Major Arnaldo Rabellino’s 429th
Coastal Battalion, apart from the command company in Gela, was deployed on two
lines of defense for the defense of the town: the external line, which included
the beach defenses, was manned by the 616th Company of the G.A.F. (Guardia alla Frontiera, the Italian
Frontier Guard) of Captain Domenico Mascherpa’s 112th Machine-Gunners
Battalion, as well as Captain Ferdinando Angelini’s 3rd Company, deployed east
of Senia Ferrata; the line ran up to the Castelluccio (the old Swabian castle
that had been built for protection against the Saracen raids, placed on a hill
in Contrada Spadaro, 7 kilometers north of the town and just under 3 km from
the air bae). The 1st and 2nd Companies, commanded respectively by Captain
Mario Rocchini and Captain Antonio Meschini, were deployed further to the
north-west, until the Gattano river, whereas Captain Alfonso Della Minola’s 4th
Company was further to the north-east, with two platoons to Villa Priolo and a
third further to east in Feudo Nobile, in defense of a strategic bridge on
Highway 115 on the Dirillo river.
The Airport Static Defense
Command 502 was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ettore Zanoletti, and
included an airmen unit, the command company (Lieutenant Santino Balsamo), the
13th Riflemen Company (Captain Giuseppe Correnti) of the 4th Battalion of the 121st
Infantry Regiment "Macerata ", the 4th Motorized Rifle Company of the
501st Coastal Battalion (commanded by Captain Vincenzo Randazzo and detached
from Mobile Group "E " in Niscemi), plus an autonomous 149/12 mm artillery
battery of the G.a.F. (Lieutenant Eugenio Giusti), three anti-aircraft
batteries of the 22nd M.A.C.A. (Milizia
Artiglieria Contraerea, Anti-Aircraft Artillery Militia, a branch of the
Blackshirt tasked with anti-aircraft defense) Legion (the 333rd and 334th 37/54
Battery, under Capomanipolo [Blackshirt
rank equivalent to Lieutenant] Francesco Barbato, and the 523rd 75/46 Battery
of Capomanipolo Pietro Galli), and
one anti-aircraft battery of the Regio Esercito, the 320th 20/65 Light Autonomous
Battery of Captain Salvatore Settineri.
The defenses were
completed by Captain Napoleon Monaco’s 268th S (Solothurn) Anti-Tank Rifle Company
(part of the 134th Coastal Infantry Regiment), placed in defense of Strongpoint
no. 31; by the 105th 47/32 mm Anti-Tank Company and by the 106th Autonomous
Mortar Company under Captain Pasquale Paolini, both stationed in Capo Soprano;
by the Captain Achille Suarez’s 21st Sapper Company miners (belonging to the
12th Corps’ Engineers Group); by four 20/65 mm anti-aircraft batteries of the "Livorno"
Division between Niscemi and Scoglitti; by four photoelectric sections; and by
some anti-paratrooper squads (Nuclei Anti Paracadutisti, NAP) (the 552nd NAP at
Poggio Lungo, the 352nd in Montelungo, the 455th in Case Priolo, the 456th in
Niscemi, the 457th in Acate, the 458th in Vittoria and the 526th in Ponte
Olivo), as well as Carabinieri, Guardie
di Finanza (Italian Customs and Finance Guard) and Blackshirts of the local
Militia.
The 17th Garrison Infantry
Battalion, stationed in the rear, was judged as having little or no military
value, being entirely composed of 30/40 years old Sicilians whom had been judged
as unfit for first-line service, many of them married or even widowed with
children.
The American troops landed
in Gela at 03:35. Some landing craft of the 26th RCT were hit by gunfire from
the coastal batteries when they were about 100 meters from the beach, some of
them were set afire, but most carried on and landed their troops on the Red and
Green beaches. There, they were immediately taken under fire from the Italian
pillboxes; an entire platoon from the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion was
virtually annihilated, and another platoon, from “D” Company, 4th Rangers
(Major Murray), stepped on a minefield and found itself pinned down by machine-gun
crossfire from two pillboxes. The platoon commander, Lieutenant Walter Wojak,
was mortally wounded, and command fell on Sergeant Randall Harris, whom had
also been badly wounded in the stomach. In spite of his wounds, Harris led the
assault on the beach defenses; he and corporal Howard Andre climbed on a dike,
about 15 feet high, where a row of pillboxes was located, then they attacked
each pillbox, taking turns – one of them opening the door and the other tossing
a grenade inside. They thus eliminated about twelve pillboxes.
On the beach, American
combat engineers sistematically destroyed other pillboxes and machine gun
nests, manned by G.a.F. troops, with flamethrowers and hand grenades, while the
coastal troops whom had barricaded themselves in the houses closer to the beach
were taken out with fragmentation grenades.
