by Mark Zuehlke
Denying Catania to Eighth Army was a vital component of the new German strategy. This had less to do with the city’s port facilities than with Sicily’s geography and limited transportation network. About seven miles south of Catania, the muddy Simeto River descended from Mount Etna to cut a sluggish, winding course across the Catania plain before spreading out into a broad marshy estuary on the coast. A single bridge—Ponte Primosole—spanned the Simeto a mile and a half west of the marsh and provided Highway 114’s link between Lentini to the south and Catania. Ponte Primosole was no wonder of engineering. It was a 400-foot-long structure of steel girders standing eight feet above the river. The land north of the bridge was thickly forested by olive and almond groves, which provided excellent cover for defending troops. To the south, the ground was flat and devoid of vegetation.
Both the Germans and British recognized possession of the bridge was vital. On the morning of July 13, 1st Parachute Machine Gun Battalion had landed at Catania airfield. Although British fighters managed to intercept and shoot down several aircraft bearing most of the battalion’s anti-tank guns, the paratroops were soon dug in about two thousand yards south of the bridge on the edge of an orange grove, which provided a rare spot of cover this side of the river. The battalion’s commander, Major Werner Schmidt, had been warned by 3rd Parachute Regiment’s Oberstleutnant Ludwig Heilmann to expect the British to attack the bridge either by air or by sea landing. Schmidt was to hold the bridge at all costs.8
HEILMANN HAD DIVINED British intention perfectly. For that very night, Montgomery had ordered an air assault on the bridge by 1st Parachute Brigade, with gliders scheduled to land two troops of light artillery three hours later. No. 3 Commando would simultaneously land from the sea three miles north of Lentini and seize a small bridge at Malati. The commandos and paratroops were to hold their bridges until xIII Corps advanced from Sortino. As the crow flies, it was about fifteen miles from Sortino to Primosole Bridge, but the winding roads doubled the distance. Montgomery realized the paratroops could only be expected to hold the bridge for a short time, so the division was ordered to reach them within twenty-four hours. By the evening of July 14, Montgomery wanted the paratroops relieved and a bridgehead established north of the bridge.9
It was an audacious plan rendered even more so by Montgomery’s decision to split his army into two forces advancing away from each other. Encouraged by the rapidity of the invasion’s initial gains, Montgomery thought that if he acted decisively, the entire island could be won in a matter of days. There was time neither for hesitation nor for appropriate consultation with superiors. Consequently, at 2200 hours on July 12, Montgomery sent a terse signal to General Harold Alexander suggesting a decisive change in the boundaries between Eighth Army and the U.S. Seventh Army. “My battle situation very good,” the signal read. “Have captured Augusta and my line now runs through Sortino-Palazzolo-Ragusa-Scicli. Intend now to operate on two axes. 13 Corps on Catania and northwards. 30 Corps on Caltagirone-Enna-Leonforte. Suggest American division at Comiso [45th Division] might now move westwards to Niscemi and Gela. The maintenance and transport and road situation will not allow of two armies both carrying out extensive offensive operations. Suggest my army operate offensively northwards to cut the island in two and that the American Army hold defensively on line Catlanisetta- Canicatti-Licata facing West. The available maintenance to be allocated accordingly. Once my left Corps reaches area Leonforte- Enna the enemy opposing the Americans will never get away.”10
In his diary the same evening, Montgomery complained that Alexander and his staff at 15th Army Group were no longer coordinating the invasion. The Americans were fighting one battle, he another. If this continued, “the enemy might well escape[;] given a real grip on the battle I felt convinced we could inflict a disaster on the enemy and capture all his troops in Sicily.” Leaving Alexander no real time to respond to his signal, Montgomery ordered xxx Corps’s 51st Highland Division and 23rd Armoured Brigade to immediately drive up the Vizzini-Enna highway and outflank the Germans facing the Americans. At the same time, he set into motion the airborne and seaborne operation against the bridges south of Catania. “I intended to make a great effort to reach Catania by nightfall on July 14; given some luck I felt it could be done; but I must have the luck.”11
By the evening of July 13, the 51st Highland Division was pushing for Vizzini, but so too was the 157th Regiment of the U.S. 45th Division. Colonel Charles Ankcorn could only stand by helplessly as he watched British troops marching up Highway 124 ahead of his troops. The highway was clearly in the American operational zone. Ankcorn had no idea what was going on, but his road north had been pre-empted.12
