Getting Back to War. Will it be Easy?
Taormina, in north-eastern Sicily, lies about 20 kms. south of this lovely beach,
at Santa Teresa di Riva. Photo - Fabrizio Sergi, Film Maker (Santa Teresa)
Author Alan Moorehead, along with other war correspondents, Allied officers and troops caught their breath in north-eastern Sicily at the end of August (while Canadian Navy boys rested, recuperated, repaired landing crafts in Malta) for a short time before the invasion of Italy, beginning (D-Day) September 3, 1943, at Reggio di Calabria.
For some there was time for swimming and wine, women and song (e.g., for Moorehead, at Taormina). For others, fat books of battle plans had to be studied and countless preparations made, because a vast armada of Allied ships and smaller vessels (e.g., various types of landing craft) was positioning itself for its approach to Italian shores. There would be no haphazard barrage or disembarkation on Italy's shores. It would be organized down to the last detail.
Sicily was in the net. Minds and hearts and bodies were gradually turning again to war.
The Little Man. The Big War.
One day merged into another.
More and more soldiers poured through the town
(Taormina) and took up positions along the coast.
Invasion barges began to drift into all
the little anchorages along the shore.
TAORMINA 1943, Canadian army parade in the Umberto Corso
in front of Piazza 9 April (Photo by Fabrizio Sergi, Santa Teresa).
As found at - CARTOLINE D'EPOCA RIVIERA JONICA.
Posted by Salvatore Coglitore
"Invasion barges began to drift into all the little anchorages along the shore,"
e.g., at Santa Teresa. Photo credit - Fabrizio Sergi, Film Maker, Santa Teresa
General Montgomery took up his headquarters
in the big villa just below ours, and there was a procession
of staff cars coming up the driveway all through the day.
Messina fell in ruins.
The last German crossed the Straits into Italy,
and when one looked across at that other shore,
the mainland of Europe, the vineyards and village houses
were utterly quiet and all the coast seemed to be gripped
in a sense of dread at what inevitably was going to happen.
The invasion.
One could not drag one's mind down to the invasion.
It had to come. But not yet. Not today or tomorrow.
One needed just a little more time.
The truth was that we were very tired.
We were suspended in the very middle of the war at a point
where we could neither remember the beginning nor see the end.
Only lately, in the past year, had we grown used to advancing.
Alamein, Tripoli, Tunis, Sicily. All victories.
But the way seemed endless. No matter how far
you advanced - a thousand, two thousand miles -
there was always the enemy in front of you,
always another thousand miles to go.
And still we had not invaded the mainland of Europe.
Still Italy was in the war. Still we appeared to make
no appreciable hole in the German armour.
One night the commandos with whom I used
to swim below Taormina came back with a prisoner.
They had nipped across the Straits in the darkness
and scooped up this little man as he was walking down
the highway towards Reggio on his way to work.
He was a railway clerk, a quaint and pathetic little figure
with a black tie and hat and an attaché case under his arm.
He sat in the stern of the invasion barge as it came back
from Italy and he was completely unnerved by the
hideous fate that had overtaken him in the night.
At one moment he had been walking down the street quite alone.
Then suddenly he was surrounded by enormous rough men
who spoke a strange language and hustled him into a boat.
And now he was far from home and probably about to die.
Someone on the beach gave him a tin of bully beef.
I asked him how many Germans were waiting to repel our invasion.
"None," he cried, "none. Absolutely none. They have all gone away.
You can land on Italy this afternoon if you want to."
Was it possible then that we were going to have an easy time?
A dry landing? A barrage across the Straits and then a quick rush
across the beach? Not too many mines?
Abruptly one began to realize how far one had shrunk
from the prospect of making the invasion, how far
one had retreated into this brief hedonism in the villa.
One was a little ashamed that a piece of incidental intelligence
from an Italian clerk, a piece of information which said,
"It's all right. It will be easier than you thought,"
should have been the gently graded path
that led one back to austerity and reality.
Once begun the process of resuming interest in the war
was very quick indeed. Snowball fashion it fed on itself.
The studied fabric of the army, the business of uniforms
and ranks that assures the soldier, "it's all right, you are
at home with your own people," began to exert itself.
It required no great effort to slip into the habits of three years.
"Let us now study the form, gentlemen.
Let us see what we have to do."
The form was not simple, but it could be
reduced to a few immediate simplicities.
The Italian empire was broken.
In all Africa no enemy soldier remained.
The enemy fleet in the Mediterranean was broken.
But Italy was still in the war; shaky, but still there.
Excerpts from Pages 18 - 19.
The day that Italy unconditionally surrendered was not very far away.
. . . . . .
