Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  I am told General Dollmann is moving 7th Army units into Vichy controlled France—ostensibly to prepare for redeployment here in French North Africa, but Darlan will certainly see though that soon enough. Hitler has activated both 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions, and he has an eye on Toulon, with all the French naval assets there. I have asked for additional forces, and now I am promised the new 334th Infantry Division to help flesh out this makeshift 5th Panzer Army. The Italians have also pledged two divisions, though that will not please the French here at all.

  Yes, what we have here is a very uneasy alliance. Franco is completely unreliable, and only a few of his divisions can be counted on. The rest will be a problem for Hube. The French and Italians hate one another, and here I am with the task of knocking heads together and making some sense of this entire mess. Rommel is already whining that I have siphoned off all the reinforcements that he was to receive, air units, ground replacement battalions, flak units, tanks. Whether he realizes it or not, we are not fighting on two fronts here, but for how long?

  Our entire position in North Africa will depend on the Navy. If we can keep the British out of the Western Med, then supplies and materiel can continue to flow to Bizerte and Tunis, and to Oran and Algiers. Gibraltar is the key. If we lose that, then we’ll have the Royal Navy here again, a situation that will give Raeder a real nightmare. This is why we need what remains of the French Navy, but securing it may not be as easy as the Führer thinks. He has ordered 7th Panzer to Toulon, and the French have been told it is coming here. Little do they know that it is there to secure that port, and every ship it now holds. But where is the prize, the last mighty French battleship? Normandie was at Oran, and had now moved to Algiers. Getting our hands on that monster will be imperative, and plans are in the offing for that as well.

  He smiled.

  Yes, he thought. Things are about to get very interesting here. Now the war in the West has truly been reborn.

  Negotiations with Darlan

  On the Allied side of these deliberations, Eisenhower had attempted to arrange a secret meeting between Admiral Darlan and General Mark Clark in northern Spain to discuss the possibility of signing an armistice with France and ending hostilities between French and Allied forces. He was rebuffed in the beginning, but when Hitler ordered “Case Anton,” the German plan to send the 7th Army into Vichy controlled France, Darlan began to see things differently. Marshall Petain protested the buildup of German forces, but to no avail. It was clear that the Germans were planning to move substantial forces south, possibly all the way into French North Africa, and they wanted to take hold of any French military assets by the earlobes there before they slipped away.

  So the meeting was finally set up, with Clark taking to an American submarine and slipping ashore with a team of US Army Rangers near the rocky headlands of the small Spanish port of Henday. A three mile hike through the mountains would take them to a small farm overlooking the port. Darlan made discrete arrangements to inspect the frontier defenses on the Spanish border, and submitted a false travel itinerary that would have him begin his tour at Lourds in Southern France. Instead he continued on the train to Henday, and so the town where Hitler once negotiated to gain Franco’s cooperation for Operation Felix would now become the site where Clark would attempt to wrest both Spain and France from the Führer’s hands.

  Darlan was High Commissioner of the colonies, and nominal commander in chief of all French North African forces. The ground for this meeting had been tilled for many months, so Darlan had been considering his options for a good long while. The two men met, shook hands cordially, and seated themselves at a small kitchen table in the quiet farmhouse. The edgy US Rangers stood watch, along with a small detachment of five security men that accompanied Darlan.

  “Admiral,” said Clark, “This meeting has been a long time coming, and let us hope we can reach an accord here. I will restate the offer communicated to you earlier, and begin by saying that it has the approval of both the President of the United States, and Prime Minister Churchill. We are prepared to accept you as head of a new provisional government overseeing all French held territories in North Africa.”

  “That is big of you, Mon General, because you see I presently hold that position.” Darlan smiled.

  “Well Admiral… That could soon change. If, however, you would like to keep your present job, we would demand that you issue an immediate order for all French Forces in North Africa to join the Allies, or, at the very least, they must cease resistance and stand neutral while we go after the Germans.”

