They sailed on 7 September at 1630 hours from Messina, ‘No.40(RM)’ with two reinforced Troops from 3 Commando spearheading the British 231st Infantry Brigade’s landing at Port San Venere. Despite a hiatus going into the harbour, where the breakwater could not be seen against the looming background of hills behind the town, they landed in the early hours of 9 September with little opposition. As General Montgomery invested the Toe of Italy the speed of advance was slowed by the nature of the terrain rather than strong German forces, for these intended to make their stand further north.
The Bay of Salerno is the shore of the Lower Sele basin with a base of some 15 to 20 miles of beaches funnelling into an apex 12 miles (19km) to the east.
The landing area was just within Allied fighter’s range from their airfields in Sicily, but bringing reinforcements by sea was a 12-hour voyage from the island’s northern ports and a two-day passage from North Africa. To the north of Salerno, tucked in the hills, is the village of Vietri by a small cove named Marina. The Salerno—Naples Route 18 road runs north-east, winding through the defile of La Molina and passing through three villages—Pigoletti, La Molina, and Dragone—perched on the hillside, as were most houses in this area that was once a pirate haunt. The COPP canoeists visited these beaches on several nights ‘at very great risk’.
The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Rangers, the 1st and 4th under Bill Darby, would land at the fishing village of Maiori and move six miles (10km) into the hills to hold the Nocera defile in positions overlooking the plain beyond and the road to Naples. Maiori is seven miles (11km) up the coast from Marina cove, where 2 and 41(RM) Commandos would land, taking the coast battery before moving inland to hold the defile at La Molina. Mark Clark’s army could then pass through the mountains that cut off Salerno from Naples and take this city by D + 4. At least that was the plan. The 16th Panzer Division, in four battle groups roughly six miles (10km) apart and three to six miles inland, lay in an arc from Salerno to south-east of Ogliastro to thwart this intention.
The Rangers landed at dawn on 9 September and overran a loosely organised Panzer reconnaissance company, even though the German divisions were all on maximum alert, and the 16th Panzer’s observation post overlooking the bay had reported ‘six ships offshore’ at 0158 hours. This was followed at 0735 by ‘major landing operation in plain of Salerno. Battles in progress. Otherwise quiet.’ (!). Moving rapidly inland, the Rangers covered six steep hill-miles to be above the Nocera defile before Bill Darby radioed their successful landing.
2 Commando under Jack Churchill—Mad Jack of Vaagsö and of a brief outflanking raid in Sicily—had been rebuilt since St Nazaire. With 210 men in the first two waves of assault craft, they landed at 0330 hours (9 September) unopposed on the Marina Cove beaches. One Troop formed a beachhead and Jack Churchill led the rest up to the battery on high ground behind the beach, finding it undefended and taking six prisoners. The third and fourth assault waves—the same craft having to make the first and fourth trips—brought in the rest of 2 Commando, another 170 men, and 41(RM) Commando. With the 400 marines were a troop of 6-pounder anti-tank guns, six guns, and an American Engineer Chemical Warfare Company with their 4.2in (107mm) heavy mortars with explosive—not gas—bombs. On the run-in, artillery fired from their LCTs and the Commando were also in radio contact with the destroyer HMS Blackmore and an LC Gun (Large) which could provide covering fire from her 4.7 inch (119mm) guns; a truly combined operation tactic that would prove invaluable in the coming week.
For simplicity, in this book two or more Commandos are often referred to as a brigade, although not officially designated as one; see organisation details in Appendix 2. Bob Laycock and Brigade headquarters come in with ‘No.41(RM)’; moving up towards Vietri village they ran across a German patrol. The signalman, batmen, and orderlies quickly routed this small force, the Brigadier having a chance to fire his revolver. Reaching Vietri they set up the Brigade headquarters among the village’s pink and white houses as ‘No.41(RM)’ passed through in making for the defile at La Molina. According to plan, two Troops (from 2 Commando) under Captain the Duke of Wellington patrolled to the outskirts of Salerno, reporting enemy tanks—disabling one with a couple of Piat shots from a house window. The 138th Brigade landed south of Salerno but were held on the town’s eastern outskirts. Bob Laycock now learnt that all was not well on the beaches. The commando’s heavy gear—packs, rations, and reserve ammunition—had not been put ashore at Marina, and if the main beach parties had not brought it through their supply route, the Commando Brigade would have been in difficulty.
