Poor Dawley flits briefly across the scene. Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery, 10th Corps, was to stay the course and become the last commander of the British Eighth Army. If Clark is the epitome of one type of West Point officer, highly professional, authoritarian and single-minded, McCreery represents perfectly a British type, the Anglo-Irish eccentric. He was, as British cavalry officers would aver, a typical cavalryman in that he did not conform to type. He was obsessed with horses and the best amateur steeple-chase jockey of his day, but he was also an utterly professional soldier. Like Clark he was tall, with great presence, and physically courageous, but there the resemblance ended. He was an intensely private man, detested publicity, relaxed only in the intimate circle of his personal staff in his field mess, drawing out their ideas and testing them against his; not always a very comfortable process, as he would pounce on any loose thinking like a tiger. He was greatly respected and liked by his divisional commanders, listening to their views and often taking their advice, but his seniors found him rebarbative, as he denounced unsound orders or ideas in the bluntest of terms. Those who knew him well found him simple and sweet-natured, although his staff warned newcomers that the wintry smile that occasionally illuminated his severe features was in fact a danger signal, presaging a violent and sometimes profane outburst of rage. He was an upright man of great integrity who was, privately, deeply religious. He read his Bible daily and often had his chaplain join him in prayers for guidance on the eve of battle. All in all, “Dick” McCreery could have served as the model for Macaulay’s Cromwellian trooper, the Ironside “Obadiah-Bind-Their-Kings-in-Chains-and-Nobles-in-Links of Iron”. Like many characterful or eccentric commanders the troops liked him, and nicknamed him “Hopalong Cassidy” because his wounds had left him with a limp.
Professionally McCreery stood out from the ruck of cavalry officers who had so foolishly obstructed the abolition of British horsed cavalry in the inter-war years. Perhaps as the result of observing the impotence of the mounted arm in France in 1916–18 (where he was severely wounded and decorated for bravery), he had made a close study of armoured warfare, and was enthusiastic in the conversion of his own regiment, the 12th Royal Lancers, which was to earn the reputation for efficiency second to none. In infantry tactics he was self-taught, but well taught, during his term as senior staff officer (GSO 1) to Harold Alexander in the 1st Infantry Division. He commanded an armoured force with credit if only briefly in 1940, earning a DSO and a useful lesson in the art of Blitzkrieg as seen from the side of the victim. In 1941 he raised and trained the British 8th Armoured Division, was posted to Headquarters, the British Middle East Forces as adviser on tanks and armoured tactics (Major-General, Armoured Fighting Vehicles), and in 1942 was packing his bags, having given General Sir Claude Auchinleck a piece of his mind on the subject of his misconceptions of armoured warfare. He was however saved by the change of command when Alexander, finding him in Cairo, immediately appointed him his chief of staff. McCreery succeeded to command of the 10th Corps when the incumbent General Brian Horrocks was severely wounded in an Axis air raid on Bizerta shortly before AVALANCHE was launched.
All the divisions, British and American had their origin in the volunteer formations of part-time soldiers which were maintained in peace as a reserve for the regular army.* After embodiment their ranks were filled by conscripts, and their higher command and staff stiffened by posting in regulars, but once they trained they proved excellent troops, because though “amateurs” or “weekend” soldiers their average standard of intelligence and alertness was superior to that of peacetime regular recruits. The weakness in the 36th Division was in the staff and the commanders of infantry regiments, as it was in the more experienced 45th Division. The US 36th Infantry Division, commanded by Major-General Fred L. Walker, was composed entirely of Texans, and retained much of its National Guard characteristics. There is no doubt that, like the two British divisions, the 36th had had insufficient training for so difficult and hazardous a task as an assault landing on defended coast line, doubly necessary in view of the fact that it had seen no active service, but it was to recover from the initial unpleasant shock of battle to acquit itself well. Five battalions of the US 45 th Infantry Division grouped in two regimental combat teams under Major-General Troy H. Middleton formed the 6th Corps floating reserve. It was also a National Guard unit, recruited from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma. It had seen some fighting in Sicily, but its infantry regiments were poorly trained and lacked spirit, though its artillery was very good.
