Chapter Eleven

Operation Husky

Operation Husky swung into action on the night of 9/10 July 1943. A vast Allied armada of 2,500 ships and landing craft surged towards the south-east tip of Sicily. On board were 181,000 men belonging to two great armies – one was Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s US Seventh Army; the other was General Sir Bernard Montgomery’s British and Canadian Eighth Army.

Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Wellesley was with the British contingent:

On the night of the assault, no one went to bed properly as the first breakfast for the first assault troops was at 12.30 a.m. and as we lay some miles off shore we could see the tremendous bombardments and bombing of the towns on the east coast of Sicily which preceded the actual landings.

The first landings took place about 3 [a.m.] and we heard from the returning landing craft that there had been little opposition, though a few losses from land mines. I had breakfast at 3.45 and actually jumped on shore from the assault landing craft about 9 carrying all my kit, which I continued to do for a mile and half up hill to the ‘Personnel Assembly Area’.

This was a lovely almond orchard filled with large rocks. The whole landing went like clockwork and it was wonderful to see the tanks and large lorries driving down the ramps to the beach and moving off.

Despite a gale earlier in the night, the winds had dropped and the amphibious landing has gone remarkably well for the British. They quickly moved all their troops and equipment on to the beaches and inland. By midday, Wellesley remembered:

The Germans had found out where we had landed and for the rest of the afternoon and most of the night we were bombed and machine-gunned. Periodically I had to leave our nice shelter to get news of how the battle was going as my instructions were to enter Syracuse as soon as possible after it fell.

Syracuse was Montgomery’s first target and his soldiers moved swiftly towards it. This was thanks in part to an advanced unit of glider-borne troops who landed near the key bridge of Ponte Grande. More than 200 airborne soldiers had been drowned as their gliders were released too early and crashed into the sea. Of the remaining seventy-three who made it to the bridge, sixty-five were killed or wounded holding it for the approaching ground forces. Wellesley described the scene:

At every pill-box along the road the dead were still lying about, a ghastly sight for those not accustomed to battlefields. At first light the next day I heard that our troops had taken [Syracuse] at 9 the night before. We got a lift on a truck that was going in and by 9 in the morning I had met the Mayor and Prefect and had taken over the civil government of the place.

Wellesley was an officer of AMGOT – the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory. It was later known simply as AMG. This organisation, headed by Major-General Francis Baron Rennell of Rodd, would rule Sicily for the next six months. It would be the front line for Allied dealings with the Mafia.

American forces landed to the west of the British on the southern coast of Sicily at Licata, Gela and Scoglitti. Associated Press War photographer Herbert White went in with the first waves of attack at Licata:

Boy! Our American warships were crackerjacks – they knocked out every pillbox ashore! The infantry landing craft started for the beach at about 2.45am and our Navy poured it on each pillbox that tried to get tough. I would see a flash from a shore gun and immediately naval shells would start whistling over my head and smash the enemy into silence.

Enemy bombers came over in the darkness, dropping flares before they let go with bombs, but they didn’t hit a thing . . .

After daylight I went ashore to see the equipment unloaded from my landing ship on tanks and it was a pretty exhibition of efficiency to see loads of artillery and vehicles and supplies moving from sea to land like an assembly line in a Detroit factory.

By the end of the day, White had seen only four American casualties – two dead soldiers and two dead sailors.

Among the first waves of assault troops that hit the beaches were the New York Naval Intelligence team of Lieutenants Anthony Marsloe, Paul Alfieri, Joachim Titolo and Ensign James Murray.

We were broken up into two teams of two members each [said Alfieri]. Lieutenant Titolo and myself were assigned to the invasion of Sicily at Licata, and Lieutenant Marsloe and Ensign Murray were assigned to the invasion of Gela.

They were armed with all the information they had gathered in New York from Luciano and his mobsters and put it to use straight away, as Marsloe recalled:

It was of tremendous help following the landing, because we gained an insight into the customs and mores of these people – particularly Sicilians – the political ideology and its mechanics on lower echelons, the manner in which the ports were operated, the chains of command together with their material culture which enabled us to carry out the findings and purposes of our mission.

Alfieri went further and explained how he used his Mafia contacts:

One of the most important plans was to contact persons who had been deported for any crime from the United States to their homeland in Sicily, and one of my first successes after landing at Licata was in connection with this, where I made beneficial contact with numerous persons who had been deported . . . They were extremely cooperative and helpful because they spoke both the dialect of that region and also some English.

Meyer Lansky later told a story about one of Alfieri’s first contacts being a man who Lucky Luciano had saved from the electric chair. The man had fatally shot a policeman on the Lower East Side when he was sixteen. The boy’s mother was a cousin of Luciano and pleaded with him to organise his escape. Luciano sent him out of New York via Canada to Sicily. In Sicily, the cop-killer became the head of his local Mafia and kept up links with other criminals deported from the States. Alfieri saw this man when he landed in Licata.

