Casa Nostra - Combat Mission: Fortress Italy

High winds and heavy anti-aircraft fire scattered much of the 82nd Airborne Division's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment over a large area of southern Sicily during their late night drop on July 9th. However, some elements of the 505th's 1st Battalion landed in the area of their planned DZ between Niscemi and Gela, where the Battalion was tasked with capturing "Objective Y," the crossroads of Coastal Highway 115 and the Niscemi-Gela secondary road controlling access to the invasion beaches at Gela.

The Battalion's Company A, under the leadership of Captain Edwin Sayre, landed in the hills just east of Casa Priolo on the Niscemi-Gela road, several miles north of the planned objective. During the drop, the transports and paratroopers received tracer fire from a hilltop position alongside the road just west of their DZ. Sayre quickly gathered a handful of his paratroopers and launched a hasty attack on the position in the first hours of July 10, but was turned back by large volumes of machine gun fire and unanticipated fortifications. During the probe, he determined the strongpoint was centered on a large, two-story house that had been converted into an Italian garrison.

After assembling two platoons of his dispersed company and support weapons, Sayre decided to attack again, with the aim of seizing the strongpoint before the enemy could bring up reinforcements at dawn, thus cutting the Niscemi-Gela road in support of the Battalion's original objective to the south.