Corporal Cesare
Pellegrini, 34 years old, a Tuscan from Seravezza (Lucca), manned a machine gun
in a pillbox near Porta Marina. He put up a stubborn resistance, hampering the
landing on the beach for over four hours with the fire of his machine gun; the
landing operations in the area that he kept under his fire had to be
temporarily suspended. More American troops, however, had already entered other
areas of Gela, and were already approaching Porta Marina; Pellegrini’s
companions felt surrounded and fled, and he remained alone.
An American patrol, led by
a non-commissioned officer, identified the source of the fire, worked around it
and then the NCO penetrated the pillbox and stabbed Pellegrini in the back.
Cesare Pellegrini was left clinging to his weapon, stiffened in death. In a
corner of the pillbox, there was his open briefcase, letters scattered all over
the place, and his dog tag on the ground near the machine gun. He was posthumously
decorated with the Bronze Medal of Valor.
At 4:05 Colonel Altini
reported that enemy troops were penetrating the town, and five minutes later
Major Rabellino confirmed that the enemy landing had succeeded and that the
enemy was entering Gela from the Belvedere side. All the available men from the
1st and 2nd Companies were sent towards the town, while the 3rd Company was
desperately resisting the 16th RCT in Senia Ferrata and the 4th Company was
engaged against American paratroopers near Abbeveratoio Priolo. Bitter fighting
was already going on in the main street, between the Rangers and the
Carabinieri whom had entrenched themselves near the Chiesa Madre (the main
church, wrongly identified by many American sources as the “Cathedral”) and the
former Trinacria Hotel. Other Carabinieri had entrenched themselves in the
public gardens, joined by Guardie di
Finanza (customs and finance guards), Blackshirts and some armed civilians.
People of all sorts died
in those confused moments: the 36-year-old Blackshirt Tommaso Sanzo, from the
22nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Militia (M.A.C.A., Milizia Artiglieria Contraerea), was surprised by some Rangers as
he was trying to reach his unit in Santa Maria del Gesù; he fired on them with
his Beretta and was gunned down by their Thompsons. Another Blackshirt from the
22nd M.A.C.A., the 53-year-old Piero Mondarini, an old Fascist and a supporter
of Mussolini since the beginning, was off-duty and in civilian clothes, taking
a walk in the early hours of the day, when he saw some American troops entering
his street; even when off-duty he carried a pistol with himself, and he
immediately reached for it in order to fire on them, but was immediately shot
and killed.
At the other end of the
political spectrum was 33-year-old Rocco Tignino, a staunch anti-Fascist; when
he saw the American troops entering the town, he left his house in Via Bastione
and walked towards them carrying an Italian flag, to greet them as liberators
of his country from Fascism. The American soldiers, however, did not
understand; they only saw a man carrying a flag of an enemy country, and they
shot him as well. Likewise, civilians without any political affiliation lost
their lives when they were caught in crossfire; among them young mother Carmela
Ferrara, 20 years old, with her two children Grazio and Lucia, one and three
years old, respectively.
The Americans had already
entered Gela.
In the city centre,
fighting was house-to-house. In Via Butera, a Lieutenant shot with his sidearm
a fleeing Sergeant, then led his platoon against an American company until he
was killed and the platoon was wiped out. A few hundred yards away, Lieutenant
Filippo Lempo, a 33-year-old reserve officer from Catania, was surrounded by
the Rangers in Via Giacomo Navarra Bresmes, while he was trying to reach his
command along with his men. The Rangers and Lembo’s men engaged each other in
hand-to-hand combat until most of the Italians were killed, some of them in
front of the steps of the nearby Cathedral. Lembo, who had retreated to a
nearby depot with some survivors, had his throat slit while firing the last
rounds of his Beretta.
After the garrison at the
farmers’ cooperative was overrun as well, the situation deteriorated steadily
for the Italians; at 4:25 Brigadier-General Orazio Mariscalco, in command of
the 18th Coastal Brigade, reported to General Alfredo Guzzoni, the commander of
the Sixth Italian Army, that in the hamlet of Case Priolo the 4th Company of
the 429th Coastal Battalion, led by Captain Alfonso Della Minola (37 years old,
from Stresa in Piedmont), after coming to the rescue of the 455th
Anti-Paratrooper Squad which was under attack, had been itself surrounded by a
hundred paratroopers (these belonged to “A” Company of the 1st Battalion, 505th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Captain Edwin B. Sayre). At 4:57 Major
Rabellino reported that there were many ships and boats off the shore,
apparently ferrying troops and supplies between the larger ships and the
beaches, and that there were already many dead and wounded among his men,
although the population of Gela remained in its houses and appeared calm. At
5:35 Blackshirt Lieutenant Giuseppe Messina of the 22nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery
Militia Legion, who had established an information-gathering centre, reported
that fighting was going on inside the town, and at 5:50 the command of the 18th
Coastal Brigade phoned to the command of the XVI Corps to report that the
command of the 429th Coastal Battalion was surrounded. At dawn the strongpoint
in the cemetery, consisting of two Breda machine guns under the command of
Second Lieutenant Giuseppe Gentile (31 years old, from Melito Porto Salvo in
Calabria), capitulated; at 6:28 Colonel Altini reported that the entire
garrison was surrounded and that the 181st Battery in Manfria had suffered many
casualties, only had one functional gun and was under heavy naval gunfire,
while the 49th and 330th Batteries, between Montelungo and Cape Soprano, had
three working guns each and had many dead and wounded among their personnel,
requiring ambulances to evacuate the many men who were seriously wounded.
