The Gothic Line Page 39

  The major task the engineers had to accomplish was to scour diversions down the steep banks with Sherman tanks fitted with bulldozer blades. They started with three of these, but two quickly broke down. That left only the Sherman commanded by Lieutenant J.D. Graham to do the job under constant shelling. Despite the German attempts to stop the work, the sappers opened one crossing at 0544 hours.11

  While the engineers laboured away, Major General Bert Hoffmeister was in his tactical headquarters, “biting my nails to my elbow. This was one of the most dramatic nights,” he recalled later.12 He started to relax when the engineers reported the crossing open. Hoffmeister figured this achievement clinched the fight for the Canadians. The rest, bloody as it might be, was just wrapping up the details.

  The first tanks of ‘A’ Squadron ground across the creek at 0630 hours and clawed a path up the slope to the Perth Regiment. German artillery fire was incessant, but the Hussars knew their Shermans were virtually impervious to explosive or fragmentation rounds. The crewmates of Trooper Wallace Robert Bishop only slightly raised their eyebrows at the sight of him calmly reading a comic book as shrapnel clanged off the outside hull while his Sherman trundled along behind the Perths. Soon the infantry was locked in a stiff fight to clear a hospital turned into a German strong-point. When a 75-millimetre antitank gun tried to disrupt the tank advance, it was quickly destroyed by return fire and seven Germans were taken prisoner.13

  While the Hussars had been able to quickly reinforce the Perths, they had a harder time reinforcing the Cape Breton Highlanders. Only one Sherman bulldozer had been assigned to cut out the crossing that aligned with this regiment’s line of advance and the machine soon broke down. ‘B’ Squadron was therefore stuck on the wrong side of the Besanigo. Knowing the need for tanks was urgent, Lieutenant Colonel George Robinson ordered ‘C’ Squadron to use ‘A’ Squadron’s crossing and then traverse the slope on an angle to reach the Highlanders. ‘C’ Squadron started crossing at 0730 hours.14

  When he heard of the problem at the second crossing, Lieutenant Graham headed that way with his still operational Sherman bulldozer. The narrow valley was shrouded in dark shadows and the ground so rugged that he had to stand on the outside hull to guide the driver forward. It was one thousand yards from one crossing point to the other and Graham’s machine was under artillery fire the whole way. Arriving safely, Graham had the crossing open by 0800 hours. ‘B’ Squadron began rolling towards the Highlanders and Graham won a Military Cross.15

  The tanks arrived just as the Highlanders managed to secure their objective. Brigadier Johnston immediately ordered the Irish Regiment of Canada to pass through the Cape Bretoners and attack Coriano village with the tanks of Major Cliff McEwan’s ‘C’ Squadron in support.16 Captain Bill Mitchell’s ‘C’ Company moved past the Highlanders into a stretch of open ground leading up to the village. The company was bracketed by withering shellfire and heavy casualties ensued. Still, the company managed to reach Coriano and started clearing houses one by one.17

  Initially, the Irish found every house to be empty and Mitchell thought the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division had decided to bug out. With things progressing so well, two troops of ‘C’ Squadron pushed their tanks out past the infantry and down the eerily quiet streets alone. Sergeant D.I. Watkins was standing in the lead tank’s turret when it rounded a corner and he spotted the long muzzle of a Mark V Panther’s 75-millimetre sticking out of the cover of a building. The Panther opened fire and so did several infantrymen with Faustpatrones. Watkins screamed at his driver to reverse as explosive charges sizzled overhead. Then a sniper round killed the sergeant, and seconds later the Panther scored a direct hit. Trooper Emmett Hart was wounded, but the other three crewmen pulled him out as they evacuated the smouldering Sherman. Although a German machine gun bore down on the men, Trooper W.E. Fitzgerald managed to drag Hart into the safety of a house. There the crew hid until the Irish reached them.18

  Their tank, however, blocked the entrance into the village’s main plaza. So McEwan directed another tank to shove it out into the open. The tank rolled forward, only to be knocked out by a Faust-patrone. The surviving four tanks fell back on the infantry.

