The Daring Dozen by Gavin Mortimer Read Free Book Online

months earlier in command of American forces, was appointed to command Operation Torch , a mission designed seemingly to appease Stalin, who for several months had been pressing the Americans and the British to open a second front to ease the pressure on Soviet troops engaged in repulsing the German invaders on the Eastern Front.
    The Americans believed the best course of action would be a landing in northern France in September 1942, codenamed Operation Sledgehammer , but the British convinced their Allies that they lacked the men and equipment to successfully establish a foothold in France. In addition the British were still fighting Axis forces in North Africa, and their priority was to win that campaign so that they could control the Mediterranean. Eventually the Americans agreed to Operation Torch , an invasion of French north-west Africa, understanding that with the whole of Africa in their possession they could use the continent as another base from which to attack Germany.
    The great imponderable concerning Operation Torch was the French and how they would react. Though France was now governed by the collaborative Vichy government, many of its overseas territories were Vichy in name only, with French soldiers desperate to fight against the Germans.
    The Allies drew up a plan for an invasion of French north-west Africa in November, in which three task forces would seize the main ports and air bases in Morocco and Algeria, enabling the invasion force to then strike east into Tunisia and attack the German forces – which by that time were in retreat from Egypt following the British Eighth Army offensive at El Alamein in late October. The ultimate aim of Torch was to crush the Axis forces in a pincer with the British applying the force from the east and the Americans from the west.
    Eisenhower tasked Major General Mark Clark of II Corps with planning the airborne phase of Operation Torch . Clark had seen the potential of paratroopers from the very first days of their existence in the States, and at his headquarters in Norfolk House in London he devised a mission for Raff’s battalion.
    What he produced was a daunting challenge for Raff. Flying 1,500 miles from England to Algeria, his men would seize the military airfields of La Sénia and Tafaraoui and thereby prevent French fighter planes from attacking the main invasion fleet as it came ashore. No large-scale airborne assault had ever flown such a distance to its target but despite that, and the fact his men had no combat experience, Raff had every confidence in his battalion, informing Clark in a note:
    There is no doubt in my mind that we can accomplish the mission, provided:
    (1) we get a break by the Air Corps and (2) by the weather. And provided
    (3) I am permitted to command my paratroopers when we hit the ground. 5
    Granted permission to lead his men into battle – and ordered not to disclose to them their destination until instructed – Raff returned to his battalion’s training camp and pushed the men even harder, telling them they would soon see action. They asked where, but Raff refused to reveal the target, leading his paratroopers to speculate on where they might be headed. Most guessed France, but there were one or two extravagant claims suggesting they were to drop into Berlin and kill Hitler himself. In his memoirs Raff described how ‘all our battalion training and manoeuvres were directed towards the accomplishment of the mission … [we] hiked across country the exact distance [we] actually would march to the objective, which, in the exercises was always an airfield with planes to be destroyed thereon. The remainder of the battalion moved the same distance it would have to move, then assumed firing positions which were similar to the ones to be taken on D-Day.’ 6
    They practised jumping at night, as they would have to do in Algeria, and before long Raff’s battalion could land in any given area and be assembled within 20 minutes. ‘Little