  Darlan took a long breath. “You realize the Germans are moving troops to Tunisia even as we speak? They have withdrawn forces from southern Morocco and occupied Fez.”

  “We’re well aware of that.”

  “Well General, those troops are presently operating with our own troops. Do you realize the difficulty such an order would create?”

  “Of course I do. In fact, we’re counting on it.”

  “And if I found such an order too preposterous to contemplate?”

  “Then your forces will continue to be treated as a hostile, and dealt with accordingly. We would prefer to avoid that, and as you undoubtedly know, Admiral Michelier and General’s Lascroux and Martin have already agreed with similar proposals put to them on the field of battle, and at Casablanca ,our General Patton faced down the entire German 327th Infantry Division.”

  “A pity that division was withdrawn to Fez and Melkenes before the issue could be decided,” said Darlan. “I have no doubt that the untimely withdrawal of the Germans in that sector contributed greatly to the decision to yield Casablanca, and General Martin was too fond of his villa at Marrakech to see that city torn apart by fighting. But you must understand that the Germans intend to stay in Morocco, and they are obviously very intent on securing Algeria and Tunisia as well. The outcome of all these events is very much in doubt. If I were to act prematurely…”

  “If you were to act too late,” Clark cut in, “then it might be difficult for us to guarantee that your position in North Africa could be upheld. I don’t have to tell you that your General De Gaulle would be more than happy to take over there.”

  “He is not my General, and as far as I am concerned he will never command so much as a single platoon here.”

  “Then you need to act. There is no time for equivocation. I need to go back with a firm answer in hand.”

  Darlan thought a moment, knowing he had the authority to do what this man was asking him, even though Petain would most likely attempt to rescind any order he gave. Beyond that, there were mixed loyalties within his remaining divisions. Some regiments were nationalists, and would fight on, others cared little for the war that had finally come to their shores, and would willingly see any armistice as a means of extricating themselves from it.

  “If I give this order,” he explained, “you must realize that I cannot entirely guarantee that the troops in the field will obey.”

  “Well they certainly won’t have any chance to make that choice if you don’t give the order.”

  Darlan had been firmly in the camp of the collaborators, and was uncertain of the consequences for his past actions. “You would also guarantee that I would be granted personal immunity?”

  “That was in the offer you received, and yes, we can guarantee that no charges would be brought against you personally, or any member of your staff. All we want is the speedy resolution of French participation as active combatants here. You are the one man who can do this, Admiral. Do not miss this opportunity.”

  Darlan nodded heavily. “Very well, General Clark, you may tell your superiors that I will issue such an order, for good or for ill, and expect the troops under my command to follow it. Whether they do so, with the Germans holding a bayonet to their backs, remains in doubt, but you will at least have my cooperation.”

  Clark got what he came for, and now he could make that 3 mile hike again and take to the rubber rafts for another ride on a submarine ou
t to Madeira. Darlan had acted as the opportunist he was, fearful that the outcome of the battle then underway would leave him in a fatally compromised position if he continued to lead his forces here in open arms against the Allies. He gave General Clark his word that his order would be transmitted no later than the 1st of October, three days hence.

  But he would not live that long.

  Unbeknownst to either of the two men that day, another player had entered the scene, with an agenda that neither man saw coming. It might have been Himmler, who was privy to the secret conversations Darlan had exchanged with Churchill—but it wasn’t his doing that day. It might have been a young dissident student named Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, the man who would assassinate Darlan on Christmas eve of that very year in Fedorov’s history, but it wasn’t his to decide either.

  No, the man in charge of these events would be the same who had first oiled the hinge of fate at Henday when Hitler last visited this sleepy coastal fishing port—a simple railway engineer named Juan Alfonso. He had stopped a leak in the roof of a train car, and that had been the balm that led to the unexpected accord when Hitler concluded his negations with Franco’s Spain. This time he was at work, as usual, greasing a squeaky wheel on the train that would soon take Darlan back to his next appointment on the inspection tour.