Rounding a bend in the road as 41(RM) Commando had hurried to reach the planned positions before first light, the leading men of B Troop came face to face with a large stationary tank, possibly a Tiger. Too close to safely fire the Piat, the leading Section ‘jumped into a ditch and opened fire on the crew’; surprised as they slept by the road. Captain John Parsons writes: ‘We clambered on to the tank and threw a 36-grenade through the open hatch’. Racing on, they were clear of the blast as the tank’s ammunition exploded, and a few minutes later they were digging in on the high ground to the right (east) of the road and railway in a well-wooded steep hillside just short of a bend where the road turned sharply right. The commandos carried ‘a Mark V anti-tank mine slung around our necks like a cow pat’. These they laid in a necklace across the road and in the ground beyond it, setting up their Piat and rifle positions to cover what proved an effective obstacle. As the day grew brighter and pleasantly sunny, several German tanks nosing round this corner from La Molina were stopped by the mines and in trying to reverse were caught in the commandos’ fire. No tank got through.
The Bay of Salerno—Commando and Ranger landings, 9 September 1943.
The confusions of such battles are made up of a thousand personal stories: of tired men making errors in map reading, of patrols mistaking one hill for the next, of lorries bogged down in quagmires despite the hot sun, of river crossings just too deep and fast for a tired man to keep his feet. Rumours were rife as the marines fought in the defile. Before nightfall on the Thursday they were joined by units of the Reconnaissance Corps and were under mortar fire, as were the commando headquarters in Vietri. At one time they knew on the defile they had been outflanked, but a second report might or might not be true. John Parsons was not sure whether the Piat should be resited to face attacks from the rear or kept in its position covering the roadblock. He made each decision in the light of what facts he could sift from rumours and his military good sense, advised by his fellow officers. For commandos in their slit-trenches, this was a lonely time: although usually in pairs there is not the comforting brotherhood of a crew cocooned in a tank, nor the familiar surroundings of a sailor’s action station. The infantry soldier is in strange, dark woods or gone to earth where he knows nothing of events a few hundred yards away; at best he has a reassuring stutter of his Section bren firing from its crew’s slit-trench 20 yards to his left, perhaps, while the other rifle squad is to his right. But are they still firing or did that last mortar bomb cave in their fox-hole? These situations, without the cohension of well-established defences, require steady nerves and men who will stay put in the confidence that those on their left and right are doing the same. The commandos stood their ground throughout Friday, as did the rangers.
A few Allied tanks had gone forward during Thursday but were withdrawn from the commandos’ area, and the reconnaissance troops—a squadron of the 44th Reconnaissance Regiment—were forced to withdraw on Friday after reporting heavy concentrations of enemy across the valley from the marines’ positions. The best that Mark Clark’s Fifth Army could expect to do was hold key hill positions, although they were not able to drive back enemy artillery beyond their range of the beaches. As the morning of Friday passed, a number of heavy machine-gun teams were seen high on the hill overlooking Vietri; the commando and American mortars caught some of these and the rest were captured as two Troops from 2 Commando scaled the 1,300 feet (390m) of its near sheer fa
ce. Supplying them was difficult and a foretaste of supply problems in the mountains in Italy. The Brigade now had pickets spread a hundred yards or so apart trying to prevent infiltration. On the left the Commando were in contact with the Rangers and the morning was relatively quiet, although A Troop of ‘No.41(RN)’ were in action. That afternoon, however, the first heavy shelling hit the marines—Berti Lumsden was wounded as were others when the Commando headquarters was hit about 1430—and Major J.R Edwards RM took command. A Troop was again heavily attacked in the bright hot sunshine just before 1700 hours.
