The fall of the Lamba Doria coastal battery

The "Lamba Doria" coastal battery was built in the Maddalena peninsula, near Capo Murro di Porco (Syracuse), in the late 1930s. It had an important role in the Augusta-Siracusa fortress, as it was armed with three 152 mm naval guns, whose firing range allowed them to keep the entire the Gulf of Noto under control. The battery also included three fixed emplacements of 20 mm "Oerlikon" anti-aircraft machine guns.

The commander of the Lamba Doria battery in 1943 was MILMART Major Antonino Pandolfo, from Syracuse; the battery was manned by a mix of artillerymen and personnel from the MILMART (Coastal Artillery Militia, a branch of the MVSN – better known as Blackshirts – tasked with manning coastal batteries).

As part of the British plan for the landing in the Syracuse area, a SAS unit was tasked with attacking and disabling the Lamba Doria battery. The unit included 250 men commanded by Major Mayne, who sailed on July 7 from Port Said on board the ship Ulster Monarch, landed on the Sicilian coast and climbed the rocky face of Capo Murro di Porco.

At 02,15 on July 10 the special troops of Major Mayne, after killing the sentries along the perimeter, attacked the battery. The outnumbered personnel of the battery resisted and fought with rifles and hand grenades till about 4,00/4,30, when the survivors surrendered and were taken prisoner and transferred to the prison camp set up by the British in Cassibile.

The British sappers blew up the 152 mm naval guns; once they captured this battery, the British could easily control the Gulf of Noto and complete the mass landing of personnel and equipment on the beaches.

Some members of the battery personnel were questioned, between 1944 and 1945, by the enquiry commission tasked with investigating the fall of the Augusta-Syracusa fortress:

MILMART Lance Corporal Paolino Carmelo, born in Pozzallo in 1914, was a rangefinder operator, and as such he was in the Fire Direction Center when the attack took place:

"At about 21.30 hours the air raid alarm was given, at about 22.00 hours the battery and neighboring areas were illuminated by the launch of many flares, the anti-aircraft batteries had opened fire against enemy aircraft, which flew at low altitude over our battery; our 20 mm machine guns were firing with rapid fire, hitting some of the planes. At about 23, the Commander of the battery, Pandolfo Antonino, who also was in the Fire Direction Center, gave orders for a possible attack of paratroopers, and then started to load his submachine rifle; at this point he accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a burst that hit me, as I was in front of him. I was hit by three bullets, two in the left leg, one of them passing through the leg and exiting, whereas the other remained in the leg; the third bullet hit me in the left arm and is still inside. After this, the medical lieutenant of the Southern Group was called, and gave me first aid.

At about 1.00 the British attacked the Lamba Doria, which defended itself with the available means; at approximately 4.30 the battery was overwhelmed; at approximately 5.30 the British, after blowing up the naval guns, took away all the prisoners with them and left in the battery all the wounded, myself included. Other wounded who remained in the battery were Spataro Rosario, Montes Agusto, Inturri Paolo, Sebastiano Garofalo.

In the evening two British officers had the most seriously wounded loaded on two trucks and transported to the hospital in Syracuse. I remained in battery, and I later reached Syracuse by myself, where I was treated by a civilian doctor."

Corpsman Sebastiano Bottaro, born in Syracuse in 1919, was also in Fire Direction Center during the British attack; he reported that the men in the FDC fought the attackers with Carcano rifles and hand grenades and then, "At about 4 o'clock the enemy forces received reinforcements, captured the battery and took prisoner the personnel. We left many dead and wounded on the ground, and were led to the POW Camp in Cassibile. After two days, by eluding the vigilance of the guards, I managed to escape from the camp and took refuge in Syracuse in my own home."

Artillery Corporal Gaspare Midolo, born in Syracuse in 1913, stated that "We defended the Fire Direction Center along with other Legionaries, and at approximately 4 the battery fell to the British.

The British having blown up the naval guns, lined us up and brought us to the POW Camp in Cassibile. We left on the ground about 7 dead and a dozen wounded, including some serious.

