A Death in San Pietro

by Tim Brady

  COMPANY I of the 143rd, the Belton boys, including Henry Waskow’s brother, August, was roused at 2:00 a.m. on the U.S.S. Stanton and served a breakfast of navy beans. Then it was over the side for their brief ride to Italy’s shoreline. Jack White, the son of the local photographer in Belton, was in a landing craft that got lost on its way to shore. It ended up arriving in the fourth, rather than the third wave, and daylight had arrived by the time White and the others hit the beach.

  Company I was also near Paestum and White’s platoon made a run toward the town, across the sand and barbed wire entanglements. White was a communication sergeant, so his first duty was to find out where the various platoons in I company were located. Amid the chaos of battle, he remained focused on his work, and it felt strangely like he was in the midst of another one of those Cape Cod maneuvers, except for the surreal fact that there were dead and wounded all around him.2

  By noon, the unit was organized, and ordered to move toward the hills and the village of Cappaccio, where it settled in for the night with Company L of the 143rd, digging foxholes and dining on K and D rations—the latter, simply those dark chocolate candy bars. The next morning they rose to word that German tanks were descending upon Cappaccio, so the company was ordered by its Captain, Bill Yates of Temple, Texas, to quickly set up outside of town to the east. The threat turned out to be seven armored cars, rather than tanks and three of them were quickly knocked out of action, while the four others surrendered. White was deeply impressed by the abilities of a company bazooka, which blew one of the cars into pieces with a single shot.

  BY LATE in the day, Monte Soprano, the peak that rose high above the landing area, had been taken by the 142nd.

  On D-Day plus 1, the supporting 3rd Battalion of the 143rd, which included Company I, with Yates, White, and August Waskow, relieved the 142nd. Elsewhere along the American line, portions of the 45th Division arrived early that morning and were sent north of the Sele River to shore up the U.S. left flank near the British, who had taken Salerno to the northeast but were otherwise having trouble rooting out German troops near the city of Battipaglia. More tank and tank destroyer battalions also came ashore along with antiaircraft defenses to further boost defenses on the beach.

  Accompanying this equipment were Generals Clark and Dawley, who came on shore to judge how the 36th was progressing. Clark annoyed Walker by giving Hawley command of the just-arrived 45th on the left flank. It was a change in leadership that had never been discussed in the planning of the operation. During those talks, Walker had been assigned sole command for all troops south of the Sele. He now sensed that Clark was still nervous about the state of the beachhead, as he had been the day before in the early hours of the invasion. It was hardly a vote of confidence for his command.3

  Nonetheless, Walker was pleased with the current situation at his post, and continued to solidify the American presence there through the course of the day. German troops south of Monte Soprano had vacated their position when that hill was taken by the 142nd, which alleviated a great deal of pressure on the beachheads. Artillery and machine gun fire were now absent from the shore, allowing Walker, still at the tobacco farm, to focus his attention on the ground north of Monte Soprano toward the area where the Sele and Calore Rivers forked. He felt comfortable enough with his situation at the end of the day on the 10th to begin planning his strike at the hills to the east of the tobacco warehouse, around the village of Altavilla where the battle would quickly grow more fierce.

  Altavilla, rested near the middle of a 424-meter high hill whose summit had a panoramic view of both Salerno Bay to the west and the Sele River to the north. Altavilla, which was also called Silentina to distinguish it from the four other villages in Italy called Altavilla, was another ancient town whose history stretched back to antiquity. The Roman General Pompey was said to have put down the last of the slave revolt led by Spartacus near Altavilla around 71 B.C. Though it was ravaged and abandoned in later times, the Normans came through the area in the eleventh century and built the foundations of the modern town. Franciscan monks constructed the dominant structure in the village, a convent, in the fifteenth century; the villagers themselves had renamed the community in the nineteenth century by combining the names of the Sele River and another stream in the area, the Alento. Its name would be remembered by the young Texans ordered to take it on the morning of Saturday, September 11, for reasons other than its history. But initially, to the 1st Battalion of the 142nd, it was simply a collection of old buildings with too many windows, too many doors, too many blind alleys and rooftops.

