The Gothic Line Page 26

  Back at the slope, Sergeant Rowe had pressed on with No. 18 Platoon’s remaining nine soldiers. Rowe led the platoon into the midst of the Germans and, after emptying his Lee Enfield, started stabbing men with the rifle’s fixed bayonet. Having bayoneted two men to death, he advanced on another who was trying to fire his rifle from hip-level at the sergeant. Just as the German squeezed the trigger, Rowe nimbly jumped out of the way, danced back again to dodge a second bullet, and then brought his assailant down with a hard bayonet thrust.33 When he turned from this task, the hill was back in Perth hands and Rowe had earned a Distinguished Conduct Medal. Also standing tall on the hill was Private R.D. Saunders, who had assumed command of his section after both section leaders had fallen wounded. Saunders had led the section into the zigzag trench and cleared a long strip of it in a fierce melee. He was awarded a Military Medal.34

  Only when the brow of the hill was clear did somebody from No. 18 Platoon check the spot where Private Hugh Detlor had last been observed sleeping deeply. They feared finding a corpse or an empty slit trench, evidence that the private had been taken prisoner. Detlor was still there, however, and only just now stirring. Amazed, the survivors of No. 18 Platoon could only think that the Germans mistook this Rip Van Winkle for a corpse.35

  Between the dawn of August 31 and the early morning hours of September 1, when the battle for Point 204 ended, the Perth Regiment suffered fifty-two casualties. Among the dead were the regiment’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant J. Henderson, and Lieutenant G.S. Hall. Lieutenants Bill Hider, George Till, and signals officer J. Morgan were wounded.36 But the Perths and Strathconas had clung on to Point 204. Come morning, the Strathconas counted forty dead Germans scattered about on their left flank. When Major Gerald Eastman of the B.C. Dragoons returned to the hill on September 2 to recover some knocked-out tanks, he estimated that there were approximately two hundred dead Germans spread across a five-acre area on the north side of Point 204. He had never before “seen so many dead men in such a small area.”37

  [ 17 ]

  A Greater Sorrow

  ACOUPLE OF HOURS past midnight on September 1, Major Tony Poulin turned to his fellow Royal 22e Regiment company commander, Captain Yvan Dubé. “It’s all or nothing! What do you think?”

  Dubé shrugged Gallic-style. “It’ll be a real slugging match.”

  With that, the two men parted. Poulin was dead tired. In the past forty-eight hours, the Van Doos had barely slept as they hastened towards the front lines. So once back at his company headquarters in an abandoned German redoubt, the major fell into an exhausted slumber that lasted just two hours before someone shook him awake. Poulin was surprised to see Lieutenant Colonel Jean Allard sitting on the dirt beside his shoulder. His watch said it was 0415 hours, time for ‘D’ Company to assemble for the attack. “Is everything ready?” Al-lard asked softly.

  “Yes, sir,” Poulin replied, as he gathered his equipment and checked his pistol.1 An hour earlier, Allard had wakened Dubé and now ‘B’ Company was already out in the minefield. In order to prevent the two companies becoming intermingled while passing through the narrow lanes the engineers had cleared in the minefield, Poulin’s company was to follow at 0515 hours.

  Poulin’s simple equipment was characteristic of what an officer carried into battle. Personal kit stuffed into a small battle pack, including a medium-sized towel; a wool sweater, either military issue or homemade; a pack of cigarettes; two pairs of socks; bar of soap; emergency rations consisting of a bar of sickeningly sweet high-calorie chocolate and a few hard tack biscuits. The food was to be eaten only if headquarters granted permission. His battle pack also contained a small notebook, some envelopes, and a pen. Strapped to the bottom of the pack, so that it rested against the base of his spine, was a tightly rolled gas cape. Also hooked to the pack was an entrenching tool Poulin considered better suited “to making sand-castles on a sandy beach than for digging a slit trench in rocky terrain.” In one hand he carried a map case, the maps therein considered by the twenty-six-year-old officer as a company commander’s most vital weapon. His pistol was stuffed into the front of his pants. No officer of sound mind wore a holster or made a show of waving his pistol about, for that invited a sniper’s bullet.2 Some officers carried a Lee Enfield rifle or Thompson submachine gun, but Poulin “figured either was just too awkward” and that he “had a bigger job than firing a rifle.” He controlled men and so “didn’t have time to muck about with a hollow stick.”3

