Don't Wake Me; Let Me Dream

ENGLAND—When Pvt. Charles Schmelze of Pittsburgh. Pa., had finished servicing a troop carrying glider of the Ninth Air Force for the big invasion hop, he was pretty well pooped. So he climbed aboard the glider, picked himself a comfortable corner and hit the hay. The glider towed by a plane piloted by F/O E. G. Borgmeyer of St. Louis, Mo., was last seen landing in a zone of heavy fighting. Pvt. Schmelze had slept his way into history's greatest military Operation.

 

-YANK London Bureau

Highway 6

By Sgt. FRED ROSEN

YANK Staff Correspondent

 

WITH THE FIFTH ARMY IN ROME [By Cable] —Nobody will ever know for certain which were the first Allied troops to enter Rome. During the evening hours of June 4 (1944), reconnaissance units, some armor and some infantrymen crept into the city from different directions. In some cases they pulled up to spend the night in houses vacated by Jerry only a half hour before.

 

All night long there was sniper fighting throughout Rome as isolated Germans tried to join the rest of their forces fleeing north. German time bombs began booming from different sections of the city during the night. Armed Partisanos in civilian clothes, thirsting for revenge, roamed the dark streets, taking pot shots at German vehicles and rushing the buildings where Germans or Fascists were known to be hiding. The last few hours that night Yanks and Partisanos, some of them working together, captured a number of Germans trying to escape in civilian clothes.

 

The city was pitch dark. There was no electricity, no telephones, and water only here and there. The people of Rome sat up all night, peering out of shuttered windows, waiting for the Americans and spitting down curses on the Germans as they caromed through the streets on their way north. At least one of these Jerry vehicles sprayed lead at every window in sight.

 

At dawn, larger bodies of Allied troops began entering the city on every road leading up from the south. Most of them somehow came together, forming one great column moving up the Appian Way.

 

People came pouring out of the houses in a great flood. Hysterical women clasped their hands and rocked back and forth on the curbstones, moaning "Grazia, grazia."

 

We had reached Rome after a furious jeep trip in pursuit of a picked force of Yanks and Canadians whose mission was to punch through the right flank of the German positions south of Rome and to penetrate the city.  

The flying spearhead had met with unexpected success along the broad straight Highway 6, long used by the Germans as their main supply route. Jerry had retreated so fast that he had neglected his usual careful demolition; even the telephone poles were standing.

 

Beyond Valmontone, until recently the anchor of the enemy defense line, we came upon the first signs of battle—a half-dozen scorched German tanks and half-tracks, discarded helmets, little heaps of machine-gun shells, a dead German with letters and snapshots on the ground beside him.

 

The first Yanks we caught up with were tankers, asleep in the turrets or on the ground against the treads. A guard told us they were taking a six-hour break after three days of continuous fighting. Next we came to long lines of infantrymen, tired, dirty but determined. From a farmhouse 20 yards off the road, a couple of riflemen emerged with vino bottles in their hands and roses in their "buttonholes."

 

As we approached Cenecelli, a suburb of Rome, Italians lined the highway, cheering and waving. Old women in black dresses bowed and grinned

like mechanical dolls. Men on bicycles leaped off and waved their arms in wild welcome. A kid, sitting on the branch of a tree that stuck out over the road, showered down handfuls of rose petals as we went by.

 

At the foot of a long upgrade in the road, we came to a cluster of soldiers crouched in a ditch. "Take it easy, there," said a heavy-bearded soldier sprawled in the ditch on one elbow. "This is the end of the line. Jerry is just over the hill." We had caught up with the spearhead.

 

The Yanks and Canadians had been held up for an hour by a couple of German self-propelled guns and some tanks, dug in over the hill. This effective roadblock had already knocked out two American tanks.

 

We sat around the ditch. Nobody seemed to know what to do until reinforcements arrived. Two of our tanks went over the hill to try to root the Jerry out, and we could hear the high song of the fast German machine gun that the boys called the diarrhea gun. Two shells burst 20 yards from our ditch. We slammed our faces into the dirt. Five men crawled down the ditch to join us. They were the crew of one of the tanks, just knocked out by the Germans. "If we could only see where the bastards are," one gasped.

 

For at least an hour enemy fire kept us pinned down. Whenever a shell burst close to a church near our ditch, it set the bells clanging. We looked at each other and remembered it was Sunday. Suddenly we spotted a wedding procession walking down the road toward the church, eight couples, arm in arm, all dolled up in their Sunday best. The white-gowned bride giggled

prettily, as if the roar of shells were her wedding march and the ricocheting bullets were rice.

 

After another 15 minutes, the lieutenant in charge decided to move up closer to the crest of the hill. We stooped over as we walked up the ditch and carefully avoided stepping on the shoulders of the road—Jerry's favorite place for mines. As the shells whistled and crashed all around us, we turned off the road and sprinted for a half-ruined farmhouse. Some of our tanks roared past, on their way over the hill for another try at Jerry.

 

Four hours passed while we listened to the battle. Everybody grew restless as the sun got hotter and the flies and the dust increased. Without telling the lieutenant, T-4 Nellis Johnson, an Indian from Pima, Ariz., and Pvt. Neal McLean of Chicago, Ill., crawled through the grass toward the hilltop. McLean had a bazooka, plenty of shells and hand'grenades. Johnson had grenades and his favorite weapon, a Johnson automatic rifle, which he calls a "Johnny gun."

