The Gothic Line

by Mark Zuehlke

  After having the wound rudimentarily bandaged by the unit medic, Bayerlein set out to find a field dressing station. All around him paratroops were scattering under the fire of the tanks. A shell went off and a shrapnel splinter pierced Bayerlein’s lung. Weak from loss of blood, he stumbled into a farmhouse where several other German wounded lay on some straw. Bayerlein lost consciousness, only to be awakened later by intense heat. The straw around him was on fire, the house ablaze. He crawled outside, but many of the others were too weak to escape and perished inside the burning building. Hearing foreign voices, Bayerlein surmised that these soldiers had set the straw on fire. Later he was driven before a Canadian soldier, who struck him with a rifle butt whenever he slowed, through a tangled vineyard to a crossroads and then locked into a house. A captured German medic gave him a morphine injection to ease the pain. Finally, the German prisoners were put on stretchers and set out on the ground preparatory to being loaded on trucks. But the position was hit by German Nebelwerfers (six-barrelled mortars). The Germans were abandoned by their guards and several were killed or suffered additional wounds. As Bayerlein was slowly evacuated to the rear he kept meeting other men from his unit, also taken prisoner in the aftermath of their skirmish with the tanks.47

  Bayerlein’s engineering battalion was largely wiped out or captured. His commander, Leutnant Heinz Schuhmacher, was missing and presumed dead. One veteran wrote later that on September 1 “many of the old, staunch soldiers, who had been fighting and bleeding in all theatres of war ever since 1940, were finally lost to the battalion.”48

  The confusion in the German ranks was such that it was not known until much later that Bayerlein had been taken prisoner. In a letter to Bayerlein’s father, written on December 12, 1944, the company’s new commander confirmed that on September 1, “despite fierce resistance, a number of our company, including your son Carl, were taken by the enemy. Since owing to the considerable disintegration of the company it was not possible to determine accurately who was taken wounded to a field hospital, or captured or missing, your son was reported wounded on the basis of individual reports by members of the company.

  “We therefore did not notify you because we were still waiting for a report from the field hospital. Since nothing has been reported to you in the meantime either, it must be assumed that your son, too, has been taken prisoner. A number of comrades have already reported from captivity.”49 Bayerlein would not be released and returned to Germany until September 1945.

  Those paratroops who escaped to the second Green Line were directed by Generaloberst von Vietinghoff on the evening of September 2 that the line was to be defended at all costs, “above all in order to gain time for the reinforcements to arrive.”50 Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring was scrambling to find reinforcements and rush them to the Adriatic coast. Generalmajor Fritz Polack’s crack 29th Panzer Grenadier Division was pulled from the central mountains. But because of the distances it must travel, this division could not reach the area in any strength until September 4.51 The partly trained 98th Infantry Division, which was possessed of an as yet undetermined “fighting value,” and the 162nd Turcoman Division, comprised of unreliable, forcibly impressed conscripts, were also ordered to the Adriatic.52

  These three divisions constituted Kesselring’s last reserves. By throwing them into the fray, he hoped to stem disaster. But if the battered paratroopers holding the line on September 3 proved incapable of checking I Canadian Corps’s advance, the reinforcements would arrive too late to prevent an Allied breakthrough to Rimini and the Po Valley. The forthcoming day’s fighting was to be decisive.

  PART FOUR

  THE DOG FIGHT

  [ 20 ]

  All This Unpleasantness

  BETWEEN THE Conca River and Marecchia River, whose northern bank rested on the edge of the Po Valley, lay twelve miles of low foothills and coastal plain. I Canadian Corps’s Lieutenant General Tommy Burns planned to cover this ground in four bounds. The first would carry the Canadians to a finger-shaped ridge running northeastward from the mountains through San Clemente and Misano to Riccione. In front of the ridge stood the prepared fortifications of the second Green Line. The second bound would be to the Marano River—midway between the Conca and Marecchia rivers. Then would follow the securing of the last ridge south of the Marecchia, San Fortunato Ridge, two miles southwest of Rimini. From here, the final bound would carry the corps north of the river to the Rimini-Bologna Railway.

