Operation Husky Page 15
Hodson thought they had been mercifully lucky. They had “gained some experience (some of it admittedly not very good) but we were intact and ready for the next operation. Men had learned for themselves that in this heat we could not carry all the equipment issued to us. Without instructions or authority, on that very first day and during the next few days, we stripped down to the very basic necessities to become mobile and to conserve energy. We all recognized that we had a great deal to learn, but we had taken a first step toward becoming good soldiers.”21
BY 1800 HOURS, the Hasty Ps had consolidated a defensive position on high ground left of the airfield. Except for ‘A’ Company, which had landed far to the west, and ‘D’ Company’s skirmish at the fortified hill, the battalion had met little opposition.22 As for ‘A’ Company, Captain Alex Campbell had marched the company up a road bordered by cactuses, “raising clouds of white dust as it went,” until the leading platoon turned a corner and found itself facing a horse-drawn Italian artillery battery. Two teams of horses, each pulling a field gun, stared balefully at the Canadians. Immediately in front of the horses, a broken-down lorry blocked the road. The infantry had guns at the ready, the Italians milling around the truck did not, and a flurry of shots left three of the artillerymen bleeding to death in the ditch. Seven other gunners surrendered.23
Campbell’s initial delight in this capture quickly turned to disgust. A bullet through the radiator had rendered the truck useless. The field guns were wooden-wheeled relics from the Great War that lacked even aiming sights. When a section returned from patrolling farther up the road with a report that they could hear tanks in the distance, Campbell realized his little sojourn was perhaps ill advised. Leaving the guns and truck behind, ‘A’ Company marched with prisoners and horses in tow eastward to link up with the rest of the battalion.
Lost more than not, Campbell led his men along one winding track after another. With each passing hour the day grew hotter and the troops wearier, thirstier, and hungrier. Finally, at 1400 hours, they stumbled into the battalion perimeter to find their mates comfortably resting in the shade of olive groves. Campbell reluctantly went to the beach to get his bullet wound tended and returned a little later with his arm in a sling. The battalion medical officer, the captain said, had wanted to evacuate him to a hospital ship. Campbell had threatened to punch the doctor if he insisted on this course.24
About the time ‘A’ Company came into the perimeter, so did the Hasty Ps’ second-in-command, Major John Buchan, 2nd Baron Tweedsmuir. Lord Tweedsmuir’s father had been Canada’s governor general from 1935 to his death in 1940 at age sixty-five. The thirty-one-year-old major had been assigned to the Hasty Ps shortly before they sailed from Britain, when the battalion’s second-in-command, Major O’Connor Fenton, was injured in a motorcycle accident. Brigadier Howard Graham and the Hasty Ps’ Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Sutcliffe had been preparing to promote one of the battalion’s more than capable officers when they were suddenly informed by army headquarters that a British lord would be foisted on them. So far as Graham knew, “John Tweedsmuir, as he liked to be called, had never commanded anything, had never seen the [Hasty Ps], nor had I or anyone else in the brigade ever set eyes on him.” Whether he would prove competent remained to be seen.25 Tall, lanky, and very intense, he was soon nicknamed “Long John” or “Tweedie” by the troops.26
Tweedsmuir had been LOB during the initial landings but had organized a carrying party to bring supplies up to the battalion. He had found Lieutenant Colonel Sutcliffe and his battalion headquarters “in a vineyard full of olive and almond trees beside a deep cool well.” The two officers discussed how well the day had developed and agreed the men were “all in good heart.”27
On his way forward, Tweedsmuir had passed through the 48th Highlanders of Canada. This battalion had been left with little to do because 1 CIB’S leading battalions had met such light resistance. Instead of closing with a determined enemy, the Highlanders fended off children begging for chocolates and cigarettes. They also ran afoul of the old Sicilian farmer from Toronto, who volunteered that he had owned a fruit store on Elizabeth Street behind the regiment’s armoury. He had recognized their pipers.28
The Highlanders set up on three small hills about a mile inland and midway between the salt marshes behind the beach and Pachino airfield.29 They had not fired a shot and so “spent time collecting tomatoes and fruit of all types.” Their positions offered little shade and the men “found the heat oppressive. This part of Sicily all vineyards, dry and flat,” bemoaned the battalion war diarist.30
