Chapter 4: The Engineers in the Invasion of North Africa
While the BOLERO program in the United Kingdom took second place, Allied planners turned their attention to an assault on the periphery of German power and began detailed consideration of landings in North Africa. The hurried planning for TORCH offered an object lesson in disorderly preparation and brilliant improvisation. Though the timetable called for landings before the end of the year, the force envisaged did not have an overall command until the Combined Chiefs of Staff named General Eisenhower Commander in Chief, Allied Expeditionary Force, on 13 August 1942. The Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) that Eisenhower headed came into existence officially only on 12 September but was already a closely integrated organization. General Sir Kenneth A. N. Anderson commanded the British ground forces and Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham the naval forces. The various general and special staff sections were Allied organizations, with American and British officers interspersed throughout in various positions of command and subordination. Maj. Gen. Humfrey Gale (British) became the chief administrative officer at AF-HQ. Of three task forces, Western Task Force (WTF), which was to sail directly from the United States to Casablanca, was under Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. Center Task Force (CTF), with the primary mission of capturing the port of Oran, was under Maj. Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall. Eastern Task Force (ETF), with responsibility for seizing Algiers and the Blida and Maison Blanche Airfields, was largely British but retained an American commander, Maj. Gen. Charles W. Ryder, to confuse the French defenders of North Africa as to the nationality of the invading force.1
Engineer Plans and Preparations
The Engineer Section of AFHQ came into being when Col. Frank 0. Bowman arrived in London toward the end of August 1942. This small section worked closely with the Engineer Section of Center Task Force, headed by Col. Mark M. Boatner, Jr., of the 591st Engineer Boat Regiment, in preparing plans for the CTF landing at Oran. AFHQ’s G-4 section was responsible
for planning engineer supply, and under G-4 were SOS groups attached to the two U.S. task forces. The Center Task Force (II Corps), SOS, assembled in England under Brig. Gen. Thomas B. Larkin, former ETOUSA chief engineer. After the landings, Larkin’s organization was to become the Mediterranean Base Section.
Western Task Force planning took place in the United States. Its Engineer Section, headed by Col. John F. Conklin, developed along the lines of an augmented corps-level engineer organization. The section received valuable assistance from OCE (which was just one block away), particularly the Supply Division, and from the Army Map Service.2
Early in the fall the first elements of the future Atlantic Base Section (initially designated SOS Task Force A) assembled in the United States under Brig. Gen. Arthur R. Wilson as the SOS for the Western Task Force. The Engineer Section, SOS, WTF, under Col. Francis H. Oxx, obtained considerable aid from the Plans and Distribution Division, OCE, WD, as well as from engineers of WTF themselves. OCE, WD, was responsible for engineer supply for the first four WTF convoys, the engineer allocation being 2,000 tons per convoy. The engineers planned that requisitions would be submitted first to the New York Port of Embarkation (NYPOE); in case of losses at sea, NYPOE would determine priority of replacement and shipment.3
The fact that Allied forces were to undertake the landings complicated supply planning for TORCH in the United Kingdom. Most of the engineer Class IV items (heavy construction equipment) would come from the British, while the remainder of Class IV and all Class II and V items would come from American sources. A joint stockpile established in England helped to avoid confusion and duplication. British elements would handle logistics for WTF, while SOS, ETOUSA, would supply the CTF and the American components of the ETF. After late December (about D plus 40) supplies for all American elements of TORCH were to come directly from the United States. Planners expected to build up supplies in North Africa to a 14-day level by D plus 30, a 30-day level by D plus 60, and a 45-day level by D plus 90. Classes II, IV, and V items were to be resupplied automatically for the first two months because the task forces could not be expected to establish adequate inventory control and requisition procedures until base sections became operational. Estimates by the chiefs of the technical services at ASF, WD, were to form the basis for the automatic resupply program, but the plan also permitted limited requisitioning from the NYPOE.
From the engineers’ point of view, one of the most disturbing events during the planning was a high-level decision to cut authorized vehicle allocations. Cutting the number of vehicles by 50 percent freed the drivers and crews for duties in fighting formations. The cut applied not only to the engineers’ trucks but also to special engineer vehicles of all types. Maj. Gen. Mark W. Clark, deputy commander in chief for TORCH, believed the decision would not seriously affect the WTF, whose primary mission was to establish and defend
a line of communications, but the 50 percent cut meant a reduction of 10,000 vehicles for Center Task Force alone. Afterwards, Brig. Gen. Donald A. Davison, Colonel Bowman’s successor as AFHQ engineer, observed that engineers without vehicles became merely under-armed and improperly trained infantry, unable to perform their technical missions.4
Supply plans had to be made before information concerning important phases of the invasion was available. Arriving at a fixed troop basis was fundamental, but the Allies could not come to an agreement on one until planning was well along. Even after a figure for the total invasion force was at hand the allocations among service, ground, and air forces changed continually. Furthermore, no outline plan of attack became available until long after supply preparations were under way.
Requirements for special engineer equipment included such diverse items as bulldozers, tractors with detachable angledozers, amphibious tractors, mines and mine detectors, beach and airfield landing mats, camouflage equipment and supplies, lighting plants, well-digging machinery, water trucks, water cans (by the thousands), hand carts, portable air compressors, fumigation vaults, asphalt, magnifying glasses, unbleached cotton sheeting, cotton sack, cord, rope, insect repellent, cable cutters, and grappling hooks. As it turned out, the engineers managed to satisfy most of their supply demands except for vehicles. On 17 October engineer units of CTF reported that they had secured 80 percent of their supply requirements, and on 22 October the 1st Engineer Amphibian Brigade reported 99 percent of its engineer equipment on hand. However, many of the missing items were important ones.
The engineers of both task forces understood in general, but not in detail, what clearing obstacles from the beaches would involve. They were, for example, unable to obtain sea-level, offshore photographs of the Barbary coastline.5 British photo reconnaissance of some of the beaches proved helpful, and plans were adjusted after submarines went in close for a final investigation.
