Donovan's Devils

by Albert Lulushi

  Mounted in the forecastle—the forward area of the boat—was a 20-millimeter Oerlikon antiaircraft gun so powerful that it had earned the name “cannon.” A sixty-round drum magazine mounted on the top of the gun housed the ammunition, usually high explosive tracer or incendiary rounds weighing approximately one half pound each. It had a maximum range of 4,800 yards with a ceiling of ten thousand feet, but the effective range was about one thousand yards. A gunner and a loader worked together to replace the quite heavy magazine, cock the gun, fire it, and clear any jams that occurred. They trained until they achieved a rate of fire between 250 and 300 rounds per minute. The best crews practiced with closed eyes so they could perform the same tasks instinctively even in total darkness.7

  Three 1,500-horsepower Packard W-14 M2500 gasoline engines with twelve cylinders powered the PT boat. Each engine turned a separate propeller shaft, enabling PT boats to reach a maximum speed of forty-one knots or about forty-seven miles per hour. In the midsection of the deck, the PT boats had a mast with a radar mounted on top. The PT boats were the smallest Navy vessels to carry radar, which was indispensable for detecting enemy boats at a distance.8

  PT boats were painted dark grey and red below the water line for camouflage. PT 203 was a notable exception because it had huge shark jaws painted around its bow. For this reason, it carried the nickname Shark’s Head. PT 204’s nickname was Aggie Maru, the Corsican dialect version of Agatha Mary.9

  As the sun set behind the mountains, Lieutenant Junior Grade Eugene S. A. Clifford, US Naval Reserve, the senior officer in charge that evening, began the predeparture check of each boat. Mishaps happened to PT boats when loose wiring caused navigation lights or even the powerful searchlights to switch on accidentally and expose their position to the enemy.10 The mission that February night required particular stealth. The PT boats would carry a group of American commandos 120 miles across the Ligurian Sea, drop them at a pinpoint near the port of La Spezia, and wait off the coast to pick them up when they had finished their mission on land. On the way to the pinpoint and back, they would cross the busy shipping lanes between Livorno, La Spezia, and Genoa, which the Germans patrolled regularly and protected with their Schnellboote, or S-boats, the PT boats counterparts in the Kriegsmarine, or the German navy.

  Clifford had finished the inspection of PT 204 when the commando crews arrived in two trucks. There were nineteen of them altogether, four officers and fifteen enlisted men. Clifford knew most of them from prior missions they had conducted together over the past three months. They came from a unit formally known as Unit A, First Contingent, Operational Groups, 2677th Headquarters Company Experimental (Provisional), attached to the Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ). Everyone knew them as the Italian OGs. They were first- or second-generation Italian Americans and had all volunteered to join the Operational Group Command of the Office of Strategic Services to conduct sabotage operations and foment guerrilla war in enemy territory deep behind the frontlines.

  First Lieutenant Albert R. Materazzi, the executive officer of the OG unit, was in command of the operation that night. He instructed the enlisted men to carry the weapons and equipment from the trucks into the forward cabin below deck of each boat. Then he asked the officers to join him in the charthouse of PT 204 for a final review of the mission objectives. The charthouse was the nerve center of the PT boat from where the captain of the boat, or the skipper, directed its movements. It contained the radar display, radio communications gear, and navigational maps. It had mahogany plywood walls, several rectangular windows looking out in front of the boat, and a thin sheet of airplane cloth atop. Moisture was the enemy of the equipment and maps in the charthouse so the crew took great care to keep it waterproof at all times.

