2nd Lt. Walters Participates in Operation Torch (8 NOV 1942)

On Nov. 8, 1942, American forces landed at the Moroccan port of Safi as a part of Operation Torch, the Allied landings on the coast of North Africa. Included in the roughly 6,400 men who participated was 2nd Lt. Vernon A. Walters’ interrogation detachment assigned to the 9th Infantry Division’s 47th Regimental Combat Team (RCT).

New Yorker Vernon Walters joined the U.S. Army in May 1941. Just twenty-four years old, Walters was already proficient in four foreign languages (French, Spanish, German, and Italian) and was, therefore, shocked to be assigned as a truckdriver. Hoping to put his language skills to better use, he applied for Infantry Officer Candidate School and, after graduating, was sent to the newly opened Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Walters was pulled from his intelligence course early to take command of a detachment of French-speaking interrogators for the 9th Infantry Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The detachment’s mission soon became clear as it joined the 47th RCT on board the USS Lyon for the 3,000-mile sea voyage to Safi. During the trip, Walters stayed busy studying the detailed information he had received about the enemy forces, the town of Safi, and gun emplacements. He then taught the troops about the French armed forces they would likely encounter in North Africa. As the Lyon neared the Moroccan shore, the ship’s captain asked Walters to monitor German and Italian radio traffic to determine if they had detected the American convoy’s approach.

The landings at Safi began in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 8. Walters and his detachment accompanied Maj. John B. Evans’ 3rd Battalion ashore about 9 a.m. In addition to interpreting for Major Evans, Walters had responsibility for rousing the sleeping crane operators to assist in unloading the American Sherman tanks. The detachment then set up their command post in a phosphorus warehouse near the port, and almost immediately, soldiers began bringing in prisoners. Soon, the detachment guarded nearly three hundred prisoners on the second floor while conducting interrogations on the ground floor. Focusing on the French and North African officers, Walters’ team elicited information about morale, their uncertainty whether to resist or surrender, and even the locations of snipers pinning down American troops in town.

The enemy forces in Safi surrendered by mid-afternoon on 8 November, but Walters’ team continued their interrogations into the third day. They were then attached to the 2nd Armored Division, which was advancing north to support the fighting at Casablanca. During the advance, Walters again showed his versatility and bravery by rushing across a mined bridge to talk a French colonel into abandoning his defensive positions.

By Nov. 12, Walters’ detachment was in Casablanca, and two days later, they were ordered to liaise with the French at Rabat. Then, Lieutenant Walters led his team to Tunisia, where they interrogated their first German and Italian prisoners. Unlike in Safi, Walters focused their efforts on interrogating the soldiers instead of the officers; the latter were too difficult to break in the short amount of time available. Walters then received orders to report back to the MITC, which was in immediate need of his language skills and experiences interrogating Axis soldiers. He landed back in the U.S. on Dec. 23, 1942.

Those two months in North Africa during World War II were just the beginning of Walters’ thirty-five-year Army intelligence career. He would later serve as military attaché in Italy, Brazil, and France, and as an interpreter, negotiator, and troubleshooter for five American presidents. Lt. Gen. Walters retired in 1976 after four years as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Post retirement, he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to serve as ambassador-at-large and later as ambassador to the United Nations. In 1987, General Walters became one of the inaugural inductees into the MI Hall of Fame. He passed away in 2002.

(For more information on General Walters’ career, see his memoirs, "Silent Missions," self-published in 1978.)

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Article by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.

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