All the Light

The wife's book club is currently reading All the Light We Cannot See. It follows two main characters, a blind French woman, who with her father escape Paris in 1944 to stay with relatives in St Malo who are members of the French resistance. The second character, is a young German soldier taken from an orphanage due to his savant nature with radios is given the chore of tracking down illegal broadcast locations, one of which is in St Malo. The wife and I just concluded watching the Netflix mini-series based on the book. During WWII My father had a connection to St Malo, France, through his attachment to the US 83rd Infantry Division. This is what I can piece together of that story.

While watching the mini-series I heard St Malo mentioned and that village name seemed familiar to me. I looked up the battle and Wikipedia did not disappoint. The lead general's name for the US was Robert Macon, who was the head of the 83rd Infantry Division. I then found a summary of the battles of the 83rd Infantry and sure enough there was St Malo. Or, perhaps, it was an article about my dad when he was discharged from the army that stuck in the back of my mind, but could not quite recall. In any event, the town seemed to mean something to me. 

Part of After Action Report, Campaign for St Malo
References materials captured

In the story and movie, the allies are bombing the city and environs, and conversations occur in varied groups such as German soldiers, French citizens and resistance about the coming US advance. In real life, St Malo had a port which the Allies viewed as necessary for its supply chain as it moved into the continent. General Omar Bradley assigned the task of obtaining the city and its environs to the 83rd Infantry Division. The 83rd Infantry's After Action report does not say anything about a bombing campaign, although a non-military source indicates it lasted about ten days. My dad was one of fourteen Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents attached to the 83rd Infantry Division. At varied times, some were attached directly to one of the three regiments, while others were attached to headquarters. We know, from a letter my father wrote to a Thomas Johnson (28 Apr 1965) who was writing a book on the CIC and looking for information on the surrender of 20,000 Germans, that he was always assigned to the 83rd division headquarters. He also noted that at least one agent was permanently attached to each of the three regiments. However, he pointed out that there were times when he was sent to the regimental level. He self-described as a "trouble-shooter" going where needed as difficulties arose. 

Part of 4 Aug 1944 83rd Infantry CIC attachment
Morning Report

By the daily morning reports, we know that on the night of 3 or 4 August the CIC division headquarters moved to Pontorson, France, which is about 20 miles westerly of St Malo (it shows in the Aug 4 Morning Report). However, they were only there one night as the next morning, 4 or 5 Aug (9:00 am) they departed and set up HQ in Chateauneuf, which is five miles south of St Malo. Dad confirmed this in a 5 Aug letter home, where he says "We are in a new city right now and its wonderful to be in a place where there is little evidence of destruction and almost normal. We have rooms in a fairly nice hotel which the Germans stayed in. They toasted us with wine and are cooking our rations for us." But more interesting is this comment in the same letter: "They are happy to see us, more so than where we were before." On 10 Aug they moved once again, to St Servan, which adjoins St Malo. Moving was in concert with battle actions. The After Action report for August 1944 is dated 1 Sep 1944 and notes near its beginning that "Due to the extreme fluidity of the campaign and its rapid culmination, comprehensive Order of Battle Information in the conventional sense was unobtainable."

Part of pp 2&3, After Action Report, St Malo Campaign

War is intractable, and one never knows what will occur. Let me turn to the After Action Report for to provide a brief insight into the battle. It first notes that the enemy numbered over 12,000, of which 8,000 were concentrated on the St Malo side of the river. (Interestingly, when Bradley was making his decision he placed the German troop level at about 6,000.) The After Action report further notes that the quality of the troops varied greatly. "Permanent defenses were elaborate and were prepared over a long period of time."  It also commented that "Captured maps and overlays and information from FFI sources showed that these defenses were designed primarily against an attack from the sea." The Germans thought the Allied invasion would be in Brittany, of which St Malo is a part, not Normandy. The report specifically calls out "A map captured on 5 August revealed the following as the main enemy units to face us on the ST MALO side of the RANCE RIVER." (Capital letters in original.) It then identified six regiments and a security battalion. 