  This time, Poulin controlled just 85—well under the regulation strength of 120. Nothing surprising there. Rifle companies in Italy were chronically understrength. Reinforcements never matched losses due to casualties and sickness. Poulin worried less about numbers than about the fact that neither his men nor he knew each other. While the Van Doos had fought their way through Sicily and up the Italian boot, Poulin had been on detached duty for fourteen months rebuilding the Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal—almost wiped out at Dieppe. After the Liri Valley Battle gutted the Royal 22e Regiment’s officer ranks, Poulin was recalled and assigned to ‘A’ Company’s command. But mere days ago, Allard had transferred him to ‘D’ Company. “You’re kidding,” Poulin had protested. “I’ve trained ‘A’ Company. I’ve taken them from zero to what they are. They know me, know what we are.”

  Allard replied that ‘D’ Company had become a disciplinary problem. Before the Liri Valley it had been the regiment’s best company under Major Ovila Garceau’s inspired leadership. But a sniper had mortally wounded Garceau at the Hitler Line and the company had suffered heavy losses among its most senior men. Morale had crashed. “They’ve become a bunch of bandits and bums. I think that only you can handle them in battle.”4

  Poulin admired Allard too much to argue. He was also a proud Van Doo. If these men were bandits, they had lost that pride. Poulin would not tolerate that. The major had enlisted on August 30, 1939 direct from university into the Van Doos. He would have probably signed up even if there had been no war. The military seemed right for him. Although he had initially fretted as to whether the regiment would accept him, a commission was offered. The commander at the time, Irish Quebecer Lieutenant Colonel Percy Flynn, had served with Poulin’s father in the Great War. When the younger Poulin reported for duty, Flynn stared at him, thoughtfully drumming fingers on his desk. “You’re as tough looking as your father,” he said finally. “We’ll get along.”5

  Now Poulin had to prove he was tough enough to ready ‘D’ Company for a battle just three days away. The major sat down immediately with the company’s other two officers, lieutenants Hector Pelletier and François “Fritz” Laflèche and the Company Sergeant Major Irénée Roy. All good men, willing to do their bit to straighten out the company if led by a good company commander. Poulin ordered a parade for 0700 hours the next morning. “Tell the men,” he said, “you can get drunk. You can do what you damned well like, but at 0700 you will be there and fit for duty.”

  Right on schedule, Poulin faced his new company. The men stood at attention with their field kits and weapons. Among them was a former corporal with a reputation as a good combat soldier but a problem in rest areas. Four times he had been promoted to corporal only to be subsequently busted back to private. This morning the corporal was obviously drunk, slouching somewhere between a stance of being at attention and at ease. A wine bottle dangled from a string tied to his belt. The man wore a cheeky grin. “You’re drunk,” Poulin said flatly.

  “Yes, sir,” the man slurred.

  “You heard what I said about being fit for parade?”

  “Yes, but.”

  Drawing his pistol, Poulin barked, “There are no buts.” From a distance of five feet, he shattered the bottle hanging from the corporal’s belt with a single shot. “That sobered him up right away,” Poulin later commented, “and I never had trouble with the company after that.”6

  At 0500 hours on September 1, Poulin led ‘D’ Company up to the start line. Heavy concentrations of artillery fire were battering P
oint 105, Borgo Santa Maria, and Point 131. The latter hill was ‘D’ Company’s final objective. The first two were Dubé’s responsibility. Ten minutes later, Dubé reported from the other side of the minefield that his company was crossing the lateral road and moving towards Point 105. At 0535 hours, ‘B’ Company reached the summit unop-posed.7 Five minutes later, Poulin signalled his men into the minefield. With his company headquarters section directly behind him, Poulin led one platoon up the middle lane. The other two platoons were in the lanes on either side. A strip of white cotton tape marked the outer edges of the cleared areas. Each lane was only wide enough to be passed through single file. The ground underfoot was rough with holes and exposed roots. Progress was slower than Poulin liked. His men were nakedly exposed in the morning light.

