The Gothic Line Read online

  Although Ortona fell, the broader offensive that had brought about the fight for this town stalled in the face of Italy’s intense winter rains. The mud reduced the battlefield to one eerily reminiscent of the Great War trench lines found in Belgium’s Flanders. On the Adriatic coast, Eighth Army was stalemated. Across the Apennines, the U.S. Fifth Army was even more hopelessly deadlocked before the heavily fortified Gustav Line, which ran from the impregnable Benedictine monastery atop Monte Cassino across the Liri Valley to the mountains of the coast.

  Repeatedly during the winter of 1943–44, the Americans tried to break through this line. The casualties incurred in these failed attacks were devastating. An attempt to outflank the Gustav Line by launching an amphibious landing sixty miles to its rear at Anzio on January 22, 1944 resulted in VI U.S. Corps, a combined American-British force, being trapped inside a narrow, perilous beachhead. By spring, the situation on the Italian west coast was bleak and even the shifting of an entire corps from Eighth Army to this front had failed to yield a breakthrough.

  General Harold Alexander, Deputy Supreme Commander, Mediterranean, decided that victory in Italy would only come on the west coast. To achieve such a victory, he needed the combined strength of his two armies. Accordingly, I Canadian Corps marched west in April to face the Liri Valley. Its role in the forthcoming Operation Diadem was to be a decisive one—the gatecrashers, who would spearhead the Allied charge up the fertile Liri Valley towards Rome. On May 11, the great offensive began with British infantry divisions and armoured brigades, including 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade, punching a hole in the Gustav Line. This time, the German fortifications were breached. By May 18, 1st Canadian Infantry Division approached the next defensive line—the formidable Hitler Line. After a series of costly failed attempts to break the line with hasty attacks, a set-piece attack was launched on May 23. For 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, fighting on the division’s right flank, this was the single most costly day of battle. By day’s end, 160 of its men were dead, 438 wounded, and 79 either missing or lost as prisoners. On the left flank, however, 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Carleton and York Regiment had broken through. The brigade soon opened a narrow gap through which 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s lead elements squeezed.

  Even while withdrawing, the Germans mounted a fierce resistance that denied Alexander a quick advance and foiled his plan to link up with the Allied divisions breaking out of the Anzio beachhead, thus encircling and then crushing the retreating enemy divisions. Despite the unfaltering bravery of Canadian units such as the Westminster (Motorized) Regiment and the Lord Strathcona’s Horse reconnaissance unit, which jointly won and held a bridgehead across the Melfa River on May 24, the advance faltered. When U.S. Fifth Army commander General Mark Clark independently changed the axis of his advance to ensure American divisions reached Rome first, the German divisions successfully melted away. Although mauled, they regrouped, refitted, and returned to the fight as they had so often in the past.

  The Allies had incurred terrible casualties during May 1944. The Fifth and Eighth armies collectively suffered 43,746 casualties in exchange for losses estimated at slightly more than 50,000 on the German side. Of these Germans, 24,334 were taken prisoner. Total Canadian battle casualties during this time were 3,368: 789 killed, 2,463 wounded, and 116 missing. Illness incapacitated a further 4,000.

  Although Clark undertook a triumphal parade into Rome on June 4, the victory was hollow. It was rendered even more so two days later by Operation Overlord, which put thousands of troops ashore on beaches in Normandy. The Germans in Italy, meanwhile, slowly withdrew northward towards yet another heavily fortified defensive line that stretched from south of Rimini on the Adriatic coast to Pisa on the western coast.

  Even as the Canadians moved into rest camps in the Volturno Valley, southeast of the Liri Valley, and started refitting and rebuilding the corps, everyone from general to private knew another major offensive must soon follow. Many who had been part of the campaign since Sicily believed death or a debilitating wound inevitable before the fighting in Italy would finally end. It was during this time in the rest camps that these soldiers first heard themselves referred to as D-Day Dodgers.

