Once There Was a War (22 page)

A RAGGED CREW

December 1, 1943
—When the plans were being made to capture a German radar station on an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. forty American paratroopers were assigned to do the job, forty men and three officers. They came to the naval station from somewhere in Africa. They didn’t say where. They came in the night sometime, and in the morning they were bedded down in a Nissen hut, a hard and ragged crew. Their uniforms were not the new and delightful affairs of the posters. The jackets, with all the pockets, and the coarse canvas trousers had been washed so often and dried in the hot sun that they had turned nearly white, and they were ragged at the edges.

The officers, two lieutenants and a captain, were dressed in no way different from their men, and they had been months without their insignia of rank. The captain had two strips of adhesive tape stuck on his shoulders, to show that he was a captain at all, and one of his lieutenants had sewed a piece of yellow cloth on his shoulders for his rank. They had been ten months in the desert, and there was no place to buy the pretty little bars to wear on their shoulders. They had not jumped from a plane since they had finished their training in the United States, but the rigid, hard training of their bodies had gone right on in the desert.

There had been no luxuries for these men, either. Sometimes the cigarettes ran out, and they just didn’t have any. They had often lived on field rations for weeks at a time, and they had long forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed, even a cot. They had all looked somewhat alike, and perhaps this is the characteristic look of the paratrooper. The eyes were very wide set, and mostly they were either gray or blue. The hair was cropped, almost shaved, giving their heads a curious egg look. Their ears seemed to stick straight out from their heads, perhaps because all their hair was cut off. Their skins were burned almost black by the desert sun, which made their eyes and their teeth seem very light, and their lips were ragged and rough from months of the sun.

The strangest thing about them was their quietness and their almost shy good manners. Their voices were so soft that you could barely hear them, and they were extremely courteous. The officers gave their orders almost under their breaths, and there was none of the stiffness of ordinary military discipline. It was almost as though they all thought alike so that few orders were necessary at all. When something was to be done, the moving or loading of their own supplies, for instance, they worked like parts of a machine, and no one seemed to move quickly, but there was no waste movement and the work was done with incredible speed. They did not waste time saluting. A man saluted his officer only when he spoke to him or was spoken to.

These paratroopers had as little equipment as you can imagine. There were some rifles, some tommy guns, and the officers had the new carbines. In addition, each man had a knife and four hand grenades, painted yellow, but they had had their grenades so long that the yellow paint was just about worn off. The rifles had been polished and cleaned so long and so often that the black coating was worn off in places and the bright metal shone through. The little American flags they wore on their shoulders were pale from sunburn and from the washing of their clothes. There was no excess equipment of any kind. They had what they wore, and they could carry. And for some reason they gave the impression of great efficiency.

In the morning their officers came into the conference to be instructed in the nature of the action. They filed in shyly and took their places at the long, rough table. The naval men distributed maps and the action was described in detail, part of it on a large blackboard that was set up against a wall.

The island was Ventotene, and there was a radar station on it which searched the whole ocean north and south of Naples. The radar was German, but it was thought that there were very few Germans. There were two or three hundred carabinieri there, however, and it was not known whether they would fight or not. Also, there were a number of political prisoners on the island who were to be released, and the island was to be held by these same paratroopers until a body of troops could be put ashore.

The three officers regarded the blackboard with their wide-set eyes, and now and then they glanced quietly at one another. When the discussion was finished the naval captain said, “Do you understand? Are there any questions?”

The captain of paratroopers studied the board with the map of the island, and he asked softly, “Any artillery?”

“Yes, there are some coastal guns, but if they use them we’ll get them with naval guns.”

“Oh! Yes, I see. Well, I hope the Italians don’t do anything bad. I mean I hope they don’t shoot at us.” His voice was very shy.

A naval officer said jokingly, “Don’t your men want to fight?”

“It isn’t that,” the captain said. “We’ve been a long time in the desert. My men are pretty trigger happy. They might be very rough if anybody shoots at them.”

The meeting broke up and the Navy invited the paratroopers to lunch in the Navy mess.

“If you’ll excuse us,” the captain said, “I think we’ll get back to the men. They’ll want to know what we’re going to do. I’ll just take this map along and explain it to them.” He paused apologetically and added, “You see, they’ll want to know.” The three officers got up from the table and went out. Their men were in the Nissen hut. The ragged captain and his lieutenants walked across the street, blinding in the white sunlight, and they went inside the Nissen hut and closed the door. They stayed a long time in there, explaining the action to the forty men.

VENTOTENE

December 3, 1943
—The units of the naval task force made their rendezvous at sea and at dusk and made up their formation and set off at a calculated speed to be at the island of Ventotene at moonset. Their mission was to capture the island and to take the German radar which was there. The moon was very large and it was not desirable that the people on the island should know what force was coming against them, consequently the attack was not to be attempted until the darkness came. The force spread out in its traveling formation and moved slowly over the calm sea.

On a destroyer of the force, the paratroopers who were to make the assault sat on the deck and watched the moon. They seemed a little uneasy. After being trained to drop in from the sky their first action was to be a seagoing one. Perhaps their sense of fitness was outraged.

All along the Italian coast the air force was raiding. The naval force could see the flares parachuting down and the burst of explosives and the lines of tracers off to the right. But the coast was kept too busy for anyone to bother with the little naval force heading northward.

The timing was exact. The moon turned very red before it set, and just as it set the high hump of the island showed against its face. And the moment it had set the darkness was thick so that you could not see the man standing at your shoulder. There were no lights on the island at all. This island has been blacked out for three years. When the naval force had taken its positions a small boat equipped with a loudspeaker crept in toward the beach. From five hundred yards off shore it beamed its loudspeaker on the darkened town and a terrible voice called its proclamation.

