"They Reached Objective!" The HMS Walney and HMS Hartland at Oran

HMS Walney on fire in Oran harbor during Operation RESERVIST. Painting by Darren Tan.

by David Rame

Published in 1944

Even in the crowded history of the Royal Navy of Britain there are few entries that match in courage, in endurance, in magnificence the thrust to Oran harbor.

Who conceived that plan, we never learned; who measured its audacity against the weight of the inevitable opposition of the Navy of France, we were never told. All that we knew was that an attack would be made.

Oran harbor is ancient. From the Vieux Port under the shadows of Mourdjadjo and the Fort of the Holy Cross, corsairs of the Barbary coast thrust out their galleys against Christendom. Barbarossa is said to have used it, Mohammed El Kebir sent out his ships from it beyond all question, but like all the ancient harbors it was small, a basin backed on the one side by the slopes of the mountain, fringed to the south by the city wall, penned in with small moles thrust out into the Mediterranean. Today it harbors yachts, tunny-fishing boats, small craft of one sort and another, a peaceful corner of the greater harbor, filled with color.

The new harbor is big. From the quay of the Naval barracks in the Bassin Gueydon to the end of the outer mole—the Jetée du Large—is 3,000 yards, almost two miles. From Pointe Mona north of the old city, the outer mole runs parallel with the coast line across the whole face of the town past the Ravin-Blanc and almost to the Batterie de Gambetta. From the old shore moles jut out into the area it encloses: the Môle Bougainville, the Môle Sainte-Marie, the Môle Jules-Giraud, the Môle Millerand, the Môle du Ravin-Blanc. The whole is sealed with the Traverse du Large, a narrow breakwater towards the seaward end of which is the single entrance to the harbor.

That entrance was protected by a double boom.

Immediately over the port and for its further protection were the batteries of Saint-Grégoire, Fort Lamoune, RavinBlanc, and Gambetta.

On its quays were heavy machine guns.

Alongside them was the contratorpilleur Epervier, a small light cruiser or very large destroyer of the "Aigle" class—2,400 tons, 36 knots, five 5.5-inch guns, six torpedo tubes. Close to her lay at least two other destroyers (according to some accounts three), four submarines, and mine sweepers and other small naval craft.

Against that concentration of ships and guns, into that narrow cul de sac of fire, we threw two Coast Guard cutters HMS Walney and HMS Hartland.

Walney and Hartland came to England with the fifty Lease-Lend destroyers in the bitter days when every ship that Britain could muster could not make up the total that was necessary to fight the U-boat.

They were ships of peace, police of the Western Ocean. Every voyager along the eastern seaboard of the United States was familiar with them: small, chunky ships with high bows and high, square superstructures amidships, and straight-up-and-down smokestacks; not beautiful but infinitely useful in their work of keeping the law along the edges of the ocean, watching the icebergs of the danger areas, shepherding the foolish, and aiding the battered. They were not meant for war, but they have done in this war a great work against the submarine.

Walney and Hartland came with us all the way. We grew to know their silhouettes day after day along the horizon as they steamed in the line that over the long voyage kept us safe from torpedoes of the enemy. One of them on the very last day of the passage picked up a man of ours who had jumped over the side. We were almost friendly with them, and the last time we saw them they were still with us, still just a little astern of us in the twilight, with MLs attendant on them. Sometime in the darkness they broke away.

The first of their story I saw myself, saw in the distant flickering of the gun flashes over Oran. I saw them, but I could not translate in its entirety their meaning. I heard of them next in the courtyard of the Château-Neuf when, in between the talking of the generals, the French interpreter whispered to me that there had been a terrible battle in the harbor. He had watched it from the heights. Two ships, he said, had broken the boom and steamed into the harbor; a searchlight had picked them up—there was an explosion. "Terrible, terrible. They came out of the water like Negroes," he said, and repeated it again and again, "like Negroes." I added a fragment to that mosaic when Captain Peters came, patch over eye like a sad buccaneer, his face seamed and lined still with the strain of that night.

And then the next day I found on the steps of the Grand Hotel, that had become American Headquarters in Oran, a little group of lost and battered souls who wore fragments of the insignia of naval officers. They were bearded, and they told me they were bug-infested. They had come straight from prison.