The British units had had varied experience and were of uneven value. The 56th Infantry Division, Major-General D. A. H. Graham, consisted of the 201st Guards Brigade (Grenadier, Coldstream and Scots battalions) which had seen much fighting in the very different environment of the open desert in 1942, but the division as a whole had been engaged only briefly, at the end of the war in Tunisia. Its best brigade was probably the 169th, of three territorial battalions of the Queen’s Regiment. The 46th Infantry Division had a newly appointed commander, Major-General J. T. L. Hawkesworth. Its Territorial Army battalions came from as far afield as Hampshire, which provided a complete brigade from the county regiment, the Midlands, Yorkshire and Durham. As a division it was dogged rather than dashing, good in defence, as it had proved in March 1943, when it had defeated one of the main thrusts of the Axis offensive in Tunisia, but it was very slow, at times tactically careless and unenterprising in the attack.
The artillery of the British and the United States armies was well equipped, well trained and with a strong esprit de corps. In many respects it was their most effective arm and both armies came to rely on it increasingly as the war dragged on. At Salerno the fire of the field artillery was powerfully reinforced by the guns of the combined fleet, either firing “direct” at shore targets visible from the ships, or controlled by artillery observers ashore in contact with the troops. The field artillery and the ships’ guns were in the long run to break the German will to continue the fight at Salerno.
* General officers’ ranks in the German Army are not quite the equivalent of British or American. A Generalmajor was the equivalent of the US brigadier-general, a Generalleutnant of a British or US major-general, and rank was not fixed rigidly to the level of command.
* The British had taken some time to absorb this idea, but did reinforce infantry brigades with armour or vice versa in “brigade groups” but kept their artillery under central control. The US Army formed similar “regimental combat teams” (RCTs) in the infantry divisions, and “combat commands” and “task forces” in its armoured divisions in exactly the same way as in the panzer divisions.
* US Ranger Force, three battalions Lieutenant-Colonel William O. Darby; Special Service Brigade, two Commandos (battalions), Brigadier R. Laycock.
* The British Territorial Army, US National Guard.
4
AVALANCHE AND HURRICANE
On September 7 the code-word Fueurbrunst – “the fire’s hotting up” – was flashed to all the units of the 16th Panzer Division, alerting them that the expected Allied invasion fleet was at sea and shaping a course for Naples. At 4.30 p.m. on the 8th the code-word Orkan – “Hurricane” – reached the 16th Reconnaissance Battalion, the main unit of KG Dornemann. Sub-Lieutenant Rocholl, commander of a Funkspaehtruppe, who was supervising the frying of some potatoes, a rare treat, ordered them to be put away carefully and reported to his headquarters for instructions and to draw a set of fresh cyphers. Then he ordered the men of his little command of two armoured cars and a radio vehicle to start up their engines and mount, and led it off to his pre-selected observation post on a hill just south-west of Salerno overlooking the sea-shore. He was to have an unrivalled view of the drama of D-day of AVALANCHE or, as he remembered it, the “Hurricane” bursting on the coast.
He set up his radio-transmitter, 80 kilowatts, as powerful as Radio Cologne, he noted with pride. He wondered whether to use its full power, for fear of interception, but dec
ided to risk it, for he knew that his information might be vital and was determined that it should get through. In addition he had an immediate and difficult task for so junior an officer. The Italians, he was shocked to learn, had surrendered to the Allies, and he had to disarm the garrisons of two positions nearby. An infantry section proved tractable. The men threw down their arms and departed with alacrity. A battery of artillery nearby proved more difficult, but after Rocholl hinted that he might have to use force, its commander agreed to abandon his guns, and he and his men also disappeared into the twilight. “It was all over in forty-five minutes.” The potatoes were brought out, replaced on the cooker, and pronounced delicious by all ranks.