  In their first visit that morning, they felt their way through Altavilla gingerly and without a fight, emerging on the other side of town about halfway up Hill 424.

  There, Companies A, B, and C of the 142nd were separated and placed above Altavilla to protect the battalions left and right flanks, and its center. An uneasy calm followed. Hill 424, like so many other mountains and heights in south central Italy, as the Allies would soon discover, was full of ridges and ravines, which, in turn, were full of Germans.

  The first patrols of Americans and Germans ran into each other as they were feeling their way around the hill at about 2 a.m. the next morning, and firefights broke out all around. The 1st Battalion of the 142nd was in a vulnerable position particularly on its left flank, which couldn’t seem to find any elements of Dawley’s newly assigned 45th Division to hook up with (it would turn out that they were quite some distance away). Both Company B and Company A of the 142nd faced heavy mortar and small arms fire from German patrols all through the morning.

  With daylight, the German artillery opened up on their positions as well. The fire got hot and communications between both companies and headquarters at the foot of the hill were lost. By noon, Company C on the right flank was also in trouble, pinned down by a German counterattack. When command was finally able to reach its units, Companies A and B were ordered back down the hill, taking a rightward shift as the they moved, in order to shore up Company C.

  Company B, on the far left, tried to head back to Altavilla on its way to Company C, but couldn’t break free from the Germans. Meanwhile, the 1st Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gaines Barron, had moved forward to help direct Company A toward its new position. Except they were not where he thought they were and Barron walked right into German lines and was captured.

  When word of Barron’s capture reached, second-in-command, Major William Mobley, Mobley ordered the battalion command post to pull back to Altavilla. By evening on September 11, they were joined there by scattered elements of all three companies that had headed out that morning, everyone now badly bruised and hurting.

  GERMAN FORCES continued to pound the remnants of the 142nd the next morning, which was when the 3rd Battalion of the 143rd was called in for support. Companies I, K, and L, under the command of Colonel William Martin, spent most of the day moving several miles north from Monte Soprano to a position that took them around Altavilla to the northwest foot of Hill 424. By the end of the day, they were in position to attack the summit.

  Companies I and L were chosen to lead the assault, with Company K and Heavy Weapons Company M, in reserve. At 3 a.m. the two companies moved out, with Captain Bill Yates’s Company I on the left flank, and Company L on the right. In a couple of hours of slow climbing, as well as moving east toward the village, they finally neared Altavilla (on the right) and the summit of Hill 424 (on the left).

  Suddenly deadly German .88 shells, the “screaming meemies,” started to rain down on top of them. For two hours, the enemy blasted both the town of Altavilla and the surrounding hillside, arcing fire back and forth between targets like a deadly lawn sprinkler.

  Jack White, up on the hillside, caught a fragment of a shell around 11 a.m. He felt a searing pain in his lower leg, fell to the ground, and saw a shattered left ankle. Five other members of the company were hit in the same blast. There were no medics nearby, so White crawled down the side of Hill 424 into the town of
Altavilla and finally found someone to help. By this time, however, the village was cutoff from the rest of the American force, so no ambulances were there to evacuate the wounded. He was given what comfort the medic could supply and taken to shelter in one of the ubiquitous ravines outside the town.4

  Meanwhile, near Altavilla, Company L on the right flank decided it needed more protection from Germans positioned on a smaller, unnumbered hill just beyond Altavilla to the east. The company proceeded over the hill, but in the process were hit hard from a draw to its left, where a German machine gun was wreaking havoc over the field. Lieutenant John Morrissey was dispatched with three infantrymen, including Private 1st Class Charles Kelly of Pittsburgh to clear the area.

