Salerno: A Military Fiasco

by Eric Morris

The mistake was Eisenhower’s. After the Allies scored victories in North Africa and Sicily, the next step was the continent, but where? It was decided to keep the landing destination secret. Even the preliminary bombardment of the beaches by naval guns was eliminated, at great risk to the troops landing. But anybody with a simple compass could draw a circle centered on the nearest Allied air bases in Sicily and come to the conclusion that the only suitable harbor within round-trip distance was the port of Salerno.

Salerno was to be taken by the first totally integrated Anglo-American force. The American contingents chosen for the landing were the Texans of the 36th Division, totally inexperienced in battle, and another National Guard Division, the 45th, largely drawn from Oklahoma and New Mexico. As for the British, what some of their troops learned on landing so dismayed them that they mutinied (for which some of the mutineers were later sentenced to death). To win the battle, the Allies needed to gain the high ground; for nine bloody days what they gained were the beaches drenched in their own blood.

In the annals of World War Il, Salerno remains “controversial.” After this book, there will be no more controversy, for Eric Morris has done what no military historian before him has been able to do. He not only interviewed in depth the previously silent General Mark Clark, but he has also interviewed many of the officers and men who survived, including those on the landing craft. Eric Morris is also the first to have access to the original, handwritten afteraction reports of Colonel “Mad Jack” Churchill’s troop commanders —~ including that of the Duke of Wellington.

Includes interviews with participants from all the forces involved and many private records as the author reconstructs an hour-by-hour, day-by-day account of the near-tragedy of Salerno.

Genres: Nonfiction, Military Fiction

358 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1983

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

You don’t hear much about the Salerno landings, Anzio is much better known. (If you “google” the two places, there is no association of Salerno with a battle while “Anzio battle” is the first result.) The Salerno operation was a mess. The Allies thought the surrender of Italy would make this a milk-run. All it did was free the Germans from an unreliable and incompetent ally. The Italians were of no help to the Allies. This book covers the planning, execution and results of Operation Avalanche. Decent maps and accounts from the battlefield to the commanders make it a good 3 Star history.

The last units (16th Panzer Division) arrived in the area on August 30th, just nine days before the landings.
When the commander of the local Italian formations, the lukewarm 222nd Coastal Division, had tried to stand on his honor, he was quietly taken to one side and shot. His men were only too relieved to hand over their weapons to the Germans, vacate their trenches and gun emplacements, and scuttle off to their homes and civilian life.

So the panzer defenses that awaited the Americans in their sector were about as solid as they could be. Along the shoreline, strongpoints, each garrisoned by a platoon of troops, bristled with light and heavy machine guns. These were interspersed with a number of quadruple 20mm antiaircraft guns, their barrels depressed in readiness for their infantry role. The concentrated firepower of high-explosive bullets would be devastating against thin-skinned landing craft and unprotected troops. In the sand dunes 75mm and the dreaded 88mm antitank guns were dug into emplacements. Farther inland, platoons of tanks and panzer grenadiers, in armored halftracks, were poised for local counterattacks. In the foothills, batteries of mobile and self-propelled artillery looked down on the beaches.

A number of famous names are in this campaign. While the invasion of Sicily had a well-executed deception plan, the Salerno invasion is no secret. The British land force commander (Lt Gen Horrocks) goes out to watch a Luftwaffe attack on the invasion force in the harbor in North Africa. He catches shrapnel from the AAA. The doctor relates what happened when he went to treat the general:
“Well,” said Moran, “when I got there General Hawkesworth was down on one knee; and across his knee like Nelson in that painting was [Genera] Horrocks—laid out, blood-stained and all.”

Moran went on to explain that some shrapnel had gone through Horrocks’ chest and into his back.

"Is he going to be out of action?” Scott asked.

“Oh, yes, he’s going home. He's a pretty sick man,” Moran replied.

Even in that moment of great pain and physical discomfort Horrocks still managed to retrieve something from the situation. He suddenly opened his eyes and looked up at the group of his senior officers who clustered around Moran and the other doctors.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I don’t like the looks on your faces. I can assure you I'm not going to die.”

