Read an Excerpt
Second Front
The Allied Invasion of France: An Alternative History
By Alexander M. Grace Sr. Casemate
Copyright © 2014 Alexander M. Grace
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-4579-6
CHAPTER 1
OPENING MOVES
2200 Hours, 18 December 1942 Near Marseille
Lieutenant Commander Gregory Palmer, USN, caressed the railing of the destroyer Cole as she crept through the inky waters of the Mediterranean, barely illuminated by the ghostly light of a crescent moon. The Cole, his first command, and very possibly his last he could not help thinking, was an old four-stacker of World War I vintage, although in her day she had once held the title of fastest ship in the world with a record speed of over 41 knots; but that was long ago. Now she was stripped of her torpedo tubes and much of her superstructure, and her decks were crammed with the huddled figures of a reinforced company of Rangers in full battle gear, barely leaving the crew room enough to man their pitifully inadequate 3-inch guns and anti-aircraft batteries. She had been chosen for this mission, as had the similarly venerable Bernadou keeping pace several hundred yards to port, neither for her speed nor her firepower, but for her dispensability. If everything went as planned, she would not have to fire a shot, and if it didn't, she would probably not get the chance.
Palmer scanned the silhouette of the city of Marseille, just a deeper shade of black than the sky behind it; with only a fitful flicker of light visible here and there, apart from the single prominent lighthouse whose beacon he only had to keep to his starboard. Closer to, he identified a faint green light from a picket boat that was to mark the left side of the channel through the defensive minefields, and a similar red light beyond it to mark the right side limit. So far, so good, he thought.
The task was simple enough. Steam into Marseille, France's largest port, and one of the biggest on the continent, and capture it. He knew that powerful shore batteries ringed the port, and a fleet of several dozen warships, from submarines up to modem battleships, was based at Toulon, just a few hours' sailing time away. Aerial reconnaissance had reported the shore batteries unmanned and the French fleet at anchor at dusk, but that was at least eight hours ago, and much could have changed in the meantime. To be sure, according to the briefings he had received from Admiral Hewitt aboard the cruiser Augusta prior to their run in to shore, complex high-level negotiations had been going on for weeks and had finally come to an agreement by which the Vichy French government would abandon its quasi-alliance with the Axis and rejoin the war on the side of the Allies. However, the armed forces of this same Vichy government had fought against the Allies with desperate courage at Dakar and in Syria and had blatantly given German forces right of passage through Syria in support of the pro-Axis coup in Iraq in 1941. Considering how this entire operation had been on again, off again literally for months, who was to say that Marshal Petain had not had another change of heart at the last minute?
That was the primary reason for the mission of the Cole and the Bemadou. To guard against an ambush, the two old destroyers were to penetrate into the very heart of the port of Marseille and land their assault troops to occupy at least some of the shore defenses, which the French had reportedly agreed. to turn over as a sign of good faith. Palmer would then send out a coded message to the waiting Allied fleet, hundreds of ships carrying over 100,000 American, Canadian, and Polish troops and tons of munitions and supplies, signaling them to move into the port and also to land at several points along the coast. If the message failed to be received, the landings would still go forward, only with preparatory naval bombardment, under the assumption that resistance had been met.
Palmer was to steam into the entrance of the old port and land the Ranger company on the back side of the Cap du Pharo, where a number of coastal defense guns were emplaced, while the Bernadou would land her company at the Digue du Large, the long mole protecting the main shipping basin and the modern port facilities. With those positions in friendly hands, General Patton would have the reassurance necessary to send in the heavily laden transports.
What concerned Palmer most of all was the attitude of the French Navy. He had heard all along that Admiral Darlan was an enthusiastic collaborator with the Germans and had been the main sticking point in the negotiations with the Allies. More importantly, the French Navy still had an ax to grind with the British, their erstwhile allies, who had launched an air attack against the partially disarmed French fleet at Mers el Kebir in Algeria, shortly after the French surrender in June of 1940. As a naval officer, Palmer understood how important it was for Britain that France's modern battle fleet not fall intact into German or Italian hands, but the deaths of more than a thousand French sailors in the one-sided slaughter brought to mind his own reaction to news of Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese had at least not been America's allies only days before. For that reason, no British troops or ships were taking part in the initial wave of landings in France, and the Allies were avoiding the naval base of Toulon altogether until after the beachhead had been secured. Hopefully, by that time, the French fleet would not only cease to be a threat but would have joined the fight against the Axis once more.
