Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  This was all very well, but behind the urbanity Alexander’s own views were concealed by an impenetrable reserve. (A distinguished officer who served under him for many months said that he knew him no better at the end of that period than the day when he first took up his appointment.) His admirers, like Macmillan, believed that his style of command, by throwing out suggestions, inviting opinions and compromising, was the only way to manage a team of fractious Allied generals. His detractors maintained that his reserve concealed a mind empty of strategic ideas, incapable of deciding the best course in any set of circumstances. Whatever the reason, Alexander either would not or could not impose his will as a commander should. Mark Clark, of whom Macmillan said that he was the cleverest general in the theatre, was quick to observe this weakness, with unhappy results. Clark was a staff officer of immense ability who had first made his name as the right-hand man of the commander of the US Ground Forces, General Lesley McNair, at the time of the great expansion of the US Army in 1941–2, when Clark made a notable contribution both in organisation and the training of the new divisions by mass production methods. He was far from popular, as it fell to him to weed out incompetent officers; a task he carried out with ruthlessness. In England Clark had given Eisenhower invaluable assistance in taking care of all the organisational details of the Allied landings in North Africa, after which he revealed an unsuspected flair for diplomacy when he made a hazardous mission in a submarine to meet the French commanders to persuade them not to oppose the Allied landings. Clark’s real ambition, however, was to command in war. His operational experience had been cut short on the Western Front in 1918 when he had been seriously wounded soon after the battalion he commanded entered the front line. In 1943 in Africa, when Clark saw that Eisenhower had found an ideal chief of staff (in W. Bedell Smith), he pressed for his release and requested the command of the newly raised Fifth Army. Since then he had been occupied in planning notional operations and training US Army units in North Africa in amphibious warfare. Salerno was to be his first test in battle.

  That Clark was an officer of enormous ability, intelligence and drive was the opinion of McNair, Eisenhower, Brooke, that harsh critic of US Army officers, and Churchill, who called him “the American Eagle”. He was also intensely ambitious, which is no bad thing, longing to be and be seen as a great field commander. He was to drive his troops hard and to accept heavy casualties as the price of success. He had great physical courage and he was no stranger in the front line. He had, however, two serious shortcomings. He lacked something granted to many lesser soldiers, that almost instinctive faculty for discerning what was operationally sound and what was not. His “schemes of manoeuvre” were designed mechanically from a set of rules imbibed at the Staff College, drawn on a map and invariably faulty. (For instance, the reason he gave for his ill-judged warning order to Admiral Hewitt to re-embark the 6th Corps at Salerno was that it is what he was taught at staff school.)3 Moreover, he seemed secretly conscious of his inadequacy; where Alexander would discuss endlessly and never give orders, Clark gave orders and refused to discuss them. The other side of his (honourable) ambition was bitter jealousy of his rivals and an avid desire for publicity. He had suspicions amounting to paranoia that the British were stealing his limelight and trying to take the credit for the achievements of his army. This was unfortunate, for it was a conviction that nothing could modify, let alone eradicate. It was to colour his attitude towards Alexander and distort all his operational planning. On the contrary, his antipathy, though carefully dissembled and revealed only to his diary, became more intense as one battle succeeded another.

  The opponent of the ill-matched team of Clark and Alexander was Generalfeldmarshall Albert Kesselring, a Franconian, originally commissioned in the garrison or heavy branch of the Bavarian Artillery, who during 1914–18 had served largely on the artillery staff. After the Armistice he was engaged in building up the post-war German Army, until 1933 when he was transferred to the Luftwaffe. The better to assert his authority in the new service he learnt to fly, a remarkable accomplishment for a man of forty-eight. As Commander-in-Chief South (Oberbefehlshaber Sued) in Italy and later theatre commander he had to steer a careful course between the wishes of his master, Hitler, and the realities of the situation. This he did with great skill, concealing any misgivings he had behind a mask of optimism – he was nicknamed “Smiling Albert” – that infuriated his army commanders; but from them he stood no nonsense. He was a master of defensive operations and withdrawal, keeping his troops in position until the eleventh hour and then disengaging them intact. He was very shrewd. As an airman he did not have to be told by his intelligence staff that the most likely landing place was Salerno. He was aware that his Italian ally might rat on him, and had a plan ready to be put into action at the first sign of treachery. When we trace the course of the war in Italy and describe the setbacks and disappointments of the Allies, the reader should bear in mind that they were facing as good a general as emerged from the German Army in the Second World War and certainly the best on either side in the Italian theatre.

