The History of Operation Torch

During World War II the North African Campaign, also known as the Desert War, took place in the North African desert from September 13, 1940 (The USA started to directly supply the British in this effort on May 11, 1942) to May 13, 1943.

Fighting in this region began with Italian attacks on British occupied areas. When the Italians suffered terrible reverses, the German Afrika Korps commanded by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel came to their assistance. After a back-and-forth series of battles for control of Libya and parts of Egypt, British Commonwealth forces under the command of General Bernard Montgomery eventually pushed the Axis forces back to Tunisia. Following on the US Operation Torch landings in north west Africa in late 1942 under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower, and after US battles against Vichy France forces, Commonwealth and US forces finally pincered the Axis forces and forced their surrender.

By making the Axis powers fight on a second front in North Africa, the Western Allies provided some relief to the Soviet Union fighting the Axis on the Eastern Front. Information learned from the British Ultra codebreaking operation was a major contributor to Allied success in the North African campaign.

The Afrika Korps

21st Panzer Division (Germany)

The 21st Panzer Division was a German armoured division best known for its role in the battles of the North African Campaign from 1941-1943 during World War II when it was one of the two armoured divisions making up the Afrika Korps.

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It was formed from elements of the 3rd Panzer Division, the unit initially earmarked for North Africa in the summer of 1940.

The first unit designated to move was the 39th Panzerjager (anti-tank) Battalion. This was a motorised unit with halftracks and trucks to tow heavy equipment, including nine Pak 36 37mm and two Pak 50mm guns. The armoured element, 5th Panzer Regiment, was moved from the 3rd Panzer Division. Its strength included 20 PzKpfw IV's, 75 PzKpfw III's, 45 Pzkpfw II's and 25 Pzkpfw I Ausf B tanks which included a number of Command vehicles - even with these seemingly impressive numbers the unit was understrength. The infantry forces came in the shape of the 200th Rifle (Schutzen) Regiment, and the only artillery unit supplied was a single battalion of 75th Artillery Regiment. The Divisional staff, again all the 3rd Panzer Division were the Chief of Staff officer Major Hauser and intelligence officer Hauptmann Von Kluge.

The formation was officially named on 18 February 1941, and its first divisional commander was Knight's Cross winner Generalmajor Johannes Streich, who had commanded the 15th Panzer regiment during the successful French Campaign in 1940. By this time most of the units had arrived in Tripoli, but the last tank elements were not deployed until after 11 March, missing the first battles of Rommel's Cyrenaica offensive. The 5th Light did not have a full establishment of tanks immediately following its deployment. Having only 150 tanks of all types of which 130 were actually combat worthy, and the rest being an assortment of command and unarmed observer vehicles.

Despite the slow build-up, due largely to the fact most of the Wehrmacht's reinforcements were now directed to the Eastern Front to support Operation Barbarossa, by September 1941 the 5th Light Division was now at Panzer Division strength. It was then renamed the 21st Panzer Division. Throughout its war in the Desert, the Afrika Korps's (DAK) units were nearly always understrength, made up of any men and equipment that was available.

5th Light Afrika Division

Created as 5th Light Division or 5th Light Afrika Division in Africa in early 1941, from an ad hoc collection of smaller units rushed to support the collapsing Italian Forces in Cyrenaica, Libya. It was formed from elements of the 3rd Panzer Division, the unit initially earmarked for North Africa in the summer of 1940.

The first unit designated to move was the 39th Panzerjager (anti-tank) Battalion. This was a motorised unit with halftracks and trucks to tow heavy equipment, including nine Pak 36 37mm and two Pak 50mm guns. The armoured element, 5th Panzer Regiment, was moved from the 3rd Panzer Division. Its strength included 20 PzKpfw IV's, 75 PzKpfw III's, 45 Pzkpfw II's and 25 Pzkpfw I Ausf B tanks which included a number of Command vehicles - even with these seemingly impressive numbers the unit was understrength. The infantry forces came in the shape of the 200th Rifle (Schutzen) Regiment, and the only artillery unit supplied was a single battalion of 75th Artillery Regiment. The Divisional staff, again all the 3rd Panzer Division were the Chief of Staff officer Major Hauser and intelligence officer Hauptmann Von Kluge

The Fallschirmjäger-Brigade Ramcke

Ramcke Parachute Brigade was a German Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger Brigade which saw action in the Mediterranean Theatre during World War II.

