A-20 bombers again struck at motor transport in the Nice area during the night of 21/22 August and hit industrial buildings in southern France during the day; fighters also attacked motor transport west of the Rhône and in scattered parts of south-east France; the 85th, 86th and 87th Fighter Squadrons from the 79th Fighter Group were deployed from Corsica to southern France with P-47s, and the 315th Fighter Squadron from the 324th Fighter Group moved from Corsica to Le Luc, also with P-47s. At sea the USS Rodman fired on shore batteries at Toulon on the 23rd, and covered minesweepers in the Golfe de Fos on the 25th and in the Baie de Marseilles on the 26th.
In the eastern sector of Toulon’s defences French troops attempted to capture La Poudrière, where the defenders employed old French tanks. French armour was brought up to seal off the quarry tunnels. On the 23rd attacks were stepped up on the Touar ridge, which was secured. By the evening the French were in force outside and inside the city and French troops took great pleasure in raising the tricolour over the Sous-Préfecture building. The following day they had only to clear the last of the Germans from their city strongholds, and the old Hôtel de la Subdivision was used to host de Lattre’s headquarters. The capture of the Grignan barracks, the Sainte-Catherine and Lamalgue forts and the Arènes ridge yielded over 1,000 prisoners
The 9th Division commenced securing the huge naval base on the 25th. There was heavy fighting on Le Mourillon peninsula and inside the Arsenal Maritime. Fort Malbosquet surrendered after an artillery bombardment and most of the others followed suit, though the defenders of Fort Lartigues had to be threatened with assault. The arsenal at Le Mourillon was bombarded the next day before capitulating, followed by the Fort de Six-Four and the Bregallion battery south-west of Toulon at Cap Sicie. The defenders of Cap Eguillette, Fort Napoleon and the Balaguier battery offered flagging resistance.
While the firing was still going on, Admiral Lambert, keen to reassert French control over Toulon naval base, set up his headquarters at the Préfecture Maritime in the name of the Marine Nationale or French Navy. A triumphal parade was conducted through the streets on the 27th, with a march-past for the War and Naval Commissioners, to the sound of German guns still firing from the St-Mandrier peninsula. The 340mm guns had been repeatedly blasted by Allied bombers and nearby warships but continued to fire.
German attempts to flee Toulon by sea were futile. On the 27th the American destroyer USS Ericsson captured fifty German submariners attempting to escape on a fishing vessel, and the American motor torpedo boat PT-552 sank four German explosive motorboats at the entrance to the harbour, though the control boat got away.
At 2245 hours Admiral Rufus, the City Commandant, agreed to surrender unconditionally. The following day the garrison of 1,880 German marines laid down their arms. The nine-day battle for Toulon had cost the French 2,700 casualties but they had now secured the vast naval base for the Allies and taken 17,000 German prisoners of war, along with considerable quantities of weapons, including artillery.
Communists seize Marseilles
To the west in Marseilles the Resistance did not stand idly by. In particular, Gaston Defferre’s Socialist militia was very active. During the twelve-day battle for the city, Corsican Barthélemy Guerini provided invaluable support to Defferre’s forces, supplying intelligence, arms and men; he was subsequently awarded the Legion d’Honneur for his exploits. His brother Antoine, also an agent for Anglo-American intelligence, was responsible for smuggling arms into the city for the MUR after they had been supplied by British airdrop. When English intelligence officers were parachuted into the Marseilles area to make contact with MUR, they were hidden in the cellars of nightclubs belonging to Antoine Guerini. The communist-dominated Resistance took over the city’s prefecture on the 23rd as de Lattre’s troops closed in on the suburbs. The garrison could have easily overwhelmed them but seemed more concerned with the approaching regular French Army.