  We can now return to Eisenhower, who was cutting his suit to fit his cloth. He soon realised that he could only carry out two landings, both on a scale much reduced in the weight of the initial assault and the rate of build-up, MUSKET was cancelled. The Fifth Army was to land at Salerno (AVALANCHE) with three divisions and a floating reserve amounting to about two-thirds of a fourth one. The US 82nd Airborne Division complete was also allotted to Fifth Army, which Clark intended to use in its airborne role in the Naples plain to engage German units that might otherwise join the fight at Salerno.* The Eighth Army operation was cut down, GOBLET was cancelled, and the 10th Corps of two divisions after having been told to be prepared to carry out either BUTTRESS or AVALANCHE was finally ordered to come under command of the Fifth Army, and Montgomery’s role for the moment reduced to BAYTOWN with only the two divisions of the 13th Corps. Loading was started on August 19 and the assault landing craft and ships stowed by September 1. Clark produced his outline plan on August 26. D-day for BAYTOWN was September 3, for AVALANCHE the 9th.

  On September 3 the Badoglio Government concluded a secret agreement with the Allies for an armistice. Eisenhower had had to push them very hard, for the Italians were under no illusions about what their fate might be if the Germans discovered their treachery. They were anxious to discover what the Allied plans were, and had tried to stipulate that a minimum of fifteen divisions should be landed in the Rome area, but Eisenhower was adamant that he would not in any circumstances disclose his plans in advance. He felt, however, that at least a gesture demonstrating Allied support was necessary. If an airborne force could be dropped in the Rome area it might serve to encourage the Italian Army and act as a focus for a general rising. On the 3rd he informed a dismayed Mark Clark that he was removing the 82nd Airborne Division from his command and using it for this purpose.

  Eisenhower understandably felt that though he considered that this extremely risky operation was worth while he had no firm intelligence of what in fact the Italian plans or intentions were. Accordingly the last act of the drama of the Italian surrender was played, fortunately, as a comedy-thriller. Two courageous officers from the airborne division were sent on a clandestine mission to Rome where they were able to have a private interview with Marshal Badoglio, who was horrified by the whole project. It was clear that the Italians had neither plans nor the intention for a rising against the Germans. It became clear also that the agreement to declare an armistice entered into by the Italian emissary was seen in Rome as conditional on the major Allied landing being made in the Rome area, whereas the Italian staff had correctly deduced that it was to be at Salerno. On the 8th the mission was able to transmit by radio the code-words “situation Innocuous” to Algiers, signifying that the operation should not take place, and orders to call it off arrived at the airfields just in time, after the first flights had actually taken off. Clark was not informed, or at least was not aware
that the 82nd Division was once more at his disposal, for four days. The Taranto operation was then revived, as Eisenhower felt able at least to rely on Italian assurances that it was not occupied by the German forces and that the Italians would not resist. In a hastily improvised operation, SLAPSTICK, the British 1st Airborne Division was rushed to Taranto on the decks of ships of the Royal Navy and disembarked over the dockside on the 9th, where it saw units of the Italian fleet depart to surrender in Malta.

