Stories of Faith and Courage From World War II (31 page)

A Navy F6F fighter preparing to launch. (National Archives)

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The Fight for Sicily and Italy

In January 1943 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in Casablanca to discuss future strategy. By this time, American success on Guadalcanal was assured, and it was agreed that enough resources would be allocated to the Pacific to retain the initiative in that theater. In Europe, the Americans favored an early attack across the English Channel, but Churchill and his staff felt that the Allies were not yet ready. After a lengthy debate, it was decided that Sicily and Italy presented the best opportunity for continuing the offensive in 1943.

Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, began soon after midnight on July 10, 1943. The American 82
^nd
and British 1
^st
airborne divisions dropped into landing zones inland to block enemy movements toward the invasion beaches. Meanwhile a naval armada of more than two thousand ships and craft staging out of North African bases converged on Sicily from the south and east. Under cover of darkness the assault waves of Patton’s 7
^th
Army landed on the southern coast to seize the small ports of Gela, Licata, and Scoglitti. The British 8
^th
Army under Montgomery landed on the Pachino Peninsula and Gulf of Noto to the east to seize the port at Syracuse. In all, more than four hundred seventy thousand troops went ashore across a beachhead extending nearly one hundred miles.

The overriding Allied objective on Sicily was to converge all forces on Messina in a large pincer movement, to trap the Axis defenders before they could evacuate the island. Characteristically, Patton drove his troops forward with all possible speed, capturing Palermo on July 22. He then turned eastward along the north coast, leapfrogging enemy defenses in a rapid series of amphibious landings. Montgomery decided to bypass the stiff coastal defenses in his sector and moved his forces inland over the rugged terrain around Mount Etna. Falling back along interior lines, the German and Italian forces were able to buy enough time to evacuate more than one hundred thousand troops and their equipment to the mainland, to oppose the next advance.

The next Allied move came with the September 1943 invasion of Italy. Montgomery’s 8
^th
Army crossed the Straits of Messina on September 3 with no opposition. On September 9 the main attack came at Salerno by the newly formed 5
^th
Army under General Mark Clark. There, the Germans waited in strength behind well-prepared defensive positions. Bitter fighting to gain and hold the beachhead reached a climax on September 1314 when a massive German counterattack with six hundred tanks and mobile guns was beaten back. On October 1 Allied forces entered Naples, as the Germans fell back to a new defensive line along the Volturno River.

From this point the Italian campaign became a slugfest as the American and British forces tried to surmount a series of bitterly contested German defensive positions. By year-end, fighting was stalled on the Gustav Line, seventy miles south of Rome. Anchored on the mountaintop abbey of Monte Casino, this German position proved to be almost impregnable. In an effort to break the stalemate, the Allies launched a major amphibious attack on January 22, 1944, at Anzio, thirty miles from Rome. This effort also stalled against determined and effective German resistance. It was not until May that the Monte Casino position fell to Allied assaults, precipitating a German retreat to new positions in the northern part of Italy. On June 4, 1944, Mark Clark’s 5
^th
Army entered Rome unopposed, two days before the focus of the war would shift to the beaches of Normandy.

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The Mosta Dome

The rotunda of the Church of St. Marija Assunta on the island of Malta has a fascinating history. The Mosta Dome, as it is called, is one of the largest freestanding rotundas in the world, spanning a diameter of 122 feet. It was the architectural masterpiece of Grognet de Vasse, completed in 1860. Built over a church on the same site, the older structure was used as scaffolding for the new. The high spherical vault was painted blue, with various heavenly scenes depicted to represent paradise.

In 1942 two German Luftwaffe pilots attacked the nearby Ta’ Qali airfield. One dropped a bomb that scored a direct hit on the Mosta Dome. That pilot was downed by anti-aircraft fire and died in the crash. The second pilot, Felix Sauer, witnessed the bombing of the Dome before he too was shot down. Sauer was a Catholic and lived thirty-three years with remorse, thinking he had helped destroy the unique and historic Malta church. When he returned as a tourist in 1975 he found what he first thought was a completely restored structure. Only then did he learn of the “Miracle.”

On April 9, 1942, church services were being held in the Church of St. Marija Assunta with three hundred people gathered under the great dome. An aircraft was heard overhead, and suddenly there was a crash in the ceiling as a falling bomb penetrated the dome. The bomb struck the floor of the church and skidded across it until finally coming to rest. It missed the entire congregation and failed to explode. This incident became famous in church lore as a great modern demonstration of God’s providential hand protecting his people and his church. Today a replica of the bomb can be seen there commemorating the Miracle of the Mosta Dome.
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When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the L
ORD
… His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.

