The Diary of Second Lieutenant Carlo Casolari, Part Four

February 3rd seems one of the usual days. A nice sun. A three-engined transport aircraft flies over our heads. Suddenly we realize it is falling. It crashes on the hill, three kilometres from us. I immediately take two of my men and running, panting, we rush to the spot. No one is nearby, only later do we find the enemies. Of the crew one is wounded and two, it seems, have fleed no one knows where. There is also one dead. (…) they are British, shot down by our AA.

In the evening, as if to celebrate, they brought us pasta.

 

The next day, I go back to the plane. The burned man is still in the wreckage. The others saved themselves, only the sergeant-radio operator was wounded. This is what I remember: I take away an oil pump.

The downed British plane becomes a diversion for an airplane enthusiast. I repeatedly skip inspections of the 105 [battery] and keep retrieving parts. I find a compressor, the cylinder of the compressor engine, a hydraulic jack. I don’t think there is anything else left. While removing that, I deeply cut two of my fingers.

 

The Sicilian winter is annoying. It rains often and the wind blows, it’s not cold, but humidity resembles that of the Tropics. (…) On Monday 8, early in the morning, I set out for the Group, I am very nervous. I leave on my bike. Before I can go very far, a British plane strafes us, two of ours are wounded. AA returned fire. I can’t do much except going back. One of our soldiers is dead. (…)

 

These are difficult days, I again came down with the gooddamned malaria. Fever and injections of quinine. I spend my days sweating, and often pass out. Damn muschitte [mosquitoes]. (…) At the 105, in the meantime, the new camouflage has been completed. A distraction, when the fever goes away, is provided by the feasts with the shepherd and by meeting the new battery commander, Colonel Manetta.

One night I felt the heart speeding up for a few seconds with a final beat, heavier, delayed.

 

On 17 February the first swallow appears. It is a sign that seals a good help from reborn Captain Raimondi: “Serious, respectful, faithful to his duty. Has good influence on his subordinates. Good general culture”. This is a summary of the personal report on me, from 15 September to 14 December.

My 105 [mm gun] needs to be moved. We get to work, in three days we build the new emplacement. “Wanna go on leave?”, the Colonel asked me, “then knuckle down”.

(Taken and freely translated from https://www.yumpu.com/user/grigioverde.org)

Late to the battle

Giorgio Chiesura, a young lieutenant from Venice, was on leave at home when the Allies landed, and rushed back to rejoin his unit, part of the 4th Infantry Division "Livorno". Having to travel down the entire Italian boot, across the straits of Messina and then across Sicily towards the frontline, he arrived when the battle of Gela was over. In his interesting, but somber, memoir book "Sicilia 1943", he thus describes his journey through war-torn Sicily and what he found when he was able to reach his battalion:

"On the evening of 10 July, when I and the Captain left Messina on a truck, the sea was beautiful, as clear as I had never seen it. Messina around the harbour was more destroyed than I remembered it from the night I had left one month before to go on leave. But everything now seemed different, even things that had not materially changed: you could feel the war everywhere, around you. (…) We welcomed some refugees [on the truck]. I talked with the Germans from the truck. They did not know anything about the war, but they seemed optimistic. (…) In the evening we had aircraft overhead, and we had to travel with out headlight turned off, covering the embers of our cigarettes. (…) One of the wheels of the trailer broke down, and the Germans explained to me that lengthy reparatins would be needed, and that we had to unload the trailer. So I halted several passing trucks and I loaded the soldiers that were on the trailer on them. The civilians fended for themselves. Theorically, due to the state of emergency, no civilian is allowed to travel without a special permit, much less on a military vehicle; but it seems that this rule is not being respected. (…) During the march we often have to get off the truck and seek shelter along the road because some enemy aircraft is too close. We see it dive and strafe the road in front of us. We reach Leonforte during a raid. Our meager Flak is firing. The “Liberators” fly in squadrons, calmly grazing our skies like herds of buffalos, and none of our aircraft are to be seen. Their fighters appear all of a sudden, flying low, coming from the direction of the sun. On the roads, we frequently come across the burned-out wrecks of vehicles, sometimes still smouldering. We are under the clear impression that the enemy has the control of the skies.

