Tug of War

by Shelfold Bidwell

  This led to a good deal of shuffling about, in the course of which both the Hampshires of the 128th Brigade and the Queen’s of the 169th took action against Lilienthal and eliminated it. Euphemistically, a faint radio message to KG Stempel reported that it had been “broken into”.4 The 128th eventually sorted itself out on its own side of the inter-divisional boundary, to run into trouble at the hands of KG Stempel. The commander of the 169th, a brigade made up of three territorial battalions all from the Queen’s Regiment, discovered that he had landed too far south, and getting a grip of his force, ordered it to face left and march to its proper jump-off line for his task, the capture of Montecorvino airfield. Brigadier L. O. Lyne was an outstanding commander and trainer of troops, with the utmost confidence in his brigade, and he was determined to waste no time. As soon as it was light he sent off his 2nd/6th Queen’s Battalion, with two troops of tanks of the Royal Scots Greys, a troop of the divisional anti-tank regiment equipped with the new and formidable 17-pounder guns and a troop of armoured self-propelled 105-mm howitzers of the 142nd Regiment Royal Artillery. Why the German aircraft were all still on the ground in spite of the warning implicit in the noise of battle, and why they were not engaging the anchored ships congesting the bay remains a mystery. In a mad quarter of an hour the Queen’s battalion group destroyed no fewer than thirty-nine aircraft on the ground, and in addition a number of assault guns, tanks and half-tracks belonging to KG Stempel. In three successive shots one of the battalion 6-pounder anti-tank guns set a tank, an assault gun and an armoured half-track on fire. A rifleman, using a shoulder-controlled “PIAT” anti-tank projector, also hit a tank and an assault gun. The aircraft fell victim mostly to the tanks of the Scots Greys, but the field artillery dashingly pushed forward to fire “direct” at close range also scored a few hits. KG Stempel’s riposte was prompt and savage, but it could not budge Lyne, and the Queen’s and the panzer grenadiers remained facing each other across the runway for the next three days.

  By the 11th (D-day plus two) Lyne’s brigade was nine miles inland and holding firm. What worried him, and also his divisional commander, was a gap of 3,000 yards between two of his battalions, the inevitable result of the absurdly wide front the division had been allotted. He had to put his company of Royal Engineers into the line. (He recalled that they used their devilish skills to such purpose, surrounding their position with mines and booby-traps, that he counted it a greater risk to visit them than to visit forward localities under fire.) Lyne prevented the Germans from exploiting the gap by an ingenious and sustained piece of bluff. Such machine guns as he could spare sprayed the front occasionally with fire, his handful of tanks when not otherwise urgently needed paraded up and down, and from time to time his field artillery put down a smoke screen. Everything was done to suggest that he was about to make a thrust into the unguarded sector, and his bluff was convincing enough to unnerve his opponent; so much so that he more than once brought down his defensive artillery fire to repel an imaginary attack.5

  By the morning of the 10th the 56th Division had built up a strong shoulder on its left. On its right the 167th Brigade had pushed out a battalion to S. Lucia, and the 9th Royal Fusiliers, by great efforts and the expedient of commandeering farm carts, hand barrows and bicycles to augment its meagre “assault” scales of vehicles, occupied the little town of Battipaglia commanding the key stretch of road linking the 16th Panzer Division’s northern and southern wings. The 8th Fusiliers was for the moment unengaged, and the 201st Guards Brigade was ashore in good order preparing to send a battalion up to Highway No. 18 west of Battipaglia. All this was to change very rapidly within hours, as Sieckenius began to put the second phase of his defensive plan into action.

