by Tim Brady
In the dark morning on calm seas, the landing craft helmsman steered toward the color-coded beaches and a 5,000-yard seawall, which stood fifty-feet high in some places, built from large stones that dated back to the Etruscans. The Doric columns of Paestum’s Greek temples were not evident from the sea, but a tower, built by the Saracens in the Middle Ages, stood out large and looming in the night sky.
ON THE NORTHERN edge of the British landing site, where the Sorrento Peninsula jutted into the sea, the high road from Salerno to Amalfi had been, according to Baedeker’s, “hewn from the cliffs” in the 1850s and still clung precariously to the mountainsides. The slopes were a mix of barren limestone and terraces growing olive, lemon and other fruit trees. A series of sixteenth century watch towers, built to guard the coast against pirates, had been refurbished as homes in modern times. Amalfi, a town of about 6,000 before the war, had become a tourist destination in the twentieth century, especially for English visitors. Hotels inhabited the high ground above the town, fifteen miles from Salerno and accessible via bus on a high asphalt road.
While Baedeker’s called the road from Salerno to Amalfi “almost unsurpassed for magnificent scenery,” it was less kind in describing the road to Paestum to the south, where Walker’s division was focused. Here, “the coast is flat and monotonous, in a barren and desolate situation.”6 The land that stretched back from the coast south of Salerno, and sweeping back to the foothills of a range of mountains to the east, was actually a plain that held a variety of farms, including grain and tobacco. The Greek temples were a spectacular contrast to the setting; in fact they were the most imposing remnants of Greek architecture remaining on the Italian mainland. In Paestum’s long history, stretching from the centuries before Christ to World War II, the town had been conquered by Romans, Lucanians, and Saracens; it had been ransacked by Normans and destroyed by Frederick II; it had been forgotten and revived in the eighteenth century when its temples were rediscovered. Now, it was to be visited again by force. As Allied troops swept from the southern reaches of Sicily to the north in July, their high commanders had settled on this old and unique site as the location of their next joint attack against the Axis and gave the operation the name “Avalanche.”
Even as the landing began, questions remained both about the choice of Salerno and the idea of invading the mainland of Italy, but momentum quickly built in favor of the assault. The flat beaches south of Salerno were more receptive to landing than those closer to Naples; coastal defenses in the gulf were not as strong as on the Naples side of the Sorrento Peninsula; fighter planes could not only reach Salerno from Sicily but an excellent airfield near the city and close to the coastline would provide for continued operations.
There had also been some questions raised about the commander of the Fifth Army. Mark Clark was perhaps not the best choice. He had Eisenhower’s confidence and had proven to be an excellent staff officer, but had no experience as a field commander. However, the two most obvious picks in the region, Patton and Bradley, were otherwise occupied finishing things up in Sicily. Beside which Patton’s reputation and availability were further muddled in the wake of the two slapping incidents in Sicily.
Clark’s star had risen quickly since the beginning of the war and he had achieved fame early on for a daring visit to North Africa in the days just before the invasion. Clark took a submarine to the shores of Algeria in order to meet with Vichy leaders in the hopes of negotiating some sort of accord with the French in North Africa prior to the invasion. Though the excursion was more colorful than effective, it helped promote Clark’s name as a bold and decisive general—a description that Clark did not shy from. He lobbied hard for the command of the Fifth Army and General Eisenhower, an old friend of Clark’s and with whom Clark had worked as deputy supreme commander in London through the summer and fall, decided to appoint him to that post in December 1942.
But Clark was not universally admired within the world of U.S. Army command. He had trouble disguising a healthy ego and was considered, according to one historian (in a piece defending Clark’s abilities as a general) “a blatant careerist and glory hog, [whose] legion of attackers claim [his] ambition exceeded all bounds. He cared more about public relations and cultivating a heroic image than he did about fighting wars.”7 Clark was vain enough to insist that photographers shoot only his left side, which he thought presented a better profile; “he was cocky to the point of arrogant”; and was referred to by some within the Army as Marcus Aurelius Clarkus.