The engineers knew that the rainy season would begin about the time of D-day and that mud would limit the use of roads and airfields. They also knew there were few rivers to cross, so they would need little bridging equipment. However, they would need much machinery to maintain and repair roads, airfields, and railroads. The meager natural resources of North Africa would not aid construction, and the engineers would have to maintain water supply, sewage, gas, electricity, and transit systems.6
Requirements for certain items of supply had to be studied in collaboration with other services. The, Engineer Section, SOS, WTF, worked with the Transportation Section in requisitioning railway equipment and petroleum pipeline and negotiated the procurement of the pipeline. Many unknowns remained. The engineers had to estimate
the amount of pipe that would be needed to transport petroleum products to storage tanks in cities and at airfields in North Africa. They had to consider, among other things, the probable amount of petroleum that would have to be moved by rail or truck as well as the probable storage facilities, and their estimate had to be based on intelligent guesswork rather than on specific knowledge.7
The American high command had barely begun to appreciate the practicability and utility of a military pipeline system when the United States became involved in the war.8 Well before TORCH began, the Army had placed orders with American industry for equipment needed to build military pipelines. Military requirements called for materials that could be easily transported and readily erected in the field, and during the year of peace the petroleum industry had produced such equipment. From the military standpoint, the important development was the “victaulic” coupling, named for one of the fabricators, the Victaulic Company of America. This coupling consisted of a gas-resistant gasket of synthetic rubber and a metal clamp. The gasket fit into grooves cut around the ends of two lengths of piping and was held in place by the clamp, a two-piece steel collar bolted tight to hold the gasket. This type of coupling could be fitted more quickly and was less rigid than either threaded or welded joints. The steel welded-seam pipe came in twenty-foot lengths. Early in the war this standard length was four inches in inside diameter and weighed 168 pounds. American industry later developed a four-inch pipe—“invasion tubing”—which weighed only sixty-eight pounds per length.
The engineers adapted other items of military pipeline equipment from the most portable items in commercial oil fields—pumps, engines, ship discharge hoses, fittings, and storage tanks. The Army used six sizes (ranging from 100-barrel to 10,000-barrel capacity) of bolted steel tanks for semi-portable storage. These tanks, consisting of shaped steel plates fitted together with bolts, could be shipped “knocked down” as sets—complete with valves and fittings—for onsite assembly.9
Maps were essential to the success of the North Africa invasion. The British Geographical Section, General Staff, supplied most of the maps CTF and ETF used. The Intelligence Division, OCE, SOS, ETOUSA, helped distribute the maps—some 500,000 items weighing approximately forty tons. Twenty tons were sorted, wrapped, and bundled in coded rolls for distribution aboard ships. Some 400,000 additional photomaps required careful handling and packing.10
The engineers in WTF did not have enough maps, and on short notice reproduction alone posed serious problems, not the least of which was security. The Army Map Service reproduced maps for WTF at its plant just outside Washington, D.C., but even there security risks existed, for only a few of the 800 workers could be screened in time. The maps were then taken to Hampton Roads by a detachment from the 66th Engineer Topographic Company, which kept them under constant surveillance. The 1:25,000-scale maps of the beachheads, issued to the troops before they sailed, had place names blacked out and carried a false north. Only the commanding generals of the individual subtask forces received true maps before departure from the United States. Each of the subtask forces making up the WTF had an attached mobile mapmaking detachment from the 66th Engineer Topographic Company, and each detachment carried a 250-pound reserve stock of maps. WTF sailed with some sixty tons of maps of many different types—ground force maps on a scale of six inches to the mile, air corps target maps, colored mosaics of such harbors as Port-Lyautey and Casablanca and the airdrome of Safi—and hundreds of photographs.11
The hurried attempt to produce maps for TORCH had poor results. On both sides of the Atlantic, maps of the target areas had to be printed from available sources, and little opportunity existed to bring them up to date or to produce them at the scales required for ground and close air support operations. In some cases major military operations had to be based on 1:200,000-scale maps with ground configuration shown by spot elevations and hachures. Low-grade photomaps, neither rectified for tilt nor matched for tone, substituted for large-scale maps of limited areas. The lack of good base maps of the target area, coupled with too little lead time, ruled out satisfactory maps for the North Africa invasion, while the secrecy that enveloped invasion plans severely limited the amount of map work that could be undertaken in time.12
British and American agencies aided each other in preparing intelligence material vital to TORCH; one example was a bulky work that the Strategic Engineer Studies Section in the Strategic Intelligence Branch, OCE, WD, compiled in September 1942. Material came from the British as well as from American construction companies, consular agents, geologists, even people who sent postcards depicting scenes in North Africa. The volumes contained a wealth of information on North Africa, including descriptions of roads and railroads, port facilities, bridge capacities, water supply, construction materials, forests, airfields, electric power, and the layout of known minefields.13
Engineer beach models were in great demand on both sides of the Atlantic. Large plaster of paris models were made at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and models of Moroccan beaches came to the United States from England. The British model beaches originated from
information the British Inter-Service Information Series (ISIS) gleaned from reports by the British military staff. Two American engineer officers who, posing as airline officials, had visited Bathurst on the western coast of Africa early in 1942 furnished useful information, particularly on coastal surf. Other information came from tourist guidebooks and from recent visitors to North Africa. Some of the model beaches depicted the terrain a mile or more inland.14
Engineer Amphibian Brigades
Engineer training for the invasion of North Africa concentrated heavily on methods of landing on hostile shores. Japanese occupation of Pacific islands and German control of nearly all the worthwhile harbors on the European continent forced the War Department’s attention to the possibility of Army beach crossings and to means of invasion and logistical support that did not rely entirely on seizing strongly defended ports at the outset. Amphibious warfare had been the preserve of the Navy for two decades before American entry into the new conflict, and, in fact, had become the raison d’etre of the U.S. Marine Corps. An agreement in 1935 defined the responsibilities of each service in landing operations and limited the Army to stevedoring at established ports. Clearly based on the experience of World War I, in which the Navy could deliver goods to French ports that were intact and secure from enemy interdiction, the arrangement was now passé. Though the issue remained open throughout the war, the Navy continued to lobby for the exclusive right to operate across beaches. However, the Army did take over a large share of this function in the spring of 1942 because the Navy could not supply smaller landing craft or provide enough men to operate boats or train other coxswains and crews. Out of the necessity to prepare for Army amphibious operations grew the engineer amphibian brigades.
