Chapter 11: Engineers in the Peninsular Base Section
The support organization behind Fifth Army grew from an embryonic planning group before the invasion of Italy to an entity of corporate size. Its functions were more varied than those in the combat zones and as important; it had management responsibility under Brig. Gen. Arthur W. Pence, an engineer officer, for combat supply and for requisitioning or foraging materiel for its own wide-ranging projects. Specialty units abounded in the base section enclaves. Through the end of the war, engineers were the largest single segment in the Peninsular Base Section (PBS) command.1
The main task of the PBS engineers in late 1943 remained the rehabilitation of the port of Naples. Their work at the docks helped Naples to become one of the busiest ports in the world. They provided depots for receiving supplies and road, railroad, and pipeline facilities for moving supplies. They improved highways serving PBS depots and Fifth Army supply dumps to handle heavy traffic, built pipelines to carry thousands of gallons of gasoline from Naples to pipeheads within range of enemy artillery, and established railheads in Fifth Army territory by reconstructing some of the worst damaged lines of the war. Behind the army boundary PBS engineers also built hospitals, rest camps, repair shops, and other facilities.
On 7 November 1943, five weeks after Naples fell, one-third of the 31,629 American troops assigned or attached to PBS were engineers. The PBS Engineer Service had at its disposal 19 engineer units: 2 combat regiments, 2 general service regiments, 2 separate battalions, and 13 units of company size or less, including the headquarters of a port construction and repair group, a petroleum distribution company, a special utilities company, a water supply company, 2 fire-fighting platoons, 2 mobile searchlight maintenance units, a 3-man engineer mobile petroleum laboratory, and a map depot detachment. By early January 1944 the PBS
Engineer Service alone had twenty-eight units totaling 10,464 men.2
When preparations for the invasion of southern France (ANVIL) got under way in early 1944, there were not enough engineer troops to support the operation. The accompanying French invasion forces would need American help. A Fifth Army breakout, expected in the spring, meant that ANVIL would take place when the demand for engineer troops in Italy was at a peak. Of eighteen engineer combat battalions required for ANVIL, the .French could furnish two and the U.S. Army eight trained in shore operations. The invasion would also need eight engineer general service regiments; PBS and Fifth Army, each with five, would both have to give up two, Shortages in engineer map depot detachments also existed. The only port construction and repair group in the theater, the 1051st, would be needed at Marseille and was allocated to ANVIL; this meant PBS would have to reopen Leghorn without experienced port specialists. ANVIL would need three pipeline companies, two of which were to come from outside the theater.3
The loss of engineers to ANVIL forced the PBS engineer, Col. Donald S. Burns, to use more Italian troops and civilians. By early October 1944 he was employing 10,000 men from Italian military engineer units and about 5,177 civilians; but these numbers dropped where new base section installations in Leg-horn took shape. About 9,700 American engineers were in PBS after ANVIL, and by the end of the campaign in Italy PBS engineer strength had increased to some 10,200.4
When Fifth Army stalled before German defenses along the Garigliano and Rapido Rivers during the winter of 1943-44, PBS engineers were able to provide close support no longer feasible when the army broke loose in May 1944. In two months Fifth Army drove to the Arno, a distance of 250 miles, and PBS support deteriorated steadily. The Germans blew many railroad bridges and culverts as they retreated, and PBS engineers could not repair them at the pace the troops were moving. Nor were petroleum engineers able to build gasoline pipelines at the fifteen-mile-a-day pace the army sometimes achieved. Thus the main burden of supplying Fifth Army fell to motor transport, which soon began to falter under increasingly longer hauls, bottlenecks in hastily repaired roads, and breakdowns.
As Fifth Army drew up to the Arno at the end of July 1944, it was in no condition to assail the Gothic Line. Men were tired and equipment worn after the long sweep from the Rapido. The army’s strength was depleted by the withdrawal of units for ANVIL, and its supply lines were stretched thin. Before it could drive for the Po valley, Fifth Army needed time to rest, to repair and
replenish equipment, and to establish a firm supply base in northern Italy.
The logical place was Leghorn, 300 miles north of Naples, a port with a man-made harbor that could accommodate ships drawing up to twenty-eight feet of water. The Germans (with considerable assistance from Allied bombers) had so wrecked the port that a month’s work would be required before deep draft vessels could enter, but as soon as the harbor was open to shipping it became the main supply base for Fifth Army. To oversee the work there and at the same time look after American installations in the Naples area, Headquarters, PBS, divided into two groups. The one in Leghorn came to be known as PBS (Main); the other in Naples was designated Pensouth and operated as a district under the larger headquarters at Leghorn.