I took them up to my room and gave them razors and soap and towels, and while they shaved and bathed they told me haltingly, and in the tongue-tied jargon of the naval officer, something of their story. More I got from two of them who went with me down to the harbor the next morning; more still I got from Hartland's captain, lying in hospital.

I wish I could convey something of the excitement in which that story grew. Something of the atmosphere of greatness that rose about it as fragment after fragment was fitted into the mosaic. Something of the sense of splendor that enveloped it.

HMS Walney broke the Oran boom at ten minutes past three on the morning of "H" Day.

Closing the coast near Canastel, Walney with Hartland and two MLs moved silently in towards the objective. Despite their precautions it is almost certain that the little flotilla was sighted in the early minutes of the moment. The water was brilliant with phosphorescence, and they moved in a trail of green fire which almost certainly must have been visible to watchers on the coast. And there were watchers on the coast. Already we had landed at Arzeu and the Rangers had reached the Fort du Nord. We had landed at Bou Zadjar and at Les Andalouses as well. The carriers of the parachute attack had crossed the coast. All along the shore the batteries must have been on the alert.

Yet from them there was no sign. Walney in the lead passed Canastel, came in under the shadow of the cliffs of Gambetta (where the batteries could have smashed her at close range), came up to the round bull nose of the Jetée du Large; and from her bridge Captain Peters and Lieutenant Commander Merrick sighted the floats of the boom. They were five hundred yards from the shore line now, headed straight for the gap between the walls. Working up to full speed, they crashed into the heavy line of floats—Walney's bows were specially strengthened for the winter ice along the coast of Maine—they went through the double boom "Like a wire through cheese," one of the subs told me.

And no shot was fired from the shore.

Walney went on. In a strange, formidable silence she penetrated into the Avant-Port, passed the end of the broad Môle du Ravin-Blanc, crossed the Bassin-Poincaré, and moved to the Bassin du Maroc—and still the guns were silent.

Clear of that, almost a mile and a half inside the silent docks, she sighted a destroyer coming out of the naval harbor and attempted to ram. Before she made position heavy machine guns opened fire from the breakwater and from the quays. Instantly the night went mad about them. Searchlights down the quay broke out, licked by them in white flame, and blazed across the harbor; tracer bullets raked the darkness with brilliant fire; the glare of gun flashes split the night. They grazed past the French destroyer, unable to make their turn swiftly enough to ram into the crowded confines of the harbor, and swept into the Bassin Gueydon, the last basin of them all.

Their objective was the Môle Bougainville. Their orders were to lay themselves alongside the Quai Central, and land their attacking force. In her mess decks Walney carried more than two hundred men of the Third Battalion of the 6th Armoured Regiment. Their mission was to take the port offices—a high modern building on the end of the mole. From there they hoped to prevent sabotage, to stop the scuttling of ships, to control their end of the harbor.

They never landed.

At the end of the Quai Central, in the berth that was their objective lay the light cruiser Epervier, her guns ready. In the Bassin over the northern side the submarines were putting to sea with their guns ready also. Mine sweepers, the other destroyers, the batteries had come into this fury of action. Shells were hitting Walney fast now, communication with her after guns had gone already, men were dead about their breaches, and in the hell of the mess decks the shells were ripping through the sides like paper and exploding among the helpless soldiers.

They might perhaps have turned and run for it. They might have ceased fire and hauled down their flag. They might have sought shelter against the wall of the Môle Giraud and hoped for quarter. But they went on. Their objective was the Quai Central, and alongside the Quai Central lay the Epervier—they made their course to lay themselves alongside her.

Shells and machine gun bullets killed off the crew of the after gun. Lieutenant Moseley told me, "I found myself trying to give orders to dead men." Somehow the guns were manned again. They were getting in their own hits too. One point-five machine gun after another was silenced, they shot out the searchlight, they battered a destroyer over close to the Naval Barracks so that she sank at her moorings. But they were hacked through and through, the mess decks were an unholy shambles of blood and of dead men; their communications were gone; their speed was falling as the steam pipes went; their decks were twisted and torn with high explosive.

Broken and battered as they were, they laid themselves alongside the Epervier.

"We meant to board her with Tommy guns," said one of her officers. "We had a chance, you know. Hardly any ships carry enough small arms."

