As the infantry made its way inland, the beach parties carried on, transmitting target coordinates, laying miles of telephone wire, unloading ammunition and high-octane gasoline, refloating beached landing craft and repairing disabled boats.

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With the dawn of D-plus-1, Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, commanding the Allied Fifth Army, could report that his forces had established a beachhead. Radioman Krumpolz recalled: ‘Things calmed down somewhat by the second day. Some of us dumb beach boys found ourselves in front of the infantry, looking for souvenirs.’ The beach was still a dangerous place, though. That morning, Ensign Glenn Adams was on Red Beach trying to find out why vehicles were coming ashore so slowly when a Messerschmitt Me-109 suddenly swept over the beach and dropped a bomb that scored a direct hit on his jeep. The ensign and two other officers were killed instantly.

By 10 p.m. on September 10, all the troops and vehicles waiting aboard assault craft had been unloaded. Even with the beachhead firmly established, however, the 4th Beach Battalion’s work was not finished. With no port facility available to the Allies, all of the equipment, supplies and reinforcements had to continue coming ashore via the beach. The sailors there were critical to the unloading operations.

Over the next few days, Clark’s GIs moved forward, bypassing some German strongpoints, eliminating others. Caught up in the ground advance, a handful of sailors converted themselves into infantrymen and, contrary to orders, headed inland with the advancing GIs. Perhaps the most daring were Seamen Clifford Christian, Clyde Daugherty and Gilbert Carter. Dodging large German units, they waged their own private guerrilla war. In one instance, the sailors surprised a half dozen German soldiers sitting down to breakfast, captured five and killed one who tried to escape. The trio even liberated a couple of small villages. ‘We haven’t got any particular name–except ‘beach party,” one of the group later told a Stars and Stripes reporter, ‘but the Army started calling us ‘Navy Commandos.’ Reckon that moniker’s about as good as any.’

On September 13, the Germans launched a full-scale counterattack that pushed the Americans back. Late in the day, Clark issued orders to prepare for a possible evacuation of the beachhead. When word of this reached the beach party, the sailors learned they would act as a rear guard. ‘We were expendable,’ radioman William Sprague later surmised. The Germans renewed their offensive the following day, but its momentum was soon spent-much to the sailors’ relief. The Allied toehold on the Italian mainland was now assured.

Most of the 4th Beach Battalion was withdrawn from Salerno on September 23. A skeleton force of six officers and 70 men remained to maintain naval control of the four beaches. Five days later, a severe storm beached scores of landing craft, damaging many. The sailors pitched in to help with the cleanup and salvage work. Finally, on October 16, with the ports of Naples and Salerno open, the sailors were relieved.

On October 21, the final group of sailors to leave the beaches endured one more trial on their way back to Oran on board LST-41 S. Coxswain Stephens remembered that he and some of his buddies were’standingon the starboard side of the LST, enjoying the sun,’ when the situation turned deadly. ‘All of a sudden there were two enemy planes corning at us out of the sun!’ said Stephens. ‘Even before we could react, a torpedo hit the LST’s bow right below us. The concussion threw us back into the ship, but luckily we were able to grab the side of the ship to keep from falling into the chasm caused by the explosion.’ The men on the port side were knocked into the water and could not be located. Meanwhile, damage control parties worked to keep the LST afloat. ‘The next day,’ Stephens recalled, ‘a Canadian subchaser hailed our ship to ask if we had lost anybody overboard. It was our shipmates, the ones who were lost overboard the night before. We sure were happy to see them.’

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