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Part One – The Lower Adriatic

Chapter 1 – The New Campaign

Two earlier volumes1 have revealed how faithfully India bore her share of Great Britain’s heavy commitments in Middle East and in the great deserts during the first four years of war.

During that period Italy’s East African empire toppled into ruins. Iran, Iraq and Syria were made secure. In Western Desert, the tide of advantage ebbed and flowed, but the Mediterranean campaign steadily became a heavier drain not only on Italian but on German resources. Finally the United Nations mustered their strength, and in a great drive destroyed the last vestiges of Axis power in Africa. The Indian troops who at one time had been the only infantry division in Middle East, remained in the van of the battle for three years, and it was justice that at the finish in Tunisia they should have added to their already remarkable bag the German Commander-in-Chief, and many thousands of his men.

With the war in Africa over, Fourth Indian Division withdrew from Tunis to Tripoli. There the King Emperor came to thank his men in person. The Indians moved eastwards across a score of familiar battlefields, and concentrated during the summer of 1943 at Alexandria. The sepoys took their ease, knowing well that when the battle mounted in vehemence, the call again would come to them.

Near at hand comrades likewise were waiting for the word. Eighth Indian Division, which had lost a brigade at El Alamein, was again at full strength, and eager for employment. Tenth Indian Division, which had swept through three little wars in Iran and Iraq only to meet unmerited disaster in Western Desert, had trained earnestly in Cyprus and Syria for more than a year against the campaign to come. Further east, Sixth Indian Division and Thirty-First Indian Armoured Division, in garrison in Iran and Iraq, hopefully scanned the west, seeking some portent of battle. Thus five Indian Divisions stood waiting for the call – no small contribution to the war against Germany at a time when the Japs stood at the gateways of Bengal.

It was quite impossible that all these fine troops should be employed in Europe. Indeed, in the summer of 1943 many believed the services of Indian forces in the Western theatres to be at an end. Although Middle East and the deserts were tranquil, garrison requirements there continued to be substantial. Moreover, Burma was India’s chief anxiety, and it seemed probable that the tough seasoned veterans

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of Western Desert would be redeployed against the still unshaken Japs. There was another important consideration. Day by day the conflict had become more and more a technician’s war. Every new weapon bred a new defence. Specialist cadres multiplied. To win battles against the Germans the private soldier must not only know something about a great many subjects, but he must supplement his courage and determination with exceptional adaptability and resource. In such a war, thought some wiseacres, the Indian soldier, in spite of his unmatched bravery and discipline, would be too greatly handicapped. On this account the supreme test of the European theatre would be denied him.

Such speculation betokened ignorance of much that had happened in the first four years of war. The sepoy, although no longer recruited exclusively from the so-called “martial races”, still for the most part came out of the Indian countryside, and brought with him the ryot’s limited horizon. The limits were those of opportunity rather than of intelligence, for when once the Indian recruit stepped into the outside world, he speedily caught the ferment in the air, and responded to the stimuli of new ideas. By 1943, Indian troops were singularly well informed, not only regarding the business of battle, but also concerning the world at large. As an illustration, their Army newspapers now appeared in eleven languages, instead of two as in peace time. Even the impassive Gurkhas had their Gurkhali news sheet, which they read with avidity. The increase in general knowledge, induced by the sight of new lands, contacts with diverse peoples, training. in new routines, was reflected in the alacrity with which Indian troops became adept in the latest devices of war. Over and over again, in the course of this narrative, episodes will supply illustrations of the quickness of mind and ingenuity of Indian soldiers on critical occasions. Mastery of new weapons challenged, but did not impede, the progress of their education. Under stress of necessity the sepoys learned the new trades of warfare easily and thoroughly, in a manner which astonished their mentors.

Nor was this quick-mindedness only characteristic of the fighting troops. In the long array of ancillary services essential to modern warfare, Indian units undertook new duties with enthusiasm and ability. As far back as 1941, New Zealand engineers, building a standard gauge line in Western Desert, undertook to teach two companies of Indian Sappers and Miners the routine of railway construction. Within three months, to the joy of their Kiwi instructors, the Indians were laying daily yardages of track equal and even superior to those of the New Zealanders themselves. Under similar circumstances, in the three thousand miles between Teheran and Tunis, hundreds of miscellaneous Indian units had skilled themselves in new occupations. No less than 224 of these formations followed the Indian divisions to Italy, and if their names do not appear prominently in this story, it is because

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of the exigencies of narrative, and not because they did not make a full contribution to the final victory.

Whatever the speculations of clubs and messes, Field-Marshal Alexander knew the facts. Soon after the fall of Tunis he let it be known that he proposed to employ Indian troops in Europe. The Anglo-American thrust, in Mr. Churchill’s phrase, into “the soft under-belly of the Axis”, opened with a landing in Sicily in July. 3/10 Baluch Regiment, 3/12 Frontier Force Regiment, and certain pioneer companies, participated in these landings, as elements in the administrative “Brick” which controlled the beachheads. The invasion swept northwards and cleared Sicily; with scarcely a pause Eighth Army leapt the narrow straits into the toe of Calabria. In early September Fifth Army stormed ashore at Salerno, to the south of Naples. Here under Beachmaster’s Command went the Jodhpur Sardar Light Infantry, a fine State Forces unit, whose services in this tricky enterprise were recognized by a D.S.O. for Major Ram Singh and five other awards – the first decorations for Indian troops in Europe in this war.

