The Right Fight

by Chris Lynch

  The low growl behind me takes on some extra thrust, and even forms words.

  “Looks like a luxury liner. Patton wouldn’t be caught dead on that thing. Typical. The other guys get Old Blood and Guts, and we get Hemorrhoid Lloyd, the sitting-downest, back-seat-drivingest general in the whole show. Probably only lured him here by telling him it was a Mediterranean holiday cruise.”

  Finally, Cowens’s intensity is enough to get me to turn my back on the announcement I’ve been waiting a year for. I find him, unsurprisingly, scowling.

  “Ah, commander,” I say, grinning, “don’t be such a diplomat. Tell us what you really think of the guy.”

  He takes that to be a genuine request for more.

  “I got some infantry pals who were ‘in the field’ with him. During maneuvers they knew exactly when they could goof off, because if it rained, or got above eighty-two degrees or below sixty, he refused to come out of his quarters. He phoned in his orders, and expected his men to follow them.”

  I smile and nod and would laugh if I thought that would be permissible but like a lot of times with Cowens, you just can’t be too sure.

  Captain Dexter has continued his briefing, probably more informational but certainly less passionate and entertaining than Cowens’s. Now he’s concluding.

  “To be frank, we are not entirely sure what to expect from the French forces along the African coast. The colonies there are controlled by the French government in Vichy, which means they really take their orders from Berlin. Indications are encouraging that these troops will not offer more than minimal resistance, and the hope is that once we have successfully taken control of the area, these forces may in fact return to the Allied cause. We must, however, be prepared for every eventuality. So, there you have it, men. Get some rest, as we sail in the morning and will be landing in Oran in four days’ time. This will be the first American endeavor in the European Theater of Operations. Let’s show ’em what they’ve been missing!”

  The roar is full-throated and long-lasting and feels like it might hold right through ’til tomorrow and power the launch all the way to Algeria.

  But you’ll follow orders, right, commander? Even from General Fredendall?”

  I must be deranged with the dizzying scent of combat, because I am teasing Commander Cowens as we pick at our gray, leathery food-shapes across the mess table. The five of us are seated and eating like a family for the first time, and it feels right.

  “I will follow those orders, no matter how misguided and uninformed, no matter how far those orders have to travel from the source to where the actual fighting is being done. Because I am a good soldier and good soldiers follow even stupid orders. Hey, I’d take orders from General Why Not here if I was required to, and he doesn’t even believe Algeria is a real place.”

  “It’s Wyatt,” Wyatt says with admirable dignity. “And I believe it now.”

  Pacifico is really disappointed, almost depressed, over the state of whatever the food is supposed to be. “I’m kind of insulted by this,” he says, looking down gloomily at his plate. He moves stuff around, turning it over, squinting hard at it, like he’s desperate to work out a point of entry.

  Logan is tearing at his meal as if somebody dared him, or possibly he likes it. “All I know is,” he says, chewing vigorously and talking more so, “I have to get in that tank and fire that cannon at something right now.”

  “You realize you’ll sink us, if you do that now,” I say.

  “I’m afraid, Logan, under those circumstances, I’m going to have to refuse to load,” Wyatt says.

  Logan seems to be taking this very seriously. Still chewing, but more pensively now, he eventually concedes. “Okay, I’ll wait. But not much longer. I ain’t kidding.”

  He’s speaking for everybody, although a little more unhinged than the rest. But not much longer appears to be upon us, as there is a sudden surge of activity and energy, people rushing out of the mess and up top.

  We have finally come within sight of the mystical Oran of our dreams. Cool as you like, we approach it, the whole convoy sailing perpendicular to the coast as if to give them a good long look. It is late in the day on November 7, and the buzz starts crackling through the whole ship and probably the whole convoy. This is it.

