Wishing all of my fellow veterans, past and present, a Happy Veterans Day! This Veterans Day, I would like to thank those who gave their lives for our country. My uncles Alex and Frank Puglisi fought in Europe in WWII. Fortunately, they came home in one piece. Their service inspired me to write about that war in a new novel, "Amore di Napoli." The following is an excerpt from this work in progress. Any comments you may have will be greatly appreciated.
THE SALERNO BEACHHEAD
As my landing craft bobbed in the choppy waves of Salerno Bay in Southern Italy, the staccato sounds of machine guns and the boom of artillery and mortars coming from shore three hundred yards away scared me so much I thought I was going to shit my pants.
It was the first invasion of the European mainland since World War Two began. It started at 0330 hours and was called Operation Avalanche. I was assigned to the 141st Combat Team of the Texas National Guard. For most of these guys, it would be their first combat experience. I had seen action in the North African desert, mostly mop-up operations, nothing of this magnitude.
I wondered why the Navy wasn’t pounding the beach with heavy artillery. The air and close quarters on the LST (we called them large, slow-moving targets) smelled rancid from fear. I tried to ignore the stomach cramps from the partially digested breakfast I gobbled down before boarding. It gave me gas and indigestion. Being Italian, I was used to that; we called it agita.
A cigarette dangled from my lips. I took a long drag and inhaled deeply. It didn’t calm my nerves and added to my sour stomach.
So many vessels headed towards the beach—crossing their wake made for a rocky ride. I felt lucky to be braced against one of the ship's front gates. I briefly closed my eyes and thought of my family in New York City. I wrote them before we left Africa. We weren’t allowed to disclose anything about the invasion. All our mail was screened and censored.
I was not a very good Catholic, but I said a Hail Mary under my breath. I worried that we had no weapons. They told us they were in short supply, along with many other items. What the hell kind of Army is this? Without guns, we were fodder.
The LST’s engines whined loudly as it chugged closer to the beach. The chatter all around me was in English and Spanish. The 141st was a mixture of redneck Texans and Mexicans, mainly from El Paso. About 50 other guys and I were replacements assigned to the battalion. Over the noise, I didn’t hear the young lieutenant beside me ask, “Can I get a light?” He nudged me back to reality and repeated, “Can I get a light?”
“Ah… yeah
I removed the cigarette from my lips and held it out. He grabbed my shaky hand to steady it enough to light his cigarette. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
He must have sensed my uneasiness. “Don’t worry. The element of surprise is in our favor.”
“Oh? I questioned with a lot of uncertainty. I looked at his face; like me, he was new to the company. I didn’t even know his name. He wasn’t much older than I was—maybe in his early 20s, an obvious college guy. He had that “Joe college” look.” I took note of his sparkling blue eyes. I didn’t know then that that image would remain with me forever.
“Keep your head down and keep moving forward.” He sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
A tall, skinny soldier, Johnny Smith, a young Texan who had befriended me, squeezed his way over to where I stood with the lieutenant. “It sounds like Texas on the Fourth of July. A lot worse, though. I’m sticking close to you, Jimmy.”
“I don’t know about that…”
“I hope we meet some of those sweet I-talian ladies. You can introduce us in your I-Italian.”
The lieutenant laughed.
I spoke Italian at home. My parents were from Sicily, and I was disappointed I wasn’t part of the recent invasion of the island. My parents had come to the United States in the 1920s. They told me about relatives in Catania I should see, but it wasn’t to be.
Looking at Johnny, I shook my head and said, “How can you think of women now?”
“Oh, I think about ladies all the time.”
I smiled at him. The young officer did, too, and said, “You men hit that beach running. It’s not going to be a party out there. The Germans are dug in pretty well.”
A fight broke out behind us as one of the Mexicans, Pedro, got into a pushing match with a loud-mouth Texan they called Joe Bob. In the time I was with the outfit, this overgrown bully had shown his prejudice towards Mexicans. A few days earlier, on the Navy ship, I had helped break up a fight Joe Bob and some of his buddies got into with the Tex-Mex guys.
