Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  The point chosen near Fedala on the coast just north of Casablanca, was selected because it had good sandy beaches to either side of the town. The small Mellah River wound its way through tidal flats and marshy ground to the sea, just south of the town itself, and its small harbor was protected by a stony headland, Cap de Fedala, and an 800 foot jetty. This had been the place 3rd Division landed in Fedorov’s history, and it was happening again here, with uncanny similarity, a piece of the shattered mirror large enough to reflect the events he might have known.

  Amazingly, the French had very little in the way of defenses there. They had reacted to the landings at Safi, and Rabat, also historical assault locations, and then to Patton’s little innovation in landing at El Jadida. That is where most of the city’s defenders had concentrated, as well as all the arriving German 327th Infantry Division. Yet none of these assaults were the main attack. That was to be delivered by the 3rd Infantry Division, dubbed Force Brushwood under Major General Jonathan W. Anderson.

  This division was supposed to land on day 1 of the plan, but shortages of shipping delayed its departure, as well as a cautious re-direction in the Atlantic to avoid suspected U-boats. So it was coming in 48 hours after the battle had begun, the hammer that was supposed to smash French resistance and take Casablanca. It would start with good fire support from the cruisers Brooklyn and Augusta, the latter being Patton’s flagship. They would be ready to take on three French shore batteries, a pair of 76mm guns on Cap de Fedala, four more 100mm guns at the base of that headland, and a more powerful bastion known as Batterie du Pont farther north on a rocky headland near the village of Cherqui. They were all protected by MG pits, a few flak guns, and there were still a few French destroyers in Casablanca that could always make a run at those landings. But it would not be the French resistance that would complicate those landings, but the sea and shoreline itself.

  The British had long ago warned the Americans about the heavy surf on the Atlantic coast. If the troops could all land on the designated sandy beaches, U.S. planners deemed the risk acceptable. As it was, the nightmares experienced by Harmon when he rehearsed his landings all began to play out for General Anderson and his 3rd Division. The landing boats were slow to load, the men lumbering down the nets, all heavily laden with heavy packs and other equipment. The boats, when they finally started to make the three mile run into the shore, would invariably drift off their assigned approach path. Many landed on the wrong beaches, with boats carrying command elements seeing men of a different battalion landing on their beach. Those were the lucky ones. Others drifted as far off as 10,000 yards from their designated landing point.

  The coastline these wayward boats encountered was not sandy beaches. There were rocky outcrops, reefs, marshy tidal flats, all conspiring to lure the landing boats in, which seemed all too eager to get to any spit of land they could see in the dark. The rough seas then tossed many of the boats onto those rocks, capsized others, and many men sank in the high surf with their heavy packs, and drowned. These casualties were not heavy, but the loss in landing boats was. One battalion had come in on 37 boats, and only two survived intact, making it back to the transports. All the rest had been capsized, run aground on rocks, with others stuck in the mud flats, unable to restart their engines.

  The 2nd wave of the attack was waiting for those boats to return, and, with that kind of attrition, they found they had only 60% of the boats required. So the whole landing schedule went to hell in the surf.

  As the first wave came ashore, the men struggling to realize whether they were on the correct beach or not, the French turned on searchlights and started firing machine guns, and it is remarkable that men under fire soon realize there’s a war on, and start to react. Officers shouted orders, commandeered any men at hand, and began organizing assault teams. Their mission was to get to the base of that headland and get after those shore batteries before daylight, with only 45 minutes of darkness remaining.

  The fear of those guns was over inflated. The planners had trained a special recon team, all dressed in jet black uniforms, and they were to come in on rubber rafts and hit the guns in the dark. Yet the landings were so jumbled up, that they didn’t arrive until twenty minutes after dawn. Now they would have to make the attack on the well lit, sun swept beach, against those French rifle pits and flak guns, and none of them had trained for that. The officer in charge shrugged, cursed his bad luck, and instead of changing the plan and organizing an attack, he simply led his men back into their rafts and they all paddled out to sea to their transport.

  That was what green, untested men might do in first combat. It was men learning how to be soldiers, almost to a man, forming companies and learning how to become a battalion, forming battalions and learning how to become regiments, a division, an army. This was the first dawn of the long crusade ahead of them. If Patton had been there, he might had sent them the other way, but he was now on a boat himself, leaving the stalemated bridgehead south of Casablanca and heading back to Augusta.

  So while some men failed when their plans were upset by these ill timed landings, others took actions they were never meant to perform. Small groups of men made attacks on those French guns, enough to silence them until the navy could weigh in with support fire. Some were taken by that first wave, and just after dawn, the American cruisers put accurate fire on the enemy occupied headlands, silencing the guns there almost before they had a chance to open fire. One battery stopped firing at the Americans but would not surrender. It took direct mortar fire and rounds from two Pak 75mm howitzers to compel them to end their resistance.

  The cruiser duel with the shore batteries did cause one other mishap. When Patton arrived at Augusta, piped aboard by sailors eager to impress, the cruiser made a point of blasting away with its main guns at enemy AA gun positions and those shore batteries. So much so that a battalion ashore had to call on the radio and ask them to stop. The concussion from one salvo blew a boat containing most of the General’s personal belongings right off the deck, and it fell into the sea in pieces.