After a ten day stay at the camp (I was to be shipped to Africa) I took advantage of the lack of surveillance on a side of the camp and I managed to escape and take refuge in my own home, taking back up my occupation as a mechanic".

The attack of the British forces at the Lamba Doria coastal battery was probably the first fight on Sicilian soil during Operation Husky. The fall of this battery had a deleterious effect in the decisions of the commanders of the other batteries in the Maddalena Peninsula, as they decided to abandon the positions without a fight, as it happened in the nearby Emmanuele Russo Battery.

The Bersaglieri, the battle for Agrigento and the story of Captain Ludovico Ricciardelli

Once the landing was over, the occupation of the western part of Sicily was up to the American 7th Army, under General George Patton’s orders; the priority strategic task was to protect the flank of Montgomery’s 8th Army, which had the aim of reaching as soon as possible the port of Messina, from which he could cut supplies to the Italian-German troops, blocking their escape. The landing in the west was carried out by the Third Infantry Division of General Truscott in the early hours of 10 July, on the beaches around Licata, which was occupied in that morning. After fierce fighting, especially in the area of ​​Campobello di Licata, the Italian counter-offensive of July 11 was repelled and the American troops conquered Palma di Montechiaro, capturing two battalions of the 177th Regiment of Colonel Venturi. The front line in the province was broken in two. On the front along the coast in the direction of Agrigento, from the town of Naro to the mouth of the river of the same name, the 10th Bersaglieri Regiment was deployed along with smaller units of the 177th; these forces were supported by the artillery of the 12th group of Colonel Corrado Ravaioli. It was at this point clear to Patton that it was possible to focus on the conquest of the city of Agrigento, that would open the way to Palermo. But it was during the days of July 12 and 13 that the feathered soldiers of the 35th Bersaglieri Battalion, led by Major Guido Moccia, fought valiantly and managed at a high price – more than 200 killed and wounded – to block the Americans, causing them serious losses. The Italian commander was later decorated with the gold medal for military valor, but these actions had cost him the loss of an arm. Patton was not discouraged, however, and he managed to obtain authorization by his superiors for an attack which was to be carried out by the 7th Infantry Regiment reinforced by the 3rd Ranger Battalion as well as armoured and artillery units. The final action for the conquest of the City of the Temples started in the evening of 15 July. An episode that remained rather obscure, clarified only in recent days by Giuseppe Todaro, a researcher from Porto Empedocle who, starting from the testimony of Salvatore Navarra – a pastor in on whose land, between Villaggio Mosè and St. Leo, there was a coastal battery commanded by artillery Captain Nicola Sapio –, was able to discover a text that was almost completely unknown, written by Captain Sapio at age 90, shortly before his death. The author cited, among other things, the death in combat of his friend and Bersaglieri Captain, Ludovico Ricciardelli. "It was possible to shed light on the mystery of this heroic officer – said Giuseppe Todaro – thanks to collaboration with the Roll of Honour Office of the Defense Ministry, which has provided us with the information contained in the documents in its possession. In fact not only nobody knew anything about this fallen, never mentioned before in other publications, but it was not even know that one company of the 525th Bersaglieri Battalion had participated in the battle of Agrigento: it was thought that this battalion had been entirely destroyed on the day of the landing, near Palma di Montechiaro." In particular, a statement of Lieutenant Corrado Di Maio was found; the statement, given to the police only on December 2, 1957, thus recounted those distant events: "On the night between 15 and 16 July 1943, the Americans had penetrated from the sea to the interior and, after overwhelming one of our platoons, stationed downline of the Serra Sale position, attacked our position. In the fighting that followed and lasted about an hour, the captain died on the field, according to what some fellow captives told me, having been struck by a hand grenade in the throat during the assault. I personally heard him shout "Avanti Savoia" during the last phase of the fighting". But the surprises were just beginning. In fact, in the hope of being able to find other details about the history of Ricciardelli, Todaro managed to track down his son in Florence, Pier Nicola Ricciardelli, who was appalled to hear someone who after seventy years old had discovered the story of his parent, for the simple reason that the family had not been notified of his death in action, but had been told that he was missing. "I could not believe my ears – said Mr. Ricciardelli – when this Agrigento researcher told me, word by word, how things went on the night when my father died. His body in fact, was never identified, probably because of a carelessness of my mother. In fact before leaving for the front, my mom gave him a wholly golden plate with his personal data. For this reason it is likely that when my father's body remained on the field, someone stole his identity plate and for this reason his body was not identified. We only knew that he had become missing in action during the fighting in Sicily." Now Mr. Ricciardelli is considering the possibility to ask for an award at the Defense Ministry in honor of his fallen father. The Battle of Agrigento ended at 20 the next day, July 16, 1943, after a week of desperate resistance.

