The Gothic Line

by Mark Zuehlke

  After dark, the Hasty P’s slipped a reconnaissance patrol into Santa Maria that discovered three machine-gun positions “and observed considerable enemy movement in and about the village.” Lieutenant Colonel Don Cameron accordingly ordered his men to “take up defensive positions overlooking the outskirts and consolidate.”17

  While the Hasty P’s had fought their way towards Santa Maria, the Royal Canadian Regiment’s ‘B’ Company had leapfrogged ‘C’ Company to carry out a frontal attack against the German blocking force. The hastily conceived plan ignored the fact that the blocking force showed no signs of weakening. Major Sandy Mitchell’s ‘B’ Company had passed ‘C’ Company on the left at 1900 hours, with No. 11 Platoon moving down a narrow, dark track while No. 10 Platoon worked its way through a cluster of buildings west of the coastal highway. No. 12 Platoon and Mitchell’s company HQ section followed a central axis directly between the two leading platoons. The men crept forward as quietly as possible, hoping to achieve surprise. As No. 10 Platoon approached a road crossing their line of advance, however, Private Millar triggered a mine that mangled his leg. The jig was up. German positions opened up with “a hail of machine-gun fire thickened up with rifle grenades, and [Faustpatrones].”18 Scattering into cover, the platoon started shooting back.

  To the left, No. 11 Platoon had followed a shallow ditch that led to two stout buildings, quickly transformed into a strongpoint. From there, they were able to support the rest of the company with sufficiently heavy covering fire that Mitchell had the chance to settle everyone into relatively secure positions. The company commander realized his company was virtually in the midst of the Germans’ forward defences and destined to spend a night “trading bullets” with the paratroopers.19

  The Hasty P’s were likewise entangled in front of Santa Maria di Scacciano. Hoping to develop a better appreciation of the German strength, Cameron ordered Lieutenant Charlie Case’s scout platoon to enter the village at 2200 hours. The scouts edged into the western outskirts, took a long, slow look, and returned to the Canadian perimeter at 0330 hours on September 4 without being detected. Case reported finding a covered approach by which the regiment might enter the village and that it seemed “only lightly held, probably by a screen of troops protecting a mortar and self-propelled gun located near the road junction.”20 Bolstered by this news, Cameron decided to attack at first light.

  “OPPOSITION IS STIFFENING now and we wonder if the enemy is making a last stand before we reach the valley of the Po which now seems to be within our grasp,” wrote 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s war diarist at the close of September 3.21 Major General Chris Vokes and I Canadian Corps’s Lieutenant General Tommy Burns concurred that the Germans were merely conducting a delaying action to enable an orderly withdrawal into the fortified Rimini–San Fortunato line. Burns said he “didn’t expect to have to mount a strong prepared attack until that position was reached.”22

  Staff officers at German Tenth Army, meanwhile, read events differently. “On 3 Sep[tember], when the enemy attacks were continued with increased severity,” stated one after-action report, “the battle of Rimini reached its climax, and with it the critical stage for the defence.” The divisions “which had up to now been fighting in the middle and left sector of [LXXVI] Panzer Corps were overstrained by the continuous service and the overwhelming superiority in matériel of the enemy, as well as greatly weakened by the heavy casualties suffered, especially by the infantry.”23 Only arrival of reinforcements in the form of regiments of the 98th Infantry Division and the 26th Panzer Division in British V Corps’s sector had prevented disaster there. The commitment of the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division against 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s flank near Misano was credited with preventing a collapse of the entire line in front of the Canadians.”24

  The close-run nature of this crisis and the confused and often contradictory news from the battlefront alarmed Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring. When General der Panzertruppen Traugott Herr raised the prospect of a full withdrawal to save his LXXVI Panzer Corps from destruction, Kesselring flew into an uncharacteristic rage and threatened to remove any corps or divisional commanders entertaining the idea of retreat.25 Only after midnight was Tenth Army commander Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff able to calm Kesselring down and speak plainly to him about the high casualties Herr’s corps had suffered. Herr’s performance in the face of the determined and skillfully conducted Allied attacks, he said, had been exemplary. “Though not strong in numbers,” von Vietinghoff said, “the Canadians are very good soldiers. I am told the 5th Canadian Armoured Division was excellent.”26 Somewhat mollified, Kesselring let Herr keep his job, but he urged von Vietinghoff to defend the Adriatic front vigorously, surrendering ground only when necessary. Kesselring knew that the long-range weather forecasts favoured the Germans, with the thunderstorm on the night of September 2–3 presaging rain.

