American Knights by Victor Failmezger

Author:Victor Failmezger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472809377
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2015-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Sergeant Nowak is one of the soldiers standing in the lead TD in a famous photo of M-10 tank destroyers driving around the Coliseum the morning of June 5, 1944. (NARA)

Many claimed to be the first soldier to enter Rome after the Germans left. The author has however heard one story directly from the soldier involved, which has the clear ring of truth. Technical Sergeant Charles W. Phallen (Galion, Ohio) was a member of A Company 601st and had been recuperating in Naples after being wounded at Anzio. He was eager to return to the battalion and his company. Released from the hospital, he arrived at battalion headquarters the night of June 4. Phallen was given a jeep and was told to go find his company. They were somewhere up ahead. About dawn, having still not met up with any of his company, he found himself driving through the deserted streets of Rome. He was alone, a single soldier in a jeep. He crossed the Tiber River unmolested and ended up in St Peter’s Square.

Fearing that he might never get another chance, he parked the jeep, jumped out and ran up to the huge doors of the basilica. Amazingly, they were unlocked. He took a quick look inside St Peter’s; upon exiting two soldiers in strange uniforms called to him from his left. They were members of the papal Swiss Guard dressed in fatigues. As he approached them, they inquired if he were an American. After he replied in the affirmative they announced that the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, had yet to meet an American soldier and wanted to talk to him. He was then escorted up the stairs into the papal apartments and met with the Pope for about five minutes. He returned under escort, got into his jeep and drove away. Eventually he found his company.

The grand entrance of the American liberators into Rome was anticlimactic. General Clark finally entered the city mid-morning on June 5 to receive the surrender. Not knowing where to go, someone suggested the town hall but his aides and drivers didn’t know how to get to the mayor’s office at the Campidoglio, the ancient heart of the Roman capital, its piazza designed by Michelangelo. The little convoy of jeeps meandered around city streets, lost, eventually reaching St Peter’s Square where they found an American priest from Detroit who pointed the way. Meanwhile a crowd of excited people surrounded General Clark in the lead jeep. Finally, a boy on a bicycle led the convoy back across the Tiber and to the Campidoglio.

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