The Beginning of Something Quite Unexplored and Different
The jacket on Eclipse is a reproduction of a painting by
Barnett Freedman. Trusteeship - Imperial War Museum
[Please link to more information about B. Freedman at Wikipedia. The painting is called The Landing in Normandy; Arromanches, D-day plus 20, 26th June 1944 (Art.IWM ART LD5816)]
Introduction:
Alan Moorehead was a war correspondent connected to the British press and his articles often found their way into Canadian newspapers. I have collected hundreds of articles from The Winnipeg Tribune, The Montreal Star and The Ottawa Citizen and though Moorehead's efforts only appear on occasion, the quality of his work is evident.
His book Eclipse was published in 1945 and the edition in my possession (located at a local used-book store for $20, hardcover) was published in 1967. It is a book in four parts and details the collapse (eclipse) of German domination in Italy, France, the Rhine and the centre of Germany.
Thousands of Canadians in our nation's army were dutifully and heavily involved in the separate invasions of Sicily (beginning on July 10, 1943) and Italy (beginning two months later), and hundreds of members of the Canadian permanent and volunteer navies helped get them to those shores in the Mediterranean and supply them with all of the necessary materials of war, delivered to contested and uncontested beaches in LCAs and LCMs (Landing Craft, Assault, and Mechanised).
"Sicily was hot. Italy was easy," said my father in memoirs.
Because I am currently presenting news, memoirs, photographs, and more, on this site related to the invasion of Italy (chiefly Operation Baytown, beginning September 3, 1943), I will share selected excerpts or passages from Moorehead's book related to that time.
The Sicilian Campaign Was Over
In the summer, towards the middle of August,
the three of us began walking up the road to Taormina...
Even at the time I believe we were conscious that
this was the end of one set of experiences, and the
beginning of something quite unexplored and different.
The army, as I remember, had stopped a little short
of the village of Giardini, on the eastern coast of Sicily,
just above Catania.
Taormina is seen, lower left, near the tip of Sicily.
Credit - The Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 3, 1943
Credit - The Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 3, 1943
Moorehead continues:
...the vehicles could not get through,
and the soldiers lay about in the shade
accepting grapes from the peasants
and awaiting the order to go on again.
It was hot.
There was a clear leaping brilliance in the sea,
and at midday everything had turned into strident colour,
red rocks, green vineyards, a blaring cobalt blue in the sky
and then all the bright colours of the tumbledown houses
along the shore.
A gunboat, keeping close to the beach,
ran on ahead of the front line, and was aimlessly
turning circles in the bay below Taormina.
The Sicilian campaign was over, or almost over.
Catania had fallen. In the north the Americans were advancing
upon the Straits of Messina, and from Messina itself the enemy
were streaming across the narrow waterway back into the toe of Italy.
Only the rearguard was left behind.
Of all the lovely towns of Sicily
only Taormina remained untaken - the loveliest of all.
As we stood with the forward platoon and argued
we could see the great hotels on the heights above.
They stood a sheer thousand feet above the sea
upon an immense red cliff; the hotels where the tourists
used to go before the war, a place that looked like
a holiday poster, "drenched in sunshine and remote."
This was the last important point we had to take in Sicily, and
the taking of the town would be the last gesture of the campaign
before we set out upon the invasion of Europe.
Excerpts from Pages 11
By mid-August, the Canadians in RCNVR and Combined Operations who had manned Landing Crafts, Mechanised (LCMs) at George and How Beaches between Syracuse and Noto (SE Sicily) from July 10 - August 6 (approx.), were in Malta enjoying rest and recuperation, followed by about two weeks of hard, hectic work repairing LCMs for the invasion of Italy.
About 250 Canadians would return to NE Sicily once their landing crafts were in good shape and get into position in several coves, harbours and bays in order to take on loads of troops and supplies for the first of a few significant landings in Italy. The first landing was Operation Baytown, beginning September 3, 1943, and the heart of their landing zone was Reggio, on the toe of the boot.
. . . . .
Before the commencement of Operation Baytown, Allied forces still had ground to cover in Sicily to secure Messina and miles of coastline south of that capital city. Allied troops, under the charge of U.S. General George Patton and U.K. General Bernard Montgomery, and the war correspondents that followed them, continued their march northward.
