Yanks at edge of Munda base
Enemy believed trapped on New Georgia
By Frank Tremaine, United Press staff writer
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Post-war plan demanded by GOP faction
Policy association to put pressure on Congressmen and committee
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
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Flying reporter sights fires in Rome from 30 miles at sea
Nero’s famous blaze was only flicker compared with bomb-set conflagration, McMillian says
By Richard D. McMillan, United Press staff writer
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Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Southern Sicily, Italy – (by wireless)
The American assault upon the southern coast of Sicily was divided into sections, each operating independently under sub-commanders and with the troops brought here in separate fleets, each commanded by an admiral.
I traveled with the section that was assigned to the western third of the Americans’ designated territory. We had to take about 14 miles of beachfront. This force itself was subdivided into sections, each with an equal amount of beach to take.
The assault troops found nobody at all. The thing was apparently a complete surprise. Our troops had been trained to such a point that instead of being pleased with no opposition, they were thoroughly disgusted.
At two beaches, the opposition was trivial and soon over. On a fourth beach, it was stronger and the beach wasn’t occupied until after daylight, but even so, it was minor league defense in every sense of the word. Our sector covered the territory on each side of the city of Licata.
When I went ashore, I landed about two miles east of the city, waded ashore, and hitchhiked a ride into town with some engineers in a jeep. Licata is a city of about 35,000 with a small river running through it. It has a wide main street and a nice little harbor.
The buildings are of local stone, dull gray and old, but very substantial. The city is so colorless it blends into the surrounding dry countryside and you can’t see it a few miles away. A hill rises right behind the city and there is a sort of fort on the top.
Sicilians plenty bomb-jittery
When daylight came, we looked at the city from the boat deck and could see the American flag flying from the top of this fort, although the city itself had not surrendered yet. Some Rangers had climbed up there before daylight and hoisted our flag. The city hadn’t been bombed. The only damage came from a few shells we threw into it from the shops just after daylight. The corners were knocked off a few buildings and some good-sized holes were gouged in the streets, but the city got off pretty nicely.
Apparently, most of the people got out the night before, although we did see two or three hundred on the streets during the day. All the stores had their Latin-type shutters pulled down tightly. Although we hadn’t bombed right around here, the people certainly were bomb-jittery.
During an air raid by the Germans, I saw two soldiers herding about 100 civilians down the road to a prison camp, and when the shooting started at the German planes overhead, the people all took to an adjacent field and lay there cowering beside the little rows of grain that gave no protection at all.
They looked terrified and wouldn’t move when the soldiers ordered them up, and finally one soldier had to fire into the ground beside them to make them move.
Ernie laughs at defenses
Their defenses throughout our special sector were almost childish. They didn’t bother to mess up their harbor, nor to blow out the two river bridges which would have cut our forces in half. They only had a few mines on the beaches, and practically no barbed wire.
We’d come prepared to fight our way through a solid wall of mines, machine guns, artillery, barbed wire and liquid fire and we even expected to hit some new fiendish devices. Yet there was almost nothing to it. It was like stepping into the ring to meet Joe Louis and finding Caspar Milquetoast waiting there.
The Italians didn’t even leave many boobytraps for us. I almost stepped into one walking through a field, but it obviously had been dropped rather than planted. At the docks, we found whole boxes full of them that hadn’t even been opened.
The roadblocks outside town were laughable. They considered merely of light wooden frameworks about the size of a kitchen table around which barbed wire had been wrapped. These sections were laid across the road and all we had to do was pick them up and lay them aside. They wouldn’t have stopped a cow, let alone a tank.
The civilians in town told us they were sick of being starved by the Germans and didn’t want to fight us. It was obvious they didn’t, but in these early days we have little contact with other American forces so it’s possible maybe that the Italians laid down here in order to fight harder somewhere else.
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Nazi fliers in Russia transferred to Sicily
Allied HQ, North Africa (UP) –
The Allies announced today that German airmen from the Russian front have entered the Battle of Sicily, some of them evidently shifted while the summer campaigning there was getting underway.
A joint statement of the U.S. Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force disclosed the presence in Sicily of Nazi airmen whose transfer must have weakened Germany. The statement recalled repeated statements by Allied leaders of intentions to ease the German pressure on Russia.
