The Battle of North Africa

^{CHAPTER ONE} WAR GAMES

Barracks bags slung over shoulders, the four tankers hopped off the deuce-and-a-half and scanned the chaotic tent city and tank park. Eleven thousand strong, 2^nd Armored Division consisted of three tank, infantry, and field artillery battalions plus signal, recon, tank recovery, maintenance, and supply units.

Corporal Anthony Russo was glad to be back among his own. While waiting for transport in Casablanca, he and his comrades had decided to see the sights. A wrong turn took them into the Arab Quarter, a maze of twisting, crowded alleys where people lived in abject poverty. Here, Americans had been killed just for their clothes. A crowd of beggars formed followed by some toughs, and the tankers were lucky to escape unharmed.

Russo had been harmed enough already. They all had—him in his legs, Swanson across his chest, Wade along his back, Ackley in his shin, Clay just about everywhere you can be hurt.

While Clay remained in an Algiers hospital, the other tankers’ rehabilitation had been cut short with orders to ship out to Morocco, a bad sign. One didn’t have to listen to the latrine rumors to know something big was going to happen.

Swanson snatched Russo’s kit bag and swung it over his other massive shoulder. “I’ll take that for you, Mac. You walk like you haven’t taken a shit in a week.”

“You’re half right,” Russo said.

“Where’s the lieutenant?” Ackley said, his tone revealing he didn’t really care where the lieutenant was but wanted to change the subject.

“Here comes the Professor,” the loader said. “He knows everything.”

Swanson no longer called the gunner Wisenheimer but instead Professor, which still sounded derogatory but marked a slight improvement in their relations. Russo was still Mac, though it was said with less derision.

Wade returned from asking around, grimacing from his still-aching wounds. “We found our regiment. D Company isn’t far.”

Russo plodded in tow. After being rousted in the middle of the night and packed onto a truck for the long, bumpy drive to the camp, he was ready for a hot and a cot. It was barely dawn, and the tankers were already up and at ’em as the African sun just started to bleach the eastern horizon.

But he was smiling. It was good to be back.

The men found their platoon commander and saluted. Lieutenant Pierce was gaunt and prematurely balding, his sharp face slightly softened by gleaming round spectacles and an easy smile. He appeared more like a gentleman farmer than a tank commander, but that was the Army. Most of them still didn’t feel like real soldiers, and only a few of them, like the hard-bitten Sergeant Garrett, looked the part.

The lieutenant returned their salute and held out his hand to shake. The tankers introduced themselves. Corporal Russo, Sergeant Wade, Corporal Swanson. General Patton had honored his promise to promote them all.

Pierce scrutinized Ackley. “And who’s this?”

The kid wrinkled his nose. “I’m Ackley.”

“He’s our driver,” Russo said. “One of the only survivors of a whole other massacre.”

“Welcome to Destroyer Company, the Hell on Wheels,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll get you billeted, but first let me show you around.”

He pointed out the dining facility, showers, water tankers, latrines, PX, motor pool, and medical tents. Then he gestured to a cluster of armored vehicles. “This is us. Your tank’s here too. We just got it a few days ago, fresh off the boat.”

The M4 medium tanks were Duck Soup, Dealer, Democracy, and the lieutenant’s own Delilah. Their crews paused from doing maintenance work on the big vehicles to check out the newcomers.

When Pierce got to the last tank, his face darkened. “Looks like somebody named it for you.”

In big white letters, DOG was emblazoned on the turret over the fresh green paint job.

“Golly,” Ackley said. “I surely hope that ain’t an omen.”

Some of the tankers snickered. Somebody barked.

“Paint whatever you want over it,” the lieutenant said. “A crew should be allowed to name their own home.”

“I kind of like it,” Wade said.

“They could have named it Dildo for all I care,” Swanson said. “If it moves and shoots and has a coupla inches of armor, I’m good.”

“We’ll take it as is,” confirmed Russo, who considered it a point of pride to always turn a practical joke around by making it seem like a surprise gift.

Pierce wasn’t listening. His face darkened again. “And who put a goddamn Confederate flag on my Delilah?” The snickers started again. “I’d better see Old Glory flying again before we go back out, you chumps.”

