by Mark Zuehlke
[8]
These Men Have Surrendered
THE ALLIED AMPHIBIOUS landings in Sicily had achieved a stunning tactical surprise. Only on July 9 had Tenth Army commander and Commander-in-Chief (South) Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring and his staff in Rome discovered through aerial reconnaissance reports that the many ships recently spotted in the Mediterranean were all vectoring towards the southeastern corner of the island. Until then, Kesselring had not been certain whether the obviously massing invasion fleet was bound for Sardinia or Sicily, although the heavy bombing of the latter island made it the likely target.1
Peculiarly, in the week preceding the invasion, both Kesselring and Adolf Hitler had become dangerously complacent about the threat to Sicily, embracing notions that the Italians could be trusted to vigorously defend it. Hitler assured General der Artillerie Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, that the “ordinary Italian soldier and the young officer reared in the school of Fascism, when called upon to defend their Motherland, would perhaps give proof of soldierly qualities surprising both to friend and foe.” Warlimont considered this an “idealistic estimate based on airy-fairy ideas” that obscured “the military realities, the most important of which was that there was a fatal gap between the level of equipment of Italian forces and those of the Allies.”2
Kesselring had more realistically come to the conclusion that Germany’s partnership with Italy “was simply riding for a fall. There were often times when I reflected that it would be far easier to fight alone with inadequate forces than to have to accept so bewildering a responsibility for the Italian people’s aversion to the war and our ally’s lack of fighting ability and dubious loyalty.”3 On June 30, this frank assessment had led him to comment that, despite adequate strength of forces and supply to enable Sicily’s defence from enemy attack, the “deciding factor” would be “the low spirit of the Italian troops.” Deployment of the Hermann Göring Division to the island, he hoped, would “improve the morale of the Italians,” but if “the island defences and the Italian soldiers fail, then the loss of the island must be expected sooner or later. German forces alone will not be able to defend Sicily for any length of time.”4 Yet to the puzzlement of his subordinates, instead of riding herd on the Italians to strengthen their martial ardour, Kesselring “deliberately retired into the wings, seeing that the defence of their native soil was pre-eminently the Italians’ business.”5
At 1630 hours on July 9, however, evidence that the invasion was imminent led Kesselring’s headquarters to issue an alert to “all troops in Sicily.”6 While this alert might have reached the German divisions in a timely fashion, it only slowly trickled down the Italian chain of command. Not until 2220 hours did 206th Italian Coastal Division commander Generale di Brigata Achille d’Havet, responsible for defending the coast from Siracusa to Gela, learn that an invasion force was closing on his shores. With a gale rising off the coast, his naval adviser “assured him it was much too rough for a landing.”7 Consequently, his troops were allowed to “relax their vigil” in the belief that so long as the storm raged they were safe from attack.8 When Eighth Army’s assault battalions came ashore that night, this division was entirely surprised and “turned out to be very ineffective.”9
This was despite the fact that Generale d’Armata Alfredo Guzzoni, who technically commanded all Axis forces in Sicily, had learned that Allied airborne troops were landing on the island at 0015 hours. Forty-five minutes later, Guzzoni ordered all Italian and German formations into action. “The enemy has started landing operations in Sicily,” he announced. “I have the confidence that the very Italian population of this island will give the troops, who are to defend it, its material and spiritual support. Joined by one will, citizens and soldiers will oppose the invader with a united front, which will break his action and hold for us this precious part of Italy.” By 0130 hours, troops of 206th Division had succeeded in dynamiting piers at Gela and Licata that the Americans had hoped to use for unloading supplies. Guzzoni also had directed Generale di Corpo Carlo Rossi’s XVI Army Corps to move towards these two towns, while at 0145 hours the Italian XII Corps was similarly ordered to head for Siracusa.10 But it was all too little and much too late to prevent the Allies getting ashore.
