missions because of the gun’s great range and the round’s flat trajectory, which would endanger friendly troops if fired at targets too close to the front lines. The 3-inch gun was better than the 105mm howitzer for shelling roads over which American troops planned to advance because the former left almost no crater but had a similar burst radius to the bigger round. The M10s could also turn to new missions by merely rotating their turrets rather than having to reposition guns.68 One drawback was that crews lacked a good white phosphorous round similar to the ones used by artillery to register their guns.69
Company A of the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had been firing artillery missions, was hunkered down under an enemy barrage one rainy morning in late November. A shell struck one of the M10s and damaged the gun. The crew was ordered not to fire until Ordnance had checked the weapon. In due course, a lieutenant from Ordnance appeared and examined the vehicle, but he offered no opinion as to the extent of the damage. When the next fire order reached the platoon, the crew opened up, too. A radio repairman from Battalion was working in the turret when the order came. When the gun fired, the concussion blew the barrel off and knocked everyone in the M10 to the deck. The repairman got to his feet and sadly observed, “I don’t know how you guys can do this all day long.”70
Recon companies, meanwhile, continued to perform a dizzying array of jobs, as needed. German demolitions frequently prevented the M10s from advancing until division or corps engineers could repair blown bridges. The terrain off the roads made jeep reconnaissance impossible, so the recon companies often turned to foot scouting to spot well-concealed German strongpoints.71 Mine clearing also became common labor. Most recon troops had received little training on mines but a lot on explosives, which evidently was viewed as close enough.72 TD recon OPs provided fire control for battalion indirect fire missions—and occasionally for artillery units up to corps level.73
The 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion debarked at Naples on 2 November. The outfit had reorganized as a towed gun battalion in October after the North Africa fighting ended, at which time it received thirty-six new 3-inch guns. On 15 November, the men received a foretaste of what awaited them as the only towed TD battalion in Italy. The crews were ordered to conduct service practice against a mountainside. The weather was by now not only rainy but, in the words of VI Corps CG MajGen John Lucas, “cold as hell,” particularly at higher elevations.74 The 3-inch gun M5 weighed 4,875 pounds with its carriage and thus confronted the crew with a wrestling match even under optimal conditions.75 Company C had to winch its guns into position, lost all rounds fired in clouds or crevices, and then had to winch the guns back out.
The battalion advanced to a bivouac in what its operations report described as “alluvial mud” on the west bank of the Volturno river by 19 November. The 805th’s operations officer was initially informed that there was not even room for additional guns firing indirect fire missions, but on 26 November the outfit was attached to the 18th Field Artillery Brigade, whose artillery battalions would provide telephone wire, survey, fire direction, and observation. Three days later, the men attempted to move their guns into firing positions. Most were winched through the muck, but bulldozers and tractors had to be brought in to move others. Usually, the vehicle sank in the mud. Because of the lack of experience with the 3-inch guns in both the battalion and the artillery, and because of the lack of space, the firing positions selected were poor. Company C’s guns were lined up hub-to-hub.
Second Corps—which, with the 3d and 36th Infantry divisions under command, was just moving into the line between VI Corps and British 10 Corps—informed the 805th that it would have no antitank mission and would fire solely as artillery. On 1 December, the guns finally did so, firing some twelve hundred rounds in support of a planned attack by British 10 Corps. The attack was scrubbed.
By the next day, the crews had learned that trail shifts—or manually swinging the entire piece to point in a new direction—were necessary between practically all fire missions. Unless the guns could be positioned on the reverse slope of a hill, moreover, the crews had to dig trenches under the trails in order to obtain sufficient elevation for the guns. Sometimes, the prime movers (2-1/2-ton trucks at this time) had to be winched into position from which to winch the guns. It was going to be a tiring business.
On 13 December, the 805th received orders to replace the 776th in support of the 2d Moroccan Infantry Division at Celli.76 The division, which had arrived in late November, was one of two selected from the ten French divisions training in North Africa to join the Allied effort in Italy. The U.S. 1st Armored Division had also arrived, accompanied by the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, and was in Fifth Army reserve pending an opportunity to employ large numbers of tanks.77 The 701st got into the action immediately, however, by conducting indirect fire missions.78
Lieutenant Arthur Edson from the 701st now commanded Company A’s tank destroyers. A TD company commander could expect to lead a fairly exposed life. He was issued nothing but a jeep and, armed with a pistol or carbine, often entered a new area ahead of his armor to scout out the best firing positions. Reports of captains and lieutenants from the firing companies being killed or captured while on reconnaissance appear with surprising frequency in the records of the TD battalions. It would be hepatitis, however, that would send Edson to the hospital in late 1943.
By December, tank destroyer battalions were firing an average of fifteen thousand rounds a month in indirect fire missions. Crews of the 701st were firing as many rounds in a thirty-hour period as they had during the entire Tunisian campaign.79 One result was a temporary shortage of 3-inch HE rounds, which curtailed the TDs’ use as artillery. At one point, the TDs of the 645th were allocated only seven rounds per tube per day, and the 701st was reduced to a single round per gun.80
The combination of terrible weather and difficult terrain forced the U.S. Army to bring back the mule train to supply its forward units, including the tank destroyers. The 645th Tank Destroyer Battalion, for example, in December 1943 had an average of fifty men per day assigned to division pack trains as “muleskinners.”81 Even the 805th, which was acting as artillery well behind the infantry’s foxholes, had to use mules to support its OPs.82 The muleskinners had to lead their charges over narrow, icy trails above deep precipices, almost always at night. It was nerve-wracking business.83
John Voss was a muleskinner for the 636th Tank Destroyer Battalion. He returned one December day with a swollen hand and explained what happened. “I carried that mule and the rations both up the mountain, then he fell down. I helped him up, and he kicked me. Then I hit him and broke my fist.”84
The high mountains also played hob with radio communications. The 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion at one point later in the campaign issued carrier pigeons to its scattered companies so they could forward required daily reports.85
The divisions of battered VI Corps began to withdraw from the line in mid-December; they would soon have business elsewhere in Italy.86 On Christmas Day, 1943, the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion was withdrawn for rest after ninety-two consecutive days of action. The next day, orders came down for yet another reorganization of the tank destroyer battalions, which reduced manpower by one hundred thirty-six men.87 Other battalions implemented the reorganization in December and January, as well.
On 15 January, the Allies finally approached the Rapido River and the Gustav Line. They had taken the Winter Position after three months of heavy losses to enemy fire and to the elements. The turnover of lieutenants in VI Corps, for example, had been 115 percent.88 Fifth Army’s battle losses were forty thousand men—far higher than German casualties—while the weather conditions had claimed another fifty thousand sick in the preceding two months alone.89
Fortunately for the tank destroyer units, the action set a pattern that would continue with few exceptions for the rest of the war: Casualties were substantially lower proportionately in TD outfits than in the infantry and separate tank battalions—although each man would be sorely missed, to be sure. The 636th, for example—which supported a bloody eighteen-day ranger and infantry attack on San Pietro beginning on 30 November—lost only three men killed and twenty-nine wounded during the entire month of December. The 776th would lose only seventeen men killed and one hundred four wounded during its one-year stay on the Italian front.
