by Mark Zuehlke
The flash was coming from a small artillery piece firing blindly out to sea. One lucky shot punched a hole in a PPCLI landing craft.39 Its occupants were pulled off before it sank by the LCA carrying Corporal Felix Carriere.40 Suddenly, the LCAS started shuddering to a halt as they grinded up on sand. The landing ramp dropped in front of Brain. He and his men “disembarked into water well above their waist.” Off to one side, the captain saw other men had landed “in water six feet deep and had to abandon weapons and equipment and swim for it.”41 Private Chester Hendricks was one of these. He stepped off the ramp, carrying a Bren gun, and disappeared, only to bob up and start swimming shoreward without the light machine gun.42
“From the craft,” Brain later related, “we made our way up a very sandy beach until we encountered wire which held us up for some time. In the meanwhile the enemy were tossing grenades amongst us. Fortunately the effect was almost entirely blast and no one came to grief, while a couple [Type] 36 grenades tossed at the enemy succeeded in killing them. Finally the wire was cut and we made our way to find an M.G. post with two sentries whom we wiped out. A search of the huts near the post brought to light another Italian obviously just awakened by the noise as he had not yet had time to put on his uniform.”43 ‘D’ Company’s LCAS had stranded on a sandspit offshore, and the men “splashed through the shallows, climbed the first dune, stepped over the tripwires and saw before them the white floor of a dried salt lagoon—exactly where it ought to be.”44
In 2 CIB’s area, the sandbars were sporadically placed, so some LCAS managed to go right onto the beach while others became stranded offshore. This was particularly true for the Seaforths. When the LCA carrying Lieutenant E.J.M. Church and his platoon dropped its ramp, a machine gun fired a burst right through the open gap. One of the navy personnel fell dead and several Seaforths went down wounded. “Bullets hammered on another craft but it had slewed around between the sandbar and the beach and had hit the beach backward. This saved more lives, for had the ramp been lowered directly on the beach more casualties would have been inevitable. Lieutenant J.J. Conway’s platoon on the far right landed waist deep in water and were fired on and returned the fire as they waded in to the beach.”45
The LCA with Sergeant Jock Gibson aboard hung up on a sandbar about one hundred yards from the beach. On the run in, he had been awed by how “the guns from the [Roberts] firing overhead, sounded like freight trains.” Now, as the ramp came down, he and the other men lunged into the water. They wore Mae West life jackets, “which held us up, and [we] struggled towards where we could get our feet on the ground.”46
Private George A. “Speed” Reid of ‘C’ Company was aboard an LCA with Private Ernest “Smokey” Smith, whose pilot “ran us up and down the beach until we told him to either land the goddamned boat or we would land it for him . . . The ramp went down, and we walked into water five-feet deep. Smokey Smith was in front of me, although he was supposed to be behind me. Well, we hit the water, and Smokey was going under, so I picked him up by the collar and held him up. I was six to ten inches taller than Smokey. Thank God I was able to grab him, because he made a hell of a lot better soldier than I did; later on, he won the Victoria Cross,” Reid subsequently wrote.47
The Seaforths dashed ashore and up to the wire in full flight. Private Harry Rankin rushed the wire with a bangalore torpedo—a long pipe filled with explosive that when thrust deep into tangles of barbed wire could be detonated to rip a hole open through which the infantry could pass—only to find the obstacle barely existed. “You could walk over it, so I slammed my goddamned bangalore down and left. The job was to get in as quickly as you could. The guy next to me, his job was also to blow that wire and he was about fifteen feet away and he nearly blew me up. His job was to do that one thing, and I guess he couldn’t think beyond that. Technically, I should have done that too, but I’d have had to lift the wire just to put the bangalore under it.”48
When Sergeant Jock Gibson’s platoon started up the sand they saw “a bunch of land mines lying exposed all over the place and there was concertina wire behind them. We just wondered how many more weren’t uncovered. So we looked down the beach and there was a boat of some sort. Looked like a fishing boat, so we went down to it and then up through a barbed wire gap that had been left for the fishermen to go back and forth. Then some firing started and one of my fellows got killed. There wasn’t a lot of fire, but it was nerve-wracking.”49
Where ‘A’ Company’s Captain Syd Thomson came to the barbed wire, it was so tightly strung that the men simply stepped on the top strand and walked over. Once over the wire, the company hugged the ground and took up a defensive position. Moments later, Thomson heard a rifleman say, “My bolt is stuck,” and another say, “So is mine.”
