War Correspondents Trek Upward for an Exceptional View
A view of the toe of Italy's boot - the dark shadow under the farthest clouds, left,
from Santa Teresa di Riva, Sicily. Photo: From Fabrizio Sergi, Santa Teresa
Introduction:
In Section 1 (of passages from 1945's Eclipse by Alan Moorehead), we catch a glimpse of conditions in war-torn north-eastern Sicily as a trio of war correspondents make their way along the beach and through a beach town toward their destination, Taormina.
In the following excerpts we read about Moorehead's trek from the beach outside the village of Giardini to the top of the cliff upon which resided Taormina, one of the last stops before Allied forces reached Messina and positioned themselves for the first landings upon the coast of Italy, beginning on September 3, 1943 (i.e., Operation Baytown, an active field of play for about 250 Canadians in Combined Operations who manned essential landing crafts as members of the 80th Canadian Flotilla).
Though the book jacket of Eclipse depicts a vast scene on Normandy's shore during June, 1944, it is surely very similar to what the coast of Sicily looked like when landing operations began in the two weeks that followed Mr. Moorehead's strenuous climb.
The jacket is a reproduction of a painting by Barnett Freedman.
Photo Credit - Trusteeship of Imperial War Museum (IWM) U.K.
Up the Face of the Cliff
"It's a Long Way to Taormina!"
We turned off the road and struck straight up
the face of the cliff along a twisting bridle-path.
The ramparts of the town were directly above us, but
one had neither the breath nor the energy to look upward.
Many little groups of Italians were lying concealed
at their machine-guns at the bends in the track.
They waited till we came abreast of their dugouts
and then they came out and called to us: "We surrender.
What shall we do? Do you want our weapons?"
"Throw them down the cliff."
They ran to the edge of the track
and threw their guns and cartridges into the ravine.
They did this very solemnly and with childish dignity,
wanting to make a formal act of surrender.
We were now half-way up the cliff,
and I for one was sobbing for breath.
The sweat ran down the open neck of one's shirt
and even one's shorts were becoming sodden with it...
The sea was now a pond below. Directly above,
the people were gathering on the stone ramparts,
and they were making a queer staccato ululation
that might have been a warning or a welcome.
They could see us clearly as we
crept slowly up the goat track.
When I got to the top the others were there,
surrounded by a mob of Italians, all chattering,
many of them waving white flags.
More and more were running down the hill.
They waved their rifles in the air.
The children kept plucking at our clothes as we
we sat on the parapet trying to regain our breath.
Biscotti. Caramelle.
There was a long broken story of how they had fought
the Germans in the night, and how the Germans had looted
the villas and the hotels before they left...
Far below lay the Mediterranean,
so vitreous that all the green formations of the seabed
showed clearly through the water.
A great shoulder of rock butted out to the north,
and there beyond it, over a stretch of water no wider
than a river-mouth, lay Italy itself.
One was hardly prepared for its nearness.
Passages from Page 13.
. . . . .
Views from Taormina were exceptional, from the writer's point of view.
Staging areas, from Taormina to Messina, for the invasion of Italy, were
as well, from Allied planners' point of view. Photo - Page 32, Eclipse
Alan Moorehead makes an effort to describe the scene before him once he has reached the vantage point offered by the town of Taormina (lower left in the map or drawing above), and after "we sat drinking beer in a little cafe." I would have paused at the cafe as well if I'd been there in sodden shorts.
The city of Reggio was the first and perhaps most significant of the Allied landing areas in Italy (beginning on Sept. 3, 1943), and the landing strip is known to have widened as far as Melito on the right (above) and Scilla on the left. One or two weeks before a devastating barrage was aimed at Italy, to soften what turned out to be an easy landing, Moorehead gazed across the Messina Strait.
Stand and Look
There was no boat on the Straits, nothing between us
and the unknown enemy country, a great high stretch of coastline
that grew up quietly out of the water. It was so close you could
discern the roads and the occasional houses among the olive groves.
It needed no great imagination to find German trucks
passing along the roads and guns pointing from the rocks.
This was the country toward which the Eighth Army
had been fighting for three years, and so this first vision
of the shore came as a naturally dramatic moment.
All of us had many times lost hope, or at least
the immediate sense of hope; and now that we had
arrived in sight of Italy it was an unaffected joy
merely to stand and look and look.
Four arrows point from Sicily to the four major landing zones in Italy.
Invasion from Messina's coastal region to 'The Toe' was first, Sept. 3
Moorehead continues:
I imagine this moment had the same effect upon all of us.
As we looked, the feeling of urgency which carries everyone
through a campaign began to drain away.
There it was: Italy.
No need to do anything more now.
Not at any rate for the time being.
No more fighting. No need to move.
The invasion was still to come, but that was a long way off;
perhaps next week, perhaps next month.
It did not matter much exactly when.
There would be an infinity of days here in the sun, drinking wine,
swimming from the beach, meeting the women.
Far back along the road the army was slowly winding
forward to fill in this gap between them and the enemy.
They would filter through the villages and
along the coast until they reached the tip of Sicily.
Then they would sit down and gather strength.
It would be a time of holiday for everyone, a time to forget
the fighting on the Primasole Bridge and across the Catania Plain.
They were tired, and now just for a little time they would be
suspended between this campaign and the next, between
what they had done and the indefinite future.
The five of us who had come to Taormina were well used
to the ways of seizing a holiday at a moment like this.
One man went off to find a villa.
Another took a truck for wine.
A third engaged Italian servants.
We gathered fruit and vegetables,
eggs and fresh fish from the beach.
For the rest there were our cases of army rations,
cigarettes, soap and chocolate; all the things
that had grown as precious as life in Europe.
Passages from Page 14, Eclipse
. . . . .
Find a villa. Find a beach. Find some swim trunks. Relax.
Navy boys and war correspondents knew how to unwind.
A14313. Heading - THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
Caption - Naval ratings off duty enjoying a bathe on the North African coast at
Oran or Mers-El-Kebir. RN Official photographer Lt. C. H. Parnall, IWM.
A14314. Heading - JACK TAR IN HIS ELEMENT. 25 AND 26 JAN. 1943,
ORAN AND MERS-EL-KEBIR. Naval ratings off duty enjoying a bathe
on the North African coast. Photo - Lt. C.H. Parnall, IWM.
Please link to Dispatches From The Front by M. Halton, far left.
Unattributed Photos GH
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