The Battle of Torbole: Part 5 – Decision

(Click photo to view larger) German prisoners are escorted out of Torbole on the morning of April 30, 1945.

This is the fifth and final part of a series about the Battle of Torbole.

Read Part One here: https://www.skylerbaileyauthor.com/the-battle-of-torbole-part-1-the-approach/

Read the previous part here: https://www.skylerbaileyauthor.com/the-battle-of-torbole-part-4-the-german-counterattack/

At the end of April 1945, the Germans mounted their last defense in Italy at the “Blue Line,” which was anchored on it’s western flank on the shore of Lake Garda. The US 10^th Mountain Division was tasked with the capture of the north end of the lake, which would then unhinge the entire line. So it was that the small lakeside town of Torbole became the linchpin of the last German defensive line in Italy. The town was captured by the 3^rd Battalion of the 86^th Mountain Infantry Regiment following over ten hours of battle and a sharp street fight, but almost as soon as the town was secure, the Germans counterattacked with 150 infantry and three panzers. This counterattack cut the mountain troops in two, surrounded half of a company, and recaptured much of the town. But the mountain troops refused to leave Torbole.

Capt. Everett Bailey, who had taken command of 3^rd Battalion only hours earlier, had been at the battalion CP throughout the battle, which by this time had been moved up to the outskirts of town. He listened with mounting exasperation to the radio transmissions, but he was unaccustomed to directing battles in this fashion. On several occasions while commander of L Company, he had rushed to points of crisis to personally direct operations. Now 3^rd Battalion was in serious trouble, and a portion of his own company was surrounded and fighting for its life. Capt. Bailey called for ammunition and antitank support to be sent into Torbole, then left the CP and made his way through artillery and small arms fire into the town. Once there, he crossed several lines of enemy fire to move among the different platoons and companies and was able to organize a stable defense.

About this time, 3^rd Battalion lost the support of 1^st Battalion on its right. The rest of the 86^th Regiment arrived at the north end of the lake. 2^nd Battalion took up a reserve post on the heights, while 1^st Battalion moved to capture the town of Nago, one mile north of Torbole. But German planes suddenly appeared overhead. They bombed and strafed the American positions on the heights, and they hit the 1^st Battalion as it was making its way northward. One bomb fell on Company B when it was two hundred yards short of its objective. Nine men were killed, and 1^st Battalion fell back to the heights, where they remained for the rest of the night. (There is some debate as to the identity of the aircraft, which will be explored in detail in a later article).

At 0125 hours, a radio message came into the regimental CP from Gen. George Hays. He wanted 3^rd Battalion withdrawn from Torbole as quickly as practicable. Col. Cook had by this time returned from the nap prescribed by the Battalion Surgeon. He and Lt. Col. Jack Hay believed that the town could be successfully defended.  The details of their exchange are uncertain. It is unclear what contact Col. Cook and Lt. Col. Hay had with the troops in Torbole, or whether Capt. Bailey participated in the decision-making process. It is unknown if Col. Cook was aware that seventy men were already trapped by the Germans, or whether that was communicated to Gen. Hays. What is known is that the Colonels suggested a delay in the withdrawal order, and that Gen. Hays gave his approval.

Col. Cook, possibly in response to Bailey’s request, ordered 2^nd Battalion to support the 3^rd by sending ammunition and the bazooka teams from H Company into the town. This reinforcement of antitank weapons robbed the panzers of much of their offensive power. The tanks were forced to operate more closely with, and under the cover of their infantry support. By 0222, the momentum of the German counterattack had been broken, and the mountain troops stabilized their defense. L Company held its divided positions in the southern part of town, while Company K held a solid defensive position in the houses of the northeastern quarter.

3^rd Battalion was able to return to the offensive. They began to make their first moves to break through to Lt. McClintock’s beleaguered men, and were able to make slow and methodical progress. As the fighting continued, the German panzers ran low on ammunition, and slowed their rate of fire to husband what remained. The German infantry were also likely nearing the end of their ammunition supplies, and they began to slowly give ground.

