Verdun was the mortar that held the tenuous structure of the truncated French state together. Any movement that could claim the endorsement of Petain would have the support of the vast majority of the French people, while any group that he opposed would have an uphill fight from the outset. With Petain safely in German hands, it would be possible to issue all manner of policy statements and directives in his name, and there might still be a chance to swing Vichy, with its sizable navy and its considerable army in North Africa, actively into the Axis camp.

  Even without serious resistance by the undermanned and poorly equipped French “Armistice Army,” it would take a brigade of bicycle infantry stationed at Tours a day or tw
o to cover the nearly two hundred miles to Vichy. And if the troops of the 13th Military District in which Vichy was located, some 8,000 men, did put up a fight, that one German brigade might not be enough. Petain would have ample warning and time to move south, further into the zone or possibly to fly out to North Africa, despite his reluctance to do just that in 1940 or at any time since. The old man had always said that, “One cannot defend France by abandoning her,” but a new German invasion might just change his mind. And an invasion there would be if a deal had, in fact, been worked out between the Allies and Vichy, as the previous night’s activities seemed to indicate. What Skorzeny saw at the Hotel du Pare only confirmed Canaris’ suspicions. This was clearly a government on the move, and the commandos would have to act quickly.

  Skorzeny was an Austrian member of the SS who had seen action on the Eastern Front. Only a few months before he had been assigned to select and train a group of elite fighting men capable of conducting missions deep into enemy territory. He had taken his troops from the Brandenburger Regiment, a special unit formed to conduct unusual operations. This unit, dressed as Poles, had staged mock attacks on German outposts to provide a pretext for the German invasion of Poland in 1939. They had slipped ahead of the armored spearheads in the Low Countries in 1940 and in Russia in 1941, often disguised as civilians or soldiers of other nationalities, to capture bridges and other key targets intact. Now, under Skorzeny’s tutelage, the men he had selected had become experts at intelligence collection and sabotage, and this would be their first major mission as a unit.

  The two vans pulled up to the loading dock at the rear of the hotel near the kitchens, and fourteen “policemen” got out. A lone youthful soldier of the 8th Dragoons was standing guard near the door, stamping his feet in the cold. One of Skorzeny’s men was an Alsatian who spoke native French, and Skorzeny had grandly given him the rank of commissaire for the occasion. The Alsatian strode purposefully toward the door, but the soldier nervously un-slung his rifle and blocked the path.

  “Please, sir,” the soldier began. “Entrance here is forbidden. You will have to go around to the front.”

  “Have you seen the front, son?” the Alsatian growled. “Rats leaving the sinking ship. We’re here to provide a final security check and lock up the building after the Marshal leaves. Now get out of the way and let us get on with it. I want to be on the road to Avignon myself before the Germans get here.”

  “I have my orders, sir,” the soldier insisted, but Skorzeny pushed past the Alsatian, and deftly slid a bayonet into the sentry’s throat, jerking it to one side and sending a spurt of red down the front of the guard’s khaki greatcoat. They leaned the still twitching corpse in the comer of the loading dock and rushed into the building, leaving two of their men to guard the vehicles. In half an hour a seaplane would touch down on the Allier River barely two hundred meters from the hotel to pick them all up. The raiders would make better time in their vans, but, if necessary, they would abandon them and try to make the rendezvous on foot, using the Marshal as a human shield.

  They bulled past the confused kitchen staff and up the service stairs, each man now openly carrying his Schmeiser submachinegun and stripping off his coat. By the time they had reached the second floor where Petain had his offices, they were a squad of German paras again.

  Shouts could be heard now in the crowded lobby of the hotel and the sound of boots pounding up the stairs, but a pair of Skorzeny’s men positioned themselves at the top of the broad staircase and sent half a dozen dragoons and staff officers tumbling back down with a long burst of 9mm fire. Skorzeny and the Alsatian kicked open the double doors to the Marshal’s inner office, and a young French lieutenant got off a shot with his revolver from behind a littered desk, catching the Alsatian in the temple. The next man through cut the lieutenant down, and in an instant Skorzeny was poised next to the Marshal’s desk, his weapon pointed at the old man’s chest.

  Petain looked even older than Skorzeny had expected, his moustache and the fringe of hair around his bald pate pure white, his skin almost translucent in the soft light streaming in through the tall windows. In his hand he held a large cavalry pistol, the hammer cocked, leveled at Skorzeny, the barrel as steady as a rock. Other raiders darted into the room and took up positions at the windows.

  “You are my prisoner, sir,” Skorzeny announced in accented French, panting heavily after his exertions. “You are to accompany me to meet with the Führer in Germany. I assure you that you will be well treated in accordance with your rank and position.”

