Stiff Resistance in Italy
Heroes Remember
Stiff Resistance in Italy
Our regiment was supposed to be the first ashore in Italy. We
went, when my company went ashore, we were supposed to be the
first on the beach. When we got ashore, the British paratroopers
were sitting on the beach waiting for us. So we weren't the
first there. And, that's when we start running into stiff
resistance. But on the 8th of September, is when Italy
capitulated. We had run into an Italian paratroop division, they
were sleeping in a gully, and we had walked into their camp,
that night we lost a few men there. Because everybody was
they never expected and they never heard us coming
in and we didn't know they were there. And that afternoon, they
all surrendered, we lost four or five men, and they surrendered
and we shipped them back, back of the lines. And that, that
afternoon, or that evening, the Italians were in front of us and
they start firing and all hell broke loose. They were firing
artillery and we thought it was a counter-attack but then a
fellow came down with a white flag and told us that it was over.
And after that we start running into stuff ‘cause the Germans
took over from there and we start running into stiff resistance.
I don't know if you ever quit walking up a hill or driving up a
hill, it was all hairpin turns. Our trucks couldn't make a turn,
they were, the highways were so crooked that our trucks, you
couldn't make go around a turn and one time you had to back up
and...So when you got up on the mountain looking down you had
trucks going all directions. But it was, it was tough for, it
was tough for our tank brigades because all the Germans had to
do was knock the first one out and the back one and then where
do you go? You're, you're looking thousands of feet down,
there's no where to go so you were sittin' ducks.
It was one of the toughest falls, time of the year that I've
ever spent in five years in the Army. We had bush clothing, and
you know what bush clothing are, they're like onion, onion
sacks, just very light clothing. And our winter clothing never
caught up to us until, I guess it was sometime in December, and
it was just hell. It was cold, cold, weather was cold at night
eh. And you get rain, you get rain with that and it, it was
really tough. We liberated a few times, Potenza was a town,
Campobasso, we went through there and it was tough. The
resistance was getting tougher all the time. They knew they were
on their last, you know, like they were told, like they were
told to hold Ortona at all costs. You know what they say, what
they always say when people talk about the troops in Ortona you
say you spend Christmas in hell eh. You know, ‘cause we had, we
had lost 2600 casualties in that and there was over 550 killed.
Takin' Ortona. So that was the toughest battle that I was in and
all during the war. The Germans, they were fighting rear guard
all the way and they put up resistance every town we went into
they, you had to fight your way all the way and,
I wouldn't want to go through that again.
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