Chapter 7: Sicily: The Drive to Messina
By 15 July the Allies held a beachhead stretching from Syracuse to Licata, and Seventh Army, strengthened by the D plus 4 convoy, was preparing to break out of its beachhead. General Patton created the Provisional Corps, consisting of the 3rd Infantry Division, the 3rd Ranger Battalion, the 5th Armored Field Artillery Group, and elements of the 2nd Armored and 82nd Airborne Divisions, to sweep around the western coast of Sicily and to move against Palermo from the south and southwest. The II Corps, initially consisting of the 1st and 45th Infantry Divisions, was to strike across central Sicily to the north coast east of Palermo. The attacks began on 17 July.1
During Provisional Corps’ drive on Palermo, which met little opposition, combat engineers speedily bypassed several destroyed bridges and removed explosives from others captured intact. Divisional engineer bulldozers and mine detectors paced the corps’ advance, for a time without corps engineer support, because Provisional Corps originally had no corps engineer organization. On 20 July the 20th. Engineer Combat Regiment joined Provisional Corps; one battalion supported 3rd Division engineers, the other 2nd Armored Division engineers.2
Palermo fell on 22 July. Allied bombs had left the port with only 30 percent of its normal capacity. Forty-four vessels—ships, barges, and small craft—lay sunk in the harbor, and bomb craters pitted quays and railway tracks. On 23 July the 20th Engineer Combat Regiment set about providing berths for thirty-six LSTs and fourteen Liberty ships, and naval personnel began salvage work in the roadstead and ship channels. At the port engineers bulldozed debris from pier areas and exit routes, filled bomb craters, and cut steps into the masonry piers to accommodate LST ramps; they also cleared city streets of debris, leveled badly damaged buildings, and laid water lines to the piers. They cut away superstructures of some ships sunk alongside the quays and built timber ramps across the scuttled hulks. Eventually Liberty ships moored alongside the derelicts and unloaded.3
On the morning of 23 July, the day after Provisional Corps captured Palermo, elements of II Corps reached the north coast of Sicily. A regimental combat team of the 45th Infantry Division entered the town of Termini Imerese, thirty-one miles east of Palermo on Highway 113, the coastal road between Palermo and Messina. The 1st Division reached Petralia on Highway 120, an inland road about twenty miles south of Highway 113.
That same day, General Alexander changed the direction of American forces. He had originally ordered Patton’s Seventh Army to Palermo and the north coast to protect the left flank of Montgomery’s British Eighth Army drive on Messina. On 23 July, becoming aware that Montgomery’s forces were not strong enough to overrun the Germans in front of Eighth Army, Alexander directed Patton to turn his army to the east and advance on Messina along the axis of Highways 113 and 120. Patton lost no time. The two divisions of Lt. Gen. Omar N. Bradley’s II Corps, already in position athwart the two highways and soon to be bolstered by units of the Provisional Corps, were in motion before nightfall.
Supply Over the Beaches
At the outset supplies for the American drive on Messina had to come from dumps at small ports and beaches on the south coast—Porto Empedocle, Licata, and Gela—because the first coasters did not reach Palermo until 28 July. The agency responsible for logistical support was still the 1st Engineer Special Brigade, acting as SOS, Seventh Army, under the general supervision of the army’s G-4.4
Once the attack out of the beachhead began, the most critical supply problem was not unloading supplies but moving them forward to the using troops, a problem compounded by prearranged shipments that did not reflect reality. The 1st Engineer Special Brigade soon was burdened with unneeded materiel.
Trained and equipped to unload supplies across the beaches and through the small ports on Sicily’s southern shore, the 1st Engineer Special Brigade performed efficiently after overcoming earlier problems at the beaches. But the brigade also had to stock and operate Seventh Army depots inland at points convenient to the combat forces, and there were never enough trucks on Sicily.5
Railroads became important in moving supplies inland to support the rapid advance. Lines from Porto Empedocle and Licata converged not far from Caltanissetta, a town near the center of the island and about thirty miles inland. Seventh Army captured the lines intact, and Transportation Corps railway troops had supplies rolling over them from the beaches immediately. The dumps were opened at Caltanissetta on 19 July. Beyond this point German demolitions limited the use of railways, and supplies had to be trucked to forward corps dumps.