K Company was able to retake the town center, capturing a number of German soldiers in the process. Around 0430, L Company drove the enemy back far enough that they were able to make contact with Lt. McClintock’s contingent. Finally the Germans ran out of ammunition, withdrew from Torbole, and headed west toward Riva. 3^rd Platoon of Company L moved into town at 0500 hours.

The battle for Torbole had cost the mountain troops some seventy casualties. In addition to those suffered by I Company, K Company had one killed, eighteen wounded, and three captured (though some of those captured may also have been counted among the wounded. L Company had eighteen wounded. The remainder were men of companies M and H. German casualties were at least twenty-three men killed, somewhere near fifty wounded, and twelve captured. Among those taken prisoner was the seventeen-year-old boy who had set the demolition charges in tunnel five.

(Click photo to view larger) Four L Company men wounded at Torbole, (left to right) Pfc. Bradford Farr, Pfc. Charles Sullivan, Pfc. Henry Schmidt, and Sgt. Ed Lisciandro.

The rising sun revealed the extent of the battle damage done to the town. A veteran of K Company recalled that,

After daylight the companies collected their men, some of whom had hidden in houses the Germans thought they had cleared. They moved through town again to make sure the Krauts had really gone.

Torbole had been a very pretty place, the kind you see pictured on Italian tourist posters, a clear blue lake, a small clean town on the shore, steep mountains, and a ruined castle on a promontory above the town. Torbole now, however, had been the scene of fighting for a day. Formal gardens had shell craters in them, trees were shattered, and shops had been blown open and the merchandise scattered in the street.

Torbole soon became the target of warm German artillery fire. During the barrage, the twenty-three-year old local, Camotti Angel, was hit by a shell near the town marina and killed. The shelling diminished throughout the day, partially as a result of attacks made by the US Army Air Corps. DUKW amphibious landing craft arrived in the marina. They delivered artillery pieces, and were loaded with wounded for evacuation by water. The regimental CP was moved into Torbole, and set up in a hotel next to the marina. Many of the officers and men of 3^rd Battalion found places in which to sleep. After a scout by I Company, 2^nd Battalion moved toward Riva, but the Germans retreated to the north during the afternoon without offering any substantive resistance.

Word travelled quickly through the German forces that the Blue Line had been unhinged on its western flank, and that it was now completely untenable. All of the German forces scrambled to get through the Alpine passes to Austria. In Arco, three miles to the north, the German garrison hastily vacated the town. They departed in such haste that they left without shooting the two girls arrested while distributing un-rationed bread the previous evening. Soon, Italian partisans took control of much of the valley.

In the afternoon, the German artillery fire stopped completely, and by 1750 things had been quiet for some time. A group of officers were talking outside the regimental CP, on a stone walkway that forms a combination promenade and breakwater for the marina. As the officers clustered together in conversation, a single German artillery shell burst in the air directly overhead. Sgt. Maj. John Evans, one of Captain Bailey’s good friends, was killed instantly. Col. William Darby was badly wounded and carried into the CP, where he died forty-five minutes later. Lt. McClellan was wounded and evacuated, and Col. Cook received a minor injury but remained on duty.

On the evening of May 2, the news of the surrender of Army Group C arrived at 3^rd Battalion headquarters. Excited relief soon gave way to a subdued mood. There was some bitterness among the troops when they discovered that the armistice had been signed at 1400 hours on April 29, and that the almost entire battle for Torbole had transpired after the signing of the armistice. In writing about that fact, Lt. Brower commented that “an ironical, terrible smirk crept over the face of Fate,” and that the end of the war had come “four days too late.” Bob Krear stated in an interview that “a lot of good men could have been saved if the war had ended right then, and I’m not quite sure why it didn’t.”

Regardless of any sense that their victory at Torbole had been a hollow one, it was in many ways the 3^rd Battalion’s finest hour. Exhausted, lacking sufficient ammunition, out-gunned, and with seventy men cut off and surrounded during a determined counterattack, they had repulsed a German armored force in fierce street fighting. In so doing, they had unhinged the last German defensive line in Italy. No fewer than five men of the 86^th Mountain Infantry Regiment were awarded Silver Star Medals for gallantry displayed during this action.

