Recommended Reading: An Army at Dawn PT 2

I recommend the book highly. I can't put it down, because, not only is it a Pulitzer Prize winner, but my father was a part of the combined US and British force that landed on the northern coast of Africa (at Oran and Arzew in French Algeria) in November, 1942.

I'm about halfway through the 540 page book about WW2 events in North Africa and I've been encouraged to once again search my dad's navy memoirs, this time to find notes about his time in that part of the conflicted world.

Recently, even before finding his notes, I recalled he mentioned that he and Joe Watson (Simcoe) survived sniper fire by hiding behind a dozer blade while delivering war materials to the nearest shore. As well, after US troops (likely the Rangers) cleared out the resistance (mainly from the French), he worked for 92 hours straight, drinking only grapefruit juice stolen from supplies going ashore.

After finding dad's extensive written record I read he was truly a part of 'an army at dawn'.

["He wrote only a line or two..."]

He recalls the following, when as a 22-year old Leading Seaman with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve, he approached Gibraltar after leaving Greenoch, Scotland several days earlier:

One November morning the huge convoy, perhaps 500 ships, entered the Mediterranean sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was a nice sun-shiny day... what a sight to behold.

He wrote only a line or two about his first sighting of the Middle Sea, as some called it, but he never forgot the image. Later in life he yearned to see its turquoise-blue colours but one more time. His memories of the open sea were never forgotten, and though he was certainly capable of writing more about his first sighting, other thoughts may have crowded out his words. He had already been aboard a ship when it was bombed by German planes and another mind-numbing incident occurred as he approached the Strait of Gibraltar.

["No effort was made to search, we just kept on," dad writes]

He writes: In the convoy close to us was a converted merchant ship which was now an air craft carrier. They had a relatively short deck for taking off, and one day when they were practicing taking off and landing a Swordfish aircraft failed to get up enough speed and rolled off the stern and, along with the pilot, disappeared immediately. No effort was made to search, we just kept on.

"We just kept on." They had to, urged on by long, hard duty ahead. The armed force that entered the Mediterranean Sea at dawn kept on until it eventually lined the coast of North Africa for as far as the human eye could see. And at dawn on 'D-Day North Africa' they hit the beaches.

More to follow.

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Please click here for 'An Army at Dawn' PT 1