The Army’s earliest conceptions for the brigades in 1942 reemphasized an ancient method of moving troops onto a hostile shore. The Navy’s prewar experimentation with amphibious operations relied almost entirely upon a ship-to-shore method of deployment to the beach in which combat troops and cargo were unloaded offshore into smaller craft that made the run from deeper water to the shore. Hazardous under any circumstances, the ship-to-shore system was a near impossibility at night and in heavy seas. With the introduction of larger, shallow-draft vessels that could plow up to the beach and disgorge men and equipment dry-shod, Army and Navy planners could readily see the advantage of the shore-to-shore amphibious operations. The shore-to-shore alternative treated each operation as a major river crossing and presupposed that landing craft making the assault would embark units and equipment on the near, or friendly, shore and transport them directly, without the confusion of a deep-water transfer, to the far, or hostile, shore. Unsaddled with earlier doctrine in the field, the Army favored the latter method as the means of crossing the Channel to the
Continent. Though the major landings of the war employed combinations of both methods, Army engineer training, organization, and equipment in the amphibian brigades created in 1942 followed shore-to-shore doctrine.15
The Army started relatively late to form amphibian units. Formally established on 10 June 1942 under Col. Daniel Noce, the Engineer Amphibian Command as an SOS organization paralleled an Army Ground Forces command, the Amphibious Training Command, at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. The Engineer Amphibian Command specified the organizational shape of the first units, the 1st and 2nd Engineer Amphibian Brigades, activated on 15 and 20 June, respectively. Each consisted of a boat regiment, a shore regiment, and support units. Later additions to the standard TOE included signal units and a quartermaster battalion. Each shore regiment consisted of three battalions; each battalion included two far-shore companies responsible for marking and organizing hostile beaches and moving supplies across them to invading forces and one near-shore company charged with loading combat troops and materiel. The Army made constant changes in the standard unit composition in an attempt to perfect the concept and to provide the brigades with a flexible structure to meet the conditions of the assault. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Brigades, eventually known as engineer special brigades, each had three boat and shore regiments. Because no larger craft were available when Colonel Noce took over the Engineer Amphibian Command, the engineers had as standard equipment 36-foot LCVPs and 50-foot LCM-3s. Though experimentation with the 50-foot boat produced the LCM-6, a longer, more commodious, and slightly faster boat using the originally designed engines, the command knew that none of its models was a match for the choppy waters of the English Channel and none could negotiate larger expanses of open ocean. Engineer amphibian training at Camp Edwards and later at Camp Carrabelle on the Florida Gulf Coast centered on the 36- and 50-foot craft as they became available from Navy stocks or from factories. But even before the 105-foot LCT-5 became available, the Navy reemphasized its prerogatives on amphibious warfare units and on training responsibilities in that field.16
In July 1942 the Navy reaffirmed the validity of the 1935 agreement, arguing for control of amphibious operations. Though it could not prevail everywhere—the Army retained command and control of the brigades for the most part in the Southwest Pacific—the Navy officially took over all boats and maintained its responsibility for training boat crews elsewhere outside the United States. Thus, the Army’s Amphibious Corps, Atlantic Fleet, consisting of the 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions and the 2nd Armored Division under Maj. Gen. Jonathan W. Anderson, was subordinate for training to Rear Adm. H. Kent Hewitt, though it was a part of General Patton’s Western Task Force. A King-Marshall agreement then delineated the
Navy’s responsibility for operating and maintaining all landing boats in the European Theater of Operations. The agreement worked to the detriment of the 1st Engineer Amphibian Brigade when it arrived in the theater on 17 August 1942, only six weeks after its formation, to complete its training with the 1st Infantry Division. It interfered further with the assault training schedule for the Center Task Force laid out in a meeting on 25 August among British Lt. Gen. K. A. N. Anderson, Vice Adm. J. Hughes-Hallett, and Maj. Gen. J. C. Hayden and American Maj. Gen. Mark W. Clark.
The engineer brigade, under Col. Henry C. Wolfe, operated in England under a number of constraints, much as the engineer units that had preceded it into the theater. Most obvious as a source of grief was the command structure resulting from the Army-Navy agreements. ETO USA headquarters, following the lead from home, established the Maritime Command under Rear Adm. Andrew C. Bennett to provide naval supervision for the brigade’s activity. The Maritime Command, hastily put together on 11 August while the brigade was still at sea, had virtually no personnel experienced in amphibious warfare and no equipment to carry out training exercises. Admiral Bennett, acting with no clear statement of the scope of his command, was forced to ask Colonel Wolfe for several of his boat crews to train junior naval officers in small boat handling so that they, in turn, could teach future Navy crews. Bennett’s command also resorted to splitting up the brigade elements. The unit, designed as an integral organization of 366 officers, 21 warrant officers, and 7,013 enlisted men to support an entire division, found itself spread on both sides of Britain’s North Channel. Though later designated principal military landing officer for Center Task Force, Colonel Wolfe served on Bennett’s staff once the Maritime Command headquarters had moved from London to Rosneath, Scotland. His own headquarters company and the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment went to Londonderry while two battalions of the 591st Engineer Boat Regiment settled in Belfast with the brigade medical battalion. The brigade managed to secure some basic training and shake down its organization, but it received no training in far-shore unloading, and much of its equipment arrived after delays at six widely scattered ports aboard sixty-five different ships.17
When Brig. Gen. Daniel Noce toured the amphibian training centers in the United Kingdom in September, he found them all inadequate. Constant rain reduced training time; the terrain behind the available beaches was not suited to the brigade’s needs; landing beaches were too constricted, windswept, and rocky. Noce saw boat crews cautiously approach the beach for fear of damaging their craft instead of coming in rapidly as they would have to do under enemy fire. A lack of tools, equipment, and personnel hampered the training program, and campsites for the men were poor. Large unit training was infeasible with the small facilities available. A reserve of boats had to
General Noce (photograph taken in 1944)
be overhauled and carefully protected against damage in preparation for TORCH, which took the craft temporarily from training use. The brigade’s engineers spent considerable time assembling new craft shipped in crates from the United States. Much of this production went to equip British units before American engineer organizations received their standard equipment. Between 22 September and 5 October, all landing craft were withdrawn from training units to be prepared for the invasion.18
In various parts of the United Kingdom the brigade’s 591st Engineer Boat Regiment received some infantry training and considerable stevedore and hatch crew experience. Because of British manpower shortages, one battalion was to supply 35-man hatch crews for ten of the twenty-three cargo vessels in the assault wave to the CTF. Two officers and fifteen enlisted men of the maintenance company of the 591st Engineer Boat Regiment received some excellent training in repairing landing craft when they were attached to British naval contingents of the ETF at Inverary on Loch Fyne, Scotland. The men of the brigade’s 561st Boat Maintenance Company had earlier repaired approximately one hundred landing craft at the U.S. naval base at Rosneath, in the Glasgow area. The company was fortunate in having the necessary equipment to do the job.19
For units other than boat maintenance and stevedore crews, training in the United Kingdom consisted chiefly of physical conditioning and instruction in infantry fundamentals. Only eight weeks were available between the time units were alerted for TORCH and moved to the port area for final rehearsal, and for some engineer units construction work interrupted even that short period.
