Bonjour à tous,
J'ai indiqué, dans "Opération Torch", qui semble peu lue, que la base de La Sénia devait être attaquée par des parachutistes US mais que ceux-ci n'avaient pas pu accomplir leur mission. Un de mes camarades de la Sénia a entretenu, il y a quelques années, une correspondance avec un des officiers de cette unité de parachutistes. Voici une des lettres de cet officier :
"Dear Pierre.
I was delighted ta receive your letter It brought back a lot of memories. The attack on the three C 47s was over sixty years ago but in many respects it seems like yesterday.
Our Battalion took off in 39 C 47s from Lands End, England on November 7 1942. It was the fist American parachute combat operation, as well as the longest. We flew for nine hours non stop to North Africa. It was a miserable flight – we were weighed down by main and reserve parachutes, inflatable life jackets, guns, equipement, etc. The planes were blacked out and we just sat, hunched over, trying to sleep. We flew over the Bay of Biscay, then Madrid, at which time we were to pick up a radio signal to guide us to Tafaraoui, a French Naval Air Base. Unfortunately, the radio signal was on the wrong frequency. As a result of that and the darkness our planes became separated. We were running out of fuel and the pilots were lost, One plane landed at Gibraltar, others went down or jumped their troops in Spanish Morocco, French Morocco and Algeria. To make matters worse, we didn’t know whether the French would welcome us or fight us. A number of our planes, including mine, landed on the Sebkra D'Oran, Three of the planes still had some fuel left and our Colonel decided to fly them, along with their paratroops, to Tafaraoui. As they took off, they were spotted by French figther planes and shot down. Six of our men were killed and fourteen wounded. They were the first American paratroops to be killed in WWII.
I know that Gail XXXX, Gordon widow, would love to hear the rest of the story from one of the figther pilote and so would I. Please send a copy of the pilote report to me and the address above and to her at the following address.
Mrs, Gordon XXXX
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
USA
It was good to hear from you and l'm looking forward to reading the pilot’s."