(2 of 6)
The red balls and the officers' shouts tore at the minds and feet of the men. They ran toward the trees, the sand humps, anything beyond the water which offered cover. Once there, they realized that in most places the enemy fire had been rather light. A soldier said: "I've been wounded. But there is so much blood, I can't tell exactly where." In the darkness, along a 45-mile stretch of the island shore, it was pretty much the same: confusion in the first moments, the slow adhesion of well-commanded troops, the first meetings with the enemy on the land.
At one such meeting, a strange, fierce shout rang in the darkness. The invaders who heard the shout dropped to the ground, saw a pillbox on the skyline. The voice called again; it was no longer fierce, but high-pitched, panic-stricken.
"He wants to surrender," a U.S. soldier guessed. "Surrender! Surrender!" the soldiers shouted. The owner of the voice in the pillbox did not appear.
"Shoot the bastard, we can't wait here all day," a soldier growled.
"No," said someone, "don't shoot him. Maybe these people don't want to fight."
Finally an Italian-American soldier shouted: "Veni qui." A figure then crept from the pillbox on all fours, ran down the hill, screaming and sobbing. He was seized, searched, left behind. That particular unit had met its first Italian in Sicily.
Introduction to Gela. Daylight came. Up & down the beaches officers had marshaled their men, found lost companies, established contacts with other units on their flanks. With daylight came the first German planes—20 of them in one attack, veering from the beaches toward the ships.
Ashore the job was to take Gela. On the hills enemy artillery opened up. One U.S. unit found three wooden guns on a hill, but there were real guns, too. Warships answered, and the men on and near the beaches lay between the fire, under the whirring shells. Enemy machine gunners on a hill held up an advancing unit east of Gela. Enemy artillery fire raked the hillside.
But, everywhere along the shore, the troops advanced. They took prisoners. They found enemy dead on the hilltops, beside ruined Roman relics of older conquests. Within seven hours of landing, Lieut. Colonel Darby and his Rangers had fought their way, ahead of the main body of the ist Division, into Gela.
Battle for Gela. The enemy was not through. The Rangers and the 1st Division had ahead of them 50 sleepless hours of bombing, tank and artillery attacks, the hardest fight in the experience of that experienced division.
During the first full day ashore, the 1st landed all of its regiments. By morning it had some 40 artillery pieces and 15 antitank guns in position to fire. It had three tanks, but one had lost a tread in the sand. These weapons were not enough for what was to come. Only the bravery of the men and the fire of the warships offshore saved Gela and the landing.