So far, so good. Lucian has gone ashore at Brolo to personally supervise the three-ring circus they have there. If the Germans weren't so convinced that we still have a second wave or a whole second landing force in Palermo and weren't trying to bomb the city flat, we might be in trouble.
It did help that the first companies ashore moved right out and up on to the high ground around the beaches. Right away they had good observation for the Navy and the mortars, and good fields of fire for everything else.
Between the AA [antiaircraft] we've landed and the fighter cover the Air Force is actually providing, not just promesing, the boys ashore don't have to look up too often. They have one road blocked and the other under fire, and German prisoners say the 29thPanzer Grenadiers is redeploying to clear their rear. They think we've landed an armored division.
The Navy hasn't been so lucky. They've lost two transports, the light cruiserSavannah, and a destroyer, plus some landing craft and PT boats.Savannah blew up and went down with most of her crew. I'm endorsing a recommendation for the Medal of Honor for her captain.
The British only went ashore with one battalion, near Taormina north of Mount Etna. They've already lost a monitor,Erebus, and a destroyer escort. Hope they don't have to evacuate. That sort of thing draws the Luftwaffe like shit draws flies, and if Monty is blamed for another Dieppe he may be out on his skinny ass before you can say "Dunkirk."
Department of Utter Goddamned Confusion. Fortunately, both sides have one. Also, I don't think the Italian alliance with the Germans is going to last much longer.
The air raids of the last three days have really hurt Palermo. They've also wrecked the Luftwaffe-nearly a hundred planes lost-and kept it off the backs of our landing forces. The Krauts even tried a parachute drop of commandos against harbor facilities and ammunition dumps.
Didn't work. Our base troops hid behind the rubble and shot back with everything they had. This included some of the first tanks to be unloaded directly at Palermo. They may also be the last for a while. The port is pretty well wrecked all over again. But the Germans lost five hundred crack troops and nearly all the transports they sent in.
Rumors running around that some of the colored supply boys did really good fighting. Did they accidentally ship the 10thCavalry over here by mistake? If they did, I am damned well going to have them orginize a mounted column for when we cross the Straits into the Italian mainland. The French are already supposed to be sending over some of their mountain guns with a mule train.
And I've recommended the Presidential Unit Citation for the two DECATUR battalions and oak leaves to his DSC and a third star for Lucian Truscott. Damn, but we're getting good!
Remind me not to play poker with Monty. He keeps an ace up his sleeve.
When we met to plan the DECATUR/BROKE landings, I noticed a lot of airfield construction going on near Monty's HQ. They'd even put a couple of new infantry battalions to work lengthening runways.
It turns out that BROKE force (named after aBritish navy captain of the War of 1812, not because it's going to end up that way) faced nothing but Italians around Taormina, and they surrendered faster than the Brits could haul up the rations to feed them. So pretty soon there was lots of elbow room, with the Germans not doing anything except long-range artillery shoots and a few patrols.
Inside their perimeter was a partly finished airfield. They filled in craters, hauled wrecked enemy planes away, and got a bumpy runway long enough to land gliders and fighters. Then last night fifty Wellington bombers flew over, towing gliders with troops and antitank guns. As soon as the runways were clear, the RAF started landing P-40 Kittyhawks.
Meanwhile, the Wellingtons flew back to the just-extended runways, landed, bombed and fueled up, and took off for a maximum-effort raid on Messina. They hit the port facilities so damned hard I doubt if we'll be able to use them to jump the Straits. Just maybe, though, the Germans won't be able to use them to evacuate Sicily!
So now we have stuck our fingers all the way down the Krauts' throat. So they'll have to either choke to death or bite back hard!
Germans definitely trying to evacuate. They've broken contact along at least half of the Allied line, stopped raiding the BROKE and DECATUR beachheads, and aren't trying to give air cover to anything much south of Messina.
Reports coming in, from Italian prisoners, that the Germans have been keeping Italians off German vehicles at gunpoint and even confiscating Italian vehicles. They've also started blowing up heavy equipment.
Rumors going around that some Palermo Communists stole guns from Italian Army depots and helped round up the German paratroops. I am giving orders to squash those rumors. Right now the Germans have to treat Italy as some kind of ally. If they learn that even some Italians have changed sides, they'll retaliate all up and down the penensula, occupy everything they can, and wreck everything they can't.
Not as worried about squashing the Palermo Communists. Right now, anybody who wants to fight Germans is doing more good than harm. We can sort them out after the Germans are down for the count.
Don't know what the politicians are doing. At least the Palermo Communists have the guts to come out shooting. But if the politicians won't give us orders, Ike and Alex [Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander] and Monty and I are all going to have to sit down and make up our own.
Decorated several Air Force pilots today. One of them had been with Eagle Squadron during the Battle of Britain. Said that he felt he'd earned this Distinguished Flying Cross even more than the first one. The air fighting was just as heavy and you couldn't be sure of landing in friendly territory!
Mass surrenders of the Italians. Surviving Germans are going to be lucky if they escape with their clothes and personal weapons. The British aren't ready to send heavy ships into range of the big shore batteries at the Straits of Messina. But they are bombing the ports on both sides every night, and have sunk quite a bunch of the lighters and coastal freighters the Germans will need to evacuate artillery and vehicles.
Already beginning to capture German supply dumps before the rearguards can destroy them. Not so many Italian supplies, but the Italians may not have much left to capture!
Note from Monty-we should meet to suggest modifications in the existing plan for knocking Italy out of the war on August 20. I have asked the engineers if we can mountanything out of Palermo before the middle of September. It would be a good deal easier if the Italians would surrender now. Then we could enlist all the POWs into the Royal Italian Army Engineers and watch the dust fly.
From The New York Times, August 19, 1943:
Sicily Falls to Allies
25,000 German, 150,000 Italian POWs
Rumors of Crisis in Rome
From Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery's Mediterranean Campaigns:
— triumphal entrance into Messina was simply not on, because there was hardly any Messina left to enter, triumphantly or in any other manner. It is more than a little difficult to maintain a conqueror's pose when one stumbles over rubble at every step and coughs on the smoke of burning buildings at every third breath, if one wishes to do so at all.
None of the Allied commanders wished it. It seemed a vulgar display worthy of the formerDuce, and not of liberators. Had we known at the time the debates among Italian and German leaders (each keeping their debates secret from the other), we might have taken even further measures to adopt a conciliatory position toward the Italians.