A Death in San Pietro Read online

  A Death in San Pietro

  ALSO BY TIM BRADY

  Twelve Desperate Miles: The Epic World War II

  Voyage of the SS Contessa

  THE UNTOLD STORY OF

  Ernie Pyle, John Huston,

  AND THE

  Fight for Purple Heart Valley

  TIM BRADY

  DA CAPO PRESS

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  Copyright © 2013 by Tim Brady

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

  Set in 12 point Adobe Garamond Pro by Marcovaldo Productions for the Perseus Books Group

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  First Da Capo Press edition 2013

  ISBN: 978-0-306-82215-5 (e-book)

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.dacapopress.com

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Susan, Sam, and Hannah

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1 “The Hoosier Vagabond”

  CHAPTER 2 The Texas Division

  CHAPTER 3 Tunisia

  CHAPTER 4 Morocco

  CHAPTER 5 Pyle in Sicily

  CHAPTER 6 Salerno

  CHAPTER 7 Altavilla

  CHAPTER 8 The Sorrento Peninsula

  CHAPTER 9 Capri

  CHAPTER 10 Why We Fight

  CHAPTER 11 Pyle and Huston

  CHAPTER 12 Winterstellugen

  CHAPTER 13 Replacements

  CHAPTER 14 Thanksgiving

  CHAPTER 15 Observers

  CHAPTER 16 Eve of Battle

  CHAPTER 17 Sammucro

  CHAPTER 18 A Bad Day on the Mountain

  CHAPTER 19 Purple Heart Valley

  CHAPTER 20 Aftermath

  CHAPTER 21 New Year

  CHAPTER 22 The Death of Captain Waskow

  CHAPTER 23 Finishing Up

  CHAPTER 24 Rapido

  CHAPTER 25 A Final Posting

  Notes

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  MAPS

  Salerno Landing

  Battle of San Pietro 1

  Battle of San Pietro 2

  A Death in San Pietro

  Prologue

  ONE UNIT OF SOLDIERS heading down the mountain, the other heading up. It was no easy task in either direction. Mt. Sammucro was a bare heap of rocks looming above the village of San Pietro: almost 4,000 feet high and so steep and craggy that the Italian mules carrying supplies to the American forces at its summit could only make it to the tree line, a third of the way up, before giving way to the sharp boulders and scree.

  The constant precipitation on the mountain that fall, a mix of rain, sleet, and snow, didn’t make the travel any easier. The rocks were greasy; the pebbly footing slipped away beneath combat boots. Both units were looking for a chance to pause among the hard ledges and catch their breath. Smoke a cigarette if they had ’em.

  No one made a record of what the soldiers talked about that night, but there was business to discuss. Company B, moving up the mountain, would want to know the state of the defense above on the summit. Company I, moving down Sammucro, would be interested in what was going on at headquarters below. When would be the next assault on San Pietro?

  There was a moment to talk about small things, too. Maybe something about the ironic circumstances that had brought both companies, each organized in neighboring small, south central Texas towns, to this Italian mountain just in time for Christmas 1943. Perhaps there was a passing mention of how the holiday would be celebrated back home.

  In Belton, Texas, where Company I had been put together as a National Guard unit in the late 1930s, the Sunday school classes of the First Baptist Church were practicing a Christmas pageant, while the Presbyterians had already held theirs the Friday before. The Beltonian movie theater was showing Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis.

  Sixty miles to the northeast, in Mexia, Texas, the home base for Company B, rehearsals were under way for the annual Christmas concert held at the City Auditorium. The Black Cat Band would be performing Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” to highlight their show. War bonds would be available for sale at the door.

  Both local papers had plenty of war news, too—“Soldier Letters Needed This Week for Dec. 24 News” read one column, reminding mothers to get news of their boys’ overseas duty down to the paper if they wanted the reports to be printed by Christmas. But there was little mention of what was happening here in Italy, right on this mountain.

  Both Companies B and I belonged to the 143rd Regiment of the 36th Infantry Division, part of the U.S. Fifth Army. They had arrived here together in Italy four months earlier; combat rookies, fresh from the port city of Oran, suddenly shoved out of their landing craft and onto the beaches of Salerno with no time to look back.

  With the first splash of water came the terrible guns of war: the sputter of small arms fire, the endless scream of shells, the thump-whistle of mortars, and the deafening thunder of explosion after explosion. Dust and smoke and quaking ground. What remained for the eye to comprehend when all was settled made no sense at all: misshapen dead men, gaping holes in the landscape, strong, steel vehicles now twisted and mangled in heaps, solid stone buildings turned to rubble.

  Three weeks of this brand of hell followed the landing, then came a moment of relative quiet, when the men of the 36th were able to actually see the foreign land they had arrived at. Ancient ruins and vistas, as beautiful as any these boys from the hill country of south central Texas had ever seen, dotted the landscape. They had heard of Vesuvius and Pompeii, Naples and the Isle of Capri. Now here they were amidst striking blue seas and dappled sunlight that glimmered through lemon trees and olive groves. There was finally time between the action to look, to contemplate the land, to eyeball its people: dirty, hungry, brutalized by war, yet grateful, oddly enough, given the amount of ammunition the Allies were dropping on their homes and villages, for the presence of the Americans.