‘I was told that “Mafia” and “Lucky Luciano” were passwords’, remembered Lansky. ‘Maybe that sounds crazy right in the middle of the war . . . but one of the agents told me later that those words were magic. People smiled and after that everything was easy.’ Alfieri told his contact that he wanted to get to the headquarters of the Italian naval command. They identified it as hidden in a holiday villa set back from the beach. The local Mafioso then gathered his gunmen and they attacked the HQ, killing the German guards outside. Alfieri went inside and blew open a safe that contained valuable documents. In the safe, he found plans that outlined German and Italian defences on the island, plus their radio code-books. Most importantly, it also contained information on the Axis naval forces throughout the Mediterranean. Map overlays detailed marine minefields and revealed safe routes through them. It was a tremendous prize that saved many Allied lives.

For that Mafia-aided act, Alfieri was awarded the Legion of Merit. ‘By his resourcefulness and daring devotion to duty’, said the presidential citation, ‘he made available information of great value in planning future operations, thereby contributing in large measure to the success of our invasion forces.’

Later, during the Herlands investigation, Titolo was asked if, in the invasion of Sicily, he made contact with members of the criminal underworld or the Mafia. ‘We did, sir’, was Titolo’s direct answer.

Exhilarated by their capture of the Italian naval documents, Marsloe and his team now had to settle down to the more mundane work of gathering further information from the locals. They used their experience on the New York waterfront to deploy the local fishing fleets to their advantage. Said Alfieri:

The original purpose of this Sicilian fishing fleet under the US Navy control was to acquire food for the Italians where the invasion had already been effective, but under the command of Lieutenant Titolo all fishing boat captains were instructed to report certain information which had high intelligence qualities, which assisted us greatly through those early troublesome days of the invasion.

In particular they located minefields and booby traps along the coast and in harbours.

The team then moved inland with the rest of Seventh Army. As they moved out of Licata, they passed hundreds of Italian prisoners. ‘The Italian soldiers that were rounded up’, noted Herbert White, ‘sat rather glumly on the hillside watching the American Army whiz past them to the European second front. There must have been from 300 to 350 Italians in that batch of prisoners.’

As the Allies advanced into Sicily, they uncovered evidence of a profound lack of morale among Sicilian and Italian troops. Preliminary reports gained from interrogating captured soldiers painted a desperate picture of the Axis forces. Said an Allied HQ report of 17 July 1943:

Morale very low and worse than that of PSW [prisoners of war] captured in Tunisia campaign. Most PSW appear heartily sick of War and happy to have been taken PW by Americans or British. In some cases invasion welcomed. Some PSW boasted of having given themselves up without firing a shot or resisted at all. PSW complained of lack of food and supplies stating that Germans were cleaning out countryside of all food.

On the US Seventh Army front in western Sicily, a message of 19 July said there were many accounts of Italians surrendering and indications that some had mutinied against the command of their German officers. Another report for the European Theater of Operations (ETOUSA) chiefs of staff, including supreme commander General Eisenhower, prepared at the Allied HQ in Algiers on 20 July, summarised the situation on the island:

Authenticated cases are not merely Sicilian Coastal Divisions but also units of Neapolitan and Leghorn Divisions surrendering en-masse. Prisoner evidence confirms that 20,000,000 [leaflets] were dropped over Sicily before the invasion and softened up the morale. Suggest that you play up pro-ally morale of civilians and Italian troops in Sicily . . .

First results of German prisoner interrogation, shows lowest morale yet encountered in German troops. The main features are Germans who hitherto regarded Italians as poor soldiers, now regard them as worse than useless, even betraying positions to enemy. Germans regard the defense in Sicily hopeless. They feel themselves sacrificed uselessly as in Tunisia and also hope German High Command does not intend to defend Italy. There is no indication yet, of a break in discipline, since Officers still retain their hold.

The Germans themselves were damning about the value of their Italian Allies. In a German campaign report produced by the Hermann Goering Panzer Division, they did not hold back with their criticism:

In Sicily the Italians virtually never gave battle and presumably they will not fight on the mainland either. Many units in Sicily, either led by their officers or on their own, marched off without firing a single shot. Valuable equipment fell into the hands of the enemy in undamaged condition. The good intentions of some commanders and the good appearance of some officers and non-commissioned officers must not lead one to overlook the fact that 90 per cent of the Italian Army are cowards and do not want to fight.

With the Germans viewing their Axis partners in this light, it is little wonder that many Italian soldiers declined to die alongside them.