  “Haven’t you got enough French hostages?” the old man asked calmly.

  “You are not a hostage, sir,” Skorzeny retorted, as Canaris had instructed him. “It is only that the Führer has urgent matters to discuss with you. We have information that the Gaullists plan to assassinate you, and that a coup d’etat is underway against your regime at this very moment. The German Army is on the way to support you, but we must make certain of the security of your person first.”

  “I have served France all my life,” Petain said in a voice as flat as if he were ordering a cup of coffee. “I imagine that I can do the one last thing that she requires of me.”

  “No!” Skorzeny screamed, lunging across the broad mahogany desk.

  But the thunderous report of the pistol had already filled the room, drowning out the rattle of gunfire coming from out in the hall as more French soldiers and officers charged up the stairs, ignoring the heavy casualties. The Marshal was almost thrown out of his chair by the force of the blast, and half of his head had instantly disappeared. Skorzeny snatched the pistol from the rigid fingers and hurled it against the wall in frustration.

  “Shit!” he roared, and he jerked a thumb toward the window. “We have to go now!”

  There was a tiled roof covering a long terrace which ran under the window, and Skorzeny’s men leapt from the second floor window, hit this roof to break their fall, and tumbled into the shrubbery below. Skorzeny was the last to go, pitching a stick grenade out into the hall before he too jumped.

  There were only twelve of them left now after the fighting in the hotel, and Skorzeny could see the shapes of men dodging from cover to cover in the park-like grounds behind the hotel. The seaplane should be coming in any moment, looking for the flare Skorzeny must fire to signal the pick-up. They had counted on having Petain as a hostage to discourage the French from firing on the plane as it maneuvered for take-off, but it could still work. There was no time to waste.

  “They’ve killed the Marshal!” a hoarse voice was screaming from up on the second floor, and this was followed by a flurry of firing which sent a cloud of splinters flying from the trunk of the pine behind which Skorzeny was taking cover.

  “To the river!” Skorzeny rasped to his men. “We’ll take the plane if it can come in. If not, we can get hold of a boat, the current will take us north to the occupied zone even if we can’t get the motor started.”

  “What about the vans?” someone asked.

  “You saw the logjam on the roads. We’ll never get out of town that way. This is our only chance.”

  A mental image of the map of Vichy that he had studied for hours leapt into Skorzeny’s head. If they could scale the wall at the bottom of the hotel gardens, they would find themselves on a major thoroughfare that led directly down to the Yacht Club on the river. He signaled to one of his men, and they began dashing from cover to cover, firing economical bursts at the soldiers who were pressing them from three sides now. Fortunately, the French were all armed with old carbines or revolvers, all single-shot, which made it hard to hit a moving target. Even so, only nine men landed on the far side of the garden wall and raced down the street toward the river.

  A traffic policeman at the first intersection tried to draw his pistol, but one of the raiders cut him down, firing from the hip. They ran in a crouch, weaving between the cars and trucks that swerved drunkenly to avoid them. More soldiers were coming from the hotel, firing wildly after them. A man
running next to Skorzeny gasped and threw up his hands, tumbling head over heels and coming to rest against the mailbox on the curb. Skorzeny paused to help him, but the man’s chest was a mass of red, and his eyes were already glazed over.

  They reached the river’s edge and could see the masts of the boats in the yacht club barely a hundred yards farther on. Skorzeny fumbled with the flap on his holster and drew his flare pistol, firing the red flare skyward and quickly breaking the weapon open to reload.

  But it proved unnecessary. With a roar, the seaplane swooped overhead and angled to touch down on the near edge of the river. Skorzeny and his men tossed aside their weapons and tore off their uniform jackets as they raced to dive into the water. It would be cold, Skorzeny thought. Even in summer a stream coming from the Alps was like ice, but they had no old man to load aboard now, and every second they could buy would improve their chances of escape.

  The pilot eased back on his throttle but kept his propellers turning as he guided the plane closer to the shore. Suddenly, however, sparks and bits of fuselage began to fly off the craft as machinegun rounds tore into it from one end to the other. The pilot increased power and tried to position to take off, but the stream of tracers found one of the engines and black smoke now began to billow from under the cowling. Skorzeny turned to see an old armored car stopped along the quay, pouring fire into the plane from its turret gun. In another moment, the plane was engulfed in a ball of flame and broke up into pieces that. were swept away with the current.

  Skorzeny’s men turned to look at him, their expressions asking for orders, but there was nothing to do. The armored car was sitting in front of the entrance to the yacht club, and a skirmish line of dragoons was moving down the street to where the Germans were helplessly clustered. Skorzeny shrugged his shoulders and slowly raised his arms over his head, and his men followed his example.