Half a mile inland of the Highlanders, Brigadier Howard Graham had established his headquarters in a sandy orchard. Graham was exhausted, the stress of executing the landing of most of his assault force by LCMS and DUKWS having taken its toll on the fifty-four-year-old. As the sun went down, he noted that the heat of the day quickly dissipated. Rolling up in his greatcoat on the sand with a mosquito net draped over him, Graham fell into a deep sleep.31
WHILE 1 CIB had faced some semblance of organized resistance, particularly at Pachino airfield, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade met next to none. Once on the sand, its biggest problem arose from the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada having landed east of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry rather than to their west. Before sunup, the Seaforths had completed the nearly three-thousand-yard trek across the beach and were busy raking in prisoners. Their first objective had been a causeway, where, after firing a few shots, they watched a sizable number of Italians come out “with their hands up. They were a sorry looking lot, no socks on their feet, shoes almost off their feet—and their uniforms were of the poorest quality.” A Seaforth, wounded in the landing, escorted them to a prisoner cage set up on the beach and then reported to the nearby Regimental Aid Post for treatment.32
Lieutenant Colonel Bert Hoffmeister ordered a pause at the causeway to clear the sand out of weapons and eat some of the forty-eight-hour rations.33 The battalion was soon on the move again, heading west towards its next objective—a height of ground beyond a saltwater lake that overlooked the beach. They reached this rise at about noon. Soon thereafter, contact was established with the Special Service Brigade commandos on the Seaforth’s left. At times, as the battalion crossed over higher ground, Ispica was visible in the distance. It was on top of a hill about seven miles to the northwest, and intelligence reports predicted the Italians would make a stand there. This was hard to believe, given that so far they had been surrendering in droves.34 Following Hoffmeister, like a loyal spaniel, was a young naval gunnery officer named Montgomery from Roberts. The lad was desperate for a target against which to direct the monitor’s guns. “Sir, now?” he would ask whenever something that looked remotely worth shooting at appeared. But Hoffmeister, who had a good understanding “of the size of the shell and the shocking effect of a shell that size” kept demurring, “Monty, there’s absolutely no target.”
“Sir, I’ve never fired this son of a gun close to extreme range,” Montgomery would sigh.
“Well, I’m not prepared to waste ammunition if there’s no target and, of course, there’s always the danger of a round falling short,” the lieutenant colonel retorted.35
Coming onto another bit of high ground, the Seaforths were suddenly startled to see a group of Italians on horseback galloping along with some mortars mounted on limbers. The mortar crews rode into the grounds of a cemetery next to a large walled château to the left of the Seaforths, unlimbered their mortars, and immediately lobbed some bombs towards the Canadians.36 “Monty, there’s your target.”
The lad grinned and started calling in coordinates. “The first round he fired just a little short,” Hoffmeister later recalled, “and you could see the shell coming through the air in a great big blur. But the next one went right on the button and anything that was left that you could carry came streaming out of that château.”37
After that the Seaforths just kept advancing, even pressing on after dark to a point about four miles so
uth of Ispica in order to attack it the next day. While they were on the move, the town was continually subjected to heavy naval bombardment. The night portion of their march was a tough one. It “was pitch dark, and moving through vineyards, orchards and similar obstacles the heavily laden Seaforths gained their first experience at stumbling through an unfamiliar countryside in enemy territory.” Dawn of July 11 found them on the low ridges that had been their destination—an inland march of some four miles—and the men collapsed for a few hours of welcome sleep.38
The PPCLI had covered even more ground after heading north from Bark West. Most of the rifle companies logged about seven miles in aggressive patrols aimed at cutting the roads running from Pachino to Ispica. Except for the Bren carrier platoon, whose LCT crew had become so disoriented they ended up at dawn standing off the 51st Highland Division’s beach and had to turn about for Bark West, the entire battalion had been ashore by first light and ready to move. Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsay had sent the men due north towards their Phase One objective astride a road running on a northeasterly arc from the beach to intersect with a road and railway that ran in tandem northwest from Pachino.