“Our last commander had a Texas flag on his,” Russo said.

“Yeah? What happened to him?”

“He rammed a Tiger tank and shot its commander out of the cupola.”

Pierce smiled and shook his head. “That’s a Texan, all right.”

“Then he got blown up.”

The smile evaporated. “Well, you guys have been in it, so I don’t have to tell you what’s what. Maybe whatever luck you got from that charm up your ass will rub off on my jokers. We’ll be seeing action soon.”

After a relatively easy invasion during Operation Torch, 2^nd Armored had sat on its heels during the Tunisian campaign. While elements entered Tunisia and fought after Kasserine, the bulk had stayed here in Casablanca, tasked with deterring fascist Spain from crossing into Africa while training for a fight that hadn’t yet come.

“Do we have a bog, sir?”

“Go to the repple-depple, they’ll get you sorted.” The replacement depot. “First, I want you to get your gear stowed and grab some chow. Then get your big boy ready to roll out. The company is going out for our second training exercise of the day. You might as well join in.”

Wade blinked. “Your second time out?”

“We’ve been at it since 0400,” Pierce explained. “This is Morocco in June, guys. We get our training done early. Gets real hot in a tank at midday. I’m talking a hundred forty degrees hot.”

Russo had experienced that on the train, crammed into a sweltering sleeper car with rowdy infantrymen who opened all the windows to let in some air only to choke the car with grimy black coal smoke from the engine stack.

“We’ll be glad for the practice,” he said, though he didn’t appreciate having to do any training after being up half the night. “We’re pretty rusty.”

“We practiced an amphibious invasion last week. Rolled onto one of those new landing crafts the Navy cooked up, sailed around, rolled back off. Today, we’re shooting targets in the bush, just like we used to at Fort Knox.”

“We’ll get right to it,” Russo said.

The tankers stowed their bags, wolfed down a quick breakfast, and returned to the tank. As tired as they were, they all were eager to take Dog for a walk.

For months, they’d convalesced at the hospital in Algiers until they’d recovered enough to begin rehabilitation. Though they could have used more rest before returning to combat, they were eager to escape from pushing brooms and censoring mail and get back into an M4’s fighting compartment.

“Ack-Ack, help me get the engine bay open,” Swanson said, smiling.

Russo was polishing a periscope lens. “What are you so happy about?”

“Dog’s got a loader’s hatch. When we get hit, I’ll be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“I think you mean, if.”

“Whatever you say, Mac.”

While they checked the track tension, fluids, and filter, a grinning tanker sauntered over. “You fellas get your African campaign badges?”

Russo finished his polishing. “Yup.”

“Even though you weren’t here.” The tanker called out to his friends, “See what I was telling you? They’re giving the campaign badge to the replacements!”

“Because they aren’t replacements, you imbecile,” his sergeant said. “They’re Old Ironsides. They fought in Tunisia, which is more than I can say for you.”

While his crewmates laughed at him, the tanker stomped his feet and did an awkward bow that ended in a grimace. “Aw, jeez. Sorry, fellas.”

“Glad we got the ass-sniffing out of the way,” Swanson said and returned to sink his arms into Dog’s engine bay.

Chuckling, the tank sergeant strolled over and singled out Wade for his stripes. “Don’t mind him, Sergeant. He ain’t right in the head on account that big chip on his shoulder keeps smacking into it.”

Russo offered his hand. “Good to meet you. I command Dog.”

While they shook, the man glanced at Wade, who said, “It’s how we do it.”

“Hey, whatever works. Sorry about that, Corporal.”

“Call me Tony.”

The tank sergeant’s homely, sunburned face stretched into a smile. “Tony it is. I’m Mickey. Duck Soup’s my gal.” He pointed. “Butch commands Dealer, and Butter over there has Democracy.”

Russo looked them over and saw average joes like him, men who’d come for the adventure and stayed because they had no choice.

“Butter?” Wade said. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Not really. He collects butterflies.” The tank sergeant lit a Chesterfield and tossed the match. “You hear anything where you came from? About where we’re going?”

“Probably the same as you,” Russo said. “Just latrine rumors.”

