A Death in San Pietro

by Tim Brady

  Walker set up his command post near four caves, which served as sleeping quarters for him and his staff. He entertained Clark and Major General Geoffrey Keyes soon after his division was in place, and again on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Keyes was the commander of the Army’s II Corps, to which the 36th had just been reassigned. Both he and Clark, feeling pressures of their own from higher command, were anxious for Walker to prep his troops for the coming assault against the German line. Walker described them as “having ants in their pants” and was perturbed when Clark labeled Walker’s division as “fresh,” as if discounting the difficulties they encountered moving into the position and its hard fighting at Salerno.1

  Walker’s division was arrayed across a five-mile front. On the left, the 142nd was aimed at Mt. Camino and Mt. La Difensa, with an ultimate goal of sweeping beyond these first two mountains (both were more than 3,000 feet high) to Mt. Maggiore. Joining them in the attack on La Difensa was First Special Service Force, a joint Canadian-American outfit composed to a large extent of ex-lumbermen from the Canadian Rockies and Pacific Northwest, who had been specially trained in mountain warfare. As in the early November operation overseen by Truscott, the British—now in the form of 56th Division—would occupy the far left and again try to sweep around Camino.

  The 141st’s 1st and 2nd battalions were positioned on hills opposite one another: Mt. Lungo on the left, and Mt. Rotondo on the right. Smack dab between them was Via Latina. Lungo was still only partially occupied by the 36th and troops positioned in its southeast corner received a great deal of attention from enemy mortar and artillery fire because the mountain, unlike the brush-covered Rontodo, was a barren pile of rocks.

  Camino, still occupied by the Germans, was to the southwest of Lungo and Rotondo, and gunners lobbed their shells and mortars at the 141st as it clung to the hillsides. To the north across the valley stood San Pietro and Mt Sammucro. Here, too, German artillery spotters were kept busy eyeing the activities across the valley and pointing gunners toward their targets.

  On the far right of the 36th’s position, the 143rd shared Rotondo with the 141st and occupied Mt. Cannavinelle on the distant right flank as well. No roads accessed Cannavinelle. The 143rd arrived there in the dark of night on November 15, with the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the regiment immediately moving out to relieve 3rd Infantry troops.

  Lee Fletcher, a Bazooka man in Company I, recalled being driven as close as possible to the mountains above the Liri Valley from the bivouac northeast of Naples. There was still a far distance to go when they were dropped off. The trail up was narrow, slippery, rocky and incredibly steep, and made all the more arduous by the persistent rain, the fact that he was lugging a Bazooka, and that all this movement had to be done at night to avoid German shelling. It took two days just to get into position, in part due to the fact that daylight hours had to be spent hidden among the brush and vines that covered the hillsides. They finally reached the site vacated by the 3rd and occupied their foxholes. In the continuing rain, the holes quickly became muddy bathtubs.2

  Mt. Cannavinelle overlooked the Liri Valley. About a mile across the valley to the northeast sat the tallest of the peaks in the area, Sammucro. Nestled into its side just above the valley floor was San Pietro, surrounded by terraced groves of olive trees. Down the road a few miles to the right of the 143rd was the village of Venafro.

  Cannavinelle had been taken earlier by the 3rd Infantry in hard fighting and bodies of both Germans and Americans still littered the site. The nastiness of the battle was indicated by the continuing presence of some German corpses, who were garotted with piano wire strung around the necks.3 Fletcher saw a mule on top of the mountain that had been wounded by artillery fire. Still living, its bladder extruded from its body and hung almost to the ground. A bullet from one of the 143rd GIs put the animal out of its misery.

  The 36th outposts stretched along the ridgelines above the valley and from these positions forward artillery observers would spy German posts across the way, and phone them back to the gunners behind the lines. German spotters were doing the same. On both sides, the shells would crash down with the rain, severing the signal corps phone lines, which would then need to be replaced, prompting a flurry of movement, which would then prompt more shelling.