  We seem to take forever cruising, showing off, sailing eastward like we’re not here for a landing at all but just to give them a chance to photograph our good side. Western Task Force is already behind us, having split off shortly after the entire fleet made the harrowing thirty-three hour passage through the Strait of Gibraltar without attracting unfriendly attention. Now we cruise at what feels like slow motion, past Oran, farther past it, as if we are all going to continue on to the Eastern Task Force destination of Algiers.

  “They’re testing to see if the French coastal defenses have us figured out,” Cowens says, “or if they just think we’re a supply convoy to the British forces on Malta.”

  “On what?” Wyatt asks.

  I jump in before Cowens can get at him. “How many nicknames are you trying to get?”

  “Why What?” Logan says.

  “Why Dat?” Even Pacifico is getting in on it.

  Before long it is apparent the French think nothing much about our convoy, if they noticed it at all. So we sail on, in the direction of Algiers, well past dark, until it is time to wave off our Eastern Task Force brothers, turn around, and steam for Oran in the dead of night. It is a multinational, Allied operation, but we are learning the politics of it as well. The British are taking on the Algiers landing farther down the coast because of the bad blood that has developed between them and the French over Oran. The Brits bombed the French fleet there to keep it out of German hands, so if we expect any kind of goodwill from French and Algerian forces, this bit needs to have an all-American look. Though the Royal Navy will have us covered discreetly from offshore.

  Good thing the French still love the Yanks. I guess.

  We are most of the way back after our big U-turn when we hear it. The sound of American and British planes, which departed directly from England, now approaching Oran. The planes are loaded with US paratroopers who are to head straight for the two airfields just outside the town, La Senia and Tafaraoui. The paratroopers will jump there, seize the fields, and neutralize one of the greatest threats to the invasion.

  Meanwhile, out way ahead of our convoy, two converted ferries are just about now delivering four companies of rangers to a beach just north of the town of Arzew to slip in and capture the forts and gun batteries that represent the fiercest coastal defense to our Navy.

  Our job now is to wait on the rangers. On their signal of objective accomplished, we will storm the beaches.

  The planes are passing overhead now, and will reach the fields in a few minutes. The transports have surely placed the rangers, who will be doing what rangers do best, meaning this will be a short wait for us. Which is good because this floating offshore is for the birds.

  Suddenly, there is a siren blaring out from the direction of Oran’s harbor. Then the lights all go out. We are no secret anymore.

  Antiaircraft fire fills the air rat-a-tat rapid, and the sky beyond Oran is popping with explosions. There seems to be more activity inshore than we were expecting. Lots of gunfire snapping from all points along the coast.

  Then, it escalates into something more.

  Bu-hoom. Bu-hoom. Bu-hoom.

  We are under attack, from gun batteries on either side of the town and just beyond it.

  All at once, the fighting ships of our flotilla respond, and the artillery fire, from every direction, beside us, behind us, is deafening and creates something like a vacuum of air and sensation in the bubble of our floating world. My ears pop hard, and the diminished hearing is a blessing, then, just as quickly, it’s terrifying and I want my senses back. This is what we didn’t experience, couldn’t experience, in all the maneuvers Carolina could maneuver in a lifetime.

  I wasn’t expecting this. I wasn’t expec
ting this. This is a slugging, back and forth, and I am now noticing the French warships mobilized in the harbor, coming out chin-first and firing large-caliber shells, giving up nothing to our superior fleet.

  I wasn’t expecting this? Was anybody expecting this?

  I see our two destroyers now. The two former American Coast Guard ships steaming straight for the enclosed harbor of Oran with the clear intention of undoing any guarding of coasts today. They are bringing in troops to pile right into the heart of Oran, and also to blast that beachfront wide open for the rest of us.

  Then, there’s an explosion. One of the ships has been hit, the other is rammed by a French destroyer, and it looks like pure dogfight chaos of the kind definitely not advertised to us before now.

  I am only a lowly tank driver, but I think things are going wrong.