  Burns retained the same divisional alignments, with 1st Canadian Infantry Division closely following the coastal highway and 5th Canadian Armoured Division pushing through the more rugged inland terrain. With II Polish Corps having been pinched out of the offensive at Pesaro, Major General Chris Vokes’s right flank rested on the Adriatic Sea. Major General Bert Hoffmeister’s 5 CAD still had V Corps’s 46th British Infantry Division coming up on its left flank.

  The fierce fighting to reach and then break through the Gothic Line had serioiusly reduced the combat effectiveness of 1 CID’s 2nd and 3rd infantry brigades, so Vokes ordered the relatively well-rested and recently reinforced 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade to pass through 2 CIB on the night of September 2–3. The armoured division handicap of having only two infantry brigades meant that Hoffmeister lacked any fresh reserves. The best he could muster was the beat-up regiments of the 5th Canadian Armoured Brigade supported by the Westminster Regiment’s motorized infantry. Close behind, 12th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s 1st Canadian Light Anti-Aircraft Battalion would mop up bypassed German pockets.1

  The coastline from Cattolica to Rimini featured long stretches of sandy beaches and dunes behind which a continuous line of seaside resorts and villas paraded. Fearful of an amphibious operation, the Germans had previously fortified the beachfront with concrete pill-boxes either festively disguised as beachside gelateria or concealed inside existing buildings. Running behind the resorts was the coastal highway, with an average setback from the beach of five hundred to a thousand yards. West of the road lay farmland, mostly dense, closely planted vineyards. The highway crossed numerous canalized streams. Between Riccione and Rimini, the major streams were, respectively, the Melo, Marano, and Ausa. By blowing the bridges, the Germans had transformed each stream into a deep, steeply banked tank obstacle. Nearby buildings and drainage ditches provided excellent defensive cover. Tanks attempting to flank the canalized portions of the stream would have to travel cross-country through the dense vine-yards—ideal concealment for infantry armed with Faustpatrones or antitank guns. In the event of rain, the deeply plowed fields would become quagmires that the narrow-tracked Shermans, unlike the wider-tracked German Tigers and Panthers, were ill equipped to wade through.

  For its part, Hoffmeister’s division faced a chaotic series of ridges and hills soon to be known simply as Coriano Ridge, after the small village atop the primary feature. Immediately north of the Conca River was a ridge running from the Apennines to the sea. Three spurs extended north from here like narrowly spaced fingers reaching towards Rimini. The most westerly and highest spur was Coriano Ridge, home to the villages of San Savino, Passano, and Coriano. Just past Coriano, this ridge descended slowly towards the Fornaci and Marano rivers—the former draining into the Melo River just south of Ghetto del Molino. The seven-thousand-yard ridge formed a hulking height of land that bordered 5 CAD’s left flank. Scattered all along the ridge’s eastern edge were farmhouses and small hamlets, ideal for use as either fighting positions or observation posts. The ridge’s western reverse slope was laced with roads and tracks, enabling the German forces to move easily while remaining invisible to the Canadians.

  About two thousand yards closer to the sea, the second spur reached out two miles from San Clemente before ending abruptly in a steep bluff at Ca Rastelli. The last spur, known to Canadians as the Besanigo Ridge, curved from Monte Gallera to a church at San Andrea and then descended into the Melo River valley.2

  AT 2100 HOURS on September 2, the Lord
Strathcona’s Horse moved with a troop of M10 Tank Destroyers from the 89th Anti-Tank Battery of the 4th Anti-Tank Regiment towards San Giovanni to link up with the Westminster Regiment. Their orders were to execute a joint night attack over three miles of rough terrain to reach the high ground north of Misano. At first light, the 8th Princess Louise New Brunswick Hussars, with another Westminster company, would then pass through this position and establish a bridgehead across the Marano River. The total advance for the day would be five miles.3