During the march we also come across the seamen from the Augusta naval base, and this makes a certain impression on us. It seems that Augusta collapsed on the first day, it is not clear how, and its seamen, it is said, were released by their commanders with a “every man for himself”. Now they are wandering through Sicily, some trying to reach Palermo, some trying to reach Messina. They wear rags, are exhausted and disarmed, with defeat painted on their faces. What upsets about them is their aphatetic wandering without trying to rely on any military command, and without anyone trying to stop and re-organize them. They are abandoned by everyone and, worse, despised by everyone. Passing vehicles do not pick them up, or if they do, they remain isolated and in silence, like pariahs. (…) at the crossroads I am reached by Captain Calarone, and togethe, crossing fields of stubble, we reach an isolated villa where a detachment of the command is located. There I am informed of the many Sicilians who desert and go home in civilian clothes, especially from the Gela front, and I am informed that the order has been issued to stop them and shoot them on the spot. I feel the same feeling I felt towards the fugitive from Augusta: I don’t know why, but while feeling that this is really happening, I internally refuse to believe it (…) I find a carabiniere who takes me on his motorcycle and carries me to San Cataldo. I spent many months here with my old company, and the town has not changed, having suffered almost no damage, yet I barely recognize it from how much it has changed: so empty, deserted, silent under the shining sun. It looks chalky and calcinate, like a wreck. I walk through it. I stop to watch a train that is burning by the station. Then I reach the regimental offices. (…) A sense of illness, shock and impotence is on every face, on every thing. Scattered papers, disorder, news that contradict each other. (…) I cannot stand this situation anymore, I do not want to stop in this hovel, I want to reach my unit. Even Lorusso, a Sicilian Lieutenant, gets enraged and slaps a soldier who is crying because a motorcycle soldier from the command brought a list of the dead. The unit, they say, has been destroyed and the British are already in Serradifalco; but even though we know this could be true, we refuse to believe them. Lorusso, gloomy, gets on a motorbike and drives to Serradifalco to see for himself.

I head towards the ammunition depot to get some weapons and ammunition. There I find out that the depot, left unguarded when the regiment left for the frontline, was ransacked on that very night by the townspeople. I cannot understand how it happened and I cannot figure why they did it. To be sure, during the voyage they told me the strangest things: that the Sicilians had welcomed the British paratroopers in their homes; that the Sicilians are hiding spies and fired on the Bersaglieri in Gela. All unbelievable things that now ring true to me, even though I still cannot comprehend them. The soldiers who inform me of the sack of our depot, instead, do not look surprised. Everything is scattered among the grass, but I manage to find a rifle and I try it against a tree: it’s good enough. I also retrieve some ammunition and hand grenades. A British fighter plane flies over the town. Large German self-propelled guns pass nearby, heading towards Serradifalco, but after less than half an hour they hastily scurry back. The Germans say that the British have reached Serradifalco and hurriedly bring their guns into position. When Lorusso comes back with his motorcycle, their haste looks exaggerated. Lorusso says there is no trace of British soldiers in Serradifalco.

(…) Sometimes the road was deserted, sometimes it was cluttered with motorized columns on the move or confused columns of refugees. For a long time we marched towards two towns burning in the distance, in a valley, which we then left on our side and finally behind us: the fires burned for hours, then they disappeared. At dawn we were strafed again. (…) The soldiers from my division, whom I immediately recognized from their khaki uniforms and our orange collar patches, were scattered over a plateau dominated by two little hills. I recognized the faces of some soldiers I knew from my battalion, but none from my platoon, and I did not see any officers, either. Then I discovered the commander’s aide-de-camp all alone atop a hump, busy writing something on a note pad. I reached him and presented myself. “Chiesura!” he said. “Where do you come from?” “From Venice”. He looked at me in dismay. I took offense. I thought that he had thought that, taking advantage of my leave, I had decided not to rejoin my regiment. But I was wrong. “So” he said “you are not dead?” “Dead?” “Sure! I had already counted you as dead. Some idiot saw you dead and so I have already put your name in the list”. And he seemed genuinely sorry – I am not sure whether he was sorry for me or for his list. “I am sorry” I said “but I am alive”. “Yeah, laugh as much as you want” he said, shaking his head. “Here nobody understands anything anymore. The officers are gone and so are the units. All registers have been lost. Reconstructing them is easier said than done!”

