The Gothic Line Page 23

  “Three rounds HE, rapid fire!” Ferley shouted. “Fire, fire, fire.” The shells blasted out. “One round AP. Fire.” The armour-piercing round shrieked down on the German SPG. Ferley then had the gunner rake the position with the co-axial machine gun. Scratch one German gun, Ferley reported to Turnley.12

  By the time Major Gerald Eastman’s ‘A’ Squadron clanked up onto Point 156, the hill was under fire from German artillery and self-propelled guns and antitank guns that were largely invisible to the Canadian tankers because of excellent use of camouflage. Eastman sidled his Sherman towards a stand of trees that offered a little cover. As the big tank shoved aside some scrub trees, it slid into a hole and tipped on its side. Eastman and his crew scrambled out. Leaving his men there to wait until a recovery team could pull the tank out of the hole, Eastman commandeered another tank in his headquarters section. He could see only one of his tank troops and had no idea where the others had gone.13 Radio communication was hopeless. According to the plan, Eastman’s squadron was to leapfrog ‘C’ Squadron. But it looked as if Turnley’s Shermans had already gone ahead.

  ‘C’ Squadron was indeed headed for Point 204, but its formation had fallen to pieces even before the full squadron shoved off from Point 156. After Ferley reported knocking out the antitank gun, Turnley bellowed over the radio for Lieutenant Romanow to advance on the farmhouse. Turnley’s voice was hoarse from shouting. Ferley noticed this always happened in combat. It was as if the major “wanted to be sure that we would be able to hear him even if his radio set had gone dead. Sometimes I think we could have.”14

  Romanow confirmed that he saw the house and was on his way. His troop would be the first to enter the open ground between the two hills. It was a dangerous assignment and Ferley wondered how the officer was feeling, for this was Romanow’s first battle. He “watched the low ground ahead and to the left—waiting for 1st Troop to come into view” off to his left. No tanks showed. Turnley asked Romanow if he was moving. “Roger, are well on the way,” Romanow responded.

  Ferley reported that he couldn’t see any tanks. Turnley checked with Romanow again. “Roger, we have almost reached the objective,” the lieutenant replied. Ferley realized that Romanow “was lost, badly lost, and very far to the left of his objective. And he was in a desperate situation—completely isolated from any support.” Staring at his map, Ferley thought Romanow’s troop was probably nearing the road from Montecchio to Tomba di Pesaro. The amount of German anti-tank fire coming from that flank was such that the troop might very well be wiped out at any moment.

  Turnley must have realized the same thing, for he ordered Romanow to stop, find some cover, and wait while the squadron located him. Attempts to fix his location by having him describe the terrain failed to help. Ferley was heartened by Romanow’s radio manner. “He did not seem unduly worried, which was a good sign. He was not the type to become easily rattled.” Finally, Romanow tried firing a Very light, even though this would betray his location to the Germans. The rest of the squadron “peered into the sky to our left, but it was a clear, hot day, and the sun was shining brightly, and we saw nothing.”15

  Turnley decided they could wait no longer. No. 1 Troop would have to fend for itself. The squadron, now only nine tanks strong, growled towards Point 204. Far to the left, No. 1 Troop had indeed come into the firing sights of several German antitank guns. Seconds after the Very light was fired, German gunners ripped into the three Shermans with armour-piercing rounds. Only Romanow and one of his crew survived. Both men were unhurt and managed to remain hidden until being able to slip back to Canadian lines on the night of September 2.16

  Ferley’s three tanks, which included Lieutenant Jack Saville’s Sherman, made for a position to the right of Point 204, while No. 4 Troop under Lieutenant Bud Green headed for the summit itself with Turnley’s headquarters section following. They picked their way slowly and carefully down the slope despite the excellent targets this presented to any German gunners dug in on the facing hill. Ferley was using the house that had been close to the phony tree position for a reference point. As he drew closer to the building, a cluster of Germans darted out and ran towards Point 204’s summit. Before they could reach the safety of the trees, Ferley’s gunner cut most of them down with a long, hard machine-gun burst.