Rocholl then made his arrangements for the morning, posted his sentries and settled down for what was to prove a noisy night. Shortly after dark he heard the sound of explosions in Salerno harbour as the demolitions went off. Later the sky above him resounded with the drone of aircraft flying out to sea, and the horizon was suddenly lit up from end to end as the invasion fleet opened on them with every gun. “After midnight” – it was actually 3 a.m. – “cruisers and Nebelwerfers*” began to shell the beaches some five miles down the coast from Rocholl’s position: the first blast of the hurricane. Dawn revealed a “magnificent spectacle”. Rocholl might well have been awed. The modern battlefield is empty of all but a scurrying figure there or a tank here, incapable of being captured by brush or camera, but Salerno exceeded the wildest imagination of a film director planning a set: a vast array of ships, the anchored cruisers, like metal castles, banging away with their guns at the coast, the defending artillery replying, their shells throwing up pillars of water that seemed to stand for minutes, landing craft plying busily from ships to shore, destroyers dashing in to silence an obstinate defence post, tanks and infantry disembarking and moving inland.
Rocholl had sent his two cars down to watch the beaches below, and remained observing and reporting the more distant scene until about 6 p.m., when his preoccupation almost prevented him from noticing the cautious approach of two men in berets and khaki battledress stalking him with tommy guns. They were chased away, but Rocholl, whose duty it was to observe and not become involved in fighting, changed position. The reaction was probably mutual, as the intruders were from his battalion’s opposite number, the Reconnaissance Regiment of the British 46th Division, whose commander in a most praiseworthy manner had wasted no time in pushing out to Salerno town. So far he had met no enemy. Dornemann, having posted his screen of observation posts, had had quite enough to do, establishing a road-block at Ponte Fratte, finding out what troops had landed at Vietri sul Mare and engaging them. He called in Rocholl’s troop, and as it drove inland it suffered the irony of being pelted with flowers by the local populace, to cries of “Viva Inglesi”.1
The naval side of operation AVALANCHE went perfectly, all the units of the Fifth Army being landed within a few minutes of the planned H-hour and, except for a muddle at the junction point between the 46th and 56th Divisions, all at the right place. This did not obviate the desperate air of confusion that attends any landing in the dark on a coast held by the enemy: landing craft cannot guarantee to beach in parade-ground order, the various components of a combat team are momentarily lost or muddled up with other units, the ground does not seem to fit the map. One infantry company plodded on knee-deep in water, wondering why it seemed such a long way to dry ground, until it discovered that it was wading up the Tusciano river. Soldiers exposed for the first time in their lives to fire understandably feel that hostile shelling, fired blind, is aimed at them personally, and tend to take cover or dig in instead of moving inland.2 Both British and American units were temporarily thrown into disorder or even paralysed by enemy defensive fire on the beaches in the first hours of the invasion.
By daylight appearances are, if anything, worse. There is the terrifying roar of fighter-bombers, the shocking sight of sinking vessels, burning vehicles and the newly dead. The first sight of battle for one young British private was a long row of corpses, neatly laid out: some of the Hampshire battalion that had landed in an earlier wave and been caught by a machine gun.3 In both corps, it must be remembered, many of the assault troops were very young and unacclimatised either by experience or realistic training. It was remarkable how soon they recovered from their initial shock and how well they acquitted themselves later.
Nowhere was this process better seen than on the American beaches. The 36th Division had wisely landed on a broad front, two RCTs side by side, each with two battalions abreast in the assault wave. This ensured that a hitch or even the repulse of a whole regiment would not block the advance of the division. There were momentary crises on beaches near Paestum when von Doering’s tanks fired at short range into the sandhills and there was a danger that troops would go to ground. In fact, 141 RCT on the right made little progress in the first twenty-four hours, but its role was the least important of all. Elsewhere, the Americans never lost the initiative, thanks to the bravery of individuals who got to their feet, sometimes to their own astonishment, threw grenades, fired sub-machine guns and gave the lead to others who followed them. It was scoring the first goal that settled the team, but a division consists of many teams and needs to experience many successes and at least one failure before they settle into winning combinations.
