Twelve Desperate Miles (34 page)

During the course of the day on November 7, Patton noted the breaking off of the components of the task force. The Safi contingent headed south at 0600; the Mehdia group, heading north, didn’t steam off until 1500.

Patton’s own central attack group, aimed at Fedala, steamed directly toward the village beaches on the evening of November 7 with the largest of the three attack commands. Twelve transports, three cargo ships, almost twenty thousand officers and enlisted men, 1,700 vehicles, and fifteen thousand tons of supplies awaited the word to hit the shores of Morocco. An additional seventeen thousand naval personnel were there to escort and protect them as they made their way onto the beaches.

Aboard the
Augusta
, George Patton issued a letter to his troops:

Patton spent the evening before the invasion trying to relax in his cabin. He read a detective story called “The Cairo Garter Murders” by Van Wyck Mason and tried to get a little sleep. At 2120—9:20 that night—the
Augusta
’s radar detected land dead ahead. They had reached Morocco.

To the north, at about that same hour, the Goalpost sub-task force was sailing stealthily past Rabat. The city lights were brightly visible from the sea, while the blackout conditions on board the convoy gave the ships a ghostly, whooshing presence as they steamed by.

René Malevergne had been called to the bridge of the
Susan B
.
Anthony
, where he stood now, indicating the landmarks to the captain as they passed. The group of lights to the right was Rabat; on the left was the city of Salé. The black trench between was the Bou Regreg, a river that empties into the sea south of the Sebou.

Suddenly, the lights of Mehdia twinkled beneath the dark African sky and a confusing wave of emotions swept over the Frenchman. Soon he would be home amid a liberating force of Americans; Morocco would be free from the taint of Vichy governance and the heel of les Boches. But it was also impossible for Malevergne not to consider that Germaine and the boys might be sleeping at this very moment in their little white cottage near the Kasbah. He tried not to think of the awful things that might happen in the morning, but sailing within this awesome force it was unavoidable to consider:
When the guns opened fire and the shells began to fly, where would his family be?

T
he landing on the shores of Morocco was to take place at 0400 hours on November 8. Precision was needed so that combat teams could hit the beaches before sunrise, which was expected at 0600. The three sub–task forces were supposed to be in position for loading at 2300 hours the night before.

The navy had worried about the timing of operations for weeks. The army was asking this convoy to cross the second-largest ocean in the world and set its forces down on a particular series of beaches on a notoriously volatile coastline essentially without pausing to regroup and reorganize in order to synchronize movements.
With zigzagging and evasive maneuvers added to the length of the journey, the pitometer logs on most of the ships in the convoy were reading in the area of 4,500 miles—this was the distance they’d traveled from Hampton Roads. Remarkably, the navy managed to deliver each of the three landing groups to its destination within an hour of that 2300 time slot: the Safi group was ready at 2345; Patton’s Fedala force at 2353; and Truscott’s north assault wing at 2340.

About half an hour after midnight, the landing craft of sub–task force Goalpost began to be lowered into the water and then steered toward their designated transport ships with the intention of loading troops beginning at 0130. The swarming sound of dozens of boats could be heard in the darkness, and problems arose immediately in the traffic. Because the ships continued to be blacked out, there turned out to be an obvious difficulty in finding the correct ship on the darkened sea. In addition, the ships maintained radio silence, which inhibited the ability to sort out the confusion. Landing craft simply couldn’t find the transports housing the troops they were supposed to take to shore.
Megaphones from the
craft could be heard in the area calling up to the transport ships questions like “Is this the
Allen
?”

There were troubles with winches, cables, and davits, which added to confusion, delays, and difficulties both before and after the landing craft were lowered. Loading areas were suddenly switched from starboard to port on some of the transports for no apparent reason; different nets were employed, as well. Other ships that weren’t involved in the initial assault, including the
Dallas
, were confused about their positioning, leading them to drift into the transport area and adding to the mess.

The lack of training of everyone involved was immediately evident, but one army witness was willing to discreetly point the finger of blame at the other service involved in the operation: “
I believe that navy personnel were cooperative and wanted to do their best, but inexperience in such operations was a great handicap.”

