A Note About the Author: Retired Lieutenant General Andrew T. McNamara graduated from West Point in 1928 and held various Infantry-related assignments for nearly a decade before transferring to the Quartermaster Corps in 1937. During World War II he served as Chief Quartermaster for the II Corps in North Africa and Sicily, and First Army Quartermaster for the entire European campaign -- from before Normandy until after V-E Day -- and was in the Pacific with First Army Headquarters when the Japanese surrendered. The Chief Quartermaster for the European Theater of Operations, MG Robert M. Littlejohn, often referred to him as "that brilliant Colonel McNamara." What follows are some excerpts from his personal memoirs of that period.
On July 2, 1942, we left New York harbor and set sail for England on board the carrier Monterrey. The convoy consisted of seven troop ships besides our own, and the USS Texas, a battleship whose appearance must have struck terror into the heart of many a Spaniard in 1898, but whose presence next to us was most reassuring. Around us was a screen of 12 destroyers, destroyer-escorts, and corvettes. We were never close enough to any of them to know just what they were, other than friendly.
Twelve days and some 4,000 miles later we entered British waters and sailed up the Clyde River to the village of Grenoch. There we boarded a train which took us to Tidworth Barracks, an old cavalry post in the south of England. From Tidworth, a few weeks later, our headquarters moved another 25 miles or so to Salisbury. There we divided into several groups and occupied Longford Castle (for the general staff) and three other country estates (for the special staff). The Quartermaster section was ensconced in a lovely country home called Cowsfield House, soon to be renamed old "Moo Manner."
Late one night in early August, I received a telephone call to report to Norfolk House in London on the following afternoon. Thus ended my days in Southern England, and I drove to London in anticipation of the secrets of Norfolk House.
In Norfolk House, the British Army had organized a planning staff, supplemented by a group of U.S. Army officers. The object of all the planning was Operation TORCH, the invasion of North Africa. The matter was highly secret. Each individual, officer or enlisted, who knew of it was required to be first classified for security purposes as "Bigot." The enlisted men stationed there not only ate and slept in the building, but also were not permitted to leave it. The British were in charge of the planning and they left nothing to chance in the matter of security.
We were to plan an amphibious operation some 1,500 miles distant, to be mounted and initially supplied from England and to be thereafter maintained by equipment and supplies that had not as yet left the United States. The Supreme Headquarters, formed from both the British and American sides, was designated "Allied Force Headquarters," commanded by Lieutenant General Eisenhower. Major General Mark Clark was transferred from the command of the II Corps to be named as Deputy Commander of the Allied Forces. Major General Lloyd Fredendall was brought from the United States to assume command again of the II Corps. During this shuffle, I was made Quartermaster of the Corps.
The II Corps' mission was to seize and occupy Oran in French North Africa. The striking force was the 1st Infantry Division, operating in three combat teams, and Combat Command "B" of the 1st Armored Division. These units plus the 20th Engineer Regiment (Combat) and a few tank-destroyer units were to comprise the initial assault force. All units were to land on D-Day with 12 days of supply.
On D-Day, we had assigned to us one Gasoline Supply Company and one Depot Supply Platoon. This was our Quartermaster troop-list of approximately 175 troops. On D+4, another convoy was scheduled to arrive with an additional QM Railhead Company and some Truck Companies.
By October 25th, we had done what we could in the way of planning the invasion of Oran. I felt dissatisfied because owing to security rules we could not give any inkling of their missions to the few troop units under our command, or even to my own assistants on the Corps staff.
My group from Corps Headquarters was placed on board the SS Letitia at Glasgow on October 26th, a miserable and dreary day. We had the satisfaction of knowing that there was nothing further in our power that could be done. As I meditated upon this satisfaction, I suffered a rude shock. We had shipped tons of all kinds of supplies, but there was not a medal in the convoy. To complicate matters, the ships were all under radio silence. Fortunately, I was able to have a "blinker" message sent to the Port Commander, asking him to forward to the main body of Corps Headquarters, a request to bring medals by the case with them on the D+13 convoy.
On the afternoon of November 6, our convoy met with convoys which had come from the United States, at a rendezvous point not far from Gibraltar. At midnight we went through the Straits, with the lights of Tangiers on our right and the massive darkness of the Rock on our left. We did not realize at the time how long it would be until we would again see the light of a city at night. On the following day we were headed east within sight of Spain, following the conventional ship route to Malta. By afternoon the land had completely fallen away. "H" hour was to be at 1:00 A.M. on November 8.