Learning by experience is an expensive process, but in the 36th Division it was fired by enthusiasm. Fifty minutes behind the rifle companies the regimental self-propelled 75-mm guns came ashore to support the rush inland. At a place where hostile fire had upset the orderly landing of the divisional artillery three guns from different units were put together in battery and fought as such. Those troops which were not pinned by fire were carried forward by their sense of purpose, but this elan carried a penalty. The main feature of D-day on the 6th Corps beaches was the degree of disorganisation just inland. There was a necessary pause lasting most of the next day while things were sorted out.
The profligate waste of modern war was never more evident than on the Salerno beaches. Half-sunken and stranded ships, vehicles burnt out or stuck in sand up to their axles together with a mass of stores littered the sands as far as the eye could see. Radio sets, batteries, weapon magazines and necessities like ground sheets and medical supplies, soon to be urgently required inland, lay jettisoned by the assault troops. Two days later and a quarter of a mile inland order had been created out of apparent chaos. All the scattered items had been sorted, marked and arranged in tidy dumps. Incoming vehicles that had “waded” ashore and been dried out, their water-proofing gear removed, were assembled in orderly parks until they were required, and a control post was established to run the operation.
In both armies a special task force based on a spare battalion providing the labour under a naval officer was landed on each RCT or brigade beach. In the 36th Division, by good fortune or good judgment, a senior officer was appointed to exercise command overall who proved to be a one-man task force. This was Brigadier-General John W. (“Iron Man”) O’Daniel, who until the invasion had been commandant of the Fifth Army Amphibious Warfare School in North Africa. He owed his appointment to the army commander, who knew his mettle. O’Daniel and Clark had served in the same battalion on the Western Front in 1918, and when Clark was seriously wounded shortly after taking command O’Daniel succeeded him. His appointment as a sort of beach-master-in-chief was a happy one. He proved full of energy and gripped the administrative situation on the beaches as soon as he landed. He also found time to assess the operational situation ashore and to use his own communications to signal his reports direct to Clark who, on board USS Ancon, the command vessel, was completely in the dark about the situation ashore, as the official link between the 36th Division and the command ship had temporarily failed. Later O’Daniel was to take over command of a sector of the 36th Division’s front.
(Someone of O’Daniel’s rank and assertive character would not have been amiss on the 10th Corps beaches, where in places there occ
urred scenes of indiscipline amounting to farce. In spite of the protests of the officers of the Royal Navy, some army officers made no attempt to prevent their troops from discarding their extra loads of ammunition inside the landing craft even before they landed. One beach-master found the men of a famous regiment landing a piano for the sergeant’s mess; another, a fat pig in a crate, intended for another regiment’s officers’ mess victory dinner in Naples!)
Despite the check to the 141st RCT, General Walker and his division had opened the ball with a marked success, greater than he knew. His push forward had cut off KG von Doering from its direct line of withdrawal while it was engaged in battering the 141st RCT. On the 10th Sieckenius, having reviewed the situation over the whole of his divisional front, wanted to bring him back into reserve in his centre, but to do so von Doering had to make a long march south, east and then north. He was therefore effectively hors de combat until the 11th.
The fortunes of the two divisions on the beaches chosen by the British 10th Corps were varied. The 46th Division, for no good reason, elected to land on a single brigade front; the 56th, on two with the 169th Infantry Brigade on the left and the 167th on the right. It so happened that two of the beach strongpoints manned by the 16th Panzer Division coincided with the choice of beaches; Moltke, as it was called, on the 46th Division’s left-hand beach, and Lilienthal on the boundary line of the two divisions marked by the Asa stream. Moltke was blown up by one of the rocket-firing landing craft covering the British assault, but there was some doubt about the exact location of Lilienthal. The fire of the rocket craft detailed to bombard it fell, not north of the mouth of the Asa, but south of it. The craft carrying the right-hand battalion of the 128th Brigade had been ordered to land their passengers where the rockets fell, and as a result, they disembarked on the wrong side of the river, in 56th Division territory, and the craft carrying the 169th Brigade were shouldered off to their right and thus in turn landed in the wrong place.
Tug of War Page 6