  When No. 3 Troop reached the slope leading up the hill, Ferley thought the ground immediately in front of him too steep and loose to climb safely. Guiding the tanks to the left to where the slope rose more gradually, Ferley led the way towards the top. Behind him, Sergeant S. Foster and Lieutenant Jack Saville’s respective tanks both slipped sideways and lost their tracks. Ferley carried on alone. “My other two babies have lost their shoes, I have only my own baby left,” Ferley advised Turnley.17

  Looking over to where the rest of ‘C’ Squadron was clawing its way up the hill, Ferley thought they were blessed with better ground under their tracks than he was encountering. He also noted their line of advance was drawing them ever farther from his tank. Ferley and his crew were truly “out in the blue.”

  AS THE SURVIVING REMNANT of ‘C’ Squadron closed on Point 204, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Vokes paced constantly back and forth, listening to the confused jumble of messages from the two squadrons closing on the objective. Finally, he could stand it no longer and told Major David Kinloch that ‘B’ Squadron should continue waiting for the Perths. Meanwhile, Vokes would take the regimental headquarters section forward.

  Kinloch thought the decision cavalier because Vokes’s Sherman and one other in the headquarters section were equipped with so much radio equipment the 75-millimetre guns had been removed and replaced with a fake wooden barrel mounted to the tank’s exterior to disguise its status as a command tank. This meant that only two of the tanks could fight. But Kinloch knew there was no reasoning or arguing with Vokes.

  Not long after the lieutenant colonel headed for Point 204, he was on the radio to Kinloch with the suspicion that the Perths must have missed the assembly point and were probably somewhere between the objective and the re-entrant. Kinloch should go look for them. ‘B’ Squadron chewed a path up the steep slope leading out of the reentrant, dropped down into the valley, and started rolling across open ground. Then Vokes came back on the radio.

  He had established contact with the Perth Regiment and “the flat-footed friends” were now in the assembly area. Kinloch must wheel ‘B’ Squadron around and fetch them. As the major swung the column around, a German shell knocked out one of his squadron headquarters tanks. German fire from an unseen gun disabled two more Shermans in one of the troops and two more tanks lost tracks while turning around.18

  The uphill grade they had so easily descended proved so steep on the return that his driver shifted into bull low, reducing the Sherman to a crawl. German artillery and antitank guns were blazing away. Great spouts of earth erupted all around Kinloch’s tank. Finally, the column of Shermans crossed the crest and skidded precariously down the steep reverse slope. Getting out of his tank, Kinloch walked over to Perth commander Lieutenant Colonel Bill Reid. “Are you ready to move, sir?” he asked.

  “No,” Reid replied. “My men have been marching and fighting all day and all night and they are utterly exhausted. We can’t move until they’ve had some food and water and a short rest.” It was early afternoon and the temperature in the re-entrant was at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit, which certainly wasn’t helping the infantry recover. Kinloch had his men break out water from the jerry cans they carried on the Shermans and scrounge together whatever food they could manage for the infantry.

  Kinloch was now in Vokes’s earlier predicament. Should he wait for the Perths or hurry on alone? The other squadrons desperately needed help and there was the added worry that he had lost radio contact with Vokes. Before Kinloch reached a decision, Reid announced the Perths were ready to go. It was only half an hour since they had arrived in the re-entrant.19

  ‘C’ SQUADRON WAS meanwhile grinding up towards the summit of Point 204,
with Lieutenant Bud Green’s tank leading. Ahead he saw what looked to be a German Regimental Aid Post, from which four armed Germans emerged, jumped into an ambulance, and drove off to the northeast. Ambulance drivers and medical personnel were forbidden under Red Cross conventions from being armed, so Green asked Turnley for permission to blow the truck to pieces. Turnley scotched that idea. “Move on,” he snapped. A few minutes later, they reached the final sharp upgrade to the summit and halted. Green and Sergeant Eric Waldron, who by now looked like a raccoon from the bashing his eyes and nose had earlier taken, jumped down from their Shermans and crept up to the summit to see if there were any German antitank guns or tanks skulking about in ambush.20 A north-south running road passed directly over Point 204; to its immediate left, the big gun of an abandoned Panzerturm pointed the way the Dragoons had come. Had it been manned, they would have all been shot to pieces coming up the slope.

