Commandos and Rangers of World War II

by James D. Ladd

  The overwhelming superiority by 1945 in American heavy weapons—guns, planes, and ships—took three years to build up from the relatively slight superiority the US forces achieved in the Gaudalcanal campaign. This ended in February 1943 after six months of fighting in which the American marines and army had 6,111 casualties including 1,752 killed. The Japanese, skilful to the last, evacuated more than 13,000 men but lost many men killed in the campaign.

  FRENCH NORTH AFRICA, MOROCCO, AND ALGERIA, 1942

  These French colonies were controlled in 1942 by Vichy France under German influence. The Free French General de Gaulle expected to win over these colonists to the Allied cause, but he was a difficult ally, not least because he mistrusted the Americans, who had tenuous relationships with the Vichy government before Pearl harbour. Many senior American and some British commanders had misgivings over the proposed North African landings, code-named ‘Torch’, for if the French fought with German support the Allies would be caught up in a conflict that could give little help to Russia. Yet Stalin wanted proof of the western Allies’ intention to fight the Germans on more than the Eighth Army’s desert front in Egypt.

  Success in North Africa would open the way to landings in southern Europe and offer the prize of French fleets in the North African ports. These ships fought, but the French army put up only a token resistance, largely because American diplomats had paved the way for a swift armistice.

  Two weeks before these landings, at 2130 hours on 23 October, the British Eighth Army opened their offensive at El Alamein, and by early November Rommel was in retreat from Egypt. His Afrika Korps skilfully withdrew to Tunis, fighting their last major battle against the US 1 Armoured Division and the British 6 Armoured during mid-February 1943. But brief victories at Kasserine and elsewhere could not withstand the Allied squeeze, between the First and Eighth Armies, that drove the Germans and Italians from Africa by mid-May 1943. The Mediterranean could now be used for convoys sailing through Suez to India and the Far East war, even though the Germans occupied southern France in response to ‘Torch’.

  The proposed Ranger force was discussed in April 1942 by General Marshall and Lord Mountbatten who suggested the name Ranger—a link through the Royal Americans to the British 60th Rifles (KRRC). At that time General Truscott was the senior American staff officer in COHQ, and later commanded 3 Division with an experienced staff drawn largely from COHQ.

  CHAPTER 7

  Rangers in Africa

  The World War II use of special forces as shock troops owes something to the German Strosstrüppen shock troops of World War I. Their élitism, their discipline, and their fighting qualities were well-known to the senior British officers who created the commandos. However, the idea blended into the commando concepts of guerrilla troops which were as old probably as war itself. Their use with regular formations has included some striking victories such as that won by French-Canadians and Indians, 900 strong, who defeated a hand-picked expedition of 1,400 British and American colonists in 1755. The experienced Scots General, Edward Braddock, expected the enemy’s light forces to be helpless when faced by a line of battle and the first French attacks were repulsed by Colonel Cage as his leading troops in the expedition formed line. But the woodsmen and Indians moved around the flanks of the forest road, pouring steady fire at the disciplined ranks of Redcoats whose volleys and controlled bayonet charges could find no targets. Edward Braddock was mortally wounded and defeat became a rout, although George Washington extracted the provincial troops he commanded in a controlled withdrawal. This defeat led to a re-thinking of military tactics that would later have influences in Europe, and in the Americas the Rangers were formed under Major Robert Rogers, John Stark, and others who took on the woodsmen and Indians at their own game in the wars of 1755-63. Nearly two centuries later, the Rangers gave their name to the American army’s commando-type formations of World War II.

  These 20th century Rangers were raised after General Lucien K. Truscott had reported to the Chiefs of Staff on 26 May 1942 that there should be an immediate formation of an American force along Commando lines. As mentioned earlier, the President had already given his support to such American formations, and a battalion of Rangers was recruited from American troops stationed in Northern Ireland. The appeal for ‘volunteers not averse to dangerous action’ was answered by some 2,000 men and after vigorous selection this was whittled down to 500 on the initiation course at Carrickfergus on the coast north of Belfast. General Eisenhower expressly asked for a different name to commando, since ‘the glamour of that name will always remain—and properly so—British’. The historic origins of the name must have escaped the General, for the Boers have a prior claim to commando, but associations are probably more important than nationality for the 18th century Rangers were fighting for the British. This certainly was no bar to the naming of the 1st Battalion, formed on 19 June 1942.