  This, to one degree or another, goes on all night long. I remain poised, frozen in my readiness like a simple devoted dog sure that his master’s going to open that door any second. Literally, for hours I hold this status. Already scuttlebutt is circulating about Allied casualties, about at least one ship sunk, about the grand plan not going to plan. But through it all I remain that dog, poised, waiting while the fierceness of the battle seems to lessen, while the explosions and responses come further apart.

  Then, a brilliant set of green fireworks flares, dazzling the sky above Algeria. Seconds later, the loudspeaker is blaring at us.

  “Report to stations. All personnel, prepare and report to designated stations, ready for assault landing.”

  From there, it is not even a blur. A guy would have to see some kind of streaky figures, motions, colors in the air to qualify as a blur but there is nothing, not a trace of visual memory as I sit at the controls of my tank, my heart beating like a Spitfire engine in full flight. The crew are all in place as our tank sits still, deep within the hold of the transport. The ship lurches and then powers, steaming straight in toward the Algerian shore as if it’s our intention to plow right through it and keep on going.

  My division, the First Armored, and the First Infantry Division are landing on three beaches, two to the west of the city and one to the east. Our concern is not really the beaches but those two airfields beyond, where we are supposed to follow up the first wave of troops who landed there and provide that special brand of tank-and-infantry security that means once the Army takes a field, it stays taken.

  I’ve gotten accustomed to the idea that I’m going the long way to the goal I’ve been chasing for a long time. Taking on the Nazis is what matters. Fighting beats waiting. So we’re attacking Algeria, which is occupied by France, which is occupied by Germany, but if that’s how we have to get at ’em, then so be it.

  My group is deployed to Arzew, to the east of Oran. We are chugging as if there is no end in sight when we start to feel the scrapings of sea bottom below us.

  Close to shore, we hit sand earlier than predicted, and the ship bucks, then rights and continues until we hit another.

  “What’s that?” Pacifico says in a voice that’s straining to be calm but is still a little higher than normal. Every one of the thousands of guys we’re about to spew onto Oran’s beaches is nervous, I guarantee it. Some are just hiding it better than others.

  “Feels like we’re running aground,” I say, like that’s no big deal.

  “That shouldn’t be happening, should it?” he asks me.

  “Well, Pacifico, since this is a landing ship, designed to land, and we are on that ship in order to land … it should be happening sometime.”

  We are able to have this little conversation because despite the hugeness of the European Theater of Operations, of II Corps and First Armored Division, Combat Command B (CCB), aboard this massive LST among the flotilla of the Center Task Force of the North African Invasion, Pacifico and I are seated together in the intimate confines of the lower level of the M-4 Sherman tank. As driver, I am set low on the left side of the main compartment while he is just on the other side of the drive train in the assistant driver/machine gunner spot. We can’t see much of the outside world as we wait to unload into it.

  Bu-hoom!

  We can certainly hear and feel the outside world, however, as a serious shell explosion happens right nearby, rocking our craft. The LST is perfect for this, being flat-bottomed, stable, and able to creep well into shore, but that was an unsettling shock all the same. These may be the last barks of the defending forces, but they are attention getters.

  “Commander?” I call up to the turret basket where the commander, main gunner, and loader all have their stations.

  “Not to worry,” Commander Cowens calls down. “We expected token resistance from French forces along the coast. They have no desire to engage Allied forces, if I understand the situation as it was explained to us, so they won’t give us any real trouble. It’s all leading to where we get to shoot and blow things up, so just stay focused and don’t panic.”

  The French forces. I don’t like to admit to being dumbfounded by the big issues we should probably understand. But I have to admit I have still not worked these guys out. How do you fight for your conquerors?

  Bu-hoom!

  Right, well we might not be panicking, but I can sense in the cozy living space we are in that everybody’s a little thrown by what we’re experiencing right now. That was another no-fooling blast from the French, casting more than reasonable doubt on the idea that they have no interest in engaging Allied forces.