  Strathcona commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim McAvity set the tanks and tank destroyers lumbering towards the Conca River and then hurried to confer with his Westminster counterpart, Gordon Corbould. Bursting into the Westminsters’ tactical headquarters at 0310 hours, McAvity was astonished to find that Corbould knew nothing of the planned attack or even that Hoffmeister had placed the Westminsters’ temporarily under 5th Canadian Armoured Brigade command. With one company sidelined at the Conca River crossing and the others exhausted from the previous day’s fighting, Courbould could only promise to get ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies moving as soon as possible.4

  Then McAvity’s second-in-command, Major Lee Symmes, radioed to report that heavy traffic, poor roads, and being sent in the wrong direction by a confused provost marshal had so delayed the armoured column that it would not reach San Giovanni until 0400 hours.5 As soon as the armour was in position, McAvity convened a candlelit O Group in a farmhouse. The weather was deteriorating, with heavy thunderclouds obscuring the moonlight that was to have illuminated the attack, and jagged lightning was jamming radio transmissions so that McAvity was unable to communicate with 5 CAB headquarters.6Just before the O Group concluded at 0540 hours, Brigadier Ian Cumberland strode into the house and agreed to push the attack back to first light. He also put the entire Westminster Regiment under McAvity’s command.7

  At 0600 hours, the Strathconas’ Shermans clanked off with the reconnaissance troop leading in its Honeys, followed in order by ‘C’ Squadron, ‘A’ Squadron, McAvity’s regimental headquarters, the battery of M10s, and finally ‘B’ Squadron. Overhead, the thunderstorm was intensifying, seriously disrupting radio communication. As McAvity’s tank left the assembly area, his signaller reported that the link to brigade was lost but the radio appeared to be working fine. Moving to the spare command tank proved equally futile, with the signaller reporting the signal strength at a “bloody awful” level of two. Then the tank banged across a ditch and the brigade radio’s master switch short-circuited. McAvity changed to yet another tank, which had a functioning gun and therefore space for only one radio instead of two. Adjutant Captain R.J. Sutherland stationed himself in the other headquarters tank with an operational radio and tuned his set to brigade while McAvity netted in to the regiment. The lieutenant colonel would direct the advance and Sutherland would maintain communications with brigade—a far from desirable way of maintaining command and control.8

  Having fallen out of column to sort out the communication problems, the headquarters section had to race cross-country to catch up. When the four tanks suddenly popped up on a rise a thousand yards off to the flank of ‘C’ Squadron, a spooked gunner opened fire on them. As McAvity’s tank scuttled for cover in a farmyard, it plunged through a cellar’s dirt-covered roof and became hopelessly stuck. While McAvity glared down helplessly at the mired Sherman, he heard the hard thump of main guns and rattle of machine guns. The Strathconas’ were in a fight, but his disabled tank’s radio was malfunctioning so he was completely out of touch. With only one of the three operable tanks in the section mounting a gun, he was reluctant to roar off along a line of travel that would dangerously silhouette the Shermans to possible German antitank guns. The lieutenant colonel decided to leave the tanks where they were and find a safe route on foot to his embattled squadrons. Trooper G.W. Mills, armed with a Thompson, accompanied the officer.

  The two men were following a track running along a hedge when they spotted a German on the other side. A burst from the Thompson and two bullets from McAvity’s pistol struck the paratrooper before he could react. McAvity dived into a ditch on one side of the track and Mills into a ditch on the other side just before a fusillade of Schmeisser and Spandau fire tore through the hedge. A following potato-masher grenade exploded next to Mills and killed him. McAvity’s ditch was directly below the raised hedge, so the remaining paratroopers were unable to fire down at him without exposing themselves. But he was also pinned down and could be easily killed if the paratroopers thought to roll grenades onto him.

  Seeing his commander’s predicament from his vantage beside the farmhouse, Sutherland directed the one Sherman with a 75-millimetre gun to fire rounds over McAvity’s head into the hedge. The covering fire enabled McAvity to crawl safely on his stomach back to the farm. But the tank fire alerted the paratroopers to the whereabouts of the headquarters section and they popped a white flare over the building, which directed German artillery and mortar fire onto the position. Seeing a nearby haystack hidden from the view of the paratroopers, McAvity set it alight with several matches. The smoke and flame that soon boiled up from behind the farmhouse tricked the Germans into thinking the tanks had been knocked out and the shelling ceased.