In April 1942, the brigade was renamed Fallschirmjäger-Brigade Ramcke. After arriving in North Africa in July 1942, the brigade performed excellently, providing a counter to Stirling's Special Air Service, which had been wreaking havoc with the Axis command, control and logistical system. Ramcke's unit next formed a part of the spearhead during the DAK's assault towards the Suez Canal, fighting alongside the Italian 25th Bologne Division before British opposition solidified near the town of El Alamein.

The brigade was then heavily engaged in the Second Battle of El Alamein. During the German withdrawal, the brigade was cut off behind enemy lines and written off as lost by Rommel. Despite this, on 3 November 1942, the brigade began marching west to rejoin the retreating Axis forces. On the night of 6/7 November, the brigade came upon a British 8th Army supply convoy, consisting of a large number of British transport vehicles. Without firing a shot, the brigade hijacked the column. Now fully motorised, the brigade continued moving west. The transport unit which they had hijacked happened to be the entire supply convoy for an allied Armoured division, and besides the trucks themselves, Ramcke's men had captured quantities of fuel, water, food and cigarettes. By the time the brigade reached friendly forces, it had travelled over 200 miles. Following this feat, the brigade was sent back to Tunisia for rest.

In late October the Ramcke Brigade was part of the Afrika Corps commanded by General Hans Stumme (Rommel, ill, had flown back to Germany), and was deployed on the Axis right to meet the coming British offensive. It came on the 23rd, when 1000 guns opened the 2nd Battle of El Alamein. Though Axis forces fought with skill and determination, Montgomery's superiority in tanks and men, plus the acute Axis shortage of fuel, began to wear down Italian and German armoured strength. By 2 November, for example, only 35 German tanks remained in action. With his fuel nearly spent and most of his tanks and artillery knocked out, Rommel, having flown back from Europe, decided to retreat. He had started the battle with 104,000 men, 500 tanks and 1200 guns. At the end of the battle he had lost 59,000 men killed, wounded or captured, almost all of his tanks and 400 guns. Ramcke's men had been involved in heavy fighting during the battle, but once the order to withdraw was given the brigade was effectively abandoned. Indeed, all those Axis infantry who had no transport were quickly overrun by the Eighth Army. The Ramcke Brigade had no organic transport, but rather than surrender its commander decided to break out to the west. The breakout cost him 450 men alone, but in the process the brigade captured a British supply column which provided it with trucks and supplies. It was an amazing piece of good luck, and enabled 600 men of the Ramcke Brigade to rejoin the Afrika Corps, though not before an arduous trip across the desert.

The Allied Operation "Torch" landings commenced on 8 November 1942, designed to seize Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia as bases for further operations against the Axis alliance. In response, Hitler began sending German troops by air into Tunisia (1000 men per day would arrive between 17 November and the end of December). Although the amount was relatively small, it was enough to check the leading troops of the Allied First Army when they reached the immediate approach to Tunis two-and-a-half weeks after the amphibious landings. The result was a five-month deadlock in the mountainous region covering Bizerta and Tunis.

A small part of these reinforcements were the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 5th Parachute Regiment under the command of Oberstleutnant Walter Koch, the hero of Eben Emael. They were flown into Tunis to protect its airfields and take up defensive positions to the west and south of the city. Koch, however, fell ill in Tunisia and had to be ferried back to a German hospital. The 5th Parachute Regiment was closely followed by the 11th Parachute Pioneer Battalion under the command of Major Rudolf Witzig. This unit was an airborne light engineering battalion composed of three field companies (each of three platoons and a machine-gun section) and a signals platoon. First raised in 1942, its strength on arrival in Africa was 716 men. It was used to bolster the Axis defences to the west of Tunis, directly in front of the Allied approach route. On 17 November, the battalion made contact with the advance guard of the Allied spearhead and a series of battles developed.