The using services, even the engineers,
were critical of the 1st Engineer Special Brigade’s inland dumps, complaining that they could not find needed items. The 1st Engineer Combat Battalion, supporting the 1st Infantry Division, reported sending its trucks back to the beaches for needed materiel no less than four times. Ordnance officers complained that forward dumps were overstocked with small-arms ammunition (which the brigade moved first because it was easiest to handle), while they urgently needed artillery ammunition.6
Whatever the deficiencies, the beaches, especially at Porto Empedocle and Licata, carried a heavy supply responsibility throughout the Sicilian campaign, mainly because the campaign was short and the rehabilitation of Palermo slow. An early and important activity at the beaches was supplying aviation gasoline to the Ponte Olivo and Comiso Airfields. The chief engineer, 15th Army Group, termed the work of the 696th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company in building fuel pipelines and tanks at Gela “the outstanding new engineer feature of the campaign.”7
A small reconnaissance party of petroleum engineers landed on DIME beaches on D-day, and by 18 July all the men and equipment of the 696th were ashore. Engineers used the damaged Gela pier to berth shallow-draft tankers in about seventeen feet of water. The company laid discharge lines along the pier, erected two 5,000-barrel bolted-steel storage tanks on shore, and by 21 July completed a four-inch pipeline to Ponte Olivo Airfield, about seven miles away. The first tanker, originally scheduled to arrive off Gela on 18 July, did not actually begin to discharge until 24 July. Two days later a 22-mile pipeline to Comiso Airfield was also completed. About the same time a detachment from the 696th erected facilities for receiving, storing, and canning gasoline at Porto Empedocle.
The petroleum engineers had wanted their equipment shipped in two equal parts on two coasters, each accompanied by some of their experts, but the equipment arrived in seven different ships at several different beaches—some as far afield as the British port of Syracuse. Workers at the beach dumps were unfamiliar with the POL equipment and had so much difficulty gathering it that the 696th had to send men to search for items along the beaches. As late as 21 July the company had found only 60 percent of its materiel and had to improvise elbows and other fittings to complete the pipelines.8
Bailey bridges had proven their worth in the final days of the Tunisian campaign. Seventh Army brought several sets to Sicily, though some arrived with vital parts missing. The main advantage of the Bailey—one of the most valued pieces of equipment in World War II—was its adaptability. It was made of welded lattice panels, each ten feet
long, joined together with steel pins to form girders of varying length and strength. The girders could be up to three panels wide and high. The Bailey could accommodate a great variety of loads and spans; it could be erected to carry twenty-eight tons over a 170-foot span, or as much as seventy-eight tons over a 120-foot span. The bridges were designated according to the number of parallel panels and stories in each girder. A double-single (DS) Bailey was two panels wide and one story high, a triple-double (TD) three panels wide and two stories high. Engineers could assemble and launch these bridges entirely from the near shore. A light falsework of paneling served as a launching nose and the bridge itself as a counterweight.9
The Bailey was especially valuable in Sicily because of the terrain. Along the coast from Palermo to Messina ran a narrow littoral flanked by the sea on one side and by steep, rocky mountains on the other. Here and there, where the mountains crowded all the way to the sea, Highway 113 was no more than a winding, shoulderless road chipped into headlands. For the most part vehicles—and sometimes even foot troops—were road-bound. The Germans had demolished bridges and culverts across the numerous ravines. To the south and inland, Highway 120 ran through rugged mountain ranges nearly due east from Petralia through Nicosia, Troina, and Randazzo to the east coast. Since maneuvering off this road was difficult at best, blown bridges could stop forward movement. After II Corps engineers established their dump in Nicosia, Baileys accounted for over 90 percent of the 298 tons of fortifications material, bridging, and road maintenance supplies the dump issued during the campaign.10