  According to the instant legend that grew up around this intended aspersion, Britain’s first female Member of Parliament, Lady Nancy Astor, directed the derogatory term their way because she thought the soldiers in Italy enjoyed an easy war compared to those fighting in Normandy. Derogation was quickly transformed into mark of honour, as the men in Italy made up various versions of a song. “We are the D-Day Dodgers” was sung to the tune of “Lili Marlene.” As the campaign continued, new verses were added, but in the early summer of 1944 the most common Canadian version ran five simple verses.

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, out in Italy,

  Always on the vino, always on the spree.

  Eighth Army skivers and their tanks,

  We go to war in tie and slacks,

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

  We fought into Agira, a holiday with pay;

  Jerry brought his bands out to cheer us on the way,

  Showed us the sights and gave us tea,

  We all sang songs, the beer was free.

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

  The Moro and Ortona were taken in our stride,

  We really didn’t fight there, we went there for the ride.

  Sleeping ’til noon and playing games,

  We live in Rome with lots of dames.

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy.

  We are the D-Day Dodgers, way out in Italy.

  We’re always tight, we cannot fight.

  What bloody use are we?

  If you look around the mountains and through mud and rain,

  You’ll see the rows of crosses, some which bear no name.

  Heartbreak and toils and suffering gone,

  The boys beneath, they linger on.

  They were some of the D-Day Dodgers,

  And they’re still in Italy.

  Some of the Canadians marched to this song as I Canadian Corps returned to active operations in the middle of July. The corps marched towards Florence for what was an anticipated major offensive in the central Apennines against the Gothic Line. Within a month, I Canadian Corps was—as it had been in the Liri Valley—again tasked with the primary role in a decisive Allied offensive. It fell to the Canadians to spearhead the breakthrough of the Gothic Line. This is the story of that bitter and costly battle.

  PART ONE

  RETURN TO THE ADRIATIC

  [ 1 ]

  Sojourn in Florence

  FROM INSIDE the Galileo Observatory, Major Strome Galloway, Royal Canadian Regiment second-in-command, gazed down upon the great spires and domes of Florence’s multitude of cathedrals, churches, and abbeys. The gentle, muted Tuscan light cast the city’s elegant buildings in soft hues of terra cotta and dappled the broad, slow-flowing waters of the Arno River—almost directly below—with sparks of gold. Spanning the river was a single bridge—the fourteenth-century Ponte Vecchio—and this reminded Galloway that he looked down upon the city not as a tourist but as a soldier.1

  Just prior to 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s August 5–6 move into the line fronting the Arno River, the engineers of the German 4th Parachute Division had blown the city’s five other ancient bridges. Among those destroyed was Santa TrinitÀ, completed in 1569 and supported by a revolutionary, near vertical, elliptical-shaped arch system. The bridge design was believed to have been sketched by Michelango, but the master architect and sculptor Bartolomeo Ammanati had completed the actual construction. Now the renowned arches, upon whose scientific design bridges around the world had been based, were just so many heaps of debris lying in the river between the piers that had supported them for centuries. Even Ponte Vecchio had not escaped unscathed. Although the two- and three-storey tall shops that formed the bridge’s distinctive outer walls and confined its crossing span to a narrow
lane barely wide enough for an ox cart to pass through appeared intact, the approaches and the buildings that had fronted these had all been demolished. This rendered the bridge virtually impassable.

  The destruction of the bridges and approaches seemed an unnecessary act of vandalism. Ostensibly, Florence was an open city, so declared by both the Germans and Allies in order to prevent its many architectural and other historic and artistic treasures being damaged. Having declared that “the whole city of Florence must rank as a work of art of the first importance,” the Allies had taken pains to spare the city aerial or artillery bombardment.2 Front-line troops were unable to shell obvious German targets and were restricted to the use of only rifles and machine guns. Discharging their projector infantry anti-tank (PIAT) launchers or mortars was strictly prohibited.3