That the Fascists themselves were aware of a chronic breakdown in morale was revealed in a government radio broadcast made in Rome in the middle of July:

Our enemies have once again resorted to threats. Roosevelt and Churchill have addressed an appeal to Italians asking them to rebel against the Italian Government. Italians have been asked to betray their cause and place themselves at the disposal of the invaders.

[But, argued the broadcast] if Italy surrendered it would not mean that she would have found peace once again. The Italian people would still be in the war – they would be asked by the invaders to turn their weapons against Germany . . . Thus our country would still continue to suffer the horrors of war.

While the Americans appeared to be having a relatively easy time advancing across the island, the same could not be said for the British and the Canadians. As the Eighth Army advanced north along the east coast towards Catania, it met strong resistance. The Germans had chosen to defend their airfields at Catania and brought in the elite Hermann Goering Panzer Division, including several Tiger tanks. The kind of fighting the British faced here shocked Lieutenant-Colonel W. I. Watson of the Durham Light Infantry. ‘The enemy were always quite ruthless and fought with almost fanatical ardour at times’ he reported. He saw German paratroopers shoot Allied wounded and stretcher-bearers, and when captured, these same Germans bared their chests anticipating they would be shot and shouted ‘Mein Führer!’

General Harold Alexander, deputy Supreme Commander to Eisenhower, sent his own personal report of the fighting to Winston Churchill on 22 July:

The battle around Catania is very fierce and the Germans are fighting bitterly in positions well suited for defence but we have killed a lot. 8th Army are trying to outflank them to the north by a thrust on Adrano by 30 Corps. This will be assisted by 1st USA Division . . . Remainder of 7th Army are progressing very well and are nearing Palermo . . . Reports are that Italian officers are deserting by getting into plain clothes and disappearing. All this is to the good and we can deal with these gentlemen later.

I appreciate that Germans will hang on to Messina peninsula at all costs consequently I must have Palermo as a port through which to supply 7th Army which I shall bring into line north of 8th Army at earliest possible.

General Alexander understood that the Germans in Sicily were desperate to evacuate as many of their soldiers as they could to mainland Italy. This meant holding the British back from the port of Messina. The rest of the island was left to fend for itself. Thus, the Americans got an easier ride to Palermo, but they were then expected to turn eastwards and drive towards Messina.

A report of 25 July from 15 Army Group said: ‘Intelligence in Western Sicily last Italian remnants being mopped up. Up to last night 42000 PW taken by 7 Army.’ Later the same report said that ‘2 Corps [from Seventh Army] captured Gangi continued advance eastward along highway . . . Prov Corps captured Trapani and Castellammare and consolidated control Western Sicily.’

Gangi, of course, was the home of a notorious Mafia gang in the north of the island and the site of Mori’s greatest victory over them. Castellammare was the hometown of many of New York’s top gangsters, including Joseph Bonanno.

A report from Allied HQ in Algiers to the War Office in London on 27 July declared that all enemy resistance in western Sicily had ceased, but said that the British still faced a slow and determined German rearguard action up the east coast. The British and Canadians had drawn the short straw and would endure many casualties in the hard slog towards Messina.

As the Americans laid claim to western Sicily, they entered the realm of the Mafia. Their hold had always been at its strongest in the central and western regions of the island. Seeing the Americans arrive with their tanks and military hardware, the Mafiosi, at first, took the soft approach. Sergeant Jack Foisie, an army reporter for Yank, the US Army weekly news magazine, described an encounter he had in the village of Pollina, on a mountainside above the valley of Mazzara in north central Sicily. ‘We drove the jeep straight up until the road became a stairway’, said Foisie, ‘we got out and climbed the rest of the way on foot. I had to duck several times to avoid the picturesque overhanging balconies – and I am not a very tall guy.’

They were greeted by the local Carabiniere, with a sword dangling from his side, who escorted them to the town hall. They met the local priest and the one-time Fascist representative who now ‘looked a little seedy’. But soon their time in the village was hijacked by a man called Mauro Poliootto. He explained he had been to America and laid out for them some red wine, almonds and cheese. ‘He apologised for the humbleness of the meal’, said Foisie, ‘showing me a small can of coffee beans. “This is all the coffee we’ve had for four years”, he said. “I drink a cup once a year, on January 27, my saint’s day.”’

Foisie noted there was some rivalry between the priest and the Fascist and saw that the crowd of villagers around the American soldiers now looked to them for guidance. Foisie declared they were mere journalists but Poliootto took it upon himself to tell the priest and the Fascist that Foisie was just being modest and that all Americans were ‘big shots’. Poliootto continued to try to demonstrate his quiet authority to the Americans by whispering instructions to them. ‘The mayor’s no good’, he said. ‘Get rid of him.’

