by Mark Zuehlke
[ 23 ]
A Hard Row To Hoe
BECAUSE THE ALLIES had enjoyed overwhelming air superiority from the outset of the Italian campaign, German air squadrons seldom posed a threat. On the night of September 4–5, however, the Luftwaffe made a surprise attack that included remarkably accurate raids on the headquarters of both 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade and the Royal Canadian Regiment.
The raid against the RCR came right as its company officers and headquarters staff had gathered to await Lieutenant Colonel Jim Ritchie’s return from brigade HQ with orders for renewed operations. A German fighter-bomber screamed down and scored a direct hit. “Glass and mortar flew everywhere but no one was hurt,” Major Strome Galloway later wrote. As the plane circled back for a strafing run, the officers ran in an ever narrowing clump to the cellar door, with Galloway first to arrive. Halfway down the steps, he turned and shouted, “Don’t panic, don’t panic.” The support company commander, Major Morgan John, wryly remarked that Galloway was the only one partially sheltered, “the others being held at the head of the stairs by [Galloway’s] stopping halfway down and turning around to calm them down.”1
Ritchie was caught in the same strafing run. He and his driver bailed out of their jeep and dived into a ditch moments before the vehicle was riddled by machine-gun slugs.2 The lieutenant colonel calmly dusted his uniform off and walked on to headquarters, where by this time the panicked officers had recovered and were gathered around the map table for the briefing.
The attack inflicted no casualties. Elsewhere, however, the pilots of a German bomber spotted ‘A’ Company of the 48th Highlanders of Canada moving towards the front lines on a road bathed in moonlight and dropped a stick of bombs precisely on target. They then swept the road with machine guns before breaking off the attack. Although casualties were surprisingly light, when the smoke cleared and everyone emerged from the roadside ditches, Company Sergeant Major Gordon Keeler was found with legs so mangled that both had to be amputated. The company’s morale was badly shaken as much from the loss of the veteran CSM as from the unfamiliar terror inherent to undergoing an aerial attack.3 Nine men were killed and thirty-two wounded by Luftwaffe planes attacking 5th Canadian Armoured Division positions.4
Throughout I Canadian Corps, the air raids further rattled already exhausted front-line troops barely fit for continued combat. Yet 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s Major General Chris Vokes still sought a breakthrough to the Marano River and ordered Brigadier Allan Calder to continue the advance. 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade would attack at dawn, while simultaneously the Royal Canadian Dragoons would use the coastal highway to drive through to Riccione.
The operational plan for 1 CIB remained little changed from the previous day, with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment again attacking Santa Maria di Scacciano and the tactically important ridge-line on its left. Simultaneously, ‘D’ Company would hit the village and ‘A’ Company the ridge. A heavy artillery program would immediately precede the attack. Moving in on the heels of the heavy shelling, the two companies reported with some surprise that they had easily taken both village and ridge. Several prisoners proved to be from the 162nd Turcoman Division rather than 1st Parachute Division, leading intelligence officers to speculate that the 162nd Division had been caught in the midst of a poorly executed relief of the paratroopers.5
On the Hasty P’s right-hand flank, the RCR found the height of land previously held so doggedly by the paratroopers since September 3 manned only by a motley group of Turcoman troops. Even though still armed, eleven of these eastern European conscripts surrendered to Private J.W. Gardner without offering any resistance and then indicated to Gardner and Corporal R.W. Peters by sign language that they wished to keep their weapons. The two soldiers escorted the still-armed men back to the regiment’s tactical headquarters where intelligence staff determined that the conscripts hoped to join the Canadians in fighting their former masters. They were gently coaxed into laying down their guns and then sent back to the prisoner cage.6
Racing up to the secured ridgeline, Ritchie and Galloway quickly examined the ground ahead and planned how to make a run for the Marano River. The only major obstacle was the Melo River, which flowed out of the hills and through the north end of Riccione. Immediately in front of the RCR position, the Melo became two parallel-running tributaries, both canalized, that merged at a coastal highway bridge crossing. On the north side of the bridge, the highway cut through the heart of San Lorenzo in Strada, but first it passed through a loose cluster of buildings clumped around a tall-spired church. Ritchie set this church as his next objective.