The Brits had many ingenious devices to help the troops. The rocket ships were much appreciated by the landing forces. Unfortunately, the Americans didn’t take advantage:
Just before the first wave hit the beaches, the rocket ships sent their salvoes. These were ordinary tank landing craft with superimposed decks on which were stacked rows of rockets. Each craft carried about 1,000 5-inch rockets. These were electronically fired in salvoes by the commanding officer, who sheltered in a little steel cupola above the wheelhouse. Every other crew member sheltered below decks to avoid the sheet of flame that the rockets threw out.
The contribution of the landing craft rockets (LCRs) to the Battle of Salerno lasted less than 5 minutes, but it was devastating. The effect of the fire of a thousand rockets in a small area is roughly the equivalent to the fire of 30 regiments of artillery or 30 cruisers each with a broadside of 12 6-inch guns.

The sight of these monsters in action defies description. There are the whistling roar and trails of arching fire as numerous salvoes hurtle shoreward. The deafening thunder of hundreds of simultaneous explosions as the projectiles detonate the minefields and obliterate the defenses blocks out all other sounds. Now, the ground struck by the salvoes burst into gouts of orange flame, which lit up the predawn sky. The few Germans who survived the bombardment were seen dazedly coming out of their holes.

Subsequent salvoes hit farther inshore as the ship moved forward at about 3 knots until its pods were empty. The tricky moments came later for the crews as their craft reversed course slowly away, alone, unarmed, and suddenly terribly vulnerable. The sailors tried to ignore the threat of enemy retaliation as they gingerly moved around the still smoking rocket pods checking for misfires.

The Americans had no faith in this absurdly ingenious device and refused to use them.

The move from desert fighting to Italy’s shores required some modifications to personal equipment:
The “Black Cats” stank of coffee. These men, who had all been in the Middle East for some while, wore khaki drill (KD), a lighter-weight tropical uniform, which had been bleached almost white by the relentless desert sunlight. The final collapse of the Axis in North Africa had yielded a vast amount of war booty, which included tons of poor-quality Italian coffee. The staff, fearing that the soldiers would stand out against the green European terrain had all their KDs stained brown. Great cauldrons of boiling coffee were prepared, some in North Africa and others on the ships en route to Salerno, and their KDs “dunked” in the evil brew. The result was an unevenly brown-stained uniform smelling of coffee.

Even this smell was overpowered by another. As they approached the shore the soldiers from North Africa could smell Europe. For so long they had lived with the perfumeless scrub of the desert that the scent of the greenery ashore was overpowering.

The “Western” way of war includes acts such as these. Won’t see this in the Pacific or elsewhere.

Ike Franklin landed with elements of the 3rd Battalion’s Headquarters Company. Since the war began, he had gone up the ranks to sergeant and back down again, twice. He was now a medic, and it was his job to make sure that the radio link between the rifle companies and the battalion aid station worked. He came ashore at Red Beach equipped with his walkie-talkie radio, a medical aid bag, and pouches, in which he carried his rations, a change of socks, and some extra bandages. There was a large red cross prominently marked on his helmet and his right arm.
Franklin owes his life to a German machine gunner. The landing craft grounded on the beach, and Franklin was the first to step off. He looked up, and there, just a hundred yards away in the sand dunes, was a German machine gunner. Before Franklin could react, the German pointed to his own helmet and arm and signaled him to hit the beach.

As if in a dream, Franklin hit the sand at the water’s edge, and the machine-gun bullets ripped into the crowded landing craft. Eight men died in as many seconds before a chance shell took out the German. It was probably a German shell falling short that killed the gunner who had saved the life of an American medic. Franklin saw it all and, like so many who experienced traumatic events, couldn't register the violence of the action.

Sometimes advice needs to be modified according to the situation. A soldier is thirsty during the battle:
He was thirsty, and so he took his canteen cup and filled it with the water from the ditch. Reaching for his pack, he took out a sulphur tablet, dropped it into the water, and gulped it down. There were some other soldiers in the ditch.

“Aren't you supposed to wait for that to work?” one asked.

“I may not be alive to have it then, but I’m thirsty now,” Franklin said.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” the soldier said He reached down and did the same.

The advent of “smart” weapons; the Germans introduce a radio-controlled flying bomb against the ships off Salerno beach:
….it was invincible, since its speed was too great for larger warships to avoid through evasive action.

