Chapter 11
Operation Husky

Once again we all started to settle down to ship board life on our LCT. The Mediterranean sea was calm and the weather good for the first few days. There were all sorts of ships of every size in the invasion fleet from battle ships to aircraft carriers. All day long the RAF few over the fleet protecting it from attacks from the Luftwaffe. The crew were always on the look out for U-boats. Once at sea the Col. Anderson called us all together and told us the Battalion would be landing with the 3rd wave of the invasion of Sicily code name Operation Husky and would be landing at a place called Syracuse. He told us that he was very proud that the Battalion had been given this honor and he was sure that we would distinguish our selves in the coming battle.

As the Invasion fleet sailed towards the coast of Sicily on the night of the 9th of July We could hear the bombers as they flew over the fleet on their way to attack targets in Sicily. Some of the bombers were towing gliders.

As our LCT got closer to the Sicilian coast-line we started to see bits of wreckage and bodies floating in the water. These were what was left of some of the gliders we had seen in the night. The bombers that had been towing the gliders had come under heavy ack ack fire as they approached the enemy coast and had cast off their gliders far to early for the gliders to reach land, so some of them had crashed into the sea drowning most of the paratroopers on board the gliders. It was a very haunting sight and all of us started to wonder how our part of the invasion would go.

As the dawn light started to grow we could make out the shape of the enemy coast line ahead. Moments later the Navy's big guns opened up and started their bombardment of the landing beaches to soften up the enemy. The noise was deafening. This went on for 4 hours non-stop. We watched as wave after wave of allied aircraft few over the fleet heading for targets inland. 2 hours before we landed all the drivers and carrier commanders got into their vehicles and waited for the LCT to beach. We sat in the carriers listening to the battle going on outside of the LCT wondering if the ship would make it to the beach without being hit. The order eventually came "Stand by to Beach". There was a hard bump and the doors of our LCT came down. My carrier was first off and I dropped it into 2 feet of water before being able to run it up to the sand on the beach.

We were expecting to have to fight our way off the beach, but most of the battle was over. The beach head had already been secured but there was still sporadic machine gun and artillery fire coming down on us so we moved off the beach pretty quick passing burnt out trucks and tanks, also the bodies of British troops that had landed on the first wave and had not made it. Once again the site of dead British Tommy's really upset me and I wondered if I would soon be lying in a shell hole myself. I was not given much time to contemplate this because a Royal Navy Beach Master was already shouting at me to "Get that ruddy tin can of the beach now, Jerry has the hole F###ING beach zeroed in" I needed no more encouragement and gunned the carrier up the beach.

Our objective after leaving the beachhead was to secure a small railway bridge about 5 miles inland. We traveled fast passing some of the first wave of troops that had headed inland. They told us the Italians were not putting up much of a fight but to watch out for snipers. The invasion was going well and we cheered the troops as we drove past  on our way to the front and made rude comments and  gestures to the passing German and Italian POWs who were being sent back down the line under guard.

About 3 miles inland we were brought back abruptly to the realities of war. Suddenly we came under a heavy barrage of machine gun fire from a farm house some distance from the road we were traveling down. Sgt. Grippens and Pvt. Watts were both killed in the exchange that followed.

My gunner spotted the Italian snipers hiding in the farm house and all the guns in the platoon opened up on them, killing 3 of them. When we found the bodies of the snipers one of them was dressed as a civilian. He must have been the local Fascist leader who had decided that if the Italian army wasn't going to fight he was. When we arrived at our objective the railway bridge we found no sign of the enemy who had by now fled well inland. We set up defensive positions and guarded the bridge until reinforcements arrived to help us. I t was very tense the first few hours at the bridge because a counter attack was expected at any moment. But the Italians did not try to retake the bridge and we watched as hundreds of our troops and vehicles crossed safely over the next two days. We stayed in this area for 2 weeks while the Battalion did beach duties like unloading the ships and clearing the beach. During this time we lost allot more men from attacks by the Luftwaffe who had decided that they weren't going to give us the beach head that easily and bombed us regularly day and night.

All you could do as soon as you heard them coming was find the biggest hole you could find and hope you weren't in the direct line of one of the bombs that were falling to earth all around you. Danny Danials, Duff and Wilks were three friends of mine who never made it off the beach. We buried them close to the beach. God rest their souls. The Battalion was on the move again, this time towards the East coasts of Sicily. We hardly ever encountered resistance from Jerry because he was always on the run, but every other town we passed through there might be a small Jerry rear-guard that we would have to deal with. Soon the whole of Sicily was in Allied hands and we started training again for the invasion of Italy.