“Italians,” it said, “you must now surrender. We have come in force. Your German ally has deserted you. You have fifteen minutes to surrender. Display three white lights for surrender. At the end of fifteen minutes we will open fire. This will be repeated once more.” The announcement was made once more—“... three white rights for surrender.” And then the night was silent.

On the bridge of a destroyer the officers peered at the darkness in the direction of the island. At the ship’s rails the men looked off into the darkness. The executive officer kept looking at his wrist watch and the night was so dark that the illuminated dial could be seen six feet away. Gun control had the firing data ready. The guns of the whole force were trained on the island. And the minutes went slowly. No one wanted to fire on the town, to turn the concentrated destruction of high explosive on the dark island. But the minutes dragged interminably on, ten—eleven—twelve. The green, glowing hands moved on the face of the wrist watch. The captain spoke a word into his phone, and there was a rustle and the door of the plotting room opened for a moment and then closed.

And then, as the minute hand crawled over fourteen minutes, three white rockets went up from the island. They flowed upward and curved lazily over and fell back. And then, not content, three more went up. The captain sighed with relief and spoke again into his phone. And the whole ship seemed to relax.

In the wardroom the commodore of the task force sat at the head of the table. He was dressed in khaki, his shirt open at the throat and his sleeves rolled up. He wore a helmet, and a tommy gun lay on the table in front of him. “I’ll go in and take the surrender,” he said, and he called the names of five men to go with him. “The paratroopers are to come in as soon as you can get them in the landing boat,” he said to the executive officer. “Lower the whaleboat.”

The deck was very dark. You had to feel your way along. The boat davits were swung out as they always are in action, and now a crew was lowering the whaleboat. They held it at deck level for the men to get in—a coxswain and an engineer were already in the boat. Five officers, armed with sub-machine guns, clambered over the rail and settled themselves. Each man had a drum of bullets on his gun and each wore a pouch which carried another drum. The boat lowered away, and just as it touched the water the engineer started the engine. The boat cast off and turned toward the shore. It was pretty much of a job of guess work because you could not see the shore. The commodore said, “We’ve got to get in and disarm them before they change their minds. Can’t tell what they’ll do if we give them time.” And he said to his men, “Don’t take any chances. Open fire if anyone shows the slightest sign of resisting.”

The boat slipped toward the dark shore, her motors muffled and quiet.

December 6, 1943
—There are times when the element of luck is so sharply involved in an action that sense of dread sets in afterward. And such was the invasion of the island of Ventotene by five men in a whale-boat. They knew that there was a German radar crew on the island, but they did not know that it numbered eighty-seven men, all heavily armed, and moreover heavily armed with machine guns. They did not know that this crew had ammunition and food stored to last six weeks. All the men in the whaleboat did know was that the Italians had put up three white flares in the night as a token of surrender.

The main harbor of Ventotene is a narrow inlet that ends against a cliff like an amphitheater, and on this semicircular cliff the town stands high above the water. To the left of this inlet there is a pier and a little breakwater, unconnected with the land and designed to keep the swells from breaking on the pier, and finally to the left of the pier there is another inlet very like the true harbor, which, however, is no harbor at all.

The whaleboat with the five men in it approached the dark island and when it was close to the shore the commander shone a flashlight quickly and it showed a deep inlet. Naturally, he thought this was a harbor, and the little boat coasted easily into it. Then the light flashed on again and ranged about, only to discover that this was not the true harbor at all but the false inlet.

The whaleboat put about and headed out again and soon it came to what looked like a sand bar stuck out of the water. And again the light flashed out, and it was seen that it was a breakwater. Again the boat proceeded, but approximately ten minutes had been consumed in being slightly lost. The third try was successful and the little boat found the entrance of the true harbor and nosed into it. And just as the whaleboat put its head into the little harbor an explosion came from behind the breakwater, and there was the sound of running feet, and then from the top of the cliff there came another big explosion, and then progressively back on the hill more and more blasts.

There was nothing to do then but to go ahead. The whaleboat plunged into the pier and the five men leaped out. Behind the breakwater lay a German E-boat and beside her stood a German soldier. He had just thrown a potato-masher grenade at the E-boat to destroy and sink her. One of the American officers ran at him, and with one motion the German ripped out his Luger pistol and tossed it in the water and then put both of his hands over his head. The lancing light of a powerful flashlight circled him. The officer who had taken him rushed him to the whaleboat and put him under guard of the boat’s engineer.

Now a crowd of Italians came swarming down from the hill, crying, “Surrender, surrender!” And as they came they dropped their rifles on the ground, in an unholy heap. The commodore pointed to a place on the quay. “Stack them there,” he said. “Get everything you have and stack it right there.”

Now the landing was crisscrossed with lights. The five Americans stood side by side with their guns ready, while the Italian carabinieri brought their guns and put them in a pile. Everyone seemed to be confused and glad and frightened. The people wanted to crowd close to see the Americans and at the same time the ugly pig snouts of the tommy guns warned them back. It is not reassuring to be one of five men who are ostensibly holding a line against two hundred and fifty men, even if those men seem to have surrendered.

Every one of the Italians was talking. No one was listening. And no one wanted to listen. And then breaking through their ranks came a remarkable figure, a tall gray-haired old man dressed in pink pajamas. He stalked through the chattering, shouting ranks of the carabinieri and he said, “I speak English.” Immediately the shouting stopped and the ring of faces showed intensely in the flashlight beams. “I have been a political prisoner here for three years,” the old man said. For some reason he did not seem funny in his pink pajamas. He had a great dignity, even enough to offset his costume.