Training in the 19th Engineer Combat Regiment and the 16th Armored Engineer Battalion (the 1st Armored Division’s organic engineer unit) may be taken as an example. The 19th Engineer Combat Regiment had sufficient physical hardening but received no ammunition or mines for training and no instruction in the use of the Bailey bridge, British explosives, or antitank
mines.20 The 16th Armored Engineer Battalion fared somewhat better. While stationed in Northern Ireland, the 16th received some comprehensive bridge and ferry training. The unit used the British Bailey bridge, its value having been recognized by officers who attended the British military engineering school. The 16th, likewise, became familiar with other British equipment, including Sommerfeld track, mines, booby traps, and demolitions. The battalion also launched a treadway bridge from a modified maracaibo boat off Newcastle.21
During the summer and fall of 1942, engineer units went through invasion rehearsal drills in both the United States and the United Kingdom. In the Zone of the Interior the WTF split into three subtask forces, X, Y, and Z, and carried out amphibious drills. Since loading went slowly, supplies were delayed, and because beach capacity was limited, one subtask force began rehearsals while the others continued loading. From the start there were mix-ups because loads were stowed aboard wrong ships and ammunition and gasoline were not unloaded for fear of explosions and fire. The result was a landing exercise limited to the loading and unloading of vehicles and other bulky items. While Y was loading, X and Z forces participated in the same type of exercise. Another serious deficiency was a lack of rigorous night training, which was to prove costly during the landings. The value of all WTF exercises also was limited by the fact that they took place during near ideal conditions—a tide that varied little and a relatively calm sea—hardly the situation to be expected along the Atlantic coast of North Africa.22
CTF and ETF held rehearsals like those of the WTF on 19-20 October near Loch Linnhe on the northwest coast of Scotland. Their objectives were to practice landing-craft techniques at night, rehearse the seizure of objectives up to ten miles inland, test communication among groups landing on a wide front, and promote cooperation among carrier-borne aircraft, naval bombardment vessels, and ground troops. The engineers gained some experience in laying out shore installations and communications but learned almost nothing about unloading vehicles and supplies. The rehearsals were final; no opportunity existed to correct errors.23 Only the experience of an actual invasion could provide an understanding of the problems involved, and only then would it be clear that a close-knit beach organization was required to coordinate the work of engineer shore regiments and of the Navy.24
The Landings
Western Task Force
WTF had the mission of taking the
port and adjacent airfield at Casablanca and then establishing communication with CTF at Oran. If Spain should intercede, the WTF was to join with Center Task Force and secure Spanish Morocco. Casablanca itself was too strongly defended to be taken by direct frontal assault. Instead, it was to be captured from the rear with three subtask forces landing close enough to the city to take it before reinforcements could arrive. This plan required the early use of medium or heavy tanks, for which a port was essential since landing craft to carry such heavy loads were not then available. Also, if land-based aircraft were to support the attack, an airfield had to be captured quickly.
The three subtask forces were called BRUSHWOOD, GOALPOST, and BLACKSTONE. The first, commanded by Maj. Gen. Jonathan W. Anderson and made up of the 3rd Infantry Division, a portion of the 2nd Armored Division, and supporting troops, was to provide the main blow by capturing Fedala, a resort thirteen miles north of Casablanca, and then moving on to Casablanca. Maj. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., headed the GOALPOST force, which was made up of part of the 9th Infantry Division and elements of the 2nd Armored Division along with supporting units. Its goals were the capture of Mehdia (eighty miles from Casablanca) and the Port-Lyautey Airfield with its hard-surfaced runways. BLACKSTONE, the third sub-task force, was under Maj. Gen. Ernest N. Harmon and had parts of the 9th Infantry and 2nd Armored Divisions. Its initial mission was the capture of Safi, a small port about 150 miles south of Casablanca. (Map 3)
The main engineer forces of the WTF were distributed among the three task forces. The 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 36th Engineer Combat Regiment were with BRUSHWOOD, and the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 540th Engineers were with GOALPOST and BLACKSTONE, respectively. All were to act as shore parties. The 15th Engineer Combat Battalion (9th Division), with GOALPOST, the 10th Battalion (3rd Division) with BRUSHWOOD, and elements of the 17th Armored Engineer Battalion (2nd Armored Division) with BLACKSTONE were to carry out normal combat engineer duties. The 2nd Battalion of the 20th Engineer Combat Regiment, assigned to BRUSHWOOD, was to remain on board ship as a reserve force to be called in when needed.25
The main objective of the Western Task Force on D-day was Fedala, where landing beaches were exposed to the double hazard of enfilading coastal defense batteries and dangerously high surf. When successive waves of landing craft approached the shore, many swept off course to founder on reefs or rocks. Others, only partly unloaded and stranded during ebb tide, were not able to retract because following landing craft were too close. The pounding surf wrecked many stranded craft. The inadequacy of the shore parties, made up chiefly of combat engineers of the 36th Engineers assisted by naval beach parties, also created dangerous delays.