The first warning of the menace to come from this newfangled weapon was at about 0935 hours on Saturday, September 11. A flight of enemy bombers was engaged at a height of over 20,000 feet when a smoking object was seen to fall out of the formation. Gunnery officers took it to be a crashing plane until it hit the sea with a frightful explosion just 15 feet off the starboard bow of Rear Admiral Davidson's flagship, the cruiser USS. Philadelphia. The explosion close-tested every rivet in the 12,000-ton cruiser and caused considerable damage, though she was still operational.

Mark Clark and Admiral Hewitt both witnessed the second attack, for it is likely that the intended target was the Ancon. The Luftwaffe repeated a tactic from their first attempt when a flight of three FW-190s came screaming in at mast height, raking the decks with machine-gun fire while the same Dorniers circled high overhead. Some 500 yards off the Ancon’s stern the cruiser U.S.S. Savannah was threading her way at 15 knots through the mass of ships to take up her station to bombard the shore.

Those on the bridge of the Ancon were watching the Savannah, a magnificent sight in the morning sunlight, when they saw a smoking bomb directly above topple over and dive steeply at terrific speed into the cruiser.

The bomb struck directly on the top of No. 3 turret, penetrated the 2-inch-thick armor plate, which is all the Brooklyn class cruisers had, and went all the way to the handling room deep in the bowels of the ship. When the bomb detonated, the force of the explosion blew part of the bottom out of the Savannah.

For Clark and others, the venting of the explosion was plainly visible along the port side waterline abreast of the forward turrets; it opened a seam in her side, and seawater flooded in and extinguished several boilers. The bows gradually settled until the foredeck was nearly awash while the stern came clear of the water.

A hundred men or more were killed outright, for the most part in the turrets and handling rooms.

[Heinz Reinhardt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Operation Avalanche, the Western Allies first major offensive operation on the European mainland, is a largely forgotten, overlooked, and ignored episode of the Second War. In part, this is due to the fact that, on a tactical level, the Germans outperformed the Allies, handling them quite roughly and coming close to driving them back into the sea. On another, it is because the Mediterranean theater as a whole is seen by most Americans as a colossal waste of effort and lives, and so the fighting in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy gets tertiary billing to Normandy, the Bulge, and the Rhine as well as the Eastern Front and what came before it all in North Africa.
Italy especially was a bitter pill for the Allies; being forced to struggle uphill(often quite literally) against skillful German resistance that often inflicted higher losses even though the Allies had a clear numerical and material superiority.
All that said, Italy did stretch thinner dwindling German resources, killed or maimed crucial veterans (especially the elite Falschirmjaegers- the best lite infantry in the world), and politically doomed the Axis as an alliance. For all of that, at least, There was at least some strategic benefits to the often stalemated war of attrition up the Italian peninsula.
Eric Morris's book recounts the opening blow of the Allies ultimately failed bid to climb up into Germany's rear through the weakest partner of the Axis alliance. However, while his tactical narrative is top notch, as is his analysis of the battle and operation as a whole from a tactical and operational perspective, he omits nearly all mention of the broader strategic picture which highly reduces the quality of the work.
There is very little mention of the planning, the buildup, the broader strategic aims of the Allies. While from the German perspective, while it is fascinating to see just how awesome the late war Wehrmacht still was on the tactical and junior command level (arguably still the best in the world at those levels in 1943), there is very little discussion of the German High Command, their own plans for the strategic defense, or the impact Avalanche had in Berlin and elsewhere amongst the Third Reich.
Because this is all but exclusively a tactical look at a bloody battle that, at best, was a Pyrrhic Allied victory, one comes away with not too much of an understanding of the operation as a whole. While the book is well written, interspersed with personal accounts of American, British and German participants, it lacks a deeper analysis of the broader scope of events.
While enjoyable for what it is, it is not one I can overly recommend.

[Jim Beaumont · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gripping read, portraying the first 2 weeks of the Italy campaign, all in the Salerno area.
Accounts of the horror, the mistakes made, the madness found in the fog of war and tales of heroism.
The best read of Op Avalanche I have had, and now 40 years old.
Some ideas and aspects may be outdated now (German tactical superiority for example) but even then, the author gives his reasoning.
Brilliant.