  Scattered throughout the minefield were the bloated and dismembered bodies of unrecovered West Novas. Then, to Poulin’s horror, some of the men he had thought dead started calling out. “Weakened by loss of blood, afraid to move for fear of setting off other mines, tortured by hunger and thirst, they called weakly for stretcher-bearers and for water and implored us not to let them die like animals. But we were on a mission; we gritted our teeth and went on.”8 Later that morning the engineers swept paths through the field to reach each wounded man and those who had survived their ordeal were rescued. Before this help arrived, however, some had bled to death or succumbed to shock.

  Twenty feet short of the lateral road the white tape marking the cleared lane petered out. Poulin stared at the space ahead. What the hell had happened? Did the engineers run out of tape? Had they bolted after being fired on and figured the lane was close enough to the road that the Van Doos could get through with only a few casualties? The company had been in the minefield for ten minutes and so far had attracted not a single shot from the Germans. But retracing his steps to use one of the other lanes would unreasonably tempt fate. From behind, CSM Roy and the company wireless operator were taking turns asking if he saw mines up ahead. “I don’t goddamned know,” Poulin replied. Then he started walking carefully forward. “If you see me go up, you’ll know,” he hissed.9

  There were no mines. ‘D’ Company crossed the road, formed in line, and headed for Point 105. ‘B’ Company meanwhile was already jumping off from this hill to move southeasterly towards Borgo Santa Maria. Poulin’s ‘D’ Company reached the summit of Point 105 at 0610 hours. By this time, Dubé was back on the lateral road and just short of the village. Neither company had so far met any opposition. After a six-minute rest, Poulin headed towards Point 131. Everything remained quiet.

  Not until Dubé’s men entered the village’s outskirts did they come under sporadic small-arms fire, but the officer led his men forward so aggressively that in less than fifteen minutes Borgo Santa Maria had been swept clear. Two Germans were captured, while a few others fled eastward along the lateral road. The village was a ruin, with only one house standing.10

  Even as Dubé reported Borgo Santa Maria secure, “a deluge of machine-gun fire” hit Poulin’s company on the slope of Point 131. “There were concealed fortifications on the side of the slope and at its summit and they delivered a crossfire that left little untouched.”11 Poulin had the platoons under lieutenants Pelletier and Laflèche out front and these immediately engaged the closest German positions. Royal Canadian Horse Artillery Forward Observation Officer, Captain Bill Howarth, called for an artillery concentration to plaster the entire hill.12 Although the two forward platoons managed to wipe out the machine-gun positions to their front, they started taking heavy fire from another position on their right flank. Several men went down dead or wounded.

  As this German machine gun was only about fifty yards from the platoons, Poulin knew it was too risky to try neutralizing it with artillery. Instead, he pointed out to his two-inch mortar team where the gun was hidden behind the corner of a wrecked brick house. The mortar man fired five rounds before hitting the building. As Poulin turned to encourage the man to pump out the bombs, he saw the mortar man “fling up his arms and slump to the ground. A spreading red stain marked the spot where a bullet had struck his chest. I leaped over, picked up his mortar and fired the seven remaining bombs, shouting to Sergeant Roméo Vézina to get his reserve platoon ready to attack with grenades and bayonets.

  “Before the last bomb had struck, I threw the mortar aside, and, clutching my pistol, dashed towards the machine-gun position. Vézina’s platoon followed me. The attack was fierce and pitiless. Firing from the hip, throwing grenades, howling like demons, we ran ahead. Many of my men fell. Those who survived had no mercy. Firing point-blank, we didn’t even give the Germans time to raise their arms to surrender.”13 The Van Doos discovered the position consisted of “two sunken steel casemates” connected by a trench system. They flung phosphorescent and fragmentation grenades into the casemate ports, killing or wounding the Germans inside. Those who tried to come out were gunned down. No prisoners were taken.14

  For twenty-five minutes, Poulin’s company cut a deadly swath up the hill through one enemy emplacement after another. They took thirteen in all before being stopped cold about seventy-five yards from the hillcrest by a torrent of machine-gun fire. Poulin could see four concrete emplacements from which a number of MG42s blazed away. The casemates were linked by trenches; the “position seemed impregnable.”15 Pelletier and Laflèche’s platoons were pinned down, trying desperately to form a defensive line along the embankment of a sunken road that would be capable of throwing back a German counterattack. Poulin tried to lead his headquarters section across to them. As he burst through a vineyard and out into a stretch of open ground, Laflèche yelled, “Watch out, you’re in their line of fire!”