The attack was three-pronged, two forces going in at Mers-el-Kebir and Los Andalouses, respectively, to the west of Oran, and one column landing at the little fishing town of Arzeu, to the east. All three were on the whole successful despite opposition. However, the same good luck did not extend to two cutters full of infantrymen which sailed directly into Oran harbor.
By the time they reached there, French naval forces had had approximately two hours notice that an invasion was underway. So they were on full alert. They turned their machine guns onto the two cutters and the unfortunate Americans in them were butchered as they stood below the decks. We afterwards buried most of them in a cemetery in Oran.
About 6:00 A.M. November 8, I first caught sight of the coast at Arzeu. Late that afternoon I went ashore with the II Corps Headquarters, and we set up our temporary command post in a schoolhouse two blocks from the beach.
Inasmuch as three-fourths or more of the troops had come in at Arzeu, the bulk of supplies were discharged there also. These supplies, whether Quartermaster, Ordnance, Chemical, Engineer or Medical, were handled by the 1st Engineer Special Brigade. This Brigade, composed of two shore regiments and one boat regiment, unloaded and carried cargo from the ships to the shore, where it would be picked up at the water line by the shore detachments and placed in the appropriate dumps. Each of the several supply services had its own dump area.
Trucks run by the Engineer Special Brigade were to haul supplies to where the other services designated. But coordination was lacking, and two unfortunate practices developed. One was that the Engineers were dumping the cargo at the spots most convenient to them, which were generally at the water's edge. The other was that they exercised no prerogative control over the landing area itself.
That is, the docks and the beaches were open to visitors of all types and descriptions: French, Arabs and Americans wandering among the stacks of supplies. The supply officers from the various American units had a field day laying in substantial reserves of rations and whatever else might be handy at the time. There was simply no discipline of any type evidenced in the supply area along the beach, and only a few truckloads were delivered to our Quartermaster dumps.
A total of 12 days of supply for 40,000 men was coming across the beaches. However, that 12 days of supply was completely exhausted in the course of four days. This did not mean that there had been bad planning. The overdraw -- and overdraw it was -- simply reflected a total lack of supply discipline aggravated by the sloppy control over the dump areas. Supply officers would go down to the beach and take whatever they wanted, "get while the getting was good."
By D+6 the II Corps Headquarters had left the beach area and was ensconced in and about the Grand Hotel D'Oran. My QM Section had its office in what had until a few days previously been a gambling casino of some note. We faced the problems of storing the supplies, anticipating the tremendous buildup that was scheduled to begin at once.
The most pressing problem was burial. Although I had requested at least a Quartermaster Graves Registration Platoon (1 officer, 24 enlisted men) accompany the force, this was rejected by G-3 on the ground that only combat troops were important. Due primarily to the slaughter in Oran Harbor, we had to bury more than 400 American soldiers. I selected a site near a civilian cemetery on the outskirts of the city, obtained some Engineer troops with digging equipment, and turned this serious operation over to one of my Assistant Corps Quartermasters. There he organized and laid out the cemetery, buried the dead, and reported the burials.
It is with some degree of humility that I look back upon Operation TORCH. Virtually no coordination or advanced thinking had preceded or accompanied the Oran operation. Our Quartermaster units had no concepts of their missions until we met them on a pier and told them where to go, what to do, and, often, how to do it. The enlisted men were physically overburdened with food, ammunition and accouterments.
The two C-Rations alone that a soldier carried as he went into Oran weighed 10 pounds. The bandoleers of ammunition, the clothing, gas masks, weapon, and other incidentals that the combat troops carried on their persons weighed an additional 122 pounds, totaling 132 pounds per man. This simply represents about 110 pounds too many for a combat soldier to carry and enough to make anyone else utterly useless. Moreover, each soldier had (either carried by him, or for him) two barracks-bags, each full of more equipment and clothing.
HISTORICAL NOTE: In subsequent entries in his memoirs, Colonel McNamara discussed many of his varied experiences with the II Corps in Tunisia and Sicily. He had some particularly tense moments, for instance, when supply bases had to be quickly moved out of harm's way during the battles of Kasserine Pass and El Guettar. Later on, during the Sicilian campaign he was also witness to the sad episode where some 27 American C-47s, loaded with paratroopers, were inadvertently shot down by U.S. antiaircraft batteries.
The Mediterranean campaign was a training ground for Allied logisticians, as well as for combat troops. Colonel McNamara thought long and hard about what he had seen and experienced and was ready to apply the lessons learned on his next assignment back in England, as First Army Quartermaster. He flew to London at the end of September 1943, and threw himself headlong into planning and full-scale preparations for the upcoming Normandy invasion: code-named Operation OVERLORD.