Notebooks and dictionaries brought from Russia were found in a German Air Force officers’ mess at the Comiso Airfield, Sicily, the announcement said.
Defends war work –
Ickes turns his guns on harping critics
Interior Secretary says officials’ only reward ‘is to be spit upon as bureaucrats;’ New York, Washington and Chicago papers rapped
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Völkischer Beobachter (July 21, 1943)
Die Schande von Rom zeugt gegen die Kulturbarbaren –
Einhellige Empörung über das geschichtliche Verbrechen
Jüdisch-sadistische Zerstörungswut tobte über der Ewigen Stadt
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Erneut 562 Feindpanzer im Osten abgeschossen –
Sowjetangriffe brachen blutig zusammen
dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 20. Juli –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Der Ansturm der Sowjets gegen die Ostfront scheiterte auch gestern an der erfolgreichen Abwehr unserer von der Luftwaffe hervorragend unterstützten Truppen, die dabei erneut 562 Panzer abschossen.
Am Kubanbrückenkopf scheiterten mehrere feindliche Angriffe gegen die Höhenstellung westlich Krymskaja, zum Teil wurden sie schon in der Bereitstellung zerschlagen.
Unter Einsatz weiterer Verstärkungen wiederholte der Feind seine heftigen Durchbruchsangriffe am Mius und am mittleren Donez, sie wurden in harten und wechselvollen Kämpfen abgewiesen.
Während im Raum nördlich Bjelgorod nur örtlich begrenzte Teilangriffe des Gegners gemeldet werden, halten die schweren Abwehrkämpfe im Kampfraum von Orel weiter an. Durch wuchtige Gegenangriffe wurden die Sowjets an einigen Stellen zurückgeworfen. An anderen Stellen brachten unsere Truppen in erbitterten Kämpfen den Angriff starker feindlicher Infanterie- und Panzerkräfte zum Stehen.
Auf Sizilien wurden zahlreiche Angriffe starker feindlicher Infanterie- und Panzerkräfte in harten Kämpfen und im Zusammenwirken mit deutschen Nahkampffliegerkräften abgeschlagen. Die deutsche und italienische Luftwaffe setzte ihre Angriffe gegen die Transportflotte des Feindes auch gestern mit gutem Erfolg fort. Bei diesen Angriffen wurde unter anderem ein feindlicher Frachter von über 10.000 BRT. durch Bombenwurf versenkt. In der vergangenen Nacht griffen deutsche Kampfflugzeuge Malta an.
Der brutale Terrorangriff auf Rom –
London begeistert, Washington befriedigt
Von unserer Stockholmer Schriftleitung
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166 Tote und 1659 Verletzte in Rom –
Feinddruck in Sizilien hartnäckig aufgehalten
dnb. Rom, 20. Juli –
Das Hauptquartier der italienischen Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Der verstärkte feindliche Druck auf die Stellung der Achsentruppen in Sizilien wird weiterhin hartnäckig aufgehalten.
Östlich von Sizilien versenkten italienische U-Boote einen Dampfer von 8000 BRT. und torpedierten einen weiteren Dampfer großer Tonnage. Ein Handelsschiff mittlerer Größe und ein Kriegsschiff von nicht näher bezeichnetem Typ wurden von unseren Torpedoflugzeugen getroffen.
Auf der Reede von Augusta und im Hafen von La Valetta beschädigten italienische und deutsche Bomber vor Anker liegende feindliche Schiffe.
Die Schäden, die von amerikanischen Verbänden, welche mit mehreren hundert viermotorigen Bombern gestern drei Stunden lang Rom angriffen, verursacht wurden, sind sehr groß. Unter anderem wurden Gebäude, die der Religionsausübung und der Wissenschaft geheiligt sind, sowie Arbeiterwohnviertel schwer getroffen und zum Teil zerstört, vor allem die Basilika San Lorenzo, der Friedhof Verano, die Universitätsstadt, der Gebäudekomplex der Poliklinik, die Wohnhäuser der Stadtteile Prenestina und Latina.