The toll of landing craft was high at the Fedala beachhead, and the landing of troops and supplies became badly disorganized. Barely more than 1 percent of the supplies was ashore as late as 1700 on D-day. Engineer officers, badly needed on the beaches to control
Map 3: North African Beachheads
Map merged onto previous page
Wrecked and broached landing craft at Fedala, French Morocco
and direct the engineers of the shore parties, could not get ashore. No centralized coordination of supply activities for the different landing operations existed. The G-4 section of WTF did not get ashore at Fedala until the third morning, and the G-4 himself was not with this group of only two officers and three enlisted men. General Patton, however, was at the beach before daylight on D plus 1 and remained there until after noon because of his disgust over conditions. He condemned what seemed to him the lack of enterprise of the Army shore parties and took measures to divert the small craft from the beaches, where they had to fight the menacing surf, to the port of Fedala.
The chaos with which the Western Task Force had to contend drove home the lesson that trained service troops should always accompany invasion forces to assume the burden of supply and service functions, allowing the task force commander to concentrate on tactical problems. As it was, Patton had held back SOS Task Force A, and the SOS did not reach Casablanca until 24 December.26
The employment of engineers as provisional assault and defensive units in the Western Task Force was exemplified by the experience of Company C, 15th Engineer Combat Battalion and 1st Battalion, 540th Engineer Shore Regiment, supporting a regimental combat
team of the 9th Infantry Division in GOALPOST—the attack on Mehdia north of Casablanca and on Port-Lyautey Airfield. In addition to weapons and hand tools, the engineers in the assault carried mine detectors, bangalore torpedoes, and flame throwers to enable them to push through minefields and other obstacles and to reduce pillboxes.
A provisional assault company of engineers made up of detachments from Company C, 15th Engineer Combat Battalion, the 540th Engineer Shore Regiment, and the 871st Engineer Aviation Battalion participated in an attack on 10 November on the Kasba, an old stone fortress that stood on a cliff above the mouth of the Sebou River and blocked the approach to Mehdia and the airfield upriver. Shouting French defenders stood on the walls firing down at the Americans but American infantry attacks along the ridge and engineer attacks along the river took the Kasba. Then a small detachment from Company C of the 15th Engineer Battalion rendered the fort’s guns useless. The destroyer Dallas, with a special raiding detachment aboard including part of a Company C platoon, then entered the Sebou, and, after the engineers had removed a cable net, proceeded upriver and captured Port-Lyautey Airfield. After the destroyer’s guns had silenced enemy artillery, the engineers began repairs on the airfield. That afternoon, the 888th Airborne Engineer Aviation Company relieved Company C’s elements.
After the occupation of Casablanca on D plus 4, supply operations began to center there, and an almost hopeless tangle quickly developed. The first task of the WTF engineers was to resolve this problem, and the 175th Engineer
General Service Regiment tackled the job. The regiment reached Casablanca on 16 November 1942 in the D plus 5 convoy and found a dump location that was eventually to be expanded to 160 acres. All supplies brought ashore, whether engineer, quartermaster, or ordnance, went into this dump, where, before any systematic attempt could be made to institute depot procedures, more supplies of all sorts began arriving. Every type of vehicle that could be used for the purpose, including jeeps, was pressed into service to move supplies from the ships. The rush to unload was so great that materials were cast off railroad cars and trucks without system or order, and there were times after the December rains began when supplies stood a foot deep in water.
The 175th Engineer General Service Regiment had the extraordinarily difficult task of operating the engineer depot under such chaotic conditions, and it had to undertake an around-the-clock job for which it was not trained. For days the regiment had no opportunity to rest and no chance to consolidate its units. The engineer depot office force was housed in a sixteen-foot tent during the first week. For more than a month supplies of all description spread over the dump area without adequate shelter, while guards had to be posted to prevent pilfering by natives. The engineers improvised shelter for perishables by turning landing barges upside down. Late in December warehouse construction was possible, and the engineer dump, which the 175th operated throughout the winter months, gradually began to assume the characteristics of an orderly depot.27
Center Task Force
The mission of Center Task Force, consisting of the 1st Infantry Division, Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division, and the 1st Ranger Battalion, was to capture Oran and its adjacent airfields, to establish communication with the WTF, and, in the event of Spanish intervention, to cooperate with General Patton in securing Spanish Morocco. Finally, CTF was to establish communications with ETF at Orléansville, Algeria. Around Oran, four landings were scheduled, with a frontal assault on the port itself as the key objective. The Ranger battalion was to develop the smaller port of Arzew, thirty miles east of Oran, while Combat Command B, designated Task Force Red, and the 16th and 18th Regimental Combat Teams of the 1st Infantry Division went ashore on Beach Z, just east of Arzew. Armored forces were to slice inland to seize the airfields at Tafaraoui and La Senia, as the 16th and 18th Regimental Combat Teams closed Oran from the east. The 26th Regimental Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, was to land at Les Andalouses and advance on Oran from the west. The fourth group, a smaller component of Combat Command B, was to come ashore at Mersa Bou Zedjar, move inland to Lourmel, seize the airstrip there, and then advance on the La Senia Airfield just south of Oran. Brig. Gen. Henry C. Wolfe, commanding the much-dispersed 1st Engineer Amphibian Brigade, was to operate Arzew as a port and bring supplies and troops across the adjacent Beach Z. He gave the responsibility for unloading the D-day convoy to the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment, which was to cooperate with Royal Navy units on the beaches.28
The 531st Engineer Shore Regiment, attached to the 1st infantry Division, provided one battalion at Les Andalouses and two battalions at Arzew. The 2nd Battalion of the 591st Engineer Boat Regiment had shore engineer support duty for Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division, split between two beaches. The 1st Battalion of the 591st furnished hatch crews, while the 16th Armored Engineer Battalion (1st Armored Division) and the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion (1st Division) were to carry out normal combat engineer functions.29
The experience of Company F of the 591st Engineer Boat Regiment illustrated much that was learned about combat engineer support at Oran. Attached to Force GREEN (Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division), Company F supervised the landing of men and supplies at Mersa Bou Zedjar (called X-Ray Beach), some twenty-eight miles west of Oran. Its 9 officers and 186 enlisted men, commanded by Capt. Kenneth W. Kennedy, were to aid in landing 108 officers, 2,158 enlisted men, 409 wheeled vehicles, 54 tracked vehicles, and 430 tons of supplies. The company organized into a headquarters platoon of 2 officers and 30 enlisted men; a defense platoon of 1 officer and 40 enlisted men; a medical detachment of 1 officer and 6 aid men; and 2 construction and unloading platoons, each composed of 55 enlisted
men, one with 3 officers and the other with 2. Available landing craft consisted of 10 LCAs, 14 LCP(R)s, 4 LCM(I)s, 2 LCM(III)s, and 1 LST.30
Plans called for routing all vehicles off the LST directly onto a road leading to the village of Bou Zadjar. As soon as waterproofing could be removed, the vehicles were to move out along the road. All other vehicles coming ashore were to gather in an assembly area for removal of waterproofing, and this initial assembly area was also to serve as a dump to keep both beaches clear. At night wheeled vehicles were to be guided across the beach to the area by a line of shaded green lights held by guides, while tracked vehicles were to be guided to the same area by orange lights along another route. Personnel could follow either color.
