ROME, ITALY
Colonel Gerhard Wolff watched from the cab of his half-track as troopers of the SS Police Brigade that bore his name kicked in the doors of several fashionable townhouses in the center of Rome. He could just see the dome of St. Peter’s over the roofs of the houses to his right, and he crossed himself, as a good Bavarian Catholic, as he got on with his business in the deep blue of the night, indifferently lit by the few working street lamps.
It had been a frustrating morning thus far. He had been with the initial assault team that had stormed the palace where King Victor Emmanuel had reportedly spent the night. There had been a vicious firefight with the palace guard, leaving at least fifty Italians and nearly twenty of his own men dead, but the king had not been there. Although the staff had originally been unwilling to talk, a practiced interrogator like Wolff had taken less than five minutes to get a steward to admit that the king had been flown away in a small observation plane. Wolff truly believed that the man did not know the final destination, speculating either La Spezia, seeking the protection of the Italian fleet, or possibly all the way to Corsica. In either event, he had escaped. The same would prove true of Marshals Badoglio and Ambrosio, and most of the Italian High Command.
In fact, other than disarming over one thousand Italian soldiers, Wolff’s “bag” for the night was thus far only a couple of minor ministers in the new government, one brigadier general, and a suspected organizer of the Communist underground, who had been summarily executed on the street. He could see now that his men were shoving prisoners out into the street, but they were only women in bathrobes and a few small children. What kind of men were these Italians who would run away and leave their families to suffer? Well, he would see how they enjoyed the accommodations at Ravensburg.
0730 HOURS, 26 FEBRUARY 1943
BOLZANO, ITALY
General Valentin Feurstein, commander of the LI Corps and of the Mittenwald Mountain Warfare School in Austria, waved from his open staff car as the mostly German population of the town crowded the sidewalks and waved Nazi flags, and even some old Imperial German flags as the troops of the 44th Infantry Division rolled southward. The ease of their coup de main had come as no surprise to Feurstein, who had been planning it for weeks. They had secured the vital Brenner Pass without a shot being fired, and more than three thousand Italian troops had been disarmed and herded aboard cattle cars for a quick trip to prison labor camps in Germany.
Feurstein had even recruited nearly two thousand Italian Alpini troopers who had been training with the Germans at Mittenwald. They had enjoyed the camaraderie of elite troops, and they tended to respect the German officers, who shared their hardships and training, much more than their own foppish officers who spent their time whoring and drinking, a practice that Feurstein had gone to some lengths to encourage lately. While they couldn’t be trusted to take the German side in the current struggle, they would form the nucleus of a new Italian army once things got back to normal.
But it would not all go quite so smoothly, he knew. General Gloria, commander of the Italian 35th Corps, had pulled most of his units back intact to the south, probably planning to make a stand somewhere near Lake Garda north of Verona where the mountains crowded up against the Adige, with the lake on the west side, forming a narrow gap through which Highway 12 ran. But it was Feurstein’s task only to secure the alpine passes and the border area. Other units would pass through his in a matter of hours and go on to crush any resistance they found. It had been a good night’s work.
0800 HOURS, 26 FEBRUARY 1943
FLORENCE, ITALY
Giorgio Paglioni crouched behind a flimsy barricade made of old automobiles, furniture, and paving stones, and he could feel the earth tremble as the German tanks approached. He looked to his right and left and could count only about a dozen men still with him, alive. Most, like Paglioni, were civilians, armed only with old hunting rifles and shotguns or pistols, but there were also a couple of soldiers, all of them wearing bright red armbands to indicate their membership in the Communist Party.
