30 Chapter 30
A few days later…
Paestum, Italy
The invasion of mainland Italy had begun with the British 8th army moving across the straights of Messina and landing in southern Italy. What was expected to be met with fierce resistance was instead met with lack of fighting and confrontation as Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, German commander in the Mediterranean theatre played defensive and moves his troops from vulnerable positions in the south into further positions up north to consolidate his forces. Denied battle, the frustrated British advanced north at a snail's pace delayed by mine fields, roadblocks and collapsed bridges. A few days after the invasion by the British 8th, a British Airborne operation was conducted to capture the port city of Taranto on the south-eastern side of the peninsula and establishing a supply base for the 8th army. The initial lands went unopposed as the British forces established control over the south of the country, news of the Italian surrender was made. It was easy to guess for anyone with Benito Mussolini captured in Allied custody and the invasion force establishing their hold, the King announced Italy's surrender to the Allies which is when things took a turn for the worst.
On Hitler's orders, German forces undertook what would later be known as Operation Asche, quickly disarming what remained of the Italian military and taking control. While a few divisions all over the country tried to resist, the majority meekly surrendered or agreed to fight alongside their new occupiers. The new Italian government fled Rome and the Germans took over, making a new puppet state in the Italian Fascist Republic. With German forces reinforcing the country the thought of a lightning campaign to liberate Italy didn't seem as possible as it did in the beginning, but the lack of initial resistance had Allied planners believing the Germans were too busy establishing their control or dealing with the Italians to mount a strong defense south of Rome, so Operation Avalanche was launched. A total of 9 divisions from the US 5th Army launched from their staging points in Sicily and headed for their target which was a 35-mile stretch of Italian coastline near the town of Salerno. The US 5th Army was actually a combination of US and British forces, and the plan was that the British would attack Salerno while the US would handle the nearby town of Paestum. Do to ignorance, overconfidence, and the poor military thinking of Admiral Ken Hewitt the landing zones were not subjected to pre-landing bombardments. The man was an arrogant jackass who thought the operation still had the element of surprise despite sightings of Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes over the taskforce as it crossed from Italy. Predictably, Kesselring had guessed the plan of action and placed his troops to contest the landing with secure emplacements of machine guns, field artillery, and Panzer tanks that would have turned the beaches into a massacre if not for the actions of one man.
A German tank commander was standing up through the command hatch of his Panzer tank which was in the lead of the large Armored Tank convoy moving into position for their attack on the invading Allied Forces. They would bombard the beachhead when they landed but he heard the distant sound of artillery guns and machine guns going off which was odd as it was supposed to be a coordinated attack by everyone. If the guns were going off, then it meant that the Allies had landed ahead of schedule. The commander used a pair of binoculars to get a better view of what was going on. Then to his stunned disbelief he saw multiple explosions by the artillery positions so the Allies must have advanced past the beachhead or called in their own naval artillery to take out the guns. He reached down to grab the radio and contacted the Wehrmacht commander.
"Wulfmach position, this is Panzer Group 4. We're coming in from the northeast and we'll establish a secure base of fire. What is your position? How many Americans have broken through?"
"…[Bzzzt] Focus fire on him, now!... [Bzzzt]…GET MORE GRENADES! [Bzzt]…FALL BACK!—"
"Wulfmach?! Wulfmach?!" The commander shouted but got nothing.
[CRASH!]
One of the tanks in the armored convoy exploded out of nowhere and the commander's tank immediately halted to a stop along with every other tank in the convoy. The Commander ducked back down into the tank and closed the top hatch, using the periscope to see what was going on without risking getting shot or hit by shrapnel. The Allies must have seen them coming and called in artillery strikes but the commander saw something that made his jaw drop. He got a better look at the wreckage and the tank didn't explode from a shell but by an impact. Something had crashed down on top of it causing it to cave in and set off a chain reaction with the ammunition and fuel. The thing in question that crashed onto the tank was a man as the commander saw him stand up and walk out of the tank wreckage. Part of the uniform he was wearing had caught fire, but he patted it out to snuff the fire allowing the commander to see the S on his chest in a diamond shield.
"KILL HIM! OPEN FIRE!" The commander urgently shouted into the radio and the tank crews complied with the order. The machine gunners fired their MG-34 light machine guns while the cannons fired tank shells.