A high rocky point divided X-Ray Beach into two sections, Green and White beaches, about a fifteen-minute walk apart. Company F had to be split into two complete units, each with its own defense and construction sections, unloading details, and even medical detachments. Green Beach was 100 yards long and almost 30 yards deep and rose steeply to high sand dunes and a hill of 500 feet. The only possible exit was to the east, a climb up a steep grade over deep sand. Because of sandbars, landing craft had to be halted 300 yards from the beach. Much of White Beach was difficult for landings because of a narrow approach and dangerous rocks in the water along the shore.
During the landings little went according to plan. When the operation started at 0145, the weather was clear and the surf moderate. Captain Kennedy and the men of his company headquarters, who were supposed to land on Green Beach at H plus 15 minutes, were ten minutes late. They remained alone on the beach for almost an hour, because the British naval beach party, which was to put the markers in place, had not yet landed. The contingents of the shore party that were to land at H-hour disembarked on Green Beach at H plus 90 minutes and White Beach at H plus 30 minutes.
Captain Kennedy and his group met no French opposition. They carried out the reconnaissance which was to have been directed by the missing assistant shore party commanders on the beach and for some distance inland. When the markers were finally put down, the first few waves of landing craft failed to land between them, and many craft were damaged and vehicles mired. Early in the operation an LCP(R) caught fire and lit up the area for miles around, revealing the site of operations. The vessel finally sank under the fire of a .50-caliber machine gun of Company F, but for some time thereafter oil continued to burn.
At approximately H plus 3 the naval beach party notified the engineers it wanted to land its maracaibo on Green Beach according to plan. To unload at this spot Company A of the 16th Armored Engineer Battalion had to erect 300 feet of treadway bridging, as expected. At H plus 4 the maracaibo was almost ready for unloading, but no Sommerfeld track for preparing an exit road was yet on hand. Without this flexible mat as a base, trucks would sink to their axles in the sand. By the time
the track arrived from White Beach and was in place, it was H plus 5, four hours behind schedule.
Landing craft continued to founder, and at noon on D-day Captain Kennedy had to close the beach. From that hour all landing operations took place at better protected White Beach. But White Beach had only two narrow exits, and in one of these, seventy-five yards from the landing points, only tracked vehicles could be used. By H plus 6, 1,500 barracks bags and other supplies had been dumped on the sands, and too little room remained to put down Sommerfeld tracks; as a result, all supplies had to be carried from the water’s edge on sleds. At 1300 the first combat unit had moved out with its equipment, but an hour and a half later the beach had become completely blocked by gasoline cans, barracks bags, and ammunition.
By 1800, with the aid of Arabs and twenty-five men from units already ashore, Kennedy and his men finally had relieved the congestion. It was then possible to lay Sommerfeld track and get two trucks on the beach simultaneously. Thereafter, the beach remained clear, and by 1900 enough equipment was ashore to send an additional combat unit forward.
Captain Kennedy called for thirty men from units already ashore to aid in a night unloading shift. As darkness fell, with serials coming in more slowly and inexperienced crews contributing to the boat casualties, the whole operation lagged further behind schedule. Next morning, 9 November, unloading continued at a still slower pace as the number of serviceable landing craft dwindled. Naval forces tried to compensate for the small craft losses by loading an LST directly from the cargo vessels and then beaching it. As another expedient, a ponton bridge served as a floating lighter to bring ashore some twenty light tanks. That night nearly all the LCMs had their propellers tangled with landing lines or had broached. Broached craft lay broadside to the sea on the sand and open to the pounding surf; even undamaged, they were of no use until they could be pushed off the shore and put back into action. Not until 1900 on 10 November was the beach closed and beach operations declared complete—twenty-three hours behind time.
With little training in shore operations, with only three vehicles at its disposal, and with the many problems of unloading, Company F managed to accomplish its task by dint of continuous hard work and cooperation with the British beach party—the fruit of joint exercises in the United Kingdom. Since a definite line of responsibility between the two had not been drawn, each could, and did, perform almost identical tasks; the shore party aiding, for instance, in retracting the boats from the beach and the beach party helping to unload the boats.
While the Rangers were capturing the French fort above Arzew and silencing Arzew’s harbor defenses, the 1st Infantry Division (less the 26th Regimental Combat Team) landed on the beaches adjacent to Arzew, the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment (less the 3rd Battalion) assisting. Supplies began to come ashore, with ammunition given top priority. The 531st Engineer Shore Regiment had enough trucks to clear the beaches initially but did not have the manpower to keep up the pace without relief, and unloading slowed
perceptibly after D-day. However, tonnage stacked along and near the beaches was never in danger of getting wet since the tide in the Mediterranean varied only about a foot. The 1st Division’s capture of the port of Arzew decreased dependence upon the beaches, and by D plus 3 ships were at dockside being unloaded rapidly. The beaches then closed and 531st Engineer Shore Regiment personnel, along with their trucks, became available for unloading parties in the town..