Like most of the population of Florence, Paglioni, a machine tool operator at the Aero Macchi plant on the outskirts of the city, had been delirious at the previous evening’s broadcast announcing Italy’s withdrawal from the war. However, unlike most of the other patrons of the neighborhood bar on whose scratchy radio Paglioni had heard the news, he understood that this did not necessarily mean “peace” for Italy. What he and his comrades in his underground Communist Party cell understood was that this act merely unmasked the fascists and nazis for what they were, oppressors of the people, and opened the door to overt warfare between them and the working class, an unfortunate but inevitable step on the road to world revolution. He was heartened by the fact that, with the collapse of the puppet regime in Rome, most of the soldiers had seen clearly on which side their interests lay and had gone over to the resistance en masse. With the Soviet armies on the move westward, and the capitalist armies still locked in a mortal struggle with Nazi Germany, there would never be a better time for the workers of Europe to throw off the yoke of oppression and create a Communist utopia on the ashes of the old order.
But fighting had been raging in the streets of Florence for hours, and it was not going well. Paglioni had imagined that the Germans, scattered in isolated pockets up and down the length of the country, would quickly surrender, or even desert in a body to the side of the workers. At forty, he was old enough to remember how the Communist Spartacists under Karl Liebkneckt had come within a hair’s breadth of victory in Germany in 1919, and would not many of these German soldiers be the sons of the workers who were herded back into their factories at the point of the bayonet? But it was not working out that way.
The 24th Panzer Division had been encamped just west of town, supposedly on the way to the front in France, although it had begun to be noted that they had lingered an unusually long time “refitting’’ their vehicles, more than ten days. Now it was clear that their presence had been no coincidence, and they had come roaring into the city, easily scattering the troops of the 103rd Piacenza Division, but they had been halted, not by the army, but by the workers. Most of the soldiers had simply turned and run, but the workers fought for every house, every factory workshop, every irrigation ditch, just as the Russian workers had done at Stalingrad. But it was beginning to appear that a just cause and boundless courage were simply not enough.
The long black snout of a tank gun poked around the comer of a building a hundred meters up the street, and Paglioni and his comrades froze as the bulk of the immense dark monster emerged. The barricade itself was shaking apart just at the approach of the tank, and Paglioni irrationally reached out a hand to steady the cross piece of a dining room table. The squealing of the tank’s treads was almost unbearable, like a schoolchild scraping his nails across a blackboard. Then a shot rang out, which started a rattle of gunfire all along the line. Paglioni didn’t bother. He could see bullets kick up sparks along the panzer’s flanks, but it would do no good. He was waiting for some infantry, targets he could actually damage, but the enemy foot soldiers were holding back, firing from cover and only dodging forward a few meters at a time, using the vast armored bulk as a shield.
A man on the roof of a house just ahead of the barricade raised up and hurled a Molotov cocktail at the tank, its burning wick leaving smoky arcs in the air as it spun downward. But he was too far away, and the bottle smashed on the pavement, spreading burning liquid over the pavement. The fool had, however, attracted the crew’s attention, and the turret whined as it swung in his direction, the gun elevating slightly. The man had ducked back down behind the low parapet around the roof, but the gunner merely blew apart the entire top floor of the building.
Paglioni suddenly heard the sound of pounding feet behind him and turned expectantly, hoping to see reinforcements coming up, but it was a squad of Germans, holding their rifles and submachineguns at the ready. Men along the barricade were throwing aside their weapons a
nd raising their hands. Paglioni looked frantically from side to side, but there was no escape, and he, too, dropped his rifle and slowly came to his feet. A German officer jogged up, scanned up and down the line of ragged prisoners, and gave a little flick of his wrist, at which the soldiers opened fire and then turned at a trot to follow the officer down the street.
Paglioni was found an hour later by a team of medical students who risked their lives combing through the ravaged city in search of wounded men to succor. Although he would lose his left arm, he would be one of the few fighters to survive the day and the subsequent weeks of hiding in the basement of a convent, constantly hovering on the verge of death. He would later refer to his salvation as one of the few acts of sloppiness that he had witnessed on the part of the Germans in the war.
0930 HOURS, 26 FEBRUARY 1943
OFF “BLUE” BEACH, NEAR GROSSETO, ITALY
Major General Sidney C. Kirkman pounded his fist on the metal side of the LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) as it plowed through the waves toward the beach. He craned his neck to peer over the sides, and the shore hardly seemed to be getting any closer.
