Shadow Warriors

by Dick Camp

  F. O. Cooke, a sailor on board the assault boat, reported, “We beached very quietly indeed: there was hardly a sound. The Americans went off excellently and very quietly, so quietly in fact that once they were on the beach, the sound of their feet on the sand woke one of the inhabitants of a cabana who opened his door letting out a flood of light and who was completely bewildered by soldiers running past him on either side. He stood there in trousers and shirt scratching his head and wondering what was happening.”

  Once the advance party had arrived, Plain’s men assisted in seizing three small steamers and a patrol boat lying in the harbor. Cooke wrote, “So many ships were lying peacefully at anchor that not enough officers could be found to take them over. So the job was given to the Marines—one Marine for each ship, complete with crew.” The first ship to be boarded was the SS Richebourg, of about three thousand tons; the second was the SS Parme, of about the same size. The crew of the first ship was largely Arab, the crew of the second mainly French. “The captain was roused from his cabin, the crew ordered to stand by, and a lone Marine assumed temporary command of each of four vessels in the name of the U.S. Navy,” Cooke noted. “They maintained order over their sections of the harbor until relieved by the newly formed Naval Command.” Other Marines were assigned to guard the five hundred foot South Jetty, which commanded the harbor entrance. They held the position all night, until relieved by the Rangers. The 22 March 1949 London Gazette noted, “At 0300, searchlights and gun flashes from the direction of Oran were seen in the sky over the hills above Cape Carbon. This, as it later transpired and was at the time suspected, was the French reception of HMS Walney and Hartland, which were due to enter Oran harbor at that hour. …”

  After daybreak in Arzeu, several French snipers started shooting from the southern breakwater and adjoining seaplane base but were quickly silenced by the small Marine detachment. Cooke noted, “Corporal George C. Brown deployed a detail to clean out a nest of snipers in a garage on the waterfront. Some snipers were hiding in a drain, while others had a machine gun inside the garage. The Marines advanced, using extended order tactics, and to fire their first shots of the landing.” Private First Class Anthony Damato said his team killed three snipers, including one woman. After the fire fight, the captives were marched off to the POW compound.

  On the Way to Oran

  The American-British planning staff considered the commando-style raid to be a high risk operation because the defenses in the Oran harbor were formidable. The French had deployed numerous searchlights and coastal gun batteries in the hills surrounding the harbor. Many of the guns could be turned inland to fire on invading troops. In addition, there were the deck guns of two submarines (Ceres and Pallas) and three destroyers (Tramontane, Typhon, and Epervier). Rear Admiral A. C. Bennett, USN, commander Advance Group Amphibious Force Atlantic Fleet, was sharply critical of the planned operation. “An entry into the port by these cutters, with additional objectives of seizing batteries fully manned, prior to the capitulation of the town … is suicidal. If determined resistance is met from the French Navy … it is believed that this small force will be wiped out.…” Despite Bennett’s objections, the planners thought the risk was acceptable if French defenders could be taken by surprise. There was also a chance that the French would cooperate with the landing forces, although the North African spymaster, Col. William A. Eddy, thought otherwise. The planning came a cropper, as he predicted, when the French put up a spirited resistance—they were neither surprised nor cooperative. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Allied naval commander later admitted, “The moment chosen could hardly have been less fortunate, since the French alarm to arms was in its full flush of Gallic fervor and they had not yet been intimidated by bombing or bombardment.”

  OPERATION RESERVIST

  As part of the Center Task Force amphibious assault, a direct assault on the Oran harbor was planned by two small shiploads of American troops and naval personnel under Royal Naval Command, with the mission of forestalling sabotage, eliminating the coastal artillery threat, and taking charge of Vichy French ships moored in the harbor. The assault force consisted of 17 officers and 376 enlisted men of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Armored Infantry, 1st Armored Division; 4 officers and 22 seamen of the U.S. Navy; 52 Royal Navy commandos; and 6 Marines from the Londonderry Northern Ireland detachment. The plan called for the force to be lifted in two British Branff-class sloops, HMS Hartland (Y-00) and HMS Walney (Y-04), which were the former U.S. Coast Guard cutters Ponchartrain and Sebago that had been given to the British under the lend-lease program. The ships were chosen because of their “American” appearance, although no one questioned how the French could determine their registry in the darkness. The cutters were fitted with iron plating around the wheelhouse and lower bridge for additional protection. “The armor plate was clearly for an ominous purpose,” British Leading Seaman J. H. Finch surmised. Each cutter was manned by 200 sailors.