Between January and May 1944, the number of Americans in the United Kingdom more than doubled, hitting a peak of approximately 1 1/2 million troops on the eve of D-Day. In cargo shipments, upwards of two million long tons (or 40 percent of all tonnage discharged in UK ports in the 2 1/2 years from January 1942 to May 1944) were received in the five months immediately preceding D-Day. Over 600,000 long tons of supplies arrived during the final months of preparation (roughly 140,000 were Quartermaster supplies). At depots, port cities, railheads and along crowded highways throughout England the scene was one of unprecedented activity, as the date set for the invasion drew nigh.
After an early morning breakfast on May 30th, we drove in a convoy from Bristol to Falmouth on the southwest coast of England. All that any of us had in the way of personal baggage was a musette-bag, a filled canteen, a gas mask, and the other accouterments worn on our pistol belts. At Falmouth, we were divided into three groups, each one of which embarked on an LST. I and one of my enlisted clerks were on one LST, another Quartermaster warrant officer and a clerk on a second, and a Quartermaster warrant officer and clerk were on the third. These LSTs were to be our homes until D+1, when we were scheduled to debark and organize Army Headquarters ashore.
On the afternoon of June 6 [D-Day] the LSTs headed south into the channel, then turned east when they were several miles offshore. In turning to the east we found ourselves a part of a steady and endless procession of ships. Around us were LSTs, LCIs, headquarters ships, cargo ships, and hospital ships, with destroyers, cruisers, and carriers in every direction as far as we could see.
When darkness fell that night, we were midway out in the channel. Hours later we were well aware that we were in a war, inasmuch as the German Luftwaffe came overhead on a bombing raid against us. Antiaircraft guns of all calibers fired at the planes from positions about us. The air became full of falling fragments and spent bullets. One of the Headquarters Company lieutenants on our LST was struck in the back of his calf by one of these falling bits and had to be transferred to a hospital ship on the following day.
Daybreak the following day [D+1] found us off Omaha Beach, watching our naval guns pound the beach fortifications as they fired over our heads. It was plain that the attack had not been as successful as it had been planned. Indeed, geysers of sand and smoke were arising all along the beach. At first I thought that these were caused by our own troops touching off enemy mines. Then I realized that there were no troops in the areas in which these explosions were taking place. No amount of wishful thinking could alter the fact that the Germans were shelling the beach. I then noticed spouts of water occasionally rising out among the ships, and the further realization came to me that the Germans were also doing their best to shell us at sea. There was very little that we could do about this. All day the LSTs moved up and down the coast from Omaha Beach to Utah Beach, and back.
Meanwhile, landing craft and DUKWs [amphibious cargo vehicles] were scurrying back and forth from the ship to the shore, moving troops and supplies as fast as they could. Long lines of troops could be observed moving from the beaches themselves inland along the very few beach exits. Overhead our planes patrolled constantly. With much sadness, we noted one of them falling into the sea and another plummeting to the earth just beyond the beaches after a strafing run. The fact that our planes were strafing just a few hundred yards beyond the bluffs which overlooked the beaches indicated clearly that the enemy was not far inland.
With the enemy that close to the beach, the area selected as the site of the First Army CP would necessarily still be in enemy hands. Consequently, our plan to go ashore on that morning was suspended. Later on the afternoon of D+1, I sent a message to one of our other LSTs and instructed the Quartermaster officer aboard to go ashore at daybreak on the following day, to survey the situation, and then to return and report to me on my LST before nightfall. I was particularly alarmed over unconfirmed reports that heavy casualties had been afflicted on the Quartermaster troops ashore.
At about 5:00 P.M. of D+2, the Quartermaster officer reported to me on my LST, and informed me that he had visited both the V Corps Quartermaster and the Quartermaster of the 29th Infantry Division, but that neither of them had any information about any Quartermaster casualties.
He reported further that our own artillery was firing from positions just beyond the beaches, which meant that the front line was not far away. He had estimated 500 dead lying on the beach. Because of the difficulty of digging decent graves in sand, I had instructed Quartermasters of the invasion Divisions and Corps, as well as the graves registration platoons that accompanied them during the early days of the operation, that no burials were to be performed on the beach.
On the afternoon of D+3 the First Army Headquarters at sea went ashore. By this time, the Germans had been cleared from some fields near the little French town of Grand Campe, designated in advance as the first location of our CP. Shortly before our LSTs began to move, a few German planes had come overhead at a high altitude. Regardless of their altitude and the fact that they dropped no bombs, they drew a terrific amount of antiaircraft fire.
