Incident At Bari

(Bari, Italy)

"On the afternoon of 2 December [1943], Air Marshal 'Mary' Cunningham held a press conference in Bari, in which he told reporters that the Luftwaffe had lost the air war in Italy.  'I would consider it a personal insult', he told them, 'if the enemy should send so much as one plane over the city'.  Cunningham was a brilliant and inspired air commander, yet there was a touch of hubris about his comments because that same afternoon a lone Messerschmitt Me 210 twin-engine reconnaissance aircraft flew over Bari, spotting a mass of Allied merchant vessels crammed into the harbour."

- The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943 by James Holland

The Allies had invaded Italy in early September, the British Eighth Army landing on the toe and advancing north, while the Fifth Army, containing both American and British divisions, came ashore at Salerno, south of Naples (the Americans landing by the ancient Greek temples of Paestum). By the beginning of December, the Allied advance slowed to a bloody crawl north of Naples, and along the Adriatic coast.  However, the important ports on the Italian heel, Taranto, Brindisi, and Bari had been captured and were handling the massive amount of supplies required to support the armies and the new air force bases around Foggia.  Cunningham was correct in his assertion that the Allied air forces dominated the sky.  But that was almost all, but not all, of the time. 

In this instance, the reconnaissance report prompted the Luftwaffe commander in Italy to send 105 bombers to the port that very evening.  They were able to foil radar, no fighter defense was scrambled, and anti-aircraft fire was ineffective.  The result was disaster for the tightly packed merchant ships.  Twenty seven merchant ships were sunk and another twelve damaged.  One of the first hit was an ammunition ship which resulted in a massive explosion breaking windows seven miles away.  A thousand seamen and another thousand civilians were killed.  The port was not back in full operation until February 1944. As bad as the toll in ships, supplies, and people, there was another aspect of the raid initially covered up by the Allies.

Among the ships sunk was the John Harvey, an American vessel carrying 2,000 mustard gas mortar bombs.  The Allies always maintained a supply of chemical weapons to be used in retaliation if the Germans used such weapons first.  Tight security was maintained regarding the cargo and neither the Bari harbormaster and any local military personnel knew about the presence of the mustard gas (the ship's captain and those of its crew who knew about the contents were killed in the explosion).  American Heritage gives this account of the dramatic explosion:

"The explosion of the John Harvey shook the entire harbor. Clouds of smoke, tinted every color of the rainbow, shot thousands of feet into the air. Meteoric sheets of metal rocketed in all directions, carrying incendiary torches to other ships and setting off a series of explosions that made the harbor a holocaust. Jimmy Doolittle, still standing by the shattered window of his office, was staggered by the terrific blast. Huddled on the east jetty, Heitmann and other survivors from the ships in the harbor were bathed in the bright light momentarily and then bombarded by debris, oil, and dirty water. The inhabitants of old Bari who had rushed to the harbor to escape the flames within the walls of the ancient section were gathered along the shore when the John Harvey exploded. There was no time to run, no time to hide, no time for anything. One moment they were rejoicing in their good fortune in escaping from the flames of the old city; the next they were struck by the unbearable concussion of the blast. Some were blown upward, their broken bodies flying twenty-five to thirty feet high. Some were hurtled straight back the way they had come. "

  James Holland reports what followed:

". . . as the John Harvey was hit a large amount of these mustard gas mortar shells leaked liquid sulphur mustard into water already slick with oil.  A number of sailors leaping from stricken vessels then found themselves in the sea and exposed to the poison, much of which mixed with the oil, caught fire, and produced noxious fumes.  Within a day, 628 patients fished out the harbour were suffering from blindness and chemical burns."

Hundreds of Italian civilians, injured by the cloud of mustard sulphur vapor that spread over the city, also presented themselves to medical facilities.  Baffled medical personnel had no clue as to the source of the injuries.  By the end of the month 83 of the military patients had died along with an unknown number of civilians and others permanently injured.  If medical personnel had known at the time about the presence of mustard gas, many injuries caused by prolonged exposure to low concentrations of mustard might have been reduced by bathing or a change of clothes.  Instead the initial victims were only thought to be suffering from shock and immersion, wrapped in blankets, and left for 12 to 24 hours to recover.

Within a few days, the mysterious symptoms caused Lt Colonel Stewart Francis Alexander, a doctor with experience in chemical warfare, to be sent to Bari. Alexander quickly concluded that mustard gas was the source, although the military command refused to confirm, and convinced medics to treat for those symptoms which saved many lives. 

In February 1944, the U.S. issued a short statement acknowledging the presence of mustard gas in Bari, but the entire incident received little attention at the time.  General Eisenhower approved Dr Alexander's report and the U.S. declassified documents related to the incident in 1959.  However, the British destroyed many documents and did not acknowledge the presence of mustard gas until 1988, at which time it amended the pension payments of those still living.

Tissue samples taken by Dr Alexander were later used in the development of the initial type of chemotherapy based on a mustard derivative.

The quote that begins this post is from James Holland's recently published account of the first four months of the Italian campaign.  Holland, co-host of the popular WW2 podcast We Have Ways Of Making You Talk, gives us a well written account of that misbegotten campaign, which the Allies began with too high expectations and too little logistical support and infantry, ending up mired in the mountains of south Italy from November 1943 until well into May 1944.  A miserable and deadly time for soldiers on both sides and a horror for the civilians caught in the middle.  Holland provides plenty of strategic overview and background but the strength of the book are the contemporaneous accounts taken from letters and diaries of American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers and of Italian civilians.  They provide an immediacy to the account.  Holland does not use later interviews or memoirs.  His approach provides an immediacy, as we see human reactions at the time of the events when no one knew what the outcome would be.

Memorial in Bari to those killed and injured in the air raid