  Patton took it in stride, for moments before the men had fetched his ivory handled pistols in a box from that very launch, because he wanted to show them to the ship’s Captain. They were the one thing he salvaged from the incident, that and the honor of being the first American General to land on two assault beaches in the same operation. He was going ashore to personally sort out the mess at Fedala, and get the men moving on their objectives. Before noon he had done exactly that, and the French would soon find a tide of khaki and olive green coming down on Casablanca from the north.

  “Get your men inland,” he shouted at any Captain or Colonel he came upon. “ You! Line up your battalion right here. The rest fall in on your left, and be goddamned quick about it! We’re going to roll on in and take that city like a tidal wave. Be ready to attack by 14:00.”

  Units of the 30th Regiment had landed farthest north, and they would soon push up towards Rabat to try and shake loose things there. Colonel Greer’s 18th RLT had been bogged down in Rabat itself, his men fighting house to house against the 2nd French Zuave Regiment. The 30th RLT from the 3rd Division was a most welcome sight when it came up from the south to take the pressure off and flank that enemy defense. The other two Regiments, 15th and 7th, had turned south for Casablanca.

  Off to the south, the real trouble spot was at Safi, and it was getting worse by the hour. The Marrakesh Division had finally reached the scene in force, its commander, Major General Henri Martin eager for a fight. He set up headquarters in a small village southeast of Safi along the rail line, and gathered field reports, eventually determining he was looking at a regimental sized landing force. The Americans had the town, port, and airfield, but the fortified outpost just south of Safi, El Houdi, was still in French hands.

  The Germans had moved swiftly to abandon their hard won prize in the Canary Islands. The six transports that Raeder had sent three days earlier were just in time to receive Kubler’s tough mountain regimen
t. Two others, and several Siebel ferries, called on Fuerteventura and their decks and holds were soon crammed with troops and equipment from the 22nd Air Landing Division. Meindel’s Sturm Regiment would go by air, but not without losses when Allied fighter patrols found some of those planes. The order had come on the first day of the invasion. Three days later, the bulk of the German fighting troops on those islands had successfully evacuated.

  Force C had learned of the move too late to intervene that first night when Kubler slipped away. On the second night they were ready to interdict any further withdrawal, but no enemy shipping was found. The German fighter cover was thick, still more than a match for the British in this sector, as the weight of most German air power had been concentrated in the south. Thus the bulk of all those airlifts were successful, and Goring remarked that it could have been much worse if the Allies had concentrated more carrier based fighters here. Instead, they had opted to cover their all important landing operation, believing the small lodgment at Safi was enough of a delaying force to prevent any quick German movement north.

  Kubler took his 98th Mountain Regiment into two small ports, Essaouria, about 110 kilometers south of Safi, and Agadair, another 130 kilometers south. The airlifts first shuttled to all the southern airfields the Germans had used, Tan Tan, El Aioun, Tarfaya, Sidi Ifini, and Goulimine. From there they refueled, and took on anything else in the way of men and field equipment that they could cram onto the planes. All trucks and other transport took the rest and started up the long dusty roads of Morocco. In the dark of the night, with confusion, units scattered and mixed, officers sometimes working at cross purposes, it was difficult for the men to have any sense that this was a redeployment, as the order had read. In their hearts, they knew it for what it was, a retreat, and one with an edge of desperation that drove it on through the cold desert tracks.

  Their grand adventure was over, but 48 hours later, as the columns and planes snaked and flew north, they would slowly muster south of Safi, where Kesselring had placed a heavy finger on the map, demanding that place be retaken at once.

  So it was that the 39th RLT of the 9th Division would soon be in a fight for its life. General Harmon’s Blackstone Force had landed there in the old history, but he was farther north in that bridgehead south of Casablanca. So the 39th came in here, a unit that would have landed at Algiers in the original plan. They were doing exactly what they had been sent there to do, but it soon dawned on the men that they had, in fact, been the one bone the Allies would throw to the wolves in this affair.

  Their position was already surrounded on all sides, though the route north of the airfield at Sidi Bou Zid was still only lightly defended. Colonel Caffey got on the radio and reported his situation—objectives taken, but under growing enemy pressure. The Marrakech Division was just the leading edge of that storm. By the 20th of September, D+5 since the Lisbon landings, and D+3 since Caffey and his men had fought their way ashore and into Safi, the first column of German troops were starting to arrive from those two ports to the south.

  The lead unit was the 22nd Recon Battalion of the Luftland Division, and Student with the HQ of 7th Flieger Korps. It had two companies of motorcycle troops, and some light vehicles that had come over on a Siebel Ferry forming a third company of armored cars. Behind that came three battalions of Falschirmjaegers, and then Kubler’s regiment, strung out in widely spaced groups, some 60 kilometers to the south. General Martin would be very glad to introduce them to one Major Griggs of the 3rd Battalion Landing Team, 39th Regiment. The American officer had taken to a jeep early on the afternoon of the first day, and slipped south along the course of a small river to scout out the terrain. Now he was a prisoner, and apparently talking freely, though everything he was saying was a load of guff.