Then, out of the crowd, came a tall man, ‘a giant among the short Sicilians’. The man handed a note to Foisie. It was addressed to a house in Alhambra, California. ‘You can deliver this note to my brother, yes?’ said the tall man. Poliootto was immediately suspicious and asked Foisie, ‘What kind of document can these two men have in common?’ The citizens of Pollina shifted their attention to the tall figure.

‘We left them jabbering away’, said Foisie. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s the next Mayor of Pollina.’

The subtle jockeying for power here is fascinating and indicates the importance of American connections in post-Fascist Sicily. Whether any of these figures were local Mafiosi, we will never know.

A more robust assertion of Mafia power was demonstrated in Villalba. Socialist politician and journalist Michele Pantaleone, whose family lived in Villalba, is the source of this most famous story told about the Allied invasion of Sicily. According to Pantaleone, German and Italian resistance to the American advance inland in central Sicily was centred near Monte Cammarata. On the slopes of the mountain, goes his story, Axis infantry were backed by formidable 88-mm anti-tank guns and a detachment of German tanks. Norman Lewis, who later re-told the tale in English, added the detail that they were Tiger tanks. The Axis position commanded the road leading north to Palermo and was perfectly placed to strike the American convoy heading towards it. The nearest major towns were Mussomeli, to the south-east, and Villalba, to the east.

On 14 July, four days after the Allied landings, an American fighter plane flew over Villalba. ‘The aircraft dipped so low’, said Pantaleone, ‘that it almost grazed the roof-tops and a strange banner or pennant could be seen fluttering from the side of its cockpit. The pennant was made of a yellowish-gold cloth and there was a large black ‘L’ carefully drawn in the middle.’ The aircraft dropped a nylon bag into the town near the house of the local priest. It was handed to Carabiniere Angelo Riccioli who opened it. Inside, he found a small yellow flag with a black ‘L’ on it – just like the banner on the aircraft.

A second bag was dropped near a farmhouse belonging to Don Calogero Vizzini. Known as Don Calo, Pantaleone claimed Vizzini was the head of the Mafia of all Sicily. Other authorities have their doubts about this, but certainly he was an influential Mafioso in the region. The second bag was recovered by one of Don Calo’s servants, Carmelo Bartolomeo, who took it to his master. He watched as Don Calo opened it. Inside, said Bartolomeo, was ‘a foulard handkerchief which looked as if it was made of gold, exactly the same colour as the cloth hanging from the aeroplane’.

Don Calo knew exactly what it meant. The silk handkerchief was a traditional Mafia method of contact. It was like a password and on this one the black ‘L’ stood for Lucky Luciano. In response, Don Calo reportedly wrote a coded letter to Giuseppe Genco Russo, the second most important Mafioso in the area. ‘Turi, the farm bailiff, will go to the fair at Cerda with the calves on Thursday 20th’, wrote Don Calo. ‘I’ll leave on the same day with the cows, cart-oxen, and the bull. Get the faggots ready for making the cheese, and provide folds for the sheep.’ ‘Cows’ meant the US Army, ‘cart-oxen’ meant tanks, and ‘bull’ meant the US commander. Don Calo was telling Russo to do everything he could to make the Americans happy and secure. That evening, the message was taken by horseman to the town of Mussomeli where Russo lived.

Five days later, on 20 July, a Sicilian, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he saw American tanks come along the road to Villalba:

I rushed downstairs and shouted to the villagers. ‘The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!’ So we went to meet the tanks. I picked up a broomstick and a white pillowcase. I made a white flag and went to meet the tanks at the village entrance. The tanks were approaching Villalba and a hollow voice was saying, ‘Call Don Calo Vizzini, Call Don Calo Vizzini!’

Three US tanks entered the town of Villalba. One of them flew a yellow flag with the black ‘L’ from its turret. When the tanks stopped in the town square, an American officer climbed out of one of the turrets and spoke in the local Sicilian dialect, asking for the 66-year-old Don Calo.

In due course Vizzini turned up [said Pantaleone]. In his shirt-sleeves, with his jacket over his arm, a cigar in his mouth and his hat pulled down almost over his big tortoise-shell spectacles, he elbowed his way through the crowd in his usual slow way as if he were encumbered by the weight of his bulky body.

Without a word being said, Don Calo handed over his yellow flag to the American officer. He was accompanied by one his nephews who had lived in America. ‘The turret opened’, recalled the anonymous Sicilian. ‘Don Calo and his nephew climbed into the tank, leaving us in the lurch. As they left, they threw us handfuls of sweets and cigarettes.’ The young Sicilian was a little annoyed to see the town’s protector disappear with the Americans.

