Operation Husky Read online

  Pacing back and forth under some olive trees, Simonds and Leese had a long conversation, after which the xxx Corps commander departed while the divisional commander retired to his caravan. Eventually he emerged and walked over to Graham. “Howard, let’s just forget about this whole business; you go back to your brigade and I’ll tear up this note.” Tugging the resignation note from his shirt pocket, Simonds ripped it up.14 Divisional general staff officer Lieutenant Colonel George Kitching, who knew Simonds had wanted to sack Graham, was relieved to see the matter blow over. He also thought it showed that Simonds “could forgive, forget and be generous as well.”15

  In a letter to Leese, Montgomery wrote immediately after the incident, “This is a great pity. Graham is an excellent fellow and much beloved in his [brigade]. I expect Simonds lost his temper. Simonds is a young and very inexperienced Divisional general, and has much to learn about command. He will upset his Division if he starts sacking Brigadiers like this.” Simonds would, he added, “be well advised to consult his superiors before he takes violent action in which he may not be backed up.”16

  About the time Brigadier Graham was bunking down at xxx Corps headquarters in the early morning hours of July 16, the 48th Highlanders had reached the outskirts of Caltagirone. They waited outside the town until the engineers cleared the roads to enable the Three Rivers ‘A’ Squadron to come up. At about 0400 hours, the battalion “marched into town” with the tanks trundling behind. “There was no opposition,” the 48th Highlanders war diarist noted, as “the Germans had left 6 hours previous.”17 Because it had been a German divisional headquarters, the town had been subjected to heavy Allied bombing. The Canadians “found the place a veritable shambles, with the streets badly blocked by rubble and many fires burning. In the very inadequate local hospital, the Highlanders’ medical section did what it could for the civilian casualties, and the 4th Field Ambulance gave assistance when it arrived. Despite all their troubles, the nuns who operated the hospital insisted on serving the Canadians coffee—made of crushed acorns.”18

  IN THE LATE afternoon of July 16, General Harold Alexander had sent signals to both General George Patton and General Bernard Montgomery reiterating that Eighth Army was to “drive the enemy into the Messina Peninsula.” Seventh Army’s role was “to protect the rear” of Eighth Army. Only when Montgomery’s troops were well beyond Enna would Patton be released to occupy Agrigento and adjacent Porto Empedocle on the southern coast.19

  Although Patton had accepted without protest the order on July 13 to cease the northward advance of his II Corps and to surrender use of Highway 124 to 1st Canadian Infantry Division, he was increasingly chafing at playing second fiddle to Montgomery. But he did not make his dissatisfaction known to Alexander—exposing a serious misunderstanding by both men over military protocol. In the British and Canadian armies, broad-based directives, such as those Alexander had issued, were considered open for discussion with regards to details of execution. Montgomery never hesitated to protest and propose alternatives to any order he believed wrong. It had been precisely such intervention that had allowed Montgomery, more than anyone else, to lay the framework for Operation Husky and subsequently win the case for Eighth Army making the drive on Messina while Seventh Army was relegated to covering his left flank.

  The American military was not so flexible. Orders from above were precisely that. To stand about debating the rights and wrongs of an order from a superior ran counter to the whole American expectation of decisive command.20

  If not prepared to challenge Alexander’s orders, Patton was willing to resort to subterfuge. On July 14, he quietly assembled a plan to carry out an end run north across the western part of the island and seize Palermo. “Monty is trying to steal the show...and may do so,” he wrote his wife. “It is my opinion that when the present line of the combined armies is secured, which will probably be around the 19th, it will be feasible to advance rapidly with the 3rd Division and 2nd Armored Division and take Palermo.”21

  “There’s plenty of room for both of us to fight,” Patton assured General Omar Bradley.22 In a July 17 diary notation, Patton charged that Alexander was “putting the Americans in a secondary role, which is a continuation of such roles for the whole campaign and may find the war ending with us being overlooked. I am flying to Tunis to see General Alexander.

  “I am sure that neither he nor any of his British staff has any conception of the power or mobility of the Seventh Army, nor are they aware of the political implications latent in such a course of action.

