“It was dark as hell,” he said, “and we were just waiting out here,” He pointed to the sea where the mass of the invasion fleet rested. “If we thought we were going to sneak ashore we were nuts,” he said. “They were waiting for us. They knew just where we were going to land. They had machine guns in the sand dunes and .88s on the hills.
“We were out there all packed in an LCI, and then all hell broke loose. The sky was full of it and the star shells lighted it up and the tracers crisscrossed and the noise—we saw the assault go in, and then one of them hit a surf mine and went up, and in the light you could see them go flying about. I could see the boats land and the guys go wiggling and running, and then maybe there’d be a lot of white lines and some of them would waddle about and collapse and some would hit the beach.
“It didn’t seem like men getting killed, more like a picture, like a moving picture. We were pretty crowded up in there, though, and then all of a sudden it came on me that this wasn’t a moving picture. Those were guys getting the hell shot out of them, and then I got kind of scared, but what I wanted to do mostly was move around. I didn’t like being cooped up there where you couldn’t get away or get down close to the ground.
“Well, the firing would stop and then it would get pitch black even then, and it was just beginning to get light too, but the .88s sort of winked on the hills like messages, and the shells were bursting all around us. They had lots of .88s and they shot at everything. I was just getting real scared when we got the order to move in, and I swear that is the longest trip I ever took, that mile to the beach. I thought we’d never get there. I figured that if I was only on the beach I could dig down and get out of the way. There was too damned many of us there in that LCI. I wanted to spread out. That one that hit the mine was still burning when we went on by it. Then we bumped the beach and the ramps went down and I hit the water up to my waist.
“The minute I was on the beach I felt better. It didn’t seem like everybody was shooting at me and I got up to that line of brush and flopped down and some other guys flopped down beside me and then we got feeling a little foolish. We stood up and moved on. Didn’t say anything to each other, we just moved on. It was coming daylight then and the flashes of the guns weren’t so bright. I felt a little like I was drunk. The ground heaved around under my feet and I was dull. I guess that was because of the firing. My ears aren’t so good yet. I guess we moved up too far because I got sent back here.” He laughed openly. “I might have gone on right into Rome if someone hadn’t sent me back. I guess I might have walked right up that hill there.”
The cruisers began firing on the hill and the .88s fired back. From over near the hill came the heavy thudding of .59-caliber machine guns. The soldier felt pretty good. He knew what he could do now. He said, “When did you say you came ashore?”
MEDITERRANEAN THEATER, October 6, 1943—You can’t see much of a battle. Those paintings reproduced in history books which show long lines of advancing troops are either idealized or else times and battles have changed. The account in the morning papers of the battle of yesterday was not seen by the correspondent, but was put together from reports.
What the correspondent really saw was dust and the nasty burst of shells, low bushes and slit trenches. He lay on his stomach, if he had any sense, and watched ants crawling among the little sticks on the sand dune, and his nose was so close to the ants that their progress was interfered with by it.
Then he saw an advance. Not straight lines of men marching into cannon fire, but little groups scuttling like crabs from bits of cover to other cover, while the high chatter of machine guns sounded, and the deep proom of shellfire.
Perhaps the correspondent scuttled with them and hit the ground again. His report will be of battle plan and tactics, of taken ground or lost terrain, of attack and counter-attack. But these are some of the things he probably really saw:
He might have seen the splash of dirt and dust that is a shell burst, and a small Italian girl in the street with her stomach blown out, and he might have seen an American soldier standing over a twitching body, crying. He probably saw many dead mules, lying on their sides, reduced to pulp. He saw the wreckage of houses, with torn beds hanging like shreds out of the spilled hole in a plaster wall. There were red carts and the stalled vehicles of refugees who did not get away.
The stretcher-bearers come back from the lines, walking in off step, so that the burden will not be jounced too much, and the blood dripping from the canvas, brother and enemy in the stretchers, so long as they are hurt. And the walking wounded coming back with shattered arms and bandaged heads, the walking wounded struggling painfully to the rear.
He would have smelled the sharp cordite in the air and the hot reek of blood if the going has been rough. The burning odor of dust will be in his nose and the stench of men and animals killed yesterday and the day before. Then a whole building is blown up and an earthy, sour smell comes from its walls. He will smell his own sweat and the accumulated sweat of an army. When his throat is dry he will drink the warm water from his canteen, which tastes of disinfectant.
While the correspondent is writing for you of advances and retreats, his skin will be raw from the woolen clothes he has not taken off for three days, and his feet will be hot and dirty and swollen from not having taken off his shoes for days. He will itch from last night’s mosquito bites and from today’s sand-fly bites. Perhaps he will have a little sand-fly fever, so that his head pulses and a red rim comes into his vision. His head may ache from the heat and his eyes burn with the dust. The knee that was sprained when he leaped ashore will grow stiff and painful, but it is no wound and cannot be treated.
“The 5th Army advanced two kilometers,” he will write, while the lines of trucks churn the road to deep dust and truck drivers hunch over their wheels. And off to the right the burial squads are scooping slits in the sandy earth. Their charges lie huddled on the ground and before they are laid in the sand, the second of the two dog tags is detached so that you know that that man with that Army serial number is dead and out of it.
These are the things he sees while he writes of tactics and strategy and names generals and in print decorates heroes. He takes a heavily waxed box from his pocket. That is his dinner. Inside there are two little packets of hard cake which have the flavor of dog biscuits. There is a tin can of cheese and a roll of vitamin-charged candy, an envelope of lemon powder to make the canteen water taste less bad, and a tiny package of our cigarettes.
That is dinner, and it will keep him moving for several more hours and keep his stomach working and his heart pumping. And if the line has advanced beyond him while he eats, dirty, bug-like children will sidle up to him, cringing and sniffling, their noses ringed with flies, and these children will whine for one of the hard biscuits and some of the vitamin candy. They will cry for candy: “Caramela—caramela—caramela—okay, okay, shank you, good-by.” And if he gives the candy to one, the ground will spew up more dirty, bug-like children, and they will scream shrilly, “Caramela—caramela.” The correspondent will get the communiqué and will write your morning dispatch on his creaking, dust-filled portable: “General Clark’s 5th Army advanced two kilometers against heavy artillery fire yesterday.”
SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATRE, October 8, 1943—The invasion and taking of the beachhead at Salerno had been very rough. The German was waiting for us. His .88s were on the surrounding hills and his machine guns in the sand dunes. His mines were in the surf and he sat there and waited for us. There was no other way. He had to be pushed out. And, for a time, it looked as though we might be pushed out. But gradually, what with the naval ships firing and the determined holding out of recently green troops and the coming of our reserves from the sea, the picture has changed. Now the invasion fleet lies in comparative safety off the shore and the beach is secure.