(from an article of “La Repubblica”)

Italian casualties in Sicily

When the invasion of Sicily started, Italian troops in Sicily numbered 252,000 men overall, including in the total, in addition to the men of the Sixth Army, also the service personnel of the Navy and Air Force.

According to the official history published by the Italian Army Historical Branch, the fate of these men was the following:

4,678 men were confirmed dead, with known grave on the island;

32,500 men, wounded, were evacuated to the Italian mainland during the campaign;

62,000 men, unwounded, were evacuated to the Italian mainland at the end of the campaign;

116,681 men (wounded and unwounded) were taken prisoner by the Allies;

36,072 men were reported as “missing”.

The question of the “missing”, whose number is often ignored when relating the casualties of the campaign, is a problematic one. These men were neither confirmed dead, nor taken prisoners; usually this means that they would have been killed but never found, but the Sicilian campaign poses another possibility. A large part of the men were recruited locally, and it is known that a number of them jettisoned their uniforms at some point and returned home. The problem is that, during these 70 and more years, no research has been done do determine how many of the 36,072 men were deserters/disbanded soldiers, and how many were actually killed and not found. A large number of the missing, according to the official history, were actually dead; buried on the battlefield or at imprecise locations. Many soldiers killed in action were buried by the Allies in mass graves that in many cases were never dug up again. It has been estimated that over 3,300 Italians were killed in the battle of Gela, many of them dismembered by naval gunfire; only 600 of them have a known burial, the others were declared missing, buried in mass graves in the nearby area.

A couple of hints about the actual number of Italian soldiers killed in the battle for Sicily come from the other data. One is the number of wounded among the Italian troops, 32,500 (not counting the wounded who were taken prisoner); that would be six to seven times the number of killed. From what it can be seen about combat casualties suffered in most battles fought by the Italian Army in WW2 (El Alamein, Keren, Bardia, Nibeiwa, the whole Greek campaign are just a few examples), the ratio between killed and wounded was usually between 1:1 and 1:3.
The other hint comes from the 1957 ISTAT study on the Italian casualties in World War II (available here). It should be noticed that the numbers of killed/missing provided by this study are often underestimated; for instance, total military dead are here reported as 291,376, whereas more recent studies by the Italian Defense Ministry (updated to 2010) have revised this number up to 319,207 (in both cases, colonial troops are not included).

For the months of July and August 1943, the ISTAT study lists 12,426 killed or missing (the ISTAT missing are dead whose bodies were never found) in the Italian armed forces, and during that period the only significant fighting involving Italian forces happened in Sicily.

It seems therefore likely that the actual number of Italian soldiers killed during the battle for Sicily was somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000, but only more accurate studies could prove, or disprove, this estimate.

There is not a ‘dedicated’ war memorial or war cemetery for all Italians killed in Sicily; the 4,678 men with known graves are buried in different cemeteries all over the island. 1,288 of them are buried in the Cristo Re War Memorial, in Messina; over 900 are buried in the memorial inside the Church of S. Nicolò l’Arena, in Catania. Others rest in Gela, Syracuse and other cemeteries.

Patton on the Italians

From George S. Patton's book, "War as I knew it".

On the battle of Gela:

Later:

Recollections of Corporal Bruno Causin

Bruno Causin - from "Gela Città di Mare"

An interview taken by Giovanni Iacono from Bruno Causin, from Padua (Veneto), then a 22-year-old corporal in the 54th Artillery Regiment, about the battle of Gela and subsequent events:

Mr Causin, when where you called to arms?

