Read Online "I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charles Brandt
Tags: United States, Fiction, General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Mafia, LABOR, True Crime, Business & Economics, Criminology, Criminals & Outlaws, organized crime, Gangsters, Mafia - United States, Hoffa; James R, Teamsters, Sheeran; Frank, Gangsters - United States, Teamsters - United States
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Diggsy told me there were two big scandals going on. Everybody hated snipers. Both sides hated snipers, and if you captured one it was okay to kill him on the spot. They had some sniping going on outside Biscari airfield and a bunch of Americans had been hit. When about forty Italians soldiers surrendered, they couldn’t tell which ones had done the sniping so they lined them all up and shot them. Then a sergeant took about thirty prisoners back behind the line. When they got some distance he grabbed a machine gun and let them have it. That got my attention like the whistling shell that had sailed over us. It made you think twice about surrendering yourself if it ever came to that. ”
In his last speech to the 45th Infantry Division in August 1943, following their combat success in Sicily, at an outdoor address, Patton told the men and officers of the 45th: “Your division is one of the best if not the best division in the history of American arms.” By his praise Patton was reinforcing his faith in his “Killer Division.” They were doing things the way he wanted their division to do things and the way he had instructed them to do things in prior speeches.
At the time he uttered these words to the men of the 45th, two of their comrades were facing courts-martial for murder. Captain John T. Compton had ordered a firing squad to shoot approximately forty unarmed prisoners of war, two of whom were civilians, following a battle to take Biscari airfield in Sicily on July 14, 1943. In a separate incident Sergeant Horace T. West had personally machine-gunned thirty-six unarmed prisoners of war that same day following that same battle.
Patton’s personal diary for July 15, 1943, a day after these killings, reads:
[General Omar] Bradley—a most loyal man—arrived in great excitement about 0900 to report that a Captain in the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division [Sheeran’s actual regiment within the division], had taken my injunction to kill men who kept on shooting until we got within 200 yards seriously, and had shot some fifty prisoners in cold blood and in ranks, which was an even greater error. I told him that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad.
General Omar Bradley, Patton’s equal in rank, did no such thing. Bradley engaged in no cover-up, and his investigation led to murder charges against the captain and the sergeant.
Captain John T. Compton was tried by a military court, but he was acquitted on the grounds that he was merely following Patton’s explicit instructions to the 45th to shoot prisoners in cold blood.
Sergeant Horace T. West was also tried by a military court for murder, and he used the same defense as Captain Compton. A lieutenant testified for the sergeant that the night before the invasion of Sicily, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Schaefer went on the ship’s loudspeaker and reminded the men of Patton’s words: they “would not take any prisoners.”
Sergeant Horace T. West, however, was convicted and given life in prison. The unremitting outcry that ensued following the acquittal of an officer and the conviction of an enlisted man for essentially the same course of conduct, on the same day, following the same battle, in the same campaign, from the same 45th Infantry Division, led to the sergeant’s prompt release and return to combat, where he served out the balance of the war as a private. Four months after his acquittal, Captain Compton was shot and killed as he approached German soldiers who were displaying the white flag of surrender as a deadly trick.
There were hushed reports of other atrocities in Sicily as well. In his book General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, Stanley P. Hirschson cites one well-known British newspaperman of the day who witnessed two busloads of
In his last speech to the 45th Infantry Division in August 1943, following their combat success in Sicily, at an outdoor address, Patton told the men and officers of the 45th: “Your division is one of the best if not the best division in the history of American arms.” By his praise Patton was reinforcing his faith in his “Killer Division.” They were doing things the way he wanted their division to do things and the way he had instructed them to do things in prior speeches.
At the time he uttered these words to the men of the 45th, two of their comrades were facing courts-martial for murder. Captain John T. Compton had ordered a firing squad to shoot approximately forty unarmed prisoners of war, two of whom were civilians, following a battle to take Biscari airfield in Sicily on July 14, 1943. In a separate incident Sergeant Horace T. West had personally machine-gunned thirty-six unarmed prisoners of war that same day following that same battle.
Patton’s personal diary for July 15, 1943, a day after these killings, reads:
[General Omar] Bradley—a most loyal man—arrived in great excitement about 0900 to report that a Captain in the 180th Regimental Combat Team, 45th Division [Sheeran’s actual regiment within the division], had taken my injunction to kill men who kept on shooting until we got within 200 yards seriously, and had shot some fifty prisoners in cold blood and in ranks, which was an even greater error. I told him that it was probably an exaggeration, but in any case to tell the officer to certify that the dead men were snipers or had attempted to escape or something, as it would make a stink in the press and also would make the civilians mad.
General Omar Bradley, Patton’s equal in rank, did no such thing. Bradley engaged in no cover-up, and his investigation led to murder charges against the captain and the sergeant.
Captain John T. Compton was tried by a military court, but he was acquitted on the grounds that he was merely following Patton’s explicit instructions to the 45th to shoot prisoners in cold blood.
Sergeant Horace T. West was also tried by a military court for murder, and he used the same defense as Captain Compton. A lieutenant testified for the sergeant that the night before the invasion of Sicily, Lieutenant Colonel William H. Schaefer went on the ship’s loudspeaker and reminded the men of Patton’s words: they “would not take any prisoners.”
Sergeant Horace T. West, however, was convicted and given life in prison. The unremitting outcry that ensued following the acquittal of an officer and the conviction of an enlisted man for essentially the same course of conduct, on the same day, following the same battle, in the same campaign, from the same 45th Infantry Division, led to the sergeant’s prompt release and return to combat, where he served out the balance of the war as a private. Four months after his acquittal, Captain Compton was shot and killed as he approached German soldiers who were displaying the white flag of surrender as a deadly trick.
There were hushed reports of other atrocities in Sicily as well. In his book General Patton: A Soldier’s Life, Stanley P. Hirschson cites one well-known British newspaperman of the day who witnessed two busloads of
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