Craig DiLouie
THE BATTLE OF NORTH AFRICA
“Our people from the very highest to the very lowest have learned that this is not a child’s game.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
While this book is based on real events occurring in North Africa in 1942–43, significant artistic license was taken to create a compelling work of fiction. Some timelines are compressed for simplicity, while our tankers’ regiment is a composite of several armored units that fought in the campaign. In some cases, further license was taken with the tank, including giving Boomer a loader’s hatch (presumably a retrofit) before they became a standard part of the M4 design. Finally, the information is limited to what our tankers know, sometimes based only on rumors.
Otherwise, every effort was taken to capture what it was like to be in an M4 medium tank battling German panzers. Any errors are, of course, the author’s.
If you’re a history buff and see any errors you’d like to share with the author, email him at Read@CraigDiLouie.com
MAP: Theater of operations. North Africa, 1942.
THE STAGE:
OPERATION TORCH
After suffering catastrophic losses in 1941–42, the Soviet Union pressured the Allies to open a new front against Nazi Germany. The Allies weren’t ready to invade Germany via France, so they planned to attack Axis forces in North Africa.
Operation Torch called for 100,000 troops landing in French Morocco and Algeria to liberate more than a million square miles of territory. This done, the British would push east to Tunis to trap the Afrika Corps between the invaders and Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army, which was advancing through Libya. By securing North Africa, the Allies hoped to secure Mediterranean shipping lanes and expose southern Europe to invasion.
French loyalties remained an open question. After Germany overran France in 1940, its armies occupied the northern part of the country, while the French government moved from Paris to Vichy and adopted its own form of fascism. The sixty thousand French troops in North Africa were loyal to Vichy, but it was hoped they would join the Allies in their fight to liberate France.
On the night of November 7, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast a message calling on the French to free themselves from the Axis yoke. The U.S. Navy shot salvos of fireworks over Casablanca, Algiers, and Oran that burst in the sky to reveal the Star-Spangled Banner. The message was clear: America is coming. Don’t resist. Join us in the fight against Nazi Germany.
The next morning, the landings began.
ALGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
COMBAT READY
I’m actually in Africa, Tank Sergeant John Austin thought.
Aside from stands of date trees, it looked like any other coastline. Two villages bookended the beach. Farmland ahead, the Tell Atlas Mountains in the distance.
Not as exotic as he’d thought it’d be, and right now it was a god-awful mess.
Armored vehicles, trucks, jeeps, and soldiers crowded Beach Z’s landing zones. The tanks growled under a haze of blue exhaust. Red-faced beach masters waved and blew whistles to corral them all inland.
At first light, troops began landing on three points around Oran. From there, they’d strike out to seize key installations before converging on the city.
Austin didn’t care about the big picture right now, however. He had an immediate task, which was to capture an airfield. If anything got in his way, he’d destroy it.
But first he had to get off this beach.
A coastal gun boomed in the south. He turned in the cupola of his M4 “Sherman” medium tank to gaze back toward the sea. Riding a moderate swell, lighters and other landing craft came and went from the great fleet. Geysers sprayed into the air as shells splashed around one of the boats.
French 75, Austin thought bitterly.
Below the turret, Private First Class Anthony Russo, his driver, yelled from his hatch, “Hey, Boss! Don’t they know they’re being liberated?”
Pivoting his attention back to land, Austin raised his binoculars to study the valley that led to the distant purple mountains. “I guess they didn’t get the message.”
“Maybe the President broadcast it in English.”
He zeroed in on smoke plumes rising above the farmland. A pair of planes, which he hoped were American, soared across the sky. Gunfire thudded over the roar of engines, more felt than heard at this range. The Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division, was out there, getting killed by the people they were freeing.
The radio crackled. “Bears 3 Actual to all Bears. The captain found us a road. Get ready to roll.”
Bears was the call sign for Company B, 3 meant Third Platoon, and actual was Lieutenant Whitley, leader of this platoon of five M4 tanks and commander of Betty, distinguished by his Texan accent.