The lack of trained supply personnel was a serious handicap from the beginning. After the armistice with the French, the confusion increased with a scramble to secure sites for depots and dumps. By D plus 3 staff officers were “scurrying in all directions” to find locations for supplies coming in from “the tangled mess at Arzew” and to get ready for those discharged from a convoy arriving that day.31
The first echelon of the Mediterranean Base Section (MBS) organization came ashore near Oran on 11 November. Within a month, with the arrival of later echelons and service troops from the United States, this base section was operating with comparative smoothness. Its Engineer Service consisted of three groups of men that left England on 12, 22, and 27 November. During November the first two groups, totaling fifteen officers and thirty-eight enlisted men detached from SOS, ETOUSA, served as part of the II Corps engineer’s staff. Upon landing at Oran their most immediate jobs were acquiring real estate, establishing water points and engineer depots, and handling gasoline and oils from ship-to-shore storage and tank cars.
On 8 December, two days after the third group arrived, and the day MBS was activated, Headquarters, Engineer Service, MBS, was formally set up to incorporate all three groups. During December the Engineer Service had an average strength of fifty-seven officers, one warrant officer, and sixty-three enlisted men assigned and four officers and enlisted men attached.32
Eastern Task Force
Two hundred fifty miles to the east was the Eastern Assault Force (EAF), at first under the command of General Ryder of the 34th Division, later the nucleus of the British First Army under Lt. Gen. K. A. N. Anderson. This attack force, after occupying Algiers and adjacent airfields, was to establish communication with CTF at Orléansville, southwest of Algiers, and to advance toward Tunis. For the seizure of Algiers, EAF devised a plan like that CTF employed. The landings were to take place outside the Bay of Algiers, on beaches west and east of the city, while two smaller groups were to take Maison Blanche Airfield, ten miles southeast of Algiers, and Blida Airfield, twenty-nine miles southwest of the city. A special landing party (TERMINAL) prepared to make a direct assault on the port itself to forestall sabotage of harbor installations. EAF was about one-half American, chiefly the 39th Regimental Combat Team (9th Division) and the 168th Regimental Combat Team (34th Division).
Company C of the 109th Engineer Combat Battalion was with the 168th Regimental Combat Team; Company A of the 15th Engineers (9th Division) and the 2nd Battalion of the 36th Engineers were with the 39th Regimental Combat Team.33 U.S. engineers participated less in ETF than in the WTF and CTF landings, nor were they needed as much, for Algiers was captured on D-day.
The Assessment
The invasion of North Africa, by far the largest amphibious operation attempted to that time, developed in a very brief time, and from the very beginning much went wrong. In a number of instances, as on Green Beach at Oran, unloading fell hours behind schedule. Engineer units landed three, five, even ten and more hours behind schedule. Not only were inexperienced troops late in disembarking from the transports, but equally inexperienced Royal Navy crews, approaching the coast in darkness from points far offshore, beached their craft many yards—even miles—from designated landing spots. In one extreme case a landing craft missed its mark by twelve miles. Some of the landings were so scattered that supplies were spread out all along the beaches, and the small engineer shore parties had difficulty governing the flow to advancing troops inland.
Another delaying factor was the poor seamanship of Navy crews in handling landing craft at the beaches. All three task forces had high losses: WTF lost
34.3 percent of its craft, CTF 28 percent, and EAF 94 percent. So many boats broached or swamped that schedules for following boat waves fell apart. The Navy claimed, with some justice, that help from those on shore, including engineers, might have reduced the losses; nevertheless, one of the chief causes of boat losses was the failure of the naval beach parties to place markers properly or in time to guide the boats. In some cases the beach parties emplaced no markers at all.34
The division of responsibility between the two services was not well defined, especially as to the time and place at which the beach commander was to transfer his authority to the shore commander. Naval officials afterwards complained that the engineers refused to aid in unloading supplies and clearing boats from the beaches; the engineers made similar criticisms of certain naval personnel. Both accusations had some basis; neither service clearly understood the other’s particular problems or duties.
A better preventive measure might
well have been experience: more training exercises before the landing. If a strict division of responsibility was indeed essential, it should have been clear to all. On the other hand, the difficulty might have been overcome had sufficient authority been given one individual. This did not happen. Engineer shore party commanders were uncertain of their authority and did not know how to meet the inevitable unexpected developments. The WTF task force engineer, who might have directed the landing activities, did not arrive ashore until the emergency had passed. At Fedala, Safi, and Mehdia experienced SOS personnel, who might have made it possible to use the ports earlier, also remained aboard ship.
Worse still was the situation at the Bay of Arzew. Units involved in the operation included the 1st Infantry Division; a port battalion operating with shore, boat, and combat engineer units; and a naval unit, all with no clear divisions of responsibility among them. Communication here and elsewhere between the men at the port and the vessels lying offshore was far from perfect. Engineer shore parties depended upon the naval beach parties for communications with the ships. This may explain complaints that landing craft appeared to be idle, lying at anchor or merely cruising about, when they were needed to land men and equipment. Communication was also poor among elements ashore. Loudspeakers often could not be heard above the firing, the shouting, and the din of the beaches. In such an intricate operation many things could go awry, and many did; even British accents over loudspeakers confused the relatively few Americans on EAF beaches.
At all the beaches, when the engineers were ready to move supplies to more permanent dumps they faced an acute transportation shortage, one that should have been expected after the 50 percent cut in vehicles. For many engineer units (already understrength to perform all their assigned tasks efficiently), this cut had created another handicap: many engineers of the shore parties were specialists, whereas landing operations with little transportation and heavy equipment called for unskilled labor. General Noce of the Engineer Amphibian Command later recommended that the shore parties be enlarged by as much as 30 percent.
The bulldozer was the most valuable means of moving supplies and equipment across the beaches; too few were available and many arrived too late or not at all. Some vehicles landed without their drivers, or drivers landed without their vehicles. The whole unloading process lagged when a great deal more than anticipated had to be done by hand.
Some of the blame for the delay could be charged to loading and some to unloading. Often combat, shore, aviation, and service engineers found that their equipment had not been combat loaded at all, especially in the CTF shipping. Combat loading meant that troops were shipped with their equipment and were ready for combat when they disembarked. Though not economical in terms of ship space, the practice was all important in saving time during operations ashore. Convoy-loaded equipment had to be assembled for use after being deposited on the beach. Moreover, ship unloading plans often did not coincide with actual loadings, while priority lists for unloading were all too
often ignored. In one case the lighters unloading the USS Leedstown were ordered to report to the USS Chase when only half the prime movers loaded on the Leedstown—equipment badly needed to clear the beaches—had been landed. One battalion of the 36th Engineer Combat Regiment lost most of its equipment and tools when the Leedstown was torpedoed on D plus 2. Hatch crews frequently were not familiar with their ships. (Later criticism pointed out that these crews should have had 60 percent more men.) Yet there were instances of rapid and efficient work. The 1st Battalion of the 591st Boat Regiment received a commendation from the commanding general, Communications Zone, NATOUSA, for the work of its hatch crews and unloading details on ten of the CTF’s twenty-three transports.