  The few Rangers in action with 3 and 4 Commando at Dieppe have been described, and these had parallels to the parts played by a handful of Rangers in General Wolfe’s assault on Quebec. Of the men at Dieppe one British commanding officer wrote: ‘Everyone liked them and enjoyed their company’. In the next few years Commandos and Rangers would be in each other’s company on several occasions.

  After the 1st Rangers had completed their training at the Commando depot at Achnacarry they moved to a bleak island in the Hebrides for the ‘most miserable part of the training’ in driving rain and cold nights. Living on Royal Navy rations, they found, was plain fare by comparison with the GIs’ normal chow. Other comparisons between British and American service life were quite marked in the two Allies’ differing approach to military discipline in World War II. The Americans had fewer restrictions but tougher penalties: for supplementing their meagre rations with a deer he had stalked, one ranger was fined £40. His commando counterpart would no doubt have had two weeks confined to camp, but if he had taken 10 shots to kill the beast—as the ranger reportedly required—the commando would probably have been ordered back to his unit for basic training in small arms. So, I suspect, would the ranger had his Colonel heard of it, for there was little to choose between the standards of weapon training expected from rangers or commandos. Comparisons of pay—a typical ranger private earned about twice as much as a commando—led to some friction, just as the British Tommy’s pay of a shilling in World War I had angered the French Poilu on a few sous a day. Fighting between the Allies in British pubs, occurred although not with Commandos and maybe the ranger’s 48-hour thrash during a leave in Oban was the origin of a widely held but unfounded British view that all rangers were ex-convicts. Certainly the return of Captain Roy Murray’s men from Dieppe had a sobering effect on the battalion, for these raiders ‘looked older, weary and deadly serious’.

  Not long after this action the 1st Rangers moved into civvy billets in Dundee, Scotland, for the only time during their service, and in October 1942 they completed their training with rehearsals for a major landing. They then sailed from Glasgow, joining a convoy from the States, for the invasion of North Africa. Their carrier ship, the LSI(H) Royal Ulsterman, which landed the Independent Companies in Norway, cleared the danger zone of U-boat operations before the men were briefed for their part in the landings— code-name Torch—spearheading nearly 14,000 Americans in 35 transports headed for the eastern landing of a series that would envelop Oran on the Vichy French colony of Algeria. The Rangers were to land at Arzew some 30 miles west of Oran; their task: to clear the two forts dominating the approaches to the harbour.

  The night of 7-8 November 1942 was so dark ‘you could not see 10 feet in front of you’ as the rangers mustered to climb aboard the landing craft, a platoon in each boat. (There were hand-hoisted on Royal Ulsterman, as a Landing Ship Infantry (Hand Hoist), LSI(H)). The mortar team boarded first, going aft, with the two Sections (see Appendix 2) one each side on the LCA’s low seats either side of the well and under the side decking. The platoon commander, his top-sergeant, and their runners b
oarded last to be first out on the beach. The Ulsterman’s hand-davits were stong enough to lower loaded boats, and they were successfully launched although 12 rangers had a swim when catapulted from their craft as one of the falls broke. A more serious loss in this mishap was the only radio that would net the rangers into the fleet frequencies and the support of the 20 British warships protecting the transports.

  Despite this hitch the Rangers were only a few minutes late—as you may remember—when they passed Stan Weatherall in the canoe marking the left limit of their beach. Landing below the bluff, Lieutenant-Colonel William Darby led his four companies up a steep cliff path, D Company pushing their trolleys carrying 81mm mortars, a ranger device for moving these forward quickly. One platoon commander had been unfortunate enough to be stranded as the LCA hit a false beach and its coxswain refused to hazard his craft by going back against this rock ledge, but the rest of the companies followed Bill Darby clear of the low cliffs and up two and a half miles (4km) of rocky and winding hill paths to the ravine at the rear of the Legion’s fort and battery. Scouts out ahead found four machine-gun positions and two double aprons of barbed-wire, the well-prepared defensive positions expected from French troops.