(…) It is possible that before the landings, the British tried some feint towards the other coast of Sicily. What is sure is that the entire division, which was deployed near the southern coast, just a few days before the landings was moved towards Palermo, and thus my regiment on the ninth of July was in San Cataldo, therefore at the center of the island. On the day before the landings, a surprise air raid destroyed part of Caltanissetta in full daylight, with the people in the streets, and the soldiers were employed in clearing the rubble and recovering the dead. They talked to me about that with dismay, pity still in their eyes. It seems that the landings took place in the night between 8 and 9 July [note: actually on the following night]. The division was placed in a state of alarm on 9 July. The 34th Infantry Regiment left in three motorized columns: my battalion was the first one to go. At midnight my battalion took up position in the plain of Gela, not in defensive positions, but ready to attack. On 10 July, at first daylight, the soldiers saw an incredible scene unveil before them: all the sea as far as eye could see was covered with enemy ships, calmly laying at anchor. (…) Nobody expected such a sight. It looked like, they said, a naval review. The battalion attacked immediately. Between that day and the following day, my division was destroyed.

The coastal troops did not resist and I know this had been anticipated: they couldn’t, as they lacked artillery. The real defense of Sicily was based on the mobile reserve. This, too, we had been told. But it was necessary for the enemy to be kept in inferior numbers to that of our mobile reserve. This did not happen; the Air Force did not show up; I know nothing of the Navy. The enemy was thus able to land motorized and armoured forces and artillery in great quantity, and superior to ours in quality. The armament of their infantry is exceptional when compared to ours. (…) How did they hope to repel and throw back into the sea such an enemy by attacking it without support and in the open? Yet what happened was incredible; and I myself would dobut it all the soldiers did not confirm it. My battalion was the first to advance, under the concentrated fire of naval artillery, mortars and aircraft, on open ground, without any artillery and aerial support. Yet, in such conditions, it pushed back the enemy for two or three kilometres, that is, everyone tells me, till the town of Gela. The troops were decimated from the start. The leading company was cut down by automatic weapons hidden in the overlooking hills. Captain Ferrara was a likable jolly companion, who disliked military life. Lojacono told me that he saw him being carried on a piece of tent fabric with a wound in his abdomen, and that he told him: “Tell the Colonel we did everything we could. The company has been decimated, Zuppo is dead, Riggio is wounded and has taken command”. Lieutenant Zuppo was cut down by a burst of submachine gun in the chest, while he was throwing a hand grenade. When they found his body, they saw he had died while biting one of his fingers: he was a young career officer, no more than twenty-one years old, he was simple, handsome and vain and he often bragged about his adventures. Riggio, wounded by a SMG in his shoulder, led the company farther forwards; he was wounded again in a leg but continued to lead. We do not know what became of him. Lieutenant Carbone, wounded while assaulting a small height from which a flanking fire was coming, rolled over a few meters and continued shouting while lying on the ground. Three Americans appeared over the ridge and finished him off with their submachine guns. The companies dashed forward, like soldiers from Garibaldi’s times, without cover from support weapons, against well-entrenched enemies and yet driving them back. But this is how they were defeated: they pushed them back until their momentum died out naturally, under the fire, like a wave on the beach, because there were no more men, officers, non-commissioned officers, ammunitions: nothing. Colonel Leonardi told Polisteno: “They sent the battalion to slaughter. They deceived us!” He was referring to the reinforcements we had been promised and never came. He also told him that he had faith in the battalion, yet he did not expect that it could do so much; he also said that if he had even just one battalion to send in as reinforcement, we would have certainly thrown them back into the sea; but about this, I think he too was wrong. Now it seems he has been wounded and captured. Really, listening to these stories and remembering the low morale of the soldiers before I departed for my leave, I was very surprised; and the soldiers themselves, while narrating these events, seemed not to believe it had been possible for them to behave like that. Yet they did, and I am sorry I was not with them.

And now I write from a railway station that has been looted by the same men who on that day behaved so magnificently. About one-tenth of them is left. Of an entire regiment, that numbered between four and five thousand men, perhaps five hundred are left. Of forty officers, I think seven are left. (…) And now they have come to this: they have looted this house, just like the Sicilians in San Cataldo looted our depot. They tore the mattresses to shreds, tipped over the furniture and cut the linen to pieces to make toe rags. They found a pig and a goat, killed them with rifle shots and hand grenades and then immediately skinned and cooked them. One of them thinks to make me a favor and brings me a piece of boiled pig in the lid of his mess tin. I accept it, so as not disappoint him. I try to eat it, but it lacks salt, it disgusts me and I throw it away."