  Eighth Army’s commanders, meanwhile, were giving little thought to the potential and possibly fatal delays a turn in the weather might deal their breakout to the Po. Eighth Army commander General Oliver Leese and V Corps’s Lieutenant General Charles Keightley still expected the real breakout, believed imminent, would come not in front of the Canadians but on Keightley’s right flank. The two officers had accordingly visited 1st British Armoured Division to emphasize this unit’s key role in pursuing the German divisions. This, Leese warned, “might well be the last great battle of the Eighth Army.” Keightley stressed that: “Speed was the factor on which success would depend and nothing must be allowed to stand in its way.” As the generals departed in their staff car, Keightley called out to Major General Richard Hull and Brigadier R.W. Goodbody that he would see them next “on the Po.”27 The two armoured division officers fully agreed. Goodbody thought the operation would be a “sure-thing gallop.”28

  That this great galloping charge was to be delivered by a division that had not seen battle since April 1943 and only then in Africa, where conditions differed greatly from Italy, failed to faze Leese and Keightley. The division’s officers were largely untrained in the tactics evolved during more than a year of fighting in the close Italian country. Indeed, 1st Armoured Division had barely completed reorganizing to add more infantry clout at some loss to its armoured mobility, in order to conform to the new operational structure adopted by Eighth Army’s armoured divisions. The armoured regiments were also still familiarizing themselves with the up-gunned 75-millimetre Shermans that had replaced their older tank models. And, having only assumed divisional command in mid-August, Hull hardly knew the officers serving under him.29 He also barely considered the division combat-ready. He later said: “If a Staff College student had suggested that as a solution for reforming an armoured division, he’d have got nought out of ten.”30

  Even had the designated armoured division clearly been up to the task, the reported gap on V Corps’s right flank adjacent to I Canadian Corps did not exist. Yet Major General J. Hawkesworth, commander of the 46th British Infantry Division fighting there, failed to admit this. Instead, he told Hull on September 3 that he would “hold the gate open for him.”31

  There was another problem neither Keightley nor Leese recognized. When Keightley inserted the 56th British Infantry Division into the front line to plug the gap developing between 4th Indian Division and the 46th Division, a misunderstanding had occurred between himself and Major General John Whitfield. The 56th Division commander believed he had been warned to keep out of the western hills on his left flank and bypass those dotting the relatively level plain on his right where his advance was being funnelled. He understood that the emphasis was speed and that these potential defensive strong-points could be mopped up later. On September 3, Whitfield’s division had accordingly bypassed to the east of a key position—Gemmano Ridge, which was a mile long and averaged a height of 1,500 feet.32 On the ridge’s eastern terminus stood the village of Gemmano protected by steep slopes, blanketed in thorny scrub that butted
right into the village’s thick twenty-foot-high wall. Gemmano was an ancient fortress, quickly transformed into a modern defensive bastion by the German 100th Mountain Regiment. Before Whitfield could recover from his error, the Germans concentrated three thousand men on the ridge, so that they dominated the upper reaches of the Conca Valley to the east and closed the very roads over which 1st Armoured Division was supposed to burst through Hawkesworth’s imaginary gap.33

  Whitfield failed to recognize the threat posed by Gemmano Ridge, for his eyes were fixed on reaching the Marano River and then pressing on from there. His operational order for September 3 stated his intention as being “to pursue the enemy to Bologna and destroy him.” Whitfield was convinced that both V Corps and I Canadian Corps were engaged in a neck-and-neck race that he would win.34

  FIRST LIGHT ON September 4 found RCR’s ‘B’ Company “still trading bullets” with a bunch of determined paratroopers showing no signs of taking flight.35 Out on the regiment’s left flank, ‘D’ Company was similarly embattled. Despite its previous day’s losses, Lieutenant Colonel Ritchie decided ‘A’ Company must break the stalemate by attacking the stronghold being used by the Germans pinning down ‘D’ Company. But it would be mid-morning before this attack was organized.

