Occupation, and a surprise in a "Quiet Area"

13 November 1942

Official Report of Action at French Algerian Town Lourmel

On 13 November 1942, the squad was sent west 30 miles from Sidi Bel Abbes to the small French Algerian town of Lourmel as an advance party to establish a new site for the battalion headquarters and reconnoiter a bivouac site sufficient for the entire battalion. Our mission was to contact the local authorities, and establish an area where our Battalion could set up encampment and headquarters operations, and establish quarters for the senior staff in the local hotel.

We arrived in town in jeeps and made initial contact with Lieutenant St. Fromage, the local constable. He directed us to stay at the Hotel El Almond, run by “Otto”. Otto is a former German citizen and his hotel retains a most excellent chef named “Francois”. Otto came to this town sometime in the 1920’s, and established his hotel here. Since we represented the potential for considerable economic influx of capital to the town, we were greeted with great hospitality and anticipation, and made to feel most welcome. Pvt Dubois was poking around and found a most excellent motor car in Otto’s barn, in almost running condition. He said something about a “turbocharger”. Don’t know what that means.

Other townsfolk we encountered were Msr Gasteneau, who is a teacher, maintains orchards, and is also the Mayor. The town doctor is named Lachance, and his assistance is Mmle Lefebve.

When we reconnoitered the town and its environs we discovered an unimproved landing strip with a small ramshackle building. It did not appear to have been used in a long time. However, one thing out of the ordinary was that there were fired modern European cartridge cases on the hard-packed earth of the runway.

It was on our second evening in Lourmel, when we heard a commotion out in the street. Gunfire. Greeley, Despaux, and Karas were the first up, and running down side-streets to investigate. Mckee and I followed. We caught sight of Arabs with rifles on horseback.

Furtively, we move up a street parallel to the one the Arabs were on. The Arabs were making boisterous noise, and we could see they were moving to the center of the town to a position directly in front of the constables building. As we approached I was able to gather up to the squad together and give them instructions.

I let them know that we would not fire on the Arabs unless they fired upon constable’s office, or upon townspeople or us. I further instructed that if we were going to open fire, it would be on my instructions only.

By moving from building to building, using cover, we avoided being detected by the Arabs. I counted 12 of them, all on horseback. They lined up in the middle of the street in front of the office of LT St Fromage. We managed to get directly behind them on line ourselves about 50 yards away.

It was night and the office was dark, with no activity. However, when the Arabs raised their rifles and fired into the building, I gave the squad the order to open fire.

Although Mckee and Despaux were effective, it was PVT Greeley who really poured it into them. We caught them by complete surprise. Greeley had felled two from their horses before the rest even realized they were under fire. I watch how Greeley went from target to target moving up the line. I never saw anything like the accuracy of his shooting! All of us were firing together, but Greeley accounted for six of the enemy himself. He just kept coolly firing and reloading, even as we took fire, and he took a slight wound to the upper left arm when the Arabs were returning fire. The Arabs ruffians scattered and ran under our withering fire.

When it was all over we heard applause from the upper story of the building and it was LT St Fromage. He had observed the entire action.

We counted eight Arab dead, and captured 8 recently maintained Mauser 98 rifles, and 10 horses from the Arabs. LT St Fromage indicated that Arabs bandits had been getting bolder and bolder over the past weeks, and it was obvious to him that someone had been encouraging them to this action. It was not difficult to figure out who was encouraging them. When we searched the dead Arabs we found 20 German Reichmarks.

COL Stark and this battalion staff arrived the next day, on 15 November 1942. Very soon thereafter the rest of the Battalion arrived, and set up camp.