On the evening of Dec. 26, 1942, Pvt. Warren Decker and 30 other men with the 2nd Battalion of the 509th Parachute Infantry were loaded onto three Douglas C-47 airplanes. Their mission was to blow up a railroad bridge at El Djem, Tunisia. The men were to make the jump 75 miles behind enemy lines, destroy the bridge and then walk their way back to American lines. Every man on the planes referred to it as a suicide mission, yet they all volunteered.
One of the other men on the mission was Keith “Doc” Argraves. His memoirs of the war were published in 1946, entitled “Keith Argraves, Paratrooper,” by George Chambers. In the book, Doc related that the planes lifted off at 10 o’clock: “They were flying without fighter escort and had to pass between two German airports. They skimmed along fifty feet above the ground, and passed that danger zone safely, after which they rose to an altitude of four hundred feet.”
That was their jumping altitude. When the men were given the three-minute warning to jump, the planes were spotted, and the Germans began firing tracer bullets. At the appointed time, the paratroopers jumped from the plane. After landing, the men quickly hid their parachutes and distributed the 750 pounds of TNT among themselves. Doc relates that they checked their position and found they had been dropped 8 miles off course.
Years after the war, Decker related to his family that the men split up in order to try to find the bridge. Decker and another man found the bridge but didn’t have enough explosives to destroy it themselves. They began backtracking to find the rest of the group. The others had been busy destroying the railroad track on the way to the bridge, which attracted the Germans. Thus began a fight as the Americans made their way to their objective, and the Germans fought to stop them. Decker and the other man were reunited with the rest and began pushing the Germans back.
Doc recalled that the dead were left where they fell, but he ministered to the wounded as fast as possible. He himself was wounded in the hip, but the group pressed on. As the Americans advanced to about 60 yards from the bridge, they thought they were going to make their objective, until German reinforcements from the Afrika Corps arrived on trains, vastly outnumbering the troopers. Decker was wounded when his gun was shattered by enemy fire, sending fragments of his rifle into his forearm. The Americans were forced to retreat, but in the end, 17 of the 31 troopers were captured, including Decker and Doc.
The prisoners were taken to the harbor port of Sousse and placed under guard in a big garage on the docks. While they were in the garage, American bombers attacked the port. They sank seven ships in the port, and the garage door was destroyed. During the attack, the German guards took cover but kept a watch on the prisoners, so there was no chance to escape. The next morning, they were loaded on a truck and taken to Tunis. They were kept under guard in a schoolhouse. Each of them was interrogated by the Germans and threatened with death if they didn’t talk, but all they got from the men were their name, rank and serial number.
Decker and the others were at Tunis for about a week before they were scheduled to be flown out of the country. Upon reaching the airport, American bombers attacked. They destroyed so many planes that the prisoners were taken back to the schoolhouse. Sometime later, they were placed on board three Italian Destroyers bound for Sicily.
Doug Stout is the local history coordinator for the Licking County Library. You may contact him at 740-349-5571 or dstout@lickingcountylibrary.org.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: A local soldier’s role in a high-risk WWII raid into Tunisia | History
Reporting by Doug Stout, Guest columnist / Newark Advocate
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Doug Stout, Guest columnist | USA TODAY Network