—1 Samuel 5:34

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Do What You Can

Capt. Edwin Sayre was a company commander with the 505
^th
Parachute Infantry Regiment. As night fell on July 9, 1943, his unit boarded C-47 transports in Tunisia for the airborne assault of Sicily. His flight of aircraft drifted off course and had to make a second run for the drop zone, delaying their arrival. Instead of a moonlit jump the paratroopers faced total darkness. High winds then wrought havoc, scattering them over a wide area. Unable to see the hand in front of his face, Sayre was able to collect only a handful of his men by dawn.

Shortly after daylight, Sayre and his men were taken under fire by an enemy machine gun. Moving forward, they found not one machine gun but a series of pillboxes. This was not the primary objective, but General Gavin had told the paratroopers, “ If you land somewhere and don’t know where you are, just find the nearest enemy and attack.”
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Well, here was Sayre’s nearest enemy. He was able to contact some of his unit by radio, and, by firing a series of shots, gave them a signal to find him. He gradually assembled enough men and weapons to organize an assault of the enemy emplacements. In close fighting with small arms and grenades they eliminated the pillboxes and captured about fifty prisoners.

General Gavin’s instruction to his paratroopers is often the kind of direction that is appropriate for us as Christians. As we try to do the right thing in our service to God’s kingdom, we sometimes face uncertainty or lack a clear direction. At such times, we simply have to do what we can do. Even if a bigger mission is unclear, we can lovingly tend to the everyday tasks that present themselves in our families and churches. A child or a friend with a problem is an opportunity for each of us to do God’s work on a personal level, possibly the most important level of all.

His master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”

—Matthew 25:23

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Every Private Was a General

Sgt. Timothy Dyas was knocked unconscious when he hit the ground near Gela, Sicily. Jumping from three hundred feet, there was barely time for his parachute to open before he made a hard landing. When he regained consciousness, he started gathering scattered soldiers together. He knew his mission was to keep enemy reinforcements from moving down to the invasion beaches. With only a dozen men, he engaged and stopped a German panzer column. When his bazooka team killed the German commander, confusion spread in the enemy ranks. Dyas made this pointed observation:

Without their leader they didn’t know what to do. In the American Army every private is a general meaning they could adapt. This wasn’t the case with the German army. When their chain of command was broken they were helpless and didn’t know what to do. It took them a good two or three hours to get a junior officer to organize them.
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Timothy Dyas was somewhat overstating his case. Any unit is adversely affected by the loss of a commander, and German units were able to regroup under such circumstances. However, I believe his main point is valid. The hallmark of American soldiers has always been individual initiative. They think for themselves and do what has to be done.

This trait causes nightmares for their officers in peacetime. Young enlisted men are very imaginative in their pranks and subversion of regulations. However, in combat this individualism comes to the forefront. This trait comes straight from our Founding Fathers, who knew that human dignity and rights flow from God to individual citizens, not to governments or organizations. The individual has always stood at the top of the hierarchy in America, as it is the individual’s relationship to God that is sacrosanct. As the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image.”

—Genesis 1:26

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Memorial

In July 1943, the 505
^th
Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped at night into the hills north of Gela, Sicily, to disrupt enemy communications and to slow reinforcements to the invasion beaches. Even though high winds and navigation errors caused mass confusion among the airborne units, the officers and NCOs (noncommissioned officers) gathered stragglers together to get the job done. In one hard-fought action (described on another day of this month) a series of enemy pillboxes were eliminated along a strategic resupply route leading into Gela.

Sixty-one years later a group of U.S. Navy and Italian officials joined together in a ceremony to honor the American paratroopers who fell in this action. A memorial was built on the site where three German pillboxes are still visible. The names of thirty-nine Americans who lost their lives in the battle are inscribed on the memorial.

The acting mayor of the nearby Sicilian village of Niscemi said, “ These young American Soldiers defended the ideals of freedom and democracy upon which western civilization was founded.”

“ We give thanks to the American soldiers who fought and died for our liberation, an event that changed the history of our country,” said the mayor of Gela. “ Yet we see them not as foreigners, but as our heroes for what they did.”

During the ceremony a minister talked about the courage of the fallen paratroopers and the courage of those American and Italian soldiers serving in the present. “ We ask you to continue instilling that same courage in (these soldiers) who at this moment are putting their lives on the line on foreign soil so that people may be free.”
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