WWII Oran: More Clues

In Intelligence School we used to call this Photo Interpretation.  The photo of Dad’s driver and guard is possibly my most valuable clue as to what unit he was with early in WWII.  It took me a long time to realize what bumper markings were – much less what they meant.  As you look at the front of the truck from left to right is the unit hierarchy sometimes down to the truck number in the platoon on the far right.  MBS, the Mediterranean Base Section of Services of Supply appears to be the parent command.  “2 SV?” I believe stands for 2nd Bn Services Command.  (There’s probably a “C” after V.)  The Black driver is a good clue.  Necessity drove integration long before it became policy.  On the back of the photo is its identification: “My driver and gard (sic) in Oran”.  By that time Dad had been promoted from “T” to SSgt and truck platoon sergeant. Whether or not he was training an all-black Transportation Corps truck platoon (16 trucks) is questionable.  The online The Employment of Negro Troops was no help.

The second photo shows Dad in his summer Khakis and tie as a Technical Sergeant posing in one of Oran’s many truck loading sheds.  The “T” usually meant the GI was a technical specialist such as a mechanic, someone not yet in command of others.  In the background is an Army forklift – one of just ten at the port if I remember correctly and an unusually low number for the requirements of Operation Torch.  Note the triangular span of wooden gables under the shed’s ridge.  Judging from the shadows, the sheds are on an east-west axis.  When Services of Supply (Signal Corps, Engineers, Quartermaster, Ordnance, Medical, Chemical, Transportation Corps) landed at Mers El Kibir six miles away on November 11, 1942, Oran was beginning to get wet and cold.  I speculate his wearing of his summer service uniform might have been unavoidably late.  Just eight weeks before he’d been on the RMS Queen Mary with a large contingent of B-17 ground crews coming to England.  I’m still working on the “units aboard” puzzle.

Operations in Africa are overlooked.  All you see on TV is Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Bulge, and D-Day.  There was dive bombing in Oran and ships blown up at sea off the coast like the Arthur Middleton which I believe Dad saw blown up on January 1, 1943 and night convoys to the east to capture Bizerte and evacuate Tunis where 250,000 Africa Corps Germans surrendered.  I think he was involved in that too.  Germans marched all night beside his resting drivers and trucks. There were bodies floating in Oran harbor when SOS arrived.  Ordnance men removed them.   Isn’t there anything out there besides Lee Marvin and the Big Red One?  The stories of the average GI are more interesting to me, especially when there’s a puzzle involved and it’s personal and some of those pieces are rare.

Oran: 1942 and Now

From old WWII newsreels Oran is black and white like most of the history then.  GI photos were the same; carefully screened by official censors allowing only nondescript pictures of self with or without buddies.  My first impressions of Oran, Algeria where Operation Torch captured this strategic port in North Africa, are the same – black and gray.  It reminds me of the San Diego naval base without the color.   I noticed from the government photo that there was a “wet side” and “dry side” separated by the usual utility road.  There is an oil depot, several warehouses, lined up deuce-and-a-half trucks, and regulating (track cluster) train station.  What’s barely shown in the photo are the steep cliffs surrounding the waterfront.  Dad spent two years in North Africa and Oran arriving there with the D+3 convoy on November 11, 1942.  His discharge citing Departure November 1 and Arrival November 11 indicates he was on this 41 troop ship convoy from Britain. When he arrived he said bodies were still floating in the harbor. 

Other than the landings to the east and west and the harbor assault to neutralize the French fleet little is known by the public of anything else although Oran became the Cam Ranh Bay of its day.  Trucks, equipment, and supplies were landed at Mers-el-Kébir, Oran’s smaller sister harbor to the west.  A Provisional Ordnance Group (POG) made mostly up of the 87th Medium Maintenance Battalion and 55th Heavy Maintenance Regiment had custody of the trucks and maintained them.  The Transportation Corps under the Mediterranean Base Section (MBS) soon assigned their missions.  Because of theft, Oran’s blocked harbor had only one road: entrance and exit. 

In 1942 Oran had a cosmopolitan population of Spanish, French, and impoverished Arabs who were hired to help off-load the ships.  Old photos from the time aren’t kind to Oran.  Of course, there was a war going on with its inherent destruction, disease, and vice.  I’d read descriptions of North Africa from travel and history books written before the war, but I never appreciated the scenery until I started surfing You Tube to see what Oran looks like today.  It’s amazing.  I know there are always old and dingy parts to every city, but Oran seems to be a surprisingly beautiful and modern city.  Maybe it’s French money, but what You Tube reveals are long expanses of clean modern highways with grassy mediums, road-side palm trees, skyscrapers, cranes, modern cars, beautiful pastel colored apartment building, tastefully done cultural centers, and I saw only one stop light. I’ve included the best You Tube video of Oran I could find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtJ3lbpSOmQ.  Halfway through the video you can see Ft. Santa Cruz (WWII stockade), on the mountain west of the harbor.  It’s in the drawing and is now a favorite tourist destination.