  The sound of sporadic bursts of fire came from the town: A and B companies were in action. Up on the bluff, Bill Darby’s scouts went forward again to cut the wire, the companies forming a skirmish line, each man two yards from his neighbour, when machine-gun tracer flicked the ground around them. F company was withdrawn slightly from its exposed positions as the 81mm mortars and the light machine-guns of the Rangers opened fire. Any hold-up at this time could court disaster: out of touch with the fleet, the Ranger companies would be caught in their own naval gunfire which was planned to a timetable should the fort not be taken. After two minutes of covering fire the skirmish line moved forward to the wire where they found the three scouts had cut gaping holes before lying within 20 or 30 yards of their own mortar burst. Across this open space beyond the wire the Rangers stormed with those yells that well-trained assault troops keep for the final charge. The French machine-gun crews had left their guns and were found with the battery teams in dugouts. At 0400 Bill Darby fired the green Very light signalling success.

  The two companies in the port had shot two sentries on the jetty and caught most of the garrison asleep, but later that morning the Rangers faced a brief display of resistance with some fire from the Legion’s fort and from the battery near the harbour. However, the French surrendered the port after this token resistance and a little shelling by their batteries further inland.

  American Combat Teams—the 16th and 18th—with an American armoured force had been landing since dawn, but during the morning they ran against stiff opposition some seven miles (11km) down the road south-west of Arzew in the hills behind Oran. Here, at St Cloud, the French had fortified a village and held its stone and concrete houses with the support of a 75mm (2.9in) and a 155mm (6in) gun. C company of the Rangers moved forward that evening (8 November) and next day took part in the assault on this village. Charging across open ground led by Lieutenant Chuck Shundstrom, they breached the French defences but Lieutenant Gorden Kleftman was killed.

  The apparent ease with which the Rangers had taken the forts led the Allied Force commander to send HMS Walney and HMS Hartland—two ex-US coastguard cutters—into the naval base of Oran. Aboard were 400 men, mainly from the US 6th Armoured Infantry Regiment and some canoeists hoping to prevent the scuttling of ships, but the French were not caught unawares and the cutters were savaged by fire at close range from destroyers, the landing parties being all killed or captured.

  From the armour ashore in the initial assault, a task force swung east but was stopped by a battery of French 75s some nine miles (14km) along the coast road at La Macta. E company of the Rangers was sent to help clear this block, and Lieutenant Schneider, with rangers who had served in the 1 Armoured Division, took over a few half-tracks, attacking the battery from the flank while HMS Farndale gave them supporting fire. The guns were captured. The main battle—more of politics than weapons—was settled after two and a half days when Oran surrendered.

  The Rangers, if not their senior army commanders, felt they had established a fighting reputation at St Cloud and La Macta, but Bill Darby knew the necessity for more training before they met serious opposition. For the next few weeks, therefore, he had the battalion practising landings from LCVR (LC Vehicle Ramped) and LCVP (Vehicle Personnel).

  Night fighting has been a speciality of Roger’s Rangers, when in silent movement without voiced commands these woodsmen in their buckskin jackets stole through an enemy’s forest, their surefooted silence in moccasins bringing them under a fort’s timbered walls: they had climbed it with hatchet holds taking them into his camp before anyone realised they were there with their fighting knives. For the 20th century rangers and commandos, similar night movement became almost more familiar than daylight attacks, and so the 180 men of the 1st Rangers were trained night fighters when they set out under Bill Darby for an overland raid in February 1943.

