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11. The Battle for Salerno
- The University Press of Kentucky
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There mustn’t be any doubt in your minds. We don’t give another inch. This is it. Don’t yield anything. We’re here to stay. —Gen. Mark W. Clark Except for sneak air raids on the transport area, D-day Plus One, September 10, 1943, was a quiet one on Salerno beachhead. In VI Corps sector, the Americans spent the day unloading and regrouping. PC-542 was patrolling off the beachhead. By afternoon, Radioman Second Class Joseph J. Smith wrote in his diary, “most (of the transports) were unloaded; LSTs and LCIs also. The transports hadn’t moved away from the beach, and at 2315 another raid. This time they meant business. Every type of flare was dropped, some directly above us. We heard a dive-bomber, then the whistling bombs—then we saw the splash and explosion hundred yards off our port beam. Shrapnel was dropping all around us! So close, you could hear the swish of air!” During this raid the destroyer Benson was almost hit. In his diary, James R. Vaughan wrote, “He dropped one bomb but it was a dud and landed about 50 feet astern of us.” Benson’s gunners held their fire “until he passed clear and to port of us. We could have hit him with spuds. The radar man tracked him and reported him to the Captain as enemy as he failed to answer our RDF [radio direction finder] challenge, but the skipper said nothing so we didn’t fire. As he went over, we made a turn to starboard and fired 32 rounds of five inch ammo at him, but he kept going just the same.”1 Enemy air raids hastened the rate of unloading on D-day Plus One, for most transport and LST crews were eager to get their cargo ashore and sail for safer waters. To reduce the time they had to spend off SalerCHAPTER 11 THE BATTLE FOR SALERNO p-Tomblin 11.qx2 6/30/04 1:15 PM Page 269 no, Admiral Hall ordered them into the inner anchorage and, to expedite unloading, put shallow draft LCTs and LCMs to work ferrying tanks, vehicles, and cargo from transports directly to the beaches. He also asked Admiral Hewitt for men from the amphibious ships to augment army stevedores. Hewitt complied with the request but later grumbled, “the Army had no established plan for beach operations.” Despite this lack of organization on the beaches, by 2200 on September 10, Hall’s force had landed thirty-eight thousand troops, thirty-two hundred vehicles, and about seven thousand tons of cargo. Hall then reluctantly turned over command of the Southern Attack Force to Richard Conolly in Biscayne and sailed that evening with the flagship Samuel Chase and the empty transports.2 Ashore on D-day Plus One, VI Corps was able to move inland for the Germans had withdrawn to the center of the Salerno plain for counterattacks against the British Tenth Corps. In fact, when General Clark came ashore on the morning of D-day Plus One, he recalled, “The situation looked so good that I sent a message to General Alexander saying that we soon should be ready to make the attack northward through Vietri Pass toward Naples.” Ensign Sydney E. Wright saw the general on the beach that morning. “The beach was almost deserted, a target area; tiger tanks were in firing range and we thought the beach was mined.” Despite artillery fire and enemy planes diving on the beach, Wright recalled, “a lone man walked north. Commanding general Mark Clark. I stood in salute. Suddenly a Luftwaffe strafer made a run on the beach. He sprayed the beach flying so low that he seemed to touch us. Clark took no notice; calmly walked on.”3 In the British sector, however, September 10 was a day of sharp fighting , especially around the town of Battapaglia. Savage fighting also broke out in the Vietri area. A British reconnaissance unit was ambushed near the Cava bridge, and Royal Marine commandos in the hills near the Vietri defile found themselves in the line of fire as camouflaged German troops, their faces painted green, tried to encircle the pass. The Royal Marines attempted to delay the attacks, and Col. Jack Churchill’s No. 2 Commando led a successful counterattack. Throughout D-day Plus One, Royal Navy fire-support ships stood by offshore to deliver fire support whenever the two combatants were not too intertwined. HMS Uganda pulverized the Nocera...