  “I shall explain the situation to General Alexander on the basis that it would be inexpedient politically for the Seventh Army not to have equal glory in the final stage of the campaign.”23

  Later that morning, Patton met with Alexander at his headquarters in Tunis. Patton proposed splitting his forces by creating a second corps composed of the majority of Seventh Army’s armour and mobile infantry—named the Provisional Corps—which would race for Palermo, rather than support operations aimed at Messina. He would leave a smaller covering force to protect Montgomery’s left flank. Alexander, who was overly conciliatory by nature, agreed. “He gave me permission to carry out my plan if I would assure him that the road net near Caltanis[s]etta would be held . . . If I do what I am going to do, there is no need of holding anything, but it’s a mean man who won’t promise, so I did,” Patton wrote.24

  The fact that the Axis forces were slowly withdrawing into the northeastern corner of Sicily in order to position themselves for an evacuation across the Straits of Messina seemed of little importance to Patton. He wanted Palermo, just as he had during the early planning for the invasion. Even the American official historians ultimately concluded that Patton’s “preoccupation with Palermo amounted to an obsession” and could find no strategic purpose for its capture. While Porto Empedocle at Agrigento had been a logical objective, giving as it did additional port facilities to the minor ones available at Gela and Licata, Palermo’s additional capacity exceeded Seventh Army’s needs. General Lucien Truscott, commander of the U.S. 3rd Division, believed Palermo drew Patton “like a lode star” and had done so since Operation Husky’s inception. “General Patton,” he later said, “made no secret of the fact that he was not only desirous of emulating Rommel’s reputation as a leader of armor, he wanted to exceed it. General Patton was also anxious for the U.S. armor to achieve some notice ... The capture of Palermo by an armored sweep through western Sicily appeared to suit his purpose.”25

  After his meeting with Alexander, Patton believed he had his endorsement to go for Palermo to demonstrate American armoured power, to prove his masterful generalship, and to provide a visible prize of war. For the foreseeable future, then, the Allied campaign in Sicily would be fought by two armies heading in different directions, neither able to offer the other meaningful support.

  THE CANADIANS ADVANCING out of the ruins of Caltagirone had no inkling of this brinkmanship. Their sights were set on Enna, with the intermediary objective for July 16 being Piazza Armerina. In the early morning, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment passed through 1 CIB’s lines as the vanguard of 2 CIB. ‘C’ Company was at the head of the convoy, once again riding on Three Rivers ‘C’ Squadron tanks. Trucks had been provided to carry the rest of the battalion forward. Following behind the tanks and infantry was a battery of self-propelled guns from the Royal Devon Yeomanry and the entire 3rd Canadian Field Regiment.

  While 2 CIB moved towards Piazza Armerina, 1 CIB’s battalions sent patrols north from Caltagirone to check out some secondary roads and ensure that several villages were clear of the enemy. The 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade, still in divisional reserve, was instructed “to be ready at an hour’s notice to follow [2 CIB] and ‘secure communications in the area of Leonforte,’ with one reconnaissance squadron [from the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards] and one field regiment under command.” When 3 CIB moved through 2 CIB it would split its strength in two—one group clearing the way through Valguarnera and the other d
riving to Enna and then swinging eastward to take Leonforte. This program laid down on 3 CIB by Major General Simonds was ambitious, but he believed it practical as the distance to be covered was no more than what 2 CIB had travelled during the preceding twenty-four hours in its move from Ragusa to Caltagirone.26

  As ‘C’ Squadron clattered along the well-paved road, Lieutenant Jack Wallace was a happy tanker. Although at the back of the column, he did not have to swallow dust kicked up by the Shermans ahead. The pace was good, and there was not a sign of opposition other than the demolition of a little bridge, which happened moments after Wallace’s tank rolled off it. The explosion was chalked up to the Germans having sown a time-delayed mine under the bridge. After five miles, they rolled into San Michele di Ganzeria and were greeted by “a bevy of sheets hanging from every conceivable place.”27 Crowding the streets of the town and standing along the side of the road on its outskirts were large numbers of Italian troops trying to surrender. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson was in a hurry and issued orders for the column to ignore them, leaving it to the other battalions behind to take them prisoner.28

  Just beyond San Michele, the column came to the point where Highway 124 intersected the highway running from Gela to Enna. Making a hard right onto the northward-trending Highway 117, the advance continued towards Piazza Armerina. By noon, from a distance of three miles, the town of about 22,000 was clearly visible in the distance atop a 2,366-foot-high summit. This was the highest Sicilian community the Canadians had so far encountered, and beyond it the terrain looked to be increasingly mountainous.