Very little opposition was met during this phase, and the men had time to take a close look at the countryside. Most decided this coastal belt had little to recommend it. “The land, sloping very gradually to the sea,” one officer wrote, “was terribly poor. Rock beds covered most of the surface and towards the sea the soil became almost pure sand. The vines were of a dwarf variety and provided little obstacle to the drift of the sand. To protect the young grain in the windswept soil the peasants had erected long rows of screens made of bamboos and rushes. Between these—which are six to ten feet apart—they grew their grain.” Beyond the plain, they could see low, brown hills. It was these they marched towards, knowing their task in this invasion was to serve as “outriders,” winning control of the high ground in order to protect Eighth Army’s left flank during its drive up the coastal plain to Catania.39
By 1000 hours, the PPCLI had reached the road. Lindsay ordered three rifle companies to fan out to strike the Pachino-Ispica road in different places. The company-sized patrols were soon engaged in “several minor clashes, with few casualties. Many Italian prisoners were taken without their offering any fight . . . The natives were very friendly and appeared happy to have their country invaded by Allied forces,” the PPCLI war diarist recorded.40
Those Italians who decided to make a stand did so in small groups usually quickly eliminated by the rifle company engaged. But there were exceptions. One section of ‘D’ Company sent to check a farmhouse approached so incautiously that it was ambushed and captured to a man by a party of Italian troops. When the section’s platoon commander, Lieutenant G.S. Lynch, went looking for them, he was fired on as he walked up to the house. Returning fire with his pistol, Lynch was badly wounded as he escaped into a nearby vineyard. It took the officer several hours to drag himself back to ‘D’ Company’s lines. In the meantime, the Italians at the farmhouse had decided to flee and let the platoon’s section go.41
To the west, ‘C’ Company had been moving towards a point where maps showed a bridge crossing a narrow gully. Lieutenant Colin McDougall’s platoon led, its sections arrayed in an H-shaped formation with the men in each section advancing in single file. The platoon walked “past vineyards and olive groves, through gardens of aloe and cypress,” McDougall wrote. “Their boots crushed and released the scent of rosemary and thyme. There were flowering almond trees, distant orange groves—but no sign of enemy.
“The platoon was climbing on the road beside a lone poplar tree when there was a sharp, black explosion. Bits of dirt and gravel showered over them. Two men fell wounded. The others pushed on through a wooded parkland where they were again fired upon.” McDougall led his men in a charge on some farmhouses that dominated the road, only to find them empty. There was no sign of the mortar or artillery piece that had fired and which had fallen silent after loosing the single round.
Hearing voices in the distance, McDougall signalled his men to be quiet and then crept out beyond the houses to look down the opposite slope into a low draw. About five hundred yards away, an officer had formed up a group of fifty Italians under the shade cast by a giant oak and was giving them a heated address. Using hand signals, McDougall spread his platoon swiftly into a firing line along the hill-crest. Men checked their sights. The lieutenant estimated the range and had it passed the length of the line by each man whispering it to the next. When everyone was ready, McDougall yelled, “Fire!” About thirty rifles and three Bren guns fired as one. “The knots of soldiers around the oak tree seemed to disintegrate. Some of the green-clad figures escaped to nearby bushes or defilades of ground, but most of them remained sprawled around the base of the tree.”42
This action took place at about 1800 hours. Three hours earlier, another PPCLI patrol had carried out a brief reconnaissance to Burgio, a village standing on the road about five thousand yards due west of Pachino. Detecting some enemy movement, the patrol did not enter the village and withdrew without alerting the Italians to their presence. Nobody wanted to give the troops in the village cause to go on the alert, for in a few hours Burgio was scheduled to be attacked by 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Carleton and York Regiment. At 2130 hours, the PPCLI’S ‘A’ Company was at the head of the battalion “when it came under fire . . . An attack was put in and resulted in the surrender of the enemy and capture of 4 Italian guns intact. During this advance the sky was aglow with flak and tracer as enemy planes carried out an attack on our ships which were still unloading on the beaches.”43
The four guns had been horse-drawn, and the PPCLI happily pressed forty large draft animals into service.44 By 0045 hours, the battalion was out on 2 CIB’S point and about five miles southeast of Ispica, which the brigade was to overrun come dawn.