Port Rehabilitation
Restoring Italian ports after November 1943 was a battle of supply and demand complicated by the fact that supply tonnages for combat units had higher priority than those for rebuilding the ports. As Naples began functioning again it imported an average of 10,700 tons per day, well above its prewar capacity, but the engineers still had to forage locally for materiel to expand facilities. At Bagnoli they located substantial stocks of steel sections, without which they could never have built ramps for the Liberty ships. Railroad track and torpedo netting also came from local sources, and combat engineers supplemented the American forestry units in cutting and milling timber at Cosenza for the quays in Naples harbor. For piling the engineers welded together locally procured ten-inch diameter pipes and filled them with concrete. Wood and prefabricated steel structural members were always in short supply.5
Even with the shortages of materiel, AFHQ steadily revised upward the planned port capacity goals for the city. In the beginning of January 1944 the 1051st Port Construction and Repair Group had orders to build twenty-six temporary LST berths, but the demand increased piecemeal and by month’s end the unit had constructed thirty-five berths with still more to come. At that time, when accumulated unloading at Naples and the satellite ports to the north had passed the million-ton level, the revised program called for over 35 Liberty berths, 3 troopship spaces, and 4 smaller berths for coasters. Port capacity increased through the spring, and in one record day in April 33,750 tons of cargo came ashore. With the May offensive, Fifth Army was drawing on the massed stocks that had piled up in beach dumps at Anzio, particularly during the breakout offensive of 1944. (Map 11)6
With Fifth Army’s advance, Peninsular Base Section acquired additional ports, but they were usually damaged severely. Rome fell on 4 June, Civitavecchia three days later, Piombino on 25 June, and Leghorn on 19 July. At Civitavecchia, the first seaport north of Anzio potentially useful to the Allies,
Map 11: Northern Italy
Blasting obstacles at Civitavecchia, June 1944
the 540th Engineer Combat Regiment forged through the heavy wreckage to open DUKW and landing craft hard-stands. On 11 June the first cargo craft, an LCT, unloaded; next day an LST nosed into a berth, and ferry craft began to unload Liberty ships. Cargo was soon coming ashore at the rate of 3,000 tons a day. Later the 1051st Port Construction and Repair Group provided Liberty berths by building ramps across sunken ships as at Naples.7
Even while improvements were under way at Civitavecchia, a new entry for Fifth Army supplies opened 100 miles farther north at Piombino, a small port on a peninsula opposite the island of Elba. Elements of both the 39th and 540th Engineer Combat Regiments reopened the port, which, like Civitavecchia, had suffered heavy bomb damage. The main pier lay under a mass of twisted steel from demolished gantry cranes and other wreckage, while destroyed buildings and railroad equipment cluttered the area. But the engineers did not find the profusion of mines and booby traps the retreating Germans usually left behind, and they were able to remove 5,000 tons of scrap steel and pig iron from the main piers during the first two days. Pier ribbing
and flooring repair required considerable underwater work. After three days facilities for LCTs to dock head on were available and one alongside berth was ready to receive a coaster; within the next few days handstands for LCTs, LSTs, and DUKWs were available; and at the end of the third week the engineers built a pier over a sunken ship to provide berths for two Liberty ships. Piombino joined Civitavecchia as a main artery of supply for Fifth Army during July and August 1944.8
After the summer offensive, Fifth Army needed Leghorn to support an attack against prepared defenses in the rugged northern Apennines. Early in July, when Fifth Army was still about 18 miles south of Leghorn, PBS selected the 338th Engineer General Service Regiment to rehabilitate the port. The 338th, which had been working on hospitals in Rome, had no experience in port repair but received planning aid from several specialists of the 1051st Group, representatives of the British Navy charged with clearing the waters of Leghorn harbor, and shipowners and contractors who knew the port. The reinforced engineer regiment was not only to repair ship berths but also to be PBS’s engineer task force in the city. The 1528th Engineer Dump Truck Company and an Italian engineer construction battalion were attached to the task force, and PBS made preparations to provide the force with a large amount of angledozers, cranes, a derrick, and other, heavy construction equipment. Much of this equipment was to move to Leghorn aboard an LST, an LCT, and several barges, but general cargo was to be discharged directly from Liberty ships.9
Early on the morning of 19 July, Leghorn fell to elements of the 34th Infantry Division. Twelve men from the 338th Engineers arrived in the city a few hours later to clear mines from predetermined routes into the port area. Leghorn was heavily mined, and for the first few days little other than mine clearing could be accomplished. As the mine-clearing teams made room, more elements of the 338th Engineers arrived, set up quarters, and began preparing a berth for the LST and the LCT carrying construction equipment. By 26 July both craft had unloaded. In the meantime, engineers repaired electrical lines and started to restore the municipal water system.
Not until 28 July were engineer and naval officers able to complete a survey of conditions in Leghorn harbor. They were soon convinced that reopening Leghorn would be a much more formidable job than Naples had been. At Naples the Germans had not blocked the harbor entrances, but in Leghorn sunken ships completely blocked entrances to all but shallow-draft craft. In each channel the hulks were so interlocked that no single ship could be floated and swung aside to make a passage. Ultimately the engineers had to spend nearly a month blasting a passage through the blockships.
The stone quays were pocked by craters, some forty feet in diameter, and not one of the eighty-two berthing spaces was untouched. Elsewhere in the
port area the enemy’s work was almost as devastating. Port equipment and buildings were demolished; roads, railroads, and open spaces between roads were cratered; and every important bridge leading out of the port was destroyed.
The threat of sea mines in the harbor delayed the unloading of engineer equipment and construction materials. A floating pile driver and three barges loaded with piling, timber, and decking arrived at Leghorn on 30 July but could not enter the harbor until late on 2 August. The next day engineers began rigging the floating pile driver and a 1½-yard crane, also to be used as a pile driver. Port and depot traffic patterns were also developing. The Italians had handled freight directly from wharfside to rail, so few of their piers were hard surfaced. But Allied military cargo had to be moved by truck, and to provide the large quantities of rock needed for surfacing the engineers set up a rock crusher to pulverize rubble from shell-torn buildings and opened a quarry nearby. By November the 338th Engineers had eight quarries in operation.
While the 2nd Battalion, 338th Engineers, worked on roads in the area, the 1st Battalion began to build berths for Liberty ships and the 696th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company restored pipelines from a tanker berth to local tank farms. Pile-driving for the first Liberty berths started on 5 August, and four were ready by the seventeenth. Three days later, after British naval demolition teams had forced a passage into the harbor, the Liberty ship Sedge-wick came into the port with piling that enabled the engineers to complete two additional berths. The six Liberty berths then available gave the port a daily capacity of about 5,000 tons.
The goal for Leghorn was to reach a capacity of 12,000 tons a day by the end of September. The port achieved that goal on the twenty-fifth after a ramp the engineers built from a sunken tanker to the shore provided additional Liberty ship berths and after landing craft returned from the ANVIL operation. By that time Leghorn was the main supply port for Fifth Army, and Civitavecchia and Piombino had closed.
