Episode 9 - “Sea and Sand”

Summary

This program's focus is North Africa and the Allies’ “Operation Torch” invasion of November 1942. EP9 opens, however, with some useful scene-setting, as Russia has suffered Germany's wrath since mid-1941. Some “Russian” Bennett music [A] is first heard here, though composed for the already-completed EP11: “Hitler is on the brink of doing what Napoleon failed to do—conquer Russia… . Russia reels and calls on her allies for help. ‘Open a second front!’ cry the Russians, hoping to divert the German divisions at the gates of Leningrad, of Moscow, of Sevastopol, of Stalingrad. The German guns keep pounding.”

The pounding of the guns is heard after 1:35 [B]. This prologue is followed by the principal Allied leaders’ June 1942 Washington conference, shown at 2:21 [C]: “Roosevelt and Churchill must strike. But where? How? The statesmen of democracy ponder the issues and decide: invasion … a second front. The orders go out to America, to England; the trans-Atlantic planning begins. Target: top secret.”

At 3:00 Eisenhower, in overall command, confers with staff in planning the Anglo-American offensive. Operation Torch consisted of landings on (a) Morocco's western coast at Safi and Fedala, near Mehedia and Casablanca (Mohammedia today), and (b) east of Gibraltar, at Oran and Algiers. For the former, Casablanca was the overall objective, and for simplicity EP9 references “Casablanca.” It was the more familiar locale to early Victory viewers thanks to 1942's headlines and the Bogart-Bergman film—whose release soon after the Torch landings became Warner Brothers’ fine stroke of fortune.

EP9's footage of men and supplies converging on British ports is set to a new A-flat major march, beginning at 3:13 [D]. We see materiel destined for the invasion's beaches, and then at 3:24 British troops assembling for departure. There's a charming Bennett touch during his march's second strain [E], which begins at 3:44. One British point of embarkation being Southampton, the final four measures [F], 4:08–4:16, are from the 1917 popular song “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” sentimentally recalling that Southampton church and its carillon.

The march's third strain [G] at 4:16 is in the customary subdominant, D flat, and we’re taken across the Atlantic again to visit American departure ports at Norfolk and Portland, “the crystal sands of Virginia, the granite rocks of Maine.”