Montgomery was again running ahead of things while sending signals to Alexander to clean up after him. “My troops are now advancing between Vizzini and Caltagirone and unless something is done there will be a scene of intense military confusion [on the road].” He suggested 45th Division be redirected to the Gela area and the entire American effort shifted westward forty miles along the coast to Agrigento.13
At 2116 hours, Alexander played catch-up with a signal to both army commanders. “Operations for the immediate future will be Eighth Army to advance on two axes, one to capture port of Catania and the group of airfields there and the other to secure the network of road communications within the area Leonforte-Enna. Seventh Army will conform by pivoting” to face west. The boundary between each army was Highway 124, “all inclusive to Eighth Army.”14
“This will raise hell for us,” American II Corps commander General Omar Bradley fumed when Seventh Army’s General George Patton gave him the news. “I had counted heavily on that road.” But Patton, strangely quiescent for the moment, told him the order stuck. The Americans were left with no alternative but to carry out a time-consuming withdrawal of 45th Division from II Corps’s right flank to its far left.15 Bradley also had to shift his 1st Infantry Division west from Highway 117 to prevent running into xxx Corps where this highway intersected its route through San Michele and Piazza Armerina.16 Effectively, xxx Corps was cutting across the entire front of the American II Corps, forcing Bradley to halt his advance and assume a defensive posture—which meant all the Americans were doing was guarding Eighth Army’s flank.
This was hardly a role either Patton or Bradley had envisioned their army playing. Bradley was seething. Seventh Army, he believed, was poised for a breakout from the Gela beachhead. “Our troops were in marvelously aggressive spirits, all having performed far beyond my wildest expectations. We had reached the main road north [Highway 124]. With our superior trucks and self-propelled artillery, we could move much faster than the British. The enemy front before us was soft from his withdrawals; he was concentrating in the main before XIII Corps at Catania, not us. We were in ideal position for a fast run to the north coast—before the enemy could organize his defensive perimeter—and an encircling right turn toward Messina.” Bradley was certain the Americans could have pulled off the breakout and relieved the pressure on Montgomery so he could win Catania. But it was all fruitless speculation, for the British were now trudging up the route he would have barrelled along.17
Meanwhile, there was little luck to be found for Montgomery the night of July 13 as the paratroops and commandos went for their respective bridges south of Catania. The nearly four hundred men of No. 3 Commando landed at about 2130 hours and won a stiff fight for control of Malati Bridge against a company of Italian troops, only to be counterattacked by an Italian anti-tank battalion and company of motorcyclists. After fierce fighting, the commandos grudgingly broke off the action by splitting into small sections and escaping southward. At a cost of twenty-eight dead, sixty-six wounded, and fifty-nine missing, they prevented the Italians from destroying the bridge.
The jump by 1st Parachute Brigade played out as disastrously as most other airborne operations over Sicily. As they neared the coast, anti-aircraft gunners aboard the Allied ships savaged the planes with streams of fire. Twenty-six planes tu
rned about because of damage suffered from the all-too-common friendly fire incidents or mechanical failures. Eleven were shot down and another three crashed for unexplained reasons. Most of the remaining 107 planes scattered to avoid the flak and dropped their paratroops up to twenty miles away from Primosole Bridge. Only twelve officers and 283 men out of 1,856 were dropped close enough to fight for and win the bridge. But not for long. Throughout the course of July 14 they met ever more determined resistance and at 1930 hours the men remaining were forced to abandon the bridge and withdraw to a height of ground south of it. Soon after, tanks from XIII Corps’s 4th Armoured Brigade broke through to them. The Germans pulled back to positions just north of the bridge. With neither side possessing the bridge, all Montgomery could claim for the sacrifice of the paratroops was that the Germans had been prevented from blowing it up. But Eighth Army’s route to Catania remained blocked, and the British now faced a costly battle of attrition to gain the city. The paratroop casualties at Primosole Bridge numbered 115 out of 292 men.18
Things had also gone badly on the xxx Corps axis, with the 51st Highland Division only managing to capture Vizzini late on July 14 after an assist of artillery fire by the American 45th Division. Clearly, Montgomery’s bold left hook had also failed.19 The Hermann Göring Division had disengaged from the Americans in time to get in front of xxx Corps, which now faced fighting its way forward against an enemy intent on blocking it at every turn.