Sergeant D.C. Bullock was killed bringing forward a machine-gun with Q Troop and his four-man team all wounded, but they save A Company, although the left flank was still exposed and was not secured until later that night when No.3 Troop of 2 Commando captured the ridge overlooking the marines’ leftward positions. Supported by a troop of tanks giving covering fire, this attack was successful and the commandos were reinforced by three infantry companies as 2 Commando moved to the south slope, joining the marines. Saturday passed without incident and at midnight the Commandos were relieved, moving into Salerno.
The Fifth Army had also reached the Montecorvino airfield and late on D-day (Thursday) No.3202 RAF Servicing Commando made a reconnaissance. These units with ten officers and some 189 airmen included engineers, airframe fitters and armourers. They worked in parties of about ten providing round the clock servicing on forward airstrips, their unit’s specially equipped Bedford truck being landed early in an operation. On landing at Salerno their ten or so support trucks and two motorcycles were collected from the beach area on the Thursday night (D-day). Next day they brought in fuel and dispersed ammunition, although the field was under fire and not secured until Saturday. For the first week or so it could be used for emergency landings only as it was within range of German guns until 20 September. (The organisation and history of these servicing commando are shown in Appendices 2 and 7). An airstrip was in use, however, in VI Corp’s sector at Paestrum and by Saturday (11 September) work had started on two other fields.
During these few days Rangers had directed fire from HMS Ledbury among other warships, and were helped by one of the Air Observation Post No. 654’s flights whose advance party landed on the afternoon of D-day (9 September) and found a suitable field 150 yards (135m) from the beach. The spotter aircraft were assembled and flew off next day—‘the Squadron shot all varieties of targets with naval, medium, and field artillery’. Two other flights arrived some days later and used two other fields. These observation flights by Royal Artillery Officers and the Rangers’ OPs (observation posts) directed the bombardments to such good effect that the Germans were forced to move their vehicles only at night; enough reason for the repeated counter-attacks that elements of the German 2 Parachute Division and SS Troops put in to shift these OPs. However, with slight readjustments the Rangers’ line held. At night the rangers also sent patrols harrying German artillery positions, forcing a commitment of reinforcements the Germans urgently needed against the main beachhead. The Rangers were joined by companies from the US 82 Parachute Division hurriedly shipped from Sicily, and by a 4.2 inch (107mm) mortar battalion. At times all these units were cut off from the Fifth Army or nearly so, withstanding seven major attacks—outnumbered at times by 9 to 1 according to one report—before being relieved on 18 September (D + 9).
The German build-up was achieved more quickly than the Allies could reinforce their beachhead, although General Eisenhower juggled the convoy plans and American parachutists dropped into the beachhead on the night of Monday-Tuesday 13-14 September. Ammunition was scarce. For the Commando Brigade, after an eight-hour rest, German pressure early on Sunday means they were called back to their old positions. Such ‘mucking about’ gives rise to many a moan to the corporals in any unit, and that fine Sunday morning was probably no exception. Commando corporals, like any others, lived with the men all the time and had to handle friends as well as those less pleased with discipline, orders, and doing what they were told. In the special service units, this was a less difficult junior command than for a corporal in a regular outfit, for almost all commandos and rangers would probably have held some rank in ordinary regiments.
As the Brigade took up their old positions, ‘No.41(RM)’ moved into the hills south and south-east of La Molina and ‘No.2’ climbed to positions on the hills north of Vietri. The Brigade was down to 619 all ranks after taking casualties on the previous three days, but no reinforcements were available despite Bob Laycock’s request for them: every cook, clerk, and reserve of X Corps was committed. The naval support ships were no longer off-shore, having moved away from re-fuelling and re-ammunitioning; fire support from the 138th Brigade’s artillery and mortars was available, but they had nothing to spare, having held the early morning German thrust towards Salerno and then Veitri.
