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