Petroleum: From Tanker to Truck
At ports along the Italian coast, PBS engineers had to devote considerable attention to unloading and distributing petroleum products, which accounted for nearly half the tonnage the Allies shipped into the Mediterranean theater. The engineers were responsible for building, and in most cases operating, not only tanker discharge facilities and port terminal storage but also pipelines that carried the POL to dispensing and refueling stations in the Fifth Army area. At the dispensing points quartermaster units operated canning installations, and they usually took over truck refueling points. In early planning for the discharge of oil tankers the PBS engineers had counted on using Civitavecchia, the first port north of Naples capable of receiving tankers. These plans were revised after the capture of San Stefano, forty miles north of Civitavecchia, where, on a spit of land connected to the mainland by a causeway, were located a tanker berth and large underground storage facilities.10 San
Stefano, along with Naples and Leghorn, became a major terminal for POL supplies. Three of the six pipeline systems built in Italy emanated from Naples, two from San Stefano, and one from Leghorn.11
By 18 November 1943, engineers of the 696th Petroleum Distribution Company had 574,000 barrels of storage space at Naples ready for motor and aviation gasoline and nearly 55,000 barrels for diesel oil. Another quarter of a million barrels of underground storage, found relatively undamaged at Pozzuoli, was cleaned and used to store Navy fuel oil.12 While part of the 696th—along with as many as 550 civilian workers—was rehabilitating the Naples terminal, the rest of the unit built a four-inch gasoline pipeline into the Fifth Army area. The pipeline originated on the outskirts of Naples at a Socony refinery arid followed Highway 6 northward. The twelve-mile section to Fertilia became operational on 12 November, but thereafter fall rains and gusty winds slowed construction. Since it was apparent from the beginning that one four-inch pipeline would be inadequate for Fifth Army’s needs, petroleum engineers had to prepare to construct a second pipeline by putting double crossings under roads and over streams and canals. The most difficult crossing was over the Volturno River, a 400-foot gap. Petroleum engineers prepared a suspension crossing over the Volturno, using two existing high tension electric line towers for supports, but flood waters knocked the line out soon after it was finished. Engineers repaired the break and also prepared another emergency line on an old railroad bridge 2½ miles upstream.13
Early in December 1943 the 705th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company joined the 696th on pipeline work in the Naples area, taking over operation of the port terminal and of pipelines as far as the Volturno. By 22 December two four-inch pipelines with a daily capacity of 260,000 gallons were in operation to Calvi Risorta, twenty-eight miles north of Naples. In January engineers extended these lines to San Felice, nearly forty-one miles from Naples, then on to San Vittore where a dispensing point was set up only 2½ miles from embattled Cassino. A third four-inch pipeline followed as far as Calvi Risorta, then turned east along Highway 7 for over twelve miles. On 27 March 1944, the 696th, with the help of a French POL unit, opened a forward fueling point on this line at Sessa. Both forward fueling points were within range of enemy artillery, but engineers of the 396th Engineer Camouflage Company concealed them and they were never shelled.14
Before the spring offensive began in late May 1944, petroleum engineers assembled more than one hundred miles of six-inch pipe (which could
deliver as much gasoline as two four-inch pipelines) at forward points on Highways 6 and 7, to be used between Calvi Risorta and Rome. A third engineer petroleum distribution company, the 785th, arrived from the United States during April and went to work on a four-inch pipeline along Highway 7 while the 696th was laying a six-inch line along Highway 6. The 705th was to operate the pipeline system.15
As Fifth Army pressed forward during June and July, sometimes as much as fifteen miles a day, it left the pipe-heads ever farther behind. By the time the pipeline reached Rome on 7 July, Fifth Army was nearing Leghorn and San Stefano had fallen. The 785th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company reached San Stefano on 24 June, and five days later a tanker was discharging 80,000 barrels of motor gas at the new terminal. By 2 July the 785th had built ten miles of six-inch pipeline inland, for only fifty miles away tanks and trucks were running dry. The 785th expanded the San Stefano system to cover 143 miles, and for some time to come it was the main source of motor fuel for Fifth Army.16
At Leghorn, captured on 19 July, the port was so heavily damaged and German shell fire so persistent that no tanker could enter until 18 September. The 696th Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company, which set up bivouac at a Leghorn refinery, soon found that only 25 percent of the tankage in the area was repairable. At the port all tanker discharge lines were wrecked, but a tanker berth about 1½ miles from the refinery was still in good condition. The 696th, recruiting about one hundred civilian workers, set about repairing storage tanks at the refinery while a French petroleum unit worked on storage facilities at a nearby tank farm. By 10 August the 696th had restored a large amount of storage and had completed a discharge line from the tanker berth. When the first tanker entered the port, storage was ready for nearly 275,000 barrels of gasoline. Eventually, the Leghorn POL terminal had facilities for 62,000 barrels of 100-octane gasoline, 307,000 barrels of 80-octane, 43,500 barrels of lower octane for civilian use, 76,100 barrels of diesel oil, and 34,500 barrels of kerosene. In all, the engineers rehabilitated thirty-two storage tanks.
Early in September Fifth Army struck north across the Arno, coordinating its attack with an Eighth Army offensive along the Adriatic coast, and by the end of the month Fifth Army troops were only fourteen miles from Bologna. October found forward units only nine miles from the Po valley, but for the next few months the army had to use nearly all its resources just to survive the northern Apennine winter. Gasoline issues to Fifth Army troops continued heavy through the winter, averaging 357,000 gallons a day between November 1944 and April 1945. Much of it went to warm troops at gasoline stoves in the mountains some ninety miles from Leghorn.
In late September the 696th left for southern France, and the 703rd Engineer Petroleum Distribution Company, relieved from a Highway 2 project, took over both the operation of the Leghorn
terminal and the construction of pipelines in the wake of Fifth Army. As soon as Fifth Army began to move, the 703rd pushed pipeline construction and by the end of October had a double four-inch line in operation to Sesto, thirty-six miles farther. By mid-December the 703rd had carried the line to Loiano, over eighty-one miles beyond Leghorn. For the last ten miles snow, mud, and water got into the line and froze solid in low spots before the line could be tested.
In mid-December 1944 engineer petroleum companies were spread over 450 miles. The Petroleum Section of the Engineer Service, PBS, exercised direct control over the units but was finding this more and more difficult. On 25 December 1944, the section activated the 407th Engineer Service Battalion according to TOE 5-500, drawing most of the personnel from an engineer utilities detachment. The battalion was a skeleton headquarters that could supervise a number of independently operating units and coordinate operation and construction activities. All troops on POL work in western Italy (three American and one Italian engineer petroleum distribution company and two battalions of other Italian troops for security and labor work) came under the 407th. This move not only relieved the Petroleum Section but also made for better supply, planning, and maintenance support for engineer pipeline units. The battalion set up a major maintenance shop in Leghorn and, in February 1945, a smaller one in Naples for third echelon and higher maintenance and repair of POL equipment.17
When the spring offensive began in 1945, the 785th Petroleum Distribution Company, along with a hundred Italian troops, stood ready to lay a double line up Highway 65 from Loiano to Bologna, twenty-two miles away. The work got under way on 24 April 1945, but, plagued with traffic congestion on the highway and the multitude of mines in the area, was not finished until 7 May.
