Frank Polizzi - Somewhere in the Stars

Nathan barked: “Will you two stop it! Let’s see if we can get some help,”

“We’ll figure it out ourselves. We’re not stupid,” Paul shot back. “Nicolo!”

As they argued how to best move their beached tank, Nick remained in the driver’s position and looked beyond his tank team. His eyes locked onto an infantryman who had reddened bandages wrapped around what remained of his leg. They had been warned about land mines buried in the sand. The soldier stared out to sea, probably drugged up with morphine, waiting to be removed to a sick bay of a transport ship. Other casualties washed up onto the shore from LCIs that breached on false beaches and had come under enemy fire.

Tired of sparring with Paul, Nathan yelled up to Nick: “Try to use the momentum of the tank. Without burning the tranny!” Paul grimaced with arms akimbo. After many attempts, he called out: “Shut it down, Nick. Now!”

Some Seabees came by and rolled steel matting across the soft part of the beach, allowing their tank destroyer and a half dozen more to reach solid ground. Nathan heard over the radio that Italian light tanks, a Niscemi mobile group from the Livorno division, had just arrived. The message seeped in for Nick when those tanks took turns firing at them on the beach.

Nathan shouted down to the gun crew, “We got a bunch of Italian tanks up ahead. Fire when I give the order.” Paul and Al hopped to it.

Nathan returned hand signals to some of the other tank commanders, while he listened on his headphones, as Captain Monroe gave instructions over the radio. Nick eyed Nathan as his friend peered above the open turret, a horizontal rotating device that enabled them to shoot 360 degrees, which impressed Nick as a great improvement over the older tank destroyers they had trained with.

“Nick, move right, full speed. Don’t stop till I tell you.” As Nick sped diagonally across the battlefield, Nathan yelled: “Fire at will!” Paul kept changing the position of the gun as quickly as Nathan ordered. One of the Italian tanks wandered too close and Nathan’s crew scored their first knockout. At that moment naval gunfire opened up and the Italian tanks that weren’t destroyed reversed their engines all the way to the Gela plain. The ammunition ran out for the tank destroyers, so Nick shut the engine down, his thoughts racing as to what was going to happen next, his crewmates silent and mentally spent.

The smoke billowed across the entire sky with intermittent orange flashes. The accuracy of naval gunners so incredible, they had knocked out every artillery battery on high ground. The Sicilian reservists, overwhelmed by the bombardment and the onslaught of Allied soldiers, became the first to surrender, while all the Axis tanks retreated. Nick had read about ancient Sicily and understood once again that these island people were under siege by another overpowering armada. He puzzled over what he was doing here anyhow, a willing participant in yet another invasion of the land of his ancestors and wondered whether his tank hit any drafted Sicilian soldiers, maybe even civilians foolish enough to be in the area where they blew up their first kill. He recalled that Niscemi was the name of a Sicilian town. Gesù Cristo, he knew they were fighting the guys in black hats like in the movies—combatants who were real life fascists and Nazis out there who wanted to kill Nick and his friends. The stories had been leaking out as to what these bastards were capable of. But he couldn’t get it out of his head—did he kill any Sicilians? All the coastal forces surrendered after the first day of this assault. Later on in Rome, Nick would learn from an intelligence report that these Sicilian reservists were not political for the most part, the fascists and Germans never meaning much to them, or even Italians in general for that matter. He also uncovered something else he could never have imagined.

On the second day of the invasion the Hermann Goring Panzer Division counterattacked against the port of Gela from the northeast by way of the Biscari airfield. Their Tiger I tanks came in from the east and inflicted a lot of casualties, while the rest of the American Armored Division tanks waited to be dewaterproofed, the ammunition still scarce. When Nick first caught sight of the Tiger tanks, he realized that the Germans had upped the ante. They were trapped and were about to be buried, and no one would even know where his body was, six feet under the sand or beneath the sea. Like a miraculu, Nick crossed himself when he heard the Navy big guns obliterating the counterattack, starting with a barrage from the light cruiser, Savannah. The German tanks could not withstand the firepower from the destroyers and cruisers, so the enemy fled.

“Look at those Krauts scrammin’,” Paul gloated.

“Yeah, we sure gave them hell,” Al added.

“They’ll come a time when we’re out of range of big naval guns,” Nathan cautioned.

“Ah, don’t go on and spoil it Nathan,” Paul rejoined.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You never listen to anybody,” Nick said.

“Just drive us around, Nick. We’ll do all the shootin’.”

“You don’t know buona fortuna when you see it, cuginu .” Paul snapped his hand dismissively at Nick, while Nathan’s eyes revealed he agreed with Nick. That same morning Nathan’s crew were part of a small detachment of Sherman tanks that headed north on the Niscemi road to assist groups of infantrymen, who had been cut off into many pockets and pin-downed, separated from their regiment.

“Nick, we need to get to the side flank of those Panthers.”

“Are you sure this is going to work, Nate?”

Nathan directed their M10, its light armor giving them a maneuverability edge, knocking out two enemy tanks in their first run. The M4 Sherman, the workhorse tank, with the help of anti-tank guns from the regiment, was able to destroy thirteen other German Mark III and Panther tanks, after a repeated exchange of hell fire. At the end of the tank battle, the 6-inch guns of the light cruiser, USS Boise, commenced firing, blowing up many of the remaining enemy tanks in retreat. Nick mused how long their luck would last through the nerve center of Sicily and on the spinal cord of Italy.

Throughout the invasion German bombers tried to destroy the armada and Nick checked his watch when a Ju–88 bomber off of Licata, mid-afternoon on July 11th, hit the American transport, the S.S. Robert Rowan. It was 1540. Nathan had Nick guide the tank onto the side of the road to adjust the rotation of the treads, just as that ship exploded into a blackish gray plume of smoke. The surrealistic image reminded Nick of the Greek mythology of Sicily he had studied, Mount Etna being the gateway to Hades, the smoking Rowan a harbinger of more tragedies to come.

That evening Axis planes attacked the naval ships offshore for an hour. After the enemy flew away, air transports appeared overhead, carrying paratroopers from Colonel Tucker’s 504th Combat Team, who had missed their Drop Zones. Nick cringed and cried out ‘ Madonna , Madonna ,’ while Nathan and Al gaped in horror, Paul crossing himself several times, as they witnessed the second wave being shot down under ‘friendly fire’ by AA guns from Allied ships and the beachhead. Nick thought how in hell could anyone come up with the term, ‘friendly fire,’ an oxymoron if ever there was one, a literary term he learned in his senior Honors class. On second thought, this was no time for him to intellectualize things—to call anything ‘friendly fire’ was simply moronic.

By the third day of Operation Husky, Captain Jones selected Nathan’s crew as the point tank to lead their squadron further inland. By this time the fighting had subsided, so the squadron encamped in a secluded location off the coastal road to Agrigento. After they set up a tent next to the tank, Nick cuffed his Zippo lighter, lit up and passed his cigarette around, so everyone could light up. They squatted in a circle and didn’t speak until half their cigarettes burnt.