Walker’s assessment of his commander would be colored by subsequent events, but his diary hints that even before his troubles with Clark began, Walker was not particularly enamored of him. Walker was old school and Clark was a part of a slightly younger generation of Army regulars. Clark was undoubtedly more attuned to the public relations aspect of command than was Walker. He annoyed the commander of the 36th early on by allocating precious space in a tightly packed convoy to a large contingent of journalists. It couldn’t have helped matters that Clark jumped a grade past Walker when he was given his third star in North Africa.
Nonetheless Clark was given overall command of the Salerno invasion, whose Fifth Army forces would include Major General Ernest Dawley’s American VI Corps and the British X Corps. In addition to the British forces under General Richard McCreery, Clark would have Matthew Ridgway’s 82nd Airborne in reserve, Ernest Harmon’s 1st Armored, Lucian Truscott’s 3rd Division, the group of army commandos under Colonel William Orlando Darby who had come to be known as Darby’s Rangers, and three infantry divisions composed primarily of former National Guard units. These were the 34th, the 45th, and Walker’s Texas Division, the 36th, which of the three was the only unit to have yet seen combat.
In addition, Vice-Admiral Kent Hewitt would command more than 600 U.S. Naval vessels, including five aircraft carriers, in support of the invasion.
To the south, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery would lead the British Eighth Army across the strait of Messina to the toe of Italy; from Bizerte in North Africa, another British force would aim directly to the “instep” of the Italian boot at Taranto.
Up the coast of Italy toward Naples, the British divisions would assault the north end of Salerno Bay directed at the Montecorvino Airport and the city of Battipaglia. The left flank of this force was to then curl to the northeast toward Naples and the Vietri Pass.
Walker’s 36th was pointed at Paestum at the south end of the Bay. Once it successfully landed and took the beach, its forces were to advance both north toward Altavilla, and south, where the 36th would secure the right flank of the Allied position against German advance from the toe of Italy.
Separating the Allied forces by nearly five miles, approximately in the middle of their two positions, was the Sele River and its delta, which drained down into the bay from the mountainous interior.
Walker’s plan was to send his 141st and 142nd Regiments onto the beach on D-Day, holding the 143rd in reserve until he could see where it was most needed. The total strength of the 36th was just under 14,000 officers and enlisted men.8
DESPITE THE tower landmark near the Greek temples, looming above the beach, not all units hit their targets in the morning’s darkness. The first battalion of the 141st, to the far right on the assault, missed Blue Beach by about 500 yards to the south. Still the first two waves of the 141st assault came in relatively unscathed and quickly moved inland to about a mile distance. Their arrival, however, soon prompted a fearsome German response, which pinned the 3rd and 4th waves just 400 yards onto the beach.
To the north, the 142nd hit Red and Green beaches but German artillery and machine gun fire sent a few of the landing craft back out to sea, cluttering the waters and slowing their scheduled debarking. Despite opposition, they continued to move inland, heading toward their D-Day destination, Monte Soprano, which loomed as the highest point in the distance beyond the beach and plain.
Elements of the 142nd advanced far enough from the beach to be, like 2nd Battalion
Sergeant Manual Gonzales of Fort Davis, Texas, within striking distance of German artillery. Gonzales single-handedly put one gun crew out of commission with well-placed hand grenades. Another hero from the 142nd, James Logan, ran directly into machine gun fire in order to take out a pair of gunners who’d set up by the ancient wall that ran along the beach. Still fire rained down on the shore.
In fact, the 3rd and 4th waves hit a wall of mortars and bullets. Glenn Clift, a medic from the 111th Battalion attached to the 36th, described the Germans as “throwing the book” at the late arrivals. He described, “Soldiers crouched low in assault boats, planes roaring overhead, shells and machine gun fire raining against the sides and off the ramps of the landing craft.” There were Panzer divisions dug into the high hills beyond the beach pummeling the sand, and blasting those screaming .88 shells overhead.