  It developed right across the front of the 10th Corps in a series of small actions, never more than a battalion, as invader and defender probed the vineyards and olive groves and suddenly clashed with mutual surprise. In such fighting success goes to the side which reacts more quickly and aggressively. In one encounter the 10th Corps nearly lost its commander. General McCreery, visiting the forward troops in his Jeep escorted by two armoured cars, had halted to read his map and discover where he was. Fortunately he had dismounted, as suddenly some well-aimed shots from a concealed anti-tank battery had destroyed his Jeep and his escort. McCreery took to his heels, lame as he was, out-running his aide-de-camp. While on his way back, still running, McCreery ordered his ADC to shoot at a German fighter-bomber overhead, but the young officer confessed that during their flight the magazine had fallen off his tommy gun. “A – fine – pair – of – bloody – soldiers – we – are!” panted the general, continuing to run, but he slowed up and entered his command post as cool as if nothing untoward had happened. There he found General Sir Harold Alexander, to whom he immediately gave a lucid picture of the situation on his front.6

  By the morning of the 10th Sieckenius might well have concluded that his worst case had occurred. The invaders had succeeded in getting ashore in strength complete with artillery and tanks and were still landing, Allied elements had been reported at Vietri and were approaching Salerno, his front was split, with KG Stempel in two parts, one on either side of the stretch of Highway No. 18 now in enemy hands, KG von Doering was out of the battle, and as yet there was no sign of the reinforcing divisions of the 14th and 76th Corps. In fact, his battle-groups had struck one severe blow at the 46th Division, wrecking the whole 10th Corps’ plan, and two more at the 56th Division, throwing it back from the vital stretch of road by nightfall on the 10th.

  The 46th Division’s plan was for the 1st/4th Hampshire Battalion to land on the left on “Uncle Green” beach, and the 2nd Hampshire on the adjacent “Uncle Red” on the right, with the 5th Hampshire following the 2nd. Once ashore the 128th Brigade would push inland to take up positions to protect the move of the 138th Brigade, the “ball-carrier”, whose role was to push on as fast as possible to Salerno and the mountain passes. The 139th Brigade was to follow in reserve. The landings were to be covered by an intense bombardment from destroyers, landing craft carrying 4.7-inch guns and the very effective multi-barrelled rocket launchers.

  The landing by the 1st/4th Hampshires on Uncle Green went well. One company disregarding the defensive fire on the beaches marched inland in the dark with great determination and occupied the village of Pontecagnano, the battalion objective. The remainder found strong-point Moltke in its path and silenced it after a short fight and then followed the leading company to Pontecagnano. The 2nd Hampshires soon discovered that they were on the wrong beach where they came under fire from Lilienthal. Unexpectedly it lay just south of the shallow Asa river, but it was correctly engaged by the Royal Naval rocket craft. The battalion sent one company to silence it and then crossed the Asa into its own divisional sector where they dug in around a group of buildings called the Maggazeno (store-house) and waited for daylight.

  The 5th Hampshires, which landed behind the 2nd Battalion, fell into confusion. The battalion radio net was not working properly (the portable sets of those days were crude and fragile) and the battalion commander was able to rally only two rifle companies and his support company and move to his proper beach, where his men became almost inextricably mixed with those of the 2nd Battalion. There followed a fatal pause, with a great deal of shouting by officers and NCOs trying to collect their companies and platoons, their voices barely audible above the noise of bursting shells and the racing of engines by drivers striving to extricate their vehicles from the boggy exits from the beach. Landing craft had been hit and were on fire, there was smoke everywhere, and slightly dazed groups of men were standing about or digging in where they were. There was great delay and no understanding that it was more important to move inland than wait until every man had answered the roll-call. Whatever the cause the 5th Hampshire did not move off the beach until 8 a.m.

  Meanwhile the commander of the 1st Battalion, 64th Panzer Grenadiers (part of KG Stempel) was worried about the situation at Lilienthal Except for the br
ief radio message at 4 a.m. saying that the invaders had “broken in” he had heard nothing. At about 6 a.m. he sent Oberleutnant Gustav Meierkord, a company of grenadiers and three tanks to its assistance. About three miles from the Maggazeno, and expecting to meet the enemy well inland, Meierkord ordered his grenadiers to dismount from their vehicles and deploy in battle formation. He had advanced cautiously for about two hours when, still some way short of the Maggazeno, he heard the sound of a large body of men. The 5th Hampshires, at last, were on the move. Three tracks led in that direction, the middle one walled on both sides. He put a tank on each, ordered his men to be ready to attack and set off to meet them.