  The Hasty P’s, meanwhile, hoped to renew the division’s advance sooner by infiltrating the scout platoon and ‘B’ Company into Santa Maria di Scacciano just before dawn. At 0430 hours, this small force crept into a clutch of small buildings on the village’s south edge and hunkered down until dawn.

  Ninety minutes later, company commander Captain Lazier judged it sufficiently light to begin the attack and ordered his men forward just as two Germans appeared on the road about one hundred yards ahead, ambling along and chatting back and forth unconcernedly. Someone shouted at the two men to surrender. The startled Germans dropped their weapons and dashed for cover, while the shout served to alert the paratroopers holding several nearby houses. Machine guns and rifles blazed out of windows and doorways and ‘B’ Company found itself ensnarled in a house-to-house melee. Although two houses were quickly captured, no further advance proved possible.36

  When Lazier reported that he was stalemated, Lieutenant Colonel Don Cameron decided to move his tactical headquarters forward to enable him to make a personal assessment.37 Cameron and the commander of a supporting squadron of 48th Royal Tank Regiment were soon lying in a position overlooking the village, but sniper fire aimed their way was so intense they could hardly take a look at things before being forced to duck for cover.38 Realizing further frontal attacks were unlikely to succeed, Cameron ordered ‘A’ Company with a troop of tanks to move across country and seize a height of ground right of the village from which it could hit the defending Germans with flanking fire.

  Captain Bill Graydon’s ‘A’ Company marched forward at 0914 hours, but was stopped in its tracks about halfway to the objective by machine-gun fire from a heavily defended position in a nearby farmhouse. When several mortars started bracketing the company with rounds, Graydon rushed his men into the shelter of a farm building. Realizing the supporting tanks were unable to see the German position, Graydon ran over to where they were idling. Just as he grabbed the phone hooked to the back of the Churchill, which enabled infantry to communicate with the tankers inside, six machine gun slugs tore into his leg and knocked him flat. Unable to either stand to reach the phone or to yell loud enough to draw the attention of the tankers inside their armoured shell, Graydon could only painfully crawl back to the building housing his men and have ‘A’ Company try to neutralize the German strongpoint with small-arms fire.39 Like the RCR on their right flank, the Hasty P’s were now stalled.

  Listening to the reports coming into his headquarters in Monte Albano, Brigadier Allan Calder knew the RCR and Hasty P’s needed help. He also thought the attack currently planned by the RCR’s ‘A’ Company must fail, so Calder cancelled it and froze the regiment in place.40 Deciding it was time to commit his reserve regiment, he had summoned the 48th Highlanders of Canada’s Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie for an 0700 hours briefing.41 The Highlanders had been waiting with ‘B’ Squadron, 48 RTR and three troops of M10 Tank Destroyers to dash through the gap the two leading regiments were to open all the way to the Marano River.42 That plan, Calder said, was off and the reserve force must break through the enemy line left of the Hasty P’s in a mid-afternoon attack.

  At 1000 hours, Vokes, Brigadier Dawnay, and 1 CID’s artillery brigadier, Bill Ziegler, bustled into Calder’s headquarters. Vokes pronounced that the brigade was flagging and “stressed the importance of speed on our part,” Calder later wrote.43 Calder explained the difficulties presented by the terrain and reminded Vokes sharply that the German strength was “greatly in excess of that reported by intelligence, and on which [the] plan was based.”44

  Vokes acknowledged that Calder was right. He also knew the situation was only going to get worse, for his intelligence staff had just reported the 303rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment being rushed into the line facing the division to stiffen the defences. Further, because Coriano Ridge threatened 1 CID’s left flank, Vokes believed the entire Canadian advance “may be stopped here for a few days.”45 Still, he urged Calder to pick up the pace. Vokes left Ziegler to help Calder organize supporting artillery for his forthcoming attack.46

  Back at the rather sumptuous seaside villa headquarters at Cattolica in which Vokes had recently settled, the major general ordered 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Paul Bernatchez, at 1400 hours, to move to a position overlooking the Conca River. He warned Bernatchez to be ready to take over the advance from 1 CIB on a moment’s notice. When Bernatchez tried to reconnoitre the new battleground, he found the Conca River valley completely obscured by “the smoke… of battle.” Thinking an aerial view might reveal some sense of the terrain, Bernatchez and Captain D.F. Rankine arranged to go up in the corps’s reconnaissance plane. The small plane was just starting its climb away from the runway, however, when it stalled and crashed. With his jaw fractured, Bernatchez was hospitalized.47 Lieutenant Colonel Pat Bogert, former commander of the West Nova Scotia Regiment and currently Vokes’s general staff officer, took over the brigade.

