The Gothic Line Page 35
Hoffmeister’s original plan had called for the Irish Regiment of Canada and the British Columbia Dragoons to pass through the Hussars and Westminsters once a crossing over the Marano River was won. The next phase of the attack would have carried the two relieving regiments through to San Fortunato Ridge. The initial advance, however, had ground to a halt just one thousand yards beyond the start line and so the Irish and BCDs were, noted the Dragoons’ war diarist, left “in furious inaction all day.”
All except for Major Dave Kinloch’s ‘B’ Squadron that is, which became embroiled in a dogfight just before dark behind the main line of advance, while trying to support the 1st Canadian Light Anti-Aircraft Battalion’s mopping-up operations.16 When torrents of machine-gun and artillery fire struck the mopping-up force, the still shaky infantrymen hugged the ground and undertook only the most cautionary attempts to advance. ‘B’ Squadron at the time was being led forward by Lieutenant James P. Looney’s troop. Spotting one of the main German positions dug in on the crest of a hill, Looney charged it with his three Shermans. No sooner had the tanks successfully overrun this position than German infantry counterattacked. Armed with his pistol and several grenades, Looney jumped out of his tank, killed two of the attackers and captured three others. Looney’s troop stood its ground, repelling repeated counterattacks until the infantry finally arrived an hour later. The lieutenant won a Military Cross.
A short distance away, Sergeant William Paul Fleck had engaged in a similar fray out front of the infantry. Around him several Shermans had been knocked out, mostly by Faustpatrones. It was so dark, Fleck could barely see the furtively dodging German soldiers operating between his location and that of the enemy positions on the crest of the hill. Knowing light was desperately needed, he set several nearby haystacks on fire with tracer rounds. Although he now had sufficient light to mount an attack, the sergeant realized that doing so with one tank unprotected by covering infantry would invite disaster. So Fleck decided to launch his own infantry-cum-tank operation by preceding the tank up the slope on foot accompanied by one crewman. Fleck raced up the hill alternately firing his sub-machine gun and chucking grenades at the German position. He single-handedly killed five Germans manning slit trenches blocking the approach to the hillcrest and once on the summit accepted the surrender of eight more dazed Germans. Moments later, the sergeant collapsed from loss of blood. He later confessed to being unaware that he had been wounded. Fleck survived to be awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal.17
WELL BEYOND 5 CAD’S official forward positions that evening, twenty tankers little expected to see the dawn. Major Howard Keirstead and Sergeant Keith Fisher’s tanks remained trapped in the depths of Besanigo’s streambed. Off to their right and eight hundred yards deeper in no man’s land, Captain Bob McLeod and Sergeant Tom Robertson’s Shermans huddled in a ditch by the side of a road still waiting vainly for the rest of the 8th New Brunswick Hussars to catch up.
Throughout the afternoon, McLeod and Keirstead had discussed plans by radio for withdrawing once night fell, although the major had no idea how he and Fisher would extract their tanks from the creek. Initially, things had been so quiet around McLeod’s position that he had been able to conduct a reconnaissance on foot of the surrounding area and even took time out to harvest some grapes to take back to his crew. But in the afternoon the Germans discovered the presence of the two Shermans and subjected them to increasingly accurate artillery and mortar fire. Then a Faustpatrone round hissed overhead and a Spandau started raking the tanks. The tankers buttoned up the hatches for protection, with McLeod’s crew resorting later in the afternoon to urinating into an empty 75-millimetre shell and then dumping the contents through the escape hatch in the hull’s bottom. At 1730 hours, McLeod’s anxiety increased as Keirstead abruptly ceased radio transmissions.
McLeod was loath to abandon the major’s group. So at dusk, when Sergeant Robertson’s tank left as planned, McLeod stayed, continuing to monitor the radio for a signal from Keirstead. With each passing minute, night drew closer and with it the inevitability of a close-up attack by German infantry, but McLeod still hesitated to leave.