  The commander has already used up all of his very limited patience and tact for this situation.

  “Hey!” he bellows up through the hatch right above his head, and I have no doubt at all that the French can hear him. “If you put this much effort into 1940, none of us would have to be here now!”

  I believe Commander Cowens does not have the same level of confusion that I have about the French participation in the war.

  Then all at once, like a twenty-one gun salute and then some, the big guns on our companion Royal Navy ships fire one more coordinated volley into the shore, with a vengeance. The air is filled with crackle and boom. Then, the additional sound of a full tanker of tank engines growling to life signals that we are about to hit the shore.

  The LST grounds for good, and the great slab of steel that is the bay door groans open and slaps the water like a whale’s tail.

  One by one the tanks roll down the ramp, splashing into the shallow water, and up the beach. We are way back in the line, with the M-3 light tanks hauling out first. They are the arrowhead of a flying column of tanks that will run from Arzew, along the road looping south around Oran to the Tafaraoui airfield.

  We can’t keep up with the pace of the M-3s, but we do our best to minimize the gap between them and us. As I work the steering levers, jamming forward for speed, I can hardly contain my excitement. When we crash nose-down into the water, bounce, and hurtle up and onto the sand, it’s all I can do to keep my wits from the thrill. I am already replaying that bust-out splash vision in my head, and already having to remind myself to stop being a kid, right now.

  My tank company moves as a unit straight toward the road, with enemy fire still nestled into the northeast about two football fields from where we make land. It’s pretty close fighting already, and I’m pretty sure I could hit a baseball farther than they’re shooting at us from.

  I learn quickly that action makes Pacifico talkative.

  “I thought the French were with the Allies,” he shouts over the sound of the tank’s excited engine, Logan’s excited howling, and the commander’s commanding everybody to just simmer down and let cool heads prevail.

  “They were,” I say. “Then they got beat, surrendered to the Germans.”

  “And what, they joined the other side?”

  “Well, yeah. Some of ’em, anyway.”

  “Aw, how are we supposed to keep up with this?”

  “Tell you what, just shoot straight ahead. If you just shoot where I point the tank, and shoot at whoever’s shooting
at us, you’ll do okay.”

  “I can do that,” he yells like somehow I’ve set him free.

  “Yes, you can,” I yell back, and follow my nose and my Tankist brethren as directly as I can into the teeth of the war.

  That’s the deal with conflict, right? Shoot at the shooters, shoot at the shots. All parties understand that, so let’s go at it.

  Boooom!

  The tank rocks, fighting me as I keep on course, and I can see through my slit as our air cover comes swooping in above us. A shell blasts a plume of sand and rock and metal and pieces of what could be confused French fighters twenty-five feet up in the air over where that enemy gun battery once was.

  From there, it quiets down considerably. Planes are still buzzing about. We hear artillery, but it’s infrequent now, and distant. The line of tanks is spread a bit but still tooling along this relatively simple stretch of road at a decent clip on the way to our destination, like a Sunday drive, only a little bumpy and with five pals piled into the car.

  “We did it,” Pacifico says, looking toward me and sounding both cautious and surprised.

  “I think we did,” I reply, paying close attention to the road I have never seen before. Through my narrow scope of vision I can already see this place, Oran, Algeria, Africa, as a different place from what I’ve ever known. Resort-quality beach becomes industrial center with great big fuel tanks lining the roads and gun batteries guarding them from gentle rises that surround the port. Fleeting glances count as sightseeing, but all the architecture looks to me like it’s made of white stone something, like the sand of the very beach we just stormed. Then that falls away to reveal palm trees popping up tall out of chalky earth and then flat empty road leading out to the Algerian heartland, whatever that might be.

  “Well, all right!” Logan whoops. “Mission accomplished. We have invaded, boys.”

  “We haven’t done anything,” Cowens says. “Keep your wits about you.”