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.

The Patch

Hopefully, the serious family WWII researcher will have his father’s Honorable Discharge or what it is commonly called today, the DD214.  It is a rich source of facts which will help in putting the pieces of his military experience from basic training to his last duty station.  In my case I didn’t take those facts seriously enough and the pieces never fit his real story from Ft. Riley, Kansas to Oran, Algeria in North Africa and, finally, to the bombed out Port of Leghorn, Italy in 1944.  “TC HQ 3^rd P of E”: but what did that mean?  It could have been hundreds of units by my hasty determination.

On the other hand, I had other supporting evidence.  I remember some of Dad’s stories which placed him in Leghorn and I had a limited number of pictures he took.  They were just enough to identify his parent unit and shed light on what he was doing in Italy from October, 1944 to September, 1945.  The first photo looks like the one you see from Art Appreciation 101 of Hadrian’s Tomb on the Tiber River in Rome.   Dad is on its roof in a typical GI-on-leave shot.  It took me several years to be curious enough to get a magnifying glass to identify what the patch on his shoulder was, but it paid off.  The half image looked something like an onion dome you see on Russian Orthodox churches. The photo of him in the chair was the clincher.  It was taken in his tent compound somewhere in Leghorn during the winter months (uniform sweater).  It was an onion dome with a red star in the center. 

The Internet has lots of sources identifying WWII shoulder patches: groups, clubs, government entities, and companies specializing in military memorabilia.  I bought my PBS patch at a gun show and that’s what it turned out to be – the patch of the Peninsula Base Section responsible for all the Services of Supply (SOS) in Italy.  With few exceptions, the war in North Africa and Italy is overlooked by historians with few exceptions like Rick Atkinson.  Combat units were just the tip of the iceberg.  There were truck parks, medical facilities, salvage yards, horse and mule units, endless convoys of Liberty and Victory ships, major ports like Oran and Naples, and stockpiles of spare parts, gasoline, and food.  The scope of the combat supporting elements is unimaginable and hidden from the public.  I know I’m not the only one who’s curious about it.  

In the months ahead I'll tell how I found answers to questions many of us have on this largely unknown front of World War II.  Oddly, the process involved the recent declassification of routine and benign Army documents.  The Internet has travel companies that specialize in WWII sites and battlefields, so I know I’m not the only Baby Boomer or elderly veteran interested in this.  I’ve said it before: Do as much research as possible before going to the National Archives.  I’ll analyze a few documents, the Tools of War (book), photos, and a 1945 map of Leghorn I found online.  It shows the probable location of PBS’s headquarters in Leghorn that housed the TC’s (Transportation Corps) headquarters – the same as indicated on my father’s discharge.

The RMS Queen Mary and Form 53-55

Ordinary people in extraordinary times and places have always interested me like a fly to sugar.  It’s even more special when the stories get personal and it didn’t get personal for me until I re-examined Dad’s WWII Honorable Discharge (WD AGO Form 53-55).  He told me he served with the 1^st Infantry Division and was at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania and sailed on the RMS Queen Mary, a voyage escorted by destroyers that dropped depth charges.  In order to confirm his stated link to the 1^st Infantry Division, I began with Box 30, Military Occupational Specialty: “Subsistence NCO 820”.  That didn’t make any sense because in Box 41, “Service Schools Attended” the answer was “none”.  Then I learned in many cases, specialties could be randomly applied, but the discovery made research simpler.  Hint - his basic training had included training in the new GMC trucks the 1^st Infantry Division was to receive at Camp Blanding, Florida February 21, 1942. 

 I concluded Dad probably went straight from basic training at Ft. Riley, Kansas on December 10th 1941 to the 1^st Infantry Division after the war started, so he must have sailed on the famous voyage of the 1^st Infantry Division August 2, 1942 which was billed as the first time an entire division (15,032) sailed on one ship.  Its destination was code named “Wildflower” for Gourock, Scotland.  Troops were staged at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, loaded at Pier 90 in New York, and sailed without escort on the RMS Queen Mary pictured in the public domain photo.

Then I looked at Box 36, “Service Outside Continental U.S., Date of Departure 5 Sep 42”.  It was the September 5, 1942 Queen Mary New York-to-Gourock, Scotland voyage (WW#17E) mentioned in Gray Ghost by Steve Harding.  Its destination was Wildflower and Nabob (Ireland).  Dad did not sail with the 1^st Infantry Division after all.  Could it be that the entire 1^st Infantry Division did not sail on the famous August 2^nd voyage?  Then I found out that, indeed, its 2^nd Battalion of the 16^th Infantry Regiment did not.  It had sailed on July 1, 1942.  Could its MT equipment and personnel were reassigned to the Transportation Corps, part of the newly formed Services of Supply to establish the Mediterranean Base Section in Liverpool which moved to Oran after the landing in North Africa?

The Gray Ghost account only went so far.  Then I stumbled into a digital record: Water Shipments of Personnel – 1942, New York Port of Embarkation, “Prepared by Historical Records Division G-3, HQ FILE NO. 370.5”.  Part of what I found was that units of the 13,838 troops were staged at Camp Kilmer, Ft. Dix, Ft. Slocum, Ft. Hamilton, not Indiantown Gap. 

Unfortunately, the old documents, which are now declassified, do not mention individual units most likely because of war time secrecy.  However, other Internet searches listed the 305^th Bombardment Group, 65^th Infantry Regiment – Hispanic, 303 Bomb Group, and the 91^st Bomb Group as passengers.  There’s got to be a manifest somewhere.

I’m going on the theory that he and motor transport were separated from the 1^st Infantry Division about February 21, 1942 during or after it was refurbished with CCKW GM trucks.  They probably were shipped on cargo vessels with its personnel leaving in convoy with the unrelated units on September 5, 1942. (I’ve yet to find out what Orders “MS-E-M 6-17-42 and MS-E-M 7-24-42” references and date mean.) 

At some point the personal historian of WWII has to establish a time line and especially proof or even a plausible unit that his subject was assigned to.  At first I took too much for granted and did not look at the scarce documents close enough, but the story is still a work in progress.  It’s a mystery I just can’t resist.