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OPERATION TORCH: A SOLDIER STORY
NOVEMBER 1942: THE SEA BURNS BEFORE ALGIER
On a storm-tossed night off the coast of North Africa, thousands of American soldiers crowd the decks of an armada stretching to the horizon. Their mission is simple on paper, impossible in land on hostile beaches, seize the ports of Algiers, and begin the long reconquest of Europe.
Sergeant Cole Mitchell leads one of the first landing craft into the fire. A battle-hardened NCO with more scars than medals, he carries the weight of every order he’s ever given that sent a man to his death. Around him stand the men of his squad, ordinary Americans pulled from farms, factories, and city streets. There’s Eddie Rossi, the loud-mouthed Brooklyn gunner who jokes to hide his fear; Ray Donovan, the quiet teacher turned radioman who writes the truth in his journal; and George “Tex” Anders, the sharpshooter who still believes courage and decency can survive a battlefield.
As the U.S. forces land, their first enemy is not the Wehrmacht but the soldiers of Vichy France, fellow Westerners bound by politics and pride to defend an empire already crumbling. The confusion is Americans and French shouting across the surf, bullets flying from men who spoke the same language only two years before. Amid the smoke and chaos, Mitchell must fight not only the defenders on the cliffs but also his own superior officer, the reckless Lieutenant Holloway, whose blind ambition threatens to destroy them all.
From the black surf of Algiers to the burning streets beyond, the men of Mitchell’s squad discover that war is never clean, that victory demands more than courage, and that it can even bring love. It demands the loss of innocence, the death of certainty, and the acceptance that survival itself is the only triumph worth claiming.
WAR OPERATION TORCH plunges the reader into the smoke and fury of Operation Torch, the first American campaign of World War II. Gritty, visceral, and deeply human, it captures the chaos of battle, the bonds between soldiers, and the moment when the tide of history turned toward liberation.
On a storm-tossed night off the coast of North Africa, thousands of American soldiers crowd the decks of an armada stretching to the horizon. Their mission is simple on paper, impossible in land on hostile beaches, seize the ports of Algiers, and begin the long reconquest of Europe.
Sergeant Cole Mitchell leads one of the first landing craft into the fire. A battle-hardened NCO with more scars than medals, he carries the weight of every order he’s ever given that sent a man to his death. Around him stand the men of his squad, ordinary Americans pulled from farms, factories, and city streets. There’s Eddie Rossi, the loud-mouthed Brooklyn gunner who jokes to hide his fear; Ray Donovan, the quiet teacher turned radioman who writes the truth in his journal; and George “Tex” Anders, the sharpshooter who still believes courage and decency can survive a battlefield.
As the U.S. forces land, their first enemy is not the Wehrmacht but the soldiers of Vichy France, fellow Westerners bound by politics and pride to defend an empire already crumbling. The confusion is Americans and French shouting across the surf, bullets flying from men who spoke the same language only two years before. Amid the smoke and chaos, Mitchell must fight not only the defenders on the cliffs but also his own superior officer, the reckless Lieutenant Holloway, whose blind ambition threatens to destroy them all.
From the black surf of Algiers to the burning streets beyond, the men of Mitchell’s squad discover that war is never clean, that victory demands more than courage, and that it can even bring love. It demands the loss of innocence, the death of certainty, and the acceptance that survival itself is the only triumph worth claiming.
WAR OPERATION TORCH plunges the reader into the smoke and fury of Operation Torch, the first American campaign of World War II. Gritty, visceral, and deeply human, it captures the chaos of battle, the bonds between soldiers, and the moment when the tide of history turned toward liberation.
247 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 13, 2025
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