  The encounter was a massacre. The Hampshires do not appear to have been told that they were likely to meet tanks, their 6-pounder anti-tank guns had become separated in the confusion of landing, the “PIAT” hand-held anti-tank weapons were not in working order (which hardly mattered as their operators had not had any training in their use) and no tank support had been arranged nor had artillery observers been attached, although both had been available since about 7 a.m. The battalion advanced without any precautions such as points, scouts or vanguard, in three columns of route up the tracks making, as Meierkord noted, a great deal of noise. Unwarned, it collided with the alert and expectant panzer grenadiers, no more than 100 strong, and was routed. The tank on the middle track drove into the column of marching men machine-gunning as it went and crushing any who were slow to leap over the walls. About 100 of the Hampshires were killed and wounded and 300 more surrendered in the ensuing panic. (A contributory factor may have been that this was the battalion’s second unfortunate encounter with tanks. It had been overrun only five months before when placed in an isolated position at Sidi Nasir in Tunisia.) Only thirty escaped to run back to the Maggazeno and alert the defenders. Meierkord’s charge had led him to within fifty yards of that place, but by then he was accompanied by only a single platoon, so he prudently withdrew for a mile and a half to collect his stragglers and take up a defensive position. He had done more than enough. He had ruined the 10th Corps plan.7

  The fact that the landings were still proceeding smoothly merely added to the congestion on the divisional beaches. All movement stopped for a short but fatal pause. The local commanders, convinced that a large force of tanks lay in wait just inland, decided it would be better to stand firm at the Maggazeno until the division was strong enough to deal with it. At length, at 3 p.m., a battalion from Uncle Red beach with three tanks was sent to sweep the ground inland of Uncle Green. It met a small enemy force a mile inland, drove it away after a tank battle and reported the area clear by nightfall. It was not until the following day, D-day plus one, that the units on Uncle Green began to advance and leave the way free for the 138th Brigade to move on Salerno and the passes, but the golden opportunity had vanished. General Hawkesworth considered that he had to secure his base before attempting any daring manoeuvre, and as a result he failed to seize the passes when they were unguarded and his for the taking. “Ask me for anything except time,” Napoleon once said, and Hawkesworth had asked for twenty-four hours. Before long Balck’s panzer grenadiers would be rushing down to bottle up the invaders, but their work had already been done for them by three tanks and a hundred men of KG Stempel’s battle-group.

  The night of the 9th/10th saw a frenzy of activity in the 16th Panzer Division and there was little sleep for its staff. Arrows on the situation map in the operations van showed the 169th Brigade penetration past Lilienthal at 10 a.m. and the direction of Meierkord’s counter-attack. More serious, at 2 p.m. the 2nd/64th Panzer Grenadiers, part of KG Stempel, was hemmed in by enemy in Pontecagnano on one side and Bellizzi on the other. An order went out to establish a base at Battipaglia for a divisional counter-attack but the town was found to be in enemy hands.

  The actions of Sieckenius’ superiors had been unhelpful, to say the least. The supply of petroleum was vital, of course, but OB(Sued) had miscalculated the demand and forgotten to inform Tenth Army of the location of the Italian depots. Down in Calabria a German naval officer had panicked, and emptied a shipload of petrol into the sea, fearing that it might fall into enemy hands. This effectively immobilised the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division, whose march north to Salerno was delayed for forty-eight hours. When von Vietinghoff tried to take charge of the battle he caused further confusion. He planned to transfer the 16th Panzer Division and the area for which it was responsible from Balck’s 14th Panzer Corps to Herr’s 76th Panzer Corps in mid-battle as soon as Herr’s troops arrived. Consequently Sieckenius was bombarded with advice and orders from Balck, his present superior, Herr, his future commander and from von Vietinghoff himself, whose chief of staff rang up to say, obviously and somewhat unhelpfully: “Der Kerl muss raus!” (literally, “the guy must [get] out”, more colloquially, “kick the bugger out”.)