“It became evident that the extremely fine sand in the area was adhering to the slight film of oil on the rifle bolts and jamming them. We passed the word quickly, bolts were to be cleaned and weapons kept off the ground. We would have been in a sorry position had there been a proper defence.”50
But the Seaforths were on the beach, and there was no longer any resistance. Thomson considered the assault companies had achieved their first objective, even if they were in the wrong place, and fired a flare signalling success. It was the first signal from the Canadians on Bark West to those waiting offshore.51
[6]
Which Direction Do We Take?
CAPTAIN SYD THOMSON fired his flare at about 0300 hours. The 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade had still not begun the run towards Roger—its section of Bark West—but a few minutes later, the Hastings and Prince Edward’s ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies moved towards shore in their LCAS. Company ‘B’ was still going through the awkward process of boarding the LCT, as were the two Royal Canadian Regiment assault companies. Following British army organizational structures, each regiment mustered four rifle companies designated alphabetically from ‘A’ to ‘D,’ so the brigade radio net bristled with confused signals that this or that company from the Hasty Ps or RCR were away. Captain Ian Hodson, commanding the RCR’s ‘C’ Company, jumped onto his LCT expecting to get all his men headed shoreward in a few minutes only to learn that just five of its seven DUKWS were operational. While he chewed on this unwelcome news, his men were trying to descend on a scramble net strung from the transport down to the LCT. “As the LCT rose, the net swung loose. When the LCT fell, the net tightened like a bow string. Picture some of the soldiers carrying awkward equipment like Bren guns, mortars, PIATS, bangalore torpedoes, 18 sets, climbing down this obstacle, in the dark. We lost no equipment, we lost no men, but we did lose time.”
When everyone was finally loaded, Hodson and the other officers started directing the men into the DUKWS. “Confusion! Shouts! Somehow we packed them all in, 27 men to a vehicle.” This rendered the amphibious trucks “grossly overloaded,” but there was nothing the captain could do about that.1 Finally, at 0400 hours, the LCTS cast away. The sky to the east was already glowing with a pre-dawn light.2
While in the heart of the bay the sea was calm, closer to the transports the waves still seethed. The LCAS carrying the Hasty Ps in ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies had been making slow progress shoreward and so were not that far ahead of the LCTS, despite their earlier start. In the blackness, ‘A’ Company had lost sight of ‘C’ Company, and the pilot in Lieutenant Farley Mowat’s boat, charged with leading ‘A’ Company to Roger Beach, had unwittingly become turned about. With the other LCAS following right along, Mowat’s craft chugged westward straight through the second wave of Seaforth Highlanders and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry battalions heading for Sugar. ‘C’ Company, meanwhile, stayed on track for the objective. 3 In the darkness, none of the men aboard the 2 CIB landing craft noticed the little ‘A’ Company boats pass by and carry on unimpeded towards a section of beach near where the British commandos had earlier landed.
Corporal John “Johnnie” Cromb was on one Seaforth craft carrying ‘B’ Company towards Sugar. The sky
was rapidly brightening, and Cromb could see the beach more clearly with every passing minute. Cromb felt like a sitting duck out on the sea with daylight imminent and just wanted to get onto the sand, but the navy pilot kept “going from right to left, left to right and so on.” Each time the LCA passed another vessel, the man would “holler in his English accent, ‘I say, can you direct me to Sugar Amber. [Each beach had been subdivided into sections designated from left to right as Red, Amber, and Green.] My compass is on the blink.’” Finally the company commander, Captain Cyrus “Freddie” Middleton, growled at him. “Look, buster, just head for the beach and hit her anywhere, if you can find the island.” Shrugging, the pilot headed in, hung up on the sandbar about one hundred yards short of the beach, dropped the ramp, and the Seaforths waded shoreward.4
It was broad daylight when the Hasty Ps and RCR companies finally reached the beach. The former’s two companies both wandered astray with ‘B’ Company riding in on the DUKWS to land unopposed on Roger Green Beach instead of Roger Amber Beach. “Some wire obstacles were encountered and blown,” wrote the Hasty Ps’ war diarist. “The only enemy in this area were one or two snipers who were killed.”
