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Authors: Oliver L. North

BOOK: War Stories III
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Montgomery's principal 8th Army troops were the same combat hardened but weary soldiers—plus freshly joined replacements—that he had led all the way from El Alamein. He was also given the entire British 1st Airborne Division and the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, dispatched from Great Britain.
The invasion force—nearly a half-million American, Canadian, and British soldiers, sailors, and airmen—were going up against more than 325,000 well-prepared Italian and German troops occupying terrain that gave the advantage to the defenders. Getting so many troops quickly and safely ashore over landing beaches that stretched over eighty miles along Sicily's eastern and southern shoreline required ships and landing craft that were already committed for operations in the Pacific or that had been earmarked for Overlord—the invasion of France.
Eisenhower got most of what he asked for—including brand-new LSTs, “Higgins boats,” and the new DUKW—“Ducks”—wheeled amphibious vehicles that could quickly shuttle troops and supplies from ship to shore and then inland. By 10 July 1943—D-Day for Husky—the naval armada numbered more than 2,500 ships and small craft. It divided into three task forces and converged on Sicily from the east, south, and west.
To confuse Hitler about where this force was heading, the British concocted a deception plan they dubbed Operation Mincemeat. The corpse of a British airman killed in a plane crash was attired as a Royal Marine major
and a briefcase full of bogus maps and documents, detailing secret plans for the invasion of the Balkans, was handcuffed to his wrist. The “major's” body was planted by a Royal Navy submarine on the coast of Spain.
The ruse may well have worked. Allied air and naval bombardment of the tiny island of Pantelleria—just off Sicily's southern coast—forced the surrender of the island's Italian garrison on 11 June. But even after that furious five-day assault Hitler refused to believe that his American and British enemies were headed for Sicily.
To ensure that the Allies maintained air superiority over the landing beaches and supported the 82nd Airborne paratroop drops, more than 1,500 U.S. and British aircraft were assembled on Malta and at fields in Algeria and Tunisia. For the airborne operations during Husky, the Joint Staff allocated a flotilla of C-47 transports—some for towing 144 of the new CG-4 Waco gliders to Sicily—which carried British troops.
Eisenhower's ground maneuver plan for Husky had actually been drafted by Montgomery—some said, in an Algerian latrine. It called for night parachute assaults by the U.S. 82nd and British 1st Airborne Divisions to seize the high ground overlooking the landing beaches. Then, at dawn, after a naval bombardment, the amphibious forces would come ashore.
The balance of the British 8th Army would land north of Cape Passero, on Sicily's east coast, seize the port of Syracuse, and then dash for Messina—where the “toe” of the Italian boot is just over six miles distant. The U.S. 7th Army was supposed to seize a beachhead at Gela, and then push north and west, protecting the British left flank as Montgomery drove north for Messina—cutting off any Axis retreat.
That was the plan. But as so often happens in war, things rarely go according to plan and Husky was no exception. By the time Eisenhower moved his forward headquarters to Malta on 7 July, things had already started to go wrong.
First, Eisenhower's intelligence staff inexplicably failed to note and report to those going ashore that Hitler had reinforced the Axis garrison on Sicily with two first-rate armored units—the 15th
Panzergrenadier
Division and the Hermann Goering Panzer Division. Second, the weather in the
central Mediterranean—normally calm in mid-summer—began to deteriorate as clouds and high winds swept in from the west.
Both the unexpected enemy armor and the adverse weather would have a profound effect on the American and British airborne troops strapping into their parachutes and boarding the Waco gliders on the night of 9–10 July 1943. One of the 3,400 paratroopers in Colonel Jim Gavin's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division was Captain Edwin Sayre from Breckenridge, Texas. He would be among the first to see action on Sicily.
CAPTAIN EDWIN SAYRE
505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
3 Kilometers Northeast of Gela, Sicily
10 July 1943
I was assigned to the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment on 19 April '42, and was initially a company executive officer. Less than a year later I was promoted to captain and made a company commander. We all knew we were going someplace overseas in Europe, but didn't know where. We went by train to New York, and then boarded the
Monterrey
—a converted luxury liner for four hundred passengers. But it wasn't quite so luxurious for
six thousand
soldiers. We crossed the Atlantic and landed in North Africa as part of a large convoy with plenty of destroyer escorts.