During the night of 23/24 August A-20 bombers hit motor transport and targets of opportunity in the Rhône valley and medium bombers attacked bridges at Montpellier, Avignon and Lunel and scored direct hits on gun positions in the Marseilles area; meanwhile roaming fighters bombed and strafed gun positions, vehicles, roads and bridges throughout south-east France. B-25 and B-26 bombers also attacked the Rhône river bridges at Avignon, Culoz, St-Alban-du-Rhône, Pont d’Ain and Loyes, and hit gun positions around Marseilles itself. Kretschmar with the 17th Bomb Group noted on 26 August, ‘Mission was gun positions at Marseilles, France. Mission was milk run. Had little flak…. Altitude was 10,600 ft … was a morning run. Didn’t drop bombs … had a rack malfunction. Was in No. 4 position.’
Initially General de Monsabert had been instructed only to clear Marseilles’s suburbs, but with the Resistance rising up and the 1st Combat Command forcing its way towards the Old Port, de Monsabert’s men moved to support them. He called on the German commander to surrender but he refused. His men were still firmly entrenched in Fort St Nicholas, an old fort by the harbour, and they held out there for four days. French artillery, though, soon made such a stand a futile exercise. On the 27th, just two days after the fall of Toulon and following an attack by the Algerians on the Notre Dame de la Garde feature, the Marseilles garrison surrendered.
On 29 August marines from the Augusta and the cruiser Philadelphia went ashore in Marseilles harbour to take the surrender of over 700 German troops who had fortified the harbour islands. Two weeks later the first supply vessels began to unload in the harbour. The American and French armies found Marseilles already in the hands of a Resistance-led left-wing administration. Initially cooperation between the American military and the French proceeded smoothly, but American plans for the port to be given over almost exclusively to American military requirements and their long-term presence soon strained relations. The Americans had also designated the coastal area as a rest and relaxation zone for their troops and this further aggravated the situation. In Cherbourg the requirements of the war effort meant the Americans were able to ride largely roughshod over French sensibilities, but in Marseilles the administration soon let its displeasure be known.
Remarkably, French and American forces had captured both Toulon and Marseilles in just fourteen days. Dragoon’s planners, erring on the safe side, had assumed that these towns would not be secured until D-Day plus 40. Upon his arrival in Marseilles General de Gaulle took a dim view of the FTP, seeing it as a threat to his consolidation of power in the south of the country. Similarly he commented ‘What a farce,’ upon inspecting local resistance forces; in Toulouse he was even more scathing, remarking ‘Can’t you sew?’ to one unfortunate resistance officer. To be fair, de Gaulle was simply exhibiting a northerner’s traditional sense of rectitude in the face of southern exuberance, but on a more professional level he was displaying his clear dislike for the ragtag militia the French Resistance had turned into. He was also not blind to the fact that the Resistance was now much bigger than it had been under Nazi occupation, as everyone sought to share in the glory of the liberation. Within a few months de Gaulle would ensure that these paramilitary units were no longer any threat to him by incorporating them into the French Army, where they were subject to military discipline.
With all his formations ashore, de Lattre’s Army B was to become the French 1st Army consisting of I Corps under General Béthouart on the right and II Corps under de Monsabert on the left. De Lattre was now an army commander in his own right, effectively making Patch an irrelevance to French military thinking.
Meanwhile in Italy the Allies were trying to break the Pisa-Rimini Line. Alexander launched Operation Olive on 25 August, but the 8th Army had been weakened by the requirements for Dragoon and its momentum was slow. It took a month to reach Rimini. There it soon became apparent that the Po valley was not the excellent tank country that the British had supposed. The Germans were able to withdraw to another defensive line along the river Uso, and there were another thirteen rivers to cross before reaching the Po itself. With the British
exhausted, having lost almost 500 tanks, the Germans were able to check Clark’s US 5th Army.
In the Far East the Japanese armies in Burma were in retreat by August, and to hasten them on their way Operation Capital was designed to advance into central and southern Burma. The Japanese were reconciled to losing their land-bridge to China, but they still had 100,000 troops in Burma, who had as yet experienced no maritime threat to their left flank. Operation Dracula, the amphibious assault to take southern Burma, would now have to wait, thanks to Dragoon.