 

Nearly an hour later the two came crawling back. McLean had fired all the bazooka shells into a house where he thought the German guns were located, and had been kept skipping around by machine-gun fire that came back. Johnson was plastered. He had crept around a house to "surround the Jerries" and found a vino cellar. The lieutenant burned their ears off for going up without orders. Johnson swayed back and forth, listening meekly and mumbling: "But, sir, we got so tired sitting here!"

 

Then Jerry began to work on us in earnest. Shells exploded all over the field and the road. "Airbursts," so-called because they exploded before hitting the ground, sent a shower of jagged steel into the backs of the men below. Broken window glass tinkled on our helmets. We had to get shelter—and quick. One of the Canadians shot the lock off a cellar door, but it was no use.

The place was full of wine barrels, and we couldn't get in. A shell fragment cut into the Canadian's back; he fell like an empty sack.

 

An Italian stuck his head out of the farmhouse and told us there were caves in the fields to our left. One by one we rose and walked at a stoop across the fields. The first man didn't run, so neither did the second. Not a man broke into a run. We all crossed safely. The caves were enormous. They were green with fungus, dark and smelly, but they seemed like heaven. There was six feet of rock between us and the shells.

 

At last the main body of our tanks arrived. In a half hour the job was done; the roadblock was smashed and the advance could continue.

We had been held up five hours.

 

Then a long column of doughboys plodded up the hill. It looked as if the whole damn Army had arrived. The doughboys had marched at

least 12 miles in the hot sun, but they just unslung their rifles as they approached the hill crest, bent over a bit and kept going.

 

The dome of St. Peter's showed up on the horizon through the mist and smoke. We were nearing the center of Rome, but there still seemed to be German snipers and machine gunners in every other cellar window. It took vicious street fighting before Jerry was driven back.

 

We stared at the enormous fountains, the huge statues and the gray stone buildings—relics of ancient Rome. There were many priests on the streets. The surprisingly well-dressed crowds were getting wilder every minute. Everyone wanted to shake our hands. Some said "Welcome" and others just yelled "Viva" and waved handkerchiefs and flags around and around their

heads. A brown-frocked Franciscan monk stood on the corner and blessed each Allied vehicle as it rolled by. A woman held up her bambino so that he would see and remember the great day when the Americanos marched in to liberate Mother Rome. Screaming swarms of kids clung to our jeep and tossed bunches of flowers all over her until she looked like a broken-down

hag made up to look like Hedy Lamarr. A well dressed gentleman jumped on the radiator and hung on precariously for a block while he got off his chest in broken English the wish that America and Italia be closa friends forever. Two

girls, eyes flashing, climbed on the fenders, drew their hands across their throats and shrieked "Morte Tedeschi! (Death to the Germans!)"

 

Around a long bend we sighted the ancient Colosseum, and under one of its huge arches of crumbling gray stone something that it had never seen before in all its years—a jeep with four exhausted Yanks sprawled out sound asleep.

An average of two or three times every block somebody would pump our hands up and down, wild with excitement, and ask whether we knew

his cousin so-and-so who lived in Newark or Chicago or Brooklyn. Six Yanks in the jeep ahead made it a rule always to say yes; then the Italians would drop off, ecstatic.

 

We were moving more and more slowly until we came to the great square known as the Piazza Venizza where Mussolini used to make

his famous balcony speeches. Here the crowd was so thick that the column stopped completely.

 

A group of Yanks and Canadians who had fought in the spearhead force worked their way through the crowd and up through the side door of Mussolini's palace, through its great gaudy corridors with their gilt ceilings, to the office where the great man used to sit.

 

Mussolini's huge desk was located at one end of the long room, so that visitors who had to walk all the way across would feel properly humble by the time they came to the big cheese himself. Sgt. Sam Finn of St. Louis, Mo., sat in the chair, put his feet up on the desk, clasped

his hands behind his head and said: "Not bad, not bad at all." All around us bustled palace guards and police in musical-comedy uniforms, with yard-wide cocked hats like the kind Napoleon used to wear. We stepped out of the office onto the balcony, and a great roar went up from the crowd in the square below. We were on Mussolini's own balcony, undoubtedly the first

Yank uniforms ever seen there.

 

"Viva Americanos!" yelled thousands of people as they waved their handkerchiefs up at us—the same sight Mussolini must have seen as he

looked down. It was then that Sgt. John Vita of Port Chester, N. Y., pulled the historic stunt that will be talked about for the duration and six. He stuck out his chin, threw out his chest and did a terrific take-off of Mussolini, speaking in Italian. The crowds loved it. They nearly went mad with

joy when Vita made the exact kind of slap with his left palm against his right bicep as he shot his arm up in the Fascist salute.

 

That sort of thing went on all day. The fiesta spirit was broken only by occasional shots as mobs went after the stores and homes of Fascists.

Once in a while we saw trucks and busses jammed with armed Partisanos, who fired into the air as they combed the side street and alleys.

 

It was a great day and one that no American soldier who was there will ever forget. By late afternoon the Yanks who had come in first and then scattered over the city were swinging into line and joining the steady columns of doughboys pouring through Rome all day from south to north. The doughboys were so tired they made little attempt to straighten up and parade.

 

These infantrymen were tired as only men can be who haven't slept two nights in five days. There were beards on their faces, and their eyes were sunken and red as they plodded silently forward. They held their rifles any old way over their shoulders, and many had tied pieces of burlap and odd rags around their helmets in place of lost camouflage nets.

 

These were the dirty, tough, goddam wonderful infantrymen who had fought their way up the long bloody mountain path from Salerno; the men who had lived in underground holes at Anzio for months, sweating out the deadly German shellings; the men who always seemed to have to fight straight uphill into the muzzles of German guns; the men who had won Rome.