The 51st Highland Division was so exhausted that Montgomery ordered it into reserve, with instructions to clear up outstanding Italian garrisons in the Scordia-Francofonte-Militello area; 1st Canadian Infantry Division would take over the advance.20 Having finally caught up with Montgomery, Alexander decided that xxx Corps would “split the island in half.” This would be accomplished by first seizing Enna, where almost all the major roads on the island intersected. From Enna, the corps would take Nicosia. That would leave the Axis forces controlling only the northern coastal road running from Messina to Palermo. If he could cut that highway at Santo Stéfano, roughly midway between the two cities, “the interruption of communications would be complete.”21
In a subsequent July 14 signal to the chief of the imperial general staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, Alexander summarized his intentions. “Future operations envisage thrust towards Messina through Catania by XIII Corps. xxx Corps will drive to the north coast at San Stéfano, then turn east to join up with XIII Corps at Messina. When the island is split in two from north to south, American Seventh Army will be directed towards Palermo and Trapani. Meanwhile they will hold Caltanissetta-Canicatti.”22 The first step along this path required the Canadians to capture Grammichele and Caltagirone.
ON THE NIGHT of July 14-15, 1st Canadian Infantry Division advanced towards Vizzini, with 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade approaching the town in a long motorized column via a secondary road running out of Giarratana, where it had spent the thirty-six-hour rest period. To the west, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade was also moving along a secondary road leading to Highway 124. The Loyal Edmonton Regiment’s ‘C’ Company, mounted aboard Shermans of the Three Rivers Tank Regiment’s ‘C’ Squadron, acted as this column’s advance guard. Passing through Ragusa, ‘C’ Company suffered the first Loyal Edmonton casualties of the war when it came under heavy machine-gun fire.23
Lieutenant Jack Wallace’s tank troop was in the lead with a platoon of Edmontons aboard. Wallace was sitting up in the turret chatting with the platoon commander “when suddenly a burst of machinegun fire whistled across in front of us. [Trooper] Ace Elliot my driver halted so as to give the infantry time to clear off. Everything was quiet for a minute and then in the pitch black a couple more bursts float across. I got out of the tank and asked where the firing was coming from and the men pointed out a house about two hundred yards up the hill. I gave [Trooper] Jim Trueman the orders as to where to fire and he let blast with the 75-millimetre gun. That put an end to the nuisance.”24
The platoon commander told him that he had six men wounded and three dead—twenty-five-year-old Private Leslie Brimacombe, twenty-eight-year-old Private James Nelson Rasmussen, and thirty-seven-year-old Private Laurence Robinson.25 Whether the machine gun was manned by diehard Italian soldiers or Fascist civilians was never determined, but the incident prompted Lieutenant General Oliver Leese to send an officer to Ragusa with instructions to “mark down 6 or 12 hostages who will be shot if this happens again.” A plan was put into action whereby as the corps passed through each town, several residents were taken hostage until it became clear there would be no guerrilla activity.26 In a letter to his wife, Leese wrote that night: “In one town they threw bombs and shot at our troops. I’m now going to take hostages, and I shall shoot them if we have any more nonsense.” When the Ragusa shooting proved to be an isolated case, however, the hostage-taking policy was quietly abandoned and nobody was ever shot.27
The short firefight in Ragusa also led to orders for the Loyal Edmonton Regiment to leave ‘D’ Company behind to ensure the town was secure for other units passing through. This denied the battalion a quarter of its strength.28
As the Canadians moved towards Enna, Leese was far from happy about his orders. He wondered if the Americans, with their greater mobility provided by a large fleet of vehicles that were almost all equipped with four-wheel drive, perhaps should have been allowed the pursuit rather than his footslogging Canadians. Having only recently met Bradley, Leese had been impressed by the man’s dash. He worried that Montgomery and Alexander underestimated the Americans. It was a problem born of the North Africa campaign, in which the Americans had fumbled badly at Kasserine Pass and elsewhere while learning the trade of war. But in Sicily, the Americans had so far performed credibly. Perhaps, he brooded, Montgomery was “a bit impatient and hasty with others,” while Alexander “simply does not step in and control the issue at critical moments.” Leese fretted that by “treating the Seventh Army as a poor relation Monty might well irk the Americans to moving in the opposite direction—westwards—and thus lose the chance of the Americans” guarding his flank.29
