Yanks capture key hill from Nazis in Sicily
Americans forced to rout German soldiers individually
By Richard Mowrer
Northern Sicily, Italy –
The Americans late yesterday took another hill. It was a hard one to take, a long ridge nearly 1,000 feet high that drops sharply to the sea on Sicily’s northern coast.
Our fellows call it Lucky Ridge because in the seesaw fighting of control of the heights preceding our final attack yesterday, our artillery observation post up there had to clear out five different times and never lost a man in the process.
Yesterday’s attack, though, was different. The Americans were up against Germans and had to climb a steep hill under fire. Fortunately, our artillery gave them good support and now we hold Lucky Ridge, which had given the Germans a wonderful view of our territory along the coast and which now gives us a view of still more hills that we are going to have to take.
Ferret out Nazis
This is mountain warfare. The fighting consists of sniping with every arm from pistols to big 155s. The Germans have to be ferreted out almost individually from caves and rocks.
The only good road is the coast road from Palermo to Messina and, as the Germans retreat, they blow up bridges, cause rockslides to block the road, or blow up the road where it winds along the steep cliff’s edge to the sea.
This morning, we climbed Lucky Ridge. It is stony and steep, even if you follow a rocky mile trail part of the way up, but at least we did not have to crawl to the top under enemy fire the way our fellows did yesterday.
Find trouser leg
Getting on toward the town, we came upon somebody’s trouser leg with somebody’s leg was that of an American drab uniform. It had been cut off, presumably in order to bandage a leg wound.
A few yards farther up, we saw what had happened. An American rifle was leaning against an olive tree. Another one was on the ground at the foot of a steep sort of bluff about eight feet high. At the foot of the bluff, we found the remnants of an American first-aid kit. Near the remnants of the first-aid kit was an empty container for American hand grenades.
We climbed up to the top of a six-foot high bluff and saw the rest of the story – a dead German. Apparently, the hand grenade had got him.
Come upon grave
Farther up Lucky Ridge, we found a shallow hole, dug under an olive tree. In the hole were a bloodstained German-Italian dictionary and a Mauser rifle and ammunition but no German. But then, five yards off, we found his grave: A mound of earth with stones on top of it, and a piece of shingle marked “German soldier.”
Nearby, in the shade, some of our fellows were getting ready to move forward. Then we saw the German prisoner. He was stripped to the waist and bareheaded. He had been burying the German dead of Lucky Ridge. He said he was 18 and had been in the German Army since the age of 16, in the Polish, French and Romanian campaigns and at Stalingrad.
This was worse than Stalingrad, he said.