Tag Archives: North African campaign

Bearing the Torch, 76 years ago today

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U.S. troops aboard a landing craft head for the beaches during Operation Torch of the North African Campaign Oran, Algeria. 8 November 1942.

Imperial War Museum photo. Hudson, F A (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer

Note the man wearing the old school “Brodie” helmet in the back of the boat, probably a Royal Navy man, as the group had spent 22 days aboard the converted ocean liner RMS Orbita on the voyage from Scotland to North Africa. The men aren’t wearing unit patches, but the cased gear to the front right look to be marked “1-19” which could be 1st Bn/19th INF Regt, which at the time was in the States and would later serve in the Pacific. In fact, they are men of the 1st coy, 19th Engineer Battalion, who did take part in the Torch landings.

Less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the Torch landings would be the U.S. Army’s first brush with war in the ETO. Other than a few officers and NCOs with Great War experience or service in the National Guard, most of these men were recent volunteers and draftees, living ordinary lives in George Bailey’s America and had only held a gun when going hunting or at a carnival shooting gallery. It’s a good thing the French didn’t really have the inclination to mix it up. The 19th Engineers went on to serve at the horrors of the Kasserine Pass (where they lost 3/4 of their active strength and it was reported that “the 19th Engineers no longer exist”) and the Rapido River, where the Germans were much more ready to fight.

As noted by the Army “During World War II, The battalion conducted five amphibious landings while accompanying the victorious allied armies through Africa, Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. The battalion had suffered 902 combat casualties including 144 killed in action. For their gallantry and service, the battalion was awarded 10 campaign streamers from World War II, and soldiers from the battalion were awarded 7 Silver Stars and 13 Bronze Stars”

Below is a great doc on the 19th, with several interviews with vets, and directly shows the above image as a reference.

The 19th is still on active duty, based at Fort Knox.

A bit of desert that will always be Scotland

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“The graves of two Scottish soldiers are marked by upturned rifles in the sand, North Africa, 5 November 1942,” some 75 years ago this quiet Sunday.

Photo by No 1 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Smales (Sgt) IWM (E 18952) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205204021

This reminds me of Scottish poet Roderick Watson Kerr‘s piece, From the Line. Kerr himself was invalided out after picking up the MC while a junior officer in the 2nd Royal Tank Corps during the Great War.

From the Line

Have you seen men come from the Line,
Tottering, doddering, as if bad wine
Had drugged their very souls;
Their garments rent with holes
And caked with mud
And streaked with blood
Of others, or their own;
Haggard, weary-limbed and chilled to the bone,
Trudging aimless, hopeless, on
With listless eyes and faces drawn
Taut with woe?

Have you seen them aimless go
Bowed down with muddy pack
And muddy rifle slung on back,
And soaking overcoat,
Staring on with eyes that note
Nothing but the mire
Quenched of every fire?

Have you seen men when they come
From shell-holes filled with scum
Of mud and blood and flesh,
Where there’s nothing fresh
Like grass, or trees, or flowers,
And the numbing year-like hours
Lag on – drag on,
And the hopeless dawn
Brings naught but death, and rain –
The rain a fiend of pain
That scourges without end,
And Death, a smiling friend?

Have you seen men when they come from hell?
If not, – ah, well
Speak not with easy eloquence
That seems like sense
Of ‘War and its Necessity’!
And do not rant, I pray,
On ‘War’s Magnificent Nobility’!

If you’ve seen men come from the Line
You’ll know it’s Peace that is divine !
If you’ve not seen the things I’ve sung –
Let silence bind your tongue,
But, make all wars to cease,
And work, and work for Everlasting Peace !

–from War Daubs (London: John Lane, 1919) via the Scottish Poetry Library

Italians and baby elephants in the stickers

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Italian gunners man their light field piece in a field of Tunisian cactus, on 31 March 1943 during the tail-end of the North African campaigns. The last Axis force to surrender in North Africa was Maresciallo d’Italia Giovanni Messe’s 1st Italian Army, on 13 May, just six weeks after this image was taken.

The gun appears to be an Austrian-designed Cannone da 47/32 M35. Commonly called the “elefantino” (little elephant) by the Italians, the light artillery piece was pressed into service as an anti-tank gun/bunker buster in North Africa with a good bit of early success as it could penetrate 58 mm (2.3 in) of steel armor at 100 m (which meant camouflage was essential to get close enough to British tanks to be able to do the job– hence hiding in a cactus clump.)

While effective against trucks, armored cars, British cruiser type tanks and Lend-Leased M3 Stuart light tanks, the elefanto was a pop gun when confronted with taking a Valentine head on or a Matilda A12 from any angle. By the stage of the war shown in the above image, the gun was about as effective as a t-shirt cannon against Allied armor barring a lucky shot at an exposed track or roadwheel.