  Bullets whizzed around Poulin. He and his men hit the dirt just as a stonk of German mortar rounds exploded practically on top of them. Clouds of dirt kicked up by the explosions blinded Poulin. Wiping grit from his eyes, he scrambled towards the sunken road. “The cracks of machine guns filled my ears, then a hard blow spun me around twice. I landed about fifteen feet away. I got up angrily and tried to reach the embankment. Before I had taken two steps I felt a sharp burn on my right leg. I was sure I’d been hit. I made it to the road and found myself near a redoubt the Germans had left. Inside, I found that four bullets had gone through my haversack but my leg was only scratched.”16

  Several of Poulin’s HQ section had been wounded in the crossing. But Sergeant Vézina had managed to get his reserve platoon up on the right flank of the other two platoons, so the company now “formed a crescent around the Germans at the top of the hill.” Next to Poulin, Captain Howarth peeked over the top of the embankment to try spotting the German positions. His helmet flew off and he slumped forward. Poulin dragged him by his feet into the roadside ditch. There was a small red hole in the foo’s left temple. Howarth’s war was over.17 Poulin’s situation was now critical. His company radios had all been knocked out by German fire, so he was unable to call for support. Howarth’s artillery signaller reported this set also malfunctioning.

  ‘B’ Company, meanwhile, was moving east from Borgo Santa Maria towards where I Canadian Corps’s boundary met that of II Polish Corps. Once this move was complete, Dubé was to swing northward to reinforce Poulin. At 0800 hours, Dubé reported by radio to Allard that he was held up by two machine-gun positions and would be en route to Point 131 once these were eliminated. By this time, Al-lard, always eager to be close to the action, had relocated his tactical headquarters to Borgo Santa Maria’s sole surviving building.

  At 0845 hours, ‘B’ Company reported Dubé down and wounded. Second-in-command Captain Gérard Payette was hit minutes later. Allard sent operations officer Captain Côme Simard to take over even as he realized the battle was becoming stalemated.18

  Back at Poulin’s position, the artillery radioman had succeeded in getting his radio back on the air. Although tempted to call for artillery support, Poulin doubted the twenty-five-pound shells would even scratch the concrete fortifications. He could summo
n a barrage by the more powerful medium or heavy guns, but that would necessitate pulling his company back to avoid the great shells striking his men. Any ground he gave up would just have to be won all over. Alternatively, he could request tank support. When he pursued that option, however, Allard said none was immediately available. With the German mortaring of his position increasing rapidly—a sign that a counterattack was likely only minutes away—Poulin knew he was rapidly losing the initiative.

  Quickly, he ordered Pelletier’s platoon on the left flank to assault the two casemates there while the rest of the company covered the move. Even with Poulin firing smoke rounds from the two-inch mortar to screen Pelletier’s men, the platoon’s two attacks were driven back. Several wounded men had to be left in the open. Wounded by a bullet when he was just fifteen yards short of the casemates, Corporal Veillette was unable to move on his own. The company’s two stretcher-bearers approached him under the protection of a Red Cross flag they held aloft, gave him first aid, and then carried the wounded soldier safely back to the company lines. The whole time, Poulin waited with his “heart in his mouth,” for fear the Germans would cut the men down. He later noted that the opposing paratroopers “were ferocious and merciless in combat, but they respected the Red Cross and stretcher-bearers.”19

  Poulin knew his only option now was to call in medium or heavy artillery. But damned if ‘D’ Company would give up the ground won, so he ordered his men to get as low as they could in hastily dug slit trenches. The first salvo dropped in the open atop Point 131. “Southwest fifty,” Poulin instructed over the radio, knowing that by shifting the fire accordingly the next salvo would either hit the western case-mates on target or stray right down on top of his company. Poulin heard over the radio an artillery officer shout, “Fire!” Seconds later, the shells exploded in front of the Van Doos. “Peering through the smoke and dust, it seemed two or three shells had struck the casemates.”