No Banners, No Bugles

by Edward Ellsberg

  Soon the droning of airplane engines started to swell again, kept on rising. This time the bombers apparently meant business. On they came, still not one caught by the searchlights. Again the ground guns concentrated protectively over the hidden harbor and its invaluable shipping.

  Cutting now through both the roaring of guns and the beat of engines came a new sound, a shrill whistling. Instinctively I plastered myself flat against the heaviest chimney, on the side opposite the harbor. I had heard that whistling before, both in Cairo and in Alexandria. The bombs were away!

  The whistling increased to a fiendish shriek, while I strove to flatten myself out even flatter against the chimney. Those bombs would be close.

  Then came the bursts. For an instant, Algiers was illuminated brilliantly in split-second succession by a dozen flaming volcanoes and my eardrums rang to the concussion of heavy explosions to which the previous racket had been nothing. And I saw I had chosen the wrong side of the chimney. Every bomb had struck to landward of the hidden harbor—the bombers had not dared enter the blazing inferno of shells over the ships.

  A red glow lighted up the sky perhaps a hundred yards inland and uphill from me. One bomb at least had landed on a building there; now it was in flames. Below in the streets I heard the clatter of trucks. The French fire brigade, already at the alert, was on its way. But as I ran to the parapet to peer in the direction of the fire, I could see the firemen were going to have trouble. Down the steeply sloping street toward the Aletti came a cataract of water-apparently other bombs bursting in the street itself had ruptured the water main there.

  Where the remaining bombs had struck except probably in the open, I couldn’t tell. There were no other fires. But certainly they hadn’t landed in the harbor. And the gunfire was drawing away to the eastward in the wake of the bombers. None of them had been touched—they were still shrouded in darkness, still wholly unseen.

  Evidently the bomber formation then broke up, probably by arrangement, to scatter the targets, disperse the gunfire, and give the bombers better opportunity for individual runs over the harbor. At any rate, that seemed the plan, for the droning of the engines came now from several different directions over Algiers. Both the searchlight beams and the gunfire broke up into groups working different sectors of the dark sky feeling for the targets which the radar indicated there, but not accurately enough to get either shells or searchlights on the circling planes.

  But if that was the Nazi tactic, it came to grief. A new factor had entered the battle. Suddenly every searchlight went out, every gun stopped firing. Except for the dull glow of the flames nearby and the beat of engines in the sky, peace, quiet, and darkness reigned again over Algiers. I had an inkling of what that meant, though apparently the Nazis overhead hadn’t. As well as if I had had a pair of phones strapped over my ears, listening in, I knew the word had just gone out over the whole Algiers fire control circuit,

  “Cease fire! Night-fighter has the target!”

  I swung my eyes toward the monument topping the hill to the westward, its white marble shaft easily visible there against the night. It would be from over there that any good bomber would start his dead-reckoning run for the smoke-hidden harbor. And it should be there that the Beaufighters would be lurking.

  It was even more calm and peaceful over that monument a mile or so away than where I was. Nothing whatever was visible there.

  But not for long. A stream of tracers suddenly etched a fiery trail high up in the dark sky, a trail composed of not very elongated straight red dashes in the blackness, a very short trail, ominous in its shortness. Evidently having homed by its own radar close in on the tail of an unsuspecting bomber before opening fire, every shot from the Beaufighter’s guns was striking home. Not a single tracer missed to cut the usual long curving red path in the sky beyond.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the short burst of tracers ceased. Darkness again. Why, I wondered, had not the night-fighter kept on firing to make sure of the job? Why take a chance on that Nazi’s getting away to bomb us again?

  But evidently the Beaufighter had made sure. For a few seconds later, a tiny point of light like a new bright star glowed in the sky high over the monument, heading for the harbor. As it came on, it glowed more brightly, swelled rapidly in size till it more resembled the ball of fire that was the sun. In a long curving arc it passed diagonally over the harbor, a flaming sphere like a vast meteor now, gradually losing altitude all the time. Not a gun fired as it passed overhead, an easy target for the ground guns. It wasn’t necessary.