The platoon’s other tanks sounded off: Buckshot, Boxer, and Bull, all having nicknames starting with a B as they were Company B. Then it came time for Tank #34, nicknamed Boomer, to respond.
Austin keyed for transmission. “Bears 3-5 here. We still can’t move.”
In the chaos of disembarking on the lighters, his tank was loaded with the company’s maintenance section consisting of a couple of M3 halftracks and a jeep. Gunfire had forced the lighter off course, resulting in the boat landing them two hundred yards south of the rest of the company.
“We’re moving out, Five,” Whitley said. “Y’all catch up soon as you can.”
Austin winced at the lieutenant’s tone, which betrayed his frustration at losing twenty percent of his strength before the operation even began. “Roger that.”
“We’ll tell you all about it when we see you,” another voice buzzed on the radio. Sergeant Cocker, the commander of Buckshot.
“Thanks a lot,” Austin muttered. “Five, out.”
The platoon frequency filled with whoops as the tanks formed up in a column and moved off the beach, kicking rooster tails of sand. Whitley’s Betty led the way, an oversized Texas flag flying from his tank’s radio aerial.
“What’s the plan, Boss?” PFC Russo yelled up at him. “Hurry up and wait?”
Austin surveyed the soldiers and vehicles crowding the beach in front of him. He was officially in the rear with the gear. “Damn.”
He was going to miss the show. Heroic fantasies aside, he was all too aware his tank was just a tiny cog in a giant war machine, but he’d come a long way over a long time to get here, starting even before he was born.
Austin men had fought in every American war since the Revolution. Now it was his turn to face the baptism of battle. He imagined going home and telling his father he sat out his first combat mission. The squashed lump of lead in his breast pocket, a family heirloom carried into battle by Austin men since the War of 1812 for good luck, suddenly felt like a dead weight.
He switched the radio from RADIO to INT, which allowed him to talk to his crew on the interphone. “Driver, get us off the beach.”
After a long pause: “How?”
“Put the tank in gear, and lean on the sticks, Shorty.”
“You want me to run people over, Boss?”
“Nudge them out of the way.”
“Nudge them?”
The tank was nineteen feet long and nine feet wide, and it weighed thirty tons.
“Keep her in granny gear,” Austin said.
Another long pause, during which the driver was no doubt contemplating a few decades of hard labor for running somebody over. “You’re the boss.”
Originally built for airplanes and now used for tanks, the M4’s four-hundred-horsepower engine snarled. The tank crawled forward on clanking treads. Soldiers cursed and jumped out of the way. A surprised corporal started his jeep and backed it out of Boomer’s path.
His heart in his throat, Austin kept an eye peeled for officers but didn’t see any nearby. He was risking his stripes and possibly more. He hoped this stunt wouldn’t get anybody hurt.
A mean-looking, broad-shouldered beach master hustled over screaming. “What the hell do you think you’re doing on my beach, Sergeant?”
“We’ve got a malfunction! We can’t stop!” Austin swept his arm in front of him. “Clear a path for us!”
The crew interphone filled with laughter. The tank commander didn’t laugh with them. He wiped sweat from his weathered face, his terror being authentic.
The military policeman had already taken note of the tank’s designation emblazoned on the hull beside the twenty-inch white star: 1▲ 6▲ B34, which translated as, 1st Armored Division, 6th Armored Regiment (1st Battalion), Company B, Tank #34. Instead of busting him, however, the MP blew his whistle to get the milling soldiers and vehicles out of his way. The gamble was paying off. The MP was no tanker. He carried too much on his plate and had to act fast.
Keeping Boomer in low gear, Russo found a path toward a stand of date trees at the edge of the beach.
“We’re gonna make it, Boss,” the driver said on the interphone.
Austin grunted. Sure enough, everybody was too busy with the invasion to care what he was doing. “Good driving.”
Russo guffawed nervously. “Yeah. Okay.”