The Advancing Army and the Retreating Enemy
The village of Giardini must be a mile long.
A main road and a line of houses on either side.
Then the sea and the mined beach.
Here and there a house was burning.
The villagers had fled into the hills, and those who had
stayed behind looked at us incredulously and with that sort of fear you
see sometimes in animals - the fear that prevents them from running away.
Only the very old or the very crazy were left behind.
They were half-mad from hunger.
They waved, but when we stopped it was
a long time before they would answer coherently.
"Yes, yes. The Germans have gone."
"The soldiers have gone. There are no soldiers in the village."
And then: "Pane. Biscotti. Caramelle." Bread. Biscuits. Sweets.
All the way through Sicily the peasants had been crying for food,
and the cry had been reduced to this three-word formula
and had been repeated so often that now it began to take on
the meaningless persistence of the Fascist slogans on the walls.
Mussolini ha sempre ragione. Mussolini is always right.
Do not question - Obey. Fascist Italy goes forward to a greater tomorrow.
Credere - Obbedire - Combattere. Believe. Obey. Fight.
Photo Credit - Life Magazine
Photo Credit - Imgur image
The letters were a foot thick and two feet high on the crumbling villa walls,
a persistent stream of sounding phrases that lost all meaning and after a while
even ceased to be ridiculous. They jarred the eyes in this peaceful landscape,
just as one is jarred by a persistent tiny noise in a quiet room.
A little group of Italian soldiers in dirty green uniforms were
standing on the beach waving a white flag at the British gunboat.
When they saw us on the road they ran forward calling: "We surrender."
There was something essentially childish in their dark and troubled faces.
Much later, after the war perhaps, they would posture again and make
a show in the village street. But not now. All that was gone entirely.
They were tired and hurt and frightened, and
it was embarrassing to feel their deflation.
Wanting to please, they said eagerly,
"Two British officers have already gone down the road."
They added: "No. There are no Germans.
The last of them left this morning."
Taormina and Giardini Naxos, Sicily, are
1 - 1.5 inches above the 'r' in Giardini : )
Moorehead continues:
There was the usual hush over this gap
between the advancing army and the retreating enemy.
Everything goes to earth. The road is clear and it is
a little adventure to turn each corner. You smell the enemy.
Here and there, for no explained reason, a house burns quietly
and there is no one to quench it;
it burns in a vacuum with not anyone to watch.
The discarded helmets and webbing of the enemy lie about.
You never take your eyes off the road.
Twice we saw the usual pattern of square holes in the macadam,
and picked our way past the teller mines lying just below the surface.
We kept to the middle of the road and walked on
into the centre of Giardini.
The gunboat came steaming back along the beach
and disappeared around the bend.
At the railway station there was a great deal of disorder.
The bombing had carried black debris across the road
and a stationary train full of some chemical
threw out a strange sickly smell.
There were craters in the highway,
and these appeared to have been mined
with a smaller type of mine, which is quite concealed
and is designed to kill single men on foot.
. . . . .
Members of the RCNVR who manned landing crafts for several weeks during the invasion of Sicily often had to find their own accommodation and scrounge for food. For a couple of weeks or more my father and dozens of mates lived inside a limestone cave near Avola, well south of Taormina and Giardini. However, the beaches near the cave (known to the sailors as "The Savoy") were littered with perhaps another version of "a smaller type of mine."
My father writes:
We used a pail of sand saturated with gasoline to heat our meals on if any food was available. Later we moved into a limestone cave, dank and wet, but safe from bombs. We hung a barrage balloon over it, about 1,000 feet up, and... we had 50 - 60 feet of limestone over our heads.
I had 27 days at Sicily living on tomatoes and Bully Beef. I swore I would kick the first bull I saw in Canada right in the posterior if I got back.
Everywhere I looked there were anti-personnel hand-sized grenades that needed only to be touched to go off. They were built to maim and not kill because it takes men to look after the wounded, but if you’re dead, you’re dead.
We threw tomatoes at a lot and exploded them in that manner.
"Dad, Well Done", page 34
To read other significant, poignant passages, please link to Passages: They Left the Back Door Open (2).
"Dad, Well Done", page 34
To read other significant, poignant passages, please link to Passages: They Left the Back Door Open (2).
Unattributed Photos GH
No comments:
Post a Comment