  The Admiral was aboard his private car, the engine had a good head of steam, the tracks were cleared, weather fine, and the green light was given for departure. But Juan Alfanso held the train up another ten minutes as he finished his job, and those last drops of oil were to lubricate the unfolding of these events in more ways than any of the Prime Movers could see. The train would head north to Bayonne, and at one point it would pass through a mountain tunnel. Had it left on schedule, it would have been in that tunnel, safely out of sight, when a pair of A-20 bombers came in that night, intending to cut that rail line to prevent the Germans from using it to move troops across the border. But the train was ten minutes late, for Juan Alfonso had greased the wheels of fate.

  Part IX

  Firebrand

  “War is simple, direct, and ruthless. A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”

  ― General George Patton

  Chapter 25

  If the Allies thought it would be easy to secure the French cooperation and conclude matters without further bloodshed, Juan Alfonso had put an end to their hopes that day. Admiral Darlan’s Train was not in that safe underground railway tunnel, but instead on a bridge over a small river at Saint Jean de Luz. That bridge was struck by those two A-20s and blown to pieces by a direct hit that killed the Admiral in the ensuing train wreck. Whether his order would have ever been given, or heeded, was still debatable.

  In Fedorov’s history, the Allies had landed at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers simultaneously, thus striking at the key facilities and cities in both Morocco and Algeria. Days later they were already pushing into Tunisia. There were no German troops to speak of in either country, and little in the way of Luftwaffe support. Now, with Algeria uncontested and secure, German troops landing at Tunis and taking to the rail lines, heading west, the Hindenburg battlegroup arriving at Oran after its aborted sortie into the Atlantic, and nearly 450 Luftwaffe planes patrolling vast segments of the region, Darlan’s order may very well have fallen on deaf ears.

  After paying his respects to the Sultan of Morocco, promising to quickly liberate the remainder of his country, General Patton set out to do exactly that. He held Casablanca secure, now receiving supplies an equipment from the transport convoys, but near Port Lyautey the landing forces had been held up by the difficult river crossing a strong redoubt called the Kasbah, and the sudden arrival of unexpected German reinforcements.

  Rather than push tired and disorganized troops against what looked like a strong defense, Patton decided to pull the regiments of the 1st Infantry Division out and replaced them with what had been Task Force Green, composed of 6th Armored Infantry Regiment. He wanted to collect all the 1st Division, and move them further east behind Harmon’s Blackstone Force, which was driving on Mekenes. Between that point and the coast near the Kasbah, the 9th Infantry held the line.

  Having all these divisions in hand gave Patton a much more powerful force here than he had historically, because all the troops that had been assigned to Oran and Algiers were now his to command in this single location. However, no thanks to Kesselring’s startling withdrawal of the two German air mobile divisions, he would now be facing much tougher resistance, and there would be no question of further surrender on the part of the French.

  The news of Darlan’s death at the hands of those two A-20s did much to stiffen the resolve of Petain to fight on—that and the shadow of the German 7th Army, including the movement of 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions towards Toulon, along with 334th Infantry Division, bound for Algeria. The Americans had called those planes the Havoc, though in British hands it was given the more sedate name of the Boston. Yet a rose is a rose, and havoc was the order of the day. Now the French resistance would give the Germans just the time they needed to get reinforcements to North Africa.

  So while he had been visiting the Sultan, dining with Governor of Dakar and the Grand Vizier, commiserating with French Generals in the old history, Patton was all business now. He was quickly reorganizing the US Army to begin the next phase of the operations aimed at Tangier. First, to secure his southern flank, he ordered 60th and 168th Infantry Regiments, and the 41st Armored Infantry Battalion south to secure Marrakech. The 39th RCT was moving inland to attempt to cut the road between that city and Fez, and also watch for any possible infiltration by German units coming up to Fez from the south.