The greatest handicap to efficient pipeline operations was the telephone system. Standard issue telephones were totally inadequate; the wire was of such low conductivity that messages traveling farther than twelve miles had to be relayed, a process that caused such delays and confusion that the PBS engineer asked the PBS Signal Section to provide a communication system solely for pipelines. The system helped, but did not solve the problems. Conversation between Leghorn and Bologna was impossible, and only clear weather and shouting permitted Sesto to converse with either Leghorn or Bologna.
Deliberate sabotage of pipelines was negligible, but civilian theft of petroleum products was a constant problem. In one thirty-day period, pipeline losses near Rome averaged three hundred barrels a day. Usually thieves loosened couplings, though in some cases they knocked holes into pipe. Breaks on long downhill stretches, where leaks could not be detected by a drop in pressure, were especially costly. One such break occurred a few miles south of Bologna, at the bottom of a 32-mile grade. Someone carelessly lighted a cigarette near the spilled gas. Eight civilians died in
the ensuing holocaust, which also broke two other lines. An estimated 12,000 gallons of gasoline were lost. Leaks caused by tension failures on couplings that thieves had loosened kept repair crews busy. Patrolling Italian soldiers and even horse-mounted GIs did not stop the tampering. Italian courts treated the few thieves who were caught quite leniently, and American authorities sometimes had to pressure the Italians to prosecute such cases.18
Tasks of Base Section Engineers
Base section engineers drew a multitude of assignments. (Map 12) Many of them were calls for a few men to sweep mines, clear away debris, or repair plumbing. Others’ tasks were larger. The ninety-five work orders the 345th Engineer General Service Regiment handled in August 1944 ranged from repairing a water faucet at Villa Maria (the General Officers Rest Camp in Naples) to installing 225 pieces of equipment for a huge quartermaster laundry and dry cleaning plant at Bagnoli. This unit was the first base section engineer construction organization in Naples. Its early assignments included setting up an engineer and a quartermaster depot, repairing railroads, building POW camps, and working on the Serino aqueduct. The 345th was also responsible for all street and sewer repair in Naples, although civilians did the actual work.19
Railway repair was an unexpected task. In AVALANCHE planning the Transportation Corps’ Military Railway Service (MRS), with help from the Italians, was expected to handle railroad rehabilitation and engineers were to be responsible only for new rail construction—mainly spurs into dumps and depots.20 But the rail net was so badly damaged and the Italian railroad agencies so disorganized that MRS had to ask the engineers for help. Most of the work fell to the 94th Engineer General Service Regiment, which arrived in Naples the second week of October 1943 and started rehabilitating lines to the Aversa railhead even before their vehicles and equipment were ashore.21
Supplies for track reconstruction had to be cannibalized. For example, to repair one lane of double-track lines the engineers used rails, ties, and fish plates from the other track. They also gathered material, as well as frogs and switches, from railway yards and unessential spur lines. Sometimes engineers could stockpile items, but because the Germans had destroyed many of the frogs and switches they were scarce. Luckily, a large stock of unused rails turned up in Naples. For bridging the engineers used steel salvaged from destroyed spans and from a steel mill at Bagnoli. However, they also needed timber. Railroad bridging supplies remained short, and in many instances
Map 12: Peninsular Base Section
the engineers had to resort to culverts topped by huge earth fills.22
By the end of November 1943 the rail reached Capua and before the spring offensive stretched to Mignano, less than ten miles south of Cassino. The closest yet built to combat lines, the railhead was within range of German 270-mm. artillery. Early in June 1944 the 94th Engineers began the largest single railroad repair assignment in Italy, reopening a 32-mile stretch from Monte San Biagio station to Cisterna station on the main coastal line to Rome. The main block was the 4½-mile Monte Orso tunnel, blown in three places, a few miles out of San Biagio. The south portal was blocked partially and the north portal completely, but the main obstruction was deep inside the mountain. These engineers worked with air hammers and explosives, cutting a passage by breaking up large rocks and carting off the debris on a small industrial railway installed for the purpose. The work was slow at best, but toward the end of June a front-end loader mounted on a D-4 tractor more than doubled the removal capacity.
The engineers relied on a natural draft to carry off fumes from generator engines that supplied power for lighting and for air compressors, but when the draft occasionally reversed, dangerous fumes soon fouled the air. Large exhaust fans did not solve the problem, and ultimately the generators had to be moved outside the tunnel. The engineers then installed a four-inch pipeline to carry compressed air to a pressure tank near the main block, whence two smaller lines carried the compressed air to the work forces.
The main problem was to cut a passage through the mass of debris without bringing down more rock and dirt. The engineers first built a broad-base masonry wall atop the debris on each side of the passage to support the roof. Then they removed the material between the two walls, tamped crevices and cracks exposed in the debris supporting the walls with mortar, and filled undermined sections with stone masonry. The engineers had another major difficulty at track level, where the debris was composed of fine material that had filtered down through the larger rocks. This material tended to run out from under the new walls, and, once started, was hard to stop. In one instance the fine material undermined a forty-foot section of new wall and delayed work for four days. Only by making undermined sections shorter could the engineers alleviate the problem. This process slowed all work on the tunnel, and the rail line to Cisterna did not open until 20 July.
North of the Monte Orso tunnel the Germans had blown overpasses and bridges, removed whole sections of rail to help build defensive works, and prepared culverts for demolition but had actually blown few. The main job north of Monte Orso was bridging the Mussolini Canal, where two of three concrete-arch spans were down. The 94th Engineers restored this crossing by using a 68-foot steel girder to span the center section of the bridge and an earth fill to replace the northern span.
On this and other jobs along the section of railroad north of Monte Orso a
major problem was getting supplies. Engineer equipment and construction material had to be trucked 80 to 115 miles from the Naples area; cement and bridge steel came 40 to 70 miles from the Minturno railhead; some lumber came 50 miles from Anzio (but most of it by truck from Naples); and sand came from beaches 5 to 15 miles from the railroad. Until it closed, the Fifth Army fuel point at Fondi supplied gasoline. Later, gas and oil had to be hauled sixty to ninety miles from Sparanise.