Soldiers from the "Livorno" Division in Sicily

Death of seven M.A.C.A. blackshirts

Vice capo squadra Colombo Tabarrini (foreground, with moustache) posing with some of his comrades next to one of their anti-aircraft guns (part of the 19th Anti-Aircraft 76/40 Gun Battery) near Santo Pietro airfield (from the collection of Angelo Augugliaro)

In the morning of 15 July 1943 Colonel William E. King, a Chaplain in the 45th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, was driving his jeep up the Biscari road towards the captured airfield, when he noticed a dark mound near and olive grove, and he stopped to investigate. The dark mound consisted of dead bodies – Italian soldiers. They had not been killed in action. ‘Most were lying face down, a few face up,’ King later recalled. ‘Everybody face up has one bullet hole just to the left of the spine in the region of the heart.’ A majority also had head wounds; singed hair and powder burns implied the fatal shots had come at close range. A few soldiers loitering nearby joined the chaplain, protesting that ‘they has come into the war to fight against that sort of thing,’ King said. ‘They felt ashamed of their countrymen.’ The chaplain hurried back to the division command post to report about what he had found.

King had come across the traces of the Biscari massacre, the murder of two groups of seventy-three Axis prisoners – seventy-one Italians and two Germans – by some members of the 45th Infantry Division. But this was not the only massacre that had taken place on that day in the 45th Division’s area of operations. A few hours after making his report, King was driving back to the rear when he came across another group of dead bodies lined along the road, about two miles south of Caltagirone.

These, too, were Italian soldiers. Six were lying face down, two face up; they had been killed in the same way as their countrymen near Biscari, with the difference that these had not received any finishing shots to the head, and many of them had more than one wound in their back or their chest.

Luigi Lo Bianco, in 1943, was fifteen and lived in Santo Pietro, a fraction of Caltagirone (the Italian name of the Biscari airfield – Santo Pietro airfield – came from that village). Sixty-nine years later, in July 2012, he recounted what he had heard at the time: “Around the airfield there were anti-aircraft batteries manned by the Militia [MVSN, Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale: “Voluntary Militia for National Security”, the official name of the Blackshirt militia] and horse-drawn batteries belonging to the Army, both field artillery and anti-aircraft guns. During the invasion, these batteries always fired on the invaders, for three days they held their ground against the Americans and then, when the Americans tried to encircle them, they fled and, at least according to what the people who lived there said, before Caltagirone, near Villa Cona, they caught seven soldiers of the Militia and they shot them near the road, against a wall next to the gate”.

Three of these murdered soldiers have recently been identified. They were militiamen belonging to the M.A.C.A., Milizia Artiglieria Contraera (Anti-Aircraft Artillery Militia, a branch of the MVSN tasked with anti-aircraft defense), and more precisely to the 19th 76/40 mm battery, 31st Group, stationed in Santo Pietro: blackshirt Luigi Poggio, born in Genoa (Liguria) on 21 June 1905, blackshirt Angelo Maisano, born in Messina (Sicily) on 30 September 1891, and vice capo squadra (Blackshirt rank for Corporal) Colombo Tabarrini, born in Foligno (Umbria) on 2 June 1895. They had officially been declared missing in action after the Allied landings. Tabarrini was married and lived in Genoa; he was a disabled veteran from World War I, who had lost toes to frostbite. He had been recalled for service during World War II and initially assigned to the anti-aircraft batteries around Genoa, but had been sent to Sicily following an argument with a capomanipolo (Lieutenant). It is not hard to imagine his end: during the retreat from Santo Pietro, he probably lagged behind due to his foot problems and was captured along with his comrades, who perhaps had stayed behind to help him. Then they were all shot.