A week before D-Day, we got maps of Sicily and aerial photos of our proposed objectives. We built sand tables, and duplicated exactly what the drop zone was supposed to look like, and knew where all our checkpoints were on the approach. We all memorized the map features and rehearsed at those sand tables with our troops, again and again.
We took off from Tunisia in a large flight of C-47s, just at dark on the night of July 9. The wind was blowing hard—in training we don't jump in wind over fifteen miles per hour because high winds will blow paratroopers off their drop zone or drag them across the ground. As we got
closer to Sicily the overcast and turbulence increased, but we were all in high spirits—it was our first combat jump and we were ready.
We were supposed to jump shortly after midnight but we were late because of the winds. The whole timing of H-Hour had been based on the moon and the tides. The airborne needed a little bit of moonlight and the amphibious force needed an incoming high tide.
Theoretically, we were to have moonlight as we jumped and then the moon would be setting and we'd be in complete darkness. But instead of moonlight we got pitch-black darkness; instead of low winds we got strong ones. But at this point we had to take what we could get.
I looked out the door of my plane, with my map in hand, and I saw that we were in the wrong place. So, I went up to the cockpit and showed the pilot on the map where we were compared to where we needed to be. Fortunately I was in the lead aircraft with the most experienced pilot in the formation. Not every pilot would have let a young paratroop captain tell him he needs to turn a nine-plane formation around, and go to some other place. But this pilot listened to me—even though anti-aircraft gunners on the ground were firing at us. He asked, “Do you want to circle around and try another shot at it?” I said “yes,” and we circled around, found the checkpoints, and he let us out about a mile from our intended drop zone.
The wind had to be blowing 40 to 45 miles per hour. I was blown over my DZ and landed right in the middle of a grape vineyard, and couldn't see my hand in front of my face. By dawn—as the amphibious forces were landing on the beach—right on time below us, I had collected up a handful of men from my company.
We knew very little about the enemy situation and had never been told that there was a German armored division parked on the spot that had been picked for our drop zone. If the higher command knew German Panzers were where we were going to jump, that word never got to us.
Shortly after daylight, we moved into an enemy trench line that one of my squads had captured. Then, German tanks started heading our way. Thankfully, the 1st Infantry Division had given me an artillery forward
observer. So I told him, “Let's get some fire out there. They're going to overrun us here in this trench. It's better for us to be hit with our own stuff, than for them to crush us with those tanks.”
He got on the radio and very quickly a 155 mm artillery battery down on the beach opened up. A “one-five-five” round hit the lead tank and it caught fire. You could hear the screams of that German crew from inside that tank a half-mile away. And then the tank exploded in front of us. That kind of dismayed the rest of the Panzers.
Gavin had ordered us, “If you land somewhere and don't know where you are, just find the nearest enemy and attack.” Well, inasmuch as they were shooting at us when we exited the plane, and after we got on the ground, we didn't have any trouble finding them.
We moved a few hundred yards and were taken under fire by a machine gun. After crawling forward a bit, I could see that it wasn't just a machine gun, but a whole series of concrete pillboxes. We needed more firepower.
I got on the radio and told my platoon leaders, “I'll fire three shots close together, and everybody assemble on me.” We got together and checked what we had: carbines, M1s, two light machine guns, and plenty of ammunition. But we needed a bazooka—an anti-armor rocket launcher. I called a bazooka man over and I told him, “I want you to take your bazooka and crawl underneath that culvert, and put a round into that pillbox. And if any German tanks come up, you get out and shoot it in the rear.”
And he said, “That's a real good plan, Captain. Only one problem—I haven't seen my ammunition man since we jumped.” So of course he didn't have any ammunition for his bazooka.
I set up my mortars and machine guns to deliver supporting and suppression fires and the rest of us crawled up until we were right below the row of pillboxes. Then, we all lobbed grenades and assaulted the emplacements. It worked and we took out a whole row of fortifications.
We had killed a number of the enemy and captured ten Germans and about forty Italians. We told the Germans to pick up our stretchers and carry our wounded, but they clicked their heels together like good Germans
and said, “Nein.” But my paratroopers convinced them that they really should pick up those stretchers. They did, and we started moving down the plateau to link up with the 1st Division.