The next day, on the heights around Monte Cammarata, overlooking the road north to Palermo, where the Axis commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Salemi, hoped to pulverise the Americans, two-thirds of his troops had deserted. Left alone, the remaining Germans decided to withdraw in their tanks. Some of the Italian troops later claimed they had been approached by Mafia agents in the night who told them they were in a hopeless situation and should leave. They offered the soldiers civilian clothes and any other help to go home to their families. The following day, Salemi was intercepted by the Mafia and taken as a prisoner to the town hall in Mussomeli. The battle of Cammarata had been won without a shot being fired – or so Pantaleone claimed – thanks to the intervention of the Mafia.

The Americans pressed on to Palermo.

Who were the US soldiers at Villalba who took Don Calo away with them in their tank? The most obvious answer is that they were Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) officers, operating, as usual, in advance of the main troop formations.

By far the largest US intelligence formation deployed in the invasion of Sicily, the CIC had played a dominant role since the very start, providing pre-invasion security in North African ports. Ten CIC detachments landed on the beaches with the first assault troops and advanced rapidly inland. In the first Sicilian towns they entered, CIC agents seized civil offices, Axis headquarters and communication centres, gathering enemy intelligence documents such as code-books and maps. But soon they were pitched into taking a grip on law and order, according to the official CIC history of the campaign:

Town officials were taken into custody, informants were recruited; parish priests were utilized to gain the cooperation of the populace and to read proclamations. Town-criers and posters were also used to promulgate military regulations. Road blocks were set up, weapons collected, pillaging stopped, brothels checked . . . Because CIC Agents were often the first conquering officials to enter a town, Agents of the Corps often were forced to assume, by default, other tasks which properly were within the province of Civil Affairs.

CIC officers were given certain guidelines, but the process of establishing order in a captured town was frequently left up to the initiative of the soldiers themselves. In Agrigento, which fell on 17 July, Lieutenant Jack B. Cameron, found himself dealing with a whole range of civic problems. In his monthly report of 31 July, Cameron listed the following CIC achievements: stopping rioting and looting; rounding-up remaining Carabinieri and placing them on police duty; ordering the local fire chief and firemen to collect dead bodies; asking the provincial vicar-general to calm the civilian population; and locating and guarding food and fuel warehouses. Soldiers were vital to all security demands and Cameron believed he needed as many as were available:

Security dropped off more than 50% when Army guards were not used and to depend on whatever units that happened to be in the area to supply guards was poor security, for the ability of such units to make men available to CIC hinged on the fluctuations of the immediate tactical situation.

Sometimes CIC officers found themselves compelled to act as guards when they should have been pursuing their counter intelligence purpose. On their first day in Termini Imerese, nine local black marketeers were arrested and the Carabinieri were told to arrest anyone else they considered a problem. Understandably, CIC personnel were keen to hand over matters to the AMGOT officials as soon as they turned up.

The CIC officers who entered Villalba would have to have been attached to either the 45th Infantry Division or the 3rd Infantry Division, both operating in central western Sicily at this time.

The British Government’s official narrative of the Allied invasion of Sicily, based on US and UK military reports, says that the US 3rd Division captured Mussomeli on 19 July and then captured the high ground north of Mussomeli on 20 July, including Monte Cammarata. From there, it advanced north-west to capture Corleone on 21 July.

The same source also says that 45th Division overcame a stand made at Vallelunga by an Italian battalion and two tanks. Vallelunga is the next town north of Villalba and this puts these US troops in the neighbouring area to 3rd Division. On 21 July, 3rd Division patrols reached highway 121 north of Lercara Friddi and contacted 45th Division. Clearly, the divisions were very close to each other and advanced groups from either could have entered Villalba.

The CIC official history of the campaign in Sicily, produced by CIC staff in the early 1950s, does not mention the Mafia and does not mention the incident at Villalba at all.

Further research at the US Army Military History Institute reveals that it was in fact the 180th Infantry Regiment (part of the 45th Infantry Division) that was operating in the area of Villalba and in particular the 45th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop. This was a mechanised unit in armoured vehicles and it seems most likely it was their tanks that entered Villalba and invited Don Calo to join them.

The daily journal of the 45th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop does mention their entry into Villalba, but nothing special is recorded. The entry for 19 July says they had an ‘order given to find out what enemy forces were in vicinity of Vallelunga’ – some ten miles to the north of Villalba. The strength of the enemy was reported as 200 Germans and five tanks. They were then told to reconnoitre Valladolma, also to the north of Villalba. No other major confrontation or enemy troop formation is reported. On the following day – the 20th – at 1.00 p.m., the daily journal of the 45th does mention ‘contact made in Villalba with 3rd Division Patrol. (Two small Italian tanks had been abandoned by Italian and destructed [sic]).’

