Passages: "ECLIPSE" by Alan Moorehead (4).

A Barrage, An Invasion. Operation Baytown, Success.

British artillery bombards the Italian mainland from Messina in Sicily prior 

to the initial landings at Reggio. Operation Baytown: the invasion of Italy.

Photo Credit - World War II Today, Imperial War Museum (IWM)

Introduction:

At Wikipedia we read that "in military usage, a barrage is massed sustained artillery fire aimed at a series of points along a line. As well as attacking any enemy in that line, a barrage intends to suppress enemy movement and actions through that line.

Ray Ward, an officer with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (one of the thousands who landed at Reggio after witnessing the Allied barrage of Italy's coastline) writes about what he saw and heard:

We boarded our landing craft and cast off at 1900. At 0335 on 3 September 1943 — the fourth anniversary of the start of the war — the night exploded with an ‘Alamein barrage’, a ferocious 600-gun bombardment. The sky sang with shells from Sicily as we chugged across the straits in the dark, watching in frozen fascination as the barrage straddled the enemy coast. World War II Today 

War correspondent Alan Moorehead was on hand as well and witnessed the Allied barrage from a different vantage point. 

No Gun Fired Back

     The barrage lasted only half an hour.

     It was night, and we could see little except the yellow flame.

     Here we sat in the Sicilian hills above Messina,

     and the guns fired out of the olive groves.

     We fired out of Italian farms on this side of the Straits,

     and the shells made the short passage of a mile or two

     across the sea and landed on Italian farms on the mainland.

     The peasants on the Sicilian side were told:

     "You must leave your cottages because the blast is going

     to break your windows and would cause you injury."

     They would not move until the first rounds were fired,

     and then they ran screaming into the open. 

     On the other side of the Straits

     the civilians expected the barrage, and they went into

     caves in the hills while their homes were destroyed.

     There were no Germans to hit. The enemy rearguard was

     retreating up the toe of Italy exploding bridges as it went.

     British commandos had already lodged themselves

     in the Calabrian cottages, and there they sat decorated

     with flowers awaiting the arrival of the main army.

     No gun fired back at the British.

     There may have been military reasons for making this barrage,

     but even at the time it was difficult to see that the shells

     accomplished anything more than a gesture and an insurance.

     A number of monitors and destroyers ran close to the Italian shore

     and advanced the destruction from Reggio to San Giovanni. 

     A little before dawn the rocket-ships sent out a series

     of immense tearing broadsides to pulverise the beaches.

     The rockets were an extraordinary sight,

     a kind of upward flowing yellow waterfall, and the

     noise was monstrous, even worse than the barrage.

     Excerpts from Pages 25 - 26

The aforementioned Officer Ray Ward (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) had the following impressions of the pulverising barrage: 

All this turned out to be a complete waste of ammo. When we hit the beach at 0615, four kilometres north of Reggio di Calabria, our landing was unopposed. We were slightly dazed by the silence after the profligate bombardment. If someone had bothered to recce the beaches, I thought, or checked aerial reconnaissance photos, the shelling of an undefended coastline should surely have been avoided. But Monty had the firepower and there was an inevitability in its use. World War II Today 

Germans troops were not affected by the barrage and the people of Reggio expected it and many were safe in the hills. We learn more about Reggio in the following offering from Wikipedia:

 "Between July and August Reggio suffered eight major raids, prompting 35,000 people to leave the city; another two raids took place in early September, while Allied artillery shelling from the Sicilian side of the straits caused further damage. Sicily had been invaded by the Allies on 10 July and secured by 17 August. Italian Army officer Giorgio Chiesura, evacuated from Sicily on 13 August, wrote in his diary that "Reggio is destroyed, and I am impressed by its empty streets"; by early September, only 17,000 of Reggio's 110,000 inhabitants were still living in the city. In early September Reggio also suffered naval bombardments in preparation of Operation Baytown."

.   .   .   .   .   .

After the bombardments came the landings related to Allied troops and their supplies, and Moorehead describes the scene:

Peaceful Invasion and Landings, For the Most Part

     Then at last many hundreds of boats and little

     ships filled with men arrived off the beaches.

     They tumbled ashore in the half-light, finding no enemy

     to fight, not even serious minefields on the beaches.

     There were two or three casualties caused

     by men slipping and falling as they got off.

     Towards nine o'clock I drove down to

     Montgomery's headquarters a little below Messina.

     He was in a brisk and amiable mood...

     We walked down to the road and got aboard a duck.

Amphibious DUKWs* loaded with men and equipment, enter the water at Messina

in Sicily to cross to the Italian mainland. Photo as found at WW2Today (IWM)

(*a six-wheel-drive amphibious vehicle, aka 'duck')

The Straits of Messina separate Messina, Sicily (closest) from The Toe.

Photo as found in Eclipse by A. Moorehead, Page 33. 

In every cove from Messina to Catania a variety of landing crafts were parked, ducks included, awaiting the order to carry troops and/or the materials of war to a designated landing beach on the toe of the boot. Artist E. J. Ardizzone created the following scene that depicts troops marching toward ramps of Landing Craft (for), Tanks (LCTs) and Landing Ships (for), Tanks (LSTs):

Art LD 3384.  The Invasion of Sicily: Troops and vehicles embarking

on invasion craft at 'Charlie' Beach near Santa Teresa di Riva, Sicily,

 3 September, 1943. Found at Imperial War Museum (IWM)

Moorehead continues:

     This was the first time ducks had been used on a large

     scale, and already there were excellent reports of them.