  Targets there were aplenty. Not two feet from where Galloway stood, the colossal barrel of the observatory’s main telescope had been fully depressed and was being used by a Royal Canadian Regiment soldier to scour the streets and buildings for signs of the enemy. Unaware that the telescope’s astrally intentioned optics pinned them as neatly as butterflies mounted on a collector’s board, German paratroopers sauntered down streets hundreds of yards north of the Arno in tempting bunches that a salvo of mortar or artillery fire would savage. Although they reported the targets, no clearances for such shoots resulted. So the men in the observatory contented themselves primarily with using the telescope for sightseeing, including detailed examinations of the intricately lavish facades of Florence’s trove of Renaissance buildings.4

  Sometimes they used the telescope to monitor the goings-on of the other regiments holding the ten-mile-long Canadian sector. Immediately to the RCR’s right, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment—a fellow 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade unit—was positioned. To the rear of the brigade’s two forward regiments, the 48th Highlanders of Canada stood in reserve. Beyond the Hasty P’s were the regiments of 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade: the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, and the Loyal Edmonton regiments. Farther south, and out of view of the telescope because of intervening hills, the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade stood some distance back from Florence to serve as divisional reserve.

  After the bloody fighting in the Liri Valley, the division’s veterans welcomed the quiet of this battleground. Since the end of the Liri Valley Battle in early June, the division had been refitting, reorganizing, and conducting training exercises to integrate newly arrived reinforcements, but the soldiers remained battle-weary. For the reinforcements, however, the sporadic German shelling, searching machine-gun fire, and sniper activity served as their first introduction to combat. The veterans were quick to remind any reinforcement unnerved by these minor hazards that they were fortunate their first taste of war occurred in such a “peaceful” setting.5

  Not that the front was entirely inactive. Around the clock could be heard the fitful chatter of machine guns and the crack of rifles. Down along the riverbank, Canadians and Germans traded gunfire on a regular, if desultory, basis. Snipers from both sides posed a constant threat. When a German sniper killed a soldier in the Hasty P’s, the regiment’s snipers were duly unleashed to exact revenge. A deadly game of cat-and-mouse in this built-up area followed until the German sniper was killed.6

  When the Loyal Edmonton Regiment had entered the line, it relieved the 2nd New Zealand Division’s 28th Maori Battalion. During the hand-off, Edmonton commander Acting Lieutenant Colonel Jim Stone noted that the Maoris had loaded their trucks with a vast stock of ladies’ shoes that they obviously intended for barter with civilians. Stone later visited a large villa with an eye to turning it into his headquarters. An American woman, who had married an Italian prior to the war, answered the door. The woman embarked immediately on a tirade about the indignities she had suffered by having to house “black people.” Stone, suspecting that she and her husband were a couple of closet fascists, cut her off in mid-sentence and harshly lectured the woman about the Maoris and her own questionable Allied patriotism. “Who’s your superior officer?” she demanded. Stone declared, “Madam, there’s no officer in the world superior to me.”7

  That evening, the ever aggressive Stone ordered fighting patrols from ‘A’ and ‘D’ companies across the shallow Arno to test the 4th Parachute Division’s alertness. One of the patrols bumped into some paratroopers and a firefight ensued that left Lieutenant J.C. Butler and two other ranks dead. Another three men were wounded.8

  The next day, Stone was notified that the Edmontons’ stay in the line was to be a short one. Even as other regiments from 2 CIB were still taking up positions in the front lines, Stone was out with a reconnaissance party to find a staging area for the Edmontons’ forthcoming move to the rear. The party used the regiment’s pioneer and engineering platoon’s jeeps, one of which towed a trailer loaded with beehive bombs. Containing powerful plastic explosives, these bombs were beehive shaped to focus the blast against the wall of concrete pillboxes or other structures.

  Stone told Captain R.S. Stephens and a lanky private named J.A. Foster to take the jeep with the trailer and check the suitability of some nearby buildings for concealing the regiment’s vehicles. Stone then carried on in another jeep. He was about a half-mile down the road when a mighty explosion came from behind him. Stone U-turned and raced back. In the middle of the road was a house-sized hole. All he could see of the jeep and trailer was a jeep wheel lying on top of a nearby roof. Several Italians were wandering around dazed, with bleeding arms. Stone asked an old woman what happened.