The battle between Captain
Della Minola’s 4th Company and Captain Sayre’s paratroopers was still raging:
the Italians had barricaded themselves in a farmhouse. After several hours,
they eventually surrendered, and the paratroopers thus captured Piano Lupo’s
“Y” road intersection. Fifteen Italians had been killed, Della Minola among
them; fifty were taken prisoner.
At 7:10 Colonel Altini
reported that enemy warships had begun interdiction fire against the rear of
the Italian strongpoints; that the 181st Battery had lost its last gun and was
fortifying itself with machine gun nests; that the 49th and 330th had overall
four gun left, were still firing on the landing craft but were in turn being shelled
by American warships. At 8:00 three Ranger companies were firmly established in
the town, and Colonel William Orlando Darby established his command in the
former Trinacria Hotel. At 8:02 the command of the 429th Coastal Battalion
radioed its last message: “We are surrounded”.
Shortly thereafter the local Carabinieri garrison, surrounded near the Cathedral by American troops coming from Corso Vittorio Emanuele, surrendered after running out of ammunition. One Carabiniere had been killed, many had been wounded. Positions in the municipal gardens were overcome by the Rangers after strong resistance. Major Rabellino barricaded himself with his command in a house; they surrendered around 9:00.
Shortly thereafter the local Carabinieri garrison, surrounded near the Cathedral by American troops coming from Corso Vittorio Emanuele, surrendered after running out of ammunition. One Carabiniere had been killed, many had been wounded. Positions in the municipal gardens were overcome by the Rangers after strong resistance. Major Rabellino barricaded himself with his command in a house; they surrendered around 9:00.
At 9:20 Colonel Altini
reported that the 330th Battery had blown up its guns and that the 49th at Cape
Soprano had been forced to surrender because the Americans had advanced towards
it using captured Italian soldiers as human shields. At 9:57 news came that the
526th Anti-Paratrooper Squad had moved from Castelluccio to Niscemi.
Thus had ended, after four
hours of fighting, the resistance of the 429th Coastal Battalion. Five of its
officers had been killed, twelve had been wounded; 180 of its enlisted men had
been killed or wounded as well, approximately 45% of the battalion’s total
strength. Two hundreds men had been captured, the few who had escaped death or
capture had retreated to Monte Castelluccio. Gela was firmly in American hands.
Captain James B. Lyle’s
Rangers soon put the guns captured at Cape Soprano back in working order, and
created several defensive outposts as well as an observatory along Highway 117.
Darby placed the mortars from the “A”, “B” and “C” companies of the freshly
landed 83rd Chemical Battalion around the north-eastern outskirts of Gela, but
was then informed that there were snipers on the bell tower of the Chiesa
Madre. Darby went to the spot and found two platoons of Rangers in front of the
church, along with an Italian American NCO who was shouting in Sicilian dialect
to those in the bell tower to come down from that sacred place. When the
Rangers broke into the bell tower, however, they found nobody inside; only an
empty case of hand grenades was laying at the top of the tower. This little
mystery would be explained more than sixty years later to the local historian
Rosario Medoro by Francesco Zafarana, one of the “snipers” that had been in the
tower back in ’43. During the battle of Gela Zafarana, who at the time was a
teenager, had retrieved some SRCM. 35 hand grenades from some dead Italian
soldiers, together with fellow teenager Rosario Cacciatore, the son of the
keeper of the Parco delle Rimembranze (Remembrance Park), and 20-year-old
Ferdinando Incardona, son of a grocer, the “oldest” of the three. The trio had
then climbed up the bell tower, unnoticed, thrown three hand grenades at the
American soldiers below them, and then fled from the tower’s rear door. A very
dangerous stunt.
The three boys had been
captured by American paratroopers half an hour later and temporarily imprisoned
in a cinema, but had been handed back to their families after a few days.
(Main source, "Nel corso della battaglia di Gela" by Nuccio Mulè)