agreement there did not apply to other areas. French headquarters in Oran agreed to a separate cease-fire only at 1215 on 10 November. At Casablanca, however, the French did not send out a cease-fire order until 1910 on the 10th, and sniper fire continued for days after. The successful end to Torch brought much relief to Washington and London but left American and British commanders suspicious about the potential of the French as battlefield allies.
Analysis
Operation Torch gave the Allies substantial beachheads in North Africa at rather modest cost, considering the size of forces committed. One hundred twenty-five thousand soldiers, sailors, and airmen participated in the operation, 82,600 of them U.S. Army personnel. Ninety-six percent of the 1,469 casualties were American, with the Army losing 526 killed, 837 wounded, and 41 missing. Casualties varied considerably among the three task forces. Eastern Task Force lost the fewest Americans killed in action, 108, Western Task Force, with four times as many American troops, lost 142 killed; Center Task Force lost almost twice as many killed, 276. But without the British-sponsored Reservist disaster at Oran, the Center Task Force killed-in-action total would have been in the same range as that of the other task forces.
On the Moroccan and Algerian coasts the United States Army executed operations for which its history offered no preparation: large-scale amphibious landings under hostile fire. While those operations ended in victory, any evaluation of U.S. Army performance must allow for the generally inept resistance offered by French and colonial forces. Only isolated artillery batteries and infantry units proved formidable; a better-equipped and more determined opponent could have
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