  The plan called for Walney to smash through the floating barrier at the harbor entrance, land its troops on the Middle Pier (Mole Centre), and capture the batteries in Fort Lamoune. Hartland was tasked to land its troops ashore on the first pier, Mole du Ravin Blanc, and knock out the gun battery of the same name. Crewmen from both ships were trained on how to board and seize French ships, if possible. “We spent a great deal of time practicing coming alongside and boarding vessels in the dark,” Finch recalled. Stoker Les Elder said, “I was detailed to boarding parties. … [W]e were sent aboard merchant vessels to familiarize ourselves with the engine-room and boiler room layout. We had no idea why at the time.” Two armed motor launches, HMML-483 and HMML-480, were assigned to lay down a smoke screen to cover the sloops’ passage through the harbor entrance.

  On 25 October 1942, Marine 1st Sgt. Fred Whittaker led his six-man Londonderry commando detachment aboard the Hartland moored alongside her sister ship Walney in the harbor of Tail of the Clyde, Scotland. Whittaker’s Marines were part of a small U.S. Navy contingent (five officers, twenty-two sailors) under the command of U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. G. D. Dickey. The ships sailed the next day in convoy with the Center Naval Task Force, an imposing array of thirty-nine British and American warships and transports. There was great concern at the highest levels of the military and among the embarked troops because of the German U-boat threat. The British naval staff estimated that, if the enemy got wind of the convoy, fifty U-boats could be deployed against, “the most valuable convoys ever to leave these shores.” In all about a hundred escort vessels were allocated to the convoys. Correspondent Drew Middleton wrote, “Patrolling the perimeter of the convoys were destroyers of the British escort. Tiny out there on the gray waters, but loaded with depth charges, they searched for U-boats everyone expected.”

  Aboard the Hartland, F. O. Cooke wrote in a July 1943 Leatherneck magazine article, “During the slow voyage south through the U-boat danger zone, the Marines spent most of their time learning to operate with the British sailors and commandos who accompanied them. Weapons classes were held in the use of the Tommy-gun [sub-machine gun] and service pistol—which caused quite some excitement as the British Tommies cut loose with the unfamiliar weapons on the transports’ heaving decks.” The overloaded cutters wallowed in the heavy seas. Middleton noted that, “Seasickness was a far greater worry to the troops than enemy attack. For two days fairly rough weather made many of them extremely unhappy.” On 6 November, the Eastern and Center naval task forces split off from the main convoy and proceeded independently through the Strait of Gibraltar. During an at-sea refueling, Captain Davis aboard the SS Orbita was able to communicate with First Sergeant Whittaker’s commandos. Cooke wrote that, “The seven Marines on the Orbita and the six on the Hartland exchanged semaphore greetings … and wished each other good luck.” Thirty hours remained before the assault landing.

  United Press staff writer Leo S. Disher was on board the Walney. “In the dead of the deep black night of November 7, two U.S. Coast Guard cutters and two trailing motor launches t
urned away from an Allied convoy off the North African coast,” he wrote. “It was midnight when we left the convoy, steaming without lights.” The night was so clear that the Marines on deck could see the navigation lights in Oran’s harbor. The French appeared blissfully ignorant of their approach—but was it a ruse? “Would the French fight,” they wondered, as the ship went to action station. Author Michael G. Walling noted, “All-close range ammunition for the .50-caliber machine guns, rifles, automatic weapons, pistols, and other small arms, was brought to the upper deck and placed either at the guns, in the fo’csle lockers or in the gun shelter or laundry.”