Once Fifth Army reached Leghorn on 20 July, almost all rehabilitation was centered on lines well north of Rome. In PBS (Main), rehabilitation included forty-eight miles of mainline track, nine major bridges, and six railheads. Much of this work was in the immediate vicinity of Leghorn, but the largest single assignment was a twelve-mile stretch of track between Pisa and Florence, where five demolished bridges had to be rebuilt. By V-E Day 3,000 miles of rail lines were in use in western Italy.
Work on roads accounted for nearly one-third of base section construction man-hours from July 1944 to mid-March 1945. In northern Italy, Italian soldiers and contractors working under engineer supervision accounted for over 75 percent of the man-hours that went into road maintenance and repair. But many assignments—particularly building and maintaining roads in base section depots—were either too difficult or too urgent for local authorities to handle, and these fell to American engineer units.
One of the main occupations of base section engineers was general hospital construction, which consisted mostly of expanding existing buildings and facilities. In the Naples area, the unfinished exhibition buildings at Bagnoli fairgrounds housed six hospitals, a medical laboratory, and a medical supply depot. The Army took over modern civilian hospitals in the city and used schools and other public buildings to house nine more hospitals. A general hospital operated in an apartment building near Pomigliano Airfield, and an unfinished apartment building at Fuorigrotta, near the Bagnoli fairgrounds, was home to the 37th General Hospital. Much of the engineer work went into increasing the water, electric, and sanitary systems. At most hospitals engineers had to black out windows, clear away debris, put up or take out partitions, install equipment, and erect prefabricated barracks where more space was needed.
Using existing buildings had great advantages over putting up standard buildings, but from the engineer standpoint it also had certain disadvantages. Since the scale of allowances NATOUSA established was barely applicable, each potential site had different construction and alteration requirements. As each site was selected, the Engineer Service and the surgeon’s office determined what work would be required. In most cases engineers were able to move hospital personnel in within a few days and then continue their work.
By mid-March 1944, twenty-three general and station hospitals were open in the vicinity of Naples. Five more were started before the end of May, but finding large buildings to convert was becoming increasingly difficult. After the spring offensive began only one more was built south of Anzio, and it consisted mainly of 20-by-48-foot prefabricated barracks. The offensive opened up a new supply of barracks, schools,
and other public buildings adaptable to hospitals. In June hospitals started operating in Rome and in smaller towns to the north. During the latter months of the campaign, hospital construction centered in the Leghorn-Florence area; of the twenty-three hospitals built north of Anzio by mid-March 1945, five were in Rome, six in Leghorn, and four in Florence.
For a long time the largest general construction assignment was hospitals, but toward the close of 1944, with the end of the war in sight, another program loomed for PBS engineers: preparing training and staging areas for redeploying troops and building enclosures for prisoners of war. By mid-February 1945 tentative redeployment plans called for eight 25,000-man training areas, two 5,000-man training areas, and two 20,000-man staging areas. Also in prospect was a major construction program to accommodate liberated Russians and another for Nazi prisoners of war. The two 20,000-man staging areas were then well toward completion, but MTOUSA and the War Department delayed the POW enclosures. Repeated changes in instructions for the Florence redeployment training area also made it difficult for the Engineer Service to allocate construction equipment, personnel, and material. By mid-April construction had started on four POW camps: one at Aversa for 10,000 men, another at Florence for 13,000, and two at Leghorn for 60,000. Construction for redeployment and for POWs continued beyond V-E Day. When Germany surrendered, 20,000-man redeployment training areas at Francolise, Montecatini, and Florence, as well as three 30,000-man POW camps, were still under construction.
On nearly every PBS engineer job, mine clearing had first priority—even in areas once held by Fifth Army troops. To remove mines in areas into which Allied troops moved, PBS relied on base section engineers, British as well as American, who got some help from attached Italian engineer troops and at the end of the war from volunteer Italian prisoners of war. Mine clearing took considerable time; for example, in June 1944 at Scauri the 345th Engineers spent 22,405 man-hours during an eighteen-day period searching a building to be used by the 49th Quartermaster Group. At a hospital site north of Naples the same unit found 230 Teller mines and 47 other mines and booby traps. At Leghorn, one of the most heavily mined areas in Italy, base section engineers, with the help of two British bomb disposal units, removed 25,000 mines. Other mine removal was a responsibility of the Allied Military Government Labor Office, which recruited and trained civilian volunteers for the work. By mid-April these volunteers had found 69,000 mines, bombs, and projectiles in and around Florence alone.
In addition to the large body of PBS engineers working on construction—the general service regiments, combat battalions and regiments, port construction companies, separate battalions, construction battalions, and petroleum distribution companies, which built ports, roads, bridges, railroads, camps, hospitals, stockades, depots, and other installations—were a number of the small special units such as water supply and mapping. In August 1943 the War Department abolished water supply battalions in favor of separate companies and left reorganizing the battalions to
the theaters’ discretion. Fifth Army chose not to reorganize its 405th Engineer Water Supply Battalion until after V-E Day. PBS had to reorganize the 401st Engineer Water Supply Battalion in August 1944 to furnish units for ANVIL and redesignated Companies A and B the 1513th and the 1514th Engineer Supply Companies, respectively. The former took over water supply work in PBS, and the 1514th went to southern France.
The 405th Water Supply Battalion provided 74 percent of the 454,765,000 gallons of water the army drew through the campaign.23 When the rear section of Company C entered Naples from the land side on 1 October, the city had been without fresh water for more than a week, for the retreating Germans had destroyed the 53-mile-long aqueduct bringing spring water from Serino. Sewer lines were clogged and overflowing, and the danger of a typhoid ‘or typhus epidemic threatened a half million people. At first the rear section could accomplish little, for all purification equipment was out in the harbor aboard ship with the main section; but the following morning the rear section discovered within a hundred yards of the headquarters they had established in the Poggioreale area, the undamaged Bolla aqueduct, which brought industrial water to the city. With meager equipment the section pumped this water into tankers, purified it, and set up four water points in the city. Crowds of civilians with containers gathered, the press so great that armed guards had to keep order. By curfew the same day, 60,000 gallons of water had been distributed. After the arrival of the main section of the company and eleven days and nights of work, fresh water reached Naples by 13 October.
