Chapter 13

North Africa
Going overseas
I told you in another letter why I didn’t catch any duty on the trip over. It took us
thirteen days and nights to make the trip over. They went (in circles?) in the
Atlantic to confuse, supposedly, the enemy “Sub Packs”. Of course, they knew more
about where we were then we did. We didn’t run into them until we hit the Straits
of Gibraltar.

As I said before, I was never seasick or airsick, but I almost got sick the second
day out of New York. We hit what they called "land swells”. Even as big as the
boat I was on was, the swells would be a lot higher than the boat. Then we would go
over the top and you could see for miles. As there were a lot of boats in the
convoy, when we hit the top you could usually see fifteen or twenty. Then the
bottom would fall out and all you could see was water. The motion didn’t get to me
as bad as seeing all the rest run to the rail and up-chuck over the side. Thirteen
days to go over and as we come back by plane we were back in twenty-eight hours.
That was fast then, but would be slow now.

When we started into the Gibraltar passage a Sub Pack hit. We pulled back and
circled all day and went through that night. The subs tried, but didn’t do any
damage. One passed between us and the boat next to us with two Sub Chasers
after it. They were dropping strings of depth charges and chased it off. They told
us all to stay below decks but when the depth charge concussion would hit the sides
of our ship, it would almost knock you out of your bunk. I slipped back on deck and
stayed. I figured I would have a better chance if they did hit.

One Cruiser in the convoy that stayed close to us carried a seaplane that they
would catapult into the air each day. There may have been others but we didn’t see
them. It circled most of the day looking for signs of the enemy. It would come in
and land on the water. The cruiser would pull close and pick it up with a crane.
There were no Carriers with us so we didn’t have air cover. One day about halfway
over, a destroyer come out from New York and caught up with us. They shot a line
over to us and sent a tray of mail and etc. over the line. That was the last mail we
got for sometime so we really appreciated it. As ours was the convoy flagship, they
said it also had a lot of sealed orders with it.

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We got on through the passage by Gibraltar without further incident. We weren’t
clear through by daylight so you could see the rock on one side and Spanish
Morocco on the other. It was that narrow. As the rock has always been a British
fort and Spanish Morocco in North Africa was neutral, we were safe going through.
We went on to Oran, North Africa. It was one of the main ports and had a huge
harbor. So now we were on foreign soils.

We were protected entirely by destroyer cruisers and one battleship and any
number of little ships called subchasers. They were extremely fast and run back
and forth through the convoy all the time. There was only one six navy guns on our
ship along with lots of anti-aircraft guns that had been placed on the decks.

North Africa
As I told you before we landed in Oran which was in French Morocco.

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Coming into the big harbor at Oran the town looked good on the hills. That was
before we got close enough to smell it. Part of the smell was due to it having been
under siege earlier and was still being hit quite regularly by air raids. This was
because it was one of the bigger harbors and supply centers for all the Allies. By
then the war had moved inland. They took us on through town and we pitched our
pup tents on some rocky hills a few miles inland. We lived for a while on cold “c” and
“k” rations. We would just stir our powdered coffee in cold water and drink it--no
fires allowed. Enemy planes would zero in on fires. The language was French
mostly. Some Arabic was used. We had lessons on Arabic on the boat going across
but didn’t get much use for it. We would have been better off learning French
phrases. The population was mostly Arabic. They were as a whole, low class, along
the coast. Inland you would see a much better class of people.

The smell was partly the war but mostly just unsanitary conditions. We couldn’t
swim in their streams even. If we did we broke out in bad sores. The locals had
built up immunity to the conditions so it didn’t bother them. As I said, the Arabs
there were low class and accomplished thieves. It was a way of life with them and
human life meant nothing. Once, they stole a bunch of our barracks bags with most
of the some of the guys’ clothes. We fell out and chased them and were close
behind when they went over a hill. By the time we reached the top they had
disappeared. We never did locate the thieves or the bags they stole. We went
over all the area foot by foot to no avail. As it was open country with just scrub
brush we could never figure where they went. They could steal a locomotive right
off the track!

The houses out in the country were built into a square. The living quarters, barns,
storage areas were all inside a wall with one gate to enter. All the people, animals,
fowls, and etc. all lived inside. Every compound had several peacocks and that was
their alarm system. Early of a morning or anytime a stranger approached you could
hear them for a mile.