  Coriano was rigged for defence. The panzer grenadiers had dug tunnels between houses and under the streets that allowed them to dodge unseen from one strongpoint to another. These tunnels also enabled the Germans to infiltrate back into buildings previously cleared by the Canadians. ‘D’ Company’s Major Frank Southby fell to a sniper firing from a building that had been swept earlier. The major collapsed into a German slit trench and his company sergeant major was shot trying to reach him. The CSM sat on the edge of the slit trench, hands clutching his stomach wound.

  Positioned behind the cover of a hedge, Lieutenant Lloyd Brown was unable to see the two wounded soldiers from his tank turret, but agreed to come to their aid when an Irish infantryman explained the situation. After bulling the Sherman through the hedge, Brown could see the wounded sergeant and realized the sniper was using him as bait to lure rescuers out into the open. The tank could reach the men easily enough, but anyone jumping down to lift the men into the tank would present easy targets. Suddenly, Brown remembered the Sherman’s bottom escape hatch. He directed Sergeant Tug Wilson, who had brought his tank up alongside Brown, to cross over to the wounded men while Brown covered the move. Wilson manoeuvred his tank so it stood astride the slit trench. Trooper Roy Robertson then opened the hatch and dragged Southby inside.

  Brown was frantically trying to signal the CSM with exaggerated gestures to lie down so Wilson’s tank could repeat the rescue procedure. But the man appeared terrifled of being crushed by the tracks. Finally he complied, was straddled and rescued by Robertson. Both men had been shot in the stomach and Major Southby’s wound proved fatal, for he died several hours later in the Regimental Aid Post.19

  Very quickly, the Canadians found they could permanently close one strongpoint after another by having the Shermans blow each building apart and then the infantry mop up any Germans found hiding in basements or underground embrasures. But the Panther in the square seemed indestructible. Major McEwan finally rounded up an Irish Regiment six-pound antitank gun team and had them push their gun by hand so its muzzle faced the wall of the building behind which the Panther crouched. The gun crew proceeded to knock the wall down on the tank, blocking its line of retreat with great piles of rubble. Unable to withdraw, the Panther crew lit a time-fused explosive charge inside the hull and bailed out. But the fuse fizzled out and the tank was captured intact.20

  It took until midnight for the Irish and Hussars to wrest control of Coriano from the Panzer Grenadiers. Shortly thereafter, several Irish infantrymen brandishing flashlights entered the ruins of a small house on the edge of the village. Yanking open a door leading down to a cellar, they discovered Oviglio Monti, his brothers, and his mother and father crouched in blackness barely dispelled by the weak glow of a small, guttering candle. “What are you doing here?” one of the soldiers demanded. Monti’s father, Paulo, looked up and said sadly, “This is our house.” In the morning, the family stared at the smouldering wreckage of their home and village. Ever stoic and hard-working, Paulo told his sons they would rebuild.21

  WHILE THE IRISH had been gaining control of Coriano, the Westminster Regiment and ‘C’ Squadron of the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Regiment had passed the right flank of the Cape Breton Highlanders at 1315 hours. Their task was to clear the ridge’s gradual downward slope to where the Fornaci River drained into the Melo River about two miles north of Coriano.22

  The open fields here were overlooked from the west and north by hills and ridges being used by German artillery and mortar batteries or their spotters. To provide some cover for the Shermans and infantry, Hoffmeister directed the 17th Field Regiment to lay down a wall of smoke in front and to the west of the advancing force.23

  ‘A’ Company and ‘C’ Squadron were to lead, with the Westminsters’ ‘B’ Company mopping up behind. The force b
egan forming up adjacent to the Highlanders and immediately attracted a heavy artillery concentration. When the infantry started scattering for cover, their commander, Major Ernie Catherwood, bellowed at them to form up and move out. He figured they would be safer presenting moving targets than trying to hide in what meagre cover was available. No. 1 and No. 2 Platoon followed Catherwood forward, but the other platoon took a few minutes longer to reorganize. This left ‘A’ Company split into two distinct elements.24