  “Alright,” said Patton as he convened a staff meeting. “We’ve kindled the torch here, but the flame is guttering, and we’ve a long way to go. It’s high time we turn his thing into a real firebrand, and then stick it right up the enemy’s behind! We’re going to take that damn Kasbah with Robinette’s armored infantry and a liberal dose of good naval gunfire support. I was aboard the Augusta when the 9th came in at Fedala, and those boys know how to dish it out. Blew my personal launch right off the deck! Now then… 9th Infantry will push hard for this town here.” He fingered Sidi Slimane on the map. “That’s holding them by the nose. Then I’ll sweep around to the right, run Harmon and Allen’s troops into Mekenes, and kick ‘em in the ass.”

  It was going to be the first coordinated American attack of the war on a corps level, three full divisions, with a supporting armored task force, against two French and two German divisions. It began on the coast near the strong French fortress known as the Kasbah. It had resisted the probing infantry attacks of 1st Infantry for three days, and the French had held the American advance up at the winding river that looped in a sharp hairpin anchored at Port Lyautey. Then that unit was pulled out, and Robinette’s 6th Armored Infantry rattled up in halftracks.

  After giving the enemy one last chance to surrender, which was met with machinegun fire that took down an American officer under a white flag, the battleship Massachusetts open fire and began pounding the thick stone walls with a fearful din. When that fire lifted, 2nd Battalion 6th Armored Infantry made their attack, the men dismounted and fixed bayonets, the halftracks backing them up with heavy suppressive MG fire. They broke the defense of 2nd Moroccan Infantry, stormed the Kasbah and pushed on over the river to a beach that should have been taken on D-Day, but one that was missed due to a mix-up in the landings.

  The Americans already had the airfield, where P-40s that had been crowded onto the decks of the light carrier Chenango had flown in the previous evening to support the attack. Half a mile east, the tanks of 1/13th Armored Battalion had taken the bridge over the river. With the defense of the 1st Moroccan Regiment cracking, 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 7th Flieger Division moved quickly forward to bolster the line, the veteran troops crouching low as they sprinted forward. Soon they were in position, with MG 42s sited to rake the open ground if the enemy per
sisted. Two batteries of artillery sent up by rail from the 22nd Air Landing Division now opened fire on the leading American positions, which sent the inexperienced GIs diving for any cover they could find in the barren ground.

  Colonel Robinette saw what was happening, and looked for a radio to get fire support from the navy. It would be quick in coming, as the cruiser Tuscaloosa, and the battleship Texas were hovering off shore, ready to weigh in. Meanwhile, the 9th Infantry Division put heavy pressure all along the line from the port, along the river, to the inland town of El Khemist on the road to Mekenes. There it took the intervention of the German 327th Recon Battalion, finding A-Company of the American 756th Tank Battalion moving through a hole in the disorganized French defense.

  The Germans had seven SdKfz 234s and another eight lighter 221s, but they were enough to stop and push the US Light tanks back when supported by a company of motorcycle infantry. On the main road itself, the 327th Pioneer Battalion was already digging in behind the French positions, the engineers building a hasty defensive position, where they now crouched with Panzerfausts and MG-42s. They were the first two battalions of that division to arrive, but the 595th Regiment was only about 20 kilometers south of Mekenes and tramping north into the grey dawn. Behind them would come the 596th, expecting to reach the city before noon.

  It would be a kind of scissors, paper, rock affair. The hard points of the German defense near the coast would be papered by the greater mass of the US force, and the French were not able to hold the gaps between these strongpoints. If the Germans organized a counterattack, those scissors would be smashed by the rock of superb naval gunfire from the battleships Texas and New York, and cruisers Augusta, Philadelphia and Tuscaloosa. The Germans called Fez for air support to paper over those naval units, but in came the scissors of the American air defense, with P-40’s off the airfield at Port Lyautey, Wildcats off the decks of the carrier Ranger, and P-38s from airfields near Casablanca.