What imbecile among the Italians had had the bright idea of announcing their surrender hours before the invasion? Now the Germans would have had ample time to seal off the Italian Army and get ready for the assault that they must know would be coming. They might have just as well sent them a printed schedule of the landings. Of course, Montgomery’s penchant for over-preparation had not facilitated things and may have had to do with the foul-up, having delayed the landing for 24 hours while some additional artillery units arrived from England. Kirkman had a premonition that those 24 hours would cost his men dear.
Kirkman commanded the 50th Northumbrian Division, responsible for half of this northern of the two beaches designated for Montgomery’s invasion. His beach straddled the mouth of the Ombrone River, and it was his responsibility to secure the left flank of the beachhead, driving inland at least to the Via Cassia and the high ground beyond it, perhaps twenty miles in depth. The 5th Division would be coming ashore to his right with the task of linking up with the XXX Corps, who would be landing at “Beach Red” to the south.
It was a fairly simple plan, if ambitious, but the plans had changed radically within the last few days. The projected drop of the British 1st Airborne Division near Rome had been cancelled when Marshall Ambrosio, commander of the Italian Army, had informed the Allies that the concentration of German units around the capital was just too strong, particularly in antiaircraft units, and any landing there would probably end in a massacre, even with the support of the Italians. That, in itself, was not a major disaster, as the paras would at least be available to come ashore as infantry at need, and in a more concentrated deployment than air dropping, which Kirkman had never quite endorsed as a means of inserting troops into enemy territory. But the original plans had always assumed at least marginal combat support from the Italian Army, at least tying up the roads, and maybe helping clear the Luftwaffe from the skies. Now that the cat was out of the bag, Kirkman had no doubt that the Germans had moved quickly to neutralize the Italians, so the British would be on their own against an alerted enemy.
The only good news thus far had been that the maps of the coastal minefields that Ambrosio had provided to Montgomery had proven to be accurate, and there had been no losses to shipping from that threat. Also, the bulk of the Italian fleet, including several serviceable battleships and a number of dangerous destroyers and submarines, that might have played havoc with the invasion fleet if they had been willing to face the losses, had apparently escaped from La Spezia and Taranto unhindered by the Germans, although they had been attacked by the Luftwaffe on the way out, and there had been rumors of at least one battleship sunk. Still, the naval side of things had worked out better than one might have expected.
The catch was that, because of Italy’s defection and the anticipation of little or no resistance at the point of entry, there had been no naval or aerial bombardment of the landing zones, and only a minimum of interdiction attacks along the highways, for fear of causing casualties among Italian civilians. Waves of fighters and bombers were now roaring overhead, and Kirkman could see destroyers racing back and forth just beyond the landing craft assembly area, their guns barking at invisible targets inland. But that would do little good for the initial assault.
The 69th Infantry Brigade from his division and the 13th from 5th Division had made up the first wave. The unskilled landing craft drivers had drifted south with the current, so all of the troops had landed south of the Ombrone. This would not have been overly serious except that it concentrated the assault on a very narrow sector of the beach, allowing the defenders to concentrate their fire as well.
There would be little in the way of permanent, prepared fortifications, just some half-hearted efforts by the Italians from before the war, the odd pill box here and there, but the Germans had apparently moved in during the night and made use of the several peaceful hours before the landings to set up some daunting defenses. It was apparent that the enemy was well-provided with self-propelled artillery that would fire a few rounds from one position and then quickly displace to another, with all of the aiming points thoroughly registered. They were ignoring the boats and pummeling the beach itself, which had also been strewn with hundreds of mines, mostly not even concealed, but which greatly hindered the movement of the first tanks of the 44th Tank Regiment which were landing to support the infantry.