  The absence of roads at the 143rd’s position on Mt. Cannavinelle required a supply point be established at the terminus of the nearest highway. From there, 270 men and a pack of 30 mules were continuously employed in the process of hauling supplies up a treacherous mountain slope to the battalion position on top of the mountain. Every day, water, rations, clothing replacement, ammunition, and communication wiring was carried up a trail so rough and rock-strewn that according to after-action reports, a good pair of shoes could stand just three trips before falling apart.4

  Meanwhile, the troops on top of the hill sent patrols out into the valley toward San Pietro, as well as up Mt. Sammucro, to gather as much information as they could about German positions and strength. Information about mines, observations posts, artillery positions and enemy installations, including command and supply posts, was collected. Company E from the 2nd Battalion got all the way to a stone house right next to the village and captured a German machine gun crew who provided valuable information about specific German army units fighting in the area.

  German artillery fire was the gravest hazard to the 36th. Death could come in an instant and without warning. Company B, which initially had been stationed in reserve, had not been hit by any of the German shells until the morning of November 19. About 10 a.m., Jack Gordon, Hubert Ingram, and Jack Berry were talking about the coming holidays and how they used to spend them back in Texas. Gordon was showing off a new watch he had gotten from back home for Christmas. Ingram moved on to an errand down the hill from the Company’s post. He was just on his way back when he heard a shell whistle overhead and land right in the midst of Company B. He rushed back toward his friends and saw immediately that someone had been hit. It turned out to be Gordon, the thirty-year-old former CCC man, who had found a job in the Mexia textile mill just prior to being called up to serve.

  Ingram wound up writing the letter back to Gordon’s mother, informing her of his death. He told her that Jack had a lot of friends in the company and elsewhere in the 36th. He wrote that her son had lasted about three minutes after the blast and that it had not been a horrible death. Ingram hoped that she received the watch that had been Jack’s early Christmas present. He had seen someone from the mortuary team pack it up to send home with his other personal effects.5

  It turned out that Jack had already written a letter home, in which he thanked his mother for the watch, and tucked $100 in the envelope for her to get presents for everyone in the family.6

  When Company B moved from reserve to the top of ridge, it began the process of sending out nighttime rifle patrols, probing the valley and base of Sammucro in preparation for the move against the Germans. The bare hillsides above the tree line made the patrols obvious targets for German mortars and small arms fire. Bennett Palmer, the replacement infantryman from upstate New York, got his baptism of fire on these sortees. Years later, his fears were still vivid and he recalled shooting at anything that moved on those hillsides.

  Palmer also recalled the freezing cold and snow on top of the mountains. He noted the sound of his own chattering teeth as it mixed with explosions from the incessant mortar and artillery fire.7 Conditions were so awful up on the hilltops, that frequent relief was necessary and units would only spend a few days at a time up on the ridges before they were relieved and could go back down the hills. Unfortunately, the relief camps down below didn’t provide much in the way of comforts; if the ridges were freezing cold and snowy, the valleys were damp, chilly and thick with mud.

  Wet boots, never able to get completely dry, caused an outbreak of trench foot among the troops. The condition, which got its name during World War I because it was so prevalent in the sodden trenches of France, basically rots th
e feet. Left untreated, numbness from poor circulation is compounded by blisters, sores and fungal infections until necrosis settles in.

  Riley Tidwell contracted the malady soon after arriving on the mountain and it would remain with him for much of the winter. The misery of the wet foxholes dominated Tidwell’s recollections of the hilltop. The German artillery seemed to quickly zero in on the battalion’s feeding schedule. With uncanny timing, the Germans shelled every time members of Company B rose from their wet foxholes to get something to eat. He also recalled eating Thanksgiving dinner while gazing out over a field still littered with dead Germans.