  But the 36th returned quickly to war. After Salerno and Naples came the abysmal crossing at Volturno River. And then rain and more rain, until now when they faced this line of mountains. The imposing range ran all the way across the mid-section of Italy from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Seas. High, rock-strewn piles, bare of vegetation on the tallest of them, including Sammucro. Just great hunks of boulders, sharp arêtes, crags, ridges, and cliffs; but plenty of places for the young men on both sides of the fighting to crouch from the bullets and mortars, lean deep as possible into the shade of those rocks, and try to breathe deep, slow the racing of their hearts.

  The goal of the Americans lay just on the other side of Sammucro, designated “Hill 1205” on army maps. There the Liri Valley spread out between the line of hills and mountains, and pointed northwest toward Rome. Down its center was Highway Six, the ancient Via Latina, which every Italian military leader from Caesar to Garibaldi to Il Duce knew as the link between the boot of Italy and its heart. This was the Allied treasure, though even now some wondere
d why. What was so important about the Liri Valley, about Rome, about whatever would come next in Italy? Wasn’t the real goal to get to Berlin, and would that ever happen over the Alps?

  That thinking was not encouraged among the men going down and coming up the mountain. They needed to focus on the thing preventing a simple sweep up the valley. The German army had built a rock solid line of defense across the peaks and down into the valley: concrete pillboxes, rock-walled machine gun nests, a ring of well-placed artillery, and spotters stationed along the crests of the mountains. They held the high ground as the Allies approached, and it was the work and duty of men in Companies B and I to take those positions from the Germans.

  Five days earlier, Company B and the rest of 1st Battalion had taken the peak of Mt. Sammucro, and for three days fought tooth-and-nail to hold on, facing one counter-attack after another, until Company I of the 2nd Battalion, had relieved them. After two days down below, with Company I holding the position above, Company B returned to battle.

  Huddled together on the hillside now, the two companies shared smokes and small talk. Not so much warriors, but exhausted, small town boys carrying weapons and heavy packs. In both units, going up and coming down, muscles ached and feet hurt. Emotions were kept in check. They were too tired to think in terms of fate or destiny—what was going to happen in this battle, who was going up the mountain, who was going down, who was going to live and who was going to die? Fate, however, was considering them.

  CAPTAIN HENRY WASKOW knew both outfits. Raised near Belton, he had signed up for Company I along with two of his brothers, and a good many other young men in town, back in the late 1930s. Waskow had moved over to Company B when he was promoted to captain, while still stationed in the States.

  Smooth-faced and slight of stature, quiet and unassuming, there was nothing physical that set Henry Waskow apart from the rest, nothing in his countenance that made him particularly impressive. He thought of himself as a little odd, someone a bit out of step with the norm. Yet there was something obviously purposeful about Waskow that commanded the attention of the men in both companies. He was a man weighted with a sense of responsibility.

  In an army composed of citizen soldiers, Henry Waskow was an ideal member. He acknowledged and accepted the responsibility of leading his men up the mountain once again. He felt the trust of those men as well as the trust his country had placed in him to lead them well. He believed fervently in the U.S. Army’s mission and had volunteered for this service because, with deep sincerity, he knew his country needed him. That was who he was: a man with few adornments.

  For all of his noble responsibility, however, Waskow might have remained as anonymous as the other members of Companies B and I, if not for a man hanging out with the Italian mules down below; a man, who despite his uniform and Army-issue cap would never be mistaken for a GI; a man deeply ambivalent about whether or not American soldiers should even be climbing this mountain, or laying down their young lives to take it.

  Ernie Pyle and Henry Waskow would never cross paths on Mt. Sammucro, would never speak a word to each other, would never share a drink or a cigarette; but fate was about to draw them together.

  And as fate would have it, they were about to make one of the great stories of World War II.

  1

  “The Hoosier Vagabond”

  “It is hard for you at home to realize what an immense, complicated, sprawling institution a theater of war actually is. As it appears to you in the newspapers, war is a clear-cut matter of landing so many men overseas, moving them from port to the battlefield, advancing them against the enemy with guns firing, and they win or lose.

  “To look at war that way is like seeing a trailer of a movie, and saying you’ve seen the whole picture . . .”

  —Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War, 1943

  OFF THE COAST OF SICILY, JULY 1943

  Ernie Pyle was in an unusual setting. After spending the past seven months tasting the grit and sand of terra firma in North Africa, most often from the foxholes, tents, and improvised lean-to’s of U.S. Army infantrymen, the war correspondent was now at sea—a part of a vast armada of some two thousand U.S. and British ships, sailing from African ports to Sicily, there to wage war on the Italian and German forces arrayed to defend the island.

