The Daring Dozen (11 page)

There now began a race between the Allies and the Germans to occupy air bases and towns of strategic importance in north-west Africa. Raff became involved in the competition when, on 12 November, he was instructed to lead a mission to capture the French airfield at Tebessa in the east of Algeria, 15 miles from the border with Tunisia and within range of the German forces streaming west from Libya.

As Raff began to plan for the insertion onto the airfield at Tebessa on 15 November, he learned from a French civilian of a second, larger air base close to the Tunisian border at Youks les Bains. Raff contacted headquarters with the intelligence report and was ordered to seize the base at Youks les Bains with an airborne operation and then send one company overland to secure the airfield at Tebessa, about 10 miles distant.

Despite having had less than 48 hours to prepare the operation, at 0730hrs on 15 November Raff led his men on their mission as scheduled. Jumping from 22 aircraft at a height of only 350ft, the 350 men of Raff’s battalion assembled on the drop zone in just 20 minutes without any incoming fire. ‘The quick descent from 350 feet leaves little time for thoughts,’ wrote Raff. ‘I had only two. First, “There must be Frenchmen in those trenches. No shots are being fired.” Then “How in the world did this carbine (which was in my hand) get tangled in the shroud lines?” when plunk – both feet hit the mud of the field and, like the others, I, in the prone position, was struggling to get out of the harness. This tense moment is always critical in a paratrooper’s life and is really much shorter than one thinks.’
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As the French soldiers (belonging to the 3rd Zouaves) emerged from their trenches to greet the Americans, Raff ordered one company to dig in around Youks les Bains, and then he dispatched a second company to secure Tebessa, which was also accomplished without contact with the Germans.

For the rest of November Raff, whose forces at Youks les Bains were augmented by the arrival of an American tank destroyer company and some Royal Engineers, embarked on several reconnaissance patrols. Now operating under the sobriquet ‘Raff Force’, the Allies penetrated as far as Gafsa, a Tunisian town 80 miles south, only to learn that the Germans were approaching. Pulling back to Youks les Bains, Raff Force was soon bolstered by the arrival of a squadron of P-38 fighters and, on 22 November, Gafsa was cleared of Germans in a combined air and land operation. Further engagements occurred with the Germans at Ferriana, resulting in the destruction of 12 enemy tanks and the capture of 100 prisoners, and at Faid Pass to the east – a portal through the Dorsale mountains to the coastal plain, the control of which offered protection to the British First Army flank to the north.

The battle for the Pass raged for two days before finally, late in the afternoon of 4 December, the Germans began waving white flags from their positions behind the rocks. Casualties had been heavy, with 100 Allied dead or wounded and twice that number on the German side. ‘From the battle that day there is one sound which sticks in my mind,’ wrote Raff later. ‘It is the rhythmic beat of a heavy German machine gun manned by a Nazi who played tunes by fanning the trigger. At first the monotoned songs were songs of positive confidence; later, when the artiste began to feel less sure of his position, the tunes changed to dejected small bursts and, as his ammunition ran out, they ceased altogether.’
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Raff remained in Tunisia throughout December and on New Year’s Eve he and his men were stationed at Kasserine, close to the border with Algeria. Raff spent the evening at a lavish party where red wine flowed and there was an abundance of roast pig. Shortly before midnight, however, he slipped away from the party to spend it with his men outside. ‘I felt that they, who had been with me through so much, should be greeted before the comparative strangers in the house,’ reflected Raff, whose battalion was about to finish operations in north-west Africa.

Writing about the contribution of ‘Raff Force’ to the campaign in Tunisia, Dwight Eisenhower said after the war that ‘under the command of a gallant American, Colonel Edson D. Raff, the story of his operations in that region is a minor epic in itself. The deceptions he practised, the speed with which he struck, his boldness and his aggressiveness, kept the enemy confused during a period of weeks’.
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Withdrawn from the theatre of operations in early 1943, the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Parachute Infantry established camp at Oujda in French Morocco and later returned to England where, in time, they began preparing for another invasion – that of Italy. However, the battalion would do so without Raff. Having assisted General Omar Bradley, commander of the US First Army, with the planning of airborne operations in the lead-up to the invasion of Normandy, Raff (now a colonel) was assigned the command of ‘Task Force Raff’. This was a special strike force comprising 17 Sherman M4 tanks from the 746th Tank Battalion and 90 glidermen belonging to the 325th Glider Infantry. Its mission on 6 June 1944 was to land at Utah Beach and punch inland towards the village of Sainte-Mère-Église, six miles to the west (where Baron von der Heydte had one company of his 6th Parachute Regiment posted) and join forces with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Raff led his men ashore at 1300hrs on 6 June, several hours after the main landing on Utah, and raced inland towards Sainte-Mère-Église. As he neared a crossroads at Les Forges, two miles south of his rendezvous with the command post of the 82nd Airborne, Raff found a large number of American infantrymen pinned down by German artillery, which was coming from the high ground known as Hill 20 between the two villages.

Raff sent a scout car down the road towards Sainte-Mère-Église with a Sherman tank behind to offer covering fire. The two vehicles disappeared along the winding road, and then Raff heard a violent crash followed by another heavy noise. A couple of minutes later the lieutenant in the scout car ran back along the road, shaken but unhurt, to explain to Raff that a German shell had hit his vehicle head-on but failed to explode. Nonetheless, such had been the force of the impact that the scout car had smashed into the tank behind and rendered it immobile.

Undeterred, Raff advanced down the road twice more, but each time shells from the German 88mm guns forced his armour to withdraw. Raff began to fret; it was 2000hrs and a glider landing was scheduled at 2100hrs, bringing in reinforcements from the 82nd Airborne on a landing zone one mile south of Sainte-Mère-Église. Suddenly into view appeared the gliders and their tug ships, one hour ahead of schedule and right on top of the German artillery.