Alan Moorehead, while in Taormina, Sicily, lived in a villa not far from where General B. Montgomery ("Monty, he's our man") established his headquarters for an undetermined number of days or weeks. Monty played a significant role in the collapse of Italy. He showed up with a rested, loyal and experienced Eighth Army.
Monty may not have been present when the plan for the invasion of Italy was hatched, but he was certainly involved in how it was carried out.
Moorehead not only shares details about 'the plan' but was present when it was carried out. 'Eclipse' reveals valuable insights and observations.
The Big Plan: Conception to Execution
In the previous winter
when Churchill and Roosevelt and their generals had met in Casablanca
three broad alternatives had presented themselves.
To invade directly through Sardinia and Corsica
and on to the mainland in southern France - the quick route.
To invade through Sicily to Italy
and thus throw Italy out of the war - the obvious route.
To invade through Greece and the Balkans - the attractive route.
Or perhaps a combination of two or more of these alternatives.
Number One, the French route, went out.
Too dangerous. Not enough air cover.
Number Three, the Balkan route, went out.
Too involved, and in any case it could be tried later on.
Number Two was chosen because of its very obviousness.
We wanted the Mediterranean. The only way to open
the Mediterranean was to conquer Sicily. Sicily was near.
We could have a dress rehearsal on the island of Pantellaria.
We had already made a landing - in North Africa -
but that was against very little opposition...
U.K. landing crafts enjoyed calm waters in some parts of N. Africa, but not all.
Canadian Doug Harrison (centre) escorts U.S. troops in U.K. Assault Crafts.
Operation Torch, Nov. '42. Photo - A12671, Imperial War Museum (IWM)
[Caption with above photo as found at IWM: "Troops and ammunition for light guns being brought ashore from a landing craft assault (ramped) (LCA 428) on Arzeau beach, Algeria, North Africa, whilst another LCA (LCA 287) approaches the beach." Royal Navy Photographer Lt. F. A. Hudson]
Moorehead continues:
...now, in the late summer,
we had done it, done it in one month.
True we had failed to catch the German garrison.
It had simply fled out of the net that neither Patton in the north
nor Montgomery in the south could draw quite tight enough.
But we had conquered Sicily and brought Italy
to the edge of surrender...
By now we were
thoroughly committed to our plans.
Route Number Two: Italy.
Indeed, such plans have to be made
at least three or four months previously in order to
get the troops and ships and aircraft into position.
We deployed an army in Sicily ready to invade, a British army.
We had another army, America, in North Africa.
Where should they land? Obviously there should be one landing
across the Straits of Messina. That was the easy one. But where else?
The journey up through the toe of Italy
was long and mountainous with many bridges.
One had to strike nearer to Rome than that.
After arguing carefully it was decided:
"We cannot land without air cover."*
In the end that proposition dominated the planning.
There must be air cover. We would land at the extreme limit
of our air cover and as near to a major port as possible.
And so inevitably the choice fell on Salerno.
Operation Baytown, smooth landings at Reggio, commenced on September 3rd.
Operation Avalanche, rocky landings at Salerno, commenced on September 9th.
Salerno is seen above, about 200 miles NW of Reggio and Italy's toe.
Drawing is found in Eclipse, page 32
Moorehead continues:
And then? Then the larger project.
The capture of Foggia, Foggia with its dozen airfields.
Given those airfields we could mount a thousand bombers
we could mount a thousand bombers for the assault on the
untouched parts of southern Europe, and moreover keep flying
when the weather was bad in that other major air-base, England.
Foggia was the ultimate aim of the campaign.
Gradually the plan took shape.
First object: make good the landing in Europe
and throw Italy out of the war.
Second: capture a port - Naples.
Third: start a new air-base at Foggia.
Given these three things, who knew what would happen?
Rome might fall, and all the rest. There was reason to believe
that the Germans might get clear out of Italy...
So in this surrounding atmosphere of hesitation and doubt
and uncertainty the planners of Algiers fell back on a plan
in which they felt they had some element of security.
A quick close landing. Limited objectives.
Air cover all the way. Wait and see.
Alexander was again given command
in the field. Under him again two armies -
one the Eighth under Montgomery, with Empire and British troops;
the other the Fifth under the American command of General Clark,
and composed of equal numbers of British and Americans.
The Eighth was to carry out the smaller operation... in Italy's foot.
The Fifth would make the big landings on the ankle at Salerno.
Passages from Pages 19 - 23.
*"We cannot land without air cover."* One of the many lessons drawn from the tragedy at Dieppe?
Please link to Passages: "ECLIPSE" by Alan Moorehead (2).
Unattributed Photos GH
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