Hunters From The Sky: The German Parachute Corps, 1940-1945 by Charles Whiting

Author:Charles Whiting [Whiting, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four – 1944: The Führer’s Fire-brigade

‘During my whole combat service in two wars I never met better fighting troops than the Germans had in Brest, especially the men of the 2nd Parachute Division.’

US Corps Commander Troy Middleton, 1945

‘The Mussolini business and the subsequent defection of Italy to the Allies,’ Student recalls, ‘was the start of the busiest period of my whole military career. Hitler and the High Command became aware of the value of parachute formations once again after virtually wasting my highly trained, valuable men in an infantry role in Russia and Africa.’

Throughout the summer, autumn and winter of 1943, the men of the Parachute Corps were thrown into action after action in an attempt to stop the rot which had started in Italy and the Balkans after Mussolini’s downfall. The 2nd Battalion, the 3rd Parachute Regiment, executed a daring drop over the Italian Army HQ at Monte Rotondo near Rome and succeeded in occupying the top Italian command, although General Roatta, the Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, had already fled.

Some time later another para battalion dropped on the island of Elba, where the Italian coastal artillery, loyal to Marshal Badoglio, whom Hitler hated so vehemently, had been harassing German supply operations along the Tyrrhenian coast with their heavy guns. The Italians fought hard, as had their comrades at Rotondo, but the ‘Führer’s Fire Brigade’, as the paras were now being called, overcame them. Elba was denied to the Allies and 10,000 Italian prisoners went off to the POW cages.

While this was going on, the Allies had done a little island hopping themselves and had seized the islands of Kos, Leros and Samos in the Aegean, Again the Hunters from the Sky went into action at Student’s command. Together with the mountain troops, who had been their comrades in Crete two years before, the 1st Battalion, 2nd Parachute Regiment, commanded by Major Kuehne, dropped on Kos in October. For the next six week, the mountain troops and the paras battled against the British occupiers, finally forcing the survivors to surrender on 16 November, 1943. It was the last time that British troops would surrender to the paras in the Second World War, but the damage had been done and apart from the strategic value of the islands their capture effectively kept Turkey from joining the Allied side; it was clear to the generally pro-British Turks that the German eagle still had very sharp claws indeed.[24]

In September, 1943, the Fallschirmjaeger were sent to repel the Anglo-American landing at Salerno and nearly succeeded in throwing them back into the sea. All in all it was ‘a damn close run thing’ and the British and American survivors of those first terrifying days on the narrow beaches were more than glad when Student was ordered to pull his paratroops out for a well-earned rest in the mountains of the Abruzzi.

*

In January, 1944, the German High Command in the Balkans, alarmed by the ever increasing power of the Jugoslavian partisan leader, ‘Marshal’ Tito, decided that he would never be put out of action by conventional methods.

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