We couldn’t eat any of their food or drink any of their water without chlorine being
put in it. It was worse than old Mexico in that respect. Too, we couldn’t eat their
food because they didn’t have enough to feed themselves. The Allies were having
to give them food to keep them from starving.

When you got farther inland you would occasionally run into a Sheik with his harem
and his horses. They did look like the pictures I had in mind about the Arabs.

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Hills come almost to shores of the Mediterranean. When you got on them, there
would be miles and miles of vineyards and grain fields. There would be some good
vineyards that raised lots of grapes. However, it was still farmed by the most
primitive methods. Before then my picture of Africa was all desert and jungle.

Because of our assignment on North Africa I didn’t get to see quite a bit of
country. We got to ride all up and down the coast with the navy. We would load on
ships with the troops we were putting through the school, and stay overnight a few
times for three or four days and load and unload at different beaches. Where
radio equipment wasn’t a big deal to load and unload, I didn’t have much to do.
Mostly my job was checking waterproofing. You couldn’t let anything get wet. Also
where we were detached from the Division, our officers had to report to Division
headquarters occasionally. Where I was the chief of radio and didn’t have too
much to do, they would send the Captain’s re-con car and driver and one Officer. I
got to ride along, sometimes across country almost to Casa Blanca. Too, I made
several trips to Bel-Abbis down where the Sahara Desert began. It was also the
main HQ for the French Foreign Legion. That was quite interesting.

I know you have seen some mirages in West Texas. One day we were driving along
some 200 miles from the desert and here come a big camel caravan through the
sand dunes. As there was no sand around us, it was a little startling. You could even
see the camel handlers walking by the camels as plain as if they were only about 100
yards off. It was bound to have been from three-or-four hundred miles away.
Later, I did see some caravans up close and the details weren’t any plainer than I
saw in the mirage. Sometimes you could see beautiful oases as plain as could be.
The mirages there put the West Texas ones to shame.

Arzew
After we had been ashore for a few days we got another school assignment. As I
had told you before, we were supposed to be good at amphibious landing. Loading on
and off of ships and onto shore, Battery C, along with 3rd Battalion, 142nd Infantry
was detached from the Division, we were sent some twenty miles up from Oran to a
small port off Arzew.

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It was a big break for us. We were quartered in French summerhouses on the
shore. They were mostly just shacks, but well-built and comfortable (a lot better
than tents). They were built on piles between the sand dunes and the water and,
when the tide come in, the waves come in under them. There were built-in bunks so
it was crowded, but nice.

The Port of Orzew was small but had a good, large harbor. Only two ships at a time
could unload, but the harbor was always full of ships waiting to unload. Also, a lot
would lay over in harbor waiting to get in Oran. They scattered ships out to keep
them from being bunched up and become targets for the German Air Force.

As we were teaching loading and landing, we had all kinds of boats at our disposal,
along with a navy detachment with assault boats and landing craft. We spent quite

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a bit of time on and off boats. When off duty, some of us would ride out on rubber
rafts and in the clear shallow water would see a lot of fish and quite a few octopus.
I didn’t know until then that there were octopuses in that part of the world.

We didn’t see much wildlife but, at night, you could hear jackals howling. They
sounded like coyotes. However, you seldom saw any. There were a lot of scorpions.
They were three and four inches long. They looked like our stinging scorpions,
except many times larger and their claws were such that they could climb the sides
of buildings. They were as wide as two fingers and mean-looking. You could see the
stinger and it was big as a large needle. I am not exaggerating. You could poke a
stick at one and hear the stinger hit. Supposedly they were very poisonous.
Luckily, by keeping them cleared away from the houses and giving them a wide
berth, nobody got stung. I don’t remember but seeing but one snake around Orzew.
As I told you, that port was rocky hills and scrub brush.

We were at Orzew several months and put a lot of troops through the school. In
fact, all the troops that landed in Sicily were through there and then the ones that
made the Salerno landing too. That is why our outfit led the Salerno landing.

While we were there, the rest of the Division went inland and down the coast to
Rabat. It was down fairly close to Casa Blanca where they were in tents in a forest.
The war was going in the Allies favor in Africa by then so we were held in reserve,
only to be committed if needed.

The only action we saw in Africa was air raids. We caught them along the coast
where they were after the supply ships. The rest of the Division missed most of
that.

