The point chosen near Fedala on the coast just north of Casablanca, was selected because it had good sandy beaches to either side of the town. The small Mellah River wound its way through tidal flats and marshy ground to the sea, just south of the town itself, and its small harbor was protected by a stony headland, Cap de Fedala, and an 800 foot jetty. This had been the place 3rd Division landed in Fedorov’s history, and it was happening again here, with uncanny similarity, a piece of the shattered mirror large enough to reflect the events he might have known.
Amazingly, the French had very little in the way of defenses there. They had reacted to the landings at Safi, and Rabat, also historical assault locations, and then to Patton’s little innovation in landing at El Jadida. That is where most of the city’s defenders had concentrated, as well as all the arriving German 327th Infantry Division. Yet none of these assaults were the main attack. That was to be delivered by the 3rd Infantry Division, dubbed Force Brushwood under Major General Jonathan W. Anderson.
This division was supposed to land on day 1 of the plan, but shortages of shipping delayed its departure, as well as a cautious re-direction in the Atlantic to avoid suspected U-boats. So it was coming in 48 hours after the battle had begun, the hammer that was supposed to smash French resistance and take Casablanca. It would start with good fire support from the cruisers Brooklyn and Augusta, the latter being Patton’s flagship. They would be ready to take on three French shore batteries, a pair of 76mm guns on Cap de Fedala, four more 100mm guns at the base of that headland, and a more powerful bastion known as Batterie du Pont farther north on a rocky headland near the village of Cherqui. They were all protected by MG pits, a few flak guns, and there were still a few French destroyers in Casablanca that could always make a run at those landings. But it would not be the French resistance that would complicate those landings, but the sea and shoreline itself.
The British had long ago warned the Americans about the heavy surf on the Atlantic coast. If the troops could all land on the designated sandy beaches, U.S. planners deemed the risk acceptable. As it was, the nightmares experienced by Harmon when he rehearsed his landings all began to play out for General Anderson and his 3rd Division. The landing boats were slow to load, the men lumbering down the nets, all heavily laden with heavy packs and other equipment. The boats, when they finally started to make the three mile run into the shore, would invariably drift off their assigned approach path. Many landed on the wrong beaches, with boats carrying command elements seeing men of a different battalion landing on their beach. Those were the lucky ones. Others drifted as far off as 10,000 yards from their designated landing point.
The coastline these wayward boats encountered was not sandy beaches. There were rocky outcrops, reefs, marshy tidal flats, all conspiring to lure the landing boats in, which seemed all too eager to get to any spit of land they could see in the dark. The rough seas then tossed many of the boats onto those rocks, capsized others, and many men sank in the high surf with their heavy packs, and drowned. These casualties were not heavy, but the loss in landing boats was. One battalion had come in on 37 boats, and only two survived intact, making it back to the transports. All the rest had been capsized, run aground on rocks, with others stuck in the mud flats, unable to restart their engines.
The 2nd wave of the attack was waiting for those boats to return, and, with that kind of attrition, they found they had only 60% of the boats required. So the whole landing schedule went to hell in the surf.
As the first wave came ashore, the men struggling to realize whether they were on the correct beach or not, the French turned on searchlights and started firing machine guns, and it is remarkable that men under fire soon realize there’s a war on, and start to react. Officers shouted orders, commandeered any men at hand, and began organizing assault teams. Their mission was to get to the base of that headland and get after those shore batteries before daylight, with only 45 minutes of darkness remaining.
The fear of those guns was over inflated. The planners had trained a special recon team, all dressed in jet black uniforms, and they were to come in on rubber rafts and hit the guns in the dark. Yet the landings were so jumbled up, that they didn’t arrive until twenty minutes after dawn. Now they would have to make the attack on the well lit, sun swept beach, against those French rifle pits and flak guns, and none of them had trained for that. The officer in charge shrugged, cursed his bad luck, and instead of changing the plan and organizing an attack, he simply led his men back into their rafts and they all paddled out to sea to their transport.
That was what green, untested men might do in first combat. It was men learning how to be soldiers, almost to a man, forming companies and learning how to become a battalion, forming battalions and learning how to become regiments, a division, an army. This was the first dawn of the long crusade ahead of them. If Patton had been there, he might had sent them the other way, but he was now on a boat himself, leaving the stalemated bridgehead south of Casablanca and heading back to Augusta.
So while some men failed when their plans were upset by these ill timed landings, others took actions they were never meant to perform. Small groups of men made attacks on those French guns, enough to silence them until the navy could weigh in with support fire. Some were taken by that first wave, and just after dawn, the American cruisers put accurate fire on the enemy occupied headlands, silencing the guns there almost before they had a chance to open fire. One battery stopped firing at the Americans but would not surrender. It took direct mortar fire and rounds from two Pak 75mm howitzers to compel them to end their resistance.
The cruiser duel with the shore batteries did cause one other mishap. When Patton arrived at Augusta, piped aboard by sailors eager to impress, the cruiser made a point of blasting away with its main guns at enemy AA gun positions and those shore batteries. So much so that a battalion ashore had to call on the radio and ask them to stop. The concussion from one salvo blew a boat containing most of the General’s personal belongings right off the deck, and it fell into the sea in pieces.
Patton took it in stride, for moments before the men had fetched his ivory handled pistols in a box from that very launch, because he wanted to show them to the ship’s Captain. They were the one thing he salvaged from the incident, that and the honor of being the first American General to land on two assault beaches in the same operation. He was going ashore to personally sort out the mess at Fedala, and get the men moving on their objectives. Before noon he had done exactly that, and the French would soon find a tide of khaki and olive green coming down on Casablanca from the north.
“Get your men inland,” he shouted at any Captain or Colonel he came upon. “ You! Line up your battalion right here. The rest fall in on your left, and be goddamned quick about it! We’re going to roll on in and take that city like a tidal wave. Be ready to attack by 14:00.”
Units of the 30th Regiment had landed farthest north, and they would soon push up towards Rabat to try and shake loose things there. Colonel Greer’s 18th RLT had been bogged down in Rabat itself, his men fighting house to house against the 2nd French Zuave Regiment. The 30th RLT from the 3rd Division was a most welcome sight when it came up from the south to take the pressure off and flank that enemy defense. The other two Regiments, 15th and 7th, had turned south for Casablanca.