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The big question was if the French Vichy forces would fire on the Americans landing at Algiers in 1942. Frantic negotiations had been going on for some time with the hope that the free French would simply
let the Allies land unopposed in North Africa.
Bob Koloski was in a better position than most in the early morning hours of Nov. 8, 1942, to find out firsthand whether the French would strike or step
aside. Koloski was one of about 250 American troops aboard the HMS Malcolm heading for shore.
It was the first invasion of the war on the far side of the Atlantic for the Americans.
"It was a
British ship, but we were flying the American flag. I suppose they were hoping the French wouldn't fire on the United States."
When the huge, glaring searchlights clicked on and illuminated the
Malcolm, and seconds later the shells started raining down on the old destroyer, everyone had their answer. The French were fighting.
Aboard the ship, the Americans were all on deck, exposed to the
heavy fire. They were ordered to lie flat, and they were happy to do so. And then the shells started hitting the ship.
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Bob Koloski grew up in the Arcade neighborhood of St. Paul and joined the National Guard in 1940 when he was 17 years old.
"No, I didn't have to get any parents' permission. You just lied, and they were only too happy to get you. There were a lot of 17-year-olds who signed up in those days."
Koloski had dropped out of
school in the ninth grade, and had worked at a variety of printing jobs, including three printing companies that went out of business during the Great Depression. "The union office said they weren't
going to send me anywhere else because I was a jinx."
On Feb. 10, 1941, Koloski's unit, the 135th Infantry Regiment of the 34th Infantry Division, was federalized.
"We had ample warning that it
was coming. There had been talk about it at drills for some time, and several units had already been called up."
The men spent several weeks bunked down at the Minneapolis Armory. "None of us had any
money, so we couldn't go out on the town very much." Finally, they were given orders to board a train and head to Camp Claiborne in Louisiana.
"The camp was all mud and junk. We got there before they
were completely ready for us." The men were housed in tents built around wood frames, five men to a tent with a natural gas heater included.
Koloski was assigned to a medical detachment. For each
regiment in the army (of about 3,600 men), there were 126 men assigned to provide medical aid, stretcher bearers, ambulance drivers and other medical services.
Koloski was an aid man in King Company
initially, but was soon promoted and sent to the battalion aid station. "Our job was to retrieve the wounded, give first aid, get them in an ambulance to the rear, and, in the worst case, tagging the
dead and getting them ready for the graves registration crew."
In early summer, the 34th and many other divisions participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers, six weeks out in the field in a mock combat
situation. "It was our first experience in living out in the field." The men got a ham sandwich and apple for lunch, and usually a hot meal for dinner.
Koloski was sent to Ft. Sam Houston in Texas for
more medical training and he was there on Dec. 7, 1941.
"I was waiting for my buddy to get ready so we could go into town that Sunday morning. It was about 11 a.m. or so, and we heard something on a
scratchy, old radio about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor.
"I told my friend to get his clothes on quickly so we could get into town because pretty soon they were going to come looking for us." The
two got out the gate but once they got into town, they had to spend the rest of the day dodging the Military Police who were driving around using paper megaphones to tell all the Army personnel to get
back to base immediately.
At 9 p.m., after enjoying their final peacetime pass, the two came back to the base. Four days later they were sent back to Camp Claiborne where things were in an uproar.
"It was a real panic time. We even had units sent to Florida to prepare for an invasion there by the Japanese. The panic was really huge. We didn't understand all of it."
The unit was soon sent to
Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then overseas on the British liner Aquitannia. "Every night we could hear the depth charges. When we got about two thirds of the way across, we just took off and left the convoy
behind. We could go faster than any submarine."
The 34th Division arrived in Glasgow and then was sent to Northern Ireland for more training. They took over the billets left by the British who were
fighting in North Africa. The 135th Regiment was spread over three towns.
Koloski's Third Battalion was selected as an assault unit. "I really don't know why. Maybe because we had done well in
training." The men were sent to Camp Sunnylands near Belfast for commando training.
Part of the training was getting experience in using cargo nets to transfer from one ship to another. "Now we felt
we were really becoming somebody, but nobody had any idea what combat was really about."
The men embarked on the cruiser HMS Sheffield. "They put 600 of us on a ship that was already full of British
navy personnel. The Limeys were not terribly happy about giving up their sleeping quarters. We slept in shifts."
One part of the British Navy the men did enjoy was the daily tot of rum. "The British
mixed it with their tea, but we usually just took it straight."
In the Mediterranean, the 600 men were unloaded into two old four-stacker destroyers, the HMS Broke and the HMS Malcolm. Britain had
obtained them from the U.S. as part of the lend-lease program. The mission was part of Operation Torch and was called Terminal Force.
The goal of the mission was to seize the docks and terminals at
Algiers and prevent the French from destroying them. Meanwhile, other Allied force would land near the port and attack from behind.