Superman jumped forward and smashed through the cannon on a tank, causing the front to smash into the ground and nearly causing it to capsize over but he just pushed it back to the ground when he got hit with a tank shell. The small explosion engulfed him and the gunner who made the shot thought it was over, but Superman just walked over, grabbed the cannon and crumpled it into the tank. MG-34 bullets rained down on him, but they bounced or broke against his skin as he jumped onto a nearby tank, ripping the top hatch off and threw a grenade in before jumping away. The tank exploded as another came straight at him, so he moved to the side and ripped the left side tracks off and punched a hole through the steel armor into the engine before ripping it out. Another one came at him from the side as the gunner fired a tank shell, but Superman dodged it with super speed and came at the tank from the side. He shoulder tackled it and the impact knocked it upside down.
Superman continued his assault and what started out as 25 German Panzer tanks was now reduced to eight with seven of them turning around and retreating. The one that stayed behind belonged to the commander who was in disbelief at what had just happened. He looked through the periscope at the carnage of what was left of his armored group in anger. "FIND HIM!" He ordered as the crew looked around but didn't see anything until the gunner saw Superman looking down at the barrel of the tank. The commander saw this too and decided to give this one lucky shot a try. "FIRE!"
The gunner pressed the trigger button causing the tank shell to fly down the cannon only for Superman to punch his fist into said cannon. His fist plugged it up causing the tank shell to hit his fist and it then exploded along with the tank. Superman pulled his fist out of the cannon wreckage and flexed his fingers a bit before dusting off the smoke and oil. About 500 yards away, Clark's team had been watching his little tank battle from a safe distance. The team was great but only Clark was suited to handle the artillery positions, so they hung back until Webb spotted the tank column coming in, so he dealt with that.
"Huh, that was easy." Arthur remarked as he and the others grabbed their gear and got ready to move out. After they mopped up what remained in Paestum, they went to Salerno.
The entire 16th Panzer division came barreling down the plains to try and stop them, but they too were taken down by Clark. Even their overwhelming force and Blitzkrieg tactics were no match for Superman who got some help by calling in some Naval Artillery strikes for a quick assist, but he was the main force in dealing with the entrenched Germany Artillery and Panzer Tanks. The Navy had their hands full with Luftwaffe attacks on the naval ships. Due to Superman's forward thinking and front assault, the towns of Salerno and Paestum were captured by the end of the first day of the aquatic assault. With the help of US Army Rangers and British SAS Commandos, Taskforce Vanguard was able to capture a vital airfield in Salerno for their Air Forces.
The Allies quickly established secure beachheads for transporting their army forces to the mainland while their air forces used the airfield to begin bombing runs on key targets. The secured towns of Salerno and Paestum allowed the Allies to continue their advance into Southern Italy at record speed capturing other nearby towns, vital crossroads and even sending groups further south to link up with the British forces in Taranto to secure all airfields in the south. In those days as the Allies advanced, Kesselring sent multiple forces south to try and keep the Allies back with coordinated Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Panzer Divisions and each time his efforts were beaten back. Taskforce Vanguard was always one step ahead of Kesselring's plans and they mounted defenses and surprise attacks on his attempts to keep them pinned south.
Eventually, Kesselring was ordered to retreat North on direct orders from High Command. Hitler had conferred with Rommel, and both agreed that it was pointless to try and defend southern Italy with the mounting heavy losses they were suffering, especially in their Panzer division. They had better odds at consolidating their forces north and using the Italian terrain to delay the Allies advance.
Moral was high for the Allies, and they quickly consolidated all their forces in the south before planning their push into the north. Clark lead Taskforce Vanguard and the men of the 107th Infantry Regiment into the city of Naples where the citizens had risen up in revolt against their German occupiers. The civil unrest in the city gave Clark and his team the perfect staging ground for their offensive and they quickly forced a German retreat. Once the city was secure, Clark and his team headed north up the Adriatic to Termoli, a seaside town/port and part of the Volturno line which was a German defensive position that ran to the east along the Biferno river through the Apennine mountains to the Volturno river in the west. Working alongside SAS commandos, the raid was a remarkable success with the teams holding the city until being reinforced by the 8th army.