Now, the lieutenant pushed his way over to de-escalate the situation. I wasn’t getting involved again. I heard the officer say, “Now, break it up. We have a big job ahead of us, and we don’t need any of this shit going on.”
Sergeant Trembley stepped in, directed his attention to Joe Bob, and said, “One more incident like this, and you are going on report. We’re here to fight our enemy, not each other.”
“This wetback started it.”
Pedro pleaded, “He keeps calling me a wetback!”
Joe Bob was about to say something else when the sergeant took hold of his bicep and led him away from Pedro and his buddies.
The LST’s engine stopped accelerating, and a few minutes later, the front gates I was leaning against suddenly dropped. I lost my balance and tumbled into the dark drink. With that fifty-pound pack on my back, it dragged me under. Panicked, I frantically pushed up with my legs and surfaced, gasping and choking on the salty water and the smoke coming from the beach. It gave me a foul taste, the water smelled oily, and the air had a strong cordite smell. When I stood up, I realized the water was only hip deep. I felt foolish when one of the guys yelled, “Hey, Esther Williams, what’s your next trick?”
The others laughed. I ignored them as we plodded toward shore that September 9th day. Guys shouted expletives at one another and the fucking Nazis. Machine gun bullets ripped the water all around us, and bullets pinged and ricocheted off the LST. On the beach, mines were exploding, and several jeeps were on fire. Navy frogmen had planted red, green, yellow, and blue lights along the beach the night before, indicating the various landing zones.
There were agonizing cries of pain as those high-velocity machine gun bullets ripped apart guys. You could hear bullets tearing through material and into flesh. As I stumbled onto the beach, I tripped over a fallen comrade whose face was mangled, unrecognizable. He was dead. I looked behind and saw bodies face down in the water, floating in the ebb and flow of the waves. I looked down the beach; it was strewn with dead and wounded lying in the wet sand. Nazi tracer bullets set backpacks simmering. Guys wriggled out of those packs. All I could think, I’m twenty years old, and I don’t want to die in the homeland of my parents.
A smokescreen from pods strategically placed at different locations along the shoreline camouflaged our invasion but made it difficult to see where to go. I coughed and spat the salty taste from my mouth. It was scary that everywhere you looked, there were more and more dead and wounded, bleeding men strewn all over the beach.
Artillery shells swooshed overhead and exploded out to sea. In all the smoke and semi-darkness, explosive cannon booms and artillery flashes came from the high ground further inland. Enemy machine guns lit up the area closer to the beachhead. Then, I heard Sergeant Trembley behind me shout, “This way… Stay to the right, men! Yellow Beach. That’s our objective. Take cover over there!”
I wanted to laugh. We have an objective? I turned around as another shell flew to sea, hitting a landing craft. The explosion was so powerful that the boat rose out of the water, turned over, and dumped the men like salt falling from a saltshaker. The craft made an enormous wake as it bounced back into the water, crushing men underneath.
The entire bay was filled with an armada of ships of all sizes and shapes. It was a surreal scene. Landing craft looked like prehistoric hulks as they steamed ahead in the heavily mined harbor. Closer to shore, one craft and several men were on fire—a fire so hot that the clothing steamed on the ones who made it over the side.
I moved along the water’s edge in the direction Sergeant Trembley had indicated. Suddenly, an exploding shell caused a freak wave to hit me and dumped me upside down into the wet sand. I felt like a turtle helplessly stuck on its back. Johnny Smith came along. “Y’all, betta be gettin’ the hell outta here.”