On 29 July II Corps engineers established a bridge dump at Nicosia and organized a provisional Bailey bridge train. The 19th Engineer Combat Regiment outfitted one of its platoons with nine trucks and seven four-wheeled German trailers. Each of the cargo trucks carried all the components for a ten-foot, double-single bay of Bailey bridging. The bridge train carried 100 feet of double-single Bailey plus material for a seventy-foot launching nose, and the bridge unit had enough extra parts for two eighty-foot Class 40 bridges.11
Corps and Army Support of Combat Engineers
At the time II Corps began slicing across Sicily to the north coast on 17 July, German forces were falling back to stronger defensive positions, using a covering screen of mines, booby traps, and demolitions to delay pursuit. Except for brief stands at Caltanissetta and Enna to gain time to consolidate new defenses to the east, the enemy abandoned western Sicily. But by 23 July, when the 45th Division reached the
north coast, evidence was mounting that the enemy would soon make a stand. The 1st Division, on the right and inland, ran into sharp fighting and increasing numbers of mines and demolitions near Alimena, northwest of Enna. To the east the British Eighth Army stalled before powerful German defenses south and southwest of Mt. Etna. (Map 6)
Up to this point the work load for divisional engineer battalions had not been heavy. Their main tasks during the establishment of the beachhead had been to help build exit roads and to help the infantry take and destroy pillboxes. There had been mines to search out and a few roadblocks to clear, but for the most part divisional engineer formations had organized and occupied defensive positions alongside the infantry units to which they were attached. During the subsequent advances across Sicily, divisional engineers spent most of their time probing for mines and bypassing blown bridges by cutting roads down banks and across dry stream-beds.
The 120th Engineer Combat Battalion opened the way for the 45th Division along Highway 113, the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion for the 1st Division along Highway 120, where mines and demolitions were somewhat denser. By the end of July the 1st Engineer Battalion had repaired or bypassed twenty-three bridges, nineteen large craters, and several bomb or shell holes. They also had cleared away wrecked vehicles, rubble, and roadblocks and had swept the route for mines.12
Backing up the divisional engineers in II Corps was the 39th Engineer Combat Regiment, one battalion behind the 120th and another behind the 1st. Corps engineers in close support improved bypasses and, where bypasses were impractical, erected Bailey bridges. They also cleared more mines, reduced grades, and eliminated traffic bottlenecks. A battalion of the 19th Engineers joined II Corps to handle work the 39th Engineers could not do because much of the regiment’s equipment and many of its vehicles had not yet arrived. This battalion had been working on Comiso Airfield and had with it several road graders, bulldozers, six-ton trucks, and sixteen-ton trailers.13
Behind II Corps, the 20th Engineer Combat Regiment on Highway 113 and the 343rd Engineer General Service Regiment on Highway 120 shared road maintenance responsibility within the army area. Most main roads were in excellent condition: surfaced with black top or water-bound macadam, wide enough for two-way traffic, and moderately graded and curved. Towns, with their sharp turns and narrow streets, were the-principal bottlenecks. Second-class roads were usually in fair condition but were narrow with sharp curves and steep grades; Seventh Army made good use of them by making them one-way and by controlling traffic. Dry weather made the engineers’ job easier. Road repair machinery such as rollers and portable rock crushers were captured in many localities, while stockpiles of crushed stone and asphalt enough for initial repairs were found along all main roads.