Die bisher festgestellte Zahl der Opfer unter der Zivilbevölkerung beträgt 166 Tote und 1659 Verletzte. Während und nach dem Angriff bewahrte die Bevölkerung Disziplin und Ruhe.
Sieben Flugzeuge wurden von der Flak und eines von Jägern abgeschossen.
In der vergangenen Nacht waren Neapel und kleinere Orte in Campania und Latium das Ziel feindlicher Luftangriffe. Es werden leichte Schäden und beschränkte Verluste unter der Bevölkerung gemeldet.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 21, 1943)
CENTRAL SICILY BASE CAPTURED
Yanks occupy Enna in drive toward coast
Canadians aid; half of island now held by Allied forces
By Virgil Pinkley, United Press staff writer
Allied HQ, North Africa –
U.S. and Canadian forces driving to within 28 miles of the North African coast today captured Enna, the main Axis communications center and base in central Sicily, while the British 8th Army pressed a hammer and tongs battle for the east coast port of Catania.
The fall of Enna, a town of 27,000 on a high horseshoe-shaped hill in mid-Sicily, cut off German and Italian rearguard troops and gave the Allies control of a network of roads leading to all corners of the island. French Goumiers, native Moroccan troops, participated in the Allied advance.
Hold half of Sicily
The Allied forces now occupy one-half of the 10,000-square-mile island of Sicily and a considerable number of Axis troops, including Germans, were believed cut off in the western part of the island.
The Canadians closed in on Enna from the southeast, breaking through stubborn enemy resistance, while the U.S. 7th Army reached the road junction from the southwest, after flanking operations that carried some units farther northward toward the coast.
The effect of the capture of Enna was to split Sicily in half, with the allies controlling all territory south of a line running from Catania on the east coast to Enna and thence southwestward to a point beyond Agrigento, where the Americans were still advancing. Enna represented an advance of about 35 airline miles from the nearest south coast port at Gela, but the troops covered many more miles in their offensive over mountain roads.
Vital road network
Of greatest importance, however, was the seizure of the road network centering at Enna. The Axis, with mid-island defenses crumbling, was being driven steadily back toward northeast Sicily and its main communication lines are vanishing except on the north coast.
The rearguard action fought by the enemy in the Enna sector as well as the fierce battle at Catania were regarded as designed to gain time while the main Axis forces fall back toward Messina, only a few miles from the toe of the Italian boot.
Two Axis armored divisions were among the enemy forces falling back from the Enna area.
At Catania, however, enemy resistance continued strong against the 8th Army of gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery. Field dispatches said that the battlefields south of Catania were strewn with German dead and wrecked tanks of the Hermann Göring Division, while Allied warships and airplanes hammered the coastal road leading northward to Messina.
The Algiers radio said today that Catania is now being attacked from all sides and is expected to fall “at any moment.”
Prisoners taken in Sicily were estimated to total around 40,000, more than half of them taken by the Americans. As usual, Italian prisoners complained that the Germans took their transport and fled, leaving the Italians to walk. They also complained that the Italian government had given them little equipment with which to fight.
Plane score even
During the last 24 hours, six enemy and six Allied planes were destroyed.
Marauder medium bombers attacked the Vibo Valentia Airfield in southern Italy. The field was covered the bombs among dispersed planes and hangars. The second wave found the hangars already burning fiercely.
Hangars were also set afire at the Monte Corvino Airdrome in southern Italy by Mitchell medium bombers. They bombed between 20 and 40 parked aircraft, setting fire to many.
Warhawks that gave Sardinia its first attack in several days aimed at airfields, factories, a reservoir dam and ammunition dump. They were credited with all Axis planes shot down during the day.
On another mission, Warhawks attacked railroad marshalling yards at Partinico and Alcamo in northwest Sicily.
Strike north of Naples
A large force of British and Canadian Wellingtons bombed an airfield at Aquino, north of Naples, Monday night, leaving eight large and 22 small fires burning.
Raddusa, midway between Enna and Catania, was hard hit by Mitchell bombers, which started big fires and caused explosions. The Allied planes encountered no Axis fighter opposition.
Medium bombers also attacked the focal enemy communications point of Randazzo north of Mt. Etna Monday night.
Intruder planes attacked railroad and highway communications in Italy Monday night.