"I enlisted on 10 January 1941, in Ferrara, in the 2nd Artillery Regiment. I was a pointer, but later I also followed courses for detachment commander, driver, a short course on ammunition and a course as a corpsman."

In July of '43, what unit did you belong to?

"I belonged to the 54th Artillery Regiment, "Napoli" Division, more precisely to the 9th 75/18 mm Battery, aggregated to the Mobile Group "E" of the XVIII Coastal Brigade, which besides us also included a company of tanks, an infantry company and one of Bersaglieri".

Where were you located?

"We were in Sicily since September 1941. In March of '43 we had moved to Niscemi. Here we were accommodated in schools; we slept on bunk beds, two up and two down. During this period, we trained every day. In the 5-6 days before the landing, the Americans bombed the entire plain of Gela; I remember the wheat that covered the whole plain that caught fire, not like the fires that they show in Venice! There, you saw something that seemed unimaginable, wheat in July that was burning ...., A pile here one there, all these fires, all over the plain. "

Bruno Causin (third from left) with other members of his unit - from "Gela Città di Mare"

What happened on the night of 9 July of '43?

"At the time I was Corporal. The Commander of the battery, Lt. Francesco Marchegiani, called us around 8.30pm in to the orderly room and told us: "Look, the hour has come. The talk, about group of ships headed for Sicily, are true. One such group is coming right here at Gela. We are ready, go to the encampment and wait for the order." We set off in the direction of Gela when it was dark. Towards midnight we were attacked by a patrol of paratroopers, and we stopped along the road from Niscemi to Gela. At some point I realized that a group of soldiers of foot were coming towards us. They were those of the Coastal Artillery Militia in charge of the anti-aircraft guns, whom had jettisoned rank and insignia. I asked them: "Where are you going?". They answered: "We had orders to run away." "And you, where are you going?" "We go to the front against the Americans," I answered, and then they fled, some here and some there. I immediately informed the lieutenant about this; and do you know what did answer Lieutenant Marchegiani? "Causin, think about doing your duty as you have always done!" I closed my mouth, "Yes, sir," I answered. We arrived at the airport in Ponte Olivo at daylight. The Americans had already landed and occupied the town. The commander of the battery, as usual, had gone ahead to see the place where to place the guns. He had been assigned the point where to go, but on this side of the village of Gela, the Americans had already placed a 105mm battery... He then came back, gave us firing data while we were still on the way and I wrote them down on the protractor which, as it was small, I always kept in my pocket. As soon as we placed the guns, we fired a salvo, hitting the American battery with the first shot. I remember that the aide told me that he saw the hell unleashing on the enemy battery, dead soldiers, overturned cannons. Afterwards we continued to shoot to cover the advance of the infantry. But as soon as the [U.S.] Navy stepped in... mamma mia... .There came upon a hell of fire and steel. The shots passed over us, but some landed even at 40-50 meters from our position, literally covering us with soil, but we continued to shoot up to 10:30-11:00, and I remember that the sun was burning.

On the evening of the second day, the Americans had sent ahead seven tanks along highway 117. I was manning the fourth gun, and I was close to the road. I remember these seven tanks that were coming ahead. The commander called all us pointers and told us, "You Causin take the first [tank], and you (the first gun) take the last, that one there the second last and the other the second", so those were four that we had to strike, however, there would be three others that would not be hit. He told us: "When I fire a gunshot in the air, you shoot." He let them come forward up to a distance of 80 meters, I saw them on the telescope as from here to you, and I remember that the first shot I fired hit the tank below, between the earth and the track, and the tank stopped. Then the second shot scored a direct hit, and the tank caught fire. I immediately fired another; but in the end only two managed to escape. But then the Navy... ..mamma mia... they pulled so many bombs. The earth seemed to boil; luckily we had a wonderful location, that is, there was a ditch made by the aviation field personnel, and so we had this kind of shelter as a protection, and the gun was on the edge. But a naval shell hit us right in the shield, and I remember that the gun jumped in the air, and I who was sitting on the folding chair, without even realizing it I found myself on the ground, all of us covered with soil, and the gun went back down again with a thud, and the lieutenant shouted "fire, fire", and we began to shoot on sight; there were many Americans who came forward here and there, they were everywhere and when it happened, as we had been instructed to do, we fired a shot here a shot there, in order to keep the enemy always on alert, so that they would not come closer, and so we fired a shot close, a shot further away. Anyway, we managed to fight them off.