‘C’ Company also had an “uneventful approach and made an unopposed landing a mile to the east of their correct beach. Minor wire obstacles were encountered and blown allowing the company to penetrate inland and consolidate on the dunes.” Once everyone was sorted out, ‘C’ Company started moving westward through the dunes towards their assigned landing point. They met no opposition.5
Aboard their LCTS, the RCR’S ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies had come under sporadic shelling from the Italian coastal battery at Maucini. Because of the delay in getting under way, ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies in LCAS were following close behind. In one of the LCAS, Captain ‘Slim’ Liddell of ‘A’ Company noticed the shellfire, but the Italian rounds were failing to “come very close.” He thought “daylight presented a weird spectacle, the horizon of the sea and sky could literally NOT be seen for ships of all sizes and shapes (all with their [anti-aircraft] balloons well up). Level with us were strings of LCAS wallowing along in line ahead with the monitor H.M.S. Roberts sitting in the middle of the small stuff having a few shots at something inland.”6
Roberts’s target was the Maucini coastal battery, and after it lobbed a few massive 15-inch shells in that direction, the Italian guns fell silent.7 When the monitor ship started firing, the LCTS had just finished dispatching ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies aboard their DUKWS. Captain Ian Hodson “could follow the shells going inland. The noise was tremendous and the blast made our DUKWS settle in the water and then surge forward. Somewhat frightening!
“We headed for the beach. We saw no sign of the sand bar. We drove up on the sand and landed dry shod. I found myself beside a large hole in the sand in which were two photographs and piles of films. When and how did they get there? There were no signs of enemy, no shots had been fired. We organized ourselves and headed for the Pachino airstrip.” Hodson’s company was on the extreme right flank or “right of the line” for the entire Canadian invasion. “To one side was a miserable farmhouse surrounded by patches of cactus (eaten fried in olive oil by many Sicilians). From the farmhouse emerged the farmer, who it turned out had spent 17 years in Toronto, had made his pile and returned to his homeland to buy his dream house. Greetings and reminiscences caused some delay.”8
WHILE THE INFANTRY companies that landed on Roger Beach had met little or no resistance, the Hasty Ps in ‘A’ Company met the stiffest opposition the Italians offered the Canadians. As the three LCAS carrying the company approached the western flank of Bark West, Lieutenant Mowat stared at the “formless strip of land with agonized intensity, desperately hoping to recognize some landmark. Nothing looked familiar.” Astern of his LCA, Mowat could see Captain Alex Campbell standing in the bow of one LCA with his “bull head thrust forward under his ridiculously small steel helmet. He was cradling a Bren and firing brief bursts toward the shore.”
Streams of red tracer arched out from a red-roofed building standing on a slight rise behind the beach, and the water between the two LCAS sprouted little waterspouts. Mowat ducked below the ramp, “revolver clenched in sweating palm.” A second later a great spout of water rose alongside, hung overhead for a second, and then crashed down to drench everyone aboard with warm, salty water.
Suddenly the ramp dropped, and Mowat and the other Hasty Ps stood looking at a stretch of sea between them and the beach. The LCAS had struck a sandbar. Mowat waved his revolver, shouted for the men to follow, stepped off the ramp, and promptly sank feet first to the bottom in water well over his head. The lieutenant was so weighted down with equipment there was no way he could swim to the surface, so Mowat simply started walking, and shortly his head emerged. Looking over his shoulder, Mowat saw Company Sergeant Major Charles Frederick Rupert Nutley on the ramp. Holding his rifle in one hand, the fingers of the other pinching his nose, Nutley jumped into the water and the rest of the men followed suit. When Mowat burst from the sea, bullets started spitting up bits of sand nearby. He threw himself down, only to be tumbled by a breaking wave. Scrabbling beyond the surf line, Mowat looked seaward and saw the rest of the company stumbling out of the water.