  Besides Materazzi and Clifford, the officers gathered in the charthouse included Lieutenant Junior Grade Wittibort, skipper for PT 203, Captain Donald B. Wentzel, who had come along as an observer, and the two officers who would lead the men in the mission ashore, First Lieutenants Vincent J. Russo and Paul J. Trafficante.11 Materazzi explained that the objective of the mission, code-name Ginny, was to demolish the railroad tunnel entrances and roadbed fill on the La Spezia–Genoa line, roughly five hundred yards southeast of Stazione Framura. This railroad was one of the main supply arteries the Germans used to provision their forces on the Cassino and Anzio frontlines, several hundred miles to the south. It had been very difficult for the Allies to interrupt the flow of trains along this line from the air. The railroad snaked along the Ligurian coast in mountainous terrain with most of the tracks hidden in long tunnels. Materazzi laid out several aerial photographs that American and British reconnaissance planes had taken in the past few days. They showed about a thousand feet of exposed tracks between two tunnels at Stazione Framura. Materazzi explained that the tunnel entrance southeast of Stazione Framura was the weakest point of the railroad because it was the only single-track stretch in the La Spezia–Genoa line.

  The plan was to proceed to the pinpoint by PT boat and land thirteen enlisted men and two officers in rubber boats. They were to follow a natural ravine to the target. A security party headed by Lieutenant Trafficante was to go ahead first, neutralize the signal house at the eastern end of the fill, and investigate the tunnel entrance. After they had established security, the working party led by Lieutenant Russo would proceed to the target, and after a complete survey, proceed to demolish it. Materazzi would remain with the boats, maintain communications with the shore parties, and move in to pick them up when they had finished the mission.

  Materazzi finished the briefing and everyone moved to his assigned position in each boat. The mooring lines were untied from the forward and aft cleats and the boats got on their way at 1800 hours. They were still inside Bastia Harbor when the radar of PT 204 stopped working. They had to go back and transfer all the personnel and equipment to the standby PT 210. This caused a delay of forty-five minutes, the boats finally clearing the port of Bastia at 1845 hours. A course straight north across the Ligurian Sea would take them from Bastia to the pinpoint for the operation. But on the way, the radar picked up several possible enemy vessels. It was necessary to change course to avoid possible contact. At about 2230 hours, they were four miles off the coast when they observed lights and could discern shore in the dark. From this time onward, the craft proceeded on silent engines. The men came on deck with their equipment and began inflating the rubber boats in preparation for landing. Clifford set course for landfall southeast of Stazione Framura. All he had to go by were his calculations and the instruments in the cockpit. The black light mounted on the cockpit—the only exposed light topside—shone ultraviolet rays and illuminated the phosphorous letters and numbers on the dashboard. Its visibility was limited to only a few feet, which made it ideal for night work. Total darkness enveloped the boat. The night was moonless, the weather rainy, the sky overcast, and the visibility zero.

  As the craft moved closer, the men aboard were able to distinguish two mountains to the north, and since it appeared that this might be the pinpoint, the craft headed in that direction. By 0030 hours, it became apparent that they were at the wrong place, so they turned south. A short time later, they saw lights on the shore, which they reckoned to be Stazione Framura. This was confirmed when they spotted a steep cliff three hundred yards south and fifty feet from the shore, which their maps showed to be Scoglia Ciamia. The boats proceeded about five hundred yards southeast of Scoglia Ciamia and stopped. Aboard PT 204, Lieutenant Russo guided the debarking of the engineers, Technicians Fifth Grade (T/5) DiScalfani, Leone, Sirico, Savino, Noia, Lepore, Amoruso, and Sorbello. The men lowered the rubber raft over the side of the boat. Two of them stepped down into the raft and the rest of the crew handed down the packages of explosives and weapons. There was an offshore wind from the northeast, but the sea was calm, which made it easy to hold the raft firmly against the PT boat. When all the equipment and men were aboard the rubber raft, Russo shook hands with Materazzi and climbed into the raft. The c
rew unfastened the lines that secured the rubber raft to the PT boat and began to row toward the shore. A second raft released from PT 210 followed them at thirty yards’ distance. In it were Lieutenant Trafficante and the security party, Technical Sergeant Vieceli, Sergeants Mauro and Aromando, and T/5 Libardi and Squatrito.