Due to the need to build bridges for the tanks, the advance slowed but Clark and his team kept moving. Colonel Phillips gave him full authority to keep moving with the 107th regiment and they proceeded to take apart the Volturno line bit by bit giving the waiting Allied army some reprieve. They then advanced through to the Barbara line, another German defensive position further ahead fitted with miles of barbed wire, fortified machine gun pits, camouflaged bunkers, and extensive minefields. They laid in wait for the advanced Allies through some of Italy's roughest terrain and in any normal situation it would have stalled them, but Clark and his team weren't normal. With Clark's senses, he was able to have Webb call in artillery strikes and air raids on the open positions and then they mopped up the rest. No matter how many mines, tanks, or soldiers they had Clark was able to take them all on and there were no signs of those super soldiers at all as they advanced through in Italy. In most cases when the tanks and artillery were taken out by Clark most German soldiers immediately surrendered the second they saw the S on his chest. They worked with Italian partisan groups to help deal with the surplus of POWs they now had.
Clark was so effective, and his team was so fast that the rest of the Allied army sometimes had trouble just keeping pace and securing the places that he had just cleared. He tore through German tanks, destroyed bunkers and was fast enough that he even helped build bridges across rivers to help things go quicker. The lightning campaign for Italy was becoming more of reality every single day as they pushed further north by leaps and bounds.
By the end of September, they had already reached the Bernhardt Line which was the last German Defensive line just south of Rome settled between wide open plains and the mountains. The defenses there were well put together by Kesselring and Rommel but even then, it wasn't much as Clark just bulldozed through anything they had put in his way. Clark and his team were able to take the hill-based town of Monte Cassino by themselves with quick, coordinated, and effective team movements. This allows the British 8th and combined 5th armies tank divisions to push on through. Any German Panzers were taken out before they could mount a defensive and artillery positions were bombed with coordinated strikes thanks to Clark's super vision and hearing allowing him to pinpoint where they were with great accuracy.
On the first day of October, the Allies had arrived and taken Rome with thousands of German soldiers surrendering and the Italian citizens cheering in joy. It seemed like things were on the side of the Allies and Germany was feeling the pain.
Berlin, Germany October 1943
German High Command had been called to Berlin for an emergency meeting by the Fuhrer himself. German High Command had meetings before, but an emergency meeting called by the Fuhrer had only happened a few times like when the United States joined the global conflict, when the Allies pushed their forces out of North Africa, when their advance into Russia had stalled, when the German Luftwaffe failed to eliminate all the British forces at Dunkirk, and most recently when Sicily was invaded. The reason for this emergency meeting was to discuss the ongoing failures of the German defensive lines in Italy and the rapid rate of the American and British advance into Northern Italy. They had advanced through several German Defensive lines too quickly and had reached Rome in under a month when they predicted it would take them several especially with all the new units and battalions, they had to send in from Central Europe. With how the war was going they needed to keep the Allies from advancing north but moving around forces wasn't as simple as it sounded. Western Europe was secure as was Central Europe but the Eastern part wasn't as secure so they couldn't move forces from that section of the war.
Moving forces from the Eastern Front wasn't advisable as they were still dealing with the Russian counterattacks and pushback. The Russians were pushing west into the Smolensk region of their country to try and cut off a western attack on Moscow and regain the territory the Germans got in their blitzkrieg attacks. Losses were considerable and the whole Germany Army wasn't as effective as they were before with many of its experienced soldiers and leaders being killed during the previous two years on the Eastern Front. This mainly had the Germans reacting to Soviet moves and now they were ensuring that they couldn't make a western approach on Moscow and were pushing them further and further back from Soviet territory. Facing off against two enemy forces was hard enough but the Superman was making it nearly impossible.
On top of that Kesselring and Rommel were two of Germany's best commanders and strategists yet nothing they had established seemed to slow the Allies advance. Adding on to the rumors of the Superman smashing through Panzer divisions like they're made of cardboard, but they had heard that many German platoons and groups had surrendered to the Allies without so much as firing a bullet.
[Glass break!]
Hitler threw a glass cup at the wall of the meeting room in pure frustration adding on to the pile from the glass water pitcher and the glass flower vase he had thrown several seconds earlier. The Fuhrer was red faced in anger as he had just been informed of their progress in Italy along with all the rumors being spread and tales being told. Suffice it to say that he was not happy.
"THOSE SOLDIERS ARE COWARDS AND SWINE! SURRENDERING WHEN THEY SHOULD BE FIGHTING TO THE LAST MAN! DESTROYING THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH! THEY HAVE NO SPINE AND NEITHER DO THEIR COMMANDERS!" Hitler shouted in anger at his assembled high command who could do nothing but just sit there.