(Main source: “La battaglia degli Iblei” by Domenico Anfora)

The Diary of Second Lieutenant Carlo Casolari, Part Three

Captain Gozzi suddenly decides that I can leave the river to go to the 105 [battery] only on Tuesday and Friday. Several comments about my discipline, considered as excessively lax, follow. I have been assigned Sergeant Major Fenigno. A good Sicilian boy. At least he does not live nearby. I have nothing against the locals, but they are constantly asking for leaves, which the Captain, also a local, unvariably grants. Anyway, I don’t torment myself too much. In fact, very little. I almost lost the habit to think and I let the most complete apathy overtake me. (…) Sometimes, when I receive letters from former girlfriends, I am seized by discomfort, for instance in the case of Luci’s note – perhaps she thought it would please me, but this reminded me of when she left me, in Piandelagotti, before departing. Mannaggia i fimmene [Sicilian: “damn the women”], as they say here! On the 19th I am summoned to Sciacca, at the first battery, in order to receive coded information from the BBCC [??]: “Mr. … suffers from acute hepatitis and must undergo surgery. His condition is not serious as of now”. I confirmed: “Flowered land, dag on sword and something floats on the water of Zilani”. The dead body they found was carrying documents considered of great importance for national security. It seems that the enemy was trying to make us believe in a landing in Sardinia. All was followed by an anti-paratroopers alarm. This was the fourth ambush they fell into, but even if we had thwarted the attack, there’s nothing good to be expected: by all evidence they were testing the water for the invasion.

Meanwhile, beautiful as the sun, Captain Raimondi left for two months of sick leave. Guess who, Raimondi, the one with connections, as usual! On 20 January we are rewieved by the General in command of the 6th Army, Roatta. This time it is my turn: I am closely scrutinized about the movements. I expect a reprimand, instead they have little to say all considered. Meanwhile, for my studies, I have set aside analytic geometry in order to focus exclusively on mathematical analysis and chemistry. I might make it, by golly. I am not very sure.

(Taken and freely translated from: https://www.yumpu.com/user/grigioverde.org)

The 54th Infantry Division "Napoli"

Collar patch of the 54th Infantry Division "Napoli"

The 54th Infantry Division "Napoli" was created in Caltanissetta on 15 April 1939, formed by the 75th and 76th Infantry Regiment and by the 54th Field Artillery Regiment.

The Division spent the entirety of the war in southern Sicily, stationed between Caltagirone, Mirabella and Piazza Armerina, ready to intervene in support of the coastal units in the case of an enemy landing on the coast between Gela, Licata and Pozzallo. Its first commander was General Renato Coturri, replaced in 1943 by General Giulio Cesare Gotti Porcinari, a 54-year-old officer hailing from an aristocratic Florentine family (he held the title of Count) who had fought with the Bersaglieri in the Italo-Turkish War and World War I, receiving two Bronze Medals for Military Valor.

At the time of the Allied landings in July 1943, the "Napoli" Division was divided into two groups, one of which was stationed between Ramacca and Scordia (west of Catania and Augusta), and the other more to the south, in Palazzolo Acreide, as a mass of manoeuvre for the XVI Corps. After the landings, the Division engaged the advancing Allied columns in heavy fighting near Noto and between Lentini and Brucoli; units from the Division launched reiterated counterattacks near Floridia throughout July 10, until they were attacked by prevalent Allied forces coming from Ponte Diddino on their left flank and forced to retreat towards the hills north of Solarino, where they kept countering the enemy advance during July 11. At the same time, other units from the Division were heavily engaged in Palazzolo Acreide; on July 12, it seemed for some time that the frontline had been stabilized on the Palazzolo-Solarino-Priolo line, but on the following day more Allied troops, having landed north of Augusta, encircled the Division, which was almost wiped out in the subsequent fighting. On that day, General Gotti Porcinari and his staff were captured near Solarino. On July 14 the surviving forces that had managed to escape encirclement gathered near Scordia, where they were almost completely destroyed while protecting the withdrawal of other Axis units from Caltagirone-Vizzini towards Scordia. Between 16 and 24 July the remains of the Division sustained sporadic rearguard fighting, and on July 25 – the day of Mussolini’s removal from power – they were sent to Linguaglossa where they were supposed to be reorganized. The impossibility of obtaining replacements, however, rendered this impossible, therefore they withdrew towards Messina, crossing the straits between 11 and 14 August and being then gathered near Fondaco Melia, south-east of Scilla (Reggio Calabria). So few men had escaped from Sicily, anyway, that the Division was officially dissolved on 14 August; the only one to suffer this fate, among the four Italian "regular" infantry divisions that fought in Sicily.