Communications between Guzzoni and the German commanders on the island were confused, and only one of the two divisions was situated to be of use. The decision, at Kesselring’s insistence, to send most of 15th Panzer Grenadier Division to the Palermo area put it out of the action. Guzzoni issued instructions attaching the Hermann Göring Division to XVI Corps so that it could launch a counterattack in concert with the 4th (Livorno) Assault and Landing Division, but Generalmajor Paul Conrath never received them. Instead, the German divisional commander independently decided to split the division into two Kampfgruppen (battle groups), each having the strength of a reinforced regiment. One was predominantly infantry, the other armoured. Conrath planned to unleash them in simultaneous assaults against the American 1st and 45th divisions. By 0400, these two forces were heading for the Americans, who were simultaneously advancing on Caltagirone from the beaches.
Also closing on the Americans was XVI Corps’s Mobile Group E, consisting largely of the Livorno Division. Advancing in two separate columns, the Italians had reacted more quickly than the Germans. Detected early by aerial reconnaissance, the Italians were dogged by naval bombardments from the cruiser Boise and other American warships. After hours of punishment that threw it into disorganization, Mobile Group E withdrew into the foothills northeast of Gela. The German Kampfgruppen proved equally incapable of making any significant gains against the Americans.11
As one negative report after another poured in, Kesselring realized only decisive action by the Germans could save the situation. “The Italian coastal divisions were an utter failure.” Unaware that the Livorno Division had attempted a counterattack, he dismissed the Italian forces as entirely incompetent. The 54th Napoli Division “in the southwest corner of the island had melted into thin air.”12 At 0340 hours on July 11, Kesselring sent a terse report to Berlin that he had ordered Hermann Göring Division “to destroy the enemy who has advanced to Caltagirone.” The third component of 15th Panzer Division—an infantry battalion with two artillery batteries—which had been left in the eastern sector of the island and designated Battle Group Schmalz after its commander, Oberst Wilhelm Schmalz, had been directed to recapture Siracusa.13 Within minutes of sending this report, Kesselring was making arrangements to fly to Sicily because of the “impossibility of remedying the confusion in the command by my telephoned directives.”14 When Kesselring’s report came in to the headquarters in Berlin, Warlimont saw that the “blanket of self-deception and wishful thinking was rent to pieces.”15
ON JULY 11, little comprehending the magnitude of Axis disorganization, the Allies expected to face stiffening resistance and counterattacks aimed at pushing them back to the sea. The threat of counterattack led 1st Canadian Infantry Division to assume a generally defensive posture throughout the morning, which also provided time for the leading brigades to reorganize and set plans for a concerted push inland. As the morning wore on, it became evident the counterattack was not to materialize, so at noon the infantry units began to move.16
Major General Guy Simonds decided the division would advance in two separate columns, with 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade on the right and 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade to the left. This left 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade in reserve, as had been the case on July 10. Also, as on the previous day, the Canadians were guarding the left flank of Eighth Army’s xxx Corps.17 The road followed by 2 CIB, which ran through Ispica, Modica, and Ragusa, and the parallel road through Rosolini, taken by 1 CIB both proved to be “rocky trails rather than the good highways suggested by the maps.”18 This posed particular problems for the artillery regiments trying to follow behind the infantry, as their trucks were almost too wide for the tracks. Even seeing the road was difficult, as “huge clo
uds of dust rolled up wherever a vehicle moved.”19 Forced to creep carefully along through this blinding, self-generated dust cloud, the gunners were seldom within range of the rapidly advancing infantry and so could offer no support.