  Everybody aboard the PT boats was tense. They were already one-and-one-half hours behind schedule, fifteen of their brethren had just disappeared in the darkness headed toward enemy shore, and they could come under fire at any moment. The gunners were in their battle stations ready to open fire if the enemy detected the PT boats or the rubber crafts approaching the shore. At 0145 hours, Materazzi’s walkie-talkie radio crackled and Lieutenant Russo reported that he had reached shore but could see only sheer cliffs. Materazzi directed him to row northward until they found the ravine that would lead them to the tunnel entrance. At 0200 hours, Russo reported that they had found a suitable landing spot. At that time, the boat party observed lights on shore just south of Scoglia Ciamia, and they alerted the shore party. Russo made a personal reconnaissance and climbed the mountain in front of him. He heard a train northeast of him, however, and realized that they had landed south of the pinpoint. At 0245 hours, Russo reported that it would take them at least an hour-and-a-half to reach the target and asked for permission to remain ashore and be picked up the following night.

  The mission timetable called for departure from the pinpoint at 0330 so that they could put enough distance between the boats and the coast in the cover of darkness. While the boat party was prepared to wait until 0400, Clifford and Materazzi felt that it would take Lieutenant Russo and his men until 0530 hours to reach the target, demolish it, and return to the boats. By that time, it would be daylight and the entire party would be exposed to discovery and attacks by shore batteries, enemy boats, or aircraft. Thus, Materazzi ordered the men to abandon the mission and return to the boat. Russo and Trafficante led their men to the rubber rafts and everyone returned to the PT boats at 0315. The crews helped men, equipment, and rafts aboard and then headed straight south toward Bastia where they arrived at 0730. By mid-morning, the OSS team returned to their base in L’Île-Rousse. Before dismissing them, Materazzi boosted their spirits by reminding them that although they had not been able to demolish the tunnel entrances that night, they had been able to make a good reconnaissance of the target. They were in a great position to succeed the next time around.

  A casual observer of the OSS commando operation against the Italian coast that night might have seen its outcome as a setback. But a wider frame of reference would have shown a different picture. Within less than three years, the United States had gone from being a country sitting on the sidelines of the conflict that had engulfed the world to a country that had committed unprecedented human, material, and technical resources to defeating the Axis powers. It was a total war on all fronts, in which millions of Americans from all branches of the military had engaged the enemy in open combat. It was also a war that required new capabilities to spy against the enemy, carry out sabotage activities, and engage the adversary far away from the front lines. The Germans first and then the British in the early years of the war had discovered the great potential of covert warfare to create heavoc in the enemy rear areas and to tie up significant enemy troops that would otherwise be fighting at the front.

  The United States had created the Office of Strategic Services to learn from this experience and to develop similar capabilities for the American war effort. The OSS was an organization without precedent in the United States government, but within a short amount of time it had been able to build assets and train personnel to engage in covert opertions like the one attempted on the night of February 27–28, 1944, in Italy.

  CHAPTER 1

  Office of Strategic Services

  In May 1941, almost two years into World War II, the Nazi-Fascist coalition led by Germany, Italy, and Japan was at the zenith of its powers. In Europe, the German troops had just conquered Yugoslavia and Greece in another stunning application of blitzkrieg, which added these two Balkan countries to Poland, France, and another half-dozen countries that the German armies had overrun since the beginning of the conflict. In North Africa, Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps armored troops had pushed the British back into Egypt and rescued the Italian positions in Libya while the collaborationist Vichy government controlled the French colonial territories. In Asia, the Japanese had conquered large swaths of territory in China and positioned troops in Vichy-controlled Indochina. Smart diplomatic maneuvering by both Germany and Japan culminated in neutrality pacts with the Soviet Union, sweetened by secret clauses that had allowed the Soviet Union to annex large swaths of Polish territory after the German invasion in 1939. They ensured that Stalin remained neutral if not friendly toward the continued aggression of the Axis forces in Europe and Asia.