  Eisenhower now made one of the few political miscalculations of his military career. From optimism about Italian intentions he had veered to distrust, even of Badoglio’s promise to surrender as agreed and not oppose the landings, and he determined to force his hand. On the 8th he broadcast personally from Radio Algiers announcing the Italian surrender. Picked up by the Germans it led to the code-words “bring in the harvest” being sent to the German troops, who at once proceeded to disarm all the Italian units. All meekly obeyed except one general, who was shot down at once in front of his staff. The broadcast therefore had the very consequence Eisenhower wished to avoid, as his bold moves were based on the hopes of the active collaboration of the Italians. The news was also picked up by the ships in the Salerno convoys, now only hours away from their beaches, where it was greeted with some astonishment by the senior officers, including Admiral Hewitt and General Clark, who had not been forewarned. Admiral Hewitt, somewhat perplexed, issued a conditional order on opening fire with naval guns as the flotillas approached the beach; that fire should be held unless the batteries on shore opened fire first. In the event the US Corps had decided to land without a preliminary bombardment as it might sacrifice surprise, which proved a costly mistake. The British, already aware that German reconnaissance aircraft had spotted the huge invasion fleet, did the opposite, and profited by it.

  The Allied commanders had yet to discover that the Italians had been disarmed. The Germans were in full operational control, Kesselring had correctly judged that the invaders would land at Salerno and the 16th Panzer Division was deployed in readiness to defend the beaches. Instead of being alerted to that possibility, the news of the Italian surrender spread quickly among the troops, with the adverse effect of relaxing their pre-battle tension. Expecting a walk-over, they were greeted not with cheers from the general public and flowers and kisses from beautiful signorini but a storm of well-directed fire, which led to a degree of demoralisation in some units during the first hours of the assault.

  Seen from a distance of forty years the disjointed and haphazard approach to so dangerous an enterprise seems fumbling and inept to a degree. That the staff were able to cope with all the chopping and changing was a miracle, for even after the AVALANCHE fleet had sailed mail-bags full of amendments to operations orders were being delivered to ships – and left unopened. Montgomery’s harsh criticisms of the dissipation of effort, the lack of a coordinated operational plan and of a plan for strategical development were, in strict military terms, justified. Before passing judgment, however, we must enter into Eisenhower’s predicament. To say a man has done the best he could is the most damning of criticisms, but Eisenhower really did very well, beset as he was by every difficulty.

  Generals can only do so much to win or lose a battle. In Brussels in 1815 a friend asked Wellington how he thought the impending clash with the Grand Army would turn out. He pointed at a private soldier strolling past them looking at the strange sights of a foreign city. “It all depends on that article,” said the duke. This, as we shall see in the ensuing chapters, was to prove the case on the beaches of Salerno.

  * One British general at a press conference was asked his opinion of the US Army’s performance to date in Tunisia. In all innocence, or ignorance, he gave an all too candid reply, which exacerbated the already frosty Anglo-American relationship and damaged his career.

  * The titles of army groups were arrived at by juggling the numbers of armies. In Sicily the same HQ became the 15th (the Seventh and the Eighth) which it remained until it became HQ Allied Armies in Italy, reverting to the numerical title in December 1944.

  * Harold Macmillan, created Earl of Stockton in 1984, and future Prime Minister, was appointed British Minister Resident in North Africa, remaining in the Mediterranean theatre until the end of the war.

  * This was GIANT I, the first of several abortive plans to use the division in other than a straight infantry role in the Salerno bridgehead.

  II

  Salerno

  3

  THE BOARD AND THE PIECES

  If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

  It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

  Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

  And, but for you, possess the field.

  Arthur Hugh Clough 1819–61

  The field which the German Tenth Army proposed to defend and the Allies to secure can be visualised as a walled garden, triangular in shape, open to the sea on one side. The wall itself was a lofty and imposing structure, tumbled down in parts, and pierced by four gateways, one in the south, in the angle between the wall and the sea, one in the apex leading inland towards the east, and two in the north. The “garden” was represented by the low coastal plain, richly cultivated, intersected by rivers and irrigation ditches and covered with vineyards, orchards of olives, tobacco plants and corn; all affording cover for a deadly game of hide-and-seek between invaders and defenders. Tactically, the key points included the Montecorvino airfield and the numerous villages, each on a hillock or low ridge commanding the plain. The vital objectives were gateways in the mountain wall.