Following the route taken by 2 CIB, the 3rd Field Regiment suffered its first fatal casualty just a short way inland from the beach when the 19th Battery’s clerk was knocked off a truck by a wire running across the road and crushed by the wheels of the gun the vehicle was towing. Forty-eight-year-old Lance Sergeant George John Jack died before the regiment’s medical officer reached the scene.20
Meanwhile, at Pachino airfield, 1st Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers was rendering the landing strips serviceable. In addition to ploughing up the strips, the Italians had sown many mines in the area and blocked nearby crossroads with large concrete obstacles. No. 1 Platoon cleared the mines while No. 2 Platoon, having found a dump of Italian box mines, detonated these under the concrete blocks and smashed them into easily movable chunks. By early afternoon, the approaches to the airfield were cleared sufficiently to allow the engineers to roll their heavy equipment, particularly bulldozers, onto the airfield and start levelling the landing strips.21
It also fell to the engineers and rear-area personnel, particularly soldiers in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (RCASC)either missing their trucks or not yet called upon to move supplies forward, to clean up the detritus of battle in the beachhead area. Some troops from the RCASC were ordered to bury the remains of an Italian artillery battery next to the road running from Pachino airfield to Burgio. The battery, one participant in the group wrote, “had come into pin-point range of our [naval] guns. The remains of the battery, animals and personnel ... [give] one an impression of the deadliness of our ... fire.”22
Much of that deadly fire had been concentrated throughout the morning on Ispica, which 2 CIB’s Loyal Edmonton Regiment was teeing up to attack in the early afternoon. Intelligence reports issued before the invasion had predicted this town would be a tough nut to crack. Perched on top of “a rock cliff towering sheer to a height of 150 feet and heavily defended by extensive barbed wire fields,” Ispica was an ideal defensible position. The town itself was built upon a series of “stepped-up terraces well up on the crest of the rocky cliff. Towering above all is the town church in the early Renaissance style of architecture.”23
It was a six-mile march through intense heat from their start point to Ispica. Ranging ahead of the battalion was a patrol of brigade scouts. When it probed the town’s outskirts, some shots were fired from a house and a couple of grenades were pitched out at them. The patrol quickly fell back and sent a message that the Eddies should expect “street fighting.”24
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson, the quiet, shy Great War veteran who commanded the Edmonton regiment, was never one to unnecessarily put men at risk. Instead of barging into a possible shootout in the streets, he had the artillery forward observation officer (FOO) travelling with the battalion send a message back to the British cruiser, HMS Delhi, to drop a salvo on the town with its five 5-inch guns.25 Before the smoke cleared, Jefferson sent an Italian civilian into the town with an ultimatum for the garrison to surrender. At 1450 hours, the leading company cautiously crept up the road into the town and took its surrender. “The only difficulties encountered,” wrote the regiment’s war diarist, “were enthusiastic greetings of the civilian population and the frantic endeavours of the military population to surrender.” Initially, about two hundred Italian troops laid down their arms, and many more were rounded up in the ensuing hours. Once Ispica was considered pacified, the Edmontons moved two miles northwest of it and established a defensive position astride the highway leading to Modica.26
This cleared Ispica’s narrow main street for the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and the main body of the Seaforth Highlanders to pass through between 1715 and 1730 hours. Both battalions had orders to move north of the village and set up defensive positions. “Many natives stood in the streets waving and clapping their hands at us,” the latter battalion’s war diarist recorded. “Wine and fruit were passed out to the troops, the hatred of Mussolini and the Germans being expressed time and again.”27
Before the PPCLI and Seaforths advanced through Ispica, both battalions had been aggressively patrolling the countryside between the village and the coast. One PPCLI patrol, mounted on horses captured from artillery batteries the day before, was able to range quite far afield.28 Every patrol sent forth met troops from the Italian 206th Coastal Defence Division, who were often “bedraggled and frightened,” barefoot or wearing “cracked shoes,” and eager to surrender despite seeming to expect “any moment to be shot.”29
