By the evening of 14 September, Allied commanders concluded that the crisis was past. The beachhead would hold.
Within days of landing, the tank destroyer battalions in Fifth Army found themselves scattered across the map despite the brass’s professed intentions not to repeat their mistakes in handling TDs in North Africa. Reconnaissance Company of the 601st, for example, had been sent to the 180th RCT, and both the 45th Infantry Division artillery CP and 141st RCT tried to issue orders to the battalion. The 601st operations report noted, “At this stage, no one seemed to know to whom the battalion was attached…. Officers and men of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion were rather perturbed by the attachments and detachments of companies and platoons to various organizations for support, not even in one division, but in several divisions, including British…. During most of the operations, the battalion commander and battalion staff were used as messenger boys between higher headquarters and the various gun companies and platoons detached from the battalion. In some cases, the battalion commander was left completely out of the picture. At various times, even company commanders were overlooked.”
Extreme fragmentation and rapid reattachments of elements down to the platoon or even gun-section level became the norm in Italy to a degree seen in no other theater of combat. On 16 September, for example, a mere two guns from the 813th Tank Destroyer Battalion (two platoons of which had been sent to Italy to join an aborted 82d Airborne Division operation to grab Rome’s airport upon Italy’s surrender) were attached to Company B of the 601st. Company B was in turn attached to the 133d Field Artillery Battalion.30 Moreover, assignments to Allied units occurred frequently.
In addition to the confusion that resulted, there were practical problems. As one TD officer later noted, “While attached to the 1st Armored Division, despite some differences about where and when TDs could be most effective, we were truly attached. I.e., Division took care of all our logistical needs. When attached to infantry divisions, as soon as they found out we needed diesel fuel and 3-inch ammo, they wanted no part of that supply problem, and we were usually sent to corps supply dumps for all our needs.”31
The 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion arrived in the Salerno Gulf on 16 September 1943 amidst the crash of naval gunfire in support of the troops ashore. The convoy endured three days of German air attacks while the tank killers waited their turn to land.32 After working with the 1st Armored Division in North Africa, the battalion had equipped its TDs with 500-series radios in place of their old 600s so that they could talk directly to armor on the battlefield.33 Unfortunately, this practice had not been adopted force-wide, and the battalion was destined instead to work closely with the infantry, who used yet a different communications setup.
Beyond the Beachhead
Kesselring by late in the day on 16 September concluded that he would not be able to destroy the Allied beachhead. Not only had four days of German counterattacks failed to cause fatal harm, but Monty’s Eighth Army was only hours away from linking up with Fifth Army. Kesselring authorized a fighting withdrawal to the Volturno River twenty miles north of Naples, where he ordered the line be held until mid-October.34
For the Allies, climbing the Italian peninsula would be like climbing a ladder of nettles. Ultra intercepts indicated that Hitler had decided to defend Italy south of Rome. Kesselring began to build a series of defensive lines north of the Volturno River, where the Barbara Line ran along a ridge to the Garigliano River and thence across the southern Apennines to the Trigno River. Next came the Reinhard (also referred to as Bernhard) Line, which stretched from coast to coast. Kesselring planned to hold this line until 1 November. German engineers received orders to put all command posts along this intermediate line underground, construct the main battle line on the reverse slopes of hills to escape Allied artillery fire, construct OPs on the crests and forward slopes, and clear all fields of fire. Twelve miles further north and anchored on the Garigliano and Rapido rivers, the Todt organization was constructing fortifications for the Gustav Line, where Kesselring planned to hold the Allies until spring of 1944.35
On 18 September, VI Corps troops found nothing to their immediate front. The Germans had begun their fighting retreat. As the 157th Infantry Regiment recorded, the Germans’ withdrawal “was as lethal as their attack, and there was no hurtling forward.”36
Over the next two weeks, VI Corps averaged a daily advance of only three miles in the face of delaying actions and demolished roads and bridges as it fought to move abreast of British 10 Corps, which on 1 October took Naples.37 Indeed, one VI Corps observer would describe the campaign over the coming months as an “engineer war:” “The Germans are expert at demolition, and in the mountainous country through which the Fifth Army is operating all advance must cease until bridges are built and roads repaired.”38 From Naples, the U.S. Fifth Army would advance up the western side of the Apennines, while the British Eighth Army advanced in a loosely coordinated fashion on the eastern side.
This was not the country envisioned in tank destroyer doctrine. Indeed, some ideas stressed in training—such as the danger of canalizing tank destroyers in narrow valleys—were completely at odds with the reality of warfare in Italy.39
The problem, however, cut both ways. German Generalmajor Martin Schmidt explained the sitution from the perspective of the panzer crews, “The German panzer units, in regard to organization, equipment, and training, were intended primarily for action on terrain like that of western, central, and eastern Europe…. It was of decisive significance that the panzer organizations were fighting on the defensive during the whole campaign [in Italy], whereas they were intended for offensive action. Almost all the panzer and panzergrenadier divisions that came to Italy in 1943 had gained their combat experience during campaigns in France and Russia…. In Italy, these divisions had to change their tactics considerably and sometimes paid dearly for their lessons.”40
The battle became one of infantry maneuver as soon as the GIs left the coastal plain. Advancing infantry regiments encountered countless small German strongpoints, usually defending a demolished bridge or some other roadblock. One battalion would try to pin the Germans down, while the other two scrambled across the mountainous terrain to flank the position. In a typical experience for the TD outfits during this period, the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion (attached to the 3d Infantry Division after 19 September) found that, because of the terrible terrain and deep mud caused by continuous rain, it could do little but follow the doughs up main roads.41 The official U.S. Army history concluded that the heavy and road-bound tank destroyers were often a liability in this kind of fighting rather than an asset.42 The doughs, tank killers, armor, and artillery would have to figure out ways to profitably employ the tremendous firepower the TDs represented.
The reconnaissance companies from the tank destroyer battalions, however, were a perfect fit for the new style of warfare and were among the busiest elements during the first weeks of the push northward. Infantry division commanders seized on their presence to reconnoiter for advancing units and to maintain contact with neighboring Allied forces.