By now, however, Villalba was well behind other towns that had already been entered by advanced US elements and judged safe. Earlier that morning, Caltavurturo, some fifty miles north of Villalba, had been entered by the 3rd Platoon of the 45th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, while 300 enemy soldiers had already left it before their arrival.

The general Axis movement was backwards – the German line of resistance had been drawn far away to the east of the island before Messina. The 45th’s tale of war for the 19th and 20th is of minimum resistance and captured prisoners. Villalba and Monte Cammarata were, according to the 45th, definitely not areas of potential Axis resistance that could only be defeated by an alliance with the local Mafia. In fact, on the date mentioned by Pantaleone, other American soldiers were already way ahead, past these towns, and on the way to Palermo. The only recorded point of conflict in the Villalba area was to the north at Vallelunga and consisted of just 200 enemy troops who were quickly overcome.

Turning to the reconnaissance reports of the 3rd Infantry Division, mentioned by the 45th as also being in the vicinity of Villalba, a similar story emerges. The operations report for the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop for 20 – 21 July has the following entry. ‘At 1500 the Division commander ordered the [1st] platoon to reconnoiter road Cammarata – S Stefano. Platoon moved 1545 completed mission and returned 2000. Road reported clear.’ This road runs east to west along the northern slopes of Monte Cammarata and would presumably be the target area for any Axis ambush as suggested by Pantaleone. The road then forks at San Stefano, with one branch running north to Corleone and Palermo, the other continuing west.

It was only north of San Stefano that some Italian opposition was encountered by 2nd Platoon, covering the road to Corleone, but they drove the enemy away. The narrative of the operations of the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop Mechanized adds some more detail to this entry:

Lieutenant Gunter’s [2nd] platoon came upon some Italians trying to establish a strong delaying position near San Stefano. Again it was a case of seeing the enemy before being seen. Lieutenant Gunter deployed his vehicles off the road and radioed that contact was imminent. He then proceeded to move back to apprise the infantry CO of the situation. The doughboys deployed, moved up, and attacked by fire. It proved to be a successful surprise action. The Italians were decimated and wiped out before they could offer any resistance.

The next entry in the operations report, for 21 – 22 July, has 1st Platoon immobile thanks to vehicle failure while 2nd Platoon is eighty miles to the north-west of Cammarata, near Chiusa Sclafani, where they came under fire from artillery, mortars and machine guns. They returned fire, knocked out some of the enemy defences, and took thirty-four prisoners. The road to Corleone was clear from that point onwards.

Again, the story is one of clear roads and rapid progress, with occasional skirmishes successfully won. According to all these US field reports, there was no major Axis position on the northern slopes of Monte Cammarata that could have provided any hindrance to the American advance to Palermo.

That the US visit to Villalba on 20 July may have been purely routine and had nothing at all to do with a bigger plot to use the Mafia in the campaign is further suggested by an account of the day’s events by Luigi Lumia, a former mayor of Villalba, recorded in his later history of the town:

At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon of 20 July three US tanks rolled into the town of Villalba. Trying to make themselves heard above the squeals of delight from the town’s children, soldiers appeared from the turret of the tanks asking where the person in charge could be found – il capo del paese. Not long after, a procession of people with Calogero Vizzini at the helm made its way towards the tanks chanting: ‘Long Live America’, ‘Long Live the Mafia’, ‘Long Live Don Calo’.

The Americans asked whether there were any German troops in the area and on hearing that there weren’t, they took il capo del paese [Don Calo] on board the tank together with Damiano Lumia who was acting as his interpreter. However, it wasn’t easy for the tanks to leave again. The soldiers had to bribe the dozens of kids who were climbing all over the tanks with pieces of candy, chewing gum and even cigarettes in order to get rid of them and clear the streets of the crowds of people who had come out to see them.

Eventually, after managing to shake off even the most die-hard supporters of Don Calo who insisted on clinging to the tanks, they were able to move off. The two men were then taken to Turrume-Tudia and questioned by a US official.

During the interrogation, it was revealed that an American jeep on patrol had come under fire a few days earlier at a road junction not far from Villalba. An American soldier was killed and the attackers were believed to be Italian soldiers hiding in olive trees near the hamlet of Lumera. The US infantry returned fire and their shots set fire to the dry fields. The fire spread quickly and ignited ammunition left by the Italians who had hastily retreated. The more the ammunition exploded, the more the Americans believed they were under attack from a major force. According to Lumia, this forced the Americans to send three tanks across the disputed territory to enter Villalba.