Palmer could see the squat silhouette of the Bemadou angling off to the left now, while he corrected his own course to swing around the looming mass of the hill on which the lighthouse stood. A dog-eared copy of a Michelin guidebook from 1932 that he kept in his cabin told Palmer that the Chateau d'If also stood atop the hill, the very place where the Count of Monte Cristo had been imprisoned. He wondered idly whether he'd have the opportunity of visiting the dungeons as a tourist or as an inmate.
Time was of the essence, he knew. There were still some eight hours of darkness left in the long winter night, but as many troops as possible needed to get ashore before dawn. There would be air cover from the Navy fighters from the carrier Ranger and the escort carriers Sangamon, Suwanee, and San-tee, and three squadrons of Army P-40s would fly off the Chenango to operate from French airfields ashore, besides whatever aircraft the French themselves could get into the air; but Palmer had no illusions that the reaction from the Luftwaffe and the Italian air force would be anything less than swift and devastating. The American and British battle fleets, hopefully reinforced by the French, should be more than a match for anything the Regia Marina could throw at them at sea, but, until a good number of anti-aircraft batteries could be off-loaded and set up around the port, the wallowing transports would be sitting ducks for any enemy bombers that got through.
Then he saw it, a flashing light coming from the small quay that jutted out from the base of the lighthouse hill. Palmer nodded to his signalman who flashed a reply, and the destroyer swung alongside the pier with a gentle thud, just as the engines were cut. The Rangers began to clamber over cargo nets down to the quay even before the gangways could be let down, and in less than a minute, the crowded decks had been cleared, and all that could be heard was the crunching of booted feet hustling off into the darkness. His crew still manned their weapons, with even the cooks and stewards in World War I-style tin hats, gripping old Springfield rifles and setting up Lewis guns fore and aft in case of a last-minute betrayal, warily scanning the entrance to the port and the closely spaced warehouses. Palmer, throwing caution to the winds, quickly made his way down to the main deck, wanting at least to set foot on French soil.
At the foot of the gangway he saw a solitary figure, a tall man in the dark blue overcoat and white cap of a naval officer. The man saluted.
"Commandant Jacques Martin, de la Marine Française," the man said matter-of-factly.
"Lieutenant Commander Gregory Palmer, USN."
"Bien venue en France," the man responded with a quivering lip before he enveloped Palmer in a warm hug.
Palmer looked up to see a green flare arch upward from the crest of the hill, and another one rose up from the position of the Bernadou to the north. He pulled himself away from Martin and shouted over his shoulder.
"That's it, Mr. Williams. Send 'Home for Christmas.' Bring 'em on in."
"Aye aye, sir," the answer came back.
"Do you speak any English?" Palmer asked.
The Frenchman waggled his hand from side to side. "Un petit peu."
"Well, come on anyway, this will be worth seeing," Palmer said jovially, jerking his thumb and jogging down the quay with Martin in tow.
They reached the tip of the headland and stopped, Palmer pointing out to sea. A pair of destroyers could be seen clearly in the moonlight, darting into the outer roads, their searchlights sweeping from side to side. Behind them came a stately column of transports. They would be carrying the 60th Regimental Combat Team of the 9th Infantry Division, a battalion of tanks from the 66th Armored Regiment, a battalion of engineers, and several batteries of anti-aircraft artillery. They would secure the port area and prepare for the reception of the rest of the expeditionary force.
As they watched, the blacked-out port area suddenly blazed with light, spreading like a burning fuse from one end of the port to the other. Flood-lights bathed the immense complex of jetties and piers in a soft yellow glow, and Palmer could see trucks positioning themselves and the tiny specks of men running back and forth. The tall derricks were swinging into action, probably for the first time in months as the war had strangled maritime trade in the Mediterranean, and he could even hear the tinny sound of a brass band wafting over the water, playing the Marseillaise.
At the same time, Palmer knew that down the coast a pair of freighters flying the Polish flag would be easing into the approaches to the massive naval base at Toulon. To avoid any possible clash with the French fleet, no Allied warships were nearby, and no troops were carried, only dozens of anti-aircraft guns and tons of ammunition with which the French could beat off any intervention by the Luftwaffe in the morning. In every port, small or large, along the coast from San Tropez in the east to Perpignan in the west, small packets of transports would be pulling up to the quays, unloading a battalion or a regiment as well as mountains of supplies, making use of every foot of dock and every crane, both to speed the unloading and to avoid offering enemy air power any single target for their bombing runs. Full-scale amphibious landings were also taking place over the beaches at Frejus, hard up on the Italian-occupied zone near Cannes, and at Agde in the west, to seal off the coastal road into either end of the lodgment area, the quickest route of enemy intervention.
