The Gothic Line Read online

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  Little Reason for It

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL Ron Waterman was also sleepless. At 0100 hours on September 15, the West Novas’ three-inch mortars started chunking out rounds towards San Lorenzo from a pit dug in beside the farmhouse, ensuring his continued wakefulness. Waterman kept hoping for some tank support, but admitted at 0200 hours that this was unlikely. The unhappy lieutenant colonel told his officers at the subsequent O Group that “on instructions from higher authority… a further attack on the hill feature of San Lorenzo” would proceed.1 ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies would lead, with ‘A’ and ‘D’ following.

  Listlessly organized by the regimental commander, the attack fell apart within minutes of kicking off at 0230. Lines of advance became confused in the darkness and soon ‘D’ Company had ranged out ahead of the sluggishly advancing ‘C’ Company, so that this reserve company was formed up alongside ‘B’ Company when the leading elements reached the village at 0345 hours. Heavy fire from San Lorenzo stopped the leading platoons cold and Waterman ordered a withdrawal after forty-five minutes of fruitless attempts to push into the village. Among those wounded was ‘D’ Company’s Captain W.H.P. David.2

  Ordered to try again just after daylight, the West Novas were forming up for the attack when artillery supporting 4th British Infantry Division widely overshot their targets with a prolonged barrage that landed right on top of the hapless infantry. The men hugged the ground for thirty minutes before the barrage was finally lifted. By this time, an increasingly vexed Brigadier Dick Bogert had succeeded in rustling up ‘B’ Squadron, 48th Royal Tank Regiment and dispatched it to support a renewed attack.3

  Meanwhile, the bridgehead won by the Royal 22e Regiment was in peril of being lost as the Van Doos only repelled a powerful German counterattack at 0730 hours by soaking the ground immediately to their front with artillery fire. Lieutenant Colonel Jean Allard advised Bogert that he had just two Shermans, two Churchills, and two M10 Tank Destroyers still operational.4 The regiment had also lost sixty-eight wounded and ten dead since beginning the attack the previous day.5 Help was desperately needed, he said. Bogert promised more tanks, but had no idea when these would actually arrive. He ordered Allard to sit tight until the West Novas cleared San Lorenzo, which would take the pressure off his flank.

  The West Novas finally attacked at 0845 hours. But as ‘C’ and ‘B’ companies headed up the slope, two Tiger tanks roamed out in front of the village and started blasting away at the tanks and infantry with their powerful 88-millimetre guns. The tankers scuttled into hull-down positions and the infantry clawed out holes for shelter.6

  ‘C’ Company tried outflanking the tanks, but, in attempting to remain undetected, the platoons gravitated closely together and at 0930 hours attracted a cluster of mortar bombs. When every officer, including company commander Major C.W. Stohart, was wounded, the surviving men beat a disordered retreat. It took thirty minutes for the officers of Major R.G. Thexton’s ‘A’ Company to reorganize ‘C’ Company and then lead their own company up alongside ‘B’ Company. As these two companies slowly climbed towards the village again, machine guns and self-propelled guns positioned on the lip of the ridge in front of San Lorenzo blocked their way. Meanwhile, 12th Royal Tank Regiment’s Major J. Cornwell was trying to bring his ‘B’ Squadron up behind the infantry. But each attempt by the tankers was driven back by accurate fire from German SPGs. Finally, Corn-well requested deployment of the infantry regiment’s six-inch anti-tank guns. Waterman immediately complied, but he also informed

  A coastal gun such as this one near Rimini was used by the Germans to fire on the Loyal Edmonton Regiment after it seized Monte Luro. Shortly before Rimini’s capture by I Canadian Corps, the Germans abandoned the gun position and civilians used it as an air raid shelter. NAC PA-173428.

  The many streams north of the Gothic Line had to be carefully forded by the Sherman tanks supporting the Canadians because of the risk of becoming mired in mud. NAC PA-204149.

  The relentless German artillery directed against the Canadians during the advance to the Po Valley made it wise to dig deep slit trenches. Note the grenade attached to the top of this soldier’s pack and Thompson sub-machine gun beside it. NAC PA-185001.

  A soldier inspects burnt rubber rollers on the tread of a Sherman. NAC PA-185002.

  PIAT gun operator Private Stanley Rodgers of the 48th Highlanders of Canada takes a roadside break. NAC PA-189919.