The source for Lumia’s account appears to be Vizzini’s interpreter, his nephew. According to the interpreter, Don Calo told the American that the Italians had fled and the firefight had been caused by exploding ammunition. The Mafioso assured him they faced no local enemy, but this answer just annoyed the American interrogator.

He told Don Calo that there was no way it had all been for nothing and he took his rage out in a stream of obscenities that the poor translator deemed unfit to translate. Then, purple with rage, he [the American] shouted, ‘Get out, get out!’ like a madman. ‘On foot?’ asked the interpreter. ‘On foot! On foot!’ he yelled, trying to put an end to the conversation.

After much shouting on one hand and much pleading on the other, the American, who had calmed down a bit, decided to accompany il capo del paese back to where he had come from in a jeep.

It was already night-time and Calogero Vizzini, tired and brow-beaten, was driven back to his house, halfway between the Americans and the countryside. He told his interpreter not to tell anybody what had happened and then lay down in his bed and went to sleep. The American troops started up their march again.

And that was that, according to Luigi Lumia. The Americans merely wanted to know what opposition they faced and certainly did not treat Don Calo with any respect. In fact, Don Calo was thoroughly embarrassed by the whole incident. There is no hint here of any prearranged deal. So much for the great conspiracy.

Michele Pantaleone is the main source for the Luciano – Vizzini story and he, as an enemy of Don Calo, is a very biased source. Wartime OSS documents reveal that his family was in dispute with the Vizzini clan over a local property issue and this – along with him being a Communist and political rival of Vizzini – casts much doubt on his view of events. And yet his seductive tale of Don Calo has been endlessly repeated by others, especially Norman Lewis, who introduced it to English readers.

The fact is, it appears, it never actually happened.

The first soldiers into captured Italian towns in the British sector of the island belonged to Field Security sections. Captain J. H. Bickerton Edwards was a Field Security Officer (FSO) with the 51st (Highland) Division and he described his experience in Sicily:

Usually upon entering a town the section became AMGOT; Police; providers of grain, food, news, relief, cigarettes and all the good things the Sicilians had been without for the last five years. FS, for the most part arrived several days – and sometimes weeks before AMGOT representatives; consequently, all the preliminaries of civil administration fell to their lot . . .

The collection of arms from the civil population was a revelation. In Vizzini alone there were over 200 shotguns, ranging from ancient flint-locks to modern twelve-bores. Thousands of home-made cartridges, bombs, mines and pistols of every calibre were handed to us in that town.

The only suitable store-room we could find was in the billet, and on one memorable occasion, the FSO, who for lack of space in the house was sleeping amongst all the armament, inadvertently set his bed alight by falling asleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand. There were a few anxious moments until the fire was quelled!

As in the American sector, the Carabinieri were quickly recruited and expected to maintain law and order under the Allies. According to Captain Edwards:

The local CC.RR [Carabinieri Reali] were allowed to keep their arms – rifles only, and instructed to continue with their normal police duties. We found that they were quite willing to help us but that, in the majority of cases, they were inefficient and lazy. It was impossible to trust them completely; most of them had friends or relations in the district, and we often suspected – but never once proved that they tipped off some of the ‘wanted’ people . . .

Many ‘self-styled secret agents’ and ‘spies’ came to offer their services to us. Again, for the most part, such men were simply airing personal grievances and never proved to be any great help. One man represented himself as having worked in Egypt as a British Agent, when, in reality, he had been a dope smuggler there . . . There are undoubtedly a number of rackets being organised and run on black market lines. These are flourishing. Such is the Sicilian outlook. Racketeering is their second nature. Was not Al Capone a native of Caltanissetta?

Actually, Al Capone’s family came from Naples, but the link with US gangsterism was pointed. The British were undoubtedly aware of the Mafia but were intent on closing down their rackets rather than forging an alliance with them.

During the invasion and conquest of Sicily, Max Corvo considered the OSS was sidelined. As usual, he blamed the British:

Even though ‘Husky’ was an Anglo-American operation, the British dominated the planning staffs and Whitehall wanted to direct and channel the various phases of the first assault on Europe, especially in an area that was considered one of primary British political and economic interest.

This bias would have been news to the British, from Churchill down, who had been compelled to accept an American character to the conquest of Sicily. Corvo put his finger more correctly on the OSS problem when he cited other US intelligence agencies:

On the US side the traditional intelligence services such as G-2, CIC, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) often displayed open hostility toward the OSS because they did not understand its work and objectives.

There was an element of snobbery to this as OSS personnel were perceived to be from a middle-class elite – the agency was even nicknamed ‘Oh So Social’.