‘B’ Company led off under Major Sandy Mitchell, with Captain Rick Forgrave’s ‘C’ Company tucked in close behind. Although Mitchell advanced cautiously, progress was good. By noon, the leading platoons were closing on the first tributary when some well-positioned heavy machine guns blocked the advance. It seemed 1st Parachute Division had reappeared.7
To ‘B’ Company’s right, the Royal Canadian Dragoons also met scant resistance at first and slipped into Riccione at noon. The resort town had been a favourite Fascist haunt before the war, even boasting a villa owned by Benito Mussolini. The squadron’s Dingoes and Staghounds slowly rumbled up streets littered with broken glass, fragments of furniture, torn clothing, empty wine bottles, shredded bedding, and the occasional civilian corpse. A few townspeople ducked furtively down alleys or into doorways as sporadic German mortar and artillery fire ripped up more cobblestones, stripped tiles off the roofs, and battered the sides of houses.
At the Melo River, the Dragoons found all the bridges blown and Germans dug in on the opposite bank. When a sergeant dismounted from his Staghound to check for a possible crossing, the Germans set the armoured car ablaze by firing a Faustpatrone across the canal. Two of the crewmen were wounded and the sergeant died trying to help his men escape the burning wreck. Unable to force a crossing, the RCD dismounted from its armoured cars and set up defensive positions inside a line of houses bordering the Melo for the length of its passage through Riccione.8
An odd war ensued, with each side stationed “in comfortable houses, served by bewildered but docile Italians. For a block or two on each side of the canal patrols slipped warily past street corners for fear of hostile MGs on fixed lines. Forward Observation Officers of various artillery units under command of I Canadian Corps lolled luxuriously on sofas in the upper storeys of the seaside hotels and called down fire on suspected buildings; while in the houses lining the canal snipers lay hopefully waiting for the day’s ‘kill.’ Beyond maintaining strong street patrols to keep down looting, most of the RCD had a rest period, although sniping and mortaring caused occasional casualties.”9 With no idea how this standoff could be ended, the Dragoons seemed content to enjoy this unexpected respite from the dangers of an all-out offensive.
Things proved far more bloody when the RCR attacked the church south of San Lorenzo in Strada. Standing atop a bit of high ground, the church and its surrounding buildings had been transformed into a strong defensive position housing numerous machine guns. ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies hit the first resistance at 1935 hours and immediately started taking casualties. When ‘B’ Company got in among the buildings, its leading No. 10 Platoon came under intense fire from machine guns, rifle grenades, and Faustpatrones. “An additional hazard was that practically every building through which the platoon had to pass was either on fire or had been burned and consisted only of shells which were gradually demolished by enemy [Faustpatrones],” the regiment’s war diarist wrote.10 When the attack faltered, the two companies pulled back to regroup for an attempt to infiltrate the German positions under cover of darkness.
At 0045 hours on September 6, Lieutenant Dave Fisher went forward with two sections of No. 12 Platoon numbering less than twenty men, while the third section and the platoon headquarters section provided a covering base of fire. The tiny force sneaked through to the church undetected and slipped inside. Fisher hoped to establish a str
ong firebase here that the rest of the company could drive towards. No sooner had he swept out the few German defenders, however, than the paratroopers counterattacked in force. They fired Faustpatrones through the windows and blew doors open with explosives. Setting up an MG42 machine gun in a building facing the main doors, the paratroopers fired deadly streams of fire directly down the church’s centre aisle. Rounds ricocheted wildly off the solidly constructed altar. Fisher was just considering aloud whether they should make a break for it when two paratroopers appeared at the top of the balcony stairs next to the altar.