The Canadians were oblivious to the high-level controversies. All Major General Guy Simonds knew was that the main drive by XIII Corps had faltered on the Catania plain and his orders were to “press towards Enna as quickly as possible.”30 Of course, it was not as simple as that. At the head of 1 CIB, the RCR arrived at Vizzini at 0300 hours to find the 51st Highland Division still clearing the town. RCR commander Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Crowe pushed through once he had word that the British troops had moved to the northeast. Crowe set his battalion on the western outskirts and advised Brigadier Howard Graham that the way was clear for the next battalion to pass into the lead. Standing by his Jeep on the roadside, Graham and Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Sutcliffe of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment watched that battalion push into the town with orders to make for Grammichele ten miles west. It was about 0600 hours and Graham was feeling grimy and unshaven. He had been on the move throughout the night and, with his driver and radio signaller as company in the Jeep, planned to follow the self-propelled battery of Royal Devon Yeomanry supporting the advance.
Suddenly a Jeep pulled alongside with Major General Simonds aboard. It was the first time since the landings that the divisional commander had come to see Graham at the front. “Why hasn’t your brigade moved forward before this?” Simonds snapped.
“They have moved forward. The RCR are in Vizzini and the Hastings are through or going through.”
“What is all the delay? My orders were for you to move through Vizzini as soon as the 51st Division had cleared it.” Simonds ground on with one accusation after another until Graham finally cut him off. “I assure you we haven’t wasted any time, but I want to get forward now and we can continue this discussion at your ‘O’ Group [Orders Group] this evening.” Although furious, Graham kept his tone level, the words crisp and to the point. “Drive on,” he instructed his Jeep driver and was away. “That’s terrible,” the driver
commented. “Jesus, he was mad,” the signaller offered from the rear.
The brigade was grinding along the paved state Highway 124, which tended to parallel a narrow-gauge railway that also ran to Enna. ‘B’ Company of the Hasty Ps was mounted on Shermans from the Three Rivers’ ‘A’ Squadron. Close behind was the battalion’s ‘A’ Company with one platoon aboard Bren carriers and the rest on tanks. Behind this leading force, which could quickly dismount to join battle, followed ‘D’ and ‘C’ companies in a variety of trucks and commandeered Italian vehicles. By 0730, the Hasty Ps were two miles beyond Vizzini, moving through a long, narrow valley, and had yet to see any enemy.31
July 15 had developed into a typical Sicilian summer day—sizzling hot with not a cloud to be seen. Yet for men who had spent most of the past five days on this island marching endless miles, the novelty of riding to war made it almost pleasant. Major John Tweedsmuir, the Hasty Ps’ second-in-command, thought it “a beautiful day and the Sicilians harvesting in the fields made it hard to believe that we were in enemy country headed for the enemy and [were] in fact the spearhead of the whole Eighth Army.” Three carriers from a Three Rivers reconnaissance section, under command of Lieutenant Pete Ryckman, and a scout car with the tank regiment’s second-in-command, Major C.B. van Straubenzee, slipped past them on the road shoulder and moved ahead of the column. Soon Tweedsmuir saw the carriers and scout car stopped under some trees at a road junction. Ryckman told him that his men had “seen a Hun running from the spot at high speed.” Scattered under the trees were crates of Italian grenades and dozens of their box mines. The mines were deadly things—small wooden boxes packed with explosives that were detonated, depending on how they were primed, either by shutting or opening the lid. Normally, they were buried with the lid slightly ajar, so the weight of a vehicle or person would force it closed and cause the mine to explode. Because of their wood construction mine detectors were incapable of discovering them. Tweedsmuir figured the German had been booby trapping the mines, and the men were told to stay away from them.32