Sorry, try the link again i think its fixed.
Ernie Pyle wrote a column about the mules:
"FRONTLINES IN ITALY-The Italian mules which we've been using to pack supplies up to our troops fighting in the mountains, are smaller and weaker than the average American mule. Also they have been ridden around in trucks from one place to another until a lot of them are sick from it.
At first we misjudged them and put too heavy a load on their backs. In fact we put on more than an American mule could carry over such a trail. We lashed on four cans of water and two cases of rations, making a total load of around 240 pounds. The mules just couldn't take it. They'd all be sick the next day.
So now we load them with only two cans of water and one of rations, cutting the load to 120 pounds. They say the Italians are cruel to their mules on the trail but take good care of them when they're not working.
The Italian method of saying "giddap" to a mule is to go "brrrr" like we do when we are cold. When I stand along the pack trail and listen to the skinners "brrr-ing" their mules upward, it sounds like the whole population is freezing to death.
At first there were some white mules in the pack trains, but they were too easy to see, even by moonlight, so they stopped using them. A few horses are used also in some outfits, and several were discovered with the brand of the Italian royal family.
When the mules arrived from Sardinia, the most pressing problem was to get them shod. It took days to scour the country and dig up shoes for them. Then horseshoe nails became the dilemma. They finally found enough racetrack nails to do the job.
In emergencies some pack trains were sent up the mountain in the daytime, but it is dangerous business for the Germans kept the trail pretty well plastered with shells.
Luckily there have been no casualties on the trail in my outfit, but seven Italians were wounded in the mule park in a dive-bombing.
The Italians are very nervous about bombs and shells, and any night the heavy shells start dropping too close to the mule park, the Italians disappear into their foxholes quick like a magician. And you never can find them in the dark to rout them out again.
The men fared much better than the mules, for unfortunately a mule doesn't know about foxholes. My outfit alone has lost 50 mules from shellfire and bombing, and another hundred are sick from overwork and too much riding around in trucks.
The Italian mule outfit is under two Italian lieutenants, who wear plumed Tyrolian hats and look sort of romantic. Neither speaks English, but in the American Army you only have to yell twice to find a soldier who speaks Italian, so the little group has an interpreter. Everybody has to depend upon him so that he practically runs the show.
He is Cpl. Anthony Savino, of 262 14th Avenue, Newark, N. J. His job would drive anybody crazy. The Italians are not quick and efficient like we are, and about the time Savino gets a pack train all arranged, everything collapses and chaos takes place. Then he catches it from both sides.
The officer in charge of this mule pack is Lieut. Harmon W. Williams of Flint, Michigan. He was named after General Harmon who won fame in the last war. Some nights Lieutenant Williams is up till 3 A.M. seeing that all the skinners get back down the mountain. Other nights he gets to bed as early as 7 P.M. He sleeps whenever he can, for it's an unusual night when he isn't routed out to get some emergency supplies to the top.
He sleeps in a stone cowshed along with a dozen of his enlisted men. He was an undertaker in civil life, an antitank man in the Army, and a mule nurse just for the moment.
Cpl. Savino takes his interpreting job so seriously he even talks about it in his sleep. I slept in the same cowshed with the boys, and one night I happened to wake up about 3 A.M. and I heard Savino saying, "Well, if we can't use them as interpreters, let's make guides out of them."
He thought that was pretty funny when I told him, because he had never known that he talked in his sleep."