  As a full-size field of battle it was inconvenient. The seaward edge of the triangle was thirty miles in length, the other two eighteen, too big for the base line of an attack, too small for the manoeuvre of an army, and hemmed in by mountains whose summits rose to 3,500 feet. An invader was in effect thrusting his head into a bag. The approach by sea was plain sailing, unobstructed by sandbanks or shallows, the beaches good with easy access inland through sand-dunes, but while it seemed easy enough to land, how to get out was another question. On closer analysis the whole area could be seen as tactically deceptive. Had the designer of a war-game sought a model terrain offering the most difficult options to both the attackers and defenders he could not have made a better choice than the smiling orchards and fields of the Salerno plain. To begin with, small and constricted as it appears on a map, it was large enough to absorb troops as desert sand absorbs rain from a cloudburst. The regiments on both sides knew about fighting in the open spaces of Africa or the steppes of Russia, but amid the vines or tobacco plants fields of fire and view were no more than fifty or a hundred yards, sometimes zero. It was indeed a place for hide and seek, but of a nerve-racking and deadly kind.

  As a point of entry Salerno held out advantages or difficulties to both sides. To be sure, the invaders could not develop their strategy until they had forced their way out of the triangle up roads running through narrow defiles many miles long commanded by crags looming 1,000 feet above them. Nevertheless the first stage of an invasion is to consolidate a bridgehead as a jumping-off place, while the defenders try to crush it before it can be reinforced from the sea. If the invaders can slam the gates and keep them shut, the tables can be turned and the defenders can, possibly, be defeated before their reserves can enter the arena.

  High mountains have a deceptive effect, largely on morale. The soldiers in the plain below cower, imagining that the frowning heights are full of eyes watching their every move (we shall see later how Montecassino hypnotised the Allied commanders) but tactically it is the foothills that count. Anything from twenty-five to a hundred feet of elevation and a field of fire of 1,000 yards are good enough for the machine-gunner or artillery observer. The plain itself was not completely flat, but rumpled with ridge and hillock, increasing in altitude as the invaders moved inland, where picturesque little villages and towns perched on the lower slopes of the mountain mass. These were to be the scenes of many a small but bloody c
ontest.

  From Ogliastro to the mountain passes north of Salerno and so to Naples, there ran one good road, Highway No. 18. Control of this, and especially the stretch from the village of Battipaglia to Bellizzi, was essential for a successful defence, so that reserves could be moved laterally. Conversely, possession of the high ground immediately to the north of the road was essential for the invaders.

  To complicate matters further, the battlefield was awkwardly compartmented by the River Sele, too deep to be crossed except by the bridges, and also by its tributary, the Calore, smaller, but none the less an obstacle, flowing from the east and joining the Sele six miles from its mouth. The pocket between the Sele and Calore could be either a pistol pointing at the beach-head, or a trap for a counter-attacker. Any aggressive manoeuvre involving cooperation between the right and left wings of the invading army depended on the possession of the bridges over the Sele. Such was the board of what was to prove a deadly war-game.

  The number of pieces available, the “ratio of troops to space”, was tiny. Nominally von Vietinghoff’s Tenth Army could dispose of six or seven divisions according to what could be spared from the task of coping with a possibly hostile Italian Army, but they were divisions in name only. Two of them, the Hermann Goering Panzer and 15th Panzer Grenadier Divisions, were in the process of being rebuilt and re-trained after evacuation from Sicily. Generalleutnant Hermann Balck, commanding the 14th Panzer Corps (in the absence of Hans Valentine Hube who was on leave), had only one unit approaching full strength, the 16th Panzer Division, covering the beaches of the Bay of Salerno. The Hermann Goering Division (originally a Luftwaffe division, hence its title) could only bring to the battle a regiment of two motorised infantry battalions, twenty tanks in its tank battalion, a company of assault guns, a battalion of field howitzers (three batteries of four guns), a reconnaissance battalion and a battalion of engineers.