Over the next few days Witzig's men were slowly reinforced, allowing them to pull out of the line and become a reserve unit. Parts of his command then received special training and were given the job of slipping behind enemy lines to carry out reconnaissance and gather intelligence. This intelligence led to the last parachute drop to be carried out by the Fallschirmjäger in North Africa.

The men of the 3rd Company, 11th Parachute Pioneer Battalion, were chosen for the operation and began immediate training. The objectives were airfields and bridges behind Allied lines in the Souk el Arba and Souk el Ahras areas, which were being used by the Allies to transport supplies and reinforcements to the front for an assault on Tunis itself. Though the idea of an airdrop was militarily sound, the actual operation was a disaster. The Ju 52 aircraft took off from airfields outside Tunis in early December 1942. The night was cold and windy and there was no moon. The aircraft were manned by inexperienced and poorly trained pilots, and consequently the Fallschirmjäger were dropped well away from their targets. This meant a long walk once on the ground. In fact the paratroopers never reached their targets, for as soon as they landed they were rounded up by the many British patrols in the area. Within a few days all the pioneers had been captured, many suffering from the effects of the sun. The airborne operation to disrupt the Allied advance on Tunis had been a fiasco (following the fall of Tunisia, the 11th Pioneer Battalion was reformed around a cadre of survivors of the North African campaign, the unit being expanded to become the 21st Parachute Pioneer Regiment, which fought on the Eastern Front and in the West in 1944-45).

The Folgore Parachute Brigade is the largest unit of paratroopers of the Italian Army; a second but smaller unit is the 4th Alpini Regiment Mont The Folgore operates as Light Infantry with the infrastructures and means to drop airborne and air transport, equipped of modest mechanization is framed in the Forces of Projection to the dependencies of 1° Commando FOD. In the 1941 a Parachutist division was completed and was designated the 185th Parachute Division Folgore, it was trained for the assault on Malta in Operation Hercules. During course of the war in Africa it was engaged in ground combat operations in North Africa from the July 1942 until its destruction in 1943. The heroic behavior of the division Folgore during the Second battle of El Alamein, it resisted the attack of six British divisions, two armored and four infantry, thus provoking the respect and the admiration of the English enemies. The Folgore Parachute Division had already proved its worth when, at the end of September, they gave very short shrift to a local attack by the British 31st Infantry Brigade.

On 11 November of 1942 in fact, the battle by now concluded London Radio transmitted the famous official notice: The rests of the Folgore division have resisted beyond every limit of the human possibilities

Here we go I would like to find german airborne insigna 10German Soldier

1. You are the chosen ones of the German Army. You will seek combat and train yourselves to endure any manner of test. To you the battle shall be fulfillment.
2. Cultivate true comradeship, for by the aid of your comrades you will conquer or die.
3. Beware of talking. Be not corruptible. Men act while women chatter. Chatter may bring you to the grave.
4. Be calm and prudent, strong and resolute. Valor and enthusiasm of an offensive spirit will cause you to prevail in the attack.
5. The most precious thing in the presence of the foe is ammunition. He who shoots uselessly, merely to comfort himself, is a man of straw who merits not the title of Parachutist.
6. Never surrender. To you death or victory must be a point of honor.
7. You can triumph only if your weapons are good. See to it that you submit yourself to this law--first my weapon and then myself.
8. You must grasp the full purpose of every enterprise, so that if your leader be killed you can fulfill it.
9. Against an open foe fight with chivalry, but to a guerrilla extend no quarter.
10. Keep your eyes wide open. Tune yourself to the topmost pitch. Be nimble as a greyhound, as tough as leather, as hard as Krupp steel, and so you shall be the German warrior incarnate.