  Still at fair elevation it crossed the line of the outer breakwater, was out over the open sea beyond, steadily but evenly dropping lower, constantly increasing in size and brilliance. Then as instantaneously as if a shutter had snapped behind it, the huge blazing ball vanished. The sea had closed over that bomber, still in full flight when it struck.

  That ended the air raid. Whatever the other bombers in that now dispersed formation had intended to do, they changed their minds immediately and started for home instead. That meteoric path of fire cut in the night skies over Algiers by the first Nazi bomber making a solitary run over the harbor and its sudden extinguishment in the sea, must have unnerved them. It took no vivid imagination to figure the fate of that bomber’s crew.

  There were no more bombs, there was no more gunfire, the hum of engines in the sky faded out. Shortly the “All Clear” sounded. Only the fire about a block away and the water still gushing noisily down the steep street beneath me remained to mark what had happened. But as the handicapped firemen seemed to have the blaze confined to that one building, I went below to my relighted room in the Aletti and finished the letter home I had been writing when the lights went out.

  CHAPTER

  8

  THE PLANE IN WHICH I WAS TO return to Oran would not take off till late afternoon. So next morning in accordance with Admiral Cunningham’s instructions to get acquainted in Algiers, I circulated through the St. George. I had now been fitted with a G.H.Q. pass, very officially stamped and signed by “J. J. Baker, Colonel Infantry, Headquarters Commandant,” so that I was no longer required to go about the building in custody of a G.I. guard. Colonel Baker’s flowing signature seemed to have much magic in it.

  I went to see first Captain Jerauld Wright, U.S.N., “Jerry” Wright, who was scheduled to remain as permanent liaison for Admiral King with Eisenhower’s forces. Poor Jerry had been through the mill already, and had good reason to fear that worse was yet to come.

  It was Wright who had been put nominally in temporary command of the British submarine P 219, the H.M.S. Seraph, of which Lieut. N. L. A. Jewell, R.N., was actually the captain, authorized by special dispensation to fly American colors when it was dispatched from Gibraltar a few days before D-day in North Africa. Its mission was to make possible the escape of General Giraud from Vichy France.

  Giraud was the French military hero in whom our political savants had put their trust to convince the French in North Africa by radio broadcasts at H-hour that we had come as friends. He was to order them not to resist. He was to inspire them to rise as one man immediately we had landed and assist us in throwing out their Nazi and Fascist conquerors.

  Jerry Wright took a very dim view of Giraud. As scheduled, at the appointed rendezvous on the French coast, he had picked General Giraud up in the dark of the night of November 4, nearly losing him when the general fell overboard in the darkness during the transfer from small boat to sub. Then with Giraud safely aboard, the sub had promptly submerged and headed back for Gibraltar, a thousand miles away. And Jerry Wright’s troubles had promptly begun. He learned to his dismay that in addition to all the many drawbacks he knew submarines had, a submarine submerged had for him now an additional one—there was absolutely no place to go to get away from his very important passenger.

  For General Giraud turned out to be a nightmare. Once he was aboard, still dripping he turned to on Jerry with the astounding assertion that he would immediately take overal
l command of the invading forces, superseding Eisenhower. And as if that were not enough, he followed it up with the disclosure of his own plan—the carefully prepared invasion of North Africa must be abandoned. Instead he would lead the troops to victory and glory by diverting them northward and invading southern France!

  Jerry Wright’s diplomatic suggestions that all this was impossible, that Giraud misunderstood what his part was, that a plan for which men and ships had been trained for months could not be cast aside on the spur of the moment for another for which there was neither training nor preparation, that the ships were all at sea nearing their prepared assault beaches and could not possibly be diverted—all this was brushed aside by Giraud as of no importance. He was General Giraud, he was like Joffre, his honor would not allow his serving in a subordinate position to Eisenhower, to anybody. He would take supreme command, he would lead the invasion to glory through southern France. Napoleon had done just that on his return from Elba. But that Hitler and the Nazis were not the weak Louis XVIII and his unstable royalist supporters, and that the unarmed French civil populace had little inclination left to rise with flails, scythes, and sickles to face Stukas and tanks in the hands of their conquerors, seems not to have occurred to Giraud.

