Three PTs, their crews beefed up by 17 extra sailors, six soldiers and a military government man—with a destroyer following behind as main fire support—sailed into Lipari Harbor at 11 A.M. on August 17th, guns manned and trained on the beach. At precisely the critical moment, the destroyer hove into view around a headland, giving the impression of a mighty fleet backing up the puny invaders.
The commandant of the Italian naval garrison came down to the dock himself to handle mooring lines for his captors.
The American Military Government man stepped gracefully ashore in the first assault wave and set up a government on the spot. PT men rounded up military prisoners, hauled down the Italian and hoisted the American flag.
The Italian commodore slipped off in the excitement and tried to burn his papers, but a sailor persuaded him to stop by pressing the muzzle of a 45 automatic to his brow.
Sailors confiscated the documents and collected souvenirs, while the commandant radioed the other islands in the group and the PT skippers accepted their surrender by long distance. Only Stromboli resisted, so the PTs chugged over to find out what was holding up the breaking out of peace on that volcanic pimple.
They found an Italian chief petty officer and a 30-man detail, blowing up their radio equipment. The American sailors indignantly halted the sabotage—then destroyed the stuff themselves.
All the Italian navy saboteurs were put under armed guard for transport to American prisons in Sicily, but a pregnant woman burst into sobs, pleading that one of the men was her husband, a fisherman who had never spent a night away from Stromboli in his life. Six other women joined their wails to the chorus. The local priest assured Lieut. Dubose that their stories were true, so Dubose granted the prisoners a reprieve.
The boats returned to Lipari, picked up fifty merry military prisoners there, and departed for Palermo to the cheers of the entire town.
Messina fell that same day, and the Sicilian campaign was over.
Three weeks after the fall of Sicily, on the morning of September 9th, Allied troops went ashore in force on the mainland around the magnificent Bay of Salerno, just across a headland from Naples, second port of Italy.