By the time army engineers took over
main supply routes from corps engineers, they generally found the roads in excellent condition. After removing roadblocks, widening bottlenecks, and improving some bypasses, they built culverts, paved the slopes of fills, and built wooden trestle bridges. The 20th Engineers improved eighteen bypasses on Highway 113 between Palermo and Cape Orlando, and the 343rd Engineers did similar work on twenty-one bypasses on roads from Cape Orlando to Messina and Randazzo. The two regiments also cleared minefields and rebuilt six railroad bridges.14
Between Highways 113 and 120 lay the rugged Madonie–Nebrodi ranges, with peaks over 6,000 feet high. Few roads crossed these mountains, and lateral roads connecting 113 with 120 were some fifteen miles apart. At the end of July traffic between the 1st and 45th Divisions had to make a long trip around to the rear. Engineers of the 45th Division began reopening Highway 117, running south out of Santo Stefano. As soon as Santo Stefano fell into American hands, Company B, 120th Engineer Battalion, went to work at a demolished bridge two miles north of Mistretta. Engineers grading a bypass there lost two bulldozers to enemy mines, although the site had been checked. Afterward, engineers spent more time on mine clearance work and paid particular attention to areas around demolitions, for the Germans, impressed by the speed with which American bulldozers cut bypasses, were bent on making the most likely bypass routes the deadliest ones.15
After II Corps turned east, enemy mining became more plentiful and more deliberate. The Germans planted mines in potholes and covered them with hot asphalt to resemble patches. They also booby-trapped antitank mines, as many as 90 percent of them in places. Before roads and trails could be opened, divisional engineers had to sweep traffic lanes and shoulders thoroughly. For this job they needed many more SCR-625 mine detectors than the fifteen allocated to each of the engineer combat regiments, divisional engineers, separate combat battalions, and armored engineer battalions. The 19th Engineers carried forty-two detectors, and after the campaign both Seventh Army and AFHQ recommended that the number provided as organic equipment for infantry and armored divisional engineer battalions be raised to forty-two and fifty-four, respectively.16
SCR-625s proved as valuable in Sicily as in Tunisia-and less troublesome. Since rain fell only once in the II Corps area, the only trouble with moisture shorting out the detectors came from sea spray during the initial landings. The detectors were fragile, however, and seldom were more than 75 percent working. Sweeping with the SCR-625 was slow and tedious, but neither so slow nor so tedious as probing. Engineers relied heavily on the SCR-625s, but doubt was growing as to how long they could continue to do so. In Sicily the Germans used two types of mines that SCR-625s could not detect under more than an inch of soil. One was a
Map 6: Sicily 1943
Map merged onto previous page
German wooden box mine that had a metal detonator, the other an improvised mine made of plastic explosive wrapped in paper or cloth and equipped with a bakelite detonator. Around Randazzo, where enemy mines were found in great numbers, the high metallic content of the soil made SCR-625s useless. The less sensitive British mine detector was of some use, but the only sure way to find mines there was by probing for them with a bayonet.17
Before the invasion the 17th Armored Engineer Battalion obtained four Scorpion mine exploders mounted on M-4 tanks for clearing lanes through minefields protected by enemy fire. They landed at Licata on 14 July. Because no trailers or prime movers were available for transporting the often trouble-prone tanks, they had to be walked into position over mountainous roads, and after twenty miles their bogeys wore out. They were never used in the heavily mined fields along the north coast between Cape Orlando and Milazzo on Highway 113 toward the close of the campaign because when they finally arrived after their long road march, all needed major repairs.18
The arrival in early August of the 39th Engineers’ vehicles and heavy equipment, as well as missing elements of the 19th Engineers, made it possible for a full engineer combat regiment to support each attacking division. The II Corps engineers also received sixteen greatly needed D-7 and D-8 heavy bulldozers from southern beaches; the 19th Engineer Combat Regiment got five to go with its three organic D-7s, and two divisional engineer combat battalions got two each.
Only three sixteen-ton trailers were available to move heavy bulldozers, and they were too light, breaking down so often that most of the time bulldozers had to be driven from one construction site to another. The larger bulldozers proved invaluable, however, for the three R-4s allotted divisional engineers were too light for many jobs. For the engineers’ requirements on Sicily, wrote one engineer battalion commander, his unit needed six R-4s, three D-7s, a prime mover, and a twenty-ton trailer. After the campaign Seventh Army recommended that divisional engineer battalions be issued one D-7 as organizational equipment and engineer combat regiments three. D-7s no longer exceeded the “division load” limitation, but production was a problem. In July 1943 engineer regiments appeared to be at least nine to twelve months away from getting more heavy bulldozers.19
Maps and Camouflage
The map used most in Sicily was a
multicolored one in the 1:100,000 series which in twenty-six sheets offered complete coverage of the island. Such coverage was not available in the tactical 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 series, but the 1:50,000 maps were accurate, and artillery used them with good results when no 1:25,000 sheets were to be had. The 1:10,000 beach mosaic was of some use during the initial landings, but its quality was poor and its coverage inadequate. Photomaps on a scale of 1:25,000, the product of air sorties before and during the campaign, were of little use because many areas were blank and detail and contrast were frequently lacking.