  Seeing no obvious traps, the tankers rolled onto Point 204 and started jockeying for hull-down positions that would allow each tank to mutually support the others. Captain Raymond E. Stubbs was the squadron battle captain, which meant it was him rather than Turnley who maintained a constant radio link back to Vokes. This practice enabled the squadron commander to focus on running his squadron while the battle captain kept Vokes informed of events and took charge of calling in artillery and other supporting arms. As ‘C’ Squadron’s six remaining Shermans crested the summit, Stubbs reported they were on the objective.

  “Consolidate,” Vokes said.

  Radio mike turned off, Stubbs muttered: “With what?”21

  A few minutes later, six ‘A’ Squadron tanks arrived. Major Eastman reported that was all of his squadron that was left.22

  The Dragoons on Point 204 knew they had bypassed large numbers of hidden paratroopers and were now surrounded. But the enemy didn’t seem in a hurry to try wiping them out. Except for one soldier, who crept up through a hedgerow bordering the east flank of the hill and tossed a grenade into the hatch of an ‘A’ Squadron tank, managing to kill the entire crew.

  Sergeant Waldron’s gunner quickly traversed the turret to bring the co-axial machine gun into play against the lone German. Waldron was happily watching .50-calibre tracers walking towards the paratrooper when the gun abruptly jammed and the German ducked down the steep, densely vegetated slope. Rolling his tank up to the edge of the hill, Waldron chucked about twenty grenades out in a pattern he hoped would do the paratrooper some harm.

  Having driven the German off, Waldron scanned the horizon for enemy targets. South of Point 204 there was a high-walled cemetery adjoined by some woods. About forty Germans emerged from the trees and marched northward in close formation along a road. Waldron’s crew couldn’t believe their luck. While his gunner carefully sighted in on the slow-moving target, his loader gathered a lap full of high-explosive shells. The gun crew slammed rounds out so fast there was almost no gap between the first explosion and those that followed. Waldron thought he saw only three Germans stagger clear. The rest lay like so many torn-up bundles of rags in the middle of the road.

  Green suddenly came up on the radio alerting Waldron to dust clouds approaching from Tomba di Pesaro. The two tank commanders dismounted and ran to the forward crest of the hill, where they lay on their stomachs peering through binoculars. Eventually, the dust parted to expose a Panther Mark V and two self-propelled guns headed directly towards Point 204. The Panther was a deadly Sherman killer, with a more powerful 75-millimetre gun, and armour so thick it was largely impervious to anything the Canadian tanks might throw at it.

  The two men scrambled back to their tanks and advised Turnley that the Germans were a mile off. Ever cautious about firing on distant targets, Turnley told them to wait until the vehicles were closer and they were “positive they could not be our own.” Waldron was disgusted and scared. “Hell of a lot of good it does to study German vehicle profile charts,” he groused. Green and Waldron braced inside their tanks for trouble. They could only catch brief glimpses of the German armoured group as it moved across the wildly undulating terrain. The Germans were going to come right in on top of the Dragoons and there would be little chance to get in good shots before their presence was betrayed to the enemy. Then, just as the Panther in the lead was about four hundred yards off, the three armoured vehicles swung to the right and headed off behind a little ridge. The tank battle every Sherman tanker feared had, for now, been averted.23

  TO THE RIGHT of the main position, Lieutenant Zeke Ferley’s Sherman—the lone survivor of Troop No. 3—was still headed towards a solitary farmhouse. He advised Turnley that he was almost there and it appeared clear of enemy. Turnley said, “Roger, go round objective to the right and explore further.”24 Ferley could hardly believe the order. Had the major forgotten he was alone out here? “This was no spot, and no assignment for a single tank,” he later wrote. The lieutenant was certain Turnley knew his other two tanks had been disabled. He wondered if he should remind the major, but instead—good soldier that he was—said only, “Wilco, out.” Then Ferley directed his driver to pass the house on the right-hand side at a good distance in case there was an antitank gun hidden inside.25