  Great Britain and China were the only two countries continuing to put up any meaningful resistance against the Axis powers in May 1941. But China was in the throes of a civil war between the Kuomintang Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong with both factions more interested in fighting one another than the Japanese. And Great Britain faced a critical shortage of war supplies, materials, and manpower, despite the vast resources it could still muster from its colonies. The wild card at the time was the United States.

  In May 1941, the Americans were divided over the role that the United States should play in the conflict that had engulfed the world. A strong isolationist sentiment of avoiding involvement in international affairs in general and especially in armed conflicts in Europe and Asia had gained momentum in the aftermath of World War I and during the years of the Great Depression. Most Americans viewed the casualties suffered during the Great War, despite the late entry of the United States in the conflict, as disproportionate to the country’s interests. There was a widespread belief that American bankers and arms manufacturers had pushed for US involvement for their own profit.1

  The isolationists represented an eclectic mix of interest groups, including anti-Roosevelt politicians like Senator Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat of Montana, conservative populists like the aviator Charles A. Lindberg, business leaders like General Robert E. Wood, chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and leftist activists like Norman Thomas, leader of the Socialist Party of America. Their single-minded focus on keeping the country out of the war at any cost prevailed over the disorganized efforts from internationalists to get the Unites States government to counter the Axis’s aggressive actions.

  In May 1941, twenty months into World War II, the United States remained officially neutral despite the decisive shift of the Roosevelt administration in favor of supporting the nations fighting the Axis nations and of preparing the country for the upcoming conflict.

  * * *

  A snapshot of New York City life in May 1941 provides a great insight into the divisions in the American public opinion between isolationists and internationalists at the time. On the afternoon of May 18, 1941, New York City celebrated “I Am an American Day,” which Congress had proclaimed in 1940 as a nationwide celebration to be held the third Sunday in May to honor men and women born in the United States who reached voting age and persons of foreign birth who attained citizenship in the past year.2 A crowd of 750,000 gathered at the Mall and the Sheep Meadow in Central Park to attend a mass meeting, which officials designated as the largest patriotic gathering the city had ever seen. Fiorello La Guardia, the flamboyant mayor of New York, presided over the ceremonies, held a speech himself, and introduced guests. At times, he grabbed the baton to conduct a 225-piece band of musicians from the Police, Fire, Sanitation, and Park Departments in Sousa’s marches “by shouting, by biting his tongue, by reaching forth and pulling toward himself with straining muscles, by knocking a lock of hair over his forehead, by sweating, and by laughing in tempo with the cymbals.”

  One of the goals of the meeting was to demonstrate the benefits of citizenship to the t
hree hundred thousand naturalized immigrants and more than two million young Americans who became voters across the country the previous year. To accomplish this, Judge John C. Knox, senior judge of the United States District Court of Southern New York, led the audience in a reaffirmation of the oath of loyalty to the nation. Standing in front of microphones, he asked all present to rise, raise their right hands, and repeat the oath after him. He read it a few words at a time, pausing to allow the participants to repeat after him:

  I solemnly swear—that I will support and defend—the Constitution of the United States—against all enemies, foreign and domestic—and that I will bear true faith and allegiance—to the same.—I further swear that—in the crisis that now confronts my country—and at all other times—I will well and faithfully—discharge my obligations—and duties of my citizenship.

  This I shall do—loyally and willingly—and with the determination—that our democracy—must and shall be preserved.—And standing here—beneath the banner of freedom—I pledge allegiance to that flag—and to the country for which it stands—one nation, indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.—I take these obligations—freely and without any mental reservation—or purpose of evasion.—So help me God.

  Bishop William T. Manning led the meeting into a prayer: “In this day of world crisis we lift our prayers that the forces of tyranny may be overthrown and that aggression, cruelty and inhumanity may be brought into an end. Stir us in this land to be watchful against subversive and disloyal influences and movements, and firmly to repress such influences by whatever name they may call themselves or under whatever auspices they may seek to propagate their destructive teachings, and stir us to resist with our whole strength all efforts to arouse racial or religious prejudice among our people.”