The Admiral was aboard his private car, the engine had a good head of steam, the tracks were cleared, weather fine, and the green light was given for departure. But Juan Alfanso held the train up another ten minutes as he finished his job, and those last drops of oil were to lubricate the unfolding of these events in more ways than any of the Prime Movers could see. The train would head north to Bayonne, and at one point it would pass through a mountain tunnel. Had it left on schedule, it would have been in that tunnel, safely out of sight, when a pair of A-20 bombers came in that night, intending to cut that rail line to prevent the Germans from using it to move troops across the border. But the train was ten minutes late, for Juan Alfonso had greased the wheels of fate.
Part IX
Firebrand
“War is simple, direct, and ruthless. A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
Chapter 25
If the Allies thought it would be easy to secure the French cooperation and conclude matters without further bloodshed, Juan Alfonso had put an end to their hopes that day. Admiral Darlan’s Train was not in that safe underground railway tunnel, but instead on a bridge over a small river at Saint Jean de Luz. That bridge was struck by those two A-20s and blown to pieces by a direct hit that killed the Admiral in the ensuing train wreck. Whether his order would have ever been given, or heeded, was still debatable.
In Fedorov’s history, the Allies had landed at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers simultaneously, thus striking at the key facilities and cities in both Morocco and Algeria. Days later they were already pushing into Tunisia. There were no German troops to speak of in either country, and little in the way of Luftwaffe support. Now, with Algeria uncontested and secure, German troops landing at Tunis and taking to the rail lines, heading west, the Hindenburg battlegroup arriving at Oran after its aborted sortie into the Atlantic, and nearly 450 Luftwaffe planes patrolling vast segments of the region, Darlan’s order may very well have fallen on deaf ears.
After paying his respects to the Sultan of Morocco, promising to quickly liberate the remainder of his country, General Patton set out to do exactly that. He held Casablanca secure, now receiving supplies an equipment from the transport convoys, but near Port Lyautey the landing forces had been held up by the difficult river crossing a strong redoubt called the Kasbah, and the sudden arrival of unexpected German reinforcements.
Rather than push tired and disorganized troops against what looked like a strong defense, Patton decided to pull the regiments of the 1st Infantry Division out and replaced them with what had been Task Force Green, composed of 6th Armored Infantry Regiment. He wanted to collect all the 1st Division, and move them further east behind Harmon’s Blackstone Force, which was driving on Mekenes. Between that point and the coast near the Kasbah, the 9th Infantry held the line.
Having all these divisions in hand gave Patton a much more powerful force here than he had historically, because all the troops that had been assigned to Oran and Algiers were now his to command in this single location. However, no thanks to Kesselring’s startling withdrawal of the two German air mobile divisions, he would now be facing much tougher resistance, and there would be no question of further surrender on the part of the French.
The news of Darlan’s death at the hands of those two A-20s did much to stiffen the resolve of Petain to fight on—that and the shadow of the German 7th Army, including the movement of 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions towards Toulon, along with 334th Infantry Division, bound for Algeria. The Americans had called those planes the Havoc, though in British hands it was given the more sedate name of the Boston. Yet a rose is a rose, and havoc was the order of the day. Now the French resistance would give the Germans just the time they needed to get reinforcements to North Africa.
So while he had been visiting the Sultan, dining with Governor of Dakar and the Grand Vizier, commiserating with French Generals in the old history, Patton was all business now. He was quickly reorganizing the US Army to begin the next phase of the operations aimed at Tangier. First, to secure his southern flank, he ordered 60th and 168th Infantry Regiments, and the 41st Armored Infantry Battalion south to secure Marrakech. The 39th RCT was moving inland to attempt to cut the road between that city and Fez, and also watch for any possible infiltration by German units coming up to Fez from the south.
“Alright,” said Patton as he convened a staff meeting. “We’ve kindled the torch here, but the flame is guttering, and we’ve a long way to go. It’s high time we turn his thing into a real firebrand, and then stick it right up the enemy’s behind! We’re going to take that damn Kasbah with Robinette’s armored infantry and a liberal dose of good naval gunfire support. I was aboard the Augusta when the 9th came in at Fedala, and those boys know how to dish it out. Blew my personal launch right off the deck! Now then… 9th Infantry will push hard for this town here.” He fingered Sidi Slimane on the map. “That’s holding them by the nose. Then I’ll sweep around to the right, run Harmon and Allen’s troops into Mekenes, and kick ‘em in the ass.”
It was going to be the first coordinated American attack of the war on a corps level, three full divisions, with a supporting armored task force, against two French and two German divisions. It began on the coast near the strong French fortress known as the Kasbah. It had resisted the probing infantry attacks of 1st Infantry for three days, and the French had held the American advance up at the winding river that looped in a sharp hairpin anchored at Port Lyautey. Then that unit was pulled out, and Robinette’s 6th Armored Infantry rattled up in halftracks.
After giving the enemy one last chance to surrender, which was met with machinegun fire that took down an American officer under a white flag, the battleship Massachusetts open fire and began pounding the thick stone walls with a fearful din. When that fire lifted, 2nd Battalion 6th Armored Infantry made their attack, the men dismounted and fixed bayonets, the halftracks backing them up with heavy suppressive MG fire. They broke the defense of 2nd Moroccan Infantry, stormed the Kasbah and pushed on over the river to a beach that should have been taken on D-Day, but one that was missed due to a mix-up in the landings.
The Americans already had the airfield, where P-40s that had been crowded onto the decks of the light carrier Chenango had flown in the previous evening to support the attack. Half a mile east, the tanks of 1/13th Armored Battalion had taken the bridge over the river. With the defense of the 1st Moroccan Regiment cracking, 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 7th Flieger Division moved quickly forward to bolster the line, the veteran troops crouching low as they sprinted forward. Soon they were in position, with MG 42s sited to rake the open ground if the enemy persisted. Two batteries of artillery sent up by rail from the 22nd Air Landing Division now opened fire on the leading American positions, which sent the inexperienced GIs diving for any cover they could find in the barren ground.
Colonel Robinette saw what was happening, and looked for a radio to get fire support from the navy. It would be quick in coming, as the cruiser Tuscaloosa, and the battleship Texas were hovering off shore, ready to weigh in. Meanwhile, the 9th Infantry Division put heavy pressure all along the line from the port, along the river, to the inland town of El Khemist on the road to Mekenes. There it took the intervention of the German 327th Recon Battalion, finding A-Company of the American 756th Tank Battalion moving through a hole in the disorganized French defense.