  A Canadian antitank gun crew with their six-pound gun set up in the middle of a village reduced to rubble during the battle. NAC PA-193850.

  A heavily camouflaged Canadian tank crosses a Bailey bridge. NAC PA-173514.

  The lead Sherman of a Canadian tank troop becomes heavily bogged down while trying to cross a narrow stream south of Rimini. NAC PA-204159.

  Brigadier D. Dawnay, 21st Tank Brigade commander, and Lieutenant General Tommy Burns (back to camera) hold a hasty roadside consultation during 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s advance on the Metauro River. Note the goggles used as protection against the dust. NAC PA-205805.

  The shelled-out ruin of San Lorenzo church, which the Royal Canadian Regiment fought to capture near Riccione on September 5, 1944. NAC PA-173438.

  German prisoners help carry Canadian wounded to a Regimental Aid Post. NAC PA-173520.

  A file of Canadian infantry marches past the wreckage of German vehicles near Rimini. NAC PA-173437.

  The Arch of Augustus as it looked to Peter Stursberg when he visited Rimini shortly after its capture. NAC PA-193847.

  A platoon of 48th Highlanders marches through the outskirts of Rimini. NAC PA-193845.A Canadian patrol searches out a German machine-gun position in Rimini. NAC PA-136213.

  A Greek patrol cautiously advances through the southern outskirts of the city. NAC PA-173430.

  The shell-battered ruin of Rimini’s train station. NAC PA-173429.

  A main street in Rimini near the central plaza, heavily damaged by Allied bombing and shelling. NAC PA-193846.

  A group of civilians talks with Canadian and Greek troops in Rimini’s central plaza. NAC PA-193852.

  The cleanup begins. Bulldozer clearing rubble a few days after Rimini’s fall. NAC PA-142070.

  As the Gothic Line Battle ended, Canadian infantry marched north from Rimini into the Po Valley with Ravenna and Bologna as their next objectives. NAC PA-173426.

  The fall rains quickly created a sea of mud that slowed the “debouch” into the Po Valley to a crawl. A Sherman tank wallows up a river embankment just north of Rimini. NAC PA-173521.

  Bogert that it would take several hours for the antitank guns supported by concentrations of artillery fire to break the German pocket of resistance sufficiently to enable the attack to continue.7

  The situation soon worsened when a German 150-millimetre gun battery targetted Waterman’s farmhouse headquarters. Many personnel were wounded or killed, the half-track containing the forward observation officer’s two No. 22 radios was destroyed, and the No. 22 in Waterman’s Bren carrier was also wrecked. That left the regiment with only a No. 18 set. Desperate to ensure its survival, the intelligence officer shouldered the unit and dashed through the smoke and flying shrapnel to the cover of a house standing outside the zone being shelled. Waterman formed up his surviving staff in this house at 1145 hours, but operations were seriously hampered by the fact that the one radio had to serve to communicate not only with the companies but also with brigade headquarters.8

  From his position to the right of San Lorenzo, Allard watched the repeated failures to seize the village with a sense of dread. The Van Doo commander realized that there was little option but for his men to attack Palazzo des Vergers and the San Martino ridge spur with an exposed flank. Capturing these two objectives would cut the lines of reinforcement and resupply to the Germans, who were so doggedly holding San Lorenzo.

  First, however, the Van Doos had to secure positions astride the road that could serve as start lines for such an attack. Although there
was only a small number of German infantry defending this area, they were supported by a pack of tanks—mostly Tigers.9 When ‘A’ Squadron, 12th Royal Tank Regiment engaged in a mismatched shootout with the German armour, all but three of the British tanks were knocked out. The infantry was also mauled, particularly Major Tellier’s ‘A’ Company, which soon numbered only fifty-nine men after twenty-three of its ranks were wounded and five killed.