  “Just you wait,” he told the General. “We’ve come with half a million men up north, and 500 planes—scores of fighting ships as well. You haven’t seen anything yet.” The fact was that they had come with 112,000 men, and about 160 carrier based planes. His brag on the Navy was closer to the truth.

  Kurt Student had been on the islands to oversee that last offensive into Tenerife and La Palma. Now he was leading this retreat, and none too happy about it. He came tramping in with Meindel, tired, dirty, his uniform covered with road dust. It was not what he thought he would be doing that day, and the first thing on his mind now was not Major Griggs, but information.

  “Mon General,” said Martin, squinting at Student like he was a vagabond or desert tramp. “A long night’s march I see. You will be pleased to know I have an American officer here.”

  “Good for you,” said Student in French. “You arrived here by rail?”

  “Some units. Others made the march by road.”

  “Are those trains still here?”

  “For the most part. In fact, one of your battalions apparently air lifted to Marrakech, and it has just brought in another small train, arriving only hours ago.”

  “Good. Will you take Safi?”

  The General smiled, thinking that a certainty now with all these German troops at hand. “Of course,” he said, “first thing in the morning. You will want dinner, and a little rest, Yes?”

  “That I will,” said Student. “And then I will want those trains, all of them. We are going back to Marrakech, and from there north to Fez.”

  General Martin raised an eyebrow at that. “You will not fight here, at Safi?”

  “You take it. First thing in the morning. What we want here is the rail line to get up north, and thankfully, you’ve already got that. Good job, Mon General. I will see about getting you a medal. Take Safi and you can have another.” Student tipped his dusty cap, and strode out into the night to look for those trains.

  General Martin blinked. There were five or six enemy ships off shore, and they had been pounding his positions all that afternoon. Some ally we have here, he thought. At least the British fought side by side with us in France. Well Herr General Student, you will not get to Fez on those trains, because the rail line runs right through Casablanca, from all accounts the Americans have already cut that line at Rabat. If you don’t already know that, you will learn about it soon enough… First thing in the morning.

  Chapter 23

  General Kurt Student got the news late that night. On the telephone to Kesselring in Fez, he also learned that the Americans had landed yet another division north of Fedala, and it was investing Casablanca from the north, sweeping the French resistance before it. As there was no sign of any direct attack on the port, Major General Lascroux moved several battalions from the city defenses to that flank in an attempt to stem the American tide. But the troops presently there did not look like they could hold out without substantial reinforcements. Now Kesselring had to make a very tough decision.

  “Do we fight for Casablanca?” Student asked on the phone.

  “How soon could you get there?”

  “The French left enough rolling stock here to move a couple regiments, but the Luftland Division is strung out on the roads south. They will be days getting up to the rail line. Kubler is arriving here this morning.”

  “What can you move by air?”

  “One good regiment, perhaps four or five battalions.”

  “Then get them to Fez, and go there yourself, by any means possible. I’m afraid that means a long march, and over difficult roads.”

  “Then you don’t want Casablanca?”

  “Oh, I would love to save it for Raeder, but let’s face facts. Even if you had all your troops there now, the best we could hope for is a stalemate. I sent the 327th there from Marrakech two days ago. They stopped the southern enemy landings, but they cannot push them back. With your troops, perhaps we could defeat that part of their landings, but I am told more armor is starting to come ashore at Rabat and on the beaches north of Fedala. Herr General, we are not going to stop them at Casablanca, and considering that port is of no use to us at all now, I’m ordering the 327th to pull out as well. They will take the
trains they came in on. There is a rail spur into the mining region near Ques Zemand Bourjad. From there it’s an overland march to El Borouj, and then a very long way to Fez. Get as many men out by air as you can.”

  “You mean to build up at Fez to cover Tangier?”

  “Possibly, but more likely we will be covering Algeria.”

  “What’s happening in Spain?”

  “Fighting all along the frontier. We’ve identified at least three British Divisions there, but we have three of our own, so the situation is stable.”

  “The Führer has authorized this withdrawal?”

  There was a long pause on the line before Kesselring came back. “Just get your men to Fez, and let me worry about the Führer.”

  “Herr General,” said Student. “I will do as you order, but something tells me you will be worrying about the Führer for a good long while after this.”

  Not even Smiling Al could crack a grin with that thought.

  * * *

  The stalemate around Casablanca was slowly shifting as more and more US troops landed. Safi had been left to hold out on its own. Everything left was going to Fedala and Rabat. The plan had always been to weight as much of the attack as possible north of the city, and with all of 3rd Division ashore by D+5, the pressure on the Fedala front redoubled. Disengaging in the face of an enemy attack was perhaps the most difficult thing you could ask your troops to do, and for the 327th, Patton’s ever present ardor for battle was making their day a nightmare. He had been on the radio, exhorting that flank to push harder. Some of the German units were able to pull off the line, others fought a stubborn delaying action. About 60% of the division would get safely back to those trains and on their way into the mountains, and it would be a week to ten days before they might reach Fez.