For all the chaos and violence, Clift heralded the stout response of the T-Patchers: “It sounds fishy and on the tall tale side but one company of our boys hit the beach, tore off their helmets, rolled up their sleeves and charged into Jerry tanks with their rifles and knifes and hand grenades.”9
One lieutenant was just called “Foxhole” because once in North Africa he’d illustrated for the company how to properly get into a foxhole by taking a flying leap from about fifteen feet. According to Clift, Foxhole ran down the beach in heavy gunfire toward a landing craft that had been hit by a shell and was burning about forty yards from the shore. Soldiers immersed in flames were jumping from the open ramp, while others remained trapped inside.
Foxhole cajoled a couple of others to brave withering machine gunfire on the beach and race out to help. The three swam to the craft and saw four soldiers inside: a badly burned major and three enlisted men. The fire in the boat remained hot and getting hotter—so hot that steam started to rise from the wet uniforms of Foxhole and his friend when they climbed onto the boat. They hauled the three wounded infantrymen to the edge of the ramp and went back for the officer, whom they discovered was dead. Just then another shell hit the stern of the craft sending shrapnel clattering around its sides. The major would have to be left behind.
Foxhole and the two others swam the wounded enlisted men to shore with gunfire splashing in the water all around them. They hauled them to the beach and just as they arrived the gas tank on the LCI exploded and the boat they’d just come from was no more.
As the morning progressed, Red Beach was proving more accessible than Green, but landing craft avoiding the shelling, caused a continuing traffic jam on Red. Out in the bay on a destroyer cruising up and down the beach, Don Whitehead reported on the action in both the British and American sectors. The British assault to the north of the Sele River, up near Salerno, was aided by naval fire, but their infantry was met squarely by a Panzer division and batteries of .88-millimeter guns. The blasts between the cruisers at sea and the German shore batteries were relentless.
To the south, the Red and Green beaches in the U.S. sector could have used the same—at least according to the troops on the ground—but command had decided not to shell the area from the sea. As the U.S. Navy continued to ferry troops, tanks, and equipment toward shore, destroyers were cruising back and forth in front of the beaches, trailing black smoke screens behind them to cover the landing craft, while German guns in the hills beyond Salerno pounded the landing areas.
At 5:30 that morning, General Walker with eighteen officers and ten enlisted men, headed toward Red Beach, some twelve miles from the U.S.S. Chase. As he neared land, Walker was irritated to see off to the south a number of landing craft, circling “aimlessly about . . . carrying artillery and tanks that should have been ashore helping infantry. . .”10
These were the boats being driven away by the fire and traffic on Green Beach, and waiting their turn at landing on Red. According to Walker, the German fire on the beach was insufficient to prevent getting that equipment on shore and he blamed the fortitude of the Navy helmsmen charged with getting the troops ashore. His negative impression was further confirmed when he and his companions were unceremoniously deposited in waist-deep water about seventy-five feet from the beach by an operator, who was, Walker wrote sarcastically, “in a great hurry.”11
As Walker waded in, he saw wide, long stretches of sand that were ideal for amphibious assault. “There were no real obstacles, only a few patches of barbed wire here and there . . .” He and his command crossed Red Beach with no difficulty. Immediately they headed inland, walking a mile and a half without seeing any Italians along the way or in the village of Paestum, when they arrived there.
All the homes were tightly closed with curtains drawn and a ghostly absence of citizens. Two abandoned radios in a home were still receiving messages in German, which Walker considered a good sign because it suggested that his troops had surprised their German operators, forcing them to flee in haste.
As he and the others in his group passed the ruined Greek temples, Walker had a feeling that the 36th was desecrating sacred ground. Two of the temples were dedicated to Hera and stood side-by-side in the village; the third, honoring Athena, was some distance away on the highest point of the village. All were constructed in classic Greek style—rectangular, with massive Doric columns framing a structure almost three-quarters of a football field in length. In contrast, a field of bright red tomatoes just beyond, brought him quickly back from the contemplation of antiquity to the reality of his empty stomach; he considered the prospects of using the local fruits as a supplement to the troops’ bitter chocolate bars.