  As the column descended a long, level ridge into a steep, narrow gully at about noon, it approached a sharp bend in the road. Suddenly, from positions all over the heights south of the town, the enemy opened up with machine guns, mortars, and artillery.29 The Edmontons of Major W.T. Cromb’s ‘C’ Company spilled off the tanks, while the other two companies piled out of the lorries with equal haste. The battalion adjutant, Captain C.H. Pritchard, spotted tracers coming from three different machine-gun positions just as a mine exploded in the road ahead of the column and created a large crater. Except for the three machine-gun positions, nobody could see any sign of the well-concealed Germans. One truck burned in the middle of the road, but the others had pulled to one side where there was some cover.30 The lead tanks of ‘C’ Squadron destroyed a German machinegun position in a house near the road, but thereafter the tankers were unable to elevate their guns high enough to fire on the enemy holding the high upper slopes.31 Helpless, the tanks of ‘C’ Squadron swung off the left side of the road while ‘A’ Squadron came up and rumbled into covered positions to the right.32

  Mortar and artillery rounds were exploding along the length of the road. The two most forward companies had deployed to either side of it and were trying to work towards the enemy positions. Jefferson ran forward, found Cromb, and ordered a halt while he assessed the situation. It was going to be an infantry fight, he realized, because the tanks were unable to raise their gun barrels and the artillery would need time to deploy. Shorthanded because of the decision to leave ‘D’ Company back in Ragusa, he decided to hold Cromb’s men as his reserve and send ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies to seize the high ground on either side of the road. The only fire support he could offer was the battalion’s 3-inch mortars and two 6-pound anti-tank guns, which were close enough to be brought to bear. The anti-tank guns had to be unhooked from the trucks towing them and dragged off the road. As one of the guns was being moved forward, it was knocked out by German fire. The other soon went into action against a machine-gun position in another nearby house “which it blew to pieces, scattering snipers in all directions.” To dodge counterbattery fire from the Germans, the mortar teams kept moving after firing a few rounds. One team delayed too long in making its hop and was caught by a German mortar round, which wounded four men.

  ‘A’ Company went straight up the heights on its side of the road, despite heavy fire, and quickly cleared the Germans out. Jefferson sent ‘C’ Company up to reinforce the position. On the other side of the road, ‘B’ Company ran into trouble when its commander, Captain A.A. Gilchrist, along with one platoon, was pinned down in an orchard by machine-gun and mortar fire. When his wireless set failed, the company was cut off from battalion headquarters. Having lost contact with his company commander, Captain A.F. Newton decided to work his way back to the battalion to restore communications. Accompanied by Private A.E. McCormack, he set off cross-country, only to be ambushed and taken prisoner by some Germans.

  With Newton missing and Gilchrist separated from the majority of his company, Lieutenant K.J. Rootes took command and led most of ‘B’ Company forward in a running fight to finally clear the high ground.33 With these hills in hand, the Eddies were overlooking Piazza Armerina. But the Germans were still tight in the town. They were also throwing a great weight of 75-millimetre shells towards the column on the road, despite countering fire by the Royal Devon Yeomanry and the powerful 5.5-inch guns of 7th Medium Regiment.34