  IN THE EARLY afternoon, Lieutenant Jimmy Quayle and his scouts joined the RCR’s ‘B’ Company in the southern outskirts of Riccione and hotly engaged the German snipers there, killing ten in short order. As the sniper battle raged, Quayle realized false windows had been painted on some of the houses in an apparent attempt to lure the Canadians into betraying their positions by firing at these bogus openings, which would appear to provide a firing port for German snipers. On learning that ‘B’ Company’s No. 11 Platoon was isolated far to the right in a couple of buildings opposite the road, three of Quayle’s men dashed across the open ground between the company’s main position and the platoon in an attempt to reinforce the vulnerable unit. Just as the scouts saw several men from the platoon trying to wave them off, a Spandau covering the open field opened fire. The lead soldier, Private D.E. Cake, fell to the first burst, and when privates R.R. Greenough and A.W. Burt tried to carry the wounded man to cover another burst cut them down.48 Although volunteers from No. 11 Platoon eventually managed to drag Cake into their position, he died from his wounds.

  With ‘B’ Company’s situation increasingly perilous and its casualties mounting alarmingly, Ritchie ordered Major Sandy Mitchell to disengage, falling back on the regiment’s tactical headquarters. The company would have to wait until nightfall, Mitchell reported, for No. 11 Platoon could not possibly escape its trap while it was light.49 Ritchie concurred.

  Ritchie knew he had no alternative but to pull ‘B’ Company out of the village, but having no intention of abandoning the overall attack, he ordered ‘D’ Company to seize the high ground it had failed to reach the previous day. ‘A’ Company, which had originally been tasked to carry out this assignment, was now obviously too shot up to succeed and so was assigned instead to covering ‘D’ Company�
�s attack.

  The slope up the hill lacked any cover, so Captain George Hungerford simply ordered his men to fix bayonets and then Company ‘D’ charged uphill with Lieutenant Danny Burns’s No. 18 Platoon leading. A machine-gun round glanced off the lieutenant’s helmet and knocked him down, but the dazed officer staggered to his feet and continued leading the charge. The platoon overran one machine-gun post and killed the paratroopers manning it, and was halfway to the objective before withering overlapping fire from several positions stalled their assault. Realizing the company was going to be chopped to pieces, Ritchie recalled Hungerford and his men back to the original start position. The lieutenant colonel decided there was nothing to do but tee up supporting artillery and try again in the morning.50

  Left of the RCR, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment’s ‘B’ Company and the scout platoon continued their lone fight on the edge of Santa Maria di Scacciano while waiting for nightfall and the opportunity to pull out. The slightest move attracted immediate swarms of sniper, machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire that slowly decimated the ranks and an attempt by Major Alan Ross’s ‘D’ Company to reinforce the embattled company was stopped cold well short of the village by well-entrenched and armed paratroopers. Lazier decided the situation was so desperate that the only hope for survival lay in mounting a probably suicidal spoiling attack in order to bring his platoons back together.

  Precisely at noon, he led the survivors in a wild rush through heavy gunfire, with the two platoons linking up midway and then dashing on to seize a line of houses inside the village. A chaotic, confused melee ensued with Canadians and paratroopers fighting hand-to-hand and showering each other with grenades. Both platoon commanders died during the hour-long fight that ended with ‘B’ Company in possession of several buildings but so depleted that further advance was impossible. Both sides had taken a mauling and a truce was negotiated to enable evacuation of all the wounded. A German medic treated the most badly wounded Canadians, helping ensure they survived the trip back to the Hasty P’s Regimental Aid Post.