"My Fuhrer, our forces are doing everything they can, but they're outmatched. The Superman destroys our artillery positions, walks through our minefields without a scratch, shruggs off all the bullets we can fire at him and smashes our tanks like tissue paper. We lost a full battalion of tanks when they landed in Salerno and lost two more battalions at Monte Cassino. They can't stop him. He is the Superman." One of the German commanders informed him only for Hitler to throw a cup at his head which he managed to duck at the last second.
"HE IS NOT AN UBERMENSCH! THAT MAN IS NOTHING MORE THEN A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT! WE ARE THE UBERMENSCH! I AM THE UBERMENSCH AND I'M SURROUNDED BY FOOLS AND COWARDS!" Hitler shouted in pure rage. He was enraged at the thought of an American calling himself the Superman. He was not a superior building. He was nothing to the majesty of the pure Aryan race.
"I'm afraid the Allies science experiment has given them a weapon to use against our best forces and it is currently working." A voice from the round table said, belonging to one of the High Command's most notable members. He was tall with a broad chest, a well-kept black beard on his face and his black hair trimmed back. The man exuded an aura of confidence, prestige, and experience well beyond his years of only 30-40 years of age. This was Standartenführer Vandal Savage. "In order to combat such a threat to the Reich, it would only make sense to use our own scientific advancements to our advantage. Many of our outposts and divisions have been using their resources to devise new weapons and projects for the war. I've heard many good things from Projekt Endstation, headed by Oberführer Wolfram Von List and Doctor Ulrich Vogel."
"With the assistance of Standartenführer Savage, we managed to recover Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny. He survived the battle against the Allies Superman and was found in Croatia and transferred back here for medical attention. With the aid of a special project Dr. Vogel and I have been developing, Skorzeny nearly killed the Superman with his own hands if not for the invention of the man's team. With the help of Savage, I've managed to perfect my procedure and made some new additions that I think will help tremendously." Wolfram Von List said and everyone, including Hitler was intrigued.
"Not only that but Doctor Frederick Vought is doing excellent work in Dachau the last I spoke with him. With a little more time and more test subjects we may have an army of powerful soldiers to send against the Americans, British, Russians, and anyone who stands in our way." Savage stated.
"Well said, Savage. Send word to Dr. Vought. I would see his research with my own eyes, and I will be visiting Projekt Endstation myself to see this new weapon." Hitler stated.
"Of course, my Fuhrer." Von List replied.
"In the meantime, we must buy for time. Send two more tank divisions and more battalions from Austria and France into Italy to halt the Americans. And send word that any hints or even whispers of surrender or desertion will be met with immediate sentence to a work camp." Hitler ordered and everyone nodded.
The meeting came to an end and Hitler left to do whatever it is he did. Savage stood up and grabbed his hat when Von List walked over. "Thank you again for your assistance in locating Skorzeny, Savage. He is a good friend and your grasp on the science of the project was very impressive. You and Dr. Vogel are like two peas in a pod with how well you understand the science."
"Well, I've had many hobbies. Science is but one of them. I hope my suggestions to Dr. Vogel has helped in the projects stability and performance." Savage said to him.
"It has. The only problem is supply as there is only enough serum for so many men." Von List told him.
"Worry not, my friend. There are other projects that will come into effect during the war and will stop the Superman." Savage assured him before they departed. Savage had a smile on his face and while he was cordial with Von List, it was purely a means to an end. His men had found Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny who was miraculously still alive with the mutation from the serum being the only thing that let him survive but his body has returned to its normal state in bad condition. Savage's assistance in Von List's project would help fix the serum's shortcomings and ensure that the affects weren't temporary. Von List and Dr. Vogel had worked for years to get where they were but Savage had a keen understanding of their work in a shorter time span visiting their base and seeing their lab a few times. Savage offered more resources for them to use along with his own personal SS-group of soldiers to help them, so Von List and Vogel weren't going to deny the help. Especially when said help came from someone with a special friend.
Later that night, Savage walked down the street to a local park which was empty since it was late. He waited near a great oak tree by a street lamp for his guest to arrive and he was running late as Savage checked his pocket watch. That's when a black blur spun around him at super speed. It was moving too fast, so all Savage saw was a blur, but he did see the noticeable trail of red lightning the blur made before it stopped behind him. Said blur turned out to be a man. Blonde hair, blue eyes, wearing black boots, pants, jacket and gloves but the style of the clothes wasn't German or from the current year for that matter.
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