The other early attacks were held, Troop sergeants making that contribution to steadiness in battle for which British NCOs are renowned. In commando and American ranger units, the senior NCOs had an experience of the technicalities of infantry warfare—overcoming the problems of ammunition supply to forward positions, spotting the lie of the ground suited to a bren gun position or route for its advance—that enabled their young Troop officers to bring off bold moves or outwit attackers. That morning, in steep and broken hill country beyond the Salerno beaches, the commandos had too few men for a continuous chain of defence posts and their nerves were stretched ‘even when nothing particular was happening on their patch’.
These attacks died away by mid-morning and the rest of Sunday (12 September) was quiet. Next morning at dawn a heavy barrage of artillery and mortar fire fell on 2 Commando’s positions. This Monday, 13 September, was to see the Germans’ supreme effort. They had skilfully shifted their mobile and other artillery positions throughout the battle, making them difficult to find, as were their OPs in wooded hills. A Royal Marine officer, stumbling into one on a reconnaissance, was captured early in the landing but later escaped, as he was being taken out of the woods, leaping from rock to rock to make his way back to his Troop, despite being shot in the leg. The German artillery’s success, the rumours of Allied evacuation German reports say were heard over radio networks, and the 16 Panzer Division’s confidence led the German Generals von Vietinghoff and Block to believe they could retake Salerno. At a breakfast-time conference (0800) they planned to attack with the division’s four original battle groups and a fifth one that had come up, the line of attack falling on the American IV Corps either side of the Sele river. Why the move should not start until 1330 that afternoon has been explained by some commentators as the result of less enthusiasm among the lower ranks than the generals felt for an attack. But when they came forward the attack fell as planned on the American IV Corps either side of the Sele river.
The preliminaries to the main attack had forced the commandos to give ground when two Troops were overrun. No doubt in part this gave cause for optimism in the German headquarters that breakfast-time, for the Germans were over the steep hill above Dragone and through this village, firing on the rear of the British defences. The Commando Brigade headquarters was hastily withdrawn, leaving their medical teams working in a small stone hut. The German thrust was broken up by fire from 25-pounders and 3.45-inch (87mm) gun-howitzers, of the British 71st Field Regiment RA, ably directed by their forward observation officer with the commandos. Jack Churchill saw the moment for a counter-stroke on Dragone hill and sent off a Troop from ‘No.41(RM)’ and a Troop from ‘No.2’. Major Dick Lawrie at their head was killed and his place taken by Captain the Duke of Wellington, who led the charge with Major Edwards RM. The Germans withdrew behind a smokescreen and the commandos rejoined their medical teams four hours after they had left them. Although the medical officer, Captain Brain Lees RAMC, knew the Germans were around him he kept his staff working quietly and they were not disturbed.
The Commandos were withdrawn to billets a bare mile from the front but late on Wednesday afternoon th
e Brigade was once again on the move. ‘No.41(RM)’ had received reinforcements of 48 men and a patrol of an officer and 15 men got back through enemy lines to rejoin ‘No.2’.
They marched to the village of Mercatello, 2½ miles (4km) south-east of their old positions, and ‘on the other side of Salerno’. Here three hills overlooked the British 167th Brigade’s positions from across flat meadows. At 1730 hours the marines launched an attack on the crags of the hill on the right of the road where it passes over a ridge to the small Pigoletti village valley. Here, as elsewhere, the Troop officers, like the Ranger Platoon commanders, had to lead with ‘plain bloody aggression’, for although their many automatic weapons—tommies, brens, or BARs—gave them plenty of fire-power they were small units often fighting on their own. Success came in leading from the front; the Troop officer up with his scouts rather than behind the leading section where normally a unit’s officer advanced. One Troop commander has written: ‘We had to get the opposition cowering and saying “Ker … ist” then we had the initiative’, vanishing the moment the enemy opened fire before the lead Troop returned this at a high rate so he felt it was coming from all over the place. Such tactics enabled the hill near Pigoletti to be taken with the loss of only one marine killed and two wounded.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 23