  The Strathcona’s ‘C’ Squadron also split its strength, but deliberately so. Even though the 17th Field Regiment’s 25-pounders were to drop nine hundred smoke rounds to screen the advance, ‘C’ Squadron’s Major Jack Smith thought the smoke too far away to be completely effective. He therefore ordered No. 1 Troop to remain on the start line and fire smoke closer in. The other two troops then worked along opposite flanks of the ridge.25

  Halfway to the objective, Catherwood realized that the lagging platoon was falling ever farther behind and told Company Sergeant Major Bill Smith to take Private B.L. Chase with him and chivvy them along. The two men were jogging back when they were ambushed by several panzer grenadiers in a house, who had allowed the leading elements to pass without betraying their presence and now thought to kill some easy game. Smith and Chase led the Germans in a desperately macabre game of ring-around-the-house as they scampered from one corner of the building to another, fired shots back at the Germans, then fled to the next corner with the panzer grenadiers in hot pursuit. For Chase, the game proved deadly. He was shot and killed, but Smith managed to break contact with the Germans when they appeared to run out of steam and gave up the pursuit.26

  Just short of the objective and before Smith returned with the trailing platoon, Catherwood was wounded. He passed command to Lieutenant J.E. Oldfield. By 1500 hours, the two platoons and two troops of Strathconas’ Shermans were on the objective. It was a hellish place next to a barely trickling stream. Strewn around were corpses of cows, horses, and many Germans. Shelling began almost immediately, and tankers and infantry both set to vigorously carving out deep slit trenches. Two hours later, the leading elements of the 4th British Infantry Division started passing on the left, a steady stream of Churchill tanks and marching Tommies. The British were all striking out for the Marano River and leaving 11 CIB and its supporting tank units to mop up the remaining German resistance on Coriano Ridge.27

  By midmorning on September 14, the Irish finished clearing the last panzer grenadiers from Coriano and the nearby castle. With the village and surrounding terrain on the northern end of the ridge taken, 11 CIB blocked the retreat of German units to the south. When these elements attempted to slip first south and then west to link up with the main LXXVI Panzer Corps front line forming north of the Marano River, they ran into the advancing 1st British Armoured Division’s brigades. The British snapped up 734 prisoners while the Canadians captured 202.28 Once the mopping-up operation was complete, 5 CAD pulled back to San Giovanni for rest and reorganization.

  Coriano Ridge had been a costly fight for the Canadians, with 11 CIB suffering 210 casualties. The Cape Breton Highlanders were hardest hit, losing 22 men killed and 63 wounded.

  Throughout the two-day battle, the Germans had repeatedly tried to mass for counterattacks, only to have the forming-up units smashed into confusion by the Desert Air Force. Planes flying nine hundred sorties dropped more than five hundred tons of bombs. Seven hundred of these sorties were directed against targets on the ridge.29

  Late on September 14, LXXVI Panzer Corps commander General der Panzertruppen Traugott Herr noted balefully that “two difficulties made themselves felt today. Firstly, the smokescreens which prevented aimed fire; secondly, the enemy’s policy of destroying all daylight counterattacks from the air, so that reserves suffered great casualties. If the reserves are kept near the front they are decimated by the preparatory (artillery) fire; if held further back they are dispersed by attacks from the air.”30

  It was an anxious Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring who called Tenth Army’s Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff that evening. “I have just… heard the terrible news,” Kesselring said. “Will you please inform me of the situation.”

  “The depth of the penetrations cannot be ascertained with accuracy yet. The front has been greatly weakened,” von Veitinghoff reported.

  “We must realize that tomorrow will be a day of great crisis,” Kesselring mused.

  “We are certain of this; all day we have been racking our brains about how to help, but we have nothing left.”31

  This was somewhat of an overstatement, for Kesselring was at the very moment rushing reinforcements to the Adriatic coast in the form of three divisions—356th Infantry Division, 20th Luftwaffe Field Division, and the elite 90th Panzer Grenadier Division. However, these divisions were still concentrating in the region and were badly delayed by the intense Allied bombing of rear areas. The railway running from Bologna to Rimini was so heavily bombed during daylight hours that the 356th Infantry Division gave up trying to move by train and marched towards the front. Kesselring therefore had no clear idea when these reinforcements would stiffen the front lines.32