  Having secured a tenuous hold on the road, Allard grimly ordered the attack to proceed at 1300 hours. He could see that the West Novas were still three hundred yards short of San Lorenzo, so there would be no help from that quarter. And repeated requests for more tanks only brought assurances from Bogert that both ‘A’ and ‘B’ squadrons of the 48th Royal Tank Regiment were en route. When the lieutenant colonel ventured out in a Honey tank to personally assess the condition of his three battered forward companies, he became even more discouraged. Still, he gathered the three company commanders together for a hasty O Group.10

  As he started the briefing, the commander of ‘A’ Squadron, 48 RTR arrived in his tank. The officer climbed out of his turret hatch and was just starting to hop off the tank when an artillery shell tore his head off. When the dead man’s subordinate, Major Robson, arrived, Allard returned to his briefing. Looking at his three company commanders, he saw the strain in their faces, the deep weariness. He knew they were “convinced that I had to be dissuaded from undertaking another attack on this next objective.”11

  Allard gave them no opportunity. “Today is September [15], the anniversary of the battle of Courcelette. Like our predecessors, and in memory of those among them who fell, we must make this one final effort.” As expected, harking back to the honour that the French-Canadian regiment had won in the mud of the Somme in 1916 stifled any dissent. Allard explained that Captain Simard’s ‘B’ Company, supported by one tank troop, would go straight for Palazzo des Vergers from the south while Major Fernand Trudeau’s ‘C’ Company hooked around the right with the other tanks to take the objective from the rear. ‘A’ Company would be the reserve. The German positions would be heavily saturated by artillery directed on targets by Royal Canadian Horse Artillery foo Major George Mitchell. Major Robson remarked that a delay to 1430 hours would be required to bring the tanks up.12

  Mitchell radioed a series of initial targets to the artillery and provided coordinates for smoke concentrations. Then the two men climbed into the second storey of Allard’s headquarters to study the line of attack through a window. Allard was pointing out several additional targets to Mitchell when a German shell exploded on the windowsill. Splinters hacked Mitchell’s nose and cheek open and the concussion knocked both men flat. Allard helped the wounded artillery officer down the stairs and onto a stretcher. Although doped up on morphine, Mitchell tried to explain his fire plan to Allard. But his speech became increasingly slurred and after a few minutes of incoherent muttering, Mitchell passed out. Allard had the artillery radio moved up to the second storey and then scrunched up against a narrow window to direct the artillery himself as the Van Doos headed towards the Palazzo.13

  The attack unfolded rapidly as the tankers, anxious to cross the open ground, dashed out ahead of the infantry. Despite coming under fire from two Tigers, the troop supporting Trudeau’s rear-flanking move pressed on without pause. By 1515 hours, both attacking prongs were within two hundred yards of the objective and the infantry had managed to get alongside the tanks. Suddenly, antitank guns deployed in a triangular formation on the side of the hill below the Palazzo ripped into the tanks supporting Trudeau. Major Robson’s tank took a direct hit that killed the officer.14

  Allard watched three of Trudeau’s men charge the gun positions. “The first fell almost at once; the second, carrying a Bren gun, had gone barely a hundred paces when he in turn was hit and dropped his weapon. The third quickly seized it and advanced towards the first casemate. I had just recognized him as Sergeant Yvon Piuze. In a few seconds, he wiped out the crew of the first casemate and moved on to the next, which he destroyed in less than five minutes.

  “As he turned to come back to the third, he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire and killed instantly. The firing had come from a fourth casemate, which had not been spotted. The destruction of the first two casemates had, however, opened the left flank. The company advanced and the other two casemates were raked by fire and destroyed.”15

  Allard recommended Piuze for a Victoria Cross, but the award was denied. The Van Doo commander believed this was because “the authorities failed to recognize the importance and valour of his action. Without his sacrifice, ‘C’ Company would probably not have achieved its objective… and the enemy would have had all night to reinforce its position and even to drive ‘C’ Company back down the hill.”16

  Piuze’s gallantry enabled the Van Doos to win the Palazzo and the two attacking companies slugged uphill towards a cluster of buildings they thought represented San Martino while Major Henri Tellier’s ‘A’ Company secured the Palazzo. By 1700 hours, the Van Doos reported San Martino secure.