More overprints were needed during the latter stages of the campaign when enemy resistance stiffened. Two photo interpreters from the 62nd Engineer Topographic Company came to Ponte Olivo Airfield to copy information on enemy defenses in the northeastern areas from aerial photographs. They were able to spot routes of advance, pick bypass routes, evaluate enemy demolitions, and even estimate lengths of bridging that would be needed at certain places. The aerial information was printed on base maps prepared in advance, and copies went to every interested division as well as to army headquarters, corps headquarters, corps artillery, and the Naval Operations Board. The value of this work for frontline units in Sicily was limited, however, because they moved so rapidly that ground reconnaissance often was possible before the photo-interpreters’ reports reached them.20
The only camouflage units in the Sicilian campaign were Company B, 601st Engineer Camouflage Battalion, and a platoon of the 904th Engineer Air Force Headquarters Company. Company B of the 601st reached Sicily late in July and was attached by platoons to the assault divisions. Its only assignments during the campaign involved camouflaging the Seventh Army command post and building a dummy railhead. However, the campaign ended before the railhead task could be finished. The 904th Company’s platoon for a time painted deceptive patterns on planes and trucks but later relied on dispersal to reduce losses at airfields.
Apart from the work of these two units the engineers’ part in camouflage was chiefly supplying materials and giving instruction in their use. Before HUSKY got under way, engineers furnished reversible nets for each TBA vehicle scheduled to go to Sicily and additional oversize nets to build up a reserve of 250 on each of the three beachheads. One side of each net was sand-colored to blend with barren landscape; the other side was green-toned for verdant areas. The nets were put to good use, notably in concealing artillery from Luftwaffe attacks during the battle for Troina.21
Highway 120: The Road to Randazzo
Late in July the 39th Infantry, 9th Division, which was to replace the 1st Infantry Division along Highway 120, arrived at Nicosia. Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen, commanding the 1st
Division, expected relief with the fall of Troina, the next main objective. Leading the advance, the 39th Infantry took Cerami on 31 July, but the following day heavy German fire stopped the regiment about four miles short of Troina.
Though the Germans were withdrawing, they had determined to delay pursuit at Troina, which was ideal for their purpose. The highest town in Sicily, Troina perched atop a 3,600-foot mountain dominating the countryside, a natural strongpoint and “a demolition engineer’s dream” because approaches could be blocked by blown bridges and mines.22 On 2 August General Allen committed his 26th Infantry, but its attack proved fruitless. Another push by the reinforced 16th Infantry, 1st Division, also made little progress.
On 4 August, the fifth day of the battle for Troina, the 9th Division’s 60th Infantry arrived on the scene and began deploying to outflank German defenses well north of Troina. Farther south, the 39th Infantry, 9th Division, and the 26th Infantry, 1st Division, were to continue efforts to encircle Troina from the northwest and north; the 16th Infantry, 1st Division, was to drive eastward on the town across virtually trackless hills; the 18th Infantry, 1st Division, was to outflank it on the south. Company A, 1st Engineer Combat Battalion, had the mission of bulldozing a road along the 16th Infantry’s axis of advance, while the 9th Division’s 15th Engineer Combat Battalion had a similar mission in support of the 60th Infantry.
Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy, commanding the 9th Division, intended that the 60th Infantry push generally east from Capizzi across Monte Pelato and Camolato and then, striking from the north, drive toward Cesaro, on Highway 120 east of Troina, in an attempt to cut off German forces withdrawing from the Troina sector. The attack began on the morning of 5 August, with three light R-4 angledozers of the 15th Engineer Battalion soon struggling to build a new road along the infantry’s axis of advance. In the afternoon two D-7 heavy bulldozers arrived from corps; one broke down almost immediately, but the other did yeoman work.