  The rain was a constant, which made Tidwell and others grateful for the gas cakes. These were the gas masks issued to each of the infantrymen. Packaged in neat little cake-shaped squares, which gave them their nickname, they were never used except in the foxholes during the rain. In their misery, the guys learned they made good rain gear. By putting the masks over their faces, they could lean back against their packs in the foxholes, and look up into the sky, protected from the ever-present dripping sky—actually get some rest.8

  For Thanksgiving, General Walker made certain that each man in the division was offered a turkey dinner, making sure cold storage was provided for the meals of those stuck on the frontlines until they were relieved and came down off the mountain. One soldier from the 142nd 1st Battalion was not assuaged by this measure. He recalled shivering in the rain on the top of Mt. Difensa on Thanksgiving Day, 1943. He and his comrades had been told about the turkey dinner and were expecting its arrival all day. From their position, they marked the progress of their meals through the course of the day, first watching as a mule train set out from a supply dump down in the valley and made its way halfway up the mountain. Then the dinner was transferred to the backs of company “mules”—infantrymen drafted into hauling where the mules could not go. With mouths watering, the men at the top of Difensa watched their turkey and stuffing slowly hauled up rope ladders on the backs of their fellow soldiers. Finally it arrived! The packets were unburdened and quickly opened: inside were gallon cans of chili con carne and the promise that their real Thanksgiving dinner awaited them down below. “It was many years before I developed a taste for chili con carne,” said Alban Reid.9

  15

  Observers

  PHOTOGRAPHER MARGARET BOURKE WHITE visited the 36th on that same Thanksgiving. None of the GI’s knew for sure who she was, but the officers seemed to accept that she was someone important and made sure she was treated with deference. They gave her use of a pigsty as a restroom because there were no other enclosed buildings at the supply dump where they were congregated and she needed privacy. No one said anything about the fact that the sty was otherwise used as a gathering place for the battalion. Later, she went up in one of the planes spotting German positions for the artillery and took some great panoramic shots of the Liri Valley.1, 2

  A few days after Thanksgiving, General Walker entertained a whole slew of reporters, who were joining the 36th for the upcoming campaign. As with the infantry, the press corps had been delayed by the terrain. They poured into the region. A war that had previously been spread out over pretty wide fronts had narrowed to the limited territory fronted by the 36th. So Walker, not nearly as comfortable with the press as his Army commander, “Marcus Clarkus,” now found himself answering questions from the cream of the correspondent crop. Robert Capa was back with the 36th, along with John Lardner of Newsweek, H. R. Knickerbocker of the Chicago Sun, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, Don Whitehead of Associated Press, and several others. The news people shuttled back and forth between the front and Allied headquarters at the palace in Caserta, where press offices were established and rooms—like Ernie Pyle’s—were made available. There was also much to do and see in Naples, which is where John Huston had taken up quarters when he first arrived in Italy by way of Marrakesh.

  HUSTON AND AMBLER had picked up a third filmmaker, Jules Buck, an old Hollywood production hand now in the Signal Corps, who Huston had asked for from London. Frank Capra had worked through Signal Corps command to see that Buck was assigned to Huston on the project, and Huston and Ambler met him in Morocco. With Huston wearing a pair of smoked aviator glasses that he’d acquired filming with the Army Air Corps on the Aleutian Islands, the trio flew first to Algiers, and then, after some delays getting a flight, on to Italy, where despite the rain, Huston continued to wear his dark glasses. He started to annoy Ambler in the process, who saw a touch of pretension in the look.3

  Naples’ port was still devastated and non-functioning. Cigarettes were the primary medium of exchange and packs of rats appeared in the streets, defiantly waiting to be shooed away. “The men and women of Naples,” wrote Huston, “were a bereft, starving, desperate people who do absolutely anything to survive.” He described Naples as looking “like a whore suffering the beating of a brute . . .”4 Little boys offered their sisters and mothers for sale, he claimed. Typhus was everywhere and cholera was anticipated.

  Yet at the same time, USO shows were taking place in city theaters to entertain the troops, including an Irving Berlin show at a downtown Naples theater, and allied troops, away from the frontlines, crowded the streets. Huston, upon arriving in the city, soon hooked up with his old friend, Robert Capa, for a bit of carousing before settling into his assignment.