They got grapnels onto her and made them fast, but there was no steam for the capstans—the pipes were shot away. There were no men to man the ropes. The gun crews were in sober fact blown over the side not by shells but by the blast of the Epervier's guns.

The ropes were severed, and, very slowly, her boilers hit and her engine room wrecked, the Walney fell away.

Commander Merrick was dead; so were most of her officers. Captain Peters was wounded. Lieutenant Colonel Marshall was killed. Walney was a ship of the dead.

And down the harbor Hartland was fighting out her battle. Coming in astern of Walney, Lieutenant Commander Billot, RNR, her captain, headed for the gap that the leader had made. Between her and Walney was an ML laying a smoke screen. In the darkness and the blindness of the smoke they reached a point a hundred yards from the broken boom. The batteries of Gambetta and Ravin-Blanc were firing now, shell splashes leapt crazily in the glare of searchlights or showed luminous against the smoke. It is not clear even now what happened, but the ML, probably hit in her steering gear, swung suddenly from her course and lay square across the Hartland's bows. In the fractional second of decision Commander Billot swung his ship away, but the ML was still moving. They crashed through her as they swung, and she sank in halves on either side of them. The Hartland was too far off her course now, and Billot swung her clear round in a circle outside the line of the Jetée du Large—always the target of everything that would bear—brought her back on her course, and approached the gap for a second time.

The Hartland was hit already, badly hit; but he took her through, fighting back at every gun flash that his fire control could locate, took her across the Avant-Port, made the Môle du Ravin-Blanc, swung round it, and reached objective. His controls were shot away now, his communications gone; but somehow he brought his ship alongside, somehow they got lines out; and then, as with Walney the last tragedy overwhelmed them, there were no men left on deck alive to man the lines. On fire, her ammunition exploding, her engines dead, her controls gone, Hartland drifted away with the wind, and as a last desperate measure Billot, already wounded, gave the order to drop the anchor.

She lay there in the open basin shelterless in the glare of the pitiless lights. And in the open she died.

"But," said Commander Billot, "I never hauled down my flag."

There is no end to the stories of gallantry in the rescues. No end to the individual hardihood. Bill Disher of the Exchange Telegraph, the only journalist with the expedition, swam wounded through a storm of machine gun fire, reached safety, and was wounded again; men paddled their way through the scum of oil on the water and were hauled up the sides of the Epervier, one small group swam until they found a rowboat tied to the quay and then, themselves in safety, turned her round and, paddling with the floorboards because she had no oars, worked her out in the hell of the basin again to pick up Billot and other survivors. It was that same boatload that sat there under fire and solemnly debated the chances of paddling her out to sea and getting away—and half of them were desperately wounded.

Hartland was a blazing torch on the calm water. Billot had ordered her abandonment shortly after he dropped anchor, yet her first lieutenant told me that man after man came to him and said, "Does that mean we've got to abandon ship, sir?"

They thought the order was for the soldiers.

But the real tragedy of the operation was the tragedy of the Sixth. Penned in the terrible mess decks, the thin steel of the sides like paper against the shells, they died not in ones, not in tens, but in scores. When Hartland blew up in thunder at ten o'clock under the hot sun, she took with her one hundred and seventy men.

Walney at the other end of the harbor, riddled and with her boilers gone, sank with as many, and as her survivors escaped on Carley floats, on rafts, on wreckage, they were run down by the French destroyers and the submarines, putting to sea. More than two hundred men were lost with her.

The operation ended in failure. But was ever failure more gallant, was ever tragedy made more splendid by the courage and the sacrifice of men?

They died, but their epitaph shall read, "They reached objective!"

 

Two former U.S. Coast Guard Cutters, which were transferred to the British and renamed HMS Hartland (formerly CGC Pontchartrain) and HMS Walney (formerly CGC Sebago) are shown ramming the boom at Oran during the Allied landings on the North African coast in this painting by the English marine artist, C. E. Turner. Both ships were sunk after carrying out their mission.

Attack of the Walney and Hartland.

 

Oran, looking northwest. Symbol (1) indicates limit of penetration of HMS Walney and (2) of HMS Hartland.

Entrance to Oran Harbor. The port entrance is visible in the upper center of this photograph, taken six months later.

Oran harbor.

HMS Hartland.

HMS Hartland on fire and sinking after following HMS Walney into Oran Harbor.

HMS Hartland on fire and sinking after following HMS Walney into Oran Harbor.