Present time Google Air Photo
St Malo and St Servan

The report goes on say, that regardless of design, tough land obstacles were in place, it then identified the varied obstacles the infantry division faced, including road blocks of concrete, twisted barbed wire, "and mined fields covered by AT guns." The 83rd Infantry attack on St Malo started on 6 Aug with the capture of outlying towns, although it noted that inferior troops were deployed along the outer defense lines. By 13 Aug St Malo, with two other towns "were in our hands, but our troops had to fight from house to house to wrest the city proper from the Germans." Allied bombing had destroyed most of the buildings in the city. After the fall of St Malo itself, the nearby Citadel, a rock and concrete fortress described as "practically impregnable" remained in German hands. The commanding German officer, General von Aulock, refused to surrender and the battle for the Citadel continued until von Aulock and "571 officers and men, including 200 marines" finally surrendered on 17 August. During the entire campaign, the 83rd infantry division captured well over 12,000 prisoners. Aulock did not like a static assignment and he, who had served in the Battle of Stalingrad, had hoped to command a mobile force.

Final Surrender, p4 After Action Report, St Malo Campaign

In the mini-series there is a German officer who has a mistress. Johnson inquired of my dad of a possible female spy named Franzeska Plourin, which, he said, my dad's commanding officer in the CIC could not much recall. Dad responded that he did not personally have any personal recollection of her, but did not think she could be the woman "whom the French underground uncovered immediately upon our entrance into Tours as the story behind that particular woman was to the effect that she had been living with a German commander in the area."  He believes, on the second or third day of having been entrusted to 300 Senegalese at the suggestion of the French underground, she became insane. He goes on to say that "Ordinarily, a mistress of a German commander would not be a spy...." In the movie I recall her asking the German officer to get her out to a different location, the officer wondered why she would want that. 

In a 9 Aug letter to his parents my father commented on the French taking care of things in their own way, when he wrote:

We are seeing numerous instances here where the civilians are taking care of the bad French themselves very effectively. They are a little late at it is the only trouble. In the last town we were at the people went & got 3 French gals who had been sleeping with the Germans & they shaved their heads. It was a pitiful sight to see them, afterwards, but the French are taking care of them in their own way.

 He did conclude by saying that there was not much he could write about, it was a busy time and "with all the confusion I can't write a very good letter either." 

Map of St Malo Area in France
Source The Thunderbolt history

We can see that the 83rd Infantry Division did a remarkable job in capturing St Malo and its environs in a relatively short period of time. However, the use of the port as a supply line for the US Third Army fell short of expectations due to significant sabotage to the port by the Nazi's which essentially nullified its use. The whole 83rd Infantry was held up for two weeks due to this mission. Patton argued it best to bypass it, so he did, cutting it off, and Bradley later assigned the 83rd the task of obtaining it. Some have argued that it would have been better to put the 83rd to more vital targets. My dad's brush with history is, however, more than simply being attached to the 83rd Infantry as a CIC agent. There is more to this connection.

A 26 Dec 1945 news article on his honorable discharge from the army notes that he received the Bronze Star "for capturing enemy documents at St Malo, France and for obtaining confessions from five enemy agents in Luxembourg." It would be interesting to know how and what enemy documents he obtained in St Malo, was it the maps and overlays referred to in the After Action report? Or, perhaps other documents that held even greater value to the larger war effort? This, we may never know. In response to Johnson, my dad commented:

As I look back on it now, I certainly am proud to have been a member of the CIC and especially of its 83rd Division detachment. However, the memory of that work is not pleasant, except in its long range effect. I would prefer to look upon it as a nightmare, simply having done the jobs we were supposed to do under the conditions in which we did them.

WSJ 26 Dec 1945

William T Sherman, one of the great Union generals of the Civil War once said, "War is hell." My dad's comments to Johnson certainly seem to fit that bill. In a letter home commenting on having received the Bronze Star, he noted that he was simply doing his job. Clearly, the US Army thought what he obtained at St Malo was important. I also wonder if the five enemy agents he obtained confessions from were those on trial in Luxembourg in mid December 1944. When he departed Luxembourg after the trial, he was shot at--one of the first shots of the Battle of the Bulge, which you can read about here. 

As for the mini-series, "All the Light We cannot See" did not say anything about an American CIC agent capturing enemy documents in St Malo. Only at the very end did we see US soldiers. Part of the job of a CIC agent was to find enemy spies, and that involved being in a place sometimes before the battle, after a battle, or both. I think dad would prefer to be under the radar, as he saw the war success as being from the solider with the boots on the ground having the greatest effect. As he said to Johnson in regard to the mass surrender of 20,000 enemy combatants, "the credit goes to the ordinary GI and his commanders in the field." I hope that the Allied cause gained a great deal from his captured documents than the ill-fated port. Among all of this brush with history, is the other part of the story---that I will now have to admit to the wife that I should read a book selected by her book club.