     The Italian peasants on the other side had gazed in horror

     and fled when they saw the vehicles waddle out of the water.
     Montgomery sat in the front seat.
     Once in the sea we transshipped into a large motor launch.
     The duck, with one of the general's A.D.C.s at the wheel,
     was towed behind.
   
     We could see nothing of Italy.
     Heavy clouds of smoke started by the barrage rolled over the shore.
     Around us, dancing and bobbing about in the brilliant sun,
     were the invasion barges and the troop carriers, the big transports
     filled with vehicles, the destroyers and the distant cruisers,
     some pressing forward towards Italy; others already coming back.

 The landing barges go ashore. A Landing Craft Tank (LCT), heavily loaded 

with troops, makes its way past a cargo or troop ship. There are three large ships

parked side by side, with Assault Landing crafts (ALCs) hanging from davits.

Photo Credit - ECLIPSE by A. Moorehead. Page 27

Landing Ship, Tanks (LSTs) were larger still than LCTs.

Moorehead continues:

     The ducks sailed in Vee formation - like ducks.

     The sea had just enough movement to make

     an occasional white ripple on the surface.

     On the beach Sicilian girls were offering fruit

     to the Tommies as they embarked. 

     A few seagulls wheeled about in search

     of litter in the wake of the ships.

     Irresistibly the scene was like a regatta;

     or some yachting carnival perhaps, even Cowes.

     We coasted along very placidly.

     Every few minutes we overtook a shoal of ducks

     or a flotilla of blunt-nosed barges.

     The soldiers laughed and waved.

     Some of them saw Montgomery's red and black pennant

     on our mast and whistled shrilly across the water.

     Montgomery himself stood near the prow of the launch

     looking across to the point where the Italian coast

     was beginning to break through the clouds of smoke.

     Messina was on our left now, Reggio on our right;

     both partly in ruins.

     

Earlier we read that Moorehead observed a variety of landing crafts travelling, as he was, toward Reggio, and that "others (were) already coming back." My father may have been in a Landing Craft, Mechanised (LCM) heading back to Messina for a second or third round of troops or supplies. In his Navy memoirs he writes the following:

Although no one ventured a word (while resting or recuperating in Malta during August, 1943), we all had Italy in the back of our minds. Before we got too settled in, we were throwing our hammocks aboard our landing craft again and heading for Sicily.

Our flotillas beached at the mouth of a now dried up river bed at Mili Marina, then a few days in Catania Harbor itself, where we had a good view of German low-level attacks on a British cruiser. At night we watched German planes try to take evasive action as they were caught in the searchlights which circled the harbor. During the day we could see the smoke from Mt. Etna.

At midnight on September 3, 1943 our Canadian landing craft flotilla, loaded once again with war machinery, left the beaches near Messina, Sicily and crossed the Messina Strait to Reggio Calabria in Italy. The invasion of Italy was underway.

Troops disembark at Reggio from an LST, left.

2 or 3 LCMs are next (right), perhaps Canadian.

It was no different touching down on the Italian beach at Reggio Calabria at around midnight, September 3, 1943 than on previous invasions. Naturally we felt our way slowly to our landing place. Everything was strangely quiet and we Canadian sailors were quite tense, expecting to be fired upon, but we touched down safely, discharged our cargo and left as orderly and quietly as possible.

In the morning light on our second trip to Italy across seven miles of the Messina Straits we saw how the Allied artillery barrage across the straits had levelled every conceivable thing; not a thing moved, the devastation was unbelievable and from day one we had no problems; it was easy come, easy go from Sicily to Italy.

"Dad, Well Done" Pages 115 - 116

Moorehead continues:

     It was impossible to feel that this, at last, was the day,

     the invasion of Europe after three years, the reply to Dunkirk.

     Outside there was no firing. Just the gentle

     crowded passage of the boats back and forth...

     The traffic became much thicker

     as we approached the beach just north of Reggio.

     Three or four German planes dived out of the sun just ahead of us,

     and their bombs made waterspouts between ships, hitting nothing. 

     Then when they came for a second dive

     Montgomery and all the rest of us except the gunners

     went down full length on the deck.

     The Oerlikons on the launch opened up simultaneously,

     a terrific din when one was only a couple of feet away.

     Presently when it was quieter 

     we climbed back into the duck and sailed directly for the beach.

     An immense commotion of unloading was going on.

     Half a dozen big landing ships had already flung open

     their doors in the bows, and the lorries and tanks were splashing ashore.

     

     On the beach itself Italian prisoners and British soldiers

     were working together pinning wire mesh into the loose sand

     and digging a track up to the coastal road.

     The road was blocked with hundreds of vehicles.

     Little groups of soldiers were making tea on the beach.

     To the left and right of us hundreds of other boats were making

     towards the shore. One had the impression that all this

     had been going on here for months instead of just five hours.

     The soldiers caught sight of

     Montgomery as soon as we touched the sand.

     None of them could have hoped for such an easy landing as this.

     They had massed for an assault, and in the darkness each man

     in these many thousands had had the prospect 

     of being killed or drowned or hurt. 

     

     The strain of fear which exists in every front-line before attack

     is probably brought to its highest pitch in a night sea landing.

     

     And now in a few hours

     all that had gone.

     The sun streamed down.

     They were ashore

     and safe.

     

Monty enters Reggio aboard a DUKW (duck), Sept. 3, 1943

Photo as found in Eclipse by A. Moorehead, Page 29. 

To read other significant passages from ECLIPSE by Alan Moorehead, please link to Passages: "ECLIPSE" by Alan Moorehead (3)

Unattributed Photos GH