On Hostile Shores
by
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The night of D+1 on Sicily was famous for one of the big SNAFUS of WWII. A large number of paratroopers and Troop Carrier personnel were lost in this action. The army had scheduled an AIR DROP of the 82nd Airborne Division Reinforcements, and the Army Air Force had ROUTED them right over the invasion fleet and DID NOT tell the navy, and the ENEMY had scheduled a bombing RAID at the SAME TIME.. That is a dangerous combination of events at any time and is extra dangerous when a large number of troops, both army and /or navy is new at the combat business. I happened to be on the pier at Licata, awaiting my turn at leading the ammo unloading gang, when the whole thing erupted and I took refuge under a jeep along with a couple of other guys. We had heard and recognized the asynchronous whine of the German aircraft engines and had seen and recognized one of the paratrooper C-47s flying away from Sicily at treetop height in the midst of the melee. At about this time an army Dukw came out upon the pier where I was now standing beside the jeep. The Dukw driver said that some of the paratroopers had been forced to ditch their planes at sea and that he was going out to see if he could help them. The two men who had taken refuge under the jeep with me said they wanted to help, as did I , so we all three climbed into the big floating truck and we went off of the pier into the Mediterranean. In less than ten minutes we had pulled a big healthy American Paratrooper Captain out of the drink. He was only soaking wet with no other injuries. Our Dukw cruised around off the port of Licata for about a half an hour, finding no more people or floating bodies. The sea was quite smooth and the visibility was not bad under our headlights, so we returned to the port and parted. I didn't know any of the individuals involved and we never met again. It was a tragedy of huge proportions due to what is now called, ".friendly fire". The ammunition on the LST was almost finished by this time and I stayed aboard the huge craft with the 20th Engineer Lieutenant until it was all loaded. Onto 3rd Division trucks. The next day I was able to reach brigade headquarters by army telephone so I took leave of the 3rd Division and started east on the coast road in the jeep which the brigade had sent for me. We were still within sight of the Licata pier when the jeep driver and I both saw a German fighter plane coming right toward us, treetop height, strafing the coast road. We stopped and tumbled out of the jeep in time to get a shot at the underbelly, the most vulnerable spot on a fighter plane in those days.. I led the speeding plane as much as I could, considering the terrain, and fired the entire clip of 20 rounds at the belly of the intruder. Of course the entire fleet was firing at him with all guns at the same time as I was, and the plane made an abrupt left turn and flew off the end of the steel pier and crashed into the sea. As a former pheasant hunter, I always had a feeling that I had shot him down. I never carried a Tommy gun again as my weapon of choice after that, despite the much heavier fighting in Normandy and Okinawa. The Tommy gun and it's ammunition were just too heavy and not worth my effort after the Sicilian Campaign. Besides the Tommy Gun is harder to clean. The remainder of the trip dawn the coast road from Licata to Gela was uneventful but gave me a broader picture of the impoverished island. We arrived before lunch time and I learned that the Brigade Command Post was in some temporarily abandoned ground floor apartments just off the coast road which the tanks of both combatants had already ground to dust. I reported on the status of theThird Division to our new CO, Colonel Caffey, who then proceeded to give me a new assignment, which proved to be an interesting challenge. Col Caffey described my new assignment as follows: The official borderline between the British and American Forces ran through the town of Vittoria which the U.S. 45 th Division had already secured. Vittoria was an important railroad center and it was believed that there were a number of steam locomotives abandoned there. I was to go to that town the next morning and bring as many of the locomotives as possible over to Gela to get them away from the British zone so there would be no question as to ownership while the battle was going on. He then as much as patted me on the back and said "fetch". I had to beg a blanket from the meager Brigade supply tent but that was better than I had the two previous nights. I had not been able to get my bedroll from 3rd Division Hq. because it was on one of their rear echelon trucks.
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About the Book
Despite the somber front cover and the very ominous title, the book, On Hostile Shores, turns out to be a collection of mostly light-hearted anecdotes by a young officer who saw more of WWII than many historians who have described that conflict form more traditional viewpoints. With proper respect for the more than 700 comrades who were killed in action, the book covers enough combat action to satisfy most readers, while also presenting many humorous episodes from the carefree life of soldiers awaiting their next assault landing "on hostile shores." Starting with an assignment in Washington, DC as a truly green "shavetail" second lieutenant soon after Pearl Harbor, to sophisticated life in the swank Mayfair section of poor, bomb-out out London in mid-1942, through five big invasions, to the muddy foxholes of Okinawa the story touches on many small adventures and several large ones. There are a few short lectures on the amphibious warfare of that era. To quote from the Introduction, "it’s all true, except where I benignly misled you as to the reasons (but not the destinations) for some of my side trips." Many documents are presented in the Appendices to authentic the gems of On Hostile Shores.
About the Author
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Sam Daugherty, eighty-five, has had at least four careers: steel mill management, for twenty years; "temporarily" interrupted for a four-year second career with the Army. Sam resigned from Steel in1961 to work for IBM and to escape from nineteenth century into the twenty-first. For IBM he worked with the steel industry in systems development, and marketing. In 1984 at age 67 he embarked upon his fourth career, Retirement. As age and health inevitably displaced golf, Sam unearthed one-liners he hoarded since 1945 and wrote On Hostile Shores. He and wife, Peggy, moved to Hilton Head in 1986. His son, Greg Daugherty, lives with wife, Sheila, and two children in Mamaroneck, New York.