  Oran Harbor

  A stone breakwater three thousand yards long separated Oran Harbor from the sea. An entrance about 160 yards wide on the eastern end was protected by a boom, but it was uncertain how substantial an obstruction the boom would be for the incoming ships. The long, narrow harbor within was further divided into four large subsections (or basins) by wide stone moles extending northward from shore toward the breakwater. There were two smaller subsections on the western end divided by the Mole Centre, which ran parallel to the breakwater. Traveling westward through the harbor, ships first encountered Avant Port, the largest of the basins, then continued past Mole Ravin Blanc; followed by the second basin, Mole Millerand; Bassin du Maroc; Mole J. Giraud; Bassin Aucer; and Mole St. Marie. At the end were the two small basins; the larger one, on the breakwater side near the French naval barracks, berthed naval vessels, while the smaller, inner basin was for small vessels.

  Shortly before 0300, two hours after the Arzeu assault, the sloops began creeping in along the twenty-five-fathom line toward the harbor with Walney in the lead and Hartland five hundred yards astern. “A British cruiser, lying offshore, sent up rockets to divert attention from our entrance to the harbor,” Disher noted. Lieutenant Wallace Moseley RN recalled, “We ran up to the outer boom where we carried out a complete circle whilst Lt. Paul E. A. Duncan RN announced in American accented French over the Ardente loud hailer, ‘Ne tirez pas (don’t shoot)!’ Nous sommes vos amis. ‘Nous sommes vos amis (we are your allies).’ Ne tirez pas”. ‘Ne tirez pas (don’t shoot)!’ This appeared to rouse the batteries which had been silent up to then … principally at Harland as [we] were well covered by smoke laid by the two ML in company, one of which, ML 483, came into collision with us when coming out of the smoke screen.” The motor launch survived the collision and was able to proceed out of the harbor for repairs. Marine Corporal Norman Boike said, “It was something out of one of those pirate pictures that Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power are always playing in, only more fireworks.”

  The sound of air raid sirens warbled across the harbor as Cmdr. Emile Abgrall, capitaine de corvette of the Vichy Bourrasque-class destroyer Typhon (T-72), breathlessly stepped onto the bridge. The officer of the watch informed him that enemy ships were approaching the harbor. “Sound, ‘Aux postes de combat’ (“to combat stations”),” Abgrall ordered without hesitation. The strident blare of the klaxon roused the French sailors from their bunks and sent them racing to their battle stations. Within minutes the ship was “manned and ready.” Commander Abgrall ordered the Typhon’s main and secondary batteries trained out to cover the harbor entrance and to make emergency preparation for getting under way. Suddenly a searchlight from Fort Lamoune at the far end of the harbor stabbed into the smoke shrouded darkness, illuminating two ships emerging from the murkiness. Abgrall immediately recognized the hated British White Ensign flying from the mast. There had been bad blood between the two navies ever since July 1940, when the British launched an unprovoked attack on the French fleet at anchor in Algeria, killing almost 1,300 French seamen and sinking a battleship; the British felt the pre-emptive attack was justified because they feared the French fleet would be turned over to the Germans after France signed an armistice with Germany at the beginning of World War II. In addition to their own White Ensigns, the Hartland and the Walney had also been given permission “to wear the largest size American Ensigns they could carry,” and Abgrall was momentarily taken aback by the bed sheet-sized stars and stripes waving from the stern. “American flag,” he mumbled and gave the order to fire.

  One of Hartland’s officers, Lt. V. A. Hickson recalled, “[W]e were caught in the glare of a searchlight and became an easy target. We were hit several times.…” The gunfire put short shrift to a message Walney had received from the higher headquarters that there was “No shooting thus far; landings unopposed. Don’t start a fight unless you have to.” Corporal Boike, stationed by the captain’s cabin, reported “four-inch shells streaking through Hartland’s thin sides like blue flame.” Heavy machine guns from the mole and the Ravin Blanc Battery opened a devastating barrage at point blank range. First Sergeant Whittaker, Pfcs. James Earhart and Richard K. Spencer, Pvts. Robert F. Horn and William L. Dickinson, and the British commandos waited below on the mess decks for the signal to come topside. Cooke described the effects of the shelling. “The first six-inch shell came through about four feet from Whittaker’s head and exploded far back in the hold, wounding several men. The men were picked up and laid on a table in the officer’s wardroom, converted into a temporary hospital. Just as a British doctor was bending over the first patient to probe for shrapnel, three more shells scored direct hits, and turned the entire below-decks into a shambles.” Private First Class Horn was swept away and killed by this salvo.