 

They had won Rome, but they did not have time to stop in it now. Their job was killing Germans, and since the Germans were running north, that was where they were heading.

 

In one long brown column a couple of doughboys were chanting a jingle that expresses, better than anything else, the spirit of the Fifth Army. It goes this way:

 

From Sicily to Rome,

Then Berlin and home....

 

 

 

Song of the Islands

Song of the Islands

GUADALCANAL — When Guadalcanal’s "Radio City" conducted a band-popularity contest recently, the GIs who operate the new station got the surprise of their lives. Harry James and
Benny Goodman trailed Roy Acuff's Tennessee hillbilly band, which received 400 of the 1,000 votes cast by soldiers, sailors and marines of the 'Canal,' on smaller South Sea islands and on patrol ships offshore.

But James is still going to get top billing from the Jacksons who run the broadcasting plant in a three-room shed in a muddy coconut grove. These GI operators, who hail from big cities (Chicago, Salt Lake City, Duluth and Cincinnati) claim the vote was a fluke.

They blame T-5 Hyman Averback of Los Angeles, who conducts the station's "Section 8 Program/' a session of recorded music and Averback chatter. Far from being a friend of hillbilly chants, Averback is such an ardent hot-music man that he lets his prejudices creep into his running commentary on the platters. "I've got some hillbilly records here," he'll remark, "but who likes hillbilly? Let's have a Harry James."

That got them riled up," the other operators of the station say, "and resulted in concerted pressure when we took the poll." Just in case this is the wrong explanation, though, the station is going to give more air time to that good old mountain music.

-Sgt, BARRETT McGURN
YANK Staff Correspondent

Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment
SOMEWHERE IN ITALY—There's a tiny village of about 20 houses here, where every person in town thinks he's the luckiest man alive.

Some drunken German soldiers had wandered into the village, broken into the houses, filled themselves with vino and used the wine barrels for target practice, laughing loudly when the old wine gushed onto the ground.

Finally the American artillery started shelling nearby, and the Nazi drunks began to stagger out of the place—all except one, who decided to see how his “tommy” gun worked.

He lined up all the Italians he could find and was all set to start shooting when some shells hit the top of the building across the street and the falling rubble killed several people, including him.

The townspeople buried their own dead but they left the German where he fell. For a week the body lay there, stinking in the sun, and nobody would bury it. Instead, every time the Italians passed the body, they spit.

When the American soldiers entered the town, they buried the German. The Italians still haven't forgiven them for doing that.

-YANK Field Correspondent

GIs Take Over Rome

By Sgt. JAMES P. O'NEILL

YANK Staff Correspondent WITH THE 1 ST ARMORED DIVISION IN ROME

[By Cable]—Eight days ago I was in Teheran, Iran; a few hours ago I was in
Naples; now I was in Rome. I entered the city under sniper and machine-gun fire, with the point
tanks of the 1st Armored Division, accompanied
by riflemen.


Behind a big Sherman, the third tank to enter
Rome, our jeep bounced at 1930 hours into this mad town filled with happy, hysterical people, sniper fire, pretty girls, mine explosions and free wine. How I happened to get here is a strange tale.
In Naples we were talking over my plane ride
from Iran, the major and I, when a corporal from
the censor's office came in and said our troops
had entered Rome that afternoon. The major, who is my commanding officer, apologized for
interrupting my story. "I'd better get up there and find a press to print YANK on," he said. "I'd
better get up there and find a story," I said.


By 1400 hours the major and I, with Cpl. Sal
Canizzo as our driver, were speeding toward
Rome up Highway 7, the famous Appian Way.
The major had decided to take Highway 7 because Sal said that, on the map, it seemed the straightest and easiest road to the Eternal City.


The highway was in excellent condition, and we 'moved quickly toward the front, slowing
down only in towns like Formia, Terracina and
Cisterna. There we had to pick our way through
rubble-strewn streets. But if the streets were
bad. the towns themselves were terrible. They were towns no longer—just lopsided masonry,
dazed peasants, mangled trees and burned tanks.
In every town there was the smell of death. You could tell the nearness to war by that smell.


Until we hit Velletri, there was little traffic except an occasional small convoy, and we had the highway to ourselves. But when we were about five miles out of Velletri, the road became clogged with traffic—on one lane only, the northbound lane that led to Rome. We zoomed up the outside lane, dodging back into the convoy whenever we spotted an MP.

We passed endless rows of crowded ammo
trucks, gas trucks, ambulances, weapons carriers
loaded down with equipment and six-by-sixes
filled with infantrymen. The road was all dust,
dirt and confusion. Whenever we stopped and asked the way to Rome, the MP would shake his
head in a puzzled way and point hesitatingly
toward the forward end of the dusty column going north on the Appian Way. There was no sign of the enemy; no gunfire of any kind; no planes-ours or theirs—in the sky; no foxholes or
tanks. On this sunny afternoon the hustling,
bustling column, noisy with yells and friendly curses, reminded me of the impatient crowds
bound for dinner after a Saturday football game.


We sped through Albano, where the final push
for Rome had started. No sooner had we passed
through the quiet town than the whole scene changed. You'didn't have to know much about war to sense that you were nearing the front.


You could tell by the dust, rising from the road
like a giant smoke screen and blotting out the warm caressing sun; you could tell by absence of vigilant MPs, who up to now had kept shooing our jeep back into the noisy column. 


And the column itself had changed.  It now consisted of tanks—mostly heavies and mediums—and trucks mounted with heavy weapons. Straddled out in two single lines, 15 paces apart on both sides of the road, were infantrymen.   Their faces were dirty and partly covered by
handkerchiefs that helped keep the dust out of
their mouths. As they walked up the road, they
kept their guns on their hips. Neither the riflemen nor the tank crews talked much; they just moved silently up the road.