Part of the delay in unloading undoubtedly could be attributed to the inexperience of officers and men, and sometimes delays had serious consequences. By H plus 96 the 1st Engineer Amphibian Brigade should have landed 80 percent of its assigned cargo and all of its assigned personnel. Actually, only 75 percent of the vehicles and 35 percent of the total cargo were ashore on schedule, although all personnel had landed. In this instance, and in several others, the forward movement of combat troops was retarded.
Engineers made many errors during the early phases onshore. Through ignorance or demands for speedy unloading, they often set up dumps too close to the water’s edge and then had to move them when the tides came in. Training exercises which had taken place in ideal tide conditions and calm seas both in the United States and in the United Kingdom did little to prepare the engineers for the Moroccan tides, rising as much as fourteen feet, or for the rough seas that interrupted unloading at several beaches. Had the engineers been more familiar with conditions, they could have closed beaches sooner, moved on to the captured ports, and saved boats and equipment.
Another cause for delay in getting supplies forward, at least in the Casablanca area, was piling all items—engineer, signal, medical, ordnance, and the five different classes—into common dumps. This mingling made it difficult to find certain much-needed supplies quickly, and the engineers claimed that they had neither the time nor the manpower to sort supplies properly. Even in dumps where segregation was attempted, faded package markings often hindered distribution. Frequently, supplies belonging to combat and shore party engineers were thrown together with those belonging to aviation engineers. The shore party engineers complained that packaging materials and crates were often too flimsy; corrugated paper or cardboard containers proved of no value whatever. Another complaint was that too often equipment was shipped in boxes too large and bulky for easy handling.
Unloading and other shore operations could have proceeded with much greater dispatch had full advantage been taken of native labor. The engineers made some effort to employ local workers on the beaches and at the ports; the 591st Boat Regiment, by doing so, cut discharge time in half at the Arzew quays. But the Americans were too trustful and lax in supervision. At Safi, natives thronged the beaches, unloading landing craft for a cigarette,
Moroccan labor gang at Casablanca harbor
a can of food, a piece of cloth. Two days later tons of ammunition and rations were found on Arab fishing vessels. American planning and preparations had made too little provision for using this vast labor pool or studying its peculiarities. Civilian workers wanted to be paid in goods, not in local currency. Nor did they look with favor upon the weekly pay system, and many quit in disgust after a day’s work. Once the engineers arranged to pay in cloth, sugar, tea, bread, and the like, willing workers became available.
The engineers’ slowness to begin salvaging equipment lost or damaged on the beaches, in turn, slowed unloading. The engineers were not trained for salvage work, nor had they been assigned it in the plans. But. they did help to recover a considerable amount of equipment and supplies. Some tractors used in futile attempts to salvage equipment from the water were lost. LCVPs proved inadequate; tank lighters, although better adapted, were little used. Sleds of wood or metal, some of them improvised, proved most useful on the beaches. A sled designed to carry larger loads would have been more useful, and a reserve of sleds, cables, and chains would have improved salvage work and general movement of equipment and supplies.
A further impediment to rapid progress on the beaches was the inadequacy of the maps issued to the shore engineers. These maps indicated the contour of the terrain only a short distance behind the beaches, and the information was sometimes inaccurate. In several areas engineers found unexpectedly
high dunes that obstructed egress to the inland plateau and that forced them in one case to build a road with a hairpin turn; at Blue Beach (Mehdia-Plage) engineers had to construct a road through a mile of deep, soft sand.
Troops and equipment moved off the various beaches on quickly improvised roads and bridges substantial enough to withstand heavy military traffic but emplaced in a constant struggle with poor construction material, equipment, procedure, and inexperience. In general, engineers concluded that the British Sommerfeld track, chicken wire netting, and cyclone wire were all inadequate, for they sank into the soft sand after traffic passed over them. They found cyclone wire of some value, provided burlap bags were used as a base. The bulldozer, the most useful piece of equipment landed, was put to various uses such as clearing exits through sand dunes and other obstacles, pulling equipment from lighters and across the beaches, and afterwards building and repairing roads as well as runways at airfields. Unfortunately, some bulldozers proved mechanically defective. Waterproofing would have increased their utility, and they all should have been equipped with winches, so effective in pulling out mired vehicles. Light cranes, had they been present to operate with the bulldozers, would have made unloading, as well as rescuing stranded boats and vehicles, more efficient. A lack of spare parts was still another factor in cutting down the effective use of vehicles and other engineer equipment, even some weapons.
Shore party engineers complained of the heavy individual load of equipment they had to carry, a problem common to all troops in the TORCH operation.
Much might have been left behind for later shipment or left on board ship to be distributed at a more convenient time. Engineer officers and noncommissioned officers complained especially of the heavy submachine gun. On many occasions soldiers were forced to jump into the water some distance out to keep boats from broaching. Men burdened with their heavy loads stumbled and fell in the surf trying to wade ashore through water that was in some places two to four feet deep.
In summing up his observations during TORCH somewhat later, an experienced engineer officer entered an oft-repeated plea for enough service troops, including guard units, fire-fighting units, bomb disposal companies, depot companies, and labor units, especially in the early waves of an invasion force. “When this is not done, either combat troops must be diverted to service tasks for which they are not trained, [thus reducing] the effective combat strength by more men than would have been necessary if trained service troops had been available; or the combat troops will not be supplied, in which case they cease to be effective.”35
The dilemma was classic and continuing. The experience the engineers gained in the invasion of North Africa stood them well in future landings in the Mediterranean and European theaters and made superior veterans of them. Lessons derived on the littered beaches were enlarged upon in new procedures and organizations, but many had to be learned again in the face of far stronger resistance than the French defenders offered in Algeria and Morocco.