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  A Carefully Coordinated Plan

  ONE FINAL RIDGE blocked Eighth Army’s entry into the Po Valley—San Fortunato. I Canadian Corps Lieutenant General Tommy Burns knew that, despite the fact that it stood only five hundred feet above sea level, the ridge would be a tough nut to crack.1Intelligence reported it “as honeycombed with dugouts and emplacements” augmented by several Panzerturms.2 Then there was the intervening ground that 1st Canadian Infantry Division must first win to reach the ridge. On September 13, the division was still a mile south of the Marano River and two miles from the hilltop village of San Lorenzo in Corregiano. From San Lorenzo, it was another two miles to San Fortunato Ridge.3 Burns knew he would have to wrest every foot of this ground, particularly the undoubtedly fortified village, from the Germans.

  On the Canadian left flank, 4th British Infantry Division—still under Burns’s command—was moving through 5th Canadian Armoured Division on Coriano Ridge and marching towards the Marano River at Ospedaletto. Directly under Major General Chris Vokes’s command, the 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade was in the front line immediately west of Riccione. On September 13, the 22nd New Zealand (Motor) Battalion was added to support the Greeks. As had been the case throughout the Gothic Line Battle, 21st British Tank Brigade provided 1 CID’s armoured support. The addition of these non-Canadian units allowed Burns to concentrate 1 CID’s thinning ranks into a sharp arrowhead directed towards the ridge.

  In the first phase of Vokes’s operational plan, 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade, supported by British tanks and elements of the 15th (Self-Propelled) Anti-Tank Battery, would cross the Marano River, capture San Lorenzo in Corregiano, and then win a bridgehead over the Ausa River in front of San Fortunato Ridge. At the same time, the Greeks would do their best to hold the Germans facing their front in place so 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade could hook across the Marano River and immediately to the left, to cut their line of retreat. The Royal Canadian Dragoons would clear Riccione and advance up the built-up coastline.

  During phase two, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade would leap 1 CIB to capture first San Martino and then San Fortunato Ridge from the right flank while 3 CIB moved from the left against these same objectives. With the ridge secured, 2 CIB would establish bridgeheads over the Marecchia River and cut Highway 9, which ran northwest from Rimini to Cesena. The operation was to be completed by September 17, leaving time for Eighth Army’s armoured divisions to rampage through the Po Valley before the fall rains began.4 With Coriano Ridge secured by the night of September 13 and 4th British Infantry Division forming on 1 CID’s left flank the following morning, Vokes’s timing seemed not overly ambitious.5

  THE FIRST STEP in carrying out the plan required the Greeks and 3 CIB’s Carleton and York Regiment to clear out any Germans south of the Ma
rano River before nightfall of September 13. Both forces attacked with gusto, but soon found their strength insufficient to hold ground won while also continuing to move towards the river. Behind the advancing forces, the Germans simply reinfiltrated their old fighting positions. Shortly after midnight, the Germans attempted to overrun the Carleton and York’s forward companies with a force of self-propelled guns. Although these were driven off by a combination of artillery concentrations and individual attacks mounted by soldiers armed with PIAT guns, the regiment suffered sixty casualties, including five killed.6 A frustrated Lieutenant Colonel Dick Danby could only report at 0145 hours on September 14 that the Carleton and York Regiment had cleared the way for the Royal 22e Regiment on the right, but that the West Nova Scotia Regiment should expect a rough fight to win a river crossing on the left.7 Shortly after Danby filed this report, he was wounded while approaching ‘B’ Company’s headquarters. Major Jack Ensor immediately took command of the regiment.8

  Lieutenant Colonel Jean Allard thought Danby was dead wrong about the situation his Van Doos faced. When he and the Carleton and York commander took out a small reconnaissance party, Allard noted that the only suitable river crossing was 1,500 yards from the nearest of Danby’s platoons. Even here, the riverbanks were “muddy, thick with reeds and difficult to reach.” The bank on the opposite shore was steep and lined by tall, closely grouped poplars under-grown by dense thickets of brush and tall stands of bamboo—both ideal for concealing enemy gun positions.9