Walker and company met no small arms fire along the way, but from the hills to the east artillery fire thundered down as they moved further inland, slightly wounding one of Walker’s officers. To the southeast, they saw the sun flashing off of moving vehicles that they later learned were German tanks heading to Beaches Yellow and Red to assault the 141st, but there were no direct assaults on their own unit.
When they reached the railroad, which ran north and south beyond the beach, the command team headed north about two miles toward a group of tobacco factory buildings built on a farm that Walker had picked out as a good command post while he was still in Oran and looking over recon photos. The several buildings of the factory were constructed in a circular fashion creating a fort-like perimeter. Open fields surrounded the post, and its largest building was a warehouse that still held racks of drying tobacco leaves.
As they approached, the Italian owner and his family, dressed in their Sunday best and the first locals to appear to them, came out to greet Walker. He welcomed the Americans to his home and farm, and invited them to use both. Walker and his staff immediately began setting up shop and soon were receiving reports from unit commanders and issuing orders. Antitank defenses at the site were incomplete as weapons were still being unloaded from the beaches.
It wasn’t long before they were desperately needed. From one of the towers near the tobacco warehouse, a spotter saw thirteen German tanks racing toward the 143rd, still in reserve down by the beaches. Part of the 151st Field Artillery Battalion had arrived and set up just in time to begin firing at the tanks. Combined with ground fire from the 143rd, the artillery was able to knock out four of the German tanks and thwart the assault.
By noon, the command post was up and running and, though the 141st on the southern reaches of American beaches was still pinned down and Green Beach was still under fire, Red Beach was wide open, and supplies were continuing to arrive on shore. Progress was satisfactory.
Unfortunately radio communication between Walker and the command out in the bay—Admiral Hewitt and Generals Clark and Dawley on the flagship—was sketchy. Clark and Dawley were taking reports from wounded soldiers returning from the fighting to the convoy, and these sounded more desperate than circumstances warranted. The two shipbound generals feared all beaches were being opposed by fierce tank attacks and artillery, and the beachhead itself was in peril. Not satisfied with the information he was receiving, Clark decided to send Dawley ashore to see if he cou
ld find out what was happening.
In fact, by the time Dawley arrived that afternoon, progress was as well as could be expected for D-Day. Though there was still some confusion around Red Beach, where the bulk of the unloading of supplies was happening—just too many craft bunched up in too small an area—unloading continued throughout the afternoon and evening. Walker, out at the tobacco farm was pleased to note that as nighttime came, combat units had pushed to their assigned positions up and down the landing area, forming a perimeter twelve miles long and about four miles deep.
His infantry was not quite so sanguine.
7
Altavilla
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CONVOY sailing toward the beaches surrounding Salerno Bay on D-Day, the individual companies of the 143rd had a moment of elation on the evening of September 8 when word of the Italian capitulation spread around the ship. Shouts of triumph were heard all around, but quickly died down with the realization that the 36th was still going ashore to fight Germans. They were ordered to bed down on the decks, in order to have quick access to the boats next morning. Not many slept soundly.
Riley Tidwell, going in with Captain Henry Waskow and Company B in the third of four waves, had been excited, like so many others, at the surrender announcement. He thought “it might be an easy deal” with just the Germans defending the beaches. Tidwell was equally thrilled to find that his landing craft was piloted by former light-heavyweight boxing champ Lou Jenkins. Jenkins was a Texas boy who had held the boxing crown for little more than a year back in the late ’30s, much to the delight of other Texas boys like Riley Tidwell. Jenkins had lost the title after getting injured in a drunken motorcycle accident in New Jersey, followed by festering problems with booze and an acrimonious divorce.
After climbing over the side of the transport and roping down to the landing craft, Tidwell, Waskow and the rest of Company B were motored onto Red Beach near Paestum by Jenkins, and dropped off with little trouble. They headed east of the village, further inland, and made quick progress until they reached the highway.1