  Stripping the machine guns from the tanks and armed also with rifles and submachine guns, the headquarters section established a defensive position inside the house and around it. From an upper-storey window, McAvity could see the paratroopers dug in near the track where Mills’s body lay in the ditch. It was a complete standoff. McAvity was effectively out of the Strathconas’ battle.

  The fight McAvity was hearing started when an antitank gun outside Misano confronted Corporal George McLean’s lead Honey. Swinging the turretless tank off the road and behind some cover, McLean jumped down with a PIAT and stalked the gun on foot. He crept up and fired a charge, but the resulting smoke and dust made it impossible to tell if the gun had been destroyed. Seeing ‘C’ Squadron’s Shermans approaching, the corporal ran back and pointed the antitank gun out to the lead tank commander, who pounded the position with his main gun. Running through fire from several light machine guns and rifles, McLean returned to his Honey only to see several enemy transport trucks about two thousand yards away and fleeing downhill towards the German rear. Zigzagging back through the German small-arms fire, McLean pointed out the new targets to the tanker and at least two were destroyed by his troop’s fire. McLean was awarded the Military Medal.9

  The Strathconas shoved on, with ‘C’ Squadron bypassing Misano to gain the high ground beyond by 0930 hours. ‘A’ Squadron came up a bit to the west, while ‘B’ Squadron settled in to the rear of ‘C’ Squadron. From these positions, they could support the Westminsters, who were attacking the village itself. But the high ground the squadrons occupied proved to be under observation by Germans on Coriano Ridge and the tankers were soon being heavily mortared and shelled. To avoid providing a static target, they kept “waltzing” their Shermans a dozen or more yards back and forth.10

  With McAvity and his headquarters section missing, Major Lee Symmes had assumed command and roamed in a Honey between the Strathconas and the advancing Westminsters. Symmes hated travelling in the open, light-skinned Honey and yearned for the chance to get back inside “a nice big fat Sherman,” so he could “be safe from all this unpleasantness.” Like most tankers, Symmes failed to comprehend why “most infantrymen abhorred the idea of riding around in one of our ‘fire-traps.’”11

  The Westminsters meanwhile alternately cursed and praised the Strathconas. Cursing was loudest when Captain Vern Ardagh’s scout car approached the tankers’ position opposite Misano only to have one of the Shermans swing its turret and draw a bead on him. Only by shouting at the top of his lungs and waving his arms frantically did Ardagh manage to stop them from doing “a very horrible thing.” But the shellfire from the Shermans also enabled the Westminsters to win Misano at about 1500 hours without suffering a single casualty.12

  As the Westminsters established a shelt
ered defensive area near Misano in which their armoured cars and Bren carriers could park for the night, two German Panthers roared into their midst. While a Westminster transport sergeant thought the two tanks were “friendlies” and tried waving them into appropriate parking slots, the equally surprised Germans gunned the two tanks and barrelled through the Canadian position without firing a shot. A blown bridge north of the village forced the German tankers to creep along the edge of the stream in search of a fording, which gave the Westminsters’ antitank platoon sufficient time to deploy its six-pounder guns and knock the tracks off the Panthers. The German crews then meekly surrendered.13

  Determining whether an area was under German or Canadian control was increasingly difficult. At 1600 hours, still thinking Misano was German-held, an 8th Princess Louise New Brunswick Hussars’ squadron shelled the Westminster’s ‘B’ Company. Fortunately, no casualties occurred during the time it took Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Corbould to frantically radio Brigadier Cumberland and get the Hussars warned off.14

  Just before dusk, a German quartermaster truck drove into ‘C’ Company’s position out front of the village and was captured. The truck carried mess tins of hot food that was happily distributed. General consensus afterward held that the food was not “a damn bit better than ours,” and the watery beer tasted like “low grade spring water.” Still, it was a change, something always appreciated by troops on campaign.15