Company C of the 405th remained in the Naples area until the 401st Water Supply Battalion arrived in mid-November 1943 to handle water supply in the PBS area. Thereafter the 405th employed a company for supplying army installations, particularly hospitals. During the winter of 1943-44 not all of the 401st was needed in the PBS area, and at least one company was generally available for well drilling, water hauling, and general construction.
In the north at Leghorn the main source of water was a series of wells at Filettole pump station, some fifteen miles north of Pisa. When Leghorn fell these wells were still in German hands, but engineers were able to furnish water from other sources. When the Filettole station was captured, engineers found that the Germans had destroyed all the pumps, and restoring the facility appeared hopeless. Closer inspection, however, showed that new pumps could make the station operational. This job was undertaken by Company F of the 338th Engineer General Service Regiment, aided by civilian workers. Also required to reopen the line to Leghorn were repairs to a twenty-mile-long, sixteen-inch cast-iron pipeline that had been broken in many places, the worst at the 550-foot Arno River crossing, the 300-foot Serchio River crossing, and a 100-foot canal crossing.
The most difficult repair job was at the Arno River crossing. In September
Company F tried to put a pipe across the Arno on bents built on the trusses of a demolished bridge, but flood waters washed it out before it was finished. Company F then tried to put a welded pipe across the river bottom, but the pipe broke on 23 October. In the meantime a new Serchio River crossing had to be raised six feet to get it above flood stage. In November a third attempt to get a line across the Arno succeeded, and water began to flow through to Leghorn. Many leaks showed up in the pipeline, and repairs and improvements continued well into 1945. Over 96,000 man-hours, divided about equally between several engineer units and Italian civilians, ultimately went into the restoration.
At both Naples and Leghorn, as well as in other cities, the municipal water systems were badly damaged, but not destroyed. The Germans had needed to use municipal water supplies until the last minute, and civilians had frustrated some destruction.24 Engineers were able not only to restore water for public use in a remarkably short time but also to provide railroad engineers with water for locomotives and to send tank trucks to engineer fire-fighting platoons.25
The War Department first authorized fire-fighting units for the Corps of Engineers in August 1942, and by the end of 1943 six platoons of thirty-eight men each were in Peninsular Base Section. Several more were formed in June 1944 from the 6487th Engineer Construction Battalion, and five Italian firefighting units were organized and equipped; just before ANVIL, PBS had nineteen fire-fighting platoons. The new platoons trained at a fire-fighting school in Aversa, each equipped and organized to operate in four sections. The main job was not to fight fires but to prevent them by inspecting for fire hazards and by keeping fire extinguishers filled and in good working order. Despite such precautions a number of fires broke out. One fire-fighting platoon assigned to Fifth Army averaged three fire calls a week for several months, and at the Anzio ammunition depot fifty fires broke out during April 1944 alone. Tankdozers and armored bulldozers, used to scatter burning ammunition boxes and then smother them with dirt, were effective against dangerous ammunition dump fires.26
A less familiar task in Italy was real estate operations. In the AVALANCHE plans the responsibility for procuring properties for American agencies went to the engineers. The Real Estate Branch of the PBS Engineer Service processed all requests by American units for property in the base section area. It also took control of real estate records for property that Fifth Army released to Peninsular Base Section. In the combat area when Fifth Army troops damaged property they occupied (and their occupancy was a matter of record) the owner was entitled to compensation. Damage that occurred before occupancy was charged to “fortunes-of-war,” for which no compensation was paid. Careful records had to be kept to separate the two categories. For these purposes photographic records showing the condition
of properties, particularly when removal of damaged portions was necessary, proved valuable, as did detailed inventories of small, movable furnishings and fixtures. When the war ended, the Real Estate Branch held active files on more than 3,900 properties ranging from open fields to beautiful villas. Hundreds more had been requisitioned, used, and returned to private owners.
Before the invasion of Italy the engineers had made few preparations to handle real estate work. The field was fairly new, and few officers were experienced. For the most part, forms and procedures had to be worked out by trial and error in Italy. Under the terms of the armistice the Italian government undertook to make all required facilities, installations, equipment, and supplies available to the Allies and to make all payments in connection with them. Allied military agencies made only emergency payments required to keep financially alive individual workers and contractors employed by the Allies.27
Procuring real estate for military use and keeping the necessary records were nevertheless considerable tasks. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the Real Estate Branch was the lack of a central agency in Fifth Army to handle real estate; thus, records the army turned over to PBS were often confused. The establishment of a real estate section in the Fifth Army engineer command, after nearly a year in Italy, helped matters considerably. Thereafter this section, together with G-4, Fifth Army, was able to plan in advance for real estate needed for dumps, bivouac areas, and other installations.28
Engineers in PBS were to handle, store, and issue maps. Under the Supply Branch of the PBS Engineer Service, two thirteen-man engineer depot detachments operated a map depot and made bulk issues to both Fifth and Eighth Armies. Peninsular Base Section had no topographic units for survey, drafting, or reproduction. The map depot detachments had reproduction sections but limited their operations to copying construction drawings and preparing administrative directives and reports for the PBS engineer and engineer units.
Soon after Naples fell the 2634th Engineer Map Depot Detachment set up a map library at the Engineer Service headquarters and a base map depot at Miano. The map library filled small orders while the Miano depot made bulk issues to Fifth and Eighth Armies. A second map depot detachment arrived in the base section in November 1943 and a third in April 1944. NATOUSA activated other map depot detachments for ANVIL, and, of the final total of six, three went to southern France.
In preparation for the 1944 offensives to and past Rome, PBS engineers took over some twenty tons of maps from Fifth Army depots at Paestum, but these sheets covered only the area south of the Volturno. Additional maps covering the area north to Leghorn arrived later, and before the end of 1943 some 700 tons of maps had reached the Miano depot. The PBS map depots stocked ground maps of Italy in four scales (1:25,000, 1:50,000, 1:100,000, and 1:250,000) as well as air maps, small-scale coverages of Europe,
town plans, and road maps. The number of map sheets ran into the millions.29
For the first time in the European war, engineer lumber operations in Italy assumed importance. Engineer training was based largely on the use of locally procured lumber for all aspects of construction, but in the United Kingdom, North Africa, and Sicily the supply had been so short that the engineers had come to rely on substitutes.