Throughout their combat experience in Italy, the 10^th Mountain Division held some combination of four major advantages; a large superiority in artillery, overwhelming air support, direct cooperation with friendly armored units, and the offensive striking power of being the freshest unit on the front. The mountain troops fighting for Torbole were deprived of all of these advantages. The collapsed tunnels prevented any allied armor or artillery from directly supporting their advance. Two weeks of constant combat and movement, compounded by three consecutive sleepless nights, left the mountain troops in a fatigued state that severely hampered their operational effectiveness. As night fell on April 29, darkness brought an end to allied tactical support from the air. The Germans were not hampered in any of these regards. Their artillery support was substantial and effective. Their panzers directly engaged the mountain infantry and nearly succeeded in forcing 3^rd Battalion from the town. Had they done so, it would have all but ensured the destruction of Lt. McClintock’s besieged men. Even the long defunct Luftwaffe reappeared as if from nowhere, and played a major role in the course of the fighting on the ground.

The Battle of Torbole was the last major action fought by the 10^th Mountain Division during the Second World War. On 3 May 1945, General Hays gave a speech to the men in praise of their outstanding performance during the war. Standing on the back of a DUKW amphibious vehicle parked in the rubble-strewn streets of Torbole, he said of the division, “Never in its days of combat, did it fail to take an objective, or lose an objective once it was taken. Never was so much as a single platoon surrounded and lost.” Were it not for the bravery and determination displayed in the narrow streets of that small Italian lakeside town, none of those statements would have been true.

The scars of battle healed in Torbole. The buildings were repaired, and tourism rebounded in the post-war period. The town doubled in size. German corpses were discovered in the area as late as 1979. Today Torbole is a popular destination for vacationers from all over Europe, who visit hike, rock-climb, mountain bike, and para-sail in the surrounding lake and mountains. Some residents of the area are still very interested in this part of their history. Local historians and archaeologists explore the areas German bunkers and find the crash sites of aircraft. At the marina, a monument was erected for Col. Darby, and there is an effort under way to open a World War Two museum in Torbole.

In the 1990’s, Everett Bailey gave a talk to some of the men involved with the Army Mountain Warfare School in Jericho, Vermont. He told them about the war in Italy, and about the battles around Lake Garda. When his talk was over, an officer named Albie Lewis rose from the audience to speak. Lewis made several trips to Italy as a member of the 86^th Infantry Brigade Combat Team to train with the Alpini, and had become friends with some of them. He told the room full of people about an experience he had had on a recent trip. After a day of exercises, an Italian soldier by the name of Luigi Santorum asked Albie if he’d like to come have dinner with his family that evening, and Lewis agreed. Upon arrival at the house in the town of Arco, he was surprised to find the entire extended family seated at a long table. Albie was seated at the head of the table, and Luigi’s mother, the family matriarch, was seated at the far end. When the meal was finished, the old woman began to speak.

She gave a long speech in Italian, growing increasingly serious and emphatic in her tone and the movements of her hands. The rest of the family listened intently. Some of them began to cry. The old woman rose, still talking, and worked her way down toward the other end of the table. With tears streaming down her face, she kissed Albie on the cheek and hugged him. The entire family began to clap. Lewis turned to Luigi, mystified, and quietly asked, “I’m not married to your sister now, am I?” Luigi told him that his mother and her friend had been out delivering bread after curfew one night in 1945, when they were arrested by the Germans. They were supposed to be killed, but the Americans broke through that night, and she credited them with saving her life.

This blog is part of a larger body of research culminating in the publication of the book ‘Heroes in Good Company: L Company, 86^th Regiment, 10^th Mountain Division 1943-1945’ which is available in select bookstores and on amazon.

SOURCES:

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Appleby, Ben. Associazione Culturale Benàch, Torbole, Italy. e-mail messages to author. 2013-2016.

Bailey, Thomas B. personal interview by author. November, 2011.

Brower, David. Remount Blue: The Combat Story of the Third Battalion, 86th Mountain Infantry, 10^th Mountain Division. Unpublished Manuscript, c. 1948. Digitized version edited and made available through the Denver Public Library by Barbara Imbrie, 2005.

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