The Gothic Line Read online

  When darkness fell at 2100 hours, ‘A’ Company tried to renew its advance, but was immediately forced back into the buildings by heavy small-arms fire. Cameron ordered his rifle companies to stay put for the night and sent the scout platoon forward to reconnoitre routes that could be used to move rations up to the men and to evacuate the dead and wounded. The two leading companies had lost five men killed. Sporadic mortar and small-arms fire continued throughout the night.38

  In the late afternoon, Calder had realized that the Hasty P’s faced a protracted fight. He therefore ordered the 48th Highlanders of Canada to close up just behind the Hasty P’s tactical headquarters, which was on the south ridge overlooking the Arzilla River, in preparation to relieve the embattled regiment. Calder told the Highlanders’ commander, Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie, that he would rendezvous with him there to plan the operation. When it took Calder longer than expected to arrive, Mackenzie warned his companies that the relief attempt would have to take place at night. He then established radio contact with Calder, who told him to come back and be briefed at brigade headquarters. Mackenzie said he was on foot and couldn’t get there in time. Calder snapped, “Get your battle adjutant back here, if you can’t make it yourself!”39

  Mackenzie contacted Major Jim Counsell by radio with Calder’s instructions. The officer, who was back at the regimental headquarters, rushed to a jeep and raced to brigade HQ, arriving just in time for the briefing. He then hurried back to the companies and briefed the officers on the job ahead. The regiment was to rally at the Hasty P’s tactical headquarters, where a final O Group would be held before the attack jumped off in the early morning hours of August 28.40

  It was a moonless night and the marching companies fumbled through the inky blackness. Mackenzie, having gone on alone, arrived at the Hasty P’s headquarters well ahead of his regiment. Cameron had not been informed that his headquarters in a farm out-building that contained two steers was to be the Highlanders’ forming-up point. So he was a bit perplexed when Mackenzie asked if he had “seen his battalion anywhere.”41

  Cameron’s men had rendered the building functional by hanging a blanket over the door to conform to blackout regulations and then scrounging an old kitchen table on which a candle had been fitted into an empty bully-beef tin. The headquarters staff had just been sitting down to stew earlier that evening when somebody coughed outside the entrance. Thinking it one of his men, Cameron pulled back the blanket and faced a six-foot German wearing the camouflaged smock of a parachute corporal. Impatient to return to his dinner, Cameron glowered at the man and said, “You are in the wrong camp. Go away.”

  Apologetically, the German explained that he was lost. Cameron pointed out a footpath and said that if he followed that four hundred yards he would likely soon find his comrades. Then the ever solicitous Cameron asked if the man had eaten. When the corporal said not for twenty-four hours, Cameron invited him to the table. Politely, the German excused himself first to wash up and then returned and ate a healthy serving of stew. While the German dined, Cameron’s officers debated whether the Geneva Convention would consider the corporal a prisoner or a social guest. The corporal, who had some command of English, ventured that he was tired of the war and was content to be a prisoner. Cameron retorted that this was nonsense because the corporal had arrived at his headquarters by mistake and that he posed nothing but an “administrative nuisance.” The German pounded the table, “But I tell you, I am your prisoner. The Geneva Convention says I am!”

  Cameron responded in kind. “You are a soldier absent without leave from his unit and your CO will be looking for you. You may even be charged with desertion. You go along, and when you get back, tell your CO that we’re going to beat the hell out of him come the dawn.” The German still refused to leave and finally Cameron, needing to hammer out the details of the forthcoming attack with Mackenzie, accepted the corporal’s surrender.42

  Surreal the circumstances surrounding the German corporal’s surrender might be, but his presence at Cameron’s headquarters confirmed intelligence reports trickling in that indicated the 71st Infantry Division was being reinforced by two battalions of 1st Parachute Division’s 4th Parachute Regiment. On the 71st’s eastern flank, this reinforcement had begun during the early afternoon, resulting in the Hasty P’s coming up against strong positions established earlier by the paratroops. Elsewhere during the night of August 27–28, other elements of the 71st were handing the line to the parachutists.43