Italy offered the first real opportunity overseas to obtain large quantities of lumber from local sources. In two years, PBS forestry operations in Italy produced lumber amounting to 370,885 ship tons, more than the total tonnage of engineer supplies recovered through Italian ports during the first year of the campaign. The lumbering operations also saved money; Italian lumber cost an estimated $25.00 per 1,000 board feet delivered to the using unit; the price in the United States at the time was $40.00 per 1,000 board feet at the mill.30
At about the time of the Salerno landing, engineers crossed the Strait of Messina to investigate timber reserves and lumbering facilities in Cosenza Province and found approximately nine million board feet of milled lumber, a large stockpile of unsawed logs, extensive timber tracts, and scores of existing sawmills. With the capture of Naples, lumber quickly became a critical item. The engineers needed piles for port rehabilitation, bridging, and power line poles; timbers and heavy planking for building and decking; ties for railroads; and lumber for boxing, building, and dunnage. The only American forestry unit in the theater, the 800th Engineer Forestry Company, was then operating a sawmill in Tunisia, but this unit had a relatively low shipping priority and could not be moved promptly to Italy. Therefore, during the latter part of November PBS sent a detachment of about fifty men from the 40th Engineer Combat Regiment to the Cosenza area to ship stockpiled lumber.31
Soon after the 800th Engineer Forestry Company reached Naples in mid-December 1943, it split into three detachments. Twenty men went to Cosenza to give the 40th Engineers experienced mill men and lumber checkers, while a smaller group remained in Naples to search out lumber stocks. The rest of the company moved into a timber stand at Montesano, about 120 miles southeast of Naples, and on Christmas Day began milling operations. With its portable sawmill the company produced over 75,000 board feet of lumber at Montesano and then, on 21 January 1944, moved to Cosenza. There it took over lumber production from the 40th Engineers and by June 1944 had forty-three civilian sawmills operating in the area, producing about a quarter of a million board feet per day.
The 800th, operating over a wide area 250 miles from Headquarters, PBS, virtually took over operation of the Cosenza–Camigliatello narrow-gauge railroad relay track after washouts and landslides and cleared away deep snow drifts during the winter. The company also performed its own road construction and maintenance, including building culverts and bridges.
The unit operated a motor pool that expanded from an original fifteen vehicles to a fleet of seventy-seven trucks and performed its own maintenance. It operated a depot where civilian laborers loaded an average of thirty-five cars of lumber piling a day; it employed 400 civilians directly and supervised nearly 3,000 others employed at civilian sawmills.
During its first year at Cosenza the 800th’s sawmill, working two shifts a day seven days a week, produced approximately 7,956,290 board feet of lumber. Peak production came during October 1944, when the mill produced an average of 37,245 board feet a day. Total lumber shipments from the Cosenza area during the twelve months ending January 1945 amounted to 63,987,350 board feet.32
Producing the lumber was one thing; delivering it was another. At times breaks in the rail lines, heavy snowfalls in the mountains, and shortages of railroad cars cut sharply into shipments from Cosenza. At such times the engineers had to pile the lumber in the Cosenza railroad yards, and on one occasion these stockpiles contained approximately 1,750,000 board feet of lumber. For seven weeks, from February to April 1944, and again the following January, blizzards in the mountains curtailed shipments by 300,000 to 400,000 board feet a week. Mt. Vesuvius erupted on 18 March 1944, burying several miles of railroad track under six to eight inches of cinders and tying up nearly seven hundred railroad cars for several days.33
In September 1944 four members of the 800th went to Leghorn to teach men of the 338th Engineer General Service Regiment and Italian troops how to operate sawmills. This reduced the amount of lumber that had to he shipped to Leghorn from Cosenza, 650 miles away. By February 1945 two mills in northern Italy were producing 40,000 board feet a day. Though many logs and trees in timber stands in northern Italy were worthless for military operations because of imbedded shrapnel, lumber production in the area nevertheless increased. On one day early in May 1945 four mills there achieved a peak production of 108,639 board feet.34
PBS Supply and Maintenance
The Peninsular Base Section supply and maintenance units came under a provisional base depot group headquarters command in Naples as soon as PBS became operational. Depot companies directed operations and supervised Italian laborers in the supply outlets; maintenance companies handled construction equipment pools and third, fourth, and fifth echelon maintenance of heavy equipment; and a heavy shop company made tools and spare parts for the maintenance units and did some repairs.35
Engineer depot companies operated two main depots in western Italy. One, near Naples, was located at an Italian Army barracks, and the other at an Italian movie studio at Tirrenia, a few miles
north of Leghorn. In the Naples area special engineer depots were also set up for POL construction supplies, stream-crossing equipment, and maps. PBS engineers also took over Fifth Army engineer depots at Anzio, Civitavecchia, Piombino, and other points as the army moved forward. These army depots either operated where they were until their stocks were exhausted, or they closed forthwith to move stocks to more central locations.
Initially the 458th Engineer Depot Company handled all administrative duties at all PBS engineer depots, while the 386th Engineer Battalion (Separate), aided by several hundred civilian workers, received, stored, and issued supplies. The 386th also kept several men on duty day and night in the port of Naples to identify engineer supplies and to see that they went to the proper depots. The 473rd Engineer Maintenance Company received and issued heavy equipment at the depots and maintained equipment in the depots and in engineer units. A second engineer depot company, the 462nd, arrived in Naples toward the end of November 1943 and ultimately took over the engineer depots Fifth Army left behind in its drive north during June and July 1944.
With the opening of the engineer depot near Leghorn, those at Civitavecchia and Piombino were closed as rapidly as transportation permitted, and elements of the 462nd moved up to operate the Leghorn depot. There, two Italian engineer companies joined the American unit as a labor force, and civilians from as far off as Pisa and Lari were hired to help. As many as a thousand civilians a day—a number limited only by the amount of transportation available—worked at the Leghorn depot. During December 1944 a total of 23,959 tons of engineer supplies reached the depot, which issued 20,907 tons. With Leghorn the focal point for engineer supply in the PBS forward area, the Supply Section of the PBS (Main) Engineer Service took up quarters there and kept stock records of all engineer depots in the PBS forward area.