  The four ran into a snakepit of Germans down in the ravine. Over seventy enemy soldiers swarmed around the gun and then around Morissey and his men as they worked their way down the landscape. Kelly, armed with a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), was able to knock the machine gun out along with its crew. He immediately redirected fire at an advancing German platoon, emptying a full magazine in its direction. His companions, meanwhile, covered him with fire from a second BAR and a .30 caliber machine gun that Morissey fired from the hip as Kelly reloaded. Again Kelly opened up and more Germans died. Finally, with a break from the German assault, the four members of Company L retreated back to their unit and arrived there unscathed.5

  Over on the left flank, Company I was in the midst of a harrowing back-and-forth battle. Just as the battalion was preparing to push up to the summit of Hill 424—I on the left, L on the right, with K down in Altavilla in reserve—it was hit by an attack from the Germans. Beginning at five o’clock and continuing until darkness, at least five assaults were brought against I and L. The first of these came so close to overrunning the 143rd that the field commander ordered bayonets drawn. Captain Yates of Company I, who’d been down at Altavilla at the start of the assaults returned to find his command in dire straits. The Germans were less than a hundred yards away on the rocky, hilly ground, and their relentless attacks were not only filling the space with dead Germans, but his own command was fast being depleted.

  The left flank of Company I was under particularly severe attack, and it was here that Sergeant August Waskow was positioned. Early in the evening the Germans rounded the unit’s left and began attacking Waskow’s post. Fire was now coming simultaneously from both front and rear. In the midst of this ground fire, a mortar suddenly burst right in front of him and all went dark for Waskow.

  On and on went the fight around him, with the Germans continuing to charge down from the crest of 424, and Companies I and L continuing to battle back. The American position was overrun and retaken, overrun again, and retaken again. August Waskow lay helpless on the field and now Captain Yates was out of commission, too, with a wound to the arm.6 As night came, the Germans fired flares to the front and back of the 3rd Battalion’s sector, framing the American troops in a deadly halo. Phone lines between the battalion and the regimental command down below the hillsides were cut, too. In the dark, German forces moved to surround the entirety of the 3rd. Word finally got to the battalion from headquarters that it should evacuate its position, but it was too late. As dawn came, so came the knowledge that Companies I and L had Germans all around them.

  Through the course of the day, the men of Companies I and L valiantly maintained their positions. Some members of the two units were also now down in Altavilla, where they were engaged in street fighting with the Germans. Among these was Private Kelly, adrenalin still pumping from his earlier heroics. He now found himself ensconced with a group of T-Patchers on the top floor of a three-story terracotta home surrounded by Germans. The unit had Kelly’s BAR, a bazooka, a .37 mm anti-tank gun, hand grenades and mortars. They employed all of them in their defense, including the mortars, which Kelly armed and implemented by removing the pins and dropping them nose down from his upper story balcony, right on top of advancing Germans.7

  As darkness inched up the side of the hill, Captain Bowden of Company L and Lieutenant Langdon, who’d replaced the wounded Cpt. Yates in command of Company I, tried to lead their men out of the trap. The results were mixed: Bowden was able to get 44 soldiers off the hill; Langdon got separated from his men and ended up wending his way down the hill by himself.

  Others made the same sort of escape, singly or in small groups. In all 20 officers and 536 enlisted men got back to battalion command; but trapped on the hill were scores more from the 3rd Battalion of the 143rd, including the wounded Belton men, Jack White, August Waskow, Bill Yates, as well as, Lieutenant Ray Goad, one of the twin football playing guards from Temple, Texas, and Captain Alfred Laughlin, another Company I officer, who was now part of the battalion command. Laughlin, like Waskow, was critically wounded.

  As their fellow T-Patchers escaped Hill 424 and Altavilla, those too injured to move were left behind for their captors, and were soon carted away to a German aid station. For those men, prisoner of war camps loomed.

  THE PLIGHT of the 3rd Battalion was not the only critical matter on the Salerno beachhead the morning of September 14. Simultaneous to the dispatch of the 3rd to Altavilla, the 2nd Battalion of the 143rd, had been ordered to an equally vulnerable position on the far left flank of the American lines, between the Sele and Calore Rivers. The battalion was supposed to hook up with British troops to the north, connecting the two Allied lines, but in fact, the Brits weren’t there and a five-mile gap existed between the two elements of the Fifth Army. German Panzers were quick to exploit the hole. The nearest American troops to the 2nd Battalion were the 3rd Battalion of the 143rd, who, as August Waskow and many others could attest, were otherwise occupied.