Mainly because of the weather and wind, 80 percent of the British and American paratroopers dropped during D-Day on Sicily landed miles from their intended drop zones. Scores of British soldiers in the 1st Air Landing Brigade drowned when their Waco gliders were cut loose too soon from their tow-planes and the powerless craft crashed into the sea. Colonel Jim Gavin, commanding the 505th PIR, landed
sixty kilometers
from his intended drop zone.
But all the Allied paratroopers had been thoroughly trained and briefed on what to do if they found themselves on the ground, away from where they were supposed to be: find a fellow paratrooper and start making trouble for the enemy. And that's just what they did.
 
Allied soldiers wade ashore on Sicily.
Within hours of the drop, little groups of paratroopers were ambushing couriers and recon vehicles, cutting telephone lines, and picking fights with any enemy units that they could find. One of them was a Brooklyn native, Sergeant Timothy Dyas.
SERGEANT TIMOTHY DYAS
505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
8 Kilometers Northwest of Gela, Sicily
13 July 1943
We left America in June of '43—about a month before the invasion of Sicily. When we arrived in North Africa we immediately started practicing parachute jumps. On the night of July 9, we climbed aboard C-47s and just after midnight on the morning of the tenth, we jumped into Sicily, just like we had been trained.
I was carrying my Tommy gun, some grenades, and a knife, along with my reserve chute, helmet, equipment-pack with supplies, lot of ammo, and canteens. I probably weighed close to 200 pounds with all the equipment.
We landed inland of Gela, where our invasion forces were to come ashore after dawn. My stick must have jumped at an altitude of about 300 feet, because my chute barely opened before I hit. If we had jumped at 1,000 feet, the wind would have blown us even further off our DZ and the Germans would have picked us off as we came down. But because of the wind and the low altitude of the jump, a lot of our guys broke arms, legs, or their backs when they landed too hard.
I hit very hard and was unconscious for some time. When I came to it was very dark and there was all kind of firing going on and a lot of our transports overhead. One of our planes was hit right after dropping its stick of paratroopers and slammed into the side of a hill and burst into flames.
After I came to, I gathered about a dozen men around and tried to figure out where we were. There was no doubt that the inexperienced
pilots—probably because of the high winds—had missed our drop zone by several miles.
We were supposed to set up a roadblock to keep enemy reinforcements from getting to the guys who would be coming across the beach at dawn, so we headed toward higher ground. But as we got to the top of this hill at just about dawn, a group of German tanks was coming up the other side. We didn't anticipate having to take on tanks—we didn't even know they were on the island—particularly German Panzers. It was a real shock.
We scrambled to get off to the side of the column of tanks and I got my bazooka team—Pat Sheridan and John Rubluski—and they took out the lead tank. Now it was the Germans' turn to be shocked—they didn't know we were there.
A German officer commanding the Panzer group opened up the hatch on the turret of his tank to see if he could spot us, and we fired again. The bazooka round hit right beneath him on the turret and killed him. And then another tank came along and my bazooka team destroyed the treads on that tank and brought it to a stop. I think the impact of killing the commander of the unit made a difference when the German tanks showed up. Without their leader they didn't know what to do.
In the American Army every private was a general—meaning they could adapt. This wasn't the case with the German army. When their chain of command was broken they were helpless and didn't know what to do. It took them a good two or three hours to get a junior officer to organize them. They had a much larger force than our dozen men—and they were trying to move infantry up to where we were but every time they stood up to move, we would shoot them down.
They backed off a ways—out of bazooka range—and stated to hammer us with fire from their tanks. We had to pull back over the crest of the hill and pretty soon we were pinned down in a ditch with potato masher grenades raining down on us. They would throw grenades down into the ditch and we would throw them right back up at them. This continued for a long period of time until one of the tanks came around the side of the hill and turned its big gun on us.
We were trapped, outnumbered, and had a bunch of wounded. I was the senior man so I had to make the decision to surrender to save the lives of my men. That hurt—and it still does—because we were trained to be the best and never surrender. It was a terrible feeling but our consolation was in knowing that we knocked out their tanks and killed their commanding officer. That had bought a few hours for the guys on the beach. If nothing else, our little group had created confusion and delay among the Panzers. The tanks never did make it to the beach.

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