  Among the many ships, scores of landing crafts whisked the tens of thousands of invading Allied troops onto the beaches of Sicily. There were tugs and minesweepers, destroyers and cruisers, submarines and sub-chasers—a large city of ships, as Pyle pictured them—all cruising in a vast sweep of ocean toward battle.

  Global forces were at work here: enormous sums of money and human capital had been poured into the operation. Time, energy, natural resources, and endless supplies of manufactured goods. And more of this sort of massive enterprise was coming. The invasion of Sicily was just the second great step in the Allied war in Europe, coming quick on the heels of battle in North Africa, in which these same combined forces—U.S. and Great Britain—had driven the forces of Erwin Rommel and the German army from Tunisia.

  Like Operation Torch, the invasion of Oran and Morocco seven months earlier, this huge collection of armies and ships sailing toward an impoverished island of Italy was prelude to even bigger conflicts to come. For more than a year, a steady stream of American forces and supplies had been shipped to Great Britain for storage and accumulation, all in preparation for the greatest invasion of them all: the one not yet definitively scheduled, but coming sometime in 1944, and aimed more directly than this assault, at the heart of Nazi Germany.

  It was typical of Ernie Pyle that amid all these global forces, he chose to boil down his description of what was happening here off the shores of Sicily to the predicament of one young captain of a sub-chaser, coming around to a fleet flagship, looking for a small bit of help in the midst of the high drama.

  Dusk was fast turning to dark night on the placid Mediterranean. All lights in the convoy were blacked out as Sicily neared. On board the U.S.S. Biscayne, the flagship on which Pyle was berthed, he watched as the sub-chaser appeared out of the gloaming and came to a softly puttering halt about thirty yards away. From his perch on the deck of the Biscayne, Pyle could not see the sub-chaser’s skipper in the dark, but could hear his megaphoned voice calling out the problem. There was a troop-carrying barge back further in the armada. Her motor had broken down. What should he—could he—do to help?

  Later on, when writing about this moment, Pyle imagined who this voice in the dark belonged to: “I could picture a youngster of a skipper out there with his blown hair and life jacket and binoculars, rolling to the sea in the Mediterranean dusk. Some young man who shortly before had been perhaps unaware of any sea at all—the bookkeeper in your bank, maybe—and then there he was, a strange new man in command of a ship, suddenly a person with acute responsibilities, carrying out with great intentness his special, small part of the enormous aggregate that is our war on all the lands and seas of the globe.

  “In his unnatural presence, there in the heaving darkness of the Mediterranean,” Pyle continued, “I realized vividly how everyone in America had changed, how every life had suddenly stopped and as suddenly had begun on a different course. Everything in this world had stopped except war and we were all men of a new profession out in a strange night of caring for one another.”1

  From the Biscayne instructions were megaphoned back on how to help the transport barge with its bad engine. The young captain of the sub-chaser called out his “aye-aye” and with a dash of newfound certainty, added that any subsequent problems would be dealt with on his ship alone. “If there is any change,” he called to the Biscayne’s commander, “I will use my own judgment and report to you again at dawn. Good night, sir.”

  Then off sailed the young sub-chaser captain, with his similarly young crew, to aid the stricken transport.

  Pyle saluted the young skipper and all the others in the armada: “Not a pinpoint of light showed from those hundreds of ships as they surged on
through the night toward their destiny, carrying across this ageless and indifferent sea, tens of thousands of young men of new professions, fighting for . . . for . . . well, at least for each other.”

  BY THE TIME Ernie Pyle’s stay in the Mediterranean theater had stretched to this point, it was hard to know if he was a new man, a changed man, or a man who had found his calling.

  After months of covering the war from every possible angle—frontline to aerodrome; signal corps to backstage with Mitzi Mayfair—Pyle had grown so at ease with what he called the “magnificent simplicity” of life on the frontlines that he was almost uncomfortable in any other setting. That included a pleasant cabin in the U.S.S. Biscayne, or the beaches of Tunisia, where he had been resting for a few weeks in the wake of the North African campaign. Pyle simply wasn’t at ease away from those whose stories he had come here to tell.

  Middle-aged in 1943 and a thin wisp of a man, Ernie Pyle’s hair had once been a lively red but was now melding into to an ill-defined mixture of gray, white, and yellowish orange which he wore combed back and usually covered with some military-issue cap. At a fighting weight around 110 pounds on a five-foot-seven-inch frame, Pyle was so frail, he looked like he’d been raised on K-rations and Chesterfield cigarettes. Maybe it was that unassuming stature that helped Ernie Pyle fit in anywhere. No matter whether he was slipping into a circle of GI’s leaning on a tank, or chatting with Ike himself, Pyle seemed to garner the confidence of everyone he met.

  His goal was simply to tell the stories of the people who were gathered here to wage war. Pyle was, as one journalist later wrote of him, “a slight, gnome-like man who hated the whole business. He knew nothing of strategy or of military affairs, and so he concentrated on human-interest stories. No detail about life for the GI in Europe was too insignificant to report—he once wrote about the colour of the soldiers’ foot ointment—no complaint too minor to mention, no message too mundane to relay . . .”2