FOR ITS PART, 3 CIB had begun landing on Bark West at about noon. The Carleton and York Regiment, supported by a squadron of Three Rivers Tank Regiment, headed immediately for Burgio. The combined arms force entered the village at 2000 hours and reported “no opposition or casualties.”45 This was typical fare for the division’s reserve brigade on July 10. Most of the troops had got soaked in the landing, and there was a general feeling of letdown at the lack of any fighting. The brigade’s transport officer, Captain D.H. Cunningham, watched sympathetically as the “troops, heavily laden with full marching order and some of them very wet—pushed up an ankle-deep sandy slope behind the beach toward [their assembly area]. The day was very hot and the men had been aboard ship for nearly four weeks—two factors that made the short trip to the assembly area a disagreeable one. However, the location was finally reached and the Brigade settled down to the task of assembling the boatloads into units again. Traffic control was established, signs were erected and the various headquarters, working at top speed, were soon organized and functioning smoothly. There was, however, one serious problem: the shortage of transport was acute. Some of the battalions had lots of transport, but so far as the Brigade headquarters was concerned, apart from two vehicles due to be landed later, all transport was at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”46
Major General Guy Simonds had landed with a lead element of his divisional headquarters at 1100 hours. They stepped off LCAS into four feet of water and “waded ashore carrying equipment and documents on their heads.” The only suitable place they could find for a headquarters close to the beach was “a civilian hovel, 12×16, inhabited by an old woman, 11 guinea pigs, 4 dogs, a goat and 4 [gallons] of wine all of which were quickly cleared out.” Lost at sea, along with their vehicles, was much equipment that kept a divisional headquarters running. They had “no office supplies except those carried aboard the Hilary by clerks,” few typewriters, and a severe shortage of wireless sets.
With nightfall, the sudden onslaught of a series of raids on the beaches by German fighters and bombers was met by heavy volleys of anti-aircraft fire from guns on both the ships and t
he beach. The planes attacking Bark West caused no real damage and failed to score any hits on the ships standing offshore, but there were reports of ships sunk elsewhere. During the night, divisional headquarters gathered a tally of Canadian casualties for the day, and there was much surprise at how light these proved to be. Seven other ranks were killed and three officers and twenty-two other ranks wounded. The Special Service Brigade commandos had faced a couple of stiff fights that left them with six dead and nineteen wounded.47
From his hovel, Simonds sent a wire to General Andrew McNaughton, who was monitoring the invasion from 15th Army Group’s Advanced Headquarters in North Africa. “Landings effected with very little opposition and by 1200 hrs today all objectives for phase one were in my hands. Ineffective counter attacks in afternoon were repulsed. Casualties very light and first reports indicate do not exceed seventy-five killed and wounded including 40 and 41 Marine Commandos. We took over 700 prisoners and some material. Morale high and troops very confident of themselves. Details will follow. Success mainly due to excellent co-operation Royal Navy and RAF.”
McNaughton quickly responded, “Canada will be very pleased at your achievement.”48
Out on the firing line that the PPCLI had set up in the darkness, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsay felt wary about how easily the day had gone. “In these early stages success came easily and swiftly,” he pointed out to the company commanders, and he warned them against “any relaxation of the small points that make for the success of an operation.”49 It was a hard message to sell to the troops, who had seen scores of enemy surrender without a fight. This was especially the case as the monitor Roberts and other warships offshore hammered Ispica with intermittent bombardments throughout the night. In the Hasty Ps’ perimeter, one soldier spoke for many that evening. “Call this a fight?” he asked. “Why, this is only fun and games. I wonder if it’s all like this?”50