 

General Gotti Porcinari after his capture

General Giulio Cesare Gotti Porcinari wrote the following report about the condition and morale of the men under his command on the eve of the Allied invasion: “Everyone was firm in their purpose to keep the enemy away from the island. Three-fifths of the soldiers in the division had been recruited in districts of Sicily; therefore, they weren’t free of deep concern about their families, given the (constantly growing, in the last period) violence and extension of the bombing and strafing attacks on towns and countryside by enemy aircraft. In October 1942, the division was asked to provide officers and soldiers (volunteers) that would be sent to Russia, replacing troops that in turn would be repatriated from Russia and would replace said volunteers (3,500 men). Thus the units lost one third of their strength, the best educated, most enthusiastic and most willing men, and the division was placed in a terrible state of crisis, as in one stroke the thorough training (specialist troops, non-commissioned officers, officers, shock troops) of men and units, that had been carried out in multiple areas, was nullified.

At the end of May 1943 General Testi, the commander of the division’s infantry, previously Chief of Staff of the XVI Corps, was transferred to mainland Italy; Colonel De Fonzo, commander of the 54th Artillery Regiment, was appointed Chief of Staff of the Intendance of Sicily; on 15 June Colonel Mazzarella, commander of the 75th Infantry Regiment, a role which he had held firmly, was removed from his position and transferred to the 213rd Coastal Division. We thus lost capable senior officers, who knew well the regions and the units under their command.

The troops that had come from Russia were not content with their transfer to Sicily, for the following reasons:

a) they had not been granted the leave they had been promised; they had only been granted fifteen days instead of thirty as they had been told;

b) they weren’t in excellent physical condition, a considerable percentage of them suffered from the consequences of frostbite and suffered from sores after brief marches;

c) according to them, they had been told that in Sicily they would enjoy a period of relative rest and calm; instead, they had been tasked with heavy guard duty, patrol duty, working on fortifications, alarms, and prolonged posting in malaria areas with little water or comfort (Butera regio – Catania plain).

The continuous changes in their rations and the reduction of their quantity, coupled with difficulties in buying food, represented an unfavorable element for the spirit of the troops.

The regiments had between 1/3 and ¼ of their troops that, due to superior orders, were not given any leave, not even in case of death of their parents. When some of these men were granted leave by the divisional command in derogation from these orders, they were sent back to the division under the escort of Carabinieri [military police], and the divisional command was reprimanded by the Ministry for this. Most of them were excellent soldiers who, in great numbers, asked their colonels and the commander of the division the reason for this undeserved mistrust and their different treatment from that of the islanders, who instead enjoyed leaves.

With the specious pretext of lack of transport, at the end of 1942 all leaves for mainland Italy were suspended, while troop trains were used exclusively for German troops.

The distribution of tobacco was irregular, while it was noted that the civilians were smoking “Milit” cigarettes, exclusively reserved to the troops.

Another loss, in addition to that of the commanding officers, was the transfer to the coastal units of all soldiers born in 1910-1911-1912-1913-1914, who were replaced with hastily-trained recruits born in 1923. Still in June 1943, the Division was deprived of 12 officers and 100 enlisted men, chosen among the best, in order to create a unit for a special Arditi battalion elsewhere”.

Men from the 75th Infantry Division (from www.antoniorandazzo.it)

The Diary of Second Lieutenant Carlo Casolari, Part Two

Every now and then I manage to disengage from the routine and I go to Sciacca with the excuse of going to the battery, in the hamlet of Carbone, and I catch a break. The spa town is the only sign that civilized world is still there, waiting for you. Radio, coffee, merry companies, students. When I compare my life with the others’ I become terribly clouded. And it’s the same old theme: at least those who are at the frontline, in Africa or in Russia, are suffering for something. But what about me? Days pass while waiting for the weather to clear up so that I can go to the battery; then unimportant things happen, and I can’t find the concentration I need to study. Sometimes I find myself drawing airplanes, or waiting and hoping for letters that won’t come. I subscribed to Le Vie dell’Aria and Ala d’Italia [two aeronautics magazines]. 

On the other hand, from home, they sent me the watch. It’s been four months since I came here at the Garbo [Carboj]: I think they’d be enough to straighten out the maddest mind. A quiet life like this is undoubtedly good for both body and soul. Only to a certain extent, however, beyond which I do not know what can precisely happen. But I do not wish to continue it for long enough to see that. On 12 January, the first bombs come. British aircraft have struck Sciacca. This does not change my condition of “involuntary shirker in the area of operations”, but this is also my luck. If I were to go to the real frontline, I would not come back, or at least I wouldn’t come back unscathed. They say that such foreboding is usually not wrong: perhaps the frontline will come here, too.