  Balck, whose corps included the Hermann Goering, 15th and 3rd Panzer Grenadier Divisions marching to the sound of the guns from the north to help the 16th Panzers, soon found his way to HQ 16th Panzer Division. With him was his chief of staff, Colonel von Bonin who, giving the orders, although his general was present, as was the practice with the German General Staff, also insisted that the invader be thrown back into the sea within forty-eight hours, before his build-up had made him too strong to shift. Soon afterwards Herr, obeying his orders to take over as soon as his troops arrived on the scene, also turned up to see what was happening and started to breathe down Sieckenius’ neck. In response to the urging of Balck, Sieckenius had already collected Colonel von Holtey, commanding his reserve battle-group, and set off rashly in the dark to inspect the ground, apparently disregarding KG Stempel’s report that the enemy had closed up to Highway No. 18 and that his 1st Battalion/64th Panzer Grenadiers were now north of it.

  Meanwhile all three brigades of the 56th Division had been actively engaged. On the left the 2nd Queen’s of 169th Brigade had had a sharp but successful fight, losing some 172 casualties it could ill afford, but it was firm on its objective. The 201st Guards Brigade had closed up to Highway No. 18 and was preparing to attack the following morning. On the right the 8th Royal Fusiliers in 167th Brigade had, after some fighting, secured the flank of the division at S. Lucia, while the 9th Fusiliers had dug into a position north and east of the town of Battipaglia. Sieckenius and his party, motoring unwittingly into Battipaglia, were fired on by the Fusiliers’ anti-tank guns. His tactical HQ vehicle and the radio section were destroyed and von Holtey badly wounded. (He was relieved, but we will continue to refer to KG von Holtey to avoid confusion, though the name of the group changed when his adjutant took command.) When Sieckenius got back to his main HQ the 14th Corps was still talking about a combined attack, although the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division had not yet arrived. What did arrive on the morning of the 10th was the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Parachute Regiment from Apulia, and the reconnaissance battalion of the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division. Sieckenius immediately ordered them to combine with KG von Holtey and clear the invaders away from Battipaglia. Shortly afterwards General Herr arrived to tell him that he would pass from Balck’s command to his the next morning and meanwhile he was to be prepared to attack south to cover Ponte Sele, where Highway No. 19, the route by which Herr’s units in Calabria would arrive to join the battle in the bridgehead, crossed the river.

  By mid-afternoon, therefore, the situation resembled the artificial confusion of a staff college map exercise designed to pose a succession of difficult problems rather than the normal logic and simplicity of a real German operation. Sieckenius had been ordered to attack westward by HQ 14th Corps and southward by HQ 76th Corps. Part of the divisional engineer battalion reported that it was still fighting in the area of S. Lucia, “but,” as the note in the war diary reads, “as they have no officer, who knows what the situation really is?” There was no information about the moves of the Americans, but the staff view was that their apparent inactivity could not last long, and if they thrust along the north bank of the
Sele towards Eboli where there was nothing to stop them, the 16th Panzer Division might then be cut in two.

  Sieckenius was right when he saw that the key to the situation was Battipaglia, where von Holtey’s tanks knocked out all the Fusiliers’ anti-tank guns and then drove their rifle companies back into the town where they were trapped. The tanks then drove up and down the streets blasting away with their guns, forcing the Fusiliers from house to house until their ammunition ran out. Major Delforce, who was awarded the DSO, succeeded in extricating 200 men and took up a defensive position south of the road, but 300, many of them wounded, including the commanding officer, were captured. Their defeat was partly due to the over-extension of the front and partly to the lack of support. As the Americans were soon to discover, it was unwise to post battalions out in the blue in the face of an aggressive armoured division, but that was no consolation for a serious reverse. Battipaglia was a key position and to Clark it looked as if the British had failed him. At 14th Corps, Balck, much elated by the success, ordered a grander operation to clear the British from the area bounded by Salerno town, S. Mango, Battipaglia and the River Tusciano to the sea.