Hi,
My father was a rifleman, corporal , belonging to the 9 th Coy / 3rd Bn/ 7th Algerian Riflemen Regiment/ 3rd Algerian Infantry Division. He volunteered for service in Spring '43 and was sent in Italy one year later, taking part in the seizure of Rome and Sienna. He was wounded on Tuesday, August the 22nd, at the beginning of the 6 days battle for the liberation of Marseilles.
Everything written in this post comes from what I've heard during maybe 40 years and it's only by asking and asking again that some details came in the light, otherwise the story would have taken less then the half of what it is today. In advance please excuse me for the mediocre English.

After having left Tarento a few days earlier, the force to which my father , Corporal A. belongs, lands on the beach of Saint-Tropez on August 16th in the late afternoon. French coast in view, a German air raid occurs and it is a concert of sirens, smoke screens and of AAA. We are on an American troop transport . The units will be re-formed once on the ground; men of the rifle squad do not know themselves well, as units have only been recently reorganized and renewed after the campaign of Italy. Relationships between the troop, a mix between North Africa" Europeans" and " Muslims" are good. A Brotherhood-in-Arms. And better not create too deep hostility against oneself: in the thick of the action, a bullet does not ever know who's "friend" or foe (smile from my dad).
At the sight of the coastline of France, the men were deeply moved and tears were cried.
Once on the ground and gathered, they are embarked on trucks. The individual equipment is light. Weapon, ammunitions, shoulder bag. Not or few personal belongings: a wallet, some papers, photos and a cheap watch bought in Algeria before the transfer to Italy. And nothing to eat or almost: The rapid advance generating a logistics nightmare, US combat rations will be brought in a very irregular way during this week of progress towards Marseille, bypassing Toulon , north through the hinterland, sometimes motorized but on foot also. These days bring no comment, no anecdote from my father and if they met Germans, these were already taken prisoners.

The French forces were heading towards both harbors of Toulon and Marseilles with the goal of taking them simultaneously before the German could actually gathered themselves and reinforce and coordonate their defensive positions in these towns, while the US rushed west towards the Rhone , with the purpose of covering the North and West flanks of the French , and to cut the German retreat through the Rhone valley.

On the way towards Marseilles, The German resistance stiffens and North from Aubagne, the first clash with the enemy (on August 20th in the afternoon) . Men are under fire. During the progression, a German gets out of cover,holding his rifle with both arms over his head. Two comrades stand to take the deserter,but a shooting pin them on the ground. The men shoot back and corporal A. shoots down the man with his US M1 carbine. Reproaches of his platoon leader, warrant officer B. Protests in return: that was in the heat of the action and moreover, smelt like trap, no?
One day later , the German stop the French advance around Aubagne. Vehicles and armor cannot pass and it takes one day and a half to free their path towards Marseille.The light infantry, though, starts to infiltrate the suburbs by crossing through the mountaineous land that surrounds the town.The rifle squad is led by sergeant C., corporal A. is his number 2. Both men have a very good relationship and mutual understanding. The 3rd battalion crosses the Garlaban massif, guided by the local Resistance and settles in the village of Allauch at the end of the day. The German garrison has fled away , retreating to Marseilles . Sergeant C. will evoke, fifty years later, this crossing, on a funny mode: they had been given US combat rations, eventually! And the men overloaded themselves with boxes and cans of food in fear and anticipation of the starvation they've experienced in the past days but the hard march in mountain, under the mediterranean summer sun killed their hope: it did not take long till the precious boxes flew in the air at the great delight of the resistance fighters who recovered treasures they had been deprived for years, even of which they did not knew they could exist. My father, remembers a more dramatic episode. A very young soldier of the platoon (" a very kind boy ") commits a fatal carelessness: when resuming the march after a break, still kneeling, he took his rifle, which he had leaned against a bush, by catching it with its barrel. Probably, the trigger gets caught by a branch and the rifle goes off blowing his head. He is killed instantly and a rifleman standing behind him is wounded.
The nigh falls on Allauch. Decades later, sergeant C. will ask my father about this German car which drove below and which they unsuccessfully tried to stop with the squad LMG.