(Taken and freely translated from https://www.yumpu.com/user/grigioverde.org)

The battle of Gela, part two: the first Italian counterattack

Sicily, January 1943: Renault R35 tanks in Italian service, ready to be reviewed by King Victor Emmanuel. These tanks were the protagonists of the first Italian counterattack at Gela. 

At 4:37 in the morning of 10 July, the 3rd Battalion of the 33rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division "Livorno", moved from Butera – where it was quartered near the railway station – towards Poggio Lungo, where Captain Riccardo Maccecchini’s 552nd Company (112th Machine Gun Battalion) was trying to halt the American advance. The 3rd Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nicola Bruni, reached the northern slopes of Poggio Lungo at 8:00 in the morning, but was taken under fire from the "A" and "B" Ranger companies (captain Lyle) that had previously captured the southern slopes, along with three intact 75 mm Italian guns that were now being used against their former owners. The light cruiser USS Birmingham also opened fire on the attacking troops.

As this was happening, another Italian counterattack was also underway, this one by Mobile Group "E" (Lieutenant Colonel Davide Conti). This attack had begun at 5:40 and was led by twelve Renault R35 light tanks, captured by the Germans in France and ceded to Italy, now belonging to the 1st Company of the 101st Tank Battalion, 131st Tank Regiment. They had moved from Niscemi. These little tanks, that weighed just ten tons and were only armed with one 37 mm gun and one 7,5 mm machine gun, were hopeless against the Shermans or the Grants, and could be easily disabled by pretty much any American anti-tank gun; but this was all the Italian forces in Sicily had left at this point. Their crews could only pray for a miracle. The R35s advanced along State Highway 117 at a speed of no more than 20 km/h, firing widly, followed by the 2nd Company of the 102nd Motorized Anti-Tank Battalion (Captain Luigi Emilio Ferrari), armed with 47/32 guns; the 155th Motorized Machine Gun Company (Captain Giorgio Venturini); the 9th Battery, 3rd Artillery Group of the 54th Artillery Regiment "Napoli" (Lieutenant Francesco Marchegiani), equipped with eight 75/18 mm howitzers; and the 1st Section of the 326th Truck-Borne Anti-Aircraft 20/65 mm Machine Gun Battery (belonging to the 26th Infantry Division "Assietta").

The R35s of the 131st Tank Regiment being reviewed by the King in January 1943

The 9th Battery, which during the march from Niscemi during the previous night had already sustained a firefight against American paratroopers, some of whom had been captured, was deployed near the Ponte Olivo airfield, in a ditch protected by an anti-splinter bulwark, from where it was possible to keep Highway 117 under fire; at 7:30 the battery opened fire, soon scoring hits on some 105 mm American guns that had not yet been brought into place. At the same time, the 155th Motorized Machine Gun Company came into contact with American troops near the level crossing, but was stopped there by well-directed American naval gunfire. The 3rd and 4th Platoon of the 2nd Anti-Tank Company, led by young Lieutenant Amedeo Fazzari, had advanced too far and were taken under fire from American mortars and light artillery hidden among the nearby houses, at a distance of less than 300 meters. Two guns were disabled and many of their gunners were killed; Lieutenant Fazzari was also killed, as was 22-year-old Second Lieutenant Ottavio Bazzoli-Righini from the 28th Artillery Regiment "Livorno", an Aemilian from Forlimpopoli. Bazzoli-Righini, a deputy battery commander, was killed by a burst of machine gun while he was exposing himself in order to better aim his guns; he was posthumously awarded a Silver Medal for Military Valor.

 

A disabled and captured Renault R35, belonging to the 1st Company, 101st Battalion, 131st Tank Regiment, photographed by US troops in Gela on 20 October 1943, three months after the battle

At this point, Lieutenant Colonel Conti ordered Captain Giuseppe Granieri’s three tank platoons to advance in multiple waves along Highway 117. Three of the twelve tanks were forced back by shortage of fuel and ammunition; the other nine pushed on, but were spotted by Captain Lyle, who reported their arrival to Lieutenant Colonel William Orlando Darby, who in turn requested naval gunfire support: the request was soon satisfied, and the light cruisers USS Savannah and Boise and the destroyers USS Shubrick and Jeffers opened fire on the advancing R35s. Between 8:00 and 12:55, 572 152 mm shells and hundreds more 127 mm shells rained on the attackers. One by one, the little Italian tanks started to fall. One of them was obliterated by a direct hit; another one was disabled by a hit in the tracks; a third one, Captain Granieri’s tank, broke down. The five surviving tanks managed to enter Gela, where their arrival caused some mayhem among the American troops, who expected this to be the vanguard of a much larger armored force.

