Despite those distractions, the defeat of the Germans in Sicily meant that we at last had time to be happy, even as we prepared for the coming invasion of the mainland. Every evening we relaxed with a Sicilian white in the hush of the garden terrace as the sun set behind Mount Etna. This was war at its best…
The 10,000 square miles of Sicily had been captured in 38 days, during which the Allies suffered 31,158 casualties. The Wehrmacht had lost 37,000 men, the Italians 130,000 – most of them, of course, prisoners getting out of the war alive.
In its successful strategic withdrawal, the German army corps had little air and no naval support, yet its 60,000 men stood up to two Allied armies of 450,000 men – and finally some 55,000 of them escaped across the Straits of Messina to Italy to fight another day. They took with them 10,000 vehicles and 50 tanks. Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring – the troops called him ‘Laughing Albert’ – had enough to laugh about at this Dunkirk victory.
Our last pictures of the Sicilian campaign showed Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery staring symbolically through field glasses out across the Straits of Messina towards the toe of Italy, and the enemy. That was to be our next step towards the end of the war. Behind them in Sicily, an Allied military government was being established, though in fact control of the island was falling back through the years into the hands of the island’s secret army – the Mafia.
Our victory was darkened by the fact that behind the scenes – and with the very best of intentions, you understand – the Americans were handing Sicily back to its former masters. In a misguided military decision, they enlisted the Godfather!
From his prison cell in New York State, Lucky Luciano, then Capo di tutti Capi, arranged Mafia support and guidance for the Allies in Sicily – in return of course for various business concessions. So it was that Lucky was released from prison and flown-back to his homeland to ‘facilitate the invasion’ – and on the side, to set-up the Mafia’s new narcotics empire. Vito Genovese, well-known New York hoodlum wanted for murder and various crimes in America, turned up in uniform in Sicily as a liaison officer attached to the US Army. Through threats and graft and skill, their contingent soon out-manoeuvred our unworldly do-gooding AMGOT, the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory. We had our card marked by gangsters.
Thus the victors helped destroy Mussolini’s rare achievement; he had held the Mafia down and all-but destroyed its power. Now in their rush to pacify an island already peaceful, the Americans resuscitated another convicted Mafiosi, Don Calò Vizzini, and put him in control of the island’s civil Administration with military vehicles and supplies at his disposal. The Mafia was born again, fully grown.
Since then even Italian Prime Ministers have been found to enjoy such connections and support. For example, the 113-mile Palermo to Messina autostrada was finally inaugurated after 35 years by Silvio Berlusconi in December 2004. It cost £500 million and was partly funded by Brussels and the European Investment Bank. Work had begun in 1969 and, following the regular siphoning-off of materials and funds by the Mafia, proceeded at a rate of three miles a year.
Fortunately for our lively sense of mission, we simple soldiers in our shining armour knew nothing of the Mafia’s rebirth, nor could we foresee it. We had no time to occupy ourselves with the future crime and corruption that was to inherit our victory. We were busy fighting a war and preparing for an attack on Italy’s mainland.
So the Allies left five million Sicilians to a future often controlled by the Mafia, and a resigned tourist industry which in the peacetime-to-come would advertise: ‘Invade Sicily – everyone else has …’
At the end of August, the only Germans left in Sicily were the 7,000 ruminating behind barbed wire. General Montgomery’s headquarters in the San Domenico, former convent and now the grandest hotel in Taormina, prepared for the first visit of the Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Theatre, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then almost unknown outside the US – and little-known within it.
An American Supreme Commander with all those stars was something quite new to us, so he was accorded the full military razzle-dazzle and then some, as only the British Army knows how to lay on.
He had flown into Catania with a sparkle of five American Generals and a fighter escort. They drove up the coast road to Taormina. The Highland Division – the men with whom I had invaded Sicily – were now much better-dressed and pressed, and turned out their most impressive Parade of Honour: pipe band, swirling kilts, white blanco, stamping feet, loads of swank … They marched about, then crashed to attention and Presented Arms. We waited for the Commander-in-Chief’s soldierly appraisal. ‘Say’ he said at last, ‘some swell outfit.’
It seemed a fair comment.
I STILL FEEL RATHER GUILTY ABOUT THAT…
During our serene sessions on the terrace of the Casa Cuseni we even had time to take silly shots for home consumption of ourselves larking about – ‘red-hots’, we called them.
I can’t remember the reason for such warriors’ relaxation. The photographs were taken in the morning, so demon vino was no excuse. Why then do grown men behave in such a way? I think we should be told.
I suspect dear old Alfred Black may have instigated the pictorial fooling around; son of George Black, the impresario who ran the Palladium and other theatres in London and Blackpool, he probably directed our light-hearted romps. The pictures were taken, I suspect, for the lovely Roma Beaumont, one of Ivor Novello’s leading ladies from The Dancing Years and such, who was also Alf’s wife. This was the only occasion I can recall during the war when we had the time or the taste for jolly frolics.
More seriously, we considered future picture-coverage of the war on the Italian mainland, which was going to mean splitting our Unit. First it had to be decided whether Captain Harry Rignold or I should lead our cameramen across the Straits at Réggio Calabria to cover the Eighth Army’s opening assault upon Italy.
The other would return to Africa to join the more militarily significant operation Buttress, the landing a week later up the coast near Salerno by the new and American-controlled Fifth Army. That bay, thirty-five miles south of Naples, was at the extreme limit of our vital air cover.
Rignold, my senior, had the choice of course. We had spent some days together driving and filming through central Sicily, and I had come to like and much admire him. Small and soft-spoken, he was a most unmilitary figure, but brave and eager. He had caught the excitement of an assault landing while filming at Narvik in Norway, May 1940. That landing was a combined operation and, like Dieppe, a considerable defeat – but for Harry a splendid photo opportunity. So he chose Salerno, the bigger story – and was killed on the beach. I went across the Straits of Messina with the 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers – the ferocious ‘Skins’ – and landed safely. I had drawn another lucky card.
Taormina had been too good to last. Very soon we were reminded there was a war to be won, and our serenity each twilight had been a sort of mirage.
So we dispersed and set off to fight once again. Harry Rignold left for Africa with his cameramen, and on the evening of September 3 ’43 my sergeants and I boarded our LCIs in Catania docks. We were back at war as a sort of decoy invasion, hoping to lure German divisions down south and away from the coming Salerno landing.
As we settled in, the massed invasion fleet due to sail that night was attacked by German fighter-bombers. So much, we thought, for surprise. They already had the unwelcome mat out…
On the fourth anniversary of Britain’s entry into the war we sailed from the comforting shores of Sicily, where by now we felt we were at home among friends. The fleet assembled off the coast, and at dawn our silent armada approached the dark mountains and narrow beaches of Italy’s toe.
The Straits of Messina are less than three miles wide.