For preparation, 18 tons of concrete had been placed in the bow of
the destroyers to give them the heft to break through the wooden booms the French had stretched across the entrance to the port of Algiers.
The ships sailed toward the harbor, and the French had not
blacked out the city. The first attempt to get into the harbor was thwarted by a lack of knowledge about the harbor as the Broke and Malcolm nearly ran into a huge, stone jetty.
"We turned around and
went out again, and then we came in and hit the boom. It didn't break. We backed off and came in and hit it again. But it didn't break. We were stopped dead in the water. On the third try, we broke
through.
"By this time, though, the French garrisons had been alerted and we were soon caught in the beams of those huge search lights."
The hope that the French would not fire on the Americans was
quickly disabused. "We ran into a real buzz saw. There was really concentrated fire, and it was raining down on us."
The order was given for everybody to get down and lay on the deck. "There really
wasn't much protection, and I'd forgotten to bring my helmet up on board. Laying there with my arms around my head, I could see the Stars and Stripes flying above. It was like being in a movie."
All
around them, the British five inch guns and the 40 mm weapons were firing as fast as they could trying to put out the searchlights. The crash of the guns was deafening, and the ship lurched every time
one of the five-inch shells was launched shoreward.
Koloski's medical unit was stationed on the fantail of the ship, and artillery shells struck both amidships and on the bow of the Malcolm. The
shelling knocked out three of the four boilers on the ship, and the captain decided the ship would never make it to the docks.
Nineteen were killed in the aborted landing, and Koloski and the others
began treating the 30 or so wounded. "It was the first real experience we'd had with battle casualties. As I worked, I noticed I had soot on my hands from the five-inch guns."
The work did have its
advantages. "I think the medics were the only ones who weren't frightened or crazy from the shelling because we were busy. Only later did it hit us, and then we were shaking like the rest of them."
The wounded were transferred to another ship, and a few hours later all the men transferred to another ship via the cargo nets.
The Broke did make it through boom to the pier and was able to put 250
Americans ashore. The men valiantly tried to secure the port, but eventually were overwhelmed by French tanks and troops, mainly Senagalese. The American commandos were all captured.
American and
British troops were landed east of Algiers and surrounded the town by the end of that day. Twenty hours after the Broke and Malcolm reached the port, and after heavy casualties were taken on both
American units, the French agreed not to fight any more.
"The French just said they were ready to be our buddies. They never did surrender."
Koloski stayed on a ship for a couple of days and then
did land in Algiers where the battalion became the guard troops for the Allied Forces headquarters. They were relieved of that duty and began their trek across northern Africa. Along the way, Koloski was
promoted to sergeant, although he didn't know about until two months later.
The unit saw only sporadic action for some time, but then at the Fondouk Pass in Tunisia
got its first real taste of combat against seasoned German troops. "It was the first time we were fully engaged, and we took a terrible beating. We were rescued, although some of the guys won't agree with that word, by the Grenadier Guards. Those crazy Limeys were amazing.
"We still had our pride though. We told them that we had softened them up."
Koloski and the others in the medical detachment spent their time retrieving the wounded. "We had a jeep with a red
cross on it, and they never fired on us while we brought the wounded in."
A few weeks later,
the 34th Division atoned for its poor showing in its first engagements by taking critical Hill 609 in Tunisia. The toughness and heroism of the division was never challenged again.
For the next
three years, the 34th Division fought its way up through the mountains and hills of Italy. By the end of the war, the division had been on the line longer than any other United States unit, and Koloski
was with them every step of the way — except for a nine-day stay in the hospital when he was hit by an artillery fragment.
"I saw one shell hit and I was just standing still trying to decide what to
do. It's an article of faith by infantrymen that you never hear the one that gets you. From my standpoint, that was true."
As a medical man, he had a better chance than others to see the nature of
war wounds. "It was artillery fire primarily. There were some bullet wounds, but it was artillery and mortar primarily."
The 34th was the first division into Rome after it was abandoned by the
Germans. "I arrived a day later," Koloski said. "It was a lot more fun that way."
At the end of the war, the 34th Division took the surrender of the German 34th Division. Over those years, the
division had nine percent killed in action, one of the highest percentages of any division in the war. In the medical unit, which originally had 120 men assigned, there were 24 killed in action.
The
men began to be sent back home in July of 1945.
Koloski arrived in the United States on Aug. 25, 1945, and was released from his Army duty not long after that at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
He took a
battery of tests to get past the educational gap in his high school days, and was admitted to the University of Minnesota where he earned a bachelor's degree in sociology. He stayed in the printing
business his entire career, retiring in 1987 after 39 years as a compositor and proofreader for the Minneapolis Star and later the StarTribune.
He and his wife, Barbara, have five children. Much of
their retirement life has been spent doing community service, and at age 79 he and his wife still do Meals on Wheels in their south Minneapolis neighborhood.
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