The War In My Bones

WWII Operation Avalanche took place on the beaches of Salerno, Italy, on September 9^th, 1943. The 36^th Infantry Division was the first U.S. division to land on the European continent in WWII. British troops landed that day, too, but the Texas 36^th Division led the charge. The entire division was front and center.

As part of the first major amphibious landing in Europe, the 36^th was part of the 5^th Army, and an initial landing force of over 165,000 Allied soldiers, and over 450 Allied ships and transports. Casualties from that “oughta be a movie” battle were twice as big as the entire town I grew up in: 2,149 killed, 7,365 wounded, and 4,099 missing.

I read somewhere that Operation Avalanche was the forgotten D-Day. So, lest we forget again, read those numbers one more time: 450 boats, 165,000 soldiers, and over 13,000 casualties. Damn, our memory is short.

This document is the Battle Casualty List from the 36^th Division, 141^st Infantry Regiment. It represents a fraction of the casualties from Operation Avalanche, and yet it is seven pages, single-spaced, of soldier after soldier killed, missing, or wounded.

If you look at the fourth column, you’ll see what Army unit the soldier was with – most from rifle companies. Just glancing down that column, you can see that some companies had it far worse than others.

It was the first combat for those nineteen or twenty-year-old soldiers. They were barely old enough to shave. But, God love ‘em, they were hellacious combat soldiers. “Get your gun, climb down off the ship onto that boat, and when you get close to shore, jump out and start running toward the beach at those tanks aimed at you!”

Your grandpa was a badass.