Seconds ticked by, then hours, and, as the first glow of dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, Palmer could see a pair of transports, already unloaded, being guided away from the pier, making room for the next relay of ships. The Allies were back on the continent in force, with over 100,000 men in this first wave alone, and, so far, not a shot had been fired.
"This just might work after all," Palmer shouted over the growling of the waves among the rocks at his feet, clapping Martin roughly on the back.
The Frenchman just nodded, hut Palmer could see that his cheeks were streaked with tears.
0200 Hours, 19 December 1942 Over the English Channel
RAF Flight Sergeant E. P. H. Peek gripped the controls of his twin-engined Mosquito fighter-bomber firmly as the aircraft was buffeted by strong gusts of air. He was flying low, low enough that the spray from the rough water in the Channel spattered against his windscreen, and hopefully low enough that German radar would not spot them. It seemed to him, however, that such drastic measures were hardly necessary, as the Germans certainly had other things to worry about tonight.
Off to his right, Peek could see the dull red glow that lit up the undersides of the scattered clouds overhead. That would be the town of Cherbourg, its defenses, and probably much of the city itself, engulfed by flames from the waves of Wellington and Lancaster bombers that had plastered the port earlier that night. It had been the largest effort of the war for the RAF, with hundreds of planes aloft, some of them, like Peek's, rushing across the Channel for a quick strike at a target near the coast, then back home to rearm and refuel for a second run. Even obsolescent Sterlings and Hudsons had been loaded up and coaxed into the air with every aircrew that could be scratched together, including training cadres and new fish fresh out of the schools. But, instead of massive thousand-plane raids that the Air Marshals had seemed to favor since Cologne earlier that year, there would be dozens of smaller raids, none of them deep into the German heartland, but all scattered across northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
It was a gross violation of the principles of air warfare, as Peek had heard the officers talking about them. They should have been focusing on crippling the enemy's capability to wage war by destroying factories, refineries, and by striking terror into the civilian population. Instead, the air force was being reduced to a form of flying artillery, striking tactical targets in direct support of a ground war.
The only benefit that Peek could see was that he wasn't facing the curtains of flak and swarms of Me-110 night fighters, since most of their targets tonight would be far short of the main defensive networks the Germans had set up to screen the borders of the Reich. But these had proven to be a minimal threat to single Mosquito bombers, painted matte black and equipped with the latest "oboe" navigational and blind bombing device. Unlike the thundering clouds of heavies that charged through the enemy flak and fighters, British by night and Americans by day, the Mosquitoes flew alone, and the Germans had yet to shoot one of them down. They were just too hard to find and presented too small a target for flak to have a high chance of hitting. Of course, a single light bomber could only cause so much damage, but, with precision aiming, they could certainly throw a spanner into the operations of a single factory, one that might not merit the attentions of several wings but one that should not be allowed to continue producing ball bearings, or machine fittings, or some other vital component of the Nazi war machine. There was also the nuisance value of demonstrating to the Germans that no city, no town, was safe from air attack. The residents of Hamburg or Berlin might have come to terms with living in a bullseye, but Peek and his colleagues had the job of making sure that no one in Germany could settle down to sleep without thinking about the quickest route to the air raid shelter first.
While the large bomber formations used pathfinder squadrons that would mark their targets with incendiary bombs and "Christmas tree" flares, the "oboe" system could only be used to guide a single aircraft to its target. The idea was that a radio transponder in England would send out a signal. A circle would then be drawn around the transponder location that would pass through the location of the target. An operator at the "oboe" site could then guide an aircraft to the target, giving course corrections if the pilot drifted off the path. Since the path was only some ten meters wide, this allowed for very accurate navigation, which was, of course, supplemented by visual observation of landmarks such as rivers. The "Gee" system could guide unlimited numbers of aircraft and was used for large formations but was not nearly as accurate at this stage in the war. Since "oboe" could only handle one aircraft, it would be used for pathfinders, who would mark targets with incendiaries for the follow-on bombers, or for single plane missions such as Peek's.
On this kind of mission, all of the responsibility and pressure was, therefore, on the pilot. Peek was terrified every time he climbed into his Mosquito, but he had learned a trick as a child, a way to win the "staring game" of turning his face into a mask of ice. It would not do to let his co-pilot or anyone else know just how nervous he was during every moment of a mission. The ultimate compliment that one of them could earn was the disbelieving testimony of a colleague that he had ice water in his veins. Consequently, Peek merely grunted in reply, glad that his flight gloves did not permit anyone to see that his knuckles must have been bone white as he grasped the steering wheel with all his might.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Second Front by Alexander M. Grace Sr.. Copyright © 2014 Alexander M. Grace. Excerpted by permission of Casemate.
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