Just A Small Story

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As the years pass battles are often over looked, now while doing some research in to my family I came across to members of my family that were killed in battle. There were also quite a number of Americans that died along side of them.
Now my two uncles were killed while serving on HMS Hartland, now this ship had at one time been and American Coast Guard Vessel and been sent to Britain under the lease lend agreement.
Now back in 1942 it was decided in invade North Africa and set up a second front, and HMS Hartland along with another ship were given the job of crashing through the harbour boom and landing the American troops on the jetty in Oran harbour to stop the port installations being destroyed. Now the planners in their wisdom decided that beach landings further down the beach should go ahead some hours before these ships went into Oran Harbour. When they forced the boom and went in to Oran Harbour ever French gun was trained on them and blew them to pieces over 300 American troops on each ship were nearly wiped out and 80% of the ships crew also died. The Captain of the other ship who managed to survive was awarded the VC and was sent home to collect it but his plane was shot down on the way back to Britain and he was also killed.
It was reckoned if these attacks had gone in at the same time as the beach landings it would had been a success, but alas the brains at the time thought this mish mash up.
I do have photographs of the ship as a Coast Guard Vessel, as it look after it had been converted by the RN and what it looked like just before it blew up, but you can't seem to post them on here.

Pictures are in the Gallery go to WW2 then to the Navy section