As I told you before, we had a good thing there as school troops. We had all kinds
of weapons at our disposal. We learned more about the overall picture too. We had
been in Orzew a couple of weeks or more and it had been quiet. They told us we
had better dig holes around to get into but, as nobody pushed it, we didn’t bother.
Then a convoy come over from the States and our harbor caught the overflow of
supply ships from Oran. They were waiting to get in and unload. The harbor was
protected from the west by a high headland. Anti-aircraft guns were located all
over, which should have clued us in. A favorite trick of the German planes was to
circle way out to sea and drop over that headland onto the harbor. That way they
could slip in with less damage to themselves.

They hit the first night--after the loading docks and the supply ships. The docks
were about one and a half miles across the bay from us. Their pattern was to go in
and bomb below the anti-aircraft fire, which threw them to pull out right over us,

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sometimes as low as 100 feet. You could see them that low even at night. Not to
mention, the noise.

They went after us but occasionally one would fail to cut loose all the bombs until
they were over us. As I said, we hadn’t dug any holes to get in but by daylight the
next morning it looked like a herd of giant gophers had hit the sand dunes. Some of
the guys dug the rest of the night. Later, some went across the dunes to an open
field and dug huge shelters. They even stocked them with canned goods they
swiped from the kitchen. Later, they got more anti-aircraft guns and a better
warning system and we had a little more time to get in a hole. When the air-raid
siren sounded you grabbed your helmet, rifle, and gas mask. The gasmask because
they still thought poison gas then; the helmet for protection from falling fragments
of our own ack-ack. The shells would explode and the stuff had to fall somewhere.
We were lucky not to have anybody bad hurt. None of the bombs hit us; just close
enough to shake you up pretty bad. What casualties we had was from guys running
into each other or over something in the dark.

As I said, a better warning system helped, but you could tell almost to the day they
would be coming. You just had to look across the harbor to see it full of ships.
Sometimes you had one raid a night but sometimes we had as many as three a couple
of hours apart. What sleep we would get would be rather nervous. But you soon get
to where you had to take it in stride or go nuts. We often slept fully dressed and,
as they had issued us hobnail shoes (to help climb the hills, they said), it would
sound like a herd of horses when everybody hit the floor at a run.

It was standard operating procedure (SOP) that the last man out shut the door.
One night this guy run out and since he thought he was last, he was careful to get
the door shut. As he left he heard a loud crash but didn’t stop. All clear sounded
and we couldn't get the door open to get back in. We finally manhandled the door
back and there was a body against it. He had run head on into the door and his
helmet jammed down on his head and knocked him cold. He was still out when the
raid was over. He didn’t appreciate it much but we all got a good laugh when we
found he was okay. If you couldn’t see the funny side occasionally, you wouldn’t
make it.

As I had told you, we were getting very frequent air raids. We slept fully dressed
a lot and they had issued us Hobnail shoes. In the house I was in there were two
old boys that weighed about 225 lbs. or so. One slept over the other in the bunks.
The air raid siren would sound and out to the sand dunes we went. They guy in the
bottom bunk kept his head skinned from his neighbor hitting him on the head with
the hobnail shoes. They discussed it one night while we were waiting for the “all
clear”. The one from the bottom bunk said, "You get up at the head of the bed and

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I will always get up at the foot."“ About two hours later they hit again and I heard
this from the other from—“GD, he did it again.” Things like that helped keep up
your morale.

We didn’t have anti-aircraft guns. We did have a couple of machine guns that some
would let loose with. However, when they made their run over the harbor, they
come out over us so low we fired our rifles and pistols at them. That was a little
silly but it made you feel better. Of course, what damage we did was negligible. As
I said, we had access to a lot of different weapons. One was a 37mm anti-tank gun.
Some of the guys dug a hole for it deep enough that it would shoot up, and they
fired it at the planes. It would have been a miracle if they had hit one. Later they
got so many guns set up along the pattern they flew that they had to change and
bomb from another direction. That way they didn’t fly low right over us. One
night, they hit about the same time as the siren sounded. In the mad rush for the
sand dunes I didn’t go. I could tell they were going a different direction so I
thought I would just stay in the house. It was a mistake. The characters firing the
37mm let it get away from them and an armor piercing shell went in one wall and out
the other of the room I was in. So from then on, I went with the rest. It missed
me by several feet but I never did learn to appreciate being shot at by my own
outfit. Through mistakes, it happened to me other times too.

After we had put all the troops through that were to invade Sicily, our bunch
returned from the Cork Forest. As I told you the rest of the Division had been
down close to Casa Blanca. We rejoined them and put them all through the
amphibious training in preparation for Salerno

So from then on, our fun and games was over.

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