“I doubt we’re going to England and invading France,” Wade cut in.

Mickey exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Why do you say that?”

The gunner shrugged. “We’re all here. It’s easier to invade someplace close than ship us all the way back to the UK. My guess is Sardinia.”

“Why Sardinia?”

“Sicily’s the obvious choice, but the Germans are expecting us to do that. Sardinia’s the other obvious choice.”

Mickey laughed. “So no France, I can buy that. A guy in signals said he heard it from a source he trusts we’re going to the Balkans.”

Wade thought it over. “I doubt even our brass is that dumb. We’ll probably invade Sardinia and then Italy.”

“Why Italy?”

“Because we’ll all be in Sardinia.”

Mickey laughed again. “You’ve got a good grasp of military strategy, pal. You ought to be a general.”

“This is Hawkeye,” Russo said. “He’s our deep thinker.”

“Yeah, I got one of those too. Mine’s a bit of a pain in the ass, though.”

Swanson guffawed from the engine bay.

Waving his index finger, Pierce marched among the tanks. “Let’s move out, Destroyers! Crank up your big boys and start your engines!”

Russo hauled himself onto the sponson and paused to massage his stiff leg. Then he lowered himself into the cupola, plugged in, and grinned. The comms check confirmed the radio and interphone were operational.

He puffed out his chest in pride. “Driver, start the engine!”

Ackley worked the controls. The tank’s four-hundred-horsepower engine roared to life and revved. “Everything checks out, Mac.”

“Fantastic.” Russo patted the hull. “Good Dog.” The American Locomotive Company had built her well. “Mannaggia dial!” I curse the devil!

“We’ll be in the lead, so look smart,” the lieutenant said over the radio.

In an orderly column two vehicles abreast, the Destroyers rumbled out of the camp onto a wide dirt road. A support train of jeeps, tank recovery vehicles, ambulances, and deuce-and-a-half trucks rolled after them.

Past the checkpoint with its crude guardhouse, the road snaked southeast through farmland into hill country, which was already shimmering in the morning heat. Beyond, the brown humps and cones of the Middle Atlas lay heaped under an azure sky.

Too preoccupied with scratching a living to pay attention to the column, barley farmers leaned against oxen-drawn ploughs. The scene reminded Russo how, at Sidi bou Zid, the farmers had kept at it even with shells shrieking over their heads. It gave him the odd feeling of being in a stranger’s house. He found it a little embarrassing how people just went on trying to live their lives while he rolled around their neighborhood, playing war games with real ammunition.

“Now every young tanker, who was in Casablanca,” Mickey sang in a surprisingly clear, strong tenor.

The platoon frequency filled with laughter and ribald comments.

“Knows Stella, the Belle of Fedala…”

The other commanders joined in, “A can of C ration will whip up a passion, in this little gal of Fedala!”

Russo sighed with longing, imagining what this legendary French lady looked like and wishing he could meet her himself. Then he sighed again, this time from fulfillment. He was back in a tank, officially its commander. Plus he was an E-4 now, which paid $66 a month, most of which he sent home to his proud parents in Trenton, New Jersey. The war could give as well as take, though it took far more than it gave and always threatened to take it all.

The column stopped in a fallow field at the base of a low hill. Pierce explained the regiment had set up a course over the rise. Wood targets representing machine gun nests, infantry, tanks, and antitank guns had to be identified and destroyed.

“Captain says we’re starting now,” Pierce buzzed over the radio. “Button up and form a line on my three.”

“We’re the end of the line, Ackley,” Russo said. “Watch out for that big rock. Wait until we’re past it—”

“I know,” Ackley said, all irritation.

“Now advance and give ’em hell,” the lieutenant said.

“For Stella!” Butch yelled from Dealer’s cupola.

The M4 tanks lurched over the rise with a roar. The commanders called out targets. Whoever had developed the course had given them a doozy designed to test the tankers’ ability to fight together. A machine gun nest menaced the platoon from fifty yards on their right flank, while a tank and two antitank guns stood on the opposite hill in defiladed positions.

Pierce dissected the problem in an instant and belted out orders. Aside from a copse of palm trees partway down the hill, there was no concealment, though concealment didn’t matter right now, only cover did. Unfortunately, the only option for cover was to back up and take a hull-down position.