Down in the creek, Sergeant Fisher had decided that the breakdown of Keirstead’s radio precluded any chance of their being rescued and that prospects for surviving the night by staying inside their tanks were slim. When it was finally fully dark, he told his crew, they would evacuate the Sherman by the bottom escape hatch, crawl up a ditch that ran up the south slope to the ridgeline, then reach the road and make their way back to the rear. Wanting to abandon neither the major nor his own tank, Fisher stayed behind.
Meanwhile, McLeod had decided there was nothing he could do for Keirstead, so at 2020 hours he set his Sherman clanking slowly towards the rear. All around, haystacks were burning, but the light they cast was virtually smothered by thick smoke and dust boiling down from Coriano Ridge, which was being pounded by Allied artillery. McLeod sat in the open turret hatch with a Thompson and a handful of grenades at hand; ready to fight off any infantry that attacked the Sherman from the flanks or the rear. The roar of the tank’s engines and grinding racket raised by its tracks was appallingly loud. He could imagine every German within miles being drawn in for the kill by the noise, but instead flushed only two of Fisher’s crew who frantically waved the tank down. After mounting them on the back of the tank, McLeod pressed on and was soon relieved to reach the regiment’s assembly point on Besanigo ridge.
McLeod, Sergeant Robertson, and Major Lloyd Hill gathered on the ridgeline and discussed ways of rescuing Keirstead and Fisher. The two tankers McLeod had brought in thought the two tanks had brewed up soon after they took flight, as there had been explosions behind them and some flames visible. Then the remaining two men from Fisher’s tank had arrived safely and denied seeing the tanks destroyed. Finally, McLeod and Hill sought Lieutenant Colonel George Robinson’s permission to take a foot patrol out to bring the missing tankers in. Admonishing the two officers that tankers were untrained in night-patrolling tactics and likely would get lost and end up getting some good men killed for nothing, Robinson refused. Instead, he reported the probable position of the two tanks to the Irish Regiment with a request that an infantry patrol be dispatched to the area. McLeod and Hill watched hopefully as the Irish patrol slipped slowly and stealthily into the valley.
Knowing nothing of the rescue effort, Keirstead and Fisher were both peering anxiously out of the turret hatches into the darkness when suddenly a Faustpatrone charge shrieked out of the night to explode in a fiery blast against the hull of Fisher’s tank. Then another charge struck. Inside, Fisher stared fearfully at the hull, expecting at any moment that one of the rounds would slice through the armoured hull, but neither succeeded.
A third Faustpatrone charge, however, found a thinner chink in the steel sides of Keirstead’s Sherman and was suddenly ricocheting about inside. “There was an explosion, a small one, the insane whirling of flying metal within that tight, compact world of a tank’s interior, and then smoke and fire and the choked, tensed voice of the major telling them to bail out,” the regimental historian wrote.18
They tumbled out into a nightmarish torrent of machine-gun and rifle fire. Driver Trooper E.R. Hilchey was shot dead while Trooper Charlie Stevens, the gunner, was paralyzed from the waist down. The impact of seven bullets tearing into Keirstead’s left thigh and two into his left arm knocked the major to the ground. When assistant driver Lance Corporal John Wentworth tried shooting it out with the machine-gunner who had wounded Keirstead, a bullet hit him in the lower part of his left leg. As Wentworth rolled into the cover of one of the creek’s banks, another bullet caught him above the right knee. Dazed and painstricken, the tanker screamed, “Shut that thing off!” Keirstead crawled painfully over to Wentworth and soon Sergeant C.M. Stevenson—the only unwounded crew member—wriggled in beside them. Stevenson tried to bandage the others’ various bullet wounds.19
Unaware of the calamity that had befallen Keirstead and his cre
w, Fisher was still inside his tank and busy cursing himself for having not escaped with his men. A deadly lull outside was probably the prelude to a renewed attack and Fisher doubted the tank could withstand any more hits from Faustpatrones. He later wrote: “I decided to strike out myself. My chances, I figured, were not very good, so I tore off my stripes, hid my pay book in the tank, took off my boots and decided to go. By the time I got on the ground under the tank I could hear the Germans talking a yard or so away. They were right alongside the tank. All I could do was keep still. All I had with me was a .38 pistol and twenty-three rounds of ammunition. Somehow the Tommy gun barrel had been bent. It was useless.”20 Surprisingly, the Germans walked off without further inspecting the tank. Fisher lay still under the Sherman, fearing any move would betray his presence.
