Amphibious Assault on the Riviera 3

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The 1st Battalion landed on a "scramble beach"; a place where there was really no beach at all, just high rocky cliffs all around that could only be traversed by foot soldiers equipped with only the tools of war that a doughboy can carry on his back. The beach was only 80 yards wide and the Navy didn't think that it would be wise to bring in more than three boats abreast. Some of our boats were blasted out of the water before we hit the beach. If the Navy hadn't delivered such effective gun fire during the preparation, we probably never would have been able to land the whole battalion on that little strip of rocky land. But we did. By noon we had enlarged the beachhead enough to clear the beach, contacted the 2nd Battalion on our left and picked up our armor which had come in over the 2nd Battalion beach. By dark we were working down the coastal highway toward Cannes, rolling-up the coastal defenses that had not been blasted by the Navy. Few of the emplacements were designed for lateral defense and consequently Jerry organized strong points in almost every one of the beautiful pastel-shade villas that fringe the Mediterranean along that part of the French Riviera known as Cote D'Azur. The prisoners of war taken by those of us in the 1st Battalion during the first three days equalled the strength of our battalion. Months later we were cited by the President of the United States for the action.

The 2nd Battalion landed on the 400 yards of rocky beach just to the west of Cap Drammont, cleared Cap Drammont, destroyed the radar station, seized the village of Drammont on the coastal highway and pushed up the Agay River Valley By midnight on D Day the battalion had moved twelve miles inland from the beach and turned right to cut the main inland highway from Cannes to Frejus on the high ground just above Cannes.

The 3rd Battalion landed just to the left of the 2nd Battalion and drove straight inland from the beach to seize the high ground against little opposition.

For most of us the memory of D Day in Southern France is not too unpleasant. It had been a spectacular show. We had suffered few casualties and our regiment had taken the beach, over which the entire division landed, before midnight on D Day. Almost to a man we liked the first impression of France. D Day was warm and sunny and the reddish firm soil was a welcome contrast to the powdered ankle-deep dust of Italy. The air was filled with the odor of pines from the sparse coniferous growth that eeked out an existence from the arid mountain slopes that run down into France's famed Mediterranean Riviera.

During the next five days we continued to consolidate the right flank of the VI Corps beachhead as rumors began to trickle in. Things had gone equally well for the 3rd and the 45th Divisions. The French had landed behind the 45th and were driving on Toulon and Marseilles. Now that the beachhead was established we were going to be relieved. This rumor was to be with us for a long time; not until D Day plus a hundred and something had passed and we were still bitterly slugging it out in the Vosges Mountains did the subject of relief cease to be number one on the rumor parade.

Early on D Day plus one a 300 radio operator established the only contact with a group of paratroopers surrounded far inland who were asking for assistance. These men had dropped short of their target on D Day and were running out of ammunition, food and radio batteries. Many. had been wounded and were in need of medical care. The paratrooper station identified itself as "Wounded Paratrooper". The next day a new station, "Wounded Paratrooper Two", came into the net, and the third day "Wounded Paratrooper Three". A task force made up of one company from the 1st Battalion and one from the 3rd Battalion reinforced with a couple platoons of armor, moved north to Callian and Fayence and relieved the hard pressed paratroopers.

After the 1st Battalion had driven up the coast to La Napoule, a couple of active Jerry naval guns on Ile de Marguerite inflicted heavy casualties on the battalion before a couple of destroyers from the Navy raced brazenly into the Cannes harbor and knocked them out. Artillery in the area just north to Cannes became more active as the days passed.

John E. Pretsch Drawing - 1945 The 1st Airborne Task Force, composed of British and American paratroopers which had jumped near Le Muy, just north of Frejus and San Raphael on, D Day relieved us on D Day plus five and we assembled in Draguignan with most of the companies sleeping in a big schoolhouse. Although on the right flank the front had been stabilized right where it had been late on D Day, we were surprised to find that the left flank had been extended beyond all expectations. Quartermaster truck drivers rolling south with loads of PW's told us the front was up 100 miles when they had left. Information picked up from these truck drivers gave us a piece-meal picture of what was happening. "Maquis going wild ... the front was 100 miles up the road when I left it ... meeting no opposition ... Jerries surrendering by the thousands."

On the 21st of August we received our first real impression of the land we were liberating and the people who inhabited it. Almost without exception the impression was a good one and the contrast to Italy most striking. Always in Italy there had been the question; "Liberators or Conquerors?" The people of Italy, with their war torn, devastated country, had been just a backdrop for the saga of men attacking hill after hill — not to liberate a worthless rocky bill or a rubbled and gutted village — but to kill that many more Germans and to get just one hill closer to the Third Reich Headquarters. This was different! Here were a clean and unquestionably sincere people whose entire heritage and tradition was one of freedom.

Probably no campaign of the war was more colorful and dramatic than the drive up through Southern France. Someone fittingly named it "The Champagne Campaign". As our Division drove into the Dauphine Alps the colorful and powerful FFI Underground Bands swung into action, harassing every movement of the stunned German forces and expediting our advance by knocking out small delaying forces of the enemy long before we reached them. Indelibly imprinted in our memories are the rows of happy, grateful faces, the waving of French, American and British flags.

For three days our columns rumbled north, giving birth to impressions that will always remain with us — mountains and fertile green valleys; little villages with huge cathedrals; steel helmets filled with eggs; cakes of rich butter rolled in clean wet leaves; rich red wine from the Rhone; a peasant woman with her apron filled with not quite ripened apples; a little girl with a French flag throwing a clumsily made corsage tied together with a bit of red, white and blue ribbon that stings your face as you roll on northward; the bells in every little village announcing the liberation as the first doughboy-laden tank grinds through the cheering crowds; a group of mountaineers with FFI brassards on their arms and nondescript firearms resting easily in the crooks of their arms, standing beside a bridge that is standing untouched waiting for American tanks to rumble across it and onward towards Germany ... Vive La France! ... Vive L'Amérique! This was the way to fight a war!

John E. Pretsch Drawing - 1945