DRAGOON was an American-led operation with a French army behind it and a British and American fleet in front. Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch’s Seventh Army would command; Major General Lucian K. Truscott’s VI Corps would make the assault with three of the most experienced divisions in the U.S. Army. Facing them along the Riviera was a German army stretched thin, short of armor and filled out with older men and conscripted Eastern European troops.

Patch, Truscott and three veteran divisions

Patch had commanded the American forces that finished the battle for Guadalcanal before taking over the Seventh Army in the Mediterranean. Truscott had commanded the 3rd Infantry Division in Sicily and at Anzio and then VI Corps in the breakout to Rome. His three assault divisions had all fought in Italy: the 3rd Infantry Division, the “Rock of the Marne,” under Major General John W. O’Daniel; the 45th Infantry Division, the “Thunderbirds,” built around National Guard units from Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, under Major General William W. Eagles; and the 36th Infantry Division, the Texas National Guard division that had landed at Salerno, under Major General John E. Dahlquist.

Behind them would come the French Army B under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, including two armored and five infantry divisions, many of them made up of North African, West African and colonial troops, which would follow ashore from the day after the landing. Ahead of them would go the 1st Airborne Task Force under Major General Robert T. Frederick and the American-Canadian 1st Special Service Force (see Chapter 3).

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Getting ready in Italy

Hewitt’s fleet

Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, who had landed Patton in Morocco in 1942 and the Allied armies at Sicily and Salerno, commanded the Western Naval Task Force from the command ship USS Catoctin. His bombardment ships included the American battleships Nevada, Texas and Arkansas, veterans of Normandy, the British Ramillies and the French Lorraine, along with about twenty cruisers and a task force of nine escort carriers whose Hellcats and Seafires would cover the beaches. Only in North Africa and southern France did American aircraft carriers fight in the European and Mediterranean theaters.

The assault troops trained near Salerno from February. The first convoy, mostly tank landing craft, sailed from Naples on 9 August; others followed from ports in Italy, Corsica and North Africa, timed to arrive off the Riviera together on the night of 14–15 August.

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The armada

The defenders

The German Army Group G under General Johannes Blaskowitz was responsible for southern and southwestern France. Its Nineteenth Army, under General Friedrich Wiese, held the Mediterranean coast with a thin line of infantry divisions; along the invasion beaches the LXII Corps, with its headquarters at Draguignan, had the 242nd Infantry Division and part of the 148th. Many of their battalions were Ost units of Soviet prisoners and other Eastern Europeans pressed into German service. The only armored division in the region, the 11th Panzer, was far to the west near Toulouse.

The coast itself was fortified with concrete gun positions, minefields, antitank walls and beach obstacles, and radar stations watched the sea. But the Atlantic Wall in the south was much weaker than in Normandy, and by August the Germans had sent many of their best units north to fight the Allied armies breaking out of Normandy.

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The coastal defenses

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