About seventy-five yards from the surviving tankers, the Irish patrol lay on the side of the hill peering down at the creek bed and hearing only the voices of what seemed to be a large party of Germans. Obviously outnumbered and sure that any Canadians down there must be either dead or prisoners, the patrol leader ordered his men to withdraw and the six unaccounted men from the two tanks were listed as missing in action.
Keirstead and his surviving three crewmen could hear Germans circling all around them, but surprisingly they failed to close back in on the two tanks. Talking in the softest of whispers, the four men tried to decide on a course of action. With Stevens and Wentworth virtually immobilized and the major little better off, Sergeant Stevenson was the only man fit enough to have a chance of reaching the Canadian lines. Keirstead agreed that the sergeant should make the attempt and passed him a white undershirt to use as a flag because nobody knew the password for the night. A few minutes after Stevenson crawled off, there was a long burst of machine-gun fire from the directon he had taken and then only silence.
Stevens and Wentworth were struggling not to moan from the terrible pain they suffered. Between whispering comforting words, Keirstead encouraged them with promises that the regiment would surely come to their rescue at dawn. The major steadfastly believed this was true. He had no idea that the offensive had collapsed and his shredded little party signified the deepest remaining penetration inside the German line.
Eventually the sun came up and Keirstead’s gaze drifted to the turret of his tank and the sight of Stevenson’s corpse dangling out of the top hatch. Instead of heading directly for the Canadian lines, as Keirstead had believed the sergeant had done, he apparently had tried to re-enter the Sherman either to get something or try the radio one last time. The Germans must have spotted him and that was the reason for the burst of fire he had heard.
Around Fisher’s tank there was no movement or sign of life and Keirstead knew that at any moment the Germans, emboldened by the growing daylight, would soon start poking around the position. He decided there was nothing to do but try to reach the Allied lines by following the creekbed west towards where the British were on the Canadian flank and get help sent back to Stevens and Wentworth. There was no way in his condition that the major could crawl up the south bank to return to the Canadian lines. After lurching painfully along for several hundred yards, the shrill of an incoming mortar round caused him to flatten against the ground for cover. Shrapnel whirred through the air and one fragment struck his right shoulder, another his right leg, while a third gouged a furrow out of the side of his head. Keirstead’s right arm was paralyzed. At first, carrying on seemed impossible, but somehow the major found the will to continue. He writhed onward like a snake, his useless arm dragging in the dust.
The creekbed stopped being a single channel, spreading out into a series of narrow ditches separated by narrow hummocks of ground and flood plains covered in long grass, brush, and thorny shrubs. Keirstead became completely disoriented in the resulting maze. He had lost his map when the mortar round struck. The hard thumping concussion of 25-pounder artillery fire echoed up and down the valley, but he was unable to use the sounds to fix a direction towards the Allied lines. Seeing a small farmhouse beside the creek, he dragged himself over to it. There was a bucket on a line next to a shallow well and he dumped it down and dragged it awkwardly up, then drank deeply. Inside the house a family of peasants huddled. Keirstead begged them to treat his wounds, but they just stared at him as if rendered dumb with fear. Then they made shooing gestures, obviously fearful of German retribution if he were discovered in their house.
On a little knoll not too far away there was another house, but it took several hours of agonized crawling for the major to reach it. He found it crowded with peasants, a gaggle of “gaunt, brown, ragged, chattering people.”21 They pressed a glass of grappa into his hand and then followed the fiery liquor with ladles of water dumped into his mouth. Amateurish and ill-equipped attempts were made to tend his wounds.