He rolled me over, and we crawled around the dead and wounded. We saw Sergent Trembley up ahead. We stood, crawled, and stood again and crawled towards the Sergeant. A mortar shell exploded nearby, and a man resembling the young lieutenant flew into the air. Johnny and I got showered with rocks and sand. I bounced up a few inches from the impact, and my ears rang terribly. I was glad that I wasn’t injured from the blast, and I crawled even faster. We made it to an empty spot along a seawall where dozens of us were pinned down by heavy machine gun fire.
It came from somewhere up above the beach. I stuck my head up for a look, and through the hazy smoke, the machine gun flashes were coming from the ancient ruins of the city of Paestum. A bullet whizzed by my head, and I ducked back down. Without weapons, there wasn’t much we could do except stay out of the line of fire. We had grenades, but even an accomplished football quarterback couldn’t reach that target.
Seargent Trembley tried to instill confidence in his green troops when he started shouting orders. “Start moving towards those rail tracks up ahead. DiMaio! he shouted at me, “You and a few guys scour the beach for weapons and ammo. There’s plenty out there.”
The men weren’t enthusiastic, and Trembley shouted, “Get going!” There was a rumor that he had been a priest before he denounced the church and joined the army after WW One. With his broad chest and beefy-pocked marked face, he looked more like a truck driver than a priest.
Me, Johnny, and a few guys crawled among the bodies, grabbing rifles, pistols, submachine guns, ammo belts, radio sets, and grenades. I stopped when I came upon the lieutenant that I had given a light earlier. The young officer moaned in agonizing pain. His legs sat in a pool of blood, separated from his torso. His helmet was blown off his head, and blood covered his face. I felt helpless. The only thing I could do was to scream, “Medic! Medic!” But no one came.
It felt strange reaching for the man’s .45 and pulling it away from him. His bloody hand put a vice grip on my wrist. It was a creepy feeling. He was hanging on to me as though I was a lifeline. In a raspy voice, the wounded man said, “Shoot me! Damn it…! I tried to pull my hand free again. He wouldn’t let go. “Shoot, damn it!”
I was nauseous, and bile rose from somewhere deep inside me. I stared at the bloody, mangled mess before me. Johnny came up next to me and said, “I got a whole bunch of ammo…” He stopped talking when he noticed it was the lieutenant. The kid's eyes bulged as he looked uncomfortably at the dying man and shook all over. I looked at Jimmy for help—his young eyes pleaded for a solution. Probably for once in his life, the kid was speechless.
The thought of shooting one of our own and an officer, no less, poisoned my mind. I froze with fear. Machine gun bullets strafed the sand around us. I had to do something fast to escape in one piece. “Medic…! Medic...! Help…” Almost crying, I shouted again for medical help.
“Shoot me… you dumb… son-of-a-bitch,” the young man could barely get the words out.
His grip got weaker, and I was able to free my wrist. With the .45 in hand, my conscience nagged me. I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. As I looked at the lieutenant's tortured face, those sparkling blue eyes were darting right and left. With all my strength, I shouted as loud as possible, “Medic!”
It startled Johnny. He turned his scared face towards me and shouted, “Medic…! Medic...! One came running down the beach towards us and was immediately mowed down by machine gun bullets.
“Shoot… me…!” the wounded man pleaded, blood spewing from his mouth. I had a tight grip on the pistol when a mortar shell exploded yards away. My finger accidentally squeezed the trigger. The gun expelled a bullet that blasted into the lieutenant’s brain. Blood, flesh, and skull fragments splattered all over Johnny and me. Oh my God, I thought. What have I done? The officer’s body shook, and a last grunt came from his mouth.
I never killed anyone before, not in Africa, not anywhere. Johnny’s head was down in the sand as he held his helmet with two hands. I couldn’t stop the bile rising in my throat and propelled an ugly-smelling swill from my mouth. Johnny didn’t see it coming. Some of it landed on him.
By then, mortar shells exploded all around us. We had to get out of there quickly. I loosened the dead man’s ammo belt and pulled it away from his body. My ears hurt severely from those explosives. We backed away.