Defeat at Montélimar
In order to avoid the errors of Anzio, it was decided that it was imperative for Truscott’s US VI Corps to thrust northwards as quickly as possible even as the bridgehead was being consolidated. The Gap or Gate of Montélimar provided him with the best way of blocking Route N7 and trapping Wiese’s 19th Army. The river Rhône flows in an almost straight north–south route over 200km between Lyons and its entrance to the delta at Avignon. Beyond Orange it narrows greatly, and at Montélimar, some 70km north of Avignon, the Montélimar Plain and the Valence Plain are divided by the Cruas Gorge, also known as the Gap of Montélimar. The west bank of the river is bordered by cliffs, while on the east deeply forested hills slope up to some 400 metres.
To exploit this breach at the Gap, Truscott ordered his deputy corps commander Brigadier-General Frederick Butler to spearhead the push with his task force (comprising the 753rd Tank Battalion, the 2nd Battalion, 143rd Infantry from the 36th Division, the 59th Armoured Field Artillery Battalion, the 117th Reconnaissance Squadron, plus tank destroyers and supporting combat engineers). The 36th Division was to follow up towards Grenoble through Castellane and along the N85, while the 3rd and 45th Divisions pushed up the Argens corridor towards the Rhône. The 3rd Division rumbled along the N7, forcing its way into Aix-en-Provence on the 21st. Everywhere the Germans seemed in disarray or were gone. The 45th Division secured the crossings over the Durance by clearing Barjols, which enabled the 3rd Division to shift right to join the march on Grenoble. Their job, if all went well, was to herd the fleeing Germans into the arms of Task Force Butler and the 36th Division at the Gap of Montélimar. The trap was set.
Futile German attempts to reinforce their troops facing the beachheads were soon thwarted once Task Force Butler had taken the Col de la Croix Haute mountain pass, 1,179 metres up on the N75 north of Apres. Similarly, with the aid of the FFI, the Gap was taken along with 1,000 German prisoners. This meant that the German 157th Reserve Division at Grenoble could not dispatch further troops south. Butler swung west to block the Germans’ escape routes up the Rhône valley. North of Livron his men caught a German convoy of thirty vehicles but around La Coucourde ran into superior German forces. By this stage the Germans had established themselves on Ridge 300, the high ground dominating the roads heading north and east. However, on the 21st the Americans reached the hills overlooking the Rhône valley north of the Gate of Montélimar. From here, reconnaissance units from the Butler Task Force watched enemy traffic stream up the main valley road, and blocked enemy armour trying to get there through Puy-St Martin. Along the floor of the valley itself the Germans had grouped the 11th Panzer Division, while opposing them were the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion and the 753rd and 191st Tank Battalions. The task force opened up on the fleeing Germans below. A tank crewman attached to the 143rd Infantry Regiment recalled:
We fired our guns continuously without stopping, and the recoil system got so hot that the system was slowing down. Norris, my loader, was pushing shells into the breach with his fist, and due to the fast fire, his skin began to peel off his hand. I exchanged places with Norris for a while, and I also lost some skin. We fired until we were out of ammunition and had to order more.
Just seven days after the landings the 36th Infantry Division had penetrated as far as Grenoble, 400 km into France. Truscott instructed the division to obstruct the German withdrawal up the Rhône, as well as counter any German reinforcements that might be pushing south. However, the 36th Infantry Division was spread over four widely separated sectors, at Grenoble, Gap and Guillestre, Digne, and in the beachhead. This meant that to escape, Wiese’s German 19th Army would have to barge the American troops out of the way. By 1700 hours on 23 August a battalion from the 141st Infantry Regiment had got to within a kilometre of Montélimar before small-scale counter-attacks developed along its flanks. By midnight enemy infiltration threatened its supply lines and the battalion was forced to withdraw. The following day the entire division deployed to the region. The 142nd Infantry Regiment moved swiftly from Gap and Guillestre to defensive positions near Nyons, south-east of Montélimar, while the 143rd hurried down from Grenoble.