On Truscott’s transport, the
Henry T. Allen
, landing craft were to be lowered beginning at 0030, with troops disembarking forty-five minutes later. Seeing the chaos evolving around him and thinking that, because of the radio blackout, he could provide more help from the water, Truscott clambered down the nets and into a landing craft, which he ordered to cruise around the staging area. He soon encountered yet another problem: “
We found ships everywhere but each one was reluctant to identify itself for they were suspicious of this unexpected visit.” When these ships were finally willing to identify themselves and let the sub–task force commander come aboard, Truscott found that none of the ships could point to where other ships were located in the area.

After an hour and a half of cruising around the transport area, hoping to sort matters out, Truscott returned to the
Allen
only to be faced with yet another unexpected difficulty. Immediately after he climbed aboard, he was pulled to the ship’s communication room, where he was astonished to hear General Eisenhower’s message to the French people being broadcast over the radio. Eisenhower’s address had come on the heels of President Roosevelt’s, and, in fact, Truscott was listening to a rebroadcast, which meant that both speeches had been aired twice now,
beginning at 0300, when, apparently, Allied forces on the Mediterranean side of the invasion had landed. The only problem here in Morocco, of course, was that no one had yet landed! FDR’s stirring invitation to French forces to lay down their arms and join the Allied cause ended with the cry “Viva la France eternelle!” But from Truscott’s perspective, this was simply an alert to the forces on shore that his army was coming. “
My heart sank,” he would later write. “Our people in the Mediterranean had landed an hour before our scheduled time. If the French were not now alert and waiting at their guns we would indeed be lucky!”

Just before the broadcasts began, René Malevergne climbed down the hull of the
Susan B. Anthony
and into a waiting craft. The boat made the short trip over to the
Dallas
, where Malevergne climbed aboard and was immediately taken to the bridge, where he shook hands with the commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Robert Brodie Jr. “
I am Viktor Prechak,” said Malevergne.

Brodie shook his hand and handed the Frenchman a pair of field glasses. “Good weather,” the captain said.

“There is better, but more importantly there is worse,” replied Malevergne.

Shortly after his arrival, an alarm sounded on the
Dallas
bridge, and in the distance Malevergne and Brodie could make out the emerging lights of at least five vessels heading directly toward the convoy. They were French merchant ships, and Truscott saw them as well from the
Allen
. The vessels began to flash signals to the American ships: “
Be forewarned,” was the message. “Alert on shore for 0500.”

Whether by the radio broadcast or some other factor, French forces on shore had obviously become aware of the pending assault. From Truscott’s point of view, it hardly mattered anymore. The landing craft were in the water and loaded with troops, ready to hit the beaches. Though they were already past their 0400 landing time, there was no turning back.

Headaches continued in getting the landing craft organized. Each battalion sailing for its designated beach had been assigned a control ship upon which it was to congregate and prepare to head in synchronized fashion to shore. Toffey’s Third Battalion, aimed for Red Beaches north of the River Sebou, was to be organized around the minesweeper
Osprey
, but it took a good hour after loading the troops for all the landing craft to find her. It would ultimately be daylight by the time they reached the Moroccan shore—0630—and as it turned out, they were five miles north of their designated landing area.

To the south, the Second Battalion combat team became the first section of the northern invasion force to hit the Moroccan beaches; units landed at Green Beach at 0540. Soon after, the first two waves of the First Battalion were also ashore. Aiming for Blue and Yellow Beaches, they drifted farther south to land on Blue and Green Beaches.

As the first waves hit the beach, the shore batteries opened fire and U.S. destroyers responded, sending red and green tracer shells arcing across the sky toward the guns on shore. From his post on the bridge of the
Dallas
, Malevergne could hear the “
dry clacking of machine guns and automatic weapons from both sides.” Everyone on the ship was at his combat station, and the commandos grouped along the deck, as loudspeakers ceaselessly transmitted orders to each unit. A pale sun, “
sad and without brilliance,” arrived at dawn; it was quickly veiled by gray, dirty clouds and a light rain.