Sicily '43. James Holland

planning disagreements into perspective.

      Once actually in Sicily, the first stop for von Senger was Enna, an ancient town perched on a flat mountaintop right in the geographical centre of the island. Viewed from the west, Enna was silhouetted against the sky like a fairytale medieval bastion, Etna looming beyond; it was here that Guzzoni had his headquarters. Accompanied at this first meeting by Kesselring, von Senger found Guzzoni realistic and candid. The coastal divisions were next to useless and could not be relied upon; the four regular divisions were better equipped but still not up to standard, although the Livorno was in the best shape with some motorization and half-decent officers and commanders. It became clear, however, that there was a divergence of views as to how best to repel the enemy if he did come. Guzzoni was for keeping the coastal batteries intact and out of range of large naval guns, but the German view was that it was far better to have as much fire-power forward as possible. The time to repel an invasion was right away, while the attackers were exposed, under strength and devoid of effective cover. Let the Allies secure a bridgehead and it would be all over. This difference of views was not resolved, while Kesselring’s continued optimism also contrasted markedly with Guzzoni’s more sceptical view. At least the meeting remained cordial. None the less, there was still much to iron out – not least exactly where the German divisions should be located.

      Time, though, was running out. Unbeknown to the Axis officers as they sat in Guzzoni’s palazzo up in Enna that day in late June, the Allies would be assaulting the island in just two weeks’ time. The countdown was on.

      CHAPTER 8

      The Glitch in the Plan

      ON FRIDAY, 11 JUNE 1943, at around 4 p.m., an American C-47 transport touched down at Luqa airfield on Malta. On board were two colonels of the 52nd Troop Carrier Wing, as well as two battalion commanders of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the regiment’s commander, Colonel James M. Gavin. It had already been quite an eye-opening journey. The party had travelled from the 82nd Airborne Division’s training base at Oujda in French Morocco, first to Tunis, where wrecks of German aircraft were still scattered all around the city’s edge; from there they headed out low over Cap Bon, the site of the final Axis surrender on 13 May, and down the east coast to Monastir. There they met with their British counterparts, who seemed to possess an insouciance Gavin found both impressive and unnerving. ‘We are sweating, tense, trying hard at everything we attempt,’ he jotted in his diary.1 ‘They are relaxed, appearing indifferent at times, no pressure, and everything seems to be getting done in tip-top shape.’ Sleeping on their C-47 that night, they were up early the following morning to fly on to Tripoli, en route crossing over the Mareth Line, the scene of more fighting back in March. Briefings received and clearance given, they then headed on to Malta, via Pantelleria, which had fallen to the Allies that very same day.

      On Malta they switched planes, boarding several Mosquitoes – the ‘wooden wonders’ of the RAF, multi-function aircraft capable of flying at over 400 mph. Since there was only room for two in a Mosquito, including the pilot, Gavin had to take on the role of navigator. Once dusk had fallen, off they went, hurtling over the sea towards Sicily, following the route his troops would take on 9 July, in four weeks’ time, and simulating the same night-time conditions by flying at just 600 feet off the deck. As temporary navigator, Gavin found the drop zones – DZs – easily enough; then they flew inland towards Niscemi, a town perched on a ridge looking down over the Gela Plain towards the sea, before turning back and speeding by Ponte Olivo airfield, one of the key Allied targets for D-Day on Sicily. Flying separately in different Mosquitoes, his two battalion commanders, Lieutenant-Colonels Krause and Keens, sped directly over Ponte Olivo and were both shot at by flak. ‘No one hit,’ noted Gavin.2 ‘We are all pleased with the results of our reconnaissance.’

      Gavin and his men were to be the first American troops on Sicily, and had been given the mission of parachuting in ahead of the seaborne landings to capture and secure the Piano Lupo – the Plain of the Wolf – an upland area to the east of Gela – and both prevent the enemy from using it and also use it to their own advantage; it was always good to control the high ground. They were also to disrupt enemy lines of communication and then, on D-Day itself, help the attacking 1st Infantry Division in taking first Gela and then the Ponte Olivo airfield. The men, he knew, were well trained and physically fit and ready; but none of them had ever been in action before, and Gavin, outwardly confident, calm and collected, none the less worried privately. No person really knew how they would respond to being under fire until they faced this challenge for the first time. Doubts were inevitable. So too was fear. On 5 July, Gavin would find a man from the 2nd Battalion with a rifle across his knees and a bible in his hand, contemplating suicide. ‘Said he was going to be killed anyway,’ noted Gavin.3 ‘So it goes.’

      Jim Gavin was thirty-six years old but looked younger. He had formed the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment from scratch, using training programmes he had devised, and applying tactics and operational techniques he had developed himself. Ambitious, extremely driven and a deep thinker about all aspects of modern warfare, he was a progressive officer hugely respected by his superiors, his peers and the men under his command. That he was a regimental commander at all was all the more remarkable because of his extremely humble beginnings. An orphan, he had been adopted at the age of two and brought up in the coal-mining town of Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. It had not taken him long to realize a career as a miner was not for him, even though he had left school at just twelve years old and needed to get a job to help with the family coffers. At seventeen he had run away to New York, where he managed to blag his way into the army, even though he was under age. Posted to Panama, he read prodigiously and caught the eye of a senior NCO, who took the young man under his wing and encouraged him to apply to a local army school – an opportunity for Gavin to better himself, because from there the brightest and best students were encouraged to try for West Point. Catching up on his lost schooling in quick time, Gavin duly won a place at the army school in Corozal in the Canal Zone, and from there a place at West Point. In the land of opportunity, this orphan was grabbing it firmly with both hands.

      In June 1929 he graduated as a second lieutenant in the US Army, continuing his studies as his fledgling career got under way. Stints in the infantry at home and then out in the Philippines were followed by a posting back to West Point and specifically to the Tactics faculty. He was still there when war broke out in Europe and, studying German operations in great detail, quickly became an advocate of airborne warfare. When the US Army decided to form its own parachute school at Fort Benning in June 1940, Gavin was among the early volunteers, eventually released from West Point in February the following year and soon making a name for himself. He was asked to write the airborne field manual, FM 31-30: Tactics and Techniques of Air-Borne Troops, which not only gathered together lessons from his studies of German – and also Soviet – airborne forces, but also drew on his own tactical studies and included information about how such troops should be structured and organized, and how and when they should be deployed. Far from a carbon copy of German doctrine, Gavin’s vision was very much his own.

      A stint at the US Army Command and General Staff College marked Gavin out for higher command and sure enough, in August 1942, he was made the first commander of the newly activated 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR). By April 1943, he reckoned he had licked his men into pretty good shape: they were physically and mentally tough, able to think on their feet, experienced at jumping out of aircraft and at a more advanced state of training than any other regiment – which was why they were sent to North Africa to join Major-General Matthew Ridgway’s 82nd Airborne Division. Ridgway had it in mind that Gavin’s 505th would spearhead the US airborne operations for HUSKY.

      Gavin and his men had landed at Casablanca on 10 May and from there been posted to Oujda for further training. It had been accepted from an early stage of the HUSKY planning that airborne troops would play a key role in the invasion as a whole, not just the American sector. Both paratroopers and glider-borne troops were, however, new elements in Allied planning. It’s fair to say that both American and British war leaders had been somewhat dazzled by the cut, dash and sheer chutzpah of German airborne operations. Germany’s glider troops had captured a seemingly impregnable Belgium fort, Eben Emael, back in May 1940, while their paratroopers had taken key bridges; later, German paratroopers had helped to capture Crete in