The column's pace had slowed down to a crawl when the sounds of shellfire suddenly came from up ahead. The men on the road dove for the safety of the embankment, and the tank crews ducked into their turrets. Sal nudged our jeep over to the embankment, and the three of us got out and lay down with the men on the side of
the road. The shelling was over in five minutes, although it seemed like ages; then the column started to move again.


We got into the jeep, and the major looked at
his map. For a moment he was silent. Then,
taking off his helmet, he scratched his head. "It
looks as if that kid from the censor was wrong.
We might end up selling these blasted things to
the Germans," he said, pointing to the bundle of YANKS we had brought along for promotion work in Rome. "Are you two willing to go on?"
Sal, an Italian boy with a terrible yen to get to
Rome, yelled "Hell, yes!" I waved my head indecisively. The major took that for an affirmative
answer. Our jeep moved on.


Soon the tanks stopped again, and now our
jeep was parked protectively behind the third
leading tank. There was more fire. It was not the same kind of fire we had heard before; this had
a whap instead of a whoosh.


A rifleman came over to our jeep; he was a short squat kid with a dark dirty face, and when he tried to smile you could see he was
tired. "Hey, YANK," he said, pointing to the sticker on our jeep, "you're pretty far up to be getting autographs." Then he spotted the bundle of magazines. "Can I have one, sir?" he asked the major. "Sure thing," the major said.


I reached down and handed the rifleman 10 copies. He pulled a knife out of his hip pocket. "Wanna German souvenir, bud?" he asked. He
threw the knife into the jeep and started across
the road. He gave the rest of the magazines to "a
bunch of his buddies, and one of them yelled across: "This sure is first-class distribution."

Just then there was another dose of whaps, and one of the infantrymen behind us must have noticed my shaking hands. "Don't worry," he said. "That's just a couple of snipers over in that farmhouse. We're gonna go up and get the bastards in a minute."


The Appian Way had now widened out into a four-lane highway with a trolley line running down the middle. Through the dust you could see the city of Rome. Down the street, ignoring the sniper fire, came citizens of Rome, some of them carrying wine in jugs and bottles. One man came running down the road alone; he wore no coat and was crying. The short dark rifleman
talked with him in Italian for a moment, then
turned to us and said: "This guy's wife was
blown up by a mine. He wants a doctor. You
better tell one of the medics."


On the right side of the road three or four
dogfaces were talking to the wine-carrying civilians. One of them took a big slug out of a bottle.
Suddenly there was a shot, and the GI fell over
in the road. The civilians scattered, and the other soldiers bent over their buddy. One of the crew of
the lead tank yelled to the crouching rifleman: "Is he hurt bad?" And the little dark kid yelled
back: "No. he ain't hurt. He's dead."


A second lieutenant and a squad of riflemen started up the embankment on the left toward
the farmhouse from which the shots had come.
The lead tank began to move again. We decided to stay with the tanks, hoping they would
finally make town. We felt uneasy on the road and nudged close to the third tank. The three tanks
in front of us were the only ones moving; the rest of the column had stopped.


We made it this time. No sooner had we passed
between two long rows of apartment houses, at the point where the Appian Way ends and the city of Rome begins, than the three tanks and our jeep were engulfed by screaming, hysterical Romans. Some were laughing, some were crying and all of them wanted to touch us. One old
lady kissed our jeep as if it were her lost son.
A dark-haired girl placed a rose in Sal's ear.
Somebody threw a bunch of flowers into the jeep and someone else put two bottles of wine alongside the flowers.

The three tanks had met the same fate. Romans swarmed over them like ants. The tanks couldn't move without killing somebody. I jumped out of the jeep and headed for the first tank to get the names of the GIs in it for my story, but it was impossible. Twice I was halfway up when the yelling crowd pushed me off.


Then I spotted an officer in the center of the road, trying to clear a path for the tanks.  I went over and talked with him. "How does it feel to be one of the first tanks in Rome?" I asked. He was a tall thin-faced captain. "We're not staying here long," he said. "We're supposed to move up that road toward the Tiber but these crazy people won't let us.  They don't know it but they're holding up the war."


The officer gave me the names of the men in the lead tank: Lt. Henry Schoberth of Versailles, Ky.; Sgt. John Brown Jr. of Canton, Ohio; T-5
Ernest Barnett of La Grande, Oreg.; Pvt. Tiberio
Di Julio of Orange, N. J., and Pvt. Antonio Cano of Los Angeles, Calif.
From somewhere came the whoosh of a selfpropelled gun. The captain headed for his tank, and the tanks began to move to the side of the road for protection. Somehow nobody got hurt, and this time the Italians cleared a path. Then the tanks disappeared down the dark street.


When I reached the jeep, I found that the major had picked up an ex-colonel of the Italian
Army. "We're going to his house for dinner," the major said. It was a confusing ride. We would start up one street and meet a bunch of people at
the corner. They would either swarm all over our much-abused jeep or scream something about
Tedeschi. This, Sal informed us, meant that there were still snipers up the street.


After backtracking over half the city of Rome, we finally arrived at the ex-colonels home.  He
lived in a modern apartment house. We parked
the jeep in his garage, locked the door and, after fighting our way through the mob that had
formed in front of the entrance, arrived at our
host's apartment. There we were introduced to
his wife, his mother and two of his friends, a middle-aged couple. We had a dinner of ham sliced thinner than a Walgreen special, peas, salad and white wine. We knew food was scarce in
Rome and went easy with the ex-colonel's larder.

