Twenty-One: Coming of Age in World War II. James Holland
on African soil at around the same time, on a sandy beach just east of the port of Arzew in Algeria, on 8 November, 1942. They would find themselves up against stiffer opposition in the months and years to come, but in fighting the Vichy French – at that time still collaborating with the Axis powers – they faced their first time in action. It was on that first day, whilst taking cover in a cemetery near the town of St Cloud, seven miles inland, that Tom saw his first dead body. ‘I saw him lying there,’ he says, ‘and that made a big impression on me. I thought, this is for real now.’ Of all the horrors they would witness before the war was over, this first corpse affected Tom the most.
Both agree that war makes a man harden up pretty quickly. French resistance quickly crumbled and French North Africa – all those troops in Algeria, French Morocco and Tunisia – joined the Allies. While the British Eighth Army advanced from the east after their victory at El Alamein, the joint US and British force that had landed in Northwest Africa advanced from the west. The joint German and Italian armies were slowly being caught in the vice of Tunisia.
But North Africa was no Axis sideshow. Hitler insisted on pouring hundreds of thousands of troops into Tunisia, as well as equipment: in Tunisia, the Allies came face-to-face with the superb Focke-Wulf 190 fighter and also the monstrous Tiger Tank. So well protected was the Tiger, there was nothing in the Allied armament at that time that could penetrate its body armour. Furthermore, Tunisia was extremely mountainous and hilly, difficult terrain in which to fight. And to make matters worse, it was now winter and there was so much rain, the battleground soon resembled something out of the Western Front of the First World War. Everyone and everything became bogged down in the mud.
It was also the first time American and British forces had fought side by side, shoulder to shoulder, under one unified command. The British were the old enemy, but now the differences of the colonial era were behind them and they were allies as never before. The 18th Infantry spent forty-seven days detached from the Big Red One, fighting alongside the British Guards Division. ‘We wore their uniforms,’ says Dee, ‘and ate their food, and drank tea instead of coffee. That tea they had was beautiful.’ He even preferred British rations to the C-rations they had been eating.
The front line was fairly static during this period, but it taught the 18th a lot. Tom learned how to dig in with his mortar team and how to get the best from the lie of the land. Dee, on the other hand, was a wire-man. He and a buddy had the task of setting up and maintaining the field telephone system. This meant running lines of wire from battalion headquarters to the various companies, and then making any repairs if the wire was broken by enemy fire. It could be pretty dangerous work, and during this time in the front line, both brothers gained valuable experience of what it was like to operate under enemy shellfire, and what it was like to be dive-bombed by the dreaded Stukas, and strafed by the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. And what they learnt was that there was still of a lot of ground and air all around them, and that it was the unlucky or careless who got themselves killed.
In February, Field Marshal Rommel launched his last offensive in North Africa, and although the Allied forces were initially heavily defeated and pushed back almost into Algeria, reinforcements from northern Tunisia were hurried south, including the 18th Infantry. Hastily digging in alongside their British Guardsman comrades, they found themselves coming under attack from the full force of the veteran 21st Panzer Division, one of the most experienced German units in North Africa. ‘We saw those tanks coming across the valley straight at us,’ says Dee, ‘and all hell let loose.’ The 18th held their line, however, and with a number of German tanks left in flames, the Panzers were forced to retreat. ‘It was several days before I could hear good again,’ adds Dee.
A month later, with the Allies back on the offensive, the 18th Infantry had rejoined US II Corps along with the rest of the Big Red One, and under the command of General George S. Patton, Tom and Dee found themselves dug in along the El Guettar massif, a long and imposingly jagged range of red mountains in southern Tunisia. But it was here that German forces counter-attacked, and Tom’s Company G found themselves isolated on a rocky outcrop on a mountain known as the Djebel Berda. ‘We were on a peak about a quarter of a mile ahead of everyone else,’ says Tom. From his position he could see German tanks in the valley beneath him. ‘We couldn’t go nowhere,’ he says, and they were beginning to run short of supplies. It was now afternoon on 24 March, 1943. The enemy had been mortaring them ever since their counter-attack had begun earlier in the day, but German troops were now moving into positions to the right of them on the Djebel Berda. The Company’s situation was becoming more and more precarious. ‘They were looking down on us,’ says Tom, ‘picking us off one at a time.’
His sergeant, Nels de Jarlais, was wounded, so Tom and his friend Giacomo Patti, an Italian from Brooklyn, decided they needed to try and get him out of there. It was evening, and the light was fading. Mortars and machinegun fire continued to burst and chatter nearby. They picked their way carefully down to the aid station and collected a stretcher, then clambered back around the front of the hill. ‘Probably the only reason we weren’t shot was because we were carrying the stretcher,’ says Tom. Having made it safely back to their positions, they were just putting the sergeant on the stretcher when word arrived from their listening post that the Germans had all but surrounded them and were about to attack.
By now it was almost dark, but suddenly flares were whooshing into the sky, lighting up their positions, and German troops were clambering up the slopes beneath them yelling at the tops of their voices. There was now no question of getting the sergeant out. Taking off the scarf he had round his neck, Tom rolled it up and put it under Sergeant de Jarlais’s head to make him more comfortable. ‘D’you think we can hold ’em?’ the sergeant asked him.
‘Yeah, we can hold ’em,’ Tom replied, then hurried back to his mortar. He never saw his sergeant again. Tom quickly began firing, but he had just thirty-six mortar bombs left. Enemy mortars were landing all about him, exploding with an ear-splitting din followed by the whiz and hiss of flying rock and shrapnel. The enemy was closing in on their positions. Tom saw one mortar land in a foxhole. Sergeant Bobby Dees clambered out of his dug-out to help the wounded man. Tom yelled at him to come back, but it was too late – moments later another shell hurtled down, just twenty yards in front of Tom, killing both the sergeant and the wounded GI instantly. Soon after Patti hurried over. ‘The lieutenant says we’re going to surrender,’ he told Tom. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘When one of the officers says that,’ says Tom, ‘you’re on your own. You can do as you please.’ They scrambled over the rocks, slid down a small cliff and fell into a pool of water, but got themselves out and away to the comparative safety of Battalion HQ. ‘I never hated anything so much in all my life as leaving those guys up there,’ admits Tom. ‘My squad leader, Arthur Winters, was wounded twice that night and captured by the Germans. And we had to leave the sergeant up there too.’ Sergeant de Jarlais did not survive.
Dee had been at Battalion Headquarters all day, but heard that Company G was in big trouble, so he and two of his colleagues set out to try and find Tom. In the dark and with the rain pouring down, they scrambled up through the rocks towards Company G’s position, then suddenly heard German voices. One of Dee’s friends said, ‘Looks like we’re caught here. Shall we give up?’
But it was dark and all three were wearing captured German ponchos, so Dee said, ‘No. Let’s just turn around and head back the way we came.’ The ploy worked. Not a single German so much as spoke to them.
In the morning on that same day, Dee had a close shave of his own. Back at Battalion HQ, he and his wiring buddy, Blake C. Owens, were told to get a wire to Company E, so having gathered a spool and armed with a field telephone, they began to lay their line towards the Company E command post. The firing of the previous night had, by now, quietened down, but desultory shell and mortar fire continued to explode among the battalion positions. Dee and Blake were trying to cover as much ground as they could by scrambling along a small wadi, when suddenly they found themselves being shot at from the rough direction of Company E’s positions. To begin with Dee thought they must have been mistaken for Germans. ‘So I waved at them and they stopped,’ he says. On they went a bit further, but then the firing began again, bullets pinging and ricocheting uncomfortably close by. Dee waved again, and once more