  Hour after hour as the submarine swam southward, Giraud dinned his projects into poor Jerry’s ears, demanding his assistance, following him into the torpedo room forward, the motor room aft, every one of the few compartments in between as Jerry Wright sought refuge from l’honneur, mon prestige, l’invasion de la France tout de suite! Had there been a solitary torpedo tube on the P 219 empty of its torpedo, I have little doubt Jerry would have crawled into it and slammed its heavy bronze door to behind him to escape Giraud’s incessant demands on him. But there was no escape.

  Two days and nights of this Jerry Wright had to stand as the P 219, sometimes submerged, sometimes on the surface ready for a crash dive if danger appeared, headed southward through the Mediterranean for Gibraltar. Then on the third morning, November 7, the day before D-day, came blessed release. A British Catalina, a flying boat, made contact with them at sea well off the Spanish coast, to take Giraud off and fly him the rest of the way to Gibraltar for his rendezvous with Eisenhower and his briefing for his prearranged part in the imminent landings.

  “I tell you, Ellsberg, I certainly felt sorry for Ike when I finally got Giraud aboard that Catalina and in the air headed for Gib,” concluded Jerry. “My conscience hurts yet.”

  I nodded sympathetically, but not overly impressed. Giraud was nothing. Eisenhower had had plenty of trouble with Giraud, who had failed miserably in his part of the invasion plan, even after cold logic, Ike’s persuasions, and rapidly moving circumstance had forced Giraud into reluctant acquiescence and the abandonment of his preposterous demands. But wait till Ike had to deal with de Gaulle, whom I had seen in the Middle East. Giraud then would seem to Ike the acme of rational and complaisant Frenchmen.

  Leaving Jerry Wright, I had a brief interlude before I resumed my round of military calls. There was to be a special ceremony that morning in the heart of Algiers in joint tribute to all—American, British, and French—who had lost their lives assaulting or defending North Africa three weeks before. I hurried down the hill to the little terraced plaza in the center of the business district where stood the Monument aux Morts, a modest cenotaph.

  Shortly there was martial music, and small detachments of British, French, and American troops filled what space there was on the lower terraces. Then Darlan, Eisenhower, and Cunningham personally one by one laid wreaths at the base of the cenotaph, there was a moment of respectful silence, and the brief ceremony was over.

  I gazed with great interest at the four major figures in this scene, for Giraud stood with the other three, though to Darlan, not to him, went the honor of representing France in this tribute to her fallen sons and those of her new allies. Taller than any of the others, General Giraud was also by far the most impressive military figure, a fact more striking as he stood in simple uniform wholly without any decorations or ribbons—these he refused to wear till once again he could parade down the streets of Metz.

  But it was Darlan, rather than Giraud, who held my attention. Admiral Darlan was the reason for the storm of abuse both in America and Britain which was swirling round Eisenhower’s head. There was Darlan, short, stocky, bull-dog faced, impassive, the very antithesis of Giraud in everything. It was perhaps no accident that Eisenhower and Cunningham stood between the two of them, as all four faced the Monument aux Morts, for these two Frenchmen had nothing in common. Yet Eisenhower had to deal with both to make his campaign a success. If he were not to risk losing his command he must placate idealistic American and British public opinion which thought it saw in Giraud something of the soul of France. And if he were to avoid the certainty of military disaster which would result if all French North Africa fought him or surreptitiously sabotaged his efforts instead of co-operating wholeheartedly, he must deal with Darlan, who was the only Frenchman to whose orders any other Frenchman in North Africa—soldier, sailor, or civilian—paid attention. Nobody in Algeria or Morocco had listened to Giraud’s impassioned appeals on D-day or afterwards, not a gun had ceased firing. But when unimpressive Darlan had issued the order to quit fighting and to co-operate, not another shot was fired. And the French were co-operating.