The Italians had done a good job on their defences here. A thick tangle of wire cut across the breadth of the beach, and several overlooking farmhouses had been fortified. Heavy small-arms fire was coming from these positions. Nutley dropped beside Mowat and screamed for the men with the bangalores to blow the wire, but it was Campbell who barged past them and shoved one of the explosive pipes in and ignited it. ‘A’ Company rallied, and charged through the gap behind their captain.9
Picking their way around tall stands of bamboo, the Hasty Ps moved across a series of dunes. They had been going for several minutes when someone realized Nutley was missing. A quick search found him lying on the beach, shot dead. Nutley should not have been there. Although nobody—including the army—knew his true age, he was clearly too old for combat. Having spent twenty years in the militia between the wars, Nutley had pulled in every marker owed him within the Hasty Ps to avoid being sent home before the regiment fought its first battle. Otherwise, he had said, his army career would have been a mockery. Instead, Nutley had been the first Hasty P to die.10
Had the company landed in its designated sector of Roger Beach, it would have come off the sand to head for pre-designated inland objectives. But Campbell knew what his men should do in this alien country. There were Italians firing from a white farmhouse dead ahead. He raised his arm and pointed at it. “Get on, you silly bastards! Get on with it,” Campbell shouted, even as a bullet tore into one side of the muscle in his upper arm and out the other.11 A thick stream of blood spouted out of the holes until a stretcher-bearer staunched the wound with a shell dressing.12
Campbell never faltered. He kept yelling orders, directing the company into a manoeuvre that had Nos. 8 and 9 platoons providing covering fire from the sand dunes while Mowat’s No. 7 Platoon “carried out a flank attack.”13 One man set up the company’s 2-inch mortar and fired off almost all his smoke rounds in a matter of seconds to screen the platoon’s attack. Mowat led his men up the slope towards the house in a charge with guns blazing. They came to a row of wire. Tumbling over it, shorts, shirts, and skin torn by barbs, No. 7 Platoon barrelled on. “Hold your fire, you clods!” someone yelled from ahead. “Fix bayonets!” Mowat shouted. Steel hissed as the men yanked bayonets free of their scabbards and rammed them onto the Lee-Enfields’ fitting. Coming onto the crest immediately in front of the house, No. 7 Platoon suddenly found itself facing a large party of commandos who had attacked the position from the rear moments earlier. Some of the men were firing through windows. “You chaps did look loverly!” said one commando. “Just like the light brigade. Never seen nothin’ like it ’cept in that flick with Errol Flynn.”
Mowat was trying to come up with some pithy retort when Campbell stomped up and yelled at him to pu
sh on to their objective. The lieutenant pointed out that he had no clue as to where they were or where they should be heading. An officer from one of the commando units showed the two Canadians their position on a map, and ‘A’ Company finally knew how far it had strayed.14 While the two officers were getting their bearings, the rest of the Hasty Ps had been helping the commandos pull about twenty prisoners from the house.15 Four machine guns were discovered inside—all covering the route taken by No. 7 Platoon’s charge. Had the commandos not struck the building from the rear moments earlier, Mowat’s men might well have been slaughtered.
At 0300 hours, the Special Service Brigade’s Nos. 40 and 41 commandos had also landed off course—but only a little far to the left. Until they attacked the house, the commandos had met little opposition and were now planning to head inland on a northeasterly line of advance that would intersect with the Seaforths.16
‘A’ Company could have tagged along and been trending towards the rest of the regiment, but Campbell had no patience with that idea. He wanted to close with the enemy and the nearest would likely be directly north of the beach. So he ordered the men to saddle up and led them inland, “apparently intent on driving straight north to the Italian mainland.”17
ACROSS THE BREADTH of Bark West the assault troops were moving off the beach towards assigned inland objectives, while the reserve companies poured ashore. Also arriving were the brigade’s reserve battalions—2 CIB’s Loyal Edmonton Regiment and 3 CIB’s 48th Highlanders of Canada. There was little opposition on the beach; the Italians assigned to defend it were mostly already either dead, taken prisoner, or put to flight. The biggest hindrance to the speed of the buildup ashore remained the sandbars and problems transferring men and equipment from the transports into landing craft.