Afterwards, we learned that all the tractors to tow the gun had been destroyed. A shot of the Navy had hit a car that was loaded with ammunition and they had all blown up. Lt. Marchegiani had telegraphed to the command that we had no more ammunition (there were 12 shells left). Then he was ordered to surrender and follow the fate (the fate was to become prisoner). The lieutenant told us "No. Not prisoners. Prepare the guns for the march, we will drag them on our backs and go away". And I always remember, I was the most robust, I put two jackets on my shoulders, one on the right and one on the left, tied with string or with straps, and I had the rudder on the shoulder, you think a gun that weighed 12-13 tons, and others pulled from the flanks, there were two ropes tied to the wheels where there was a hook with that purpose, and dragging these we reached Niscemi. We had travelled a dozen kilometers, during which we had been attacked several times by airplanes; that was terror. I was afraid of airplanes, because they arrived on you without you noticing, popping up from behind a hill, and they mowed you down. The planes came over us four of five times, dived on us and then went away immediately thereafter. They dropped bombs, machine-gunned us, luckily I remember we did not even suffer one wounded. The Lord has blessed us on that journey."

You pulled back, you arrived in Niscemi and then ....

"Once in Niscemi we believed we would find our encampment and instead we found all empty, they had taken away even the blankets, mattresses and kitchen; we were left literally with nothing. I do not remember how many hours we stayed there. But I remember that at one time I saw the American flag hoisted at the foot of the Castelluccio [Swabian Castle on a hill overlooking Gela]. Lieutenant Marchegiani called me and said, "Causin, you see that flag, bring it down." I fired my gun and brought down the flag with the second shot. Then new trucks with ammunition came, and we set off towards Caltagirone. Here we hid under the trees of the public gardens, to hid from the planes that were going around and looking for us; we stood there almost until evening. I remember that just after dark we went near Caltagirone and we took positions witht the guns on top of the hill. Lieutenant Barnabà, which was my platoon leader, had assumed command because Lieutenant Marchegiani was gone, having been wounded in the arm by a bullet fired by a plane, and having been taken to hospital; Lt. Barnabà said: "Bruno, come with me to go and see where to take position". We went up the hill and that was when we saw all the plain full of cars going around and all heading for Caltagirone. We could see columns that never ended, I had never seen such a thing, then with binoculars you could see even better. "They are better equipped of us," I said to the lieutenant, and he answered me, "unfortunately we are the ants and they are lions."

In that moment how did you feel?

"I was not afraid. Unfortunately, fear is the worst thing you can have, and I said to the lieutenant: "Lieutenant Marchegiani always told us: "Remember that fear is the n. 1 enemy, because a person betrays himself and at the same time also betrays his companions". "It 's true," he said. "Go down and tell the others to come here." He had already taken the firing data; we went up pulling guns up the hill by hand, and I remember that we immediately started to fire. Sainted mother!, all those car that were blowing up, ammunition, fire, we shot all night and the next morning we were really exhausted. The next day we left and we went on the front of Catania. And there we did not really fire so much, quite different from what had happened in Gela. And then I remember that I kept having these fevers, and lost my appetite."

Mr. Causin was taken prisoner on August 15, 1943, while hospitalized in the Castroreale field hospital for malarial fever. He was transferred to no. 211 POW Camp in Algeria, where he remained until June 30, 1945. Mr. Causin was awarded the War Merit Cross for taking part in the Sicilian Campaign. He was later promoted to the rank of honorary Corporal First Class.

Bruno Causin in 1943 - from "Gela Città di Mare"

(from: Giornale di Sicilia)