Through Canizzo's New Jersey-style Italian, we learned that, besides being very happy, these
people were interested in two things. The ex-colonel wanted to know how the Allies were going to treat the members of the Italian Army. The other gentleman, a banker, wanted to know what the AMG would do with the lira. We could answer neither question.


After thanking them for the dinner, we took off with a volunteer guide for the Ambasciatori, one of Rome's swankiest hotels. Our guide found
it easily, and we went inside. There were no
lights, since the Germans had knocked the powerhouse out of commission. At the desk we found a tall thin man in charge. He spoke good English and did not seem at all ruffled by our presence. "Aren't you surprised to see us?" we asked. "No,"
he said, "we were expecting you, but not quite so
fast." "Are there any Americans here?" we asked. "Not yet," the man said, laughing quietly. "There were German officers in this hotel an hour and a half ago."


A bellboy took us to our rooms. Sal and I shared one with twin beds. He was asleep in five minutes, but I couldn't doze off. There was a lot of sniper fire, and with every whap I could picture some Kraut working his way toward our room. Soon the roar of tanks came up from the streets below. I went out on the balcony and
breathed a sigh of relief when I saw they were ours. For a minute or two I watched and then I went back to bed. Soon the comforting roar of
the tanks made me drowsy. I remember saying: "This all must be a dream." Then I went to sleep.


Early next morning I went down to the bar and met Charlie Castellotti, a famous bartender in the Paris of the hectic 1920s. Three German officers drank at Charlie's bar only a few
hours before the arrival of our jeep. "They were sad," Charlie said. "They have felt for a long while that you were going to take Rome."


There was a pretty girl sitting at the other end of the bar with a beautiful dark cocker spaniel at her feet. I went over and petted the spaniel.
He didn't seem to like my touch. "His name is
Blacky," the girl said. "He was given to me by a
German lieutenant last night."


It was a warm lazy day. There were still crowds in the streets. GIs whizzed through town with flowers in their helmets, bottles of wine in
their hands and girls hanging on their jeeps.


On one of the main streets a water main had burst. Four happy dogfaces were pushing each other into the stream. A large crowd gathered and watched the horseplay, cheering whenever a soldier was thrown into the drink.


But not all the Roman scene was hysterical
that day. Through one main street, in long serious lines, marched the infantry on its way to the
Tiber and the forward positions. On another street tanks, trucks, guns and ammo rolled toward the front.

On still another street a band of civilians, armed with machine guns and wearing red bands on their sleeves, stormed a radio station. They brought out the proprietor and beat him to the ground, using their guns as clubs. Then they carried him off. yelling "Fascisti."


The pace was too fast to last. Pvt. Charles
Camp of Dunbar. Pa., a rifleman who had fought
from the beginning of the push to the very outskirts of the town, put it this way: "Come the MPs and the 'Off Limits' signs, and this town will slow down."

YANK 7 July 1944

Picnic at Sansapor

Picnic at Sansapor

By Sgt. Charles Pearson

YANK Staff Correspondent

Sansapor, Netherlands New Guinea [By Cable]

If there had been some ice cream around, the invasion of Cape Sansapor would have been a picnic. It was a surprise landing. In­stead of warships plastering the beach to clear the way for the invasion craft, the LCVPs chugged in unescorted, hoping there would be no one ashore besides the usual hermit crabs.

The infantrymen poured out on the beach and nothing happened. Noone shot at them and no one ran away from them. There just wasn't anyone there. Wave after wave came in and disappeared in the jungle. LCIs and troops proceeded up the beach. It was Sunday morning with the sun shin­ing and no shot fired. A soldier wiped the sweat off his face and said: “Well, why don't we choose up sides?”

Two and a half miles offshore was Amsterdam Island and two miles farther out, Middleburg Island. A company in buffaloes went to Amster­dam and a platoon occupied Middleburg. There were no Japs on either island.

Back on the beach, GIs speculated on the where­abouts of the next landing, gambled with guilders and discussed women. A photographer walked by.

Up on the left flank, a machine gun opened fire suddenly, followed by a few bursts of rifles and tommy guns. There was no answering Jap fire at all. "Someone saw a rabbit," a soldier said by way of explanation.

Two young natives came up the beach and were chased into the water by a small barking puppy. Some ducks and trucks were using the beach for a highway. Five photographers stroIled past.

A small force moving up the right flank to the river passed through a native village, and 10 minutes later all the natives were smoking American cigarettes.

Back at the landing point a whole platoon of photographers went by. There wasn’t much of a battle but it was getting a lot of attention. Cats and bulldozers were building roads and clearing the ground. Ack-ack guns were in posi­tion. A small fellow went past with a large white sign lettered in blue: To Latrine. The beachhead was civilized now.

Next morning a force left Sansapor beach in LCMs and headed up the coast to a small settle­ment, evidently used by the Japs as a barge-relay station. The landing was made a mile and a half to the left of the village. Like the first landing, there were no shots fired. Part of the infantry started for the jungle trail and the rest headed up the beach.

There's a peculiar thing about infantrymen. Whenever they march in, there's always some madman at the head of the column with a seven-foot stride, and everyone in the second half of the column puffs and sweats. It was like that here. As the force approached the village it slowed down and advanced cautiously. The precaution was unnecessary since a rooster, a hen and a pig in the village offered no resistance. The rooster was killed, the hen was captured, and the pig escaped.

We found the village clean and in good order. The Japs who had been living there had scrubbed out the place before leaving. They left practically nothing of value or interest behind. The huts were set in around coconut palms and some banana, breadfruit, kapok and lemon trees. Flowers, red hibiscus and frangipani were everywhere, and it was the kind of place some bum who had never been there would describe as a tropical paradise. The heat was stifling.

