The Force by Saul David

Author:Saul David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

23

“There was utter destruction”

On November 13, with all the regiments reunited, the Forcemen were trucked to Oran’s harbor and loaded onto three naval transports (including one, the USS Thomas Jefferson, they knew from their Chesapeake training). But engine trouble postponed their departure, and it was not until November 16 that they set a course for Naples. The 2nd Regiment traveled with Force HQ on the USS Barnett, a “swell ship” that had shot down three Japanese planes and one German and had a “torpedo patch” on its port side. There was a minor scare when a hostile plane was spotted, but it soon cleared off when the antiaircraft guns opened up.394 The threat, however, was real: just over a week later, the British troopship HMT Rohna was bombed and sunk by German planes after leaving Oran. Of the 1,100 lives lost, more than a 1,000 were US servicemen (the worst loss of American troops at sea during World War Two).395

The transports reached the Bay of Naples on November 19 and nudged slowly into a harbor that had been badly damaged by German demolition teams and, later, air raids. Describing the port on the day of its capture by his US Fifth Army, Mark Clark wrote: “There was utter destruction of ships, docks, and warehouses, such as not even ancient Pompeii, through which we had passed earlier in the day, had ever seen.” Clark had feared the harbor would not be usable for weeks. But thanks to the tireless efforts of US engineers and laborers—who removed tons of rubble and converted sunken ships “to foundations for emergency piers”—the first supplies were landed within 72 hours, and soon the port “was handling over 20,000 tons daily.”396

When the Force transports arrived, they tied up against one of the sunken ships and wooden catwalks were used to get to the shore. Though the worst of the debris had been removed, the scars of war were still obvious. “The Germans had destroyed everything,” noted a wide-eyed Jack Callowhill. “The electricity, the water, the staircases, the buildings.” Shouldering their heavy packs, the Forcemen set off for their temporary bivouac to the west of the city. At one point, passing through a tunnel that the locals had been using as an air-raid shelter, they had to hold their noses as the pavement and gutters were still strewn with human feces. Everywhere they encountered desperate Italians begging for food or trying to sell them nuts and oranges. The children would cry, “Caramelli? Joe, Joe, caramelli?” Or even—in an attempt to sell sex with their mothers and sisters—“Joe, Joe, signorina? Fiki Fiki?”397 As they set off in trucks for the last leg of the journey, Jack Callowhill could see a woman sitting on the ground with a baby. She seemed to be dressed in black. It was only when they passed the woman that they realized she was naked from the waist up and covered in flies. “She didn’t even have the strength,” noted Callowhill, “to swat them away. There was nothing we could do.

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