Behind the 11th Panzer Division, reinforced and backed by fresh units, came the entire 198th Infantry Division. As the soldiers of the 198th mounted a full-scale attack to drive the 141st out of its positions north-east of Montélimar and force its artillery to withdraw out of range of the highway, the 142nd and 143rd Regimental Combat Teams raced up from the south. By 24 August the 142nd had reached the battleground and occupied defensive positions in a zone some 40 km long; they were soon followed by the balance of the 143rd.
From 25 to 30 August the 36th Division was attacked daily, with the main German effort pushing along a spur valley which ran north-east from Montélimar in an attempt to cut the 36th’s supply routes and encircle the defenders. In addition, the Germans constantly subjected the division’s long defensive perimeter to spoiling attacks designed to prevent the 36th Division from launching any attacks of its own. On the evening of the 25th Route 7, several kilometres north of Montélimar, was severed by the entire 141st Regimental Combat Team, reinforced by elements of the 143rd. In the process they beat off German infantry and armour. This attack cut the valley road at a narrow neck of the Rhône south of La Coucourde. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Wilber’s mission was to hold the block as long as possible. In the event of the Germans breaking through, he and his men were to fall back eastwards to Crest and hold the town at all costs, blowing up the bridges as a last resort. Subsequent German counter-attacks broke through the roadblock soon after midnight. German armour was soon being reported north and north-west of Crest, in the vicinity of Banlieu and near Grance. The northernmost road-block, manned by the 36th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, was forced back at daybreak by overwhelming German power. Reinforcements in the shape of the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division were deployed north of Crest.
Now, although the 36th Division had almost surrounded the 19th Army, the Germans were on three sides of the division. Artillerymen turned their guns 180 degrees to pummel German armour threatening Grance and Crest to the north. The 36th Division salient at Montélimar thrust towards Route 7 several kilometres north of the city. Running through Condillac, Sauzet and Cleon, and anchored at Crest, the snaking lines of supply and communication ran from the south to Crest. At first the Germans held the initiative and certainly if they had conducted a bold oblique thrust to the east, they might have disrupted the whole of VI Corps, cutting the only artery up from the beaches. General Dahlquist decided to hold the little Rubion stream-bed (in front of a vital supply road) on a flat bowl-shaped plain backed up by a wall of hills. His divisional artillery was deployed on to the hills, opening up in a great arc to the south, west and north. Key terrain held by the infantry allowed gun positions to be disposed in such a manner that the route of German withdrawal along the Rhône was under fire for 25 km.
Long German convoys were destroyed, and the entire zone was literally covered with a mass of burned vehicles, trains, equipment, dead men and dead animals. German attacks, initiated simultaneously from three directions, were hammered and repulsed by the same paralysing barrages. On the Rhône side of the line the 36th Division attempted to put the final seal on the main valley highway. Also American P-47s swooped in, pounded and destroyed all bridges across the river, forcing the enemy to remain on the east bank. Trapped in the developing pocket were three German divisions determine
d to hold open their escape route. On two successive days regiments of the German 198th Division surged against the centre of the Rubion line at Bonlieu but were thrown back by battalions of the 143rd and 142nd. The 141st, in the hot corner near the Rhône, faced incessant enemy attacks trying to drive them away from Route 7.
Further efforts to seize La Coucourde and to recapture and block Route 7 were not completely successful, although much damage was inflicted on the enemy. The 3rd Battalion of the 143rd held the vital Magranon Ridge near La Coucourde, overlooking Route 7, during three days of critical fighting. Cut off and isolated into small groups at one time, the battalion fought on resolutely and eventually defeated the German forces decisively. Towards the end divisional forces were shifted northwards to strike again along the Drome river valley. For nine days the Germans fought the Americans before retreating north to Lyons. In particular, on the 25th the 11th Panzer Division and supporting units launched five attacks. Two days later the bulk of the 11th Panzer Division and most of the retreating infantry had crossed the Rhône north of Drome, having lost 2,500 men taken prisoner, and leaving the Montélimar region in the hands of General Baptist Kniess’s newly arrived LXXXV Corps.
Operation Dragoon Page 16