HMS Hartland on fire and sinking after following HMS Walney into Oran Harbor.

The "VC" ship, HMS Walney, sunk in harbor, Oran and Mers-el-Kebir, 22 and 23 November 1942.

The "VC" ship, HMS Walney, sunk in harbor, Oran and Mers-el-Kebir, 22 and 23 November 1942.

Oran Harbor and Mers-el-Kebir, 22 and 23 November 1942.

Portrait of Captain Frederick Thornton Peters, HMS Walney, awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in Operation Reservist, an attempt to capture Oran Harbor, Algeria and prevent it being put out of action by its Vichy French Garrison during the Allied landings in North Africa, 8 November 1942.

The Royal Navy on anti-submarine patrol around Oran. photographs taken from HMS Formidable, 19-21 November 1942. The French fort on top of the hill, west of Oran, Oran Harbor and town.

A French fort near Oran which is now in Allied hands.

The Royal Navy on anti-submarine patrol around Oran. Photograph taken from HMS Formidable, 19-21 November 1942. A destroyer and auxiliary aircraft carrier off Oran.

Anti-submarine patrol aboard HMT Stoke City, November 1942. The Captain - a Lieutenant RNR.

War correspondent Leo "Bill" Disher suffered 25 wounds in Oran during Operation Reservist. He earned the Purple Heart Medal for his actions. Casualties during Operation Reservist exceeded 90%. United Press correspondent Leo S. Disher Jr. became the first combat reporter awarded the Purple Heart — citing "extraordinary heroism and meritorious performance of duty" for action on a day in November 1942 that started with his ankle already in a plaster cast. Disher was aboard one of two U.S. Coast Guard cutters that came under heavy fire while crashing a harbor boom to open Algeria's Oran harbor. His survival account became the fifth episode of United Press's "Soldiers of the Press" radio series.

United Press advertisement in Broadcasting magazine, 1942.

Convoy to Oran

General view of convoy en route to Gibraltar. Imperial War Museum photo A 12656.

by David Rame

Published in 1944

There was a battle before Oran, a battle in which no shots were fired, in which no men fell, that was yet one of the great strategic victories of this or of any other war.

It was the battle that began the day the convoys left.

It is not easy always for a layman to grasp the deep intricacies of naval strategy—the oceans are complex, the functions of fleets at times incomprehensible; yet the picture of the seas at the end of October 1942 when the armadas sailed is clear and well defined.

We had to carry down the Atlantic and into the Mediterranean the heaviest convoys that the world has ever known in order to land simultaneously along the coast of Algeria an army sufficient to overcome all possible French resistance and to deal with any counteroffensive that the Axis might launch against it. The size of that army determined the size of the convoys. That was the first essential of the problem.

Less than a fortnight before we left, Admiral Lützow, spokesman of the German Navy, told the world that there would be no Second Front. There could be none, he said, because a Second Front was predominantly a matter of ships. The second part of his proposition was correct: predominantly the Second Front was determined by the ability of the United Nations to carry across water—across the North Sea, the English Channel, the Atlantic—men in sufficient numbers to challenge Germany's defense of the continental coasts, materiel enough for them to face the panzer divisions, stores enough for them to subsist after the initial landing and for them to carry on the fight.

Precise figures are not permissible, but the amount of shipping space needed to carry a man and to supply him even for a month in these days of mechanized warfare is astonishing. Admiral Lützow, with the cold calculating logic of the German, and believing the reports of his U-boat commanders, considered that Britain and America between them could not assemble enough shipping to transport an army and still maintain their commitments in India, Australia, the Near East, and Britain itself.

How wrong he was, we knew before we sailed, lying in that astonishing armada.

I think perhaps the U-boat captains of Admiral Lützow lied.

Getting together the fleets for the movement was the initial step; there remained the problem of defense. Admiral Lützow said in the same speech that, even if the attempt were made, Britain and America had lost so many capital ships, so many cruisers, so many destroyers, that in no circumstances could they defend the convoys of an invasion.

The enemy's naval disposition at the time of the movement are of the first importance in considering this point. They began along the coast of Norway. In the deep fjords of that coast Germany had the battleship Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismarck. She had one, and probably two pocket battleships, one battle cruiser, and probably two heavy cruisers. These, if they were in seagoing condition, represented an important force, for Germany's navy is the most modern in the world. In Germany itself there was one other battle cruiser, probably out of action, one large aircraft carrier whose condition is among the minor mysteries of the war, and a number of smaller craft.