Incredibly most of the glidermen landed unharmed, though their presence wasn’t sufficient to assist Raff in breaking past the German positions on Hill 20. That was achieved the next day when, with the help of the 4th Division, Raff reached General Matthew Ridgeway and his 82nd Airborne. A week later Ridgeway appointed Raff commander of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, following the capture of its predecessor Colonel George Millett at Amfreville.

By March 1945, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment were respectfully known among the American airborne troops as ‘Raff’s Ruffians’. So heavy had their casualties been in the Normandy landings that they were not deployed during the ill-fated Operation
Market Garden
in September 1944, the audacious but unsuccessful Allied attempt to seize a number of important bridges in Holland and expedite the advance into Germany. They did, however, take part in the Battle of the Bulge, helping drive back the German attack through the Ardennes in January 1945, and in March it fell to Raff’s Ruffians to lead the drop into Germany.

Operation
Varsity
was an Anglo-American operation involving more than 21,000 paratroopers and glidermen, the biggest single airborne drop in warfare in one day. The object of
Varsity
was simple: for two airborne divisions to drop east of the Rhine, secure key bridges and roads, and hold them while the 21st Army crossed the river in amphibious landing craft. Opposing the Allies was the German Army Group H, consisting of approximately 85,000 troops, although their morale and fitness for combat varied. Nonetheless it was a daunting task for Raff and his ruffians as they boarded their aircraft in the early hours of 24 March, having digested a breakfast of steak and eggs.

The 507th’s DZ was a clearing two miles north of the town of Wesel, just to the edge of the Diersfordter Forest. As ever, Raff insisted on being the first to jump. ‘I was alone standing in the door of the plane looking down at the river passing beneath the plane, smoke partially obscured my view,’ he later recalled. ‘At that moment, I said a prayer to the infant Jesus, The Little Flower, “Little Flower, in this hour show Thy power.” The prayer was given to me by my sister who was a nun. I said the prayer before every jump. A split second after I said the prayer, the green light came on, as I looked down, I saw several objects below me. The first thing that caught my attention was several German soldiers on the ground with rifles in their hands looking up. The second thing I noticed was a heavy equipment bundle that was swinging back and forth as it descended toward the ground. The bundle saved my life because the Germans thought it was a bomb and disappeared into the cellar of a nearby house. I landed in the chicken yard behind one of the homes.’
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Once down on the ground, Raff and his men rounded up the Germans and then took stock of their position. They had been dropped wide of the intended DZ and were two miles north-west of where they should have been. Raff led his 700 men through the woods and back to the DZ, engaging several German patrols as they went. By mid-afternoon the 507th, along with all other airborne units, reported that they had secured their objectives. Operation
Varsity
had been a stunning success, a brilliant demonstration of what airborne troops could achieve with thorough planning and swift execution. Of the American 17th Airborne Division, 359 men had been killed and 522 wounded, while the British 6th Airborne lost 347 men and suffered another 731 wounded.

On 26 March the Allied 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery began moving east into Germany and two days later they had penetrated 20 miles behind the Rhine across a front 30 miles wide. Though there would be much bloody and bitter fighting in the weeks ahead, the Allies were within sight of victory against Nazi Germany.

Raff remained in the army after the war. Already something of a legend within the United States thanks to his wartime exploits and the publication in 1944 of his book
We Jumped to Fight
, Raff was a leading figure in the development of Special Forces in the post-war period. In 1952 he trained Turkish troops in commando tactics, and later he commanded the 77th Special Forces Group, Airborne, who specialized in guerrilla warfare. Raff is credited with introducing the ‘green beret’ as the headgear of the elite Special Forces unit.

His last appointment was as head of the Psychological Warfare Centre at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from where a quarter of a century earlier he had prepared the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry to become the first combat airborne troops of the American military. Though Raff died in 2003 aged 95, some of the philosophy that made him one of the greatest Special Forces soldiers in American history lives as ‘Afterthoughts’ in
We Jumped To Fight
. Among three of the most pertinent, nearly 70 years later, are the following:

Be simple in your every act, word and deed. Your men will like it and you’ll get results, not excuses.

You will never win a war at the command post. It is just as safe and more inspiring for your men to see the commanding officer around whatever your rank may be.

Mere production will not win the war. It is the man with the gun, the man in the tank, the man at the stick of the plane who must do the actual fighting. You must have the best and sufficient quantities of it, to be sure, but you, individually, must be the best also.

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In December 1943 it was redesignated the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion.

On 2 February 1943 Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson assembled his 2nd Raider Battalion of the United States Marine Corps at their camp on Espiritu Santo one of the islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean, in order to celebrate their first anniversary. Just a year earlier Carlson had formed the battalion at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt, ‘the first organization in the history of the American armed forces to be organized and designed purely for raiding and guerrilla missions’.

Casualties had been high on the battalion’s two major operations but the sacrifices had been worth it, explained Carlson, because they had ‘proved to the world the value of democratic practices in connection with military operations’. Then the lean, wiry grey-haired Carlson, about to turn 47, told his men why the battalion had achieved such success. It was, he said with his customary zeal, because each of them possessed ‘a deep spiritual conviction in the righteousness of the cause for which he fights and in the belief that victory will bring an improved social pattern wherein his loved ones and the loved ones of future generations will enjoy a greater measure of happiness and well being than was his lot. And so it has been an unfailing policy in this organisation to articulate for you and constantly remind you of the reasons why we endure and fight and sacrifice.’
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