Captain Freddie Middleton of the Seaforth’s ‘B’ Company was approached by a civilian. The civilian spoke a little English; Corporal John Cromb, a little Italian. This enabled Cromb to ascertain that “a captain and some of his compatriots were in a cave just off the road up on a hillside. It was felt, therefore, that my section and myself could take care of them. We left the company, climbed the steep hillside and took up positions outside. The Italian went inside to bring out the captain and his companions. The first individual to appear was a batman. He had a large valise under each arm and one in his hand and came out bowing very politely. Then followed two lieutenants, then the captain, then his companions—123 of them!” Cromb’s section of ten men formed the Italians up and marched them down the hill to Middleton, who was at a loss as to how he could spare sufficient men to escort such a large party back to the beach. Finally, he simply wrote on a slip of paper: “These men have surrendered.” Handing the slip to the Italian captain, Middleton told him to march his troops back unaccompanied.30
The Seaforth’s ‘C’ Company, meanwhile, had been diverted southwest of Ispica to secure the little coastal village of Pozzallo. During the morning, the navy had dropped 160 shells on either flank of the place and then at 1315 hours sent a shore party in that accepted the surrender of two officers and ninety-six troops. When Major Jim Blair and his men arrived about an hour later, they relieved the naval personnel and were soon approached by ten officers and another 250 men anxious to give up. The village’s Fascist mayor had fled and the citizens seemed close to starvation. Blair discussed things in pidgin Italian with the local Catholic priest and village postmaster, after which the Canadian troops “broke open a granary and organized the distribution of grain, bread and macaroni.”31
By 1800 hours, 2 CIB’s battalions were all north of Ispica setting up defensive positions for the night when, because “the enemy were on the run, further orders were issued for the advance to continue and follow the retreating enemy to the high ground east of Modica. This advance was carried out under very hot and dusty conditions and the troops, though tired from the previous activities, carried on magnificently,” the PPCLI war diarist reported.32
Ranging well ahead of the main columns on July 11, the artillery FOOs attached to each battalion hunted enemy positions to target for naval bombardment in order to eliminate them before they could delay the advance. Each FOO was normally accompanied by one of his regiment’s soldiers, who helped carry and operate the heavy No. 18 wireless set. To provide the FOOs with mobility, each battalion had supplied their assigned gunner with a Bren carrier and four men from the carrier platoon.
Captain George “Duff” Mitchell of the 1st Field Regiment (Royal Canadian Horse Artillery) was acting as the naval FOO for the PPCLI with HMS Delhi on call. He and the carrier team were about halfway between Ispica and Modica and well out front of the marching infantry when Mitchell spotted a roadblock of “wire and mines, covered by two anti-tank guns” ahead. Calmly, Mitchell dismounted from the carrier and approached the Italians manning the roadblock. In the carrier, two men had a Bren gun apiece aimed at the enemy troops. The authority of these weapons, combined with his commanding manner, enabled Mitchell to force “the detachment of some 20 Italians to surrender and to dismantle the obstacle. This exploit, and the eff
icient way in which he maintained communication with his bombarding ship in calling down supporting fire, brought Captain Mitchell the first Military Cross to be awarded a Canadian in the Italian campaign,” the army’s official artillery historian later wrote.33
Late in the afternoon, 3rd Field Regiment received welcome news that 2 CIB had overrun a battery of Italian guns. As its 92nd Battery had lost its 25-pounders aboard one of the sunken ships, the decision was made to equip it with the captured weapons. The guns being horse-drawn, a call was issued for men with experience handling horses. A truck soon rushed to the scene “with a motley group of Westerners aboard—cooks, signallers, despatch riders and gunners, but all self-professed horsemen—under command of Lieutenant M.H. “Mel” Watson and Regimental Sergeant Major Bill “The Whip” Adams, a horse artilleryman of Permanent Force days. They found the guns on the road to Ispica. They were 105-mm Howitzers, and sat in action just as they had been when overrun. There were four guns, four limbers, two wagons ... and all the technical equipment, stores, signal equipment and gadgets necessary to fire the troop, as well as a plentiful supply of ammunition and some food.
“The first difficulty was with the horses. Several had already been taken by passing soldiers, the rest were wandering about the fields.” It soon became evident that the horses, not understanding English, were incapable of responding to the commands issued with such authority by Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) Adams. Finally, however, the guns were hooked up and the battery moved off in pursuit of the infantry, only to be quickly forced into the ditch by a passing squadron of tanks. Plodding on until nightfall, the gunners made camp on the side of the road with hopes running high that the battery would soon be able to put the Italian guns into action.34