On Tuesday, August 22nd: very early at 4.AM, the troop sets off. 8 kms away lies Marseille and they are aware it's going to be hard. Strict orders are given: one defensive handgrenade per man only to use to get out a deadly situation, to avoid collateral damages done to civilians because from now they will bring the fight in an inhabited area. The long forgotten smell of freshly baked bread haunt the men as they cross the hamlet of Les Olives ...the baker offers them his whole bakery .
Cutting carefully through the fences and the gardens around the houses, the locals indicate the presence nearby of a strong German defensive position. The squad C., this time at the head of the platoon, scout a sloping ground in search of enemy contact. Having left the shelter of a low wall, the leading rifleman has spotted something: higher on the terrain, a German lookout, the rifle between his legs, half hidden and crouching behind a tree, and who saw nothing coming. On order of his sergeant, A. shoots him down (embarrassed smile, that was cold blooded...maybe I only wounded him...he plunged with both arms down...note that C. was in position to shoot him down but he ordered me to do it ). The enemy reaction is immediate and extremely violent. A rain of stick grenades thrown from concealed positions situated on a higher ground annihilates the squad C. in a few seconds. All the riflemen, except my father are wounded or killed. Those who can take cover against the stony low wall below. The LMG is left behind by its wounded crew on the field and my father proposes going to get it back , to his warrant officer, platoon leader , who showed up, gun in the hand. Thanks to a break in the fight, he climbs back over the low wall and crawls towards the weapon. At the very moment he reaches it, he spots at short distance a troop of uncovered German soldiers (maybe 10 or 20). They seem to try to withdraw in the high lying defensive position. A. takes his aim on the foes and opens fire quickly . Men fall and the rest is stopped in their attempt to reinforce their comrades. These, besides, do not remain inactive and try to neutralize A. and his LMG by renewed volleys of stick grenades. A. can use some ammo magazines either found on the spot or taken with him when he came back on the field and asks his platoon leader to bring him more ammunitions. Refusal of the warrant officer who ordered him to leave this too exposed spot. The fight does not last probably more than a couple of minutes. Bursts of the LMG versus grenades explosions.
One, eventually, hits its target. A.,flattened behind the machine gun is riddled with splinters. Some wound him tangentially, superficially, in the back, the belly and the leg (They are still visible) but one gets through the whole right hand from the little finger to the thumb and worst, an other one penetrates into the right eye and gets out by the ear on the same side. Unable to fight further, he rolls down and collapses behind the low wall. He has till today no idea of what occured to him in the next hours but two young female inhabitants of the neighborhood, though horrified by all the flowing blood, cut his pants and leggings with scissors in search of bleeding wounds.

A. recovered at the hospital of Allauch. Mechanical gesture of reaching out his valid hand, to fetch his cigarettes under the pillow. A nurse brings him one she asked to a passer-by in the street. Nothing is left from his personal belonging.
US field hospital, probably in the vicinty of Aix-en-Provence. Surgery, mostly the eye removal .In a big common tent, a German wounded groans continuously. Protests of those who cannot find any rest! An American nurse intervenes with authority and restores the silence in the name of the Geneva Convention.
Back in Marseille, stay in another hospital. Then, boarding to Algeria on an American hospital ship. Smile at the thought of a Moroccan soldier (goumier) who undertakes to sell the fruit of its robberies, jewels etc, to an American nurse who declines the offer by saying that she does not have the means of to buy herself such treasures, without suspecting that she would have been able to obtain them for a couple of bucks.
A. has been mentionned in dispatches with a divisional citation and awarded the Croix de Guerre with one star and one palm, the Médaille Militaire and later , the Légion d' Honneur.
He lost the right eye and the hearing on the right side, and could never fully extend the fingers of the right hand. He only got in touch with seargent C. decades later and never heard of the other members of his squad till I found the names of two KIAs on the web, along with the one who killed himself accidently the day before.

Wow, that was interesting!

S!

Also, this is strictly related to a post about the same very campaign- The campaign for Champagne, Operation Anvil Dragon I read somewhere here around. Great read that too.
Thank you for writing this!

Thank You, this was a very interesting read.

Thank you and thanks to your father and all his brave comrades.

Great read, thanks for sharing your fathers story. Is he still alive ? Not many WW2 vets left
on this Earth. So many have died in recent years. Lost about a dozen WW2 vets who residents
here, always enjoyed their stories. Some were easier then other to talk about it. My wife`s uncle
broke down one night while visiting and we were having drinks and told us his Guadalcanal story.
Unreal he even survived it. He is forever haunted by it.

Thanks for your words,all of you, they are greatly appreciated !I would have loved to hear a personal account of the war in the Pacific...

A video about the battle, with plenty of tirailleurs-riflemen on it ( forget the annoying speaker on it ):

Battle for Marseilles

And some reading in English on what these men were:


The Forgotten Army


And yes, he is still in quite a good shape for a man of his age(94)

A picture of him taken last June:(sorry for the big sized photos):



...and a grenade splinter :-)!

Marvellous story, thanks for posting Kaa

Thanks for posting, if you have any more stories about your dad, i would love to hear them.

Thanks for this story, respect to him.

Thank You Colonel...I am aware that some words in this post can hurt you Austrian and German members of the forum ...

You're welcome and I am very grateful to those who took interest in this story.Unfortunately,it took me 40 years to gather these few details...and he had not been a very long time in operations in fact as members of a rifle squad did not last very long.The turnover in men was very fast.