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 Sub-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 Sub-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

Sub-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 popper 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. Sub-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)