Naples, Italy 0430 September 25, 1943
Machine gun tracers reached across the docks. Grenades exploded as a company of German infantry were pinned down. They were the quick reaction force for the regiment that was "stiffening" the Italian garrison in the great port of Southern Italy. The barracks were in Vesusivus' shadow and if things were to get hinky, the regiment had orders to destroy the port facilities so that nothing could be used for months. The two critical objectives were the drydocks and a coastal defense battery. One company that was supposed to be relieving the beach defense watch had double timed to the battery while the alert company had headed to the docks.
The plan had been simple; rapid, decisive action with a small body of well disciplined men could overwhelm an unorgainzed and unmotivated mob twenty times it size. And the plan worked for the first half hour. The first drydock had been seized and engineers were already preparing demolition charges on the pumps. However, the lead platoon had been caught in the open by an Italian tank platoon and a quick moving battalion of infantry whose commander's older brother and cousins had kept him informed of the plot. Now the seventy five surviving Germans were pinned down and the Italian infantrymen were slowly, methodically and professionally advancing. They rushed from cover to cover and any time a German gunner fired, Italian tanks blanketed the smoke spot with shells and machine gun bullets.
Out to sea, dozens of landing ships were lowering their boats. Three divisions were making ready to come ashore just south of the city. The coastal defense guns had either been spiked by their Italian crews when the initial German assault had been detected, or the gunners had pointed their guns as far away from the invasion flotilla as possible. When dawn was breaking, over one thousand Allied aircraft were overhead. Fighters crisscrossed the sky looking for German bombers while medium bombers began runs against known German positions and Luftwaffe airfields.