The tank commander still wasn’t convinced his crew had what it took, and he didn’t like his driver being an Italian-American for the obvious fact America was at war with Italy. Russo was short and stocky and way too slick. Every time the kid called him Boss, Austin suspected he was being made fun of.
Still, Russo was shaping up to be a good tank driver. Austin would soon lead him and the other men into combat. They were a gunner, loader, driver, and assistant driver/bow machine gunner. They still acted as individuals, not yet a real team. Good men, but they all rubbed each other the wrong way and constantly got on each other’s nerves. They loved the tank for its colossal power, but they had no love for each other. Getting them to cohere into a single fighting organism would be a test of Austin’s leadership.
Boomer navigated the date trees and emerged facing a southerly road choked with armored vehicles raising an enormous dust cloud. Austin switched to RADIO and reported in to his platoon.
“Yup, I’ve got my eyes on y’all,” Whitley said. “Welcome back, Boomer. We’re on your two. Fall in behind Buckshot.”
“Roger.” Austin switched back to INT. “Driver, you heard the man.”
Boomer rolled forward and filled the gap that opened in the column. The commander pulled his goggles over his eyes and raised his bandana to cover his nose and mouth.
The loader’s hatch beside the cupola swung open. The loader popped up.
“What are you doing?” Austin asked him.
“I’ve never been to Africa,” PFC Amos Swanson said in his Appalachian accent. The big tanker was pure hillbilly and half animal. The crew called him Mad Dog. The swirling brown cloud enveloped him, and he coughed. “Never mind.”
“Plenty of time to sightsee later. We’ll be staying a while.”
“Not that different than home.” The hatch banged shut.
The platoon crossed the American lines. A thrill ran Austin’s spine. This was it.
He keyed his microphone. “We’re in injun country now, boys. Stay sharp.”
Buckshot emerged looming from the dust. Before he could yell a warning, Russo pulled on the sticks. Balking and grinding, Buckshot rolled off the road. Engine trouble, probably the transmission. If the crew couldn’t fix it, they’d have to wait for the maintenance platoon, which was still stuck on the beach.
“Bad luck, Barney,” Austin grinned.
“Get one for me, John,” Buckshot’s commander replied over the radio. “Out.”
An aggravated Whitley cut in, “Bears 3, at the junction up ahead, clock three and steady on First Platoon.”
First Platoon was already making the right turn. Russo geared down and swung Boomer in a wide arc to the right until the tracks found the new road. Then he threw the transmission into fourth gear. The tank charged ahead at a steady fifteen miles per hour.
The sun blazed high in the African sky. The morning air warmed steadily. Tafaraoui Airfield lay twenty-five miles away. The battalion’s fifty-odd tanks would be in action in less than two hours.
Intense firing crackled and boomed from St. Cloud in the west, one of the approaches to the city of Oran, which was the operation’s final prize. From the sound of it, the French had quite a bit of fight in them. To switch sides, apparently they’d need some additional convincing in the form of heavy shelling.
“Bears 3, clock nine at the junction up ahead. Steady on First Platoon.”
The final stretch of road, going southwest. Every minute brought the airfield closer. First, Tafaraoui, where they’d deny the formidable French air forces a base and give it to American planes now staging from Gibraltar. Next, La Sénia Airfield to the north. Then on to assault Oran and end the operation.
Austin shivered as another thrill shot down his spine. The French African Army didn’t have much in the way of armor, but they had 75s, artillery pieces powerful enough to punch holes in tanks. However, aside from a general fear he’d make a wrong decision and let his boys down, he wasn’t scared, not really. Surrounded by all this armor, it was impossible to feel anything but safe. Mostly, he was just plain excited. He wanted some action.
He’d made it to the party, and he was eager to do his country proud and live up to his family’s legacy.
Let’s go, he thought. I’m ready. Let’s get this show started.
The Tanker in the Sky must have heard his prayer, because the air filled with the thunder of guns.