There had been no air attacks thus far, and there was little likelihood that the Japs, who had been in the place and taken a powder, would return. All in all it was a cheap victory. No one was sorry about that.

This was not the first action for the troops who took Cape Sansapor. They had fought in earlier New Guinea battles where the going was really tough. The surprise landing probably was more of a surprise to these infantrymen than to any­one else.

The operation will never be made into a movie starring Dorothy Lamour. It undoubtedly will not make everyone forget about a second front. But it does bring us 200 miles closer to the Philippines and the Japanese jackpot. At the moment that's the general idea behind all our movements in this theater.

It's Hotter'n Hell at Andimeshk

It’s Hotter’n Hell at Andimeshk

By Sgt. Burtt Evans

YANK Staff Correspondent

Desert District, Iran—A GI died at Andimeshk post here and went to hell. "Where were you last stationed?"

asked the Devil.

"Andimeshk," replied the GI.

“Oh," said the Devil sympathetically. “In that case you'd better rush over to the supply sergeant and draw your woolen underwear and winter overcoat."

They don't publish the temperature at Andi­meshk, but estimates of the summer heat range from 130 to 180 degrees, with most of the soldier vote favoring the higher figure. Worst thing is that it's almost that hot at night, making it hard to sleep. An old-time GI resident of this desert hot box will pour a canteen of water onto his mattress, then lie down in it and try to get to sleep before the water evaporates.

KPs fhave four meals a day to deal with at Andimeshk — the usual three, plus cold fruit juices and snacks at 0930. This breaks up the work day, which runs from 0530 to 1300 for most of the men; it's murder to work in the afternoon.

Metal subjected to this red-hot sun has caused many a flesh burn. Your dog tags will sear your chest in the short walk from barracks to mess hall. Yet the men here do heavy work, packing supplies for Russia. Most of them, like T/Sgt. Jo­seph E. Dionne, S/Sgt. Milton Kaplan, T-4 Peter Farkas, T-4 Edward A. Marusa, Cpl. Edward G. Rice and Pfc. Carl C. Miller, are spending their second summer here.

The occasional breeze hits you like a blast from a steel furnace, and the heat plays strange tricks. Some types of soap just melt away, vaseline turns to liquid and shaving-cream crumbles.

Andimeshk is practically in the suburbs of Dizful, "the City of the Blind," hottest inhabited spot on earth. Dizful is one Believe-It-or-Not place that lives up to its billing.

To avoid the heat, the people of this ancient city long ago went underground. All the mysteri­ous functions of a Persian city are performed in a labyrinth of caves many feet below the earth's surface. The wealthier the people are, the deeper they can afford to dig, and there is a saying in Dizful that "the robes of the rich rest on Noah's waters." Many of the inhabitants never come up into the daylight. More than half are at least partially blind—some because of disease, some because of their long stay below the earth.

Other Army posts in the Persian desert are almost as hot as Andimeshk. As one GI put it: “To my mind, when it gets over l50 degrees it doesn't make much difference.”

And nature kicks up other annoyances form these camps. Ahwaz has almost daily duststorms and the American soldiers who unload supply ships at the important port of Khorramshahr often labor through sandstorms that blot out the sun. At Bandur Shapur it's the humidity and stench that get you.

The summer heat is even too much for the flies. When the troops first hit this waste area "the natives greeted them with these heartening words: “InJuly the flies die; in August Johnny dies." But thanks to sun helmets, salt tablets and numerous heat-stroke centers, the medics have kept heat casualties at a minimum.

Andimeshk must be unique in one respect. It is probably the only place in the world where the American soldier is denied his one inaliena­ble privilege—the right to sweat it out.

At Andimeshk perspiration dries as it leaves the pores—you can't sweat,

YANK 25 Aug 1944

The Battle of Belvedere

The Battle of Belvedere

In this Tuscany town, a battalion of Storm Troopers found it was no match for the Fifth Army's crack Japanese-American soldiers.

By Sgt. JAMES P. O'NEILL

YANK Staff Correspondent

With the Fifth Army in Italy—There are three outfits that will remember the little Tuscany town of Belvedere for a long while to come. Two of them are the American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Combat Team, now spearheading the drive to the north. The other is a German SS battalion, the remnants of which are now spearheading a drive toward Naples and the nearest PW camp.

Both the 100th Battalion and the 442d Combat Team are composed of Japanese-Americans, many of them from Hawaii. The 442d is a recent arrival in Italy, but the 100th has been here a long, long time. The men of the 100th went in at Salerno and have since fought through almost every major action from the Volturno to Rome. In a battalion of 1,300 men they have more than 1,000 Purple Hearts.

The story of Belvedere really began after Rome fell, when the 100th was pulled out of the line and sent to bivouac in the pleasant countryside just north of the city. There it joined the 442d. It was a happy day for both outfits; most of the lOOth's younger brothers, cousins and friends were in the 442d and they hadn't seen each other since shortly after Pearl Harbor, when the 100th left- Hawaii for combat training in the U. S.

For three, days the brass hats left the two out­fits alone. The kids of the 442d plied their older brothers with questions of war. The older broth­ers, like all combat men, dodged these questions and asked questions of their own about Hawaii and their families and girls. Together the outfits visited Rome, buying souvenirs and baffling the Romans, who decided they must be Japanese prisoners. It was impossible for them to believe that these were tough, loyal Americans.