  The Italians, with German support, held three strongpoints guarding the Sened Pass where the road to the coast (at Sfax) goes between the Majoura and Biada mountains. Three positions had to be carefully recced by Colonel Darby before he brought his raiders by truck to the French outpost 20 miles (32km) west of the pass. The men were prepared for a silent night march, having left behind such jangling equipment as the GI’s issue concertina cup: besides their weapons, they carried a shelter-half (groundsheet), a small ration pack, and a single canteen of water. Their boots were saddle-soaped to prevent any night-shattering squeaks; the dogs of their equipment were taped down; they wore cap-comforters which enabled them to hear the slighter sounds a tin-hat might muffle.

  They crossed the pebble plain of enemy-patrolled country before snaking in a long file led by A Company across the ridges and boulder-strewn slopes of the central Tunisian mountains. For the men in the rear platoons, as in every speed march, the pace increased until they were jogging if not running to keep up, and in a little more than two hours they had crossed 14 miles (22km). In ‘a bluish dawn’ they reached a bowl-shaped saddle between two towering peaks, the bivouac area Bill Darby had selected two nights before on his reconnaissance. Scouts were set on the rim of the hills; the men spread their shelter-halves for camouflage and shade between the boulders and over rock crevices where they would sit out the day. There was no movement except for essential relief, and the valley must have appeared deserted to the German reconnaissance plane that flew over. The day was brilliantly clear when junior commanders edged cautiously between rocks at the saddle’s rim for Captain Roy Murray—the veteran of Dieppe—to brief Section leaders. He showed them the Sened Pass, a cleft in the mountains behind three hills six miles (10km) away to the east across a plateau. Bill Darby had seen four enemy armoured patrols cross this plain in the first three hours of daylight, but none came near the rangers’ bivouac as they sweated and catnapped through the day.

  After dusk they came down from the saddle towards lower ground bathed in eerie bright moonlight, but when the moon set they were ready for a compass march on a bearing across the plain. Beyond the enemy positions they could hear the rumble of tanks (or other heavy vehicles?) which lent urgency to their march, now only a few paces apart. (If the man ahead is lost in the dark, those behind become detached: all lost in the night.) In an hour they were across the plain, the scouts guiding the night march having silently killed several men in an enemy patrol. By 0200 hours the companies were forming line by companies, a notoriously difficult manoeuvre in the dark as each company swings forward on the flanks of the centre one. Swing too far wide and a company can lose contact, but this night the Ranger companies came in line moving forward up a slope, with A Company on the left, E Company having paused in the centre allowing the others to move up, with F company on the right. The drill so often rehearsed went smoothly and the battalion moved forward half a mile (800m), each
platoon in files kept abreast of the company headquarters by watching the brief pinprick of red light from the company commander’s torch, while the squads could see the occasional light of their platoon commander’s small green torch. Bill Darby kept control by radio on each company’s progress.

  Marching forward, the men felt the tingle of apprehension when no fire met them at a comfortable distance. They were a mere 50 yards from the enemy wire when A company on the left was fired on, and as they and the centre company moved forward they could hear the sentries ‘Qui va la? … Qui va la?’ as the machine-guns were manned, opening fire across the whole Range front. A 47mm (1.8in) cannon was also raking the advancing line as the rangers went to ground. Their only chance lay in going forward, for there was no cover, not even the occasional boulder, on this bare hillside. They wriggled on their stomachs in the way they had been taught to crawl, snaking forward for 40 yards (35m) pressed to the ground, driven by that element of urgency which enemy fire gives to battle action and distinguishes it from even the most arduous training. On damper ground just below the last rise before the enemy guns, the rangers were below his line of fire: the squads moved into skirmish lines. A grenade tossed, a shouted yell, each man has moments—testing his courage—and these rangers all passed theirs, for they bounded up the slope, firing from the hip although still facing stabs of tracer from out of the darkness behind the enemy’s front positions. The defenders were not to be dislodged in one rush. Two rangers crawled within feet of an Italian machine-gunner firing aimlessly over the attacker’s heads: he and his crew probably never felt the point-blank tommy-gun burst that killed them. One ranger—James Altieri—fell into a nearby slit-trench, landing face to face with an Italian. He ‘nearly panicked, then I remembered my commando knife snugly sheathed around my right leg’. A lightning thrust killed the Italian and as the warm blood spurted over his hands James Altieri was sick.