According to a divisional news-sheet produced by the British 1 Airborne Division in July 1943, the BBC had broadcast the following story:
“Airborne troops were landed on a wide area owing to a strong wind. First objective captured, but, owing to shortage of men and expenditure of ammunition, Airborne troops could not continue to hold bridge owing to strong enemy pressure including a cavalry charge. Bridge later retaken intact by 17 Bde and Airborne troops rescued.”
The bridge mentioned above was the Ponte Grande bridge, just south of Syracuse. No other official source mentions a cavalry charge in Operation Ladbroke, and no personal account does either, memorable though such a thing would have been. Clearly there was no Italian cavalry charge as described in the broadcast. So how did the BBC come to report a charge at the Ponte Grande? And if there was no cavalry charge at the bridge, then was there a charge against airborne troops somewhere else in Sicily?
Italian Sources
Italian accounts are clear: there was indeed a cavalry attack against Allied troops, however foolhardy and improbable that seems. We have two primary sources. The first is the official report of General Guzzoni, commander of the Italian 6 Army, who was head of all the Italian armed forces in Sicily. Speaking of US troops that had penetrated inland from beaches in the American sector of the invasion, he wrote:
“The commanding officer of XII Corps ordered a mobile group, … comprised of a Blackshirt battalion and a squadron of cavalry, to counterattack in support of some strongpoints that had been surrounded but were holding out.
The action could not have the desired effect, given that the enemy had already landed jeeps and light tanks, against which they had no effective weapons.”
We also have a personal account from a survivor of the Italian cavalry unit. He was the commanding officer of one of its squadrons:
“On 10 July 1943 I received orders from my group commander: 1) To make contact with the enemy in the plain of Licata to identify their position, strength and activity; 2) To determine the precise location of a battalion of Blackshirts that were part of our battle group. I set out with my squadron and made contact with the enemy force and … fulfilled my orders … Making contact with the Blackshirt battalion was now vitally important to the success of our operations, but I did not think I needed the whole squadron … so I personally took command of the search with ten cavalrymen … and set off in the direction where I supposed the Blackshirts were. Soon we approached a copse of trees and unexpectedly came under intense enemy machine gun fire from it. Rapidly reviewing the situation I saw that turning back was absolutely impossible, as there was no cover anywhere. So I decided to eliminate the machine gun and I ordered the charge. I got as far as a few meters from the trees when my horse, severely wounded, fell. I lost my helmet and was knocked unconscious … When I regained my senses I found I was in enemy hands … I assume that most of the ten men in my patrol were killed.”
Both of these accounts tally in placing the action near Licata in the American sector of the invasion. The personal account also makes it clear that the charge was not a deliberate and planned piece of military tactics, but an impulsive and desperate move by men trapped in an ambush.
To those who subscribe to a rigid code of military honour, the charge may well seem heroic. Many Italian soldiers that day, all over the invasion zone, fled or surrendered when under no particular threat at all. By contrast, this cavalry charge is an instance of Italian soldiers, caught in a hopeless situation, who did not surrender, despite facing almost certain death. To a modern civilian sensibility, however, it may seem a pointless waste, when surrender under the circumstances would have been equally honourable, and would have left no widows and orphans.
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