Word: messina
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...midmorning the U.S. Seventh and the British Eighth Armies had entered Messina in force. Then from the pine-covered hills on the Italian mainland, three and a half miles across the Strait, German big guns lobbed over their shells. Quickly the bulk of the Allied troops withdrew from the city...
Curtain. Cabled TIME Correspondent Jack Belden: "For the soldiers who had fought so bitterly a few days previously in the barren mountains to the west, the finale in Sicily seemed an anticlimax. In Messina the doughboy was lost; there was no one to fight. Private Hays Cathey stood in the street, hardly knowing what to do. 'That's all there is, there ain't no more,' he commented. Then, he sat on a debris-littered curbstone, opened a tin of cheese and disregarded everything...
...Messina's civilians the fall of the city was a relief. Two hundred of them came out in their rags and gave a feeble cheer. When the enemy guns started shelling from the mainland, they scurried out of town. It is unlikely that many will come back for a long time. There is nothing for them to come back to. Of all the wrecked cities of Sicily none is so thoroughly wrecked as Messina. From one end of the town to the other, I have not seen a building that has not been damaged...
...dock areas. In the harbor a sunken liner's funnels still stick out of the water. The remains of one or two ferries clutter the slipways. Concrete piers have been cut in two. Railway cars are smashed. The scene recalls the earthquake of 1908, when 91% of Messina's buildings were destroyed and 78,000 of its residents perished...
...Play. In a little vineyard hidden from German eyes across the Messina Strait, a U.S. battery commander, Lieut. William B. Dougherty, brought up "Draftee," one of the 155-mm. rifles that the Allies have dubbed "Long Tom" and the Germans "Whispering Death." A truck hauled the heavy gun into position. The crew wrote their names on the first shell. A red-haired Tennessee private was about to yank the lanyard when the colonel came up and said: "Do you mind, son?" The private answered: "That's all right, sir." The colonel yanked. Seconds later the shell crashed into...