  “Tall boy, minnen,” she replied, indicating that Foster had tripped a mine.

  For the first time, Stone noticed stacks of Italian box mines lying alongside the road. A small wooden box packed with explosives, such mines detonated if the closed lid was opened. Alternatively, the detonator could be rigged to explode if an open lid was closed. Set up in this way, the mine could be buried in a road and any vehicle running over it would slam the lid shut and detonate the mine.

  Foster had taken a mine and, while standing on top of the trailer containing the beehive mines, had opened one to examine the box’s contents. The exploding mine had set off the entire stock of beehives. Stone thought a half-ton of explosive had gone off at once.

  Stephens’s body was lying nearby, head and one leg blown off. Of Foster nothing remained but some hair and little bits of flesh. No trace of his identity tags could be found. Stone’s men gathered what they could of the private in a pail. “We called it Foster and buried him,” Stone said later.9

  ON AUGUST 7, the day after the RCR moved into the line, ‘A’ Company was mortared. Major Sam Liddell, Lieutenant F.K. Wildfang, Regimental Sergeant Major D.P. Duffey, and several other men were wounded. The incident was a stark reminder that Florence’s comparatively modern southern outskirts were not to be spared the destruction of German mortaring and shelling. Still, they were somewhat judicious about the selection of targets. The RCR’s headquarters was a modern villa no more than nine hundred yards from the river. Despite the constant comings and goings that clearly betrayed the building’s current use, the villa drew no German fire. Galloway was glad of this, for it was a lovely sixty-four-room mansion with so many lavishly comfortable bedrooms that most of the regimental staff had one to themselves.10 A huge four-poster bed all but filled Galloway’s bedroom. There was also “an immense wall portrait of a luscious nude reclining with all her ample charms revealed in full, living colour. The bathroom next door was the sunken pool variety in a beautiful marble environment, with erotic artwork to beguile the sensuous mind.” There was also a library with “thousands of books, hundreds of them in English.”11

  The four staff officers took their meals “at a mammoth dining room with high-backed baronial chairs which gave the necessary post-prandial panache, as we sipped our cheap vino rosso, pretending in our minds, though not with our palates, that it was the best port.”12

  Galloway wished life on the Fl
orence front would not end too soon.

  Not only the headquarters’ staff enjoyed luxurious accommodations. Line companies were also comfortably fixed. ‘A’ Company was established in a Medici palace dating back to 1430, while ‘B’ Company occupied Aldous Huxley’s Florence residence.13

  Scout platoon commander Lieutenant Jimmy Quayle thought this the strangest war he had yet seen. Having waded ashore in Sicily, having survived Ortona and the Liri Valley, and having been twice wounded, he was a seasoned campaigner. Yet he had never before attempted to conduct surreptitious scouting operations on a riverbank opposite German positions while, all around his furtively moving scouts, Florentines thronged the streets, totally unconcerned for their personal safety. Stunningly attractive women wearing bright print dresses strolled with typical Italian haughtiness past Quayle as he crouched in a shop doorway for protection.

  The peaceful atmosphere was illusory. When Quayle was on the verge of joining the throngs—rather than creeping along like the cautious combat veteran he was—there was the sudden scream of an incoming shell. As the smoke rolled up from the street, women, children, and old men lay on the cobblestones bleeding and dying before his eyes. An hour or two later, the casualties had been picked up, the street washed clean, and the Florentines meandered again with careless abandon. Soon a shot was fired from a nearby apartment building roof and someone pitched dead to the sidewalk. This time everyone fled for cover, but they didn’t stay there long.

  This urban battleground’s surrealism made it hard for the soldiers to keep vigilant. One of Quayle’s men got shot in the upper arm while carelessly looting a camera store situated on the Arno’s south bank in plain view of the Germans. When Quayle visited him at the Regimental Aid Post, the painstricken soldier grinned at him sheepishly. “That was a kind of dumb thing I did,” he said.14