By Jim Cofer, second of two parts
SNELLVILLE, Ga. | After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed American forces would join the Allies in defeating Germany and Italy in Europe. American generals were anxious to join the fray and invade the continent.
Cofer
But the seasoned British military wisely recognized that inexperienced GIs were not ready to take on the battle-hardened Germans. They convinced the U.S. to launch attacks on French Morocco and Algeria, which were held by the Vichy French, who had sided with the Germans.
This should produce an easy victory, inspire confidence, and bolster the Brits in battling Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Libya and Egypt. A victory there would allow the Allies to cross the Mediterranean and come up through Italy into Germany from the south. The Vichy had negotiated an “armed neutrality” with the Germans which allowed them to keep all weaponry.
In July, 1942, President Roosevelt sent a Task Force, code name Operation Torch, headed by Gen. George Patton, to French North Africa. Patton left Hampton Roads, Va. with 19,000 men, on 850 ships including the Aircraft Carrier USS Ranger Battle Group. My father, Wendell Cofer, recalled that the Task Force had to zig-zag across the Atlantic to avoid German submarines. Soldiers endured cramped quarters and toilets that often didn’t work.
The landing zone was to stretch 800 miles across Africa from Casablanca to the Bay of Algiers. Patton’s orders were that Americans would not fire first, hoping that the Vichy would surrender and join with our forces.
At dawn on Sunday, November 8, 1942, the amphibious assaults began with Patton wearing his famous pair of revolvers. The Vichy lit up the beaches with searchlights and began to rake the area with machine gun fire. Big mistake!
The Navy battle group sitting offshore opened up with their big guns, pummeling the French shore batteries. Carrier-based aircraft, Dauntless, Wildcat, and Avenger, bombed and strafed the French positions. The battle was over in less than three days. Landings of troops and materiel began.
Once the Vichy were disposed of, American troops began moving rapidly by rail toward Egypt to assist their British comrades to seek to subdue the charismatic German “Desert Fox,” General Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel.
The GI’s were transported in railway cars dubbed “40 & 8,” which could carry 40 men or 8 horses. Conditions were miserable under the desert sun with standing room only and bouts of dysentery from buying unwashed fruit from Arabs along the tracks. Outdone by the Allied supply chain, Rommel abandoned his troops in March 1943 and went back to Europe. The 185-day campaign ended with the surrender of all German and Italian troops in Tunis on May 12, 1943.
The American troops next invaded Sicily in July 1943. Encounters with the Germans were mostly exchanges of heavy artillery with little hand-to-hand combat. Artillery pieces would be positioned during daylight and then fired all night. After 38 days of fighting, the Allies successfully drove German and Italian troops from Sicily and prepared to assault the Italian mainland.
My father had numerous stories about this phase of the war; my favorite was the one about each soldier digging a fox hole just big enough to get below ground level, thereby avoiding shrapnel from nearby incoming rounds. One night during an intense artillery exchange, he answered a call of nature and visited the latrine. When he returned to his fox hole, he found only a large crater.
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