British Vice-Consul Manley tells an interesting story about the OSS and its agents’ first days on the island. In his Report on Sicilian Separatism – a political movement calling for the independence of the island and backed by the Mafia – he says that Separatist supporters claimed they made contact with the Allies at the time of the landings at Gela. ‘Sicilian deserters from the Italian army carrying the red and yellow Sicilian flag’, says Manley, quoting his Separatist sources, ‘gave themselves up to the Allied authorities’. Manley doubted this and gave his own interpretation of events:

What I think actually happened was that the OSS unit with the 7th US Army occupied the castle of Falconara near Gela for a few days. This castle belongs to the Barone Frassini Bordonaro, a relative of Lucio Tasca one of the [Separatist] leaders . . . As some of the Frassini Bordonaro family were in residence at that time they probably came into contact with the OSS officers, who no doubt discussed the local situation with them.

Max Corvo did, indeed, visit the castle, but he claimed the family of the baron had left and he only talked to the caretaker – he had no contact with any Separatists. Italian soldiers had used it as a base but fled before the Americans. He took over the castle and made it the first OSS headquarters in Sicily. Lucio Tasca, however, was a key Mafia figure on the island. Was a contact made between the two at this early stage?

With the fall of Palermo on 22 July, the Americans turned eastwards to join the British and Canadians. They were still fighting hard against the Germans based around Catania and the road to Messina alongside Mount Etna. Several small amphibious operations conducted by the Americans along the north coast helped to outflank the Germans and it was Patton and his Americans who arrived first in Messina on 17 August, beating General Montgomery by just two hours.

The casualties suffered by the Americans throughout the Sicily campaign were not slight, some 9,213 being killed and wounded. The British and Canadians lost 12,572 men. Axis losses were much higher at 156,000, but the vast majority of these were captured Italians. The German rearguard succeeded in holding off the Allies long enough for 53,000 Axis troops to escape to the mainland, along with 50 tanks and 9,800 other vehicles. The successful evacuation of so many enemy troops to Italy, to carry on the fighting, was judged to taint the overall success of the Sicilian campaign.

A major achievement of the campaign, however, was to end Benito Mussolini’s rule in Italy. On the night of 24 July 1943, the Fascist Grand Council passed a vote of no confidence in Mussolini. They turned instead to King Victor Emmanuel to help them solve the crisis that had overtaken their country. The next day, the king dismissed Mussolini from power with a curt handshake at the door of the Villa Savoia in Rome and he was escorted by submachine-gun-carrying Carabinieri to Podgora Barracks. Il Duce’s 21-year-reign had come to an end.

Victor Emmanuel chose Marshal Pietro Badoglio to establish a new Italian government without one Fascist member. Badoglio immediately began negotiations with the Allies and on 3 September agreed to an unconditional surrender in a secret armistice. It was not announced until the 8th, by when the Allies hoped to have their invasion of mainland Italy under control, but the Germans swiftly reinforced their troops and Badoglio and the king were forced to flee in a corvette to Allied territory in the south.

Hitler was furious with the Italians and ordered a complete German military occupation of their country. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was made supreme commander of forces in Italy and rounded up many Italian soldiers, who had thrown away their uniforms and deserted, and sent them to forced labour camps. Hitler demanded that the new Italian government release Mussolini so he could restore him to power. The Italians refused and moved him to a mountain-top ski resort at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi mountains – a sufficiently remote location, or so they thought.

Hitler instructed his top commando trouble-shooter Otto Skorzeny to rescue him. Skorzeny put together a ‘Mission Impossible’ team of German paratroopers and special forces troops and crash-landed gliders on to the mountain-top. They then stormed the hotel and bundled Mussolini into a light aircraft. The 6-foot 4-inch tall Skorzeny insisted on cramming himself into the cabin next to Mussolini and the aircraft lurched over the edge of the slope, nearly plunging into the valley floor, before the pilot regained control and flew them on to Nazi Germany.

Reunited with Hitler, Mussolini was instructed to head a new Fascist state based at Salo beside Lake Garda in north Italy. Badoglio and his government declared war on Germany on 13 October. The news was received badly by Hitler. A year before, over dinner with Grand Admiral Raeder, Hitler cockily declared: ‘There’s one very curious thing to note in all this; the side Italy is on invariably wins!’ He was right about that.

Cesare Mori – nemesis of the Mafia – had never thought much of Mussolini’s chances in a war against the Allies. When the war started, he followed its progress carefully, supposedly in British newspapers. On a rare visit to Rome he was heard to agree with the British view on the war and was denounced for defeatism – it was the last time he figured in public affairs.

Mori’s wife died in early 1942 and he, heartbroken, died a few months later in July. His death received little coverage in the newspapers – he was yesterday’s hero. And yet the forces that Mori had gone some way towards defeating were now on the verge of being unleashed. The Allies would have to deal with the hydra monster that Mori had almost slain.