During the night of 5-6 August the Germans abandoned Troina and fell back behind a cover of mines and demolitions. The next day the 9th Division replaced the 1st along Highway 120, and the 15th Engineer Combat Battalion took over from the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion. Some of the heaviest German mining and demolitions were along Highway 120 between Troina and Randazzo, the next main objective. Nowhere during the campaign was mine clearance and bypass construction more important, because Randazzo lay high on the slopes of Mt. Etna. Just as important was building new roads through the mountains.23
On 8 August Company B, 15th Engineer Battalion, withdrew from the new road to Mt. Camolato to support the 47th Infantry on Highway 120 east of Troina. By this time the new road was open to Colle Basso, perhaps two-thirds of the way to Mt. Camolato, but the
15th faced difficult problems. Company A’s R-4 broke down, and mist and rain began to hinder the work. Company C pushed the road to completion at 1700 on 9 August. Earlier that day Company A moved off to repair the Mt. Camolato–Cesaro road and to build a north-south bypass around Cesaro, using a D-8 bulldozer that had just arrived from corps.
After joining the 47th Infantry on 8 August, Company B cleared mines to within a mile of Cesaro, where enemy shell fire halted the work. Next morning the company used a repaired D-7 to build a four-mile-long east-west bypass, which for 1½ miles followed the Troina River bed and detoured around both Cesaro and three demolished bridges east of Troina. Company C ultimately extended to forty miles the 60th Infantry’s road through the mountains north of Troina and Cesaro.
Slowed by mines, the 9th Division did not enter Randazzo until the morning of 13 August; shortly thereafter the British 78th Division entered from the south. The 1st Infantry Division came back into the line at Randazzo, and the 9th Division swung north and northeast toward the north coast. In anticipation of this shift, engineers had already scouted a narrow road that ran north from Highway 120 at a point a few miles west of Randazzo, and Company B, 15th Engineer Battalion, began opening the road on 13 August. Two demolished bridges and two road craters caused little trouble, but a quarter mile of abatis was heavily strewn with S-mines and Teller mines, one of which claimed a D-8 bulldozer. Nevertheless, Company B opened the road to one-way traffic shortly after noon. Elements of the battalion then moved to Floresta, and the next day Company A opened a one-way road as far as Montalbano. At this point all 9th Division engineer work halted—with the campaign almost over, the 9th Division came out of the line.
The 15th Engineer Battalion had been in action fifteen days. During that time the battalion built 45 miles of new supply roads through mountains, repaired 14 miles of existing roads, bypassed 15 demolished bridges, filled 4 major craters, cleared a quarter mile of abatis, and searched 30 miles of road for mines. The unit’s water points supplied over 1,500,000 gallons of purified water. There had been twelve casualties, ten (including two deaths) caused by two S-mines near Cesaro on 11 August.
On 13 August the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion came back into action with the rest of the 1st Division. Company B and a platoon of Company A worked throughout the night improving the road through and east of Randazzo for the 18th Infantry to use the next morning. The engineers found nine bridges destroyed within a few miles and worked continuously until 15 August bypassing them. At one site a forty-foot bank rose on the near side—a perfect spot for Bailey bridging, but none was available. During its thirty-one days in the line, the 1st Engineer Combat Battalion bypassed thirty-nine bridges, filled twenty-eight road craters, and searched out hundreds of mines. The battalion suffered 30 casualties: 4 killed, 3 missing, and 23 wounded.
Highway 113: The Road to Messina
After fighting its way into the north coastal town of Santo Stefano on 31 July, the 45th Division went into reserve
and the 3rd Infantry Division took over on Highway 113. As the 3rd Division advanced east along the north coast, it was confined to a single road even more than was the 9th Division along Highway 120. On the left was the sea, on the right mountainous terrain fit only for mules and men on foot. Maj. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., commanding the division, sent one element forward astride Highway 113 to clear spurs overlooking the road and to protect the engineers who were making a path through demolitions and minefields so that artillery and vehicles could move forward. He sent other elements with pack animals (he was to use more than 400 mules and 100 horses) over mountain trails on the right and inland to strike the enemy’s flank and rear.24
An advantage Highway 113 had over Highway 120 was the possibility of landing men and supplies by sea. Supplies came ashore from LSTs at Torremuzza beach near Santo Stefano at an unloading point the 2nd Battalion, 540th Engineer Combat Regiment, opened on 3 August. This same battalion also furnished a platoon and a D-7 to clear mines and wire from a beach at Sant’ Agata when Truscott attempted a small amphibious operation to outflank the San Fratello position, the first major German strongpoint east of Santo Stefano.25
At Monte San Fratello, a 2,200-foot peak about fifteen miles east of Santo Stefano, the 3rd Division was stopped from 3 to 8 August, as effectively as the 1st Division had been at Troina and for the same reason—the Germans were buying time for their withdrawal. When heavy fire and dense minefields halted the 15th Infantry, two battalions of the 30th and the entire 7th had to be committed before any progress could be made, and that progress was made partly because the Germans were thinning out their defenses. A battalion leapfrogged behind the San Fratello position at Sant’ Agata in an amphibious landing before dawn on 8 August, the battalion landing team including a platoon of the 3rd Division’s 10th Engineer Combat Battalion and a platoon of the 540th Engineer Combat Regiment. The operation failed to cut off the Germans but did hasten their withdrawal.
