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trained and ready to fight. “I now have a really intensive faith in the First Division. They are 1,000 percent better than they were…. They are young but are hard and fit. Please remember that I am thinking of you and Sonny all the time.” He swung a leg over the side of the Reina del Pacifico and with a gymnast’s grace scrambled down the net to the waiting boat below. Chaos awaited him on the beaches near Arzew. An unanticipated westerly set had pushed the transports and landing craft off course. Dozens of confused coxswains tacked up and down the coast in the dark, looking for the right beaches. Most of the soldiers carried more than 100 pounds of equipment; one likened himself to a medieval knight in armor who had to be winched into the saddle. Once ashore, feeling the effect of weeks aboard ship with a poor diet and little exercise, they staggered into the dunes, shedding gas capes, goggles, wool undershirts, and grenades. Landing craft stranded by an ebb tide so jammed the beaches that bulldozers had to push them off, ruining their propellers and rudders. The flat-bottomed oil tankers that were supposed to haul light tanks onto the beach instead ran aground 300 feet from shore; engineers spent hours building a causeway through the surf.
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