One of the strangest things is to see her big guns when they go on automatic control. They are aimed and fired from the bridge. The turret and the guns have been heavy dead metal and suddenly they become alive. The turret whips around but it is the guns themselves that seem to live. They balance and quiver almost as though they were sniffing the air. They tremble like the antennae of an insect, listening or smelling the target. Suddenly they set and instantly there is a belch of sound and the shells float away. The tracers seem to float interminably before they hit. And before the shells have struck, the guns are trembling and reaching again. They are like rattlesnakes poising to strike, and they really do seem to be alive. It is a frightening thing to see.
A RAGGED CREW
December 1, 1943—When the plans were being made to capture a German radar station on an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. forty American paratroopers were assigned to do the job, forty men and three officers. They came to the naval station from somewhere in Africa. They didn’t say where. They came in the night sometime, and in the morning they were bedded down in a Nissen hut, a hard and ragged crew. Their uniforms were not the new and delightful affairs of the posters. The jackets, with all the pockets, and the coarse canvas trousers had been washed so often and dried in the hot sun that they had turned nearly white, and they were ragged at the edges.
The officers, two lieutenants and a captain, were dressed in no way different from their men, and they had been months without their insignia of rank. The captain had two strips of adhesive tape stuck on his shoulders, to show that he was a captain at all, and one of his lieutenants had sewed a piece of yellow cloth on his shoulders for his rank. They had been ten months in the desert, and there was no place to buy the pretty little bars to wear on their shoulders. They had not jumped from a plane since they had finished their training in the United States, but the rigid, hard training of their bodies had gone right on in the desert.
There had been no luxuries for these men, either. Sometimes the cigarettes ran out, and they just didn’t have any. They had often lived on field rations for weeks at a time, and they had long forgotten what it was like to sleep in a bed, even a cot. They had all looked somewhat alike, and perhaps this is the characteristic look of the paratrooper. The eyes were very wide set, and mostly they were either gray or blue. The hair was cropped, almost shaved, giving their heads a curious egg look. Their ears seemed to stick straight out from their heads, perhaps because all their hair was cut off. Their skins were burned almost black by the desert sun, which made their eyes and their teeth seem very light, and their lips were ragged and rough from months of the sun.
The strangest thing about them was their quietness and their almost shy good manners. Their voices were so soft that you could barely hear them, and they were extremely courteous. The officers gave their orders almost under their breaths, and there was none of the stiffness of ordinary military discipline. It was almost as though they all thought alike so that few orders were necessary at all. When something was to be done, the moving or loading of their own supplies, for instance, they worked like parts of a machine, and no one seemed to move quickly, but there was no waste movement and the work was done with incredible speed. They did not waste time saluting. A man saluted his officer only when he spoke to him or was spoken to.
These paratroopers had as little equipment as you can imagine. There were some rifles, some tommy guns, and the officers had the new carbines. In addition, each man had a knife and four hand grenades, painted yellow, but they had had their grenades so long that the yellow paint was just about worn off. The rifles had been polished and cleaned so long and so often that the black coating was worn off in places and the bright metal shone through. The little American flags they wore on their shoulders were pale from sunburn and from the washing of their clothes. There was no excess equipment of any kind. They had what they wore, and they could carry. And for some reason they gave the impression of great efficiency.
In the morning their officers came into the conference to be instructed in the nature of the action. They filed in shyly and took their places at the long, rough table. The naval men distributed maps and the action was described in detail, part of it on a large blackboard that was set up against a wall.
The island was Ventotene, and there was a radar station on it which searched the whole ocean north and south of Naples. The radar was German, but it was thought that there were very few Germans. There were two or three hundred carabinieri there, however, and it was not known whether they would fight or not. Also, there were a number of political prisoners on the island who were to be released, and the island was to be held by these same paratroopers until a body of troops could be put ashore.
The three officers regarded the blackboard with their wide-set eyes, and now and then they glanced quietly at one another. When the discussion was finished the naval captain said, “Do you understand? Are there any questions?”
The captain of paratroopers studied the board with the map of the island, and he asked softly, “Any artillery?”
“Yes, there are some coastal guns, but if they use them we’ll get them with naval guns.”
“Oh! Yes, I see. Well, I hope the Italians don’t do anything bad. I mean I hope they don’t shoot at us.” His voice was very shy.
A naval officer said jokingly, “Don’t your men want to fight?”
“It isn’t that,” the captain said. “We’ve been a long time in the desert. My men are pretty trigger happy. They might be very rough if anybody shoots at them.”
The meeting broke up and the Navy invited the paratroopers to lunch in the Navy mess.
“If you’ll excuse us,” the captain said, “I think we’ll get back to the men. They’ll want to know what we’re going to do. I’ll just take this map along and explain it to them.” He paused apologetically and added, “You see, they’ll want to know.” The three officers got up from the table and went out. Their men were in the Nissen hut. The ragged captain and his lieutenants walked across the street, blinding in the white sunlight, and they went inside the Nissen hut and closed the door. They stayed a long time in there, explaining the action to the forty men.
VENTOTENE
December 3, 1943—The units of the naval task force made their rendezvous at sea and at dusk and made up their formation and set off at a calculated speed to be at the island of Ventotene at moonset. Their mission was to capture the island and to take the German radar which was there. The moon was very large and it was not desirable that the people on the island should know what force was coming against them, consequently the attack was not to be attempted until the darkness came. The force spread out in its traveling formation and moved slowly over the calm sea.
On a destroyer of the force, the paratroopers who were to make the assault sat on the deck and watched the moon. They seemed a little uneasy. After being trained to drop in from the sky their first action was to be a seagoing one. Perhaps their sense of fitness was outraged.
All along the Italian coast the air force was raiding. The naval force could see the flares parachuting down and the burst of explosives and the lines of tracers off to the right. But the coast was kept too busy for anyone to bother with the little naval force heading northward.
The timing was exact. The moon turned very red before it set, and just as it set the high hump of the island showed against its face. And the moment it had set the darkness was thick so that you could not see the man standing at your shoulder. There were no lights on the island at all. This island has been blacked out for three years. When the naval force had taken its positions a small boat equipped with a loudspeaker crept in toward the beach. From five hundred yards off shore it beamed its loudspeaker on the darkened town and a terrible voice called its proclamation.