  Huston and company soon arrived at Allied headquarters in Caserta, where they reported to Colonel Melvin Gillette, commander of the Fifth Army Signal Corps photographic section. Gillette had arrived in Italy in late September and immediately set to work getting Signal Corps crews out into the field. Like Huston, Gillette had been given the War Department assignment to produce “first-rate pictures . . . to give the American people a visual accounting of the accomplishments of our soldiers overseas.” It was his unit that was supposed to illustrate “the dangers and grimness of war.”5 And it was Gillette who had asked the War Department in Washington to send “qualified directors” and “recognized writers” to Italy in order to fashion the sort of films they were requesting. Yet when Huston arrived at Caserta, there was a question of who was in charge, the hotshots from Hollywood, or the Signal Corps?

  Huston asked for personnel and equipment from Gillette’s 163rd Signal Photo Company (SPC). He assumed he would be given assistance and autonomy to make the sort of documentary that he, Ambler and others had discussed in London. Gillette assumed Huston would be working for him, and was unimpressed with Huston’s smoky glasses, Hollywood bona fides, his VIP friends, and the two pals he’d brought to Italy with him. Huston (and Ambler as well) was likewise unimpressed with Gillette, whom Ambler sarcastically characterized as someone who knew all about filmmaking “thanks to an eight-week guided tour of Hollywood studios” made “to prepare him for this mission.”6

  To make matters even more uncomfortable, Gillette, Huston, Ambler and Buck all wound up sharing the same sleeping quarters in Caserta, in a house next door to the grand palace. Huston complained about Ambler’s loud snores. For his part, Ambler awoke one night late to hear Huston explaining “the subtleties of filmmaking to the colonel” including the differences between cutting from a scene and panning away from it.

  Days passed during this awkward impasse. A message finally arrived from the War Department clarifying Huston’s status in no uncertain terms to Gillette. A lot of trouble had been taken to get Huston to Italy, was its substance. He was to be given all necessary assistance in collecting combat footage for a documentary. It was clear that Huston was working with the blessing of some power in the War Department, and Gillette quickly assigned a camera and sound crew of five members of the 163rd to the Hollywood hotshot. Through no fault of his own, however, Gillette was still short of transportation to get Huston and his crew around the front.7

  Buck, who had quickly learned to apply his jack-of-all-trades Hollywood skills to his work in the Signal Corps, was somehow able to secure a jeep for Huston and company. By early December, they were on their way t
o a unit on the right flank of the Fifth Army line, out by the village of Venafro. Like Ernie Pyle, Huston’s film crew was meeting up with the 143rd Regiment.8

  It had long since been obvious that the original plan for the documentary—filming the taking of Rome, and the triumphal entry of Allied troops into the city—was not going to happen anytime soon. The revised outline for a film was to create a documentary describing the difficulties Allied troops were facing in Italy with a focus on the infantry. Huston and company would follow American troops as they attacked the German Winter Line and captured the next Italian village on the path leading into the Liri Valley and onto Rome. This was the “dangers and grimness of war” angle which the War Department had been clamoring for since early September. The sense among all in the field was that realistic footage of infantry work would help explain why the Allied advance had bogged down north of Naples. It would show, in documentary form, the life of the GI, in much the same way that Ernie Pyle’s writing was illustrating that life in the papers. It was time to let motion pictures lift the veil on the war experience of the typical infantryman.

  Units of the 163rd Signal Corps had already been shooting film through October and early November, but their work illustrated some of the difficulties and dangers of meeting the request of the War Department for actual combat footage. As they would soon report to the War Department, it was possible to get a lot of film of the “grimness and dangers of war” variety—footage of the dead and wounded (both friend and foe); footage of burials, surgical operations, uprooted Italian refugees. As wells as human interest material—“material which will show how the ordinary soldier lives, works, rests and relaxes, fights, suffers; footage covering the various national and racial types of the men under arms in this theater.” But for all this, combat footage of the “studio war” variety—explosions, sagging bodies, soldiers charging from their foxholes—remained missing. Despite “venturing so close to enemy lines that we draw fire, [camera crews] were unable to see, let alone photograph anything that is usually accepted as combat material.” It was just too dangerous. A man trying to film in battle with his bulky camera had to expose himself to fire in order to get shots; he was just too obvious a target.9