That was the one end of the line.

The other end reached into Mussolini's Italian Lake. In the Mediterranean there was the Italian Fleet. Battered, kicked about, Mussolini's naval morale was believed to be at a low ebb; yet it is probable that he had at his disposal in Italian waters, three modern battleships—the Vittorio Veneto, the Littorio, and the Impero. He had at least two old battleships of the Cavour class, and possibly three. He was short on heavy cruisers because his heavy cruisers had been left to bear the brunt of the British Navy's ceaseless thrusting at his comfort, but he still had a reasonable strength in light cruisers and in heavy destroyers.

But since the objective of the expedition was French North Africa, there was a third fleet to consider. All that had gone before led us to believe that among our bitterest enemies would be the fleet of France. Pétain had said that France would fight if North Africa were attacked. Darlan had said that the French Navy would fight. And in Toulon or Bizerte there was the Strasbourg, there was probably one old battleship, there were four and possibly six heavy cruisers, a flock of light cruisers and destroyers, and numerous small craft.

In itself the French Navy was a formidable force—though the ships lacked sea time and experienced crews; if it linked up with the Italian Navy it might be more than formidable; and at no time (with the known temper of the French Navy) could that possibly be scouted.

We had therefore to guard against possible attack at the beginning and at the end of the passage—and that passage, as we steamed it, was more than three thousand miles in length.

This was the first possibility: surface attack.

There was a second: attack from the air.

The port has been bombed in this war, ships have been sunk off the coasts of Ireland by the Focke-Wulf. The first sector of the journey, therefore, was through a danger area. Convoys have been attacked and ships sunk approaching the Portuguese and the Spanish coasts from the westward, Gibraltar has been bombed. The central sector of the journey therefore was also a danger area. All the Mediterranean is open to the Axis bombers—Algiers is hardly three hundred miles from the Sardinian aerodromes; every mile, therefore, of the last sector of the passage was under the threat of the air.

These were the first and second possibilities. There was a third, and that third was possibly the greatest of them all, the menace of the submarine.

We fought between Britain and Algiers Bay the greatest fight in all the Battle of the Atlantic. There was not a mile of our journeying that was not under the threat of the enemy of the undersea. We had to thread our convoys through the narrowest of the great straits of the world, the Straits of Gibraltar. We had to bring them across every submarine lane that operates from Europe, across the outward route or the homeward-bound route of every U-boat that sails. We had to do it knowing that this was the greatest sea target of the war, the greatest sea target of all time.

There is in each of the operations rooms of the naval commands about the coast of Britain, and in the great war room of the Admiralty a vast wall map. It stretches from floor to ceiling, and it charts the Atlantic from Labrador to the West Indies, and from the North Cape to the islands of Cape Verde. On it they mark the passage of the convoys. A thread stretches from the port of departure to the point of dispersal—or to the port of arrival. It moves angularly across the sea, according to the route selected for the movement, and it is held in place by pins. On other pins are shapes representing surface vessels, aircraft, and submarines of the enemy—most of the pins are for submarines. As the reports come in, those pins are placed upon the chart, moved, or taken away. And as the reports of the convoy's position come in, an arrow shape is moved along its thread. When one of the pins threatens the convoy the thread is stretched out to avoid it.

Somewhere in a room in England they moved our convoy so. Our lives—the lives of an army—hung upon that thread. This was the target. They knew in Whitehall, as they knew in Washington, that every endeavor that Germany and Italy could use would be bent on its destruction.

There is something almost incredibly fascinating in the vast moves of the chessmen that were ships in this adventure. I believe that almost every naval craft available both in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean was used to protect our valiant thread. Our escort, the ships that sailed with us under the white ensign, was almost pitifully small for our immensity. A dozen or so little ships made a fence about us a mile away from the outer ships of the columns; inside our lines we had a cruiser of the Town class and an aircraft carrier. That was all. To those who knew little of the sea it looked dangerously inadequate.