Reversing, Duck Soup dropped white phosphorous in front of one of the antitank guns to blind it until it could be dealt with later, then joined Democracy in firing high-explosive rounds at the other gun.

“One, Two, Five, knock out that tank!” the radio blared.

In the platoon, Dog was Five.

“Gunner, tank, shot, five hundred, fire!” Russo yelled.

“On the way!” Dog bucked at the recoil.

The shell streaked across the gully and blazed a trench into the hillside. Russo winced as if it had ripped a hole in his gut. He heard the din of battle as panzers rumbled toward him in a haze of gun smoke and exhaust. He wished they would stop but was terrified when they did because that was when they fired—

He snapped out of it. “Driver, right stick and take us along the rise so we’re in front of that MG crew. Gunner, up four, right four. Traverse as we turn. Mannaggia dial!”

“American, Mac!” Swanson said. “Up!”

“On the way!”

Another miss. Delilah claimed the kill, her shell smashing the target. Dirt fountained into the air and left a crater.

Feeling sick now, Russo started to give the order to shift targets, but HE rounds ranged the exposed antitank gun and pulverized it. Which was all well and good, this being a team effort and the goal being survival under fire.

That left the machine gun nest.

“Driver, left stick, high gear, advance. Run those disgraziats down!”

Wade was already shooting with the coax machine gun. While the rest of the platoon raced whooping down the hill to take out the next antitank gun still shrouded in smoke, Dog rolled on top of the enemy MG position and flattened it. Ackley jerked the tank in a shimmy to grind it into splinters.

A black cloud poured over the opposite hill.

Russo raised his binoculars and yelled into the radio, “Sandstorm!”

He actually wasn’t sure what the hell it was, but it was big and dark and growing. It’d be on him in seconds. He dropped into the turret and pulled the hatch closed after him as the cloud closed in.

“What the hell?” Swanson said at his scope. “They’re bugs!”

“Locusts,” Wade clarified. “Amazing.”

The swarm swept over the tank with a skin-crawling shimmering sound from the flapping of millions of wings. Their bodies pattered against the hull. The tankers sweated in oven heat as the rising African sun slowly cooked the tank.

“Just like Tunisia,” the loader growled. “Everything is trying to kill us.”

“They came as far as Algeria,” the gunner went on in a lecturing drone. “It’s been hotter and drier than usual, which makes them swarm. A single swarm can cover a hundred square miles.”

“Stop talking,” Swanson said.

Russo raised his scope to see for himself. Thousands of grayish-yellow, spotted locusts flitted past. Then one landed on the scope, followed by more until it was covered in a seething carpet of bugs.

He asked, “Can anybody see?”

“I can’t see shit,” the loader fumed. “It’s like that calamity that happened to the pharaoh—”

“The eighth plague of Egypt,” Wade said.

“Exactly what was I going to say, Professor. It’s like we share the same mind.”

The gunner shuddered. “Ugh.” Whether to the bugs or the idea or sharing the loader’s mind, Russo didn’t know.

Irritated voices filled the radio.

“Looks like everybody’s blind,” he said.

In more ways than one. During the exercise, the other tank commanders had congratulated each other on their fine shooting, having fun with it. Russo knew it was a whole different experience while under direct panzer fire.

The truth was the Germans would have attacked first, and in tank combat, whoever shot first had a big advantage. Their initial salvos would likely have left one or more of the platoon’s tanks a burning wreck.

“We’d better get moving,” Ackley said. “We stay here much longer, we’re gonna melt in this heat.”

Orders came through to drive through the swarm and return to base. Russo lowered his goggles and raised his handkerchief to cover his eyes and face.

So far, this whole damn war is the blind leading the blind, he thought.

Russo hoped, wherever they were sent next, command wouldn’t revisit the same mistakes that had plagued the army in Tunisia. He hoped whoever was in charge, Patton or anybody else, had gained enough experience they could see clearly and prevent another disaster.

Then he raised the hatch. Instantly, the tank filled with flying insects, which set the tankers to cursing as Dog stumbled back to camp.