An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

by Rick Atkinson

Dawn brought a strange tranquility. The hollow pock pock pock of rifle fire ebbed, then died completely. Clumps of floating debris burned like campfires. Far above, at the shrine of Notre Dame de Santa Cruz, a weathered stone madonna extended her hand toward the harbor, as if to offer absolution for all that she had witnessed. French marines rounded up the survivors. The badly wounded, groaning and bloody, were hoisted into trucks and ambulances. Others had to walk. Barefoot or in tattered plimsolls, clad only in their underwear and coated with oil, they shuffled in a gray drizzle through the streets of Oran for two miles to a military prison. Weeping Frenchmen lined the sidewalks; jeering Arabs spat and threw stones. Casualties in the RESERVIST force topped 90 percent, about half of whom were killed. Of Marshall’s 393 men, 189 were dead and 157 wounded. The toll also included 113 Royal Navy dead and 86 wounded, plus 5 U.S. Navy dead and 7 wounded.

Not a good beginning.