  HMS Walney

  At this point in the action, the ships were less than a half mile from the entrance. Captain Frederic Peters aboard the Walney, a retired Royal Navy officer who was brought back on active duty and placed in charge of the operation, ordered the engines to flank speed in order to hit the boom with full force to smash their way through. “All men below decks lie flat,” Peters ordered, “we are approaching the boom.” Walney sliced through it, “with barely a noticeable tremor,” according to Moseley. A moment later she broke through the second boom, a row of coal barges, “like a wire through cheese.” As the ship crept farther into the smoke enshrouded harbor, she endured heavy but inaccurate close-range fire. Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison wrote in History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II that Walney “boldly steamed right up the three hundred-yard-wide harbor past Mole Revin Blanc, drawing fire from two submarines (Ceres and Pallas) docked between it and the next quay, Mole Millerand. Having passed this mole, she was about to turn and ram a French destroyer standing out of the harbor when her bridge was shot away.” Survivors estimate that the destroyer opened fire from a distance of two hundred feet.

  The Walney continued until within six hundred yards of her objective, the Mole Centre at the furthermost end of the harbor when the French torpedo boat Tramontane and the destroyer Epervier opened fire at almost muzzle-end range. One shell exploded in the engine room, killing most of the crew, and destroying the lubricating tanks. With the oil supply cut off, the automatic stop valve closed and the engine shuddered to a stop. Another shell detonated in the boiler room, wiping out the two main boilers. No one escaped from the compartment. Author Jack McIntyre described the action in the 14 December 1943 London Gazette: “The toll in death and destruction was mounting. … The bridge exploded in flame from another [direct hit], blowing Peters off the bridge, the only survivor of eighteen officers and men … [T]he devastation above and below decks was indescribable. … Walney’s situation was hopeless.” The ship was a floating heap of jagged, twisted metal, with bodies piled two- and three-feet deep on her decks. Peters ordered abandon ship. At 0445, Walney capsized and sank only a few yards from the head of the harbor. Only one officer and thirteen ratings survived, while eighty-one of her crew and most of the soldiers went down with the ship.

  HMS Hartland

  HMS Hartland was a sitting duck. A searchlight from Fort Lamoune held her in its beam and the French destroyer Typhon pounded the ship from only one hundred feet away with its two 4.7-inch guns. The salvoes were devastating and within minutes most of her gun crews were casualties. Fires raged fore a
nd aft. She lost all control and power, and drifted several hundred yards while absorbing a merciless shelling from the destroyer and the two submarines that had fired on Walney. Within minutes of the first shells hitting the ship, Corporal Boike was knocked unconscious and severely wounded. Cooke noted, “… [S]hrapnel tore away the muscle of his left arm. When he came to, only dead men were below decks. He climbed painfully topside and found most of the ship ablaze still under direct fire from the destroyers. …” An officer bound up Boike’s arm, gave him a shot of morphine, then the two jumped over the side and swam through a mass of floating wreckage to a life raft holding six British sailors. The men turned to and after 150 yards of furious paddling they reached a floating dry dock manned by a squad of French soldiers, who quickly took them prisoner. After spending several hours on the dock, Boike was taken to a French naval hospital and treated for his wounds. He was liberated the next day by U.S. soldiers.

  First Sergeant Whittaker was trapped below decks with “the smoke getting thicker by the minute.” The compartment was filled with dead and wounded men, all the hatches were still battened down and, unknown to them, all the men on the main deck had been cut down. “The situation looked grim for the trapped men,” Cooke wrote. “Escape forward was barred by a wall of flame. The hold was rapidly filling with deadly carbon dioxide gas from the blasted refrigeration plant … one of the British seaman remembered an emergency hatch far aft.” The men had to clamber over debris, bodies, and piled-up equipment to get to the escape hatch that was blocked by a wooden block that had not been removed in years. Cooke noted that, “Four rifle stocks were broken on it before the hatch cover finally gave way, and a path was cleared out of the deathtrap below decks to the dubious safety of the open deck, which was still being swept by machine gun fire.”