  As word of the presence of the paratroops reached 1 CID headquarters, a sense of gloom settled in. Not only had the 71st Division proven a tougher nut to crack than expected, the arrival of their old foes served as a warning that the worst of the fighting south of the Foglia was still to come. When Burns called Vokes to ask if there was any hope his brigades might reach the Foglia by morning, Vokes curtly replied, “Seems unlikely.”44

  [ 11 ]

  Most Difficult and Unpleasant

  THE LOYAL EDMONTON REGIMENT was first to test the mettle of the paratroopers on August 28. Although a narrow road with a sharp hairpin corner approached Monteccicardo from the south, Lieutenant Colonel Budge Bell-Irving wanted to avoid using such an obvious approach. Instead, ‘A’ Company started up the slope well to the right of Monteciccardo at 0130 hours with instructions to enter it from the east flank. ‘B’ Company simultaneously advanced on a point of high ground three hundred yards right of where the road switched back eastward on its steep climb to the village. Ready to support the flanking attack if required, ‘C’ Company was in trail behind ‘A’ Company. ‘D’ Company was held in reserve.

  ‘A’ Company crept up to the edge of the village without being detected and Captain W.G. Roxburgh slipped his troops in among the buildings. Neither the streets nor the houses showed signs of life. Men spread out to search buildings and to establish defensive points. Meanwhile, ‘B’ Company cleared the heights without incident and struck out for the village’s western flank.

  Roxburgh’s company had been in Monteciccardo a scant ten minutes when the heavy tramping sound of men on the march was heard to the immediate north of the town. Moments later, a column of German infantry marching three abreast, with weapons slung on shoulders, materialized out of the darkness. The captain realized that the 71st Infantry Division must have withdrawn without waiting to hand off the village to the paratrooper relief force. Now that force was tromping towards the village and ‘A’ Company scrambled to give them a surprise welcome. The two Bren gunners quickly set up on either side of the street and opened fire the moment the German column reached the village’s main square. Each man ripped off a couple of magazines in rapid succession, killing or wounding sixty to seventy paratroopers in seconds. A handful of Germans managed to run back the way they had come without being shot.

  When the two guns fell silent, ‘A’ Company had no time to celebrate its initial success, for the grinding sound of tank tracks cut through the night. A large tank materialized in the centre of the road and behind it a pack of paratroopers started spreading out into the buildings. Moments later, small-arms fire began snapping at the Canadians from various nearby buildings, rooftops, and street corners. Roxburgh ordered a hasty retreat and ‘A’ Company fled.1

  Captain Alon Johnson’s ‘D’ Company had just crossed the Arzilla when the rattle and crack of gunfire erupted in Monteciccardo. He ordered his men to establish a firm defensive base in front of the river in case the leading companies had to retreat. The ground alongside the riverbank was strewn with German corpses, as if an artillery or aerial bombardment had caught a platoon or company in the open. Johnson saw one of his Bren gunners casually stretch out behind the cover of one of the bodies and brace his gun across the corpse. A few minutes later, ‘A’ Company came streaming back with its platoons all hopelessly jumbled together.2 Once Johnson and the other officers got everyone calmed down, they discovered that Roxburgh, Company Sergeant Major E.H. Morris, and eight other men were missing. Thirty of the men who had made i
t back were wounded.

