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At 8 a.m. of the second morning (July 11), Lieut. Colonel James Curtis was just finishing his breakfast of K rations when the telephone rang in divisional headquarters. The message said that 30 to 40 German tanks had attacked the 2nd Battalion of the division's 16th infantry regiment. That battalion held the division's right flank on a hill between Gela and the inland town of Niscemi.
Most of the battalion's anti-tank guns had not come up. Under the first shock, it had to retreat from hill to hill, toward the sea. The battalion commander, trying to pull his companies together at the height of the German attack, was wounded. His executive officer, a young captain, had to take over. Upon him, for a tense while, the fate of the U.S. invasion rested.
With 45 enlisted men and six other officers, the captain held a position called Hill 41.* Tanks repeatedly overran the hill. Every man fought for himself. The unit on the hill had only one anti-tank gun. Officers sometimes fired the gun. They manhandled it on a wall, firing first at tanks to the right, then at tanks to the left. A captain seized a bazooka (the army's famed anti-tank rocket weapon), knocked out a tank 25 yards away. A lieutenant colonel of paratroopers, who had stumbled on the battalion and stayed with it, knocked out another tank with a bazooka, then was killed. Officers and men battled the waves of tanks with grenades, rifles, machine guns. In the desperation of that battle, the men no longer sought cover. They fought standing up, running, all over the hill.
A mobile tank destroyer (a truck-mounted 75) arrived. The young captain in command of the battalion jumped into the destroyer, charged to the top of the hill, toward the tanks. His men did not expect him to return. He drove off the remaining tanks, and he came back. His battalion regrouped, advanced, eventually seized Niscemi. Softspoken, black-haired, tired, unconsciously heroic, the captain met Correspondent Belden. Belden said: "I hear you got some tanks yourself."
"I was in it," the captain said. "Everyone was in it. Just a family affair."
The right flank was saved. But the left was also under attack. Darby of the Rangers, on that flank, watched 300 Italians march toward his position. When they were well within range, his mortars fired. Only 50 Italians survived to retreat.
At the center of the divisional line, two groups of tanks came out of the hills, reached and crossed the Gela-Vittoria road, shot up some amphibious trucks, lobbed shells over divisional headquarters toward the shore 800 yards from the tanks. The defending units had no infantry, no antitank guns to stop the tanks. There was only artillery — 105-mm. howitzers, designed for other work—and Bofors anti-aircraft guns.
Toward the beaches, aswarm with incoming men and weapons, the tanks steadily advanced. A brigadier general of artillery, watching them, said to his companions: "I won't go back into the sea." Terry Allen said: "Hell, we haven't started to fight. Our artillery hasn't been overrun yet."