After the three days the two outfits went to work. Now the men of the 100th began to answer those questions; for 14 days they drilled the 442d, sweating with the kids from morning to night, cursing and pushing and ridiculing and encour­aging them, giving the final polish that makes a man as much of a combat soldier as he can be before combat. And in the evenings they would sit around together and drink “vino” and sing their soft Hawaiian songs.

Then on the seventeenth day after the fall of Rome the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442d Combat Team were pulled into the line, and two days later they headed for the beautiful little hilltop town of Belvedere.

The 100th was the first to go into the line. Its objective was a small town about seven miles below Belvedere. The German strategy since Rome had been to fight in pockets on each sector of the front, and the mission of the 100th was to clean up one of these rear-guard pockets. The men of the 100th did it in two days, chasing the Germans up the inland road toward Florence and meeting little resistance until they neared the valley directly before Belvedere. There they were stopped by a brace of 150-mm cannon and several self-propelled guns. The German artil­lery was also holding up a battalion to the right of the 100th. This battalion was trying to use a crossroad, but the Germans had it zeroed in. Division sent orders for the 100th to stop while division artillery tried to clear out the Germans. When the barrage was over, the 100th was pulled out and the 442d was sent in lb assault the German positions.

It didn't work. The 442d made an initial break-through, but that was all. The Germans counter-attacked against the 442d's left flank, throwing in a mess of mortars. They pushed the 442d out of the valley and pinned the outfit down in an exposed and highly uncomfortable position in a wheatfield. Meanwhile the German artillery had moved back and was still stopping the battalion on the right of the 442d.

Back in their bivouac areas the men of the 100th heard what was happening to the 442d and began to get itchy. The enlisted men uncon­sciously began to clean and oil their guns; the officers brought out their maps and began to think. Finally they held a semiofficial meeting and delegated Capt. Sakae Takahashi of B Com­pany to go to the brass hats and tell them the outfit wanted to do something. When the captain got to the colonel and started to speak, he was cut short. "Save your breath,” the colonel said. "We're hitting the road."

The 100th had orders and a mission.

The mission was simple. All the battalion had to do was to infiltrate the German positions in the valley, the hill that Belvedere was on and the town itself; to encircle and capture the town, and cut off the main road out of Belvedere that runs north to Sasseta and Florence. That was all. Division intelligence said the position was being held by an SS battalion, which had an OP in the town directing artillery and mortar fire on the 442d and the battalion on its right.

A and B Companies of the 100th were assigned to assault positions, with the rest of the battalion in reserve. The jump-off was at 1200 hours. By 1300 both companies had infiltrated completely around Belvedere and were behind the town at a farm called Po Pino. The rest of the battalion dug in among the olive groves at the edge of the valley. B Company was to initiate the attack, while A Company was to rendezvous at Po Pino.

Commanding B Company was the same Capt. Takahashi who had taken the battalion's plea to the colonel. He planned the attack this way: the 1st Platoon under S/Sgt. Yeki Kobashagawa was to take the town; the 2d Platoon under Lt. James Boodry, a former Regular Army dogface from Boston, was to move on the main road leading out of town and cut it off; the 3d Platoon under Lt. Walter Johnston of New York was to cover the northern position of the company. The heavy-weapons platoon was to move with the 2d Platoon and cover the road north to Sasseta.

Sgt. Kobashagawa broke his 1st Platoon into three squads, two of which encircled Belvedere on each side, while the sergeant led his squad into town. On the outskirts Kobashagawa's squad located the Jerry OP wires, which were cut by one of the point men, Pfc. Seikichi Nakayama. Then the squad moved cautiously into town. It was quiet, the men were almost up to the modern three-story Fascist headquarters when two German machine pistols opened up on them. They ducked behind some houses and settled down to work.

Kobashagawa and two men, loaded with gren­ades, moved toward the big building under cover of the others. The machine pistols were located in a doctor's office on the first floor. One of the men was hit, but the sergeant and the other man got to the house next door. They tossed four grenades in the window, and the machine pistols were through. Four Germans came out of the building, and the covering fire killed three and wounded one.

That left about 20 Germans in the building. They started to retreat the back way and out of town toward the valley. They fought from house to house, and; then ducked over a ravine and down into the valley. The two squads encircling the town caught some of these Germans coming out of the ravine.

When Kobashagawa's platoon assembled again at the edge of town, it ran into machine-gun fire from a German half-track located in front of one of the valley farmhouses. The platoon could also hear the noise of a battle opening up to the right.

Kobashagawa decided to dig in and call for mor­tar support before jumping the farmhouse.

The mortar support didn't come. The heavy weapons platoon had discovered a nice reverse slope and set up there to cover the road to Sasseta. The platoon was about to open up on some Germans trying to make a get-away when the point squad of the 2d Platoon, preceding the weapons platoon, arrived at the edge of the hill and practically ran into the four German 155s that had been firing on the 442d and its flank battalion. The Germans had just moved into this new position and were preparing to fire.

They never did. Lt. Boodry, commanding the platoon, had Cpl. Hidenobu Hiyane, communications man, get the weapons platoon on the radio. Cpl. Hiyane contacted T/Sgt. M. Nakahara and gave him the essential data; Their conversation must have sounded terrifying if any Germans were listening—it was conducted in a per­sonal code, combining Hawaiian dialect with Jap­anese and American slang.

The plan worked all right. While Lt. Boodry and his platoon moved in on the German battery with carbines and M1s, the weapons platoon cut loose with its mortars. In five minutes 18 Ger­mans had been killed and all four of the 155s were out of action.

The Germans knew they were encircled now and tried to make a break up the main road to­ward Sasseta. Capt. Takahashi ordered the 3d Platoon to move up and cover the flank of the 2d Platoon. He told both rifle platoons and the weapons platoon to hold their fire until the Ger­mans made a break, which sooner or later they had to do. And they did.