  Up the slope, ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies were engaged in a hot skirmish with the Germans on the edge of the town. Although they took eighteen prisoners, it was soon evident that the battle was stalemated until tanks could be brought up at dawn. The two companies dug in and spent the rest of the night exchanging sporadic fire with the paratroopers.3

  ON THE CANADIANS’ far right flank, the 48th Highlanders of Canada had started their advance at 0200 hours with the companies marching in single file towards Point 146, a hump of ground about five hundred yards east of Point 268. The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment was simultaneously taking another stab at capturing this latter point.4

  The Highlanders walked along the outside edge of a narrow track descending towards the Arzilla River, with ‘B’ Company leading. Nobody expected any trouble crossing the river. Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie and his intelligence officer, Lieutenant N.H. McMurrich, were walking at the very front of ‘B’ Company in order to guide the regiment to the forming-up point for the actual attack against Point 146. Mackenzie became uneasy, though, when he saw the red glow of ashes smouldering in a ditch beside the road. “Jerries,” he whispered to McMurrich and drew the officer off the road into some bushes to check their map references with a hooded flashlight. Mackenzie was worried that they may have somehow drifted off course.

  As the two men consulted the map, ‘B’ Company passed them and continued on towards a cluster of houses on the riverbank. ‘A’ Company followed and ‘C’ Company was halfway past Mackenzie when a storm of rifle and machine-gun fire from ahead and to either side ripped into the regiment, followed immediately by the explosions of mortar rounds in their midst. The Highlanders had walked into an ambush and could do little but take cover in the buildings of the small hamlet or dive into the ditches on either side of the road. Even as they sought cover, the platoon sections stuck together.

  The Germans had sprung the ambush just as ‘B’ Company passed beyond the main body of houses, leaving it nowhere to hide initially but in the roadside ditches. Captain Gordon Proctor managed to slowly withdraw two platoons into the buildings of a farm, but any attempt by the lead platoon to pull back was met with withering machine-gun fire. ‘A’ Company and Mackenzie’s headquarters section found shelter among the buildings, while ‘C’ Company set up just to the rear of the nameless village. ‘D’ Company was back far enough that its position lay outside the German ambush’s pincers.

  Although the situation was critical, the paratroopers seemed reluctant to press their advantage by directly attacking the elongated Canadian line. Instead, they held their ground, continuing to rake the Highlanders with gunfire. This allowed Mackenzie and the other officers to reorganize. Inside what the Highlanders would later refer to as simply The Village, Battle Adjutant Major Jim Counsell and McMurrich established an advance tactical HQ in a stone building on the southern outskirts. The old building was a combination farmhouse and grain mill. About a dozen Italian peasants were hiding in a cellar below the building and immediately outside a terrifled cow bawled continuously. Miraculously, the animal remained unscathed by the mortar and machine-gun fire lashing the courtyard. After ensuring that ‘A’ Company had taken up a sound defensive perimeter within the village, Mackenzie and McMurrich withdrew to the location of the less heavily engaged ‘D’ Company. Captain L.G. Smith had established a strong defensive position on a small rise that looked down on the rest of the regiment. Mackenzie figured he would be better able to direct the battle from here than if he remained inside the embattled village.

  Although ‘D’ Company’s position was now secure, it had been won only after a hard fight. ‘D’ Company had already passed this rise by when the Germans had sprung their ambush, and the company was scattered every which way by the incoming gunfire. Smith realized immediately that he must get his company back to the ridge in order to regroup. He bellowed orders to his lieutenants and sergeants to get their men moving back, but not a soul emerged from the cover of whatever hole, ditch, or cluster of brush they hid in. Noting that the German fire seemed to be either falling short or snapping well overhead, Smith decided a desperate, possibly suicidal gamble was required to get his men moving before the Germans found their range. He shouted for Company Sergeant Major Leitch to order the men to form up on the road in parade order of three abreast.

  “In threes?” the stunned CSM stammered.

  “Fall them in! Line them up! Get going!” Smith bellowed.

