By noon, Toffey had his naval gunfire control party set up on the hill with telephone wire strung back to the coast along a hastily constructed road. Naval fire was soon being directed onto the airfield, and the 60th Field Artillery Battalion was getting its heavier equipment atop nearby Hill 74. As midnight approached, scouting parties reported that the bridge leading into Port Lyautey from the north was heavily defended and mined.

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Meanwhile, the first day on the beach was not proving to be the walkover the 2nd Battalion had hoped it would be. Facing Moroccan tirailleurs (skirmishers) and French Foreign Legionnaires, the battalion’s mission was to take the Casbah before its occupants had time to rally a defense. Unfortunately, the French were waiting for them. After a naval barrage on the old fort forced Dilley’s green troops to retreat, the Go-Devils divided into two companies. Company F crossed a lagoon to its front in rubber boats while Company E plowed through barbed-wire-entangled thickets to regroup on the far side. Through binoculars, Dilley could only see a few defenders about the lighthouse, and he ordered an attack.

Hand-to-hand fighting brought the men over the trench system until, coming under heavy automatic-weapons fire, they slowed to a halt. Then, Lieutenant Charles Dushane, Corporal Frank L. Czar and Private Theodore R. Bratkowitz rose up and ran for the lighthouse. They made it inside, and after some shooting, emerged safely with 12 prisoners.

Pressing their advantage, the Americans attacked again, only to run into stiff resistance from the tank-supported Moroccan 1st Infantry Division. Again it was Dushane and Czar who sprang into action, this time firing an abandoned French anti-tank gun at the enemy. Although their heroic stand slowed the enemy by knocking out two of its tanks, Dushane was killed and Czar was forced to retreat along with the rest of Dilley’s command as communications broke down. Near the end of November 8, fighting still raged in the village just below the wall of the Casbash.

Farther south, the roadblocks established earlier in the morning by the 1st Battalion were overrun by French tanks, endangering the whole of Sub-Task Force Goalpost. After encountering stiff initial resistance, McCarley and the rest of his battalion had managed to move inland before being stopped again by hidden machine guns. Before the day was over, Truscott had arrived on the scene and ordered McCarley to keep moving through the night to link up with the 2nd Battalion for the final assault on Port Lyautey.

The first night ashore ended with the situation still in doubt. Contact had not been established with the 3rd Battalion, Dilley’s men had failed to seize the Casbah, the airfield was still denied to Allied planes, the southern flank was extremely vulnerable, and ship-to-shore communications were out. Rain began to fall that night as Truscott sat on the beach, feeling that the operation was slipping completely out of his control. He broke his own rule and lit a cigarette, then watched as dozens more followed his example all along the darkened beach.

On the morning of November 9, the most pressing problem for Goalpost was its weak southern flank. Truscott ordered Lt. Col. Harry H. Semmes to take the seven tanks of his 3rd Armored Landing Team that had made it to shore so far and have them block the Rabat-Port Lyautey road as soon as possible. Leaving word for the rest of his command to follow as soon as they could, Semmes leaped aboard his tank and trundled off, arriving in position just before dawn. Almost immediately, he was forced to beat back a determined infantry attack from some nearby woods. When the French infantry returned, they were accompanied by 15 or so Renault tanks of the 1er Regiment de Chasseur d’Afrique.

With tank-to-tank communication inoperative and with their gunsights unadjusted, the Americans retreated behind a low rise and opened fire. Protected by their heavier armor, Semmes’ tanks had the better of the inferior French tanks and destroyed four (two of them by Semmes himself) while inflicting heavy losses on the accompanying infantry.

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