Seventeen of their amphibious jeeps loaded with Jerries swung out of an olive grove and headed hell-bent for Sasseta. The three platoons let them get onto the road and then let them have it. All 17 jeeps were knocked out. Two light machine guns manned by Sgt. K. Yoshimoto and Sgt. Nakahara accounted for most of the damage, and the riflemen picked off the Germans as they ran from the jeeps.

Right after that, four German trucks filled with men broke from the olive grove and tried to swing around the knocked-out jeeps. The first two made it, but the other two were stopped. Lt. Boodry picked out one driver with his carbine, and one of his riflemen got the other. The trucks piled up in the middle of the road, blocking it effectively and preventing any further German escape. “The next half-hour," says Pvt. Henry (Slim) Nakamora, a bazookaman of the 2d Pla­toon, "that valley was like a big box of chocolates and us not knowing which piece to take first."

The test of the Germans retreated to the grove and dug in. Sgt. Kobashagawa's platoon on top of the hill picked off a few of them. The sergeant was good and sore about not getting his mortar support and kept calling for it, but the mortars were needed somewhere else. Capt. Takahashi had decided to make a frontal attack on the farmhouse with the 3d Platoon. The 1st Platoon was assigned to keep the Germans busy in the grove, while the 2d Platoon was to knock off any snipers who might have come up the road on the platoon's flank. The captain also sent a request back to battalion for more ammo. The supply was running low.

When the Germans in the farmhouse saw the 3d Platoon moving toward them, they opened fire. The 3d returned the fire, aided by elements of the 1st and 2d Platoons, and moved in and around the farmhouse. There was a German half-track there, with two Germans working its machine gun. Cpl. Toshio Mizuzawa, who had plopped a rifle grenade into the back seat of a jeep earlier in the day, scored another basket when he dropped one into the half-track and rendered it highly ineffective.

This was enough for the occupants off the farmhouse. They came out with their hands up. One of the prisoners spoke English and asked Lt. Johnston about his platoon: These men are Mongolians, yes?”

"Mongolians hell," the lieutenant said, “Hasn't Hitler told you? These are Japanese. Japan has surrendered and is fighting on our side now." The German was a little skeptical until three of the dogfaces gathered around and solemnly intoned: Tojo no good. Hitler no good. Roosevelt good. Banzai!" That convinced him.

Sgt. Kobashagawa had seen the Germans reforming in the olive grove and had spotted a PzKW IV tank there. He relayed this informa­tion to Capt.Takahashi, who didn't exactly rel­ish the idea of running into a tank with so little ammo. The captain sent an urgent call for A Company and ordered the 3d Platoon back to the reverse slope to join the weapons platoon, leaving a patrol to scout the area. The patrol consisted of Sgt. A. Governagaji and Pfc. Tanreyshi Nakana, working as a BAR team, and Pvt. Nakamora with his bazooka. Snipers tried to get them but were silenced by Lt. Boodry and a squad from his platoon. Boodry shot one sniper out of a tree from 150 yards with his carbine. “He fell out of a tree and just looked at me as if he was surprised,” Boodry says. "I was surprised, too. I didn't think a carbine was accurate at that dis­tance. I moved in a little closer and hit him four more times."

Then the German counterattack started. The tank rolled out of the olive grove and started up the slope. It was followed by a half-track, and behind that were some soldiers with two light machine guns and what was left of a rifle company. Sgt. Governagaji of the patrol crawled over to Pvt. Nakamora and asked him if he wanted to take a crack at the tank with his
bazooka.

"Yeah,” said Pvt. Nakamora, who is a man of few words.

Sgt. Governagaji nodded and started to crawl back to his position. On the way he was hit by a slug from the tank. Then the tank bounced into view about 15 yards from Nakamora. He aimed, fired and hit the tank right in the belly. He reloaded and hit it in the same place. The tank moved about 10 yards and blew up. The concus­sion knocked out Nakamora and killed Sgt.Governagaji who was lying about 10 feet away. Two Germans started out of the tank but Pfc. Nakana, working the BAR alone, got both of them before they were halfway out of the turret.

The weapons platoon on the slope took care of the half-track knocking off its tread. The 2d Pla­toon had run out of ammunition and withdrawn; the weapons platoon had one box of machine-gun ammo left. Now the German rifle company with the two machine guns started up the hill. The dogfaces didn't know what they were going to do, but they hadn't counted on Nakana with his BAR. Nakana waited until the Germans were within 50 yards, then knocked out the four Jer­ries carrying the two machine guns. The rest of the rifle company hightailed it back to the olive grove. The counterattack was over.

After that the 100th mopped up. B Company called it a day; A Company moved through and chased the retreating Germans among the olive groves and up and down the ravines. When B Company took stock they found they had one box of ammo left in the company. It was now 1600 hours.

In the valley of Belvedere lay 84 dead Germans; headed for the rear were 32 prisoners and 29 wounded Jerries. By 1900 hours A Company had accounted for 26 more German dead, 18 pris­oners and 9 wounded. The box score on Jerry equipment was 13 motorcycles, 19 jeeps, 7 trucks, 2 half-tracks, 1 PzKW IV tank, 1 SP gun, 2 anti­tank guns, 4 155-mms, 1 radio CP and 1 battalion CP with 20 telephones.

The 100th lost one man and had eight wounded. The next morning the outfit was relieved. It bivouacked that day with the 442d. There was a lot of razzing between the two outfits.

After a couple of days both of them went back into the line.