But away to the north of us, working out of the Scottish bases of Coastal Command were the Sunderlands and the Catalinas scouring the fjords of Norway for the movements of the German Navy. Between them and Scapa Flow the Home Fleet waited in its power for any sortie that might threaten us. Somewhere at hand was a flying force to challenge any raider that might slip through the net; close at hand too was a destroyer reinforcement to deal with any wolf pack that might threaten us.

When we picked up the loom of the light of Cape Spartel—that is, the Atlantic limit of the Strait of Gibraltar—we were untouched. That is the measure of the success of those who moved us, of those who planned our journeying.

Gibraltar was a special problem. The Strait is barely ten miles wide at the little white town of Tarifa. Three miles to the south is neutral water, three miles to the north is neutral also. The central channel is deep, strong tides run through it; it is not possible to mine it. Axis U-boats—Italian and German—have, we know, used the Spanish water to the south to move in and out of the inland sea.

And we were forced to use that channel. In it we were canalized. We had to approach it through the narrowing funnel between Spartel and Cape St. Vincent, we had to go out of it through the long horn from Ceuta to Alborán Island. Along it we had to run the gauntlet.

And we lost no ship there either.

How they swept that water and held it clean for our long passage, I do not know; and I have sailed with the Gibraltar submarine patrols for long months in this war. It was a miracle of organization and a masterpiece of execution. And the miracle and the masterpiece held all the way to the Algerian beaches. One ship alone was hit one hundred and twenty miles from her goal, and she survived. No ship was sunk. Mussolini's navy made no slightest effort to challenge our audacity. The French Navy swung to its doomed anchors in Toulon harbor.

The Algerian Convoy is and will remain for all time high on the list of naval accomplishments.

A map of Allied convoys heading from the British Isles to North Africa.

 

Allied invasion of Northwest Africa, 8 November 1942.

Admiral Ingersoll, Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet, watches as the Operation Torch task force stands out from Hampton Roads, Virginia, en route for North Africa, 24 October 1942. Note the light cruiser in the distance.

The chiefs of the four services in conference in the operations room of HMS Bulolo, (L to R) Air Commodore Lawson, Major General C Ryder, Rear Admiral Sir Harold Burrough and Major General V E Evelegh. Imperial War Museum photo A 12776.

A night attack by enemy aircraft is met by a barrage of tracer shells from the guns of the convoy and escorting warships taken from HMS Bulolo off Algiers. Imperial War Museum photo A 12756.

Near Algiers, "Torch" troops hit the beaches behind a large American flag hoping for the French Army not to fire on it.

Packed Landing Craft Mechanized LCM 73 leaving the troop ship for shore. Imperial War Museum photo A 12705A.

Troops and ammunition for light guns being brought ashore from a landing craft assault (ramped) (LCA 428) on Arzew beach, Algeria, North Africa, whilst another LCA (LCA 287) approaches the beach. Imperial War Museum photo A 12671.

American troops landing on the beach at Arzew, near Oran, from a landing craft assault (LCA 26), some of them are carrying boxes of supplies.

Transports unloading troops and stores at Arzew, near Oran. Imperial War Museum photo A 12932.

Some of the inhabitants of Arzew, meet the US soldiers on the beach.

Troops making their way inland after landing at Algiers. Here some men are pulling and pushing a trailer of equipment over the sandy beach, and in the background two soldiers are manhandling a motorbike.

British sailors and British and American soldiers on the beach near Algiers. A 40 mm Bofors gun can be seen further down the beach along with three lorries.

Rangers Capture French Coastal Gun Position. This image shows 1st Battalion Rangers at dawn on November 8, 1942, at a French coastal gun position that they captured during a night of fighting, probably at Arzew, Algeria.

1st Armored Division M7 Being Unloaded at Algerian Docks. The lack of specialized tank landing craft during the Operation TORCH landings necessitated the capture and use of ports and docks to unload heavy vehicles.

American soldiers interrogate a Vichy French soldier captured during fighting near Oran. While most of the Vichy troops did not oppose the Allied landings during Operation Torch, some resisted.

American infantrymen advance warily through a street in Algiers as rifle fire rings in the distance. Operation Terminal, an effort to capture Algiers harbor intact, failed, and a similar attack was launched at Oran.

American soldiers occupy positions near Oran on November 10, 1942, two days after the Operation Torch landings. Soon after Torch, American troops engaged German forces on land for the first time.

American infantry marching through Algiers after landing during Operation Torch in 1942.