Two armies abreast, the advance up Italy began. The Italians surrendered, and at first it seemed possible that rather than maintain a battle line with two seaward flanks, the enemy would abandon the Kingdom and would withdraw to main defensive positions along the great wall of the Alps. This hope was unfulfilled. Fresh German formations rushed south to reinforce the stubborn rearguards which slowed down the Allied advance. A captured document gave the following succinct reasons for the decision of the Germans to turn Italy into a battlefield:

(1) It was best for Germans to fight as far as possible from the Fatherland.

(2) The United Nations should be denied the use of Italian airfields from which fighter-bombers might attack the Reich.

(3) The United Nations should be denied the use of the ports of Genoa, Trieste and Venice, which would continue to be used as German bases for harrying the sea supply lines of the Mediterranean.

(4) Germany should continue to draw plentiful supplies of war material from Italian factories. The German Army could live on the Italian countryside, and could even export food to Germany.

(5) Italy was the first and last member of the Axis in Europe, and could not be abandoned without loss of prestige.

It seems possible that these excellent reasons were implemented in the minds of the German General Staff by a further pertinent consideration. Much of Italy consisted of terrain which lent itself to military defence. On such battlefields resolute garrisons might sell ground at an extortionate price in blood. The flat narrow peninsula of Calabria offered few obstacles to invaders, but eighty miles north of the Gulf of

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Taranto, where the ankle of Italy begins to swell into a calf, a mountain chain emerged in the centre of the Kingdom. These mountains created watersheds which directed the Italian rivers to the east and to the west, into the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas. Scores of such rivers on each coast lay across the path of any invader from the south, and each of these watercourses offers an individual obstacle to mechanized forces.

As the Italian peninsula widened, the central mountain spine thickened and increased in substance, until it towered into the Sierra-like ridges and lofty crests of the High Apennines. This mighty natural fortress commanded both the eastern and the western littorals of Italy. Beyond the Apennines lay the flat fruitful plains of Emilia and Lombardy, but here likewise the water barriers continued; instead of brawling torrents in gashed ravines, great rivers, of which the Po is the mightiest, wound across the land between artificial dykes raised above the plain. These fertile provinces grew much food, and in the midst of their rich fields stood the arsenal cities of Milan and Turin, where behind blued windows the machines roared for twenty-four hours daily, shaping the tools of war. Italian agriculture and industry alike made handsome contributions to the German war machine. It was inconceivable that such resources should be surrendered without a struggle.

Enemy strategy, therefore, was based on the possibility of bleeding the Allies white at low cost to Germany. Every advantage of terrain would be exploited to the full, and enemy forces would be committed to decisive battle only in key positions. Such positions would be covered by new fortifications in the rear. The entire Italian peninsula would be transformed into a fortress which would engulf as many Allied formations as possible, pinning down large bodies of troops which otherwise might be free to strike elsewhere.

Such strategy, however, imposed two necessities on the enemy. A large body of troops must be kept available not only in order to man the battle lines but also to garrison successive reserve positions. Comparatively few of these troops at any one time would be in action. The German plan required a great many men, and it likewise required the presence of high class shock troops; for if men are to be thin upon a battlefield they must be both competent and indomitable. Field-Marshal Alexander revealed long afterwards, that there were always more enemy than Allied troops in Italy, and a comparatively high percentage of such troops consisted of the flower of the German Army – paratroopers, Panzer Grenadier divisions and other specialist formations.

Faced by such concentration and such quality of opponents, a stern task awaited the soldiers of the United Nations in Italy. On the other hand, their mounting labours were lightened by new tools of battle. Gone were the days when emergencies must be met by improvisations

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out of the scrap of battlefields. Behind the Allied armies now stood the greatest industrial mobilization the world has ever seen. A vast array of scientists, technicians, organizers and craftsmen, sensitive to the vagaries, instant to the necessities of battle, built and delivered a spate of equipment and machines for the new campaign. Among a thousand devices, two were of such paramount importance as to make the difference between defeat and victory. Bulldozers, long the envy of commanders in the desert, multiplied their functions to meet a hundred emergencies. These great scoops and their crews became integral elements of every battlefield. Whatever the malice of the enemy or the whim of nature, if earth and stone could repair the damage the bulldozers speedily would open the way. A brigade of artillery or a heavy concentration of bombers might wreak fantastic destruction on a vital target. Yet in a matter of hours a half-dozen grimy drivers with chugging caterpillars would mend and make workable. The bulldozer was surgeon-on-the-spot to all wounded terrain.

As the bulldozers served with solid earth, so the Bailey Bridge served with unstable water. The simple magic of these Meccano-like frames and sections ranks only behind Radar and the atomic-bomb as the greatest development of the war. Neither enemies nor Allies possessed comparable equipment. A bridge of any length and height, of any tensile strength or carrying power, would grow to completion in a few short hours. The versatility of this equipment equalled its simplicity, and as a result, in the heroic chronicle of the Italian campaign, the bulldozer-driver and the bridge-sapper stand with the infantryman, the gunner and the airman in the front rank of those who made victory possible.

To Indian soldiers the Italian campaign came as a fresh challenge. After bitter ordeals among the saw-toothed peaks of Eritrea, under the thirsty glare of the desert, in the steaming swamps of Burma, a greater strain, a more complicated enterprise awaited them. This book will tell how they met the challenge.

Footnotes

1. The Tiger Strikes – the narrative of the Eritrean campaign, the battle of Sidi Barrani, and the Syrian campaign. The Tiger Kills – the Western Desert from 1941 onwards, and the Tunisian campaign.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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