Once ashore, our vehicles from First Army Headquarters followed the prearranged road net from the beach exits to the site of our CP at Grand Campe. There we dug slit trenches for ourselves, ate our K-rations, and spent our first night ashore.
Historical Note: Colonel McNamara went on to describe the laborious efforts required to sort out supplies, establish dump sites, forge communications, and move QM units into position to begin supporting the combat forces as they fought their way through the hedgerows and beyond. After the breakthrough at St. Lo and frantic pursuit across France and Belgium, winter descended and the Allies (notably the First Army) were dealt a major setback with the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes.
With the Battle of the Bulge behind them, the new year found the "Fighting First" again on the move, pushing relentlessly past the Rhine to the very heart of Nazi Germany. Colonel McNamara recounts many of the episodes that occurred along the way -- instances of Quartermaster bravery, guts, hard work and sheer determination -- that contributed immeasurably to the final victory. His eloquent conclusion, and praise for a job well done, could just as easily apply to all Quartermasters, in all theaters, in World War II.
On May 15, 1945 [a week after V-E Day], First Army Headquarters departed by motor convoy from Weimar, Germany, the location of our last CP, to the Port of La Havre. By direction of our Chief of Staff , I traveled by plane to Paris, where I had my final interview with General Littlejohn. It was with deep sincerity that I expressed to him my appreciation for making possible all that I had been able to do in providing Quartermaster service within the First Army. The fact that the supplies and the troops had been available in Europe to be assigned or attached to the First Army, did not happen by accident. On the contrary, it happened because of the vision and imagination, as well as the intelligent planning of General Littlejohn and the splendid staff of officers with which he had surrounded himself.
Without General Littlejohn's foresight, I would never have been able to obtain the units for use in the First Army. Similarly, the fresh bread, the fresh meat, the fresh eggs, the cigarettes and cigars, new razor blades, and other items that were characteristically in demand and relished by the troops, would never have been available had they not been considered and thought of months in advance by this same staff.
The fact that we had laundry service in the field, the fact that our combat troops when pulled out of the line would go by battalions towards bath points where, after hot showers, they would exchange their dirty clothes for clean clothing, the fact that in our system of burials less than two per cent of our own dead were required to be marked "unknown," and the fact that by our salvage operations hundreds of tons of clothing and equipment were repaired and were kept in circulation among our own troops, were all reflections upon the ability and providence of the Chief Quartermaster of the European Theater.
There were other people to whom I would have liked to express my thanks, had it been physically possible to do so. I was thinking of the truck drivers, who often carried our supplies and troops past a point of human physical endurance but who nevertheless kept going because they felt it their duty to do so. I was thinking of the officers and men of the 89th Quartermaster Railhead Company, who with enthusiasm had accepted their role as combat troops during the Battle of the Bulge. And I was thinking of those men who had stood out between our own Infantry and the enemy tanks in the gasoline dumps at Spa while loading the cans of gasoline on our trucks, with the result that not one ounce of gasoline was lost to the enemy. This impetus, this enthusiasm and spirit on the part of these subordinate officers and enlisted men which had made it possible to accomplish the Quartermaster mission within the First Army.
Lastly, I thought of the responsibility and the resiliency that had typified our Quartermaster groups, battalions and companies. All during the campaign we had been operating the First Army with a Quartermaster troop command that I had thought appropriate for an Army of 8 divisions and 3 corps. The minimum number of divisions that we had had within First Army after the Normandy operations were 12, divided into 3 corps. Most of the time, we had 15 or more divisions within the First Army. During the early phase of the Bulge, we had 22 divisions.
Consequently, the Quartermaster units of First Army had far exceeded their capacities as noted on the appropriate tables of organization and equipment. Our multiple movements of depot areas, however, placed even a higher strain upon these troops. I marveled then, as I do now, that at no time did a unit commander ever tell me or any of my staff officers that any assignment, plan or order would be impossible in its execution.
I consider that these three factors, namely, the farsightedness of the Chief Quartermaster of the Theater, the individual spirit of our Quartermaster soldiers, and the ingenuity and ability of our troop commanders, together combined to make possible the Quartermaster service that was given in First Army. It is my further opinion that this service was of such nature as to have reflected credit upon the Quartermaster Corps.
A Note About the Author: Lieutenant General Andrew T. McNamara was Quartermaster for the II Corps at the time of the invasion of North Africa in 1942, and a year later became Quartermaster of the First Army in the European Theater. He returned to the United States in May 1945 and served in the Southwest Pacific with the portion of First Army Headquarters sent to the Philippines.
General McNamara was The Quartermaster General from 1957 to 1961, and from then until his retirement in 1964, he served as first Director of the newly established Defense Supply Agency.