A grateful Keirstead was just beginning to relax when the hard sound of jackboots rang on stone outside and the front door was thrown open. Three Germans stomped in and looked down at him curiously. The major sighed, knowing he was captured. Then he realized they carried no guns, grenades, or any armaments. Quickly, efficiently, they stripped his tattered uniform off and cleansed his wounds with an alcohol mixture made by diluting wine with water. The three got the Italians cooking up a chicken broth while one took his temperature with a thermometer pulled from a pocket. Finally, they dug out all the bandages in their kits and fashioned others from sheets and bound his many wounds quite professionally. Keirstead realized by now that his German nurses were actually deserters wanting to surrender. The next morning, one of the Italians slipped off to the south and returned after dark with four Irish Regiment soldiers. They took the Germans prisoner and then had them carry the wounded major back to safety. After reporting what he knew of the fate of the rest of his troop, Keirstead was immediately sent to hospital. His war was over.22
About the time Keirstead was being treated by the Germans on the night of September 5, Lance Corporal Wentworth was drifting between bouts of delirium-ridden consciousness and troubled sleep punctuated by a recurring dream in which his Hussar comrades came to his rescue. Stevens was even worse off, spending his few moments of consciousness either screaming from pain or pitifully pleading that Wentworth brew a pot of tea. The lance corporal noted somewhat clinically that his leg wounds no longer bled and wondered if this was significant or not.
Venturing from under his tank at dawn, Fisher soon came upon the other two tankers. Wentworth was reading a pocket Bible and, seeing Fisher, started weeping softly. Stevens didn’t recognize the sergeant and when Fisher examined the man’s back he found four bullet wounds. One was next to the spine, which explained the lower paralysis. Bullets had broken both of Wentworth’s legs. Retrieving a first-aid kit from his tank, Fisher treated the bullet holes with sulfa. He then stripped Stevens, treated his wounds, and managed to get his own coveralls on the man. A shot of morphine failed to lessen the soldier’s pain.
There was no way Fisher could help these men to safety and he was unwilling to leave them, for they would surely die. Whenever he moved even a short distance away from the tanks, Fisher either spotted German positions or heard enemy soldiers talking. Why the Germans had yet to search the tanks puzzled him, but their lassitude was the only chance the surrounded tankers had. Fisher and Wentworth decided they would stay put and hope to be rescued. Even though it was clear that Stevens and Wentworth must surely die if their wounds went untreated for long, surrender was never considered. Neither Fisher nor Wentworth bothered consulting the delirious Stevens. Fisher’s tank held a supply of bully beef, canned milk, jam, and some water, which they rationed. Stevens was unable to eat anything.
Fisher buried Hilchey in a shallow grave, but every time he tried retrieving Stevenson’s body from where it dangled out of the turret the Germans immediately drove him off with machine-gun fire. This only left the sergeant more perplexed as to why the Germans, who obviously knew of their presence, were content to leave them alone.
Wentworth found he was una
ble to sort fantasy from reality, but he never lost hope of being rescued. Both he and Fisher had lost all sense of time and could no longer remember how many days had passed. They stopped trying to have conversations and spent most of their time just staring straight ahead into space.
On the fifth day of their ordeal when Allied planes droned overhead and bombed a nearby enemy position, one of the bombs exploded close by and knocked Fisher unconscious. Upon regaining consciousness, the sergeant found it hard to function and kept nodding off. He gave Wentworth the last of the morphine and then, caring little whether he lived or died, Fisher fell asleep.
Wentworth heard sounds of men approaching sometime that night. Then he heard an unmistakably Canadian voice say, “Christ, those are Shermans.”
Wentworth croaked, “What outfit are you from?”
Soldiers skidded down the bank into the creekbed. A lieutenant bent over Wentworth and softly told him they were from the Perth Regiment and it was the night of September 9–10. Wentworth started weeping. Fisher, awakened by the noise, looked up dully to see a man standing over him with a rifle and didn’t care whether the man was friend or foe. The tankers were quickly evacuated, but the rescue came too late for Stevens, who died soon after. After many months of hospitalization, Wentworth fully recovered. For deciding to stay initially with his tank and then with his wounded comrades, Sergeant Fisher was awarded the Military Medal.23