  Troopers and officers alike emerged from their hiding points wearing dazed, fearful expressions. But they responded to the familiar orders instinctively, forming precisely as if on a drill field back in Canada. Maintaining this formation, Smith marched his company up the centre of the road to the low ridgeline. Only when they passed the crest did he shout the order for the parade to fall out and quickly got his men digging trenches. Not a single soldier had been hit by the wildly inaccurate German gunfire that had continued seeking the marching column as it proceeded to the ridge.5

  From the vantage of ‘D’ Company’s position, Mackenzie quickly realized there was no way to improve his regiment’s position until tanks could come to the rescue and he could start directing artillery and mortar fire against the well-concealed German positions. His men would have to hunker down until dawn.6

  When all hell had broken loose around the 48th Highlanders, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment had just started probing once again towards Point 268. The leading companies were halted by fire from the same well-prepared German positions as had been encountered the day before. Like the Highlanders, they could only wait for daylight and some tanks.7

  FAR OUT ON THE Canadians’ left flank, the ‘B’ Company platoon of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry garrisoning Monte Santa Maria collectively tensed at the sound of men marching towards them from the west. It was 0430 hours. Sergeant Frederick Snell motioned everyone to bring weapons to bear, including the medium machine-gun section that was still with the platoon. Out of the gloom, twenty-five Germans nonchalantly traipsed towards the village. The Canadians opened fire, knocking down many of the Germans with the opening volley. After a short firefight, the surviving enemy retreated. Snell’s platoon had suffered two men wounded.

  An hour later, Lieutenant Colonel David Rosser, planning to establish his regimental headquarters in Monte Santa Maria, led a column of vehicles to the village. The four PPCLI rifle companies were also moving westward to strengthen the Canadian hold on the little mountain town, which divisional headquarters had decided the Canadians must hold until the British could come up on line.

  As Rosser’s column neared the village, it came under fire from some well-dug-in Germans. Rosser and his driver bailed out of the lead jeep to take cover in a ditch. The regiment’s snipers and scouts rushed past to close with the enemy. They quickly captured one German, killed six more, and drove the rest off. By 0830 hours, the PPCLI were concentrating in and around the village when a salvo of artillery struck ‘A’ Company, wounding one soldier. Three trucks were also damaged. Sporadic shelling proved the order of the day, but no further casualties resulted.

  To the PPCLI’s left, the 128th Brigade of 46th British Division was slogging towards Monte Gaudio, a hill almost parallel to Monte Santa Maria. When the brigade launched its assault on the feature at 1600 hours, the Germans started conducting a hasty withdrawal that took them right across the PPCLI’s front. The Vickers of the medium machine-gun platoon ripped into the fleeing troops, forcing them to take cover wherever they could. With the retreating soldiers pinned in place by the machine-gun fire, the PPCLI’s artillery Forward Observation Officer (FOO) calmly started directing accurate artillery fire on their heads. Desperate, those Germans who survived the initial bombardment made a break for it, but were further chewed up by an onslaught of artillery shells fired from their own lines when they were obviously mistaken for attacking Allied troops. All in all, the PPCLI spent the day wreaking havoc on the Germans at little cost to their ow
n ranks.8

  WHILE AUGUST 28 offered a day of easy victories for the PPCLI, dawn had only rendered the 48th Highlanders’ position more precarious by enabling the Germans to fire at any movement inside the regiment’s badly extended linear perimeter. ‘D’ Company’s position south of The Village was separated by a stretch of about five hundred yards of open ground. Trying to cross it on foot invited near certain death. This left Mackenzie dependent on radio contact to communicate with his other companies. Out front of the village, ‘B’ Company remained completely trapped either in the roadside ditch or in the farm buildings. Mackenzie was unable to raise Captain Gordon Proctor on the radio.9

  Proctor had been caught by the sudden onset of first light trying to creep from the farmhouses to where his forward platoon was trapped in the ditch. With bullets cracking all around him, and lacking any entrenching tools, the officer had frantically carved out a one-foot-deep hole with a celluloid protractor that was part of his map-reading equipment. Proctor was soon hungry, thirsty, and terrifled. Above his head, fat bunches of grapes dangled enticingly from a vine, but every time he reached for them rifle and machine-gun fire showered bits of the vines down on his head. Finally, he just lay in his shallow trench, virtually motionless, enduring what he later called the longest day of his life.10