American Forces

The 2nd Armored Division of the United States Army —nicknamed Hell On Wheels— played an important role during World War II in the invasions of North Africa and Sicily and the liberation of France, Belgium, and Holland and the invasion of Germany. During the Cold War the division was primarily based at Fort Hood, Texas, and had a reinforced brigade forward stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany. After participation in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the division was deactivated in 1992

509th Parachute Infantry Battalion (509th PIB) was the first combat paratrooper unit of the United States Army. The 509th was originally constituted on 14 March 1941 as the 504th Parachute Battalion and activated on 5 October 1941 at Fort Benning, GA. It was reorganized and redesignated on 24 February 1942 as the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment. It was again reorganized and redesignated on 2 November 1942 as the 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment. (The 2nd Battalion was the only active element of the 509PIR. In the 503PIR, a new 2nd Battalion, with different honors and lineage, was formed.) The unit was again reorganized and redesignated on 10 December 1943 as the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, a designation it retained for the remainder of the war.

The battalion was the first US airborne unit to ship to England early in 1942, and was assigned to the British 1st Airborne Division for further training. Although it was a non-divisional unit for most of the war, it was part of the provisional 1st Airborne Task Force (organized 15 July 1944 in Rome, Italy, and discontinued 23 November 1944 in France) for the invasion of southern France in August 1944 and it was attached to the 101st Airborne Division from 22 November to 18 December 1944

The 34th Infantry Division is an Army division of the United States National Guard that participated in World War I, World War II and continues to serve today, with most of the Division part of the Minnesota and Iowa National Guard. It holds the distinctions of being the first US Division deployed to Europe in World War II, and having spent more days in combat and having taken more enemy-defended hills than any other US Army Division in that war. The United States Army Rangers also trace their lineage back to the 34th Division. The modern incarnation of the Rangers were developed from 34th Infantry volunteers in Ireland under the command of Major William O. Darby. Of the original five hundred twenty WWII Rangers, two hundred eighty one came from the 34th Infantry Division. The 34ID has deployed sizable elements to both Afghanistan and Iraq, returning the 34ID's SSI to combat for the first time since WWII, where they once again earned the respect and envy of their Regular Army comrades, for their toughness and preference for "old-school Army" way of doing things, both in garrison and out in the bush on operations. The 34ID's cadre of senior non-commissioned officers can be credited for this.

The 34ID has not experienced recruiting and retention problems, like other ARNG and AR units, such as the MAARNG's 26th Brigade of the 29ID, have experienced since 2004. Assignment to the 34ID is considered a coveted assignment in the mid-West United States from which it draws it's personnel.

The 1st Ranger Battalion was formed upon America's entry into World War II. Major General Lucian Truscott, U.S. Army, in liaison with the British General Staff, submitted proposals to General George Marshall that "we undertake immediately an American unit along the lines of the British Commandos" in 1942. A subsequent cable from the U.S. Department of War authorized the activation of the 1st U.S. Army Ranger Battalion.

After much deliberation, Company A, 1st Ranger Battalion was constituted on May 27, 1942, and Captain William Orlando Darby, a graduate of West Point with amphibious training, was chosen as its commanding officer. Promoted to major within weeks, Darby rose to the challenge of organizing the unit. Of the 1,500 men to volunteer for the original Ranger Battalion, only 600 were chosen. Eighty percent of these original Rangers came from the 34th Infantry Division. [1] On June 19, 1942, Company A, 1st Ranger Battalion, was officially activated. A select team of four officers toured the existing Commando training camps and selected the center at Achnacarry, Scotland for the Rangers. Here they underwent intense training. Coached by the battle-seasoned commando instructors (commanded by Colonel Charles Vaughan), the Rangers learned the basics of commando warfare. Five hundred of the 600 volunteers (83.33%) that Darby brought with him to Achnacarry completed the Commando training. Many could not endure the exercises; one Ranger was killed, while several others were wounded in training so realistic that it was executed under live fire

The 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army is an elite airborne infantry division and was constituted in the National Army as the 82nd Division on March 5, 1917, and was organized on March 25, 1917, at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Since members of the division came from all 48 states, the unit was given the nickname “All-American.” This is the basis for its famed “AA” shoulder patch. Famous soldiers of the division include Sergeant Alvin C. York, General James M. Gavin and former Chief Dave Bald Eagle (Sitting Bull grandson).