  Losing the Palazzo had unbalanced the Germans defending San Lorenzo and by the time the Van Doos secured San Martino, the West Novas’ ‘B’ Company, under Captain J.C.H. Jones, fought its way into the village in the face of rapidly weakening resistance. ‘A’ Company quickly joined Jones’s men and the village was secure at 1830. As the Germans dashed out of the village towards the rear, their artillery and mortars immediately brought it under fire. But the thick stone walls and many deep dugouts provided the West Novas with excellent shelter and most of the men immediately fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. They had been in almost constant combat for forty hours.17

  Meanwhile, at last light the Van Doos held a jumbled landscape of small hills linked by numerous spiny ridges, over which a patchwork quilt of farmhouses, clustered buildings of large estates, and various small hamlets were scattered. All were surrounded by sprawling tangles of olive groves and vineyards. A road connecting San Martino to San Lorenzo in Corregiano cut across a saddle of ground between the two heights occupied by these villages. Every building, whether in a village or standing alone on the ridge, had been reduced to rubble.

  On the ridge’s reverse slope, the Germans had dug positions they could fall back to for protection from artillery concentrations. San Fortunato Ridge, upon which the Germans had positioned a strong contingent of artillery batteries, overlooked the entire height of land. As night set in, the whereabouts and strength of the paratroops remaining on the ridge in positions around the Van Doos remained undetermined. Throughout the night of September 15–16, German infantry and tanks were heard constantly roaming about in the darkness.

  The Van Doos were beginning to appreciate that their hold on San Martino was at best tenuous and there was also some uncertainty regarding their precise whereabouts in this confused terrain. About a half-mile north of the Palazzo, a small cluster of ruined buildings surrounded the church of San Martino. It was this position that the Van Doos had won just before nightfall and reported as being San Martino. A bit to the north stood another cluster of shattered buildings, which seemed of little strategic importance compared to the stoutly built church.18

  ON THE NIGHT of September 14–15, the Germans had withdrawn from between the Melo and Marano rivers, allowing I Canadian Corps’s right flank to form up that morning on the Marano’s south bank. 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade was given the task of driving through to capture Rimini. While the 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade and the Royal Canadian Dragoons would advance up the coastline to support this attack, responsibility for capturing the city fell to the Royal Canadian Regiment and 48th Highlanders of Canada.19

  The two regiments were to follow a line of advance bordered to the east by the Rimini airfield and to the west by the heights of San Martino until reaching the airfield’s northwest corner. Here, the RCR would wheel right and cut sharply northeastward to pinch off German units engaging the Greeks while the 48th Highlanders pushed towards Rimini.
20 Lieutenant General Tommy Burns thought the Canadians were poised for a rapid breakout into the Po Valley. With the fall of San Lorenzo in Corregiano and San Martino, Burns expected the Germans to immediately withdraw behind the Ausa River to avoid having their flank turned. Believing Rimini all but taken, he turned that morning to discussing with 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s Major General Bert Hoffmeister and 2nd New Zealand Division’s Acting Major General C.E. Weir the forthcoming debouch beyond the Marecchia River.*21

  Burns was premature. The Germans had neither intention nor need to surrender the ground south of the Ausa River because they still remained firmly ensconced among the ruins of San Martino. For the Van Doos were not where they thought they were. At 0315 hours on September 16, Lieutenant Colonel Bogert had advised Allard that

  * Brigadier Weir had been temporarily promoted to divisional command after the New Zealand division’s veteran commander, Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg, was injured in a plane crash on September 3.

  the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Seaforth Highlanders of Canada would relieve the Van Doos at 0700 hours.22 The Van Doos were to pull back, reorganize, and then attack the final remaining feature between the Canadians and San Fortunato Ridge. This was a 150-foot-high, fingerlike, southward-trending spur crowned by farm buildings that was codenamed Whipcord.23 Taking Whipcord was to be 3 CIB’s last task. It would then move into divisional reserve while 2 CIB went on to capture San Fortunato Ridge.24

  Allard initially intended to remain in place until the Seaforths arrived. But the 2 CIB regiment, having to march from a position well to the rear, was only passing Santa Maria di Scacciano three miles south of the Marano River by early morning.25 By this time, Bogert was hectoring the Van Doo commander “to get my companies out of 2 CIB area and exploit with one company” towards Whipcord.26 “With my completely exhausted regiment,” Allard later wrote, “I could only think of ensuring the security of my men.”27 So the Van Doos marched off from the church while Allard sent several scouts to link up with the Seaforths and bring them up to the front line. All but one of these became lost, however. The Seaforths’ ‘D’ Company linked up with the single remaining guide at 0915 hours. He led them to a large stone house with extremely thick walls positioned about one thousand yards south of the cluster of buildings the ‘D’ company commander believed his map indicated as San Martino.28