  On the crest of a small hill, Ferley paused to survey the country ahead through his binoculars. Beyond this hill, another slope led up to yet another hilltop upon which a large farmhouse stood. The ground out to his front was mostly covered by low shrubbery, but about three hundred yards to the left a pocket of trees ran up Point 204’s east flank. Off to the right, the ground levelled somewhat and was less vegetated. Ferley didn’t think there was anywhere over there for the Germans to hide guns or tanks. Things were so quiet it was eerie. Swivelling, Ferley looked back the way he had come and could see all the way to the ridge fronting the assembly area. “There was a great void—no tanks, no infantry, nobody.”

  Turning his attention back to the front, he said: “Driver advance. Slowly.” The Sherman ground down the slope into a little draw between the hills. “As we did so,” Ferley remembered, “I realized that we were in a rather hopeless situation and could not expect to accomplish much. . . . If we had company within sight, it could only be German and they were probably watching us closely from their usual invisible positions.”26

  Near the bottom of the draw, Ferley halted again to scan the ground ahead. The tank was like an oven and the lieutenant was dripping with sweat from the heat and his increasing anxiety. Nothing moved. Then abruptly, fifty yards off something did. Ferley swung the turret to bring the gun to bear just as a German soldier stepped clear of some shrubs holding a Red Cross flag mounted on a long pole. The lieutenant told the gunner to hold his fire. Although apparently unarmed, the German soldier also had no Red Cross markings on his sleeve. Holding his flag aloft, the man started walking up the far hill. From a small thicket, another unarmed soldier emerged to join the first. The two men walked very slowly, “as though expecting to be cut down at any moment.” But Ferley entertained no such thought. They had abandoned their weapons; they were under the protection of a Red Cross flag. Ferley let them go and a minute later they disappeared behind the large house.

  Ferley knew the jig was up. It was time to retreat to Point 204. The lieutenant thought the shortest and safest route was likely to follow the tree line until he found a way up the slope. Having gone only fifty yards towards the slope, however, the tank suddenly lurched to the right and halted. “Good God, not here,” Ferley hissed. The Sherman had lost a track and was “immobile in the palm of the German’s hand.” Fortunately, the tank had slewed sideways so that its front armour, which was thickest, faced northward. There was nothing to do but “tough it out here, even though we were sitting ducks, lonesome ones at that.” Ferley had no intention of abandoning his tank to the enemy. They would man it until a recovery team arrived to help repair the track.

  Something gave the tank a hard-rattling whack. Ferley realized the Sherman “had probably been hit a glancing blow by an 88 or a long-barreled 75 and that we had betw
een ten to fifteen seconds to clear the tank or we would be blown to bits with it.” As the round had struck the left front corner near the driver’s station, he asked if the man was okay. When the driver replied that he was fine, Ferley ordered the crew to bail out.

  “With one motion, I brushed off my tank helmet, grabbed my ground helmet, flipped myself up and onto the turret, and leaped to the ground on the right side of the tank and rolled and crawled into a small ditch some twenty-five or thirty feet from the tank. At the ditch, I turned to check on the rest of the crew. Hughes, the gunner, was right on my tail. Rogers, the driver, was right behind him. The operator-loader was hitting the ground en route. But Campbell, the co-driver, was up on the outside of the tank, leaning into the turret.”

  “Campbell! Get off the tank,” Ferley yelled.

  Pulling a Thompson from the turret, Campbell jumped down and scurried over to join the rest of the crew in a ditch. “He had hardly hit the ground, when the second shot hit the tank and the ammo started to go.” The men cowered in the ditch as another shot slammed into the tank. Ferley and his crew belly-crawled away from the German gun. “There was a god-awful commotion coming from the tank, as the ammo was exploding every which way.” The ditch petered out and Ferley, not sure what to do next, halted.