Resuming the advance, which heavy mining and considerable demolition work slowed, the 3rd Division encountered a second strong line at Naso ridge near Cape Orlando on 11 August. A second end run, attempted early on the twelfth near Brolo, twelve miles behind the enemy’s lines, almost proved disastrous. The enemy boxed in the landing force and inflicted heavy casualties before relief arrived by land. Two engineers of the 10th Engineer Combat Battalion were killed and two were wounded; two engineers of the 540th platoon were killed and three were wounded.26
Five or six miles beyond Brolo along the coastal highway, the 30th Infantry, leading, halted on 12 August before the most formidable roadblock German demolition engineers had yet put up. Overcoming it was to be “a landmark of American engineer support in Sicily.”27
About fifty feet beyond a tunnel at Cape Calava the Germans had blown out 150 feet of the road that ran along a shelf carved out of a sheer rock cliff rising abruptly from the sea. Infantrymen could pick their way one by one across the steep rock face, and guns and supplies could be ferried by sea. But the division’s supply trucks and heavy guns had to use the road, for landing craft were in short supply. Grading could close two-thirds of the gap, but any fill dumped into the center would roll down to the sea, 200 feet below. This section had to be bridged, but no Bailey bridging was available. With captured timbers, the 10th Engineer Combat Battalion “hung a bridge in the sky”—and did it in twenty-four hours.28
Shortly after noon on 13 August, several engineer officers halted their jeep at a roadblock on Highway 113 four miles west of Cape Calava and hiked to the break in the road. They computed what would be needed to do the job, ordered up the necessary men and-equipment, and estimated they could bridge the gap by noon the next day. Within an hour or two, men from Company A, 10th Engineer Battalion, were on hand, breaking rock with jackhammers. Trucks and trailers loaded with heavy timber beams and flanks began to move forward. In the meantime a bulldozer was needed on other demolitions farther east. To get one forward, engineers built a raft on two fishing smacks, loaded a bulldozer aboard, and used an amphibious jeep to tow the makeshift ferry five miles around Cape Calava.29
At the constricted bridge site, Company A could put only one platoon at a time on the job. All night the unit labored to meet the deadline. At dawn the gaping hole remained, but the foundations for a bridge had been laid. Engineers swung a heavy timber into the gap and set it upright on a seat cut into the cliff. They laid another beam from the top of this upright to another seat chipped out of the rock and pinned the two timbers together to form a bent. Then they looped a steel cable around the upright and anchored it to pins set in the cliff. The cable prevented the bent from sliding downhill when heavy, spliced-timber girders were worked into place. Twenty-man teams picked up the girders one by one and slid them into position.
A rickety bridge began to take shape. As the last floor plank was spiked down and the final touches added to the approaches, General Truscott climbed aboard his jeep. Promptly at noon on 14 August men of Company A stepped back and watched the division commander test the newly completed span. Other light vehicles loaded with ammunition and weapons for frontline troops were waiting to follow. After they crossed, the bridge was closed so that engineers could strengthen it to take 2½-ton trucks. At 1700 the bridge was reopened and cargo trucks—even a bulldozer—began to cross.