The guys had formed a conveyor line. We passed rifles, weapons, and ammo from hand to hand up the beach. Guys grabbed them up as quickly as they were available and started shooting at machine gun installations entrenched in those ruins.
The beach was strewn with so many dead National Guardsmen that most of my squad had weapons in their hands in minutes. A crazed GI boldly stood up, waved a small American flag, and yelled, “This way to Naples men!” He was immediately hit by a barrage of machine gun fire and dropped face down in the sand.
When we returned to the seawall, many guys had tried to move forward closer to the train tracks. Sergeant Trembley moved over to me. “Are you all right? I saw what you did.”
Oh, shit. I was in trouble now. I had killed an officer.
I pleaded, “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it.” I feared the consequences that would bring. I was still dazed and couldn’t hear a thing.
“You did a brave thing over there. Not many guys could do something like that,” Sergeant Trembley said.
I stared at him, unable to speak. My thoughts were jumbled, my ears rang, and I was physically and mentally drained. Sergeant Trembley grabbed my arm, and I had trouble hearing him over the noise in my ears. I think he said, “Let’s get out of here. Move forward and take cover up ahead. We may be bogged down until reinforcements come in.”
We crawled to a spot just below the railroad tracks. After a few minutes, we stopped. My companion, Johnny Smith, was right beside me. I was relieved the boy hadn’t been killed or wounded. In the early morning light, the freckled-faced kid looked like he belonged in high school. I said, “You don’t look old enough to be here.”
He got closer and, under his breath, said, “I lied about my age—I was seventeen when I joined.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“To fight for my country!”
I wanted to tell him he was nuts. But didn’t say anything.
Someone on the beach set off a mine. It reminded me how dangerous the situation remained. The powerful explosion sent three or four guys flying, separating arms and legs. Besides the constant machine gun fire from the ruins, heavier artillery came from the dense woods further inland.
A Luftwaffe plane suddenly zoomed toward the beach and shot down the artillery balloon floating over the water. The cables holding the balloon were a hazard for enemy planes who attempted low-level strafing or bombing. It forced them to fly higher and to discourage attacks. We watched the deflated balloon fall into the water in a fiery mass. The plane continued, strafing the beach with its machine guns and dropping several bombs. Its engine wailed loudly as it accelerated. Then, we heard horrible sounds of wounded men crying for help and shouting, “Medic! Medic! Medic!”
I kept my head down and closed my eyes. I couldn’t get the young lieutenant's blue eyes and tortured face out of my mind.
The sun began to rise. Our advance was hampered, and we were stuck in the same position below the tracks, caught between machine gun fire coming from the ancient city and tank fire coming from further inland. With the bright sunlight behind the advancing Panzer tanks, we could only see the flashes from their blasting cannons. The casualties mounted quickly for the 141st Combat Teams’.
The Navy provided some assistance around 0900 when it started shelling the German artillery positions and their advancing tanks. But their efforts were fruitless as far as taking out those Nazi guns, which were well dug into the hillsides. They did manage, however, to blow up several German tanks.
The weight of the battle was taking its physical and emotional toll on our troops. After the naval bombardment, it got quiet. It became apparent that we weren’t going anywhere. Men broke out C-rations to eat in the lull. I couldn’t even think about eating.
In the late afternoon, after making no progress, the Army sent a company of the 601st Tank Battalion that had just landed on the beach. What was left of our battalion watched as the allied tanks fired their guns at the Panzers, destroying eight of 13 of them without losing any of our tanks. The remaining German tanks made a hasty retreat. We cheered as the last Panzer sped away.
Infantry reinforcements landed on the beach and came to help clear the ruins. The battle went on all day into the evening. Most of the Panzers in the area had been disabled. During the night, the Germans in the old structure retreated. We roamed through the area, searching for any remaining resistance. The battle had ended with the beach secured, and the division moved further inland. Dead and wounded men were scattered everywhere. We helped get them on LSTs and evacuated them to the waiting hospital ships.
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