Word: gela
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...just finishing his breakfast of K rations when the telephone rang in divisional headquarters. The message said that 30 to 40 German tanks had attacked the 2nd Battalion of the division's 16th infantry regiment. That battalion held the division's right flank on a hill between Gela and the inland town of Niscemi...
...center of the divisional line, two groups of tanks came out of the hills, reached and crossed the Gela-Vittoria road, shot up some amphibious trucks, lobbed shells over divisional headquarters toward the shore 800 yards from the tanks. The defending units had no infantry, no antitank guns to stop the tanks. There was only artillery - 105-mm. howitzers, designed for other work-and Bofors anti-aircraft guns...
...Wide Advance. Such was the fighting for Gela and its beaches, the fighting which made the rest of the U.S. invasion possible. On the ist Division's left flank, 48-year-old, Texas-born Major General Lucian K. Truscott's 3rd Infantry Division seized Licata and its neighboring airfields, then expanded its position westward and inland to take Canicatti and seize the old walled port of Agrigento and its innumerable, well-placed gun positions...
There were many local battles for towns and airdromes, of great moment to the men in the battles, dismissed with a sentence or no mention whatever in the communiques. One such engagement was the battle for the town of Butera, eight miles inland from Gela. Butera was taken by Rangers on the march toward the inland communications center of Enna, which Canadian and U.S. troops approached this week...
...Sword. At week's end, General Patton returned briefly to North Africa. Ahead of him came stories befitting the Patton legend. According to one story, a visiting major general accosted Patton at Gela. Patton promptly ordered him to the top of the hill, "so that you can get shot at a bit." Patton went with the major general. After a suitable number of missiles had fallen suitably near, Patton said: "All right, you can go down...