Two types of engineer units, light equipment and base equipment companies, could service, issue, and when necessary, operate Class IV equipment—extra and special equipment such as bulldozers issued temporarily or for specific jobs. In July 1944 the 688th Engineer Base Equipment Company reached Naples to assemble equipment coming into engineer depots, service it, transport it to requisitioning units, and provide instructors for receiving units. But in mid-September the 688th passed to Seventh Army control, and thereafter PBS engineer maintenance companies had to do the 688th’s work as well as their own.
In August 1944 Brig. Gen. Dabney O. Elliott, NATOUSA engineer, put theater requirements for maintenance companies at eleven and estimated that the theater also needed at least one heavy shop and three maintenance companies to support Army Air Forces units properly. At the time only three engineer maintenance companies and two engineer heavy shop companies were available in the theater.36
The 469th Engineer Maintenance Company went to Italy with Fifth Army, and the 473rd, a PBS unit, reached
Naples on 10 October 1943. The 473rd took in equipment for second, third, fourth, and even fifth echelon repairs and also functioned as a base equipment company, hauling heavy engineer equipment from the port and uncrating, assembling, and servicing it for both PBS and Fifth Army units. Roads in the shop area deteriorated badly during the fall, and in January the unit had to move to a new hard-surfaced area near the port, ten miles from the engineer depot. In mid-April, with the coming of dry weather, the company returned to Naples. Both moves cost the unit heavily, for it took eleven days and help from other units to move the 5,200 tons of heavy engineer equipment back to the depot.
Engineer maintenance forces in PBS had been strengthened in February 1944 by the arrival of the 496th Engineer Heavy Shop Company, but a month passed before all of the 496th’s equipment reached Italy. In the meantime the unit established itself at a civilian steel jobbing concern in Naples. There it set up and operated a series of separate shops for engine rebuilding, carburetor and injection repair, electrical repair, salvage and reclamation work, forging, welding, and patternmaking.
An important function was manufacturing spare parts that could not be obtained through normal supply channels: piston rings and cylinder sleeves for internal combustion engines, air compressors, and reciprocating pumps. The 496th also salvaged and reconditioned usable parts from scrapped equipment, did fourth and fifth echelon engineer maintenance, and took on third echelon maintenance until a third engineer maintenance company, the 470th, arrived in Italy during May 1944.
ANVIL laid a heavy hand on engineer maintenance resources in Italy. Fifth Army gave up its 469th Engineer Maintenance Company; PBS lost the 470th Engineer Maintenance Company and the 688th Engineer Base Equipment Company. Italy was left with one maintenance company (split among the Army Air Forces, Fifth Army, and PBS), one heavy shop company, and one base shop company. PBS had to turn more and more to Italian sources. The 1st Engineer Maintenance Company (Italian) was activated in July 1944 and attached to the 473rd Engineer Maintenance Company at the Naples engineer depot; the 2nd Engineer Maintenance Company (Italian) came into being in mid-August and worked with the 496th Engineer Heavy Shop Company until ready to function independently. Although handicapped in personnel and equipment, both units were soon doing good work. Machinists, blacksmiths, welders, and carpenters were easy enough to find among Italian soldiers and civilians, but skilled mechanics, patternmakers, and foundry workers were not. Moreover, securing adequate maintenance equipment for the Italian units was difficult. U.S. Army tables of basic allowances did not provide for equipping either unauthorized or expanded units, so the two Italian companies never had more than half the equipment allotted their American counterparts.
During the summer of 1944 the maintenance of engineer equipment became critical; in June, when daily advances were great, the 19th Engineer Combat Regiment had to haul its dozers long distances for minor repairs. During the next month and into September as much as 50 percent of the unit’s heavy
equipment was under repair, and over the last half of 1944 the 19th Engineers had an average of fifty pieces of equipment in its “waiting line.” The shortage of engineer maintenance units was the main reason, but there were others: poor preventive maintenance, particularly during the rapid advances of July and August; equipment that had worn out after two or more years of use; replacement of some trained mechanics with untrained limited-service men; and a shortage of certain critical spare parts. Another important factor was extra wear and tear that equipment suffered at the hands of unskilled operators. Multiple shifts and heavy use of Class IV equipment required several times the number of operators provided by unit TOEs.
Toward the end of 1944, MTOUSA was able to achieve a better balance of engineer forces, largely with men from deactivated antiaircraft units. The engineers used some of these men to activate two new engineer maintenance companies. In Pensouth the 5th Engineer Maintenance Company was activated on 10 November with a cadre of a few men from both the 473rd and 496th Engineer Companies. In Fifth Army the 40th Engineer Maintenance Company came into being on 1 December with a cadre from the 473rd Engineer Company. Neither of the new engineer maintenance companies came up to full strength until the end of December 1944, and many of the men had had no experience in maintenance. Already a heavy backlog of deadlined equipment had built up, while hard winter usage and age kept broken machines flowing to repair shops. Gradually, greater attention to first and second echelon maintenance reduced breakdowns, and in March five inspection teams, made up of men from the maintenance and heavy shop companies, began to make frequent trips among units. In April Fifth Army reported the fewest equipment breakdowns in six months.
Probably the most challenging supply job the engineers had was handling spare parts—between eighty and ninety thousand different items. By early 1944 fast-moving parts were noticeably lacking throughout the engineer shops in the theater, whereas slow-moving items were overstocked. In August 1944, inspection teams from the United States found that about one-fourth of the 10,000 tons of spare parts in MTOUSA was excess that had accumulated as a result of the automatic supply policy. Some of the heavy parts in third echelon maintenance sets had been stocked, unused, for two years, while allowances for certain other parts needed to be doubled, tripled, or increased even tenfold.
Efficient handling of available parts required men thoroughly familiar with engineer equipment, with nomenclature and cataloging, with interchangeable parts, and with the repair history of parts and equipment. The 754th Engineer Parts Supply Company, the only such unit in MTOUSA, furnished cadres for spare parts platoons in engineer depot companies and, during the latter part of 1944, also lost men for retraining as infantry. By early 1945, 60 percent of the company was newcomers, few of whom had any qualifications for their assignments.
Italian theater shortages came from sacrifices for the more decisive theater in northern Europe. Beginning in early 1944, Fifth Army gave up support and
combat units of all types to the ETOUSA command and to the invasion of southern France. In losing some of the best of its engineer units, the theater, in small measure, replenished some of what was borrowed in 1942 for commitment to Operation TORCH. The focus of the war shifted again to the Continent opposite England.