  Lieutenant Wallace realized they were “right in the centre of the arc of fire with shells from both directions flying overhead. They sound nice when they go overhead like that.” Running towards their Shermans after conducting a reconnaissance of the perimeter, he and another tanker heard “one coming ever so close, so we hit the dirt but fast. The shell lands about 10 yards away and really shakes us up, but we did not get a nick. Pretty lucky. Everything seems to be alright with the way that we have dispersed our tanks so I detail Jim Trueman and Ed Lawrence (Gunner and Operator) to make some orangeade. The shelling continues but we must have our orangeade. Only the occasional one lands close.” But it was a different matter for ‘A’ and ‘B’ squadrons, Wallace saw, for shells and mortar rounds were exploding constantly in their positions. With a chuckle, Trueman, who had started monitoring the tank’s wireless, caught Wallace’s attention. The two men listened with grim amusement to Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Booth, the regiment’s commander, ordering his driver to move the tank away from the shelling. In his excitement, Booth was broadcasting over the regimental net, rather than switching his radio key to engage the tank’s intercom. “It really sounds funny hearing him getting frantic, probably wondering why the driver doesn’t obey his orders. Jim gets disgusted and tells him to get the hell off the air. Every man in the regiment was listening to the C.O. screaming, it was amusing while it lasted.”35

  Things took a more serious turn when No. 4 Troop of ‘B’ Squadron moved out left of the road in an attempt to close on a mortar position. Finding the ground impassable, the three tanks halted in the open and were subjected to concentrated shellfire. One shell exploded in front of the tank on the far left and broke a track. As the crew bailed out to head towards the cover of the closest other tank, another shell landed in their midst—Corporal William Hulse and Troopers George Karcameron and James Harold MacTavish were killed.36

  The Loyal Edmonton Regiment’s battalion headquarters was also taking a pounding from the German guns, and Captain Pritchard was aghast when “one of our men came up to me ... with one side of him covered from head to foot with what appeared to be blood and since he appeared dazed and spoke incoherently I immediately concluded that a shell had exploded in the midst of a group of men and rushed to the scene of the disaster. There I found nothing but the remnants of what had been a mulberry bush. Apparently the mortar bomb had exploded near this mulberry bush, blowing away all its fruit which had spattered on the soldier.”37

  Finally at about 2100 hours, fully nine hours since the battle had broken out, the German fire slackened and it soon became clear that a withdrawal to Piazza Armerina was under way. Knowing that his men, who had been almost constantly on the move for two nights and a day, were exhausted by the action, Jefferson decided to wait until morning before testing whether the town had been evacuated. The Edmontons had suffered twenty-seven casualties.38 Surprisingly hard hit, since tanker casualties were normally expected to be far lighter than those suf
fered by infantry, the Three Rivers Regiment added another eleven men killed or wounded.39

  AT 2230 HOURS, Simonds convened an ‘O’ Group with his brigadiers and set out a new plan. Rather than the Eddies clearing Piazza Armerina, Simonds told Brigadier Chris Vokes to give that task to the Seaforths and PPCLI. They were to keep pressure on the Germans to push them out of the town during the night and also secure the heights to its north and northeast. Simonds stressed that 2 CIB was to “maintain contact with the enemy regardless of the situation,” so the Germans could not break and run. While 2 CIB cleared Piazza Armerina, 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade would muster south of the town in readiness to take over the advance on Enna at 0500 hours. If 2 CIB had not by then finished opening the way for 3 CIB, Vokes was to put in a hard attack on Piazza Armerina supported by the entirety of the division’s artillery.40

  The division’s final objective remained Enna, which Simonds emphasized “controls the four main roads running from east to west in Sicily and acts as a sort of clearing centre for traffic in the northern part of the island. It is felt that once Enna is taken the Italian forces on the island will pack up. The Germans are attempting to reach the Straits of Messina intact and it is our job to knock out as many of them as we can before their main body attempts the evacuation to Calabria.” 41

  In the early morning hours of July 17, the Seaforths and PPCLI sent patrols into Piazza Armerina and found that the Germans had pulled out. Progress by the Seaforths was hampered not by the enemy but by civilians, who the moment the Germans departed began “to pick up everything in sight, beds, and boxes out of the barracks, water pails, anything they can lay their hands on.”

  Piazza Armerina was discovered to have been a headquarters for the Italian XVI Corps “and a great deal of signal equipment as well as a large quantity of petrol, reported to be 52,000 gallons, were taken as booty.” The Seaforths’ war diarist noted that many Italian army vehicles were also seized and pressed into service, which gave the division almost full mobility. This, however, also resulted in major congestion on the single highway “due to 1 and 3[CIB] passing through 2 [CIB],” which contributed to 3 CIB’s delayed start.42