From the partial reports that had come in over the radio, Kirkman had learned that the handful of prisoners taken thus far were from an SS panzer grenadier battalion, among the best troops in the German Army. They were organized in platoon-sized strongpoints and would let the British advance in some areas into what they referred to as a “fire sack” in which they would be ambushed by fire from all sides. The few tanks that had thus far made it off the beach had been butchered at long range by the 88mm guns of the awesome new Tiger tanks, of which there appeared to be at least a company in the area, and by the squat, turretless assault guns of the panzer grenadiers. Still, initial progress had been made off the beach itself, but thus far neither brigade had been able to cross the open killing field of the Via Aurelia highway which ran parallel to the coast less than a mile inland.
It was Kirkman’s plan to make sure that the Durham Light Infantry Brigade (DLI), that he was accompanying, would land north of the Ombrone and push inland to take the town of Grosseto and the high ground beyond it. It seemed that the Germans had blown a damn somewhere upriver, making the stream impassable, and destroying the only bridge as well, so he would be unable to mount a left hook against the defenses, but he should be able to pour a flanking fire into them to enable the 69th Brigade to continue its advance. Depending on the outcome of this move, they would then bring in his third brigade, the 168th, to reinforce whichever element had met with the most success.
Kirkman was lost in these thoughts when there was suddenly a lurch that nearly threw him off his feet, and would have except that the press of men in the cargo bay prevented him from falling. Then the bow ramp opened with a crash, and the tide of men carried him forward into water up to his hips. He strained to see as he sloshed through the surf, the sand and his wet clothing slowing him down as if in a dream, and he strained to see of the river was on his right where it belonged. He fought his way up to the top of a small dune tufted with grass and was relieved to see the muddy stream about three hundred meters to his right. Almost the instant his eyes had picked this up, he received a rough blow on the backs of his knees and was hurled forward into the sand.
“Sorry, sir,” the booming voice of his sergeant major rolled out over the growling of the landing craft, the rush of the waves, and the rattle of machine guns. “Perching on the highest point of land in a firefight is strictly against regulations.”
Kirkman grunted an apology, or his thanks, and hauled himself forward on his elbows for a few more yards until he could peer over the next
rise with his binoculars. He could just make out the sand-colored houses of Grosseto in the distance, and the figures of a company of Tommies moving forward in rushes. There was resistance here, but scattered, and it appeared that the enemy had deployed most of his forces south of the river. Only an occasional geyser of earth spouted up from an artillery shell on the beach here, while farther to the right he could see a thick pall of smoke and hear the steady rumble of gunfire. Just then a tank, one of the older Valentine models that had been equipped with the new duplex-drive that enabled them to “swim” to shore along with the landing craft, burst into flame, its frontal plate, complete with its main gun, twisted halfway off.
Kirkman set up his command post in a small gully two hundred meters off the beach. He had been tempted to use the remains of a small villa, but as one of the few structures still standing in the area, he could see that it attracted an undue amount of artillery fire, and reports via radio and messenger finally started to come in. The 6th DLI Regiment had taken about half of Grosseto but had been brought to a halt by a company of Luftwaffe ground troops and a 20mm anti-aircraft battery holed up on the grounds of an old convent. The 8th DLI had tried to swing to the left through the marshes north of the town, but had been taken in the rear by a heavy fire of machine guns dug into the reverse slope of some hills hard up along the coast north of the landing beaches and impervious to naval gunfire. An effort by the remaining regiment of the brigade to slip men up the bank of the Ombrone to turn the enemy’s left flank had likewise received heavy fire from the Germans still holding the line south of the river.
In the face of this stalemate, Kirkman was obliged to call for the 168th Brigade to land on the southern flank of the beachhead and to focus on making a link-up with the XXX Corps zone. They had apparently had a little more luck and had nearly cleared the port of Civitavecchia, although badly damaged by the Germans and unusable for the time being, and had advanced halfway to the town of Viterbo, several miles inland. They, too, were still far from reaching their first day’s goal of the high ground near the Via Cassia highway, but they had at least carved out a respectable beachhead.
Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History) Page 21