  There stood Darlan, a very devil in the eyes of American and British public opinion. Was he? Or was he as patriotic a Frenchman as Giraud? Enigmatic, inscrutable of countenance, he laid his wreath in tribute to Americans, British, and French alike, and stepped back impassively. I could imagine with what dramatic fervor Giraud at the other end of the quartet would have deposited that wreath at the base of the Monument aux Morts. It would have been a lend-lease reverse of “Lafayette, we are here!” But if it had not been for Eisenhower’s swift comprehension of realities and his quick agreement with Darlan, there would have been vastly more mothers in America, in Britain, and in France also, who would have paid for the privilege of having Giraud lay the wreath instead of Darlan by having their sons also honored at the Monument to the Dead that morning of December 2, 1942.

  CHAPTER

  9

  BACK IN ORAN BY EARLY EVENING, I was once more billeted in the Grand Hotel, this time with more permanence. The eastward hegira of the army and the resultant overcrowding at Algiers had had at least one good result—it had eased the pressure on quarters in Oran. I drew a room by myself, a rather ancient, unheated and depressing room. Compared to the cabin I might have had if afloat, it was terrible. But compared to what I saw the G.I.s up against on my trip in from Tafaraoui Airfield, that room, any room with a roof and a floor, was heaven itself. By the thousands, I saw G.I. pup-tents set up in fields of mud (there weren’t any other kind of fields about) with the men half mired in it, nothing to sleep on save cold, clammy mud, and nothing to shield them from the nightly near-freezing rain except a flimsy bit of canvas. Why they didn’t all die of pneumonia, I was never able to figure out. Vividly I recalled the cynical retort of a battlewise infantry general just after World War I to a flying officer enthusiastically expounding war in the future,

  “The next war may start in the air as you say, but it will end just where all other wars have—in the mud!”

  Well, the next war, a quarter of a century later, was here now. As prophesied, it had started in the air, all right, over Pearl Harbor; now it was being fought out true to form in the African mud.

  December 3 I saw Oran harbor.

  Oran itself stands on a wide plateau a few hundred feet above the sea. The harbor area is a long narrow strip of low ground beneath the city, reached only by a sharply sloping wide road carved into the rocky face of the plateau. The harbor is flanked at the eastern end (its entrance) by a precipitous cliff on which stands the Ravin Blanc Battery, and is flanked on the western end (or head end) by another eminence carrying Fort Lamoune. Between these two forts, the harbor runs east and west, a rather narrow rectangle about
a mile and a half in length. Except one pier at the head of the harbor, all the piers lie to the southerly or landward side, and a massive stone breakwater forms the northerly or Mediterranean side. The harbor has only one opening to the sea, that at its eastern end, directly under the guns of Ravin Blanc Battery, a naval battery, and hardly a quarter of a mile from them—pointblank range, in fact.

  About three miles to the westward of the commercial harbor of Oran, lies the separate French naval harbor of Mers-el-Kebir, with a towering rock, the highest in the vicinity, crowned by the formidable Du Santon Battery, commanding all the sea approaches to Oran and Mers-el-Kebir.

  I felt sick when I got my first glimpse of Oran harbor from the heights above, and sicker yet when I got a close range look first from a jeep and later from a small boat.

  There were twenty-seven French wrecks littering the harbor. Masts and stacks at crazy angles broke the surface of the harbor waters wherever one’s eyes lighted—in most cases, the hulls, whether right side up, upside down, or on their sides, were wholly submerged and invisible. A string of masts and smokestacks lay across the entrance to the inner harbor. There six ships, anchored in two lines nearly bow to stern, had been scuttled to block the port. Inside these were sunken destroyers, sunken submarines, sunken freighters, sunken passenger ships, sunken drydocks. Everything in the port had been scuttled before the surrender—across the entrance, in the fairways, alongside the quays—wherever in the opinion of the French naval commandant at Oran they would cause us the most trouble in reopening the port.

  And as a sad reminder that the taking of Oran had had nothing of “friendliness” about it, torn fragments of the blasted hulls of two British men-of-war protruded slightly above the surface, one just inside the inner entrance, the other very near the head of the harbor. Inside those battered hulls still lay the mangled bodies of some four hundred men, mostly Americans, who had all died within a few minutes in the taking of Oran. With these two added wrecks, H.M.S. Walney and H.M.S. Hartland, the score was complete. Twenty-nine hulks lay inside Oran harbor—twenty-seven French, two British.