  Late in the afternoon of September 13, the 2nd Battalion’s left flank was caved in by German tanks. Though the Texans fought gallantly, they didn’t have a chance and were soon surrounded by the enemy troops. Just nine officers and 325 enlisted men of the battalion’s near 900-strong were able to make it out of the fork between the two rivers. The rest were now POWs.

  Counting heads that night was a desperate matter. The 142nd’s 2nd Battalion had been gravely depleted by fighting at Altavilla on September 12; the 143rd’s 3rd Battalion now needed rescuing on Hill 424; and the regiment’s 2nd Battalion had largely been killed, captured or wounded. To use a naval euphemism, it was now time for all hands on deck to protect the Salerno beachhead and keep the 36th from being pushed all the way back to the ocean.

  General Walker ordered a quick reorganization of defenses: he split the division front into three sectors and gave command of each to a brigadier general. Assigned to each area was a mix of units, including cannon and antitank battalions; tank and engineer companies; as well as infantry battalions left over from the 141st and 142nd. Two parachute units from the 504th Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, were also dropped in that night to land on the sandy beaches of Salerno, bolster defenses, and help in counterattacks.

  Early in the afternoon, the Germans attacked on the north (left) flank of the division near the Calore River and were halted. Near Altavilla, later that afternoon, about thirty Panzer tanks were likewise thwarted by a pair of field artillery battalions. The battle had not quite turned, but the U.S. Army was holding.

  In the midst of the action, Walker was again annoyed by General Clark, who arrived at Walker’s command post at 2 p.m. to chide Walker about the performance of his division, most particularly the 143rd’s 2nd and 3rd battalions. Walker, who felt he was fed bad information about 2nd Battalion’s position by command (specifically, Ernest Dawley), held his tongue about that matter. He also held it about the lack of initiative on Dawley and the 45th’s part in trying to link up with the 36th from the left. In other words, not only did he not tell Walker about the gap, he failed to do anything himself to close it.

  Walker, who never seemed to doubt that the Allied beachhead would stiffen despite these troubles, was further irritated that afternoon when he received a follow-up note from Clark with what
Walker considered to be melodramatic language to the effect: “There must be no retreat” and “Not one foot of ground is to be given up.”

  In addition, Walker was forced to expend an infantry battalion and a tank destroyer unit to the villa serving as Clarks’ Fifth Army Headquarters. In Walker’s estimation the estate was unnecessarily close to the frontlines, thus prompting the headquarter’s request for the defensive units. Clark’s staff had chosen it, according to Walker, because it was the finest villa in the area, one befitting Clark’s command.

  Despite these squabbles, the 36th, with the assistance of the 45th Division on the left flank, and the airborne troops now fighting near Altavilla, was pushing back. The 45th had moved into the triangular area between the Sele and Calore Rivers where the 2nd Battalion of the 143rd had been trapped two days earlier. Near Altavilla and Hill 424, after some very tough fighting, the 504th paratroopers finally began to turn the tide of battle. Though Walker was frustrated a number of times by the lack of air support, the U.S. Navy supplied effective assistance to the assaults, essentially leveling the village of Altavilla in the process. And from the south, elements of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army were making their way into the area from the boot of Italy. By Saturday morning, September 18, the Germans had withdrawn from the front.

  With more allies coming onto shore by the hour, the British Eighth Army moving in, and facing continued air, artillery and naval superiority, the jig was up for the Germans. Some would later suggest that their hour for victory had passed when they failed to deliver a knockout blow to the Allies when they’d overrun the 2nd Battalion of the 143rd near the confluence of the Sele and Calore Rivers. General Walker would later regret sending in 2nd Battalion into an area as fraught with danger as that one, but would also add that the 36th was never in danger of losing the field.8 It was all a moot point a few days later, when, according to a veteran of the 16th Panzer Division, “the decimated and fatigued forces [on the German side had] no further hope . . . of forcing the enemy into the sea.”9