At this point, however, a R35 broke down, and another one had to turn back because it had run out of ammunition. This left three tanks, all belonging to the platoon commanded by Second Lieutenant Angiolino Navari, a 25-year-old Tuscan elementary school teacher who had been called up for service in 1940. Navari had already fought in Africa, and now found himself leading what was left of the Italian counterattack on the American beachead – in fact, he had taken the lead since the moment Captain Granier’s tank had broken down. Before leaving Niscemi, Navari had given his personal items to his orderly, Ivo Masoni, telling him to give them back to his family in case he would be killed. (Masoni complied with this order after the war, and on that occasion met Navari’s sister, Maria Assunta: the two fell in love, and later married).

Angiolino Navari on a M13/40 tank (Il Tirreno). Not a particularly good tank, but better than what he would later have in Sicily...

One of his three tanks was hit and disabled as it moved through the town; the other two pushed on and advanced along the road that ran parallel to the railway, as the American infantry in front of them hastily retreated. Rangers barricaded in the upper stories of the houses threw hand grenades on the tanks as they passed. One of the two remaining R35s, whose crew was composed of Sergeant Cannella and 22-year-old trooper Antonio Ricci from Cerveteri (near Rome), had to stop at the beginning of Gela’s main street, near the Hotel Trinacria (where the Americans had established their provisional headquarters), because its cockpit had been inundated by the smoke from its own weapons: trooper Ricci came out of the tank, and was immediately killed by a hailstorm of rifle fire and hand grenades. (His old father would later come down all the way from Cerveteri to Gela on a horse-driven cart, in order to retrieve the body of his son and bury him in his native town). Sergeant Cannella restarted the tank on his own, following Navari, and the two R35s advanced along Via Carrubazza (present-day Via Generale Cascino): when they were near Porta Caltagirone, however, Cannella’s tank was hit and forced to go back. When it reached the crossroads with the road to Vittoria, the tank was hit again by a 37 mm anti-tank gun, personally manned by Lieutenant Colonel Darby: this time the R35 caught fire, and Sergeant Cannella, slightly wounded and in a state of shock, had to climb out of it. A girl came out of a nearby house, ran towards him, hugged him and cleaned his face with a wet towel; then American soldiers arrived and took him prisoner.

A Sicilian boy looks at a disabled and burned R35 in Gela, 14 July 1943

Second Lieutenant Navari and his driver, trooper Carlo Cuschini from Fiume (also 25), were now alone, advancing under a hailstorm of hand grenades and machine gun fire. Near the Gela-Vittoria railway the tank suddenly stopped, and Cuschini had to come out in order to restart the engine by using the hand crank, which could only be activated from outside (!). He succeeded in restarting the tank, but that was the end of him, as he was gunned down before he could climb back inside. Navari continued alone; he reached the crossroads between Corso Umberto I and the main square, just 300 meters from the beach, but there the engine stopped again (or, according to other versions, the tank was disabled by a bazooka hit, or by Darby’s 37 mm gun). The young officer popped out of the hatch, wounded, gun in hand: before he could do anything, Lieutenant Colonel Darby shot him in the head with his Garand rifle. It was 10:30 in the morning of July 10. Second Lieutenant Navari would be posthumously awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valor; he has no known grave.

 

Inhabitants of Gela and U.S. troops walking near a destroyed R35 tank after the battle

Meanwhile, Captain Venturini and half the men of the 155th Motorized Machine Gun Company had been killed or wounded; Lieutenant Franco Girasoli took command of the survivors, but the Americans launched a counterattack, and at 11:00 Lieutenant Colonel Conti gave order to withdraw to Castelluccio. Lieutenant Colonel Bruni’s 3rd Battalion also withdrew there, along with the remnants of the 552nd Machine Gun Company, after resisting for three hours under heavy naval gunfire in the strongpoints of Poggio della Femmina and Monte del Falcone.

Thus ended the first Italian counterattack at Gela.

(Main source: Report from the Command of the 18th Coastal Brigade, found in the Italian Army Historical Archives by Gelese historian Nuccio Mulè)