Beyond Cape Calava the 3rd Division’s 7th Regimental Combat Team advanced so rapidly that an amphibious landing by the 157th Regimental Combat Team,
Construction begins at cape Calava to close gap blown by retreating Germans
45th Division, during the night of 15-16 August at Bivio Salica fell miles short of the advance infantry elements. Darkness found the 7th Regimental Combat Team pushing strong patrols into Messina. By dawn, organized resistance in Sicily had ended and American artillery was dueling with enemy guns across the Strait of Messina.
A measure of the German demolitions in the mountains rising from the sea was the time it took Truscott’s forces to traverse the coastal road. The 3rd Division took sixteen laborious days to reach Messina; on the morning of 20 August General Truscott made the return journey from Messina to Palermo in just three hours.30
In the drive along the coast the 10th Engineer Combat Battalion took casualties of four men killed and twenty-three wounded; most of the casualties were from mines. Lt. Col. Leonard L. Bingham, commanding the battalion, thought the unit had been used improperly in the later stages of the campaign. At the outset, on 1 August, its three line companies were strung out along Highway 113, all working under division engineer control. Two companies leapfrogged each other froth demolition site to demolition site, while the third company provided mine removal parties for divisional units. Headquarters, Headquarters and Service Company, maintained the division engineer supply dump, established water points, serviced engineer vehicles, and operated
General Truscott tests the temporary span at Cape Calava
the battalion aid station. But this arrangement did not last, and soon many units of the 10th Engineer Battalion—frequently whole companies—were attached to infantry units. This procedure had officers who were not engineers directing the platoons and companies and cost the engineers their cohesiveness within the division.31
Palermo
After the capture of Palermo on 22 July, Seventh Army had no sooner established headquarters and main supply dumps when requests for work began to pour in to Col. Garrison H. Davidson, the army engineer. No formal construction program was established, and army engineer troops handled mine sweeping, road clearing, and construction requests as they came in. Space was urgently needed for offices, billets, storehouses, laundries, bakeries, and maintenance shops, while hospitals set up in unoccupied buildings had to have window screens and more water and sewage facilities. The municipal water and sewage systems needed repairs, and generating plants at Palermo and Porto Empedocle had been bombed out of operation.
Several engineer units had a part in rehabilitating Palermo. The 20th Engineer Combat Regiment
began work there on 23 July but left a week later to extend the railroad line to Santo Stefano. On this job the regiment rebuilt four bridges and repaired one tunnel and a considerable amount of track. For one bridge the 20th Engineers used prefabricated trestling found in the Palermo shipyards; for another, Bailey highway bridging was used, with planking between the rails so trucks as well as trains could use the bridge, and for others, captured timbers were used. On 9 August the railroad was open to a forward railhead at the junction of Highways 117 and 120 near Santo Stefano. In the first five miles beyond this railhead were four demolished bridges; therefore, the engineers made no attempt to extend rail service east of Santo Stefano.32
The 540th Engineer Combat Regiment (less one battalion) worked briefly at Palermo, then moved on to operate beaches at Termini Imerese. The 343rd Engineer General Service Regiment, whose responsibility for Palermo was also brief, replaced the 540th on 30 July. The 1051st Engineer Port Construction and Repair Group, organized especially for such work, took over the assignment on 11 August. The group’s equipment did not arrive for some time, and in the interim it had to use whatever captured equipment it could find. Italian POWs did most of the work under the 1051st’s supervision.33
The 1090th Engineer Utilities Company, which arrived in Palermo on 7 August, handled most of the repairs on utilities. The principal project was steam power plants. The unit employed an average of 120 POWs and 100 civilians and used borrowed tools and captured equipment, including two 5,000-kilowatt turbines. A new type of engineer unit, the 1090th had been hastily activated for HUSKY. The company was in Sicily a month before its organizational equipment arrived, and one-third of its men never caught up with the parent unit there.34
After its surrender, Sicily became part of the British line of communications in the Mediterranean. The U.S. 6625th Base Area Group (Provisional) handled American interests until Seventh Army units could be shipped out and American installations closed. On 1 September 1943 the 6625th Base Area Group was redesignated Island Base Section (IBS). Operating directly under NATOUSA, IBS supervised the steadily diminishing American activities on the island. The principal engineer task after the campaign ended was replacing bypasses with bridges and culverts in preparation for the fall rains.35