Realizing they could bring the entire platoon under fire, Fisher rushed them. Halfway up the stairs, however, a Faustpatrone charge struck the wall next to the lieutenant and the blast killed him instantly. Corporal R. Duhaime took command and yelled to the rest of the men that they should make a break back to the company lines. Duhaime led the men towards a door through which a German suddenly appeared with a Faustpatrone shouldered in the ready firing position. When the corporal fired his Thompson at the man, the gun jammed. He then rushed the German, grabbed the Faustpatrone with his left hand, and wrenched it out of the paratrooper’s grasp. Using his Thompson to bludgeon the man’s head, Duhaime knocked the German unconscious. He then led the platoon back to the company’s base in a narrow gully. Just twenty-five minutes had passed since Fisher first led his men towards the church. The platoon suffered just two casualties, with Fisher the only fatality.11
While the RCR were engaged at the church position, the 48th Highlanders of Canada and a supporting force of tanks had moved on the hamlet of Besanigo, standing on a ridge about a mile to the left. Meeting only scant resistance, the Highlanders closed on Besanigo by mid-morning and were surprised to find well-dug-in elements of 5th Canadian Armoured Division’s Irish Regiment of Canada already strung out along the ridge.
Staying right of the Irish to avoid mingling divisional lines, Captain L.G. Smith’s ‘D’ Company descended into the gully that formed the lower reaches of the Besanigo River prior to its juncture with the Melo River. Here the company smacked into a hard wall of German machine-gun positions and ground to a halt. Corporal Murray Percy Thomas was wounded in the abdomen and left shoulder. Although in great pain, Thomas charged across the thirty-five-yard open ground between himself and the Spandau gunner who had shot him. After killing the two-man crew with a long burst from his Thompson, the corporal collapsed. Surviving his wounds, Thomas won a Military Medal.12
The exploit failed to shatter the German defensive line, however, and ‘D’ Company was soon pinned down in the creek bed. Highlander commander Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie was planning how to crack the German position when Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Clark of the Irish Regiment arrived and told him that he had just received a message from I Canadian Corps. The Highlanders, he said, having been ruled as being inside 5 CAD’s designated territory, must pull back and then hook hard to the right to pass immediately south of the hamlet. From there, they were to execute a sharp left turn and cross the Melo River at a point that would place them back inside 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s narrowing sector. This would leave 5 CAD free to swing around the choke point of Coriano Ridge.13
After extracting ‘D’ Company from the gully, the Highlanders carried out the realignment, managed to cross the Melo River, and even reached a point of high ground less than one thousand yards from the Marano River before nightfall and stiffening German resistance precluded further gains. Unknown to the Highlanders, they had achieved the deepest penetration into the German lines that would be won for another week. On every other front, Eighth Army was being blocked. And it was Coriano Ridge that presented the primary obstacle.
BY EARLY MORNING on September 6, it was apparent that the attempt to the west by 1st British Armoured Division to break through at Coriano Ridge had failed. But the situation reports by Major General Richard Hull to his counterpart Major Bert Hoffmeister were “conflicting and confusing… and it was only possible to obtain from them the fact that the enemy was building up resources, particularly tanks, on the San Savino–Coriano ridge.”14
In the midst of this uncertainty, Hoffmeister directed the Irish Regiment of Canada to “send patrols across River Marano and to try and build it up to company strength if possible.”15 Preparatory to this effort, Lieutenant Bobby Clark ordered the regiment advanced to a forward spur of Besanigo Ridge upon which stood the village of San Andrea. Upon arriving there, however, the Irish realized that Coriano, “a group of white houses, clustered about church spires atop its hill… prohibited any hope of crossing the Marano. For from that town,” wrote the regiment’s historian, “would come the artillery and perhaps the counterattack which would have spelled disaster to our venture.”16
Clark established his headquarters in the whitewashed San Andrea church, intending to use its steeple as an observation point. No sooner had his staff set up tables, wired in the phones, and laid out the maps than the building started taking artillery and mortar fire accurately vectored in by German forward observation officers stationed on Coriano Ridge. Expecting the British to soon clear Coriano, Clark decided against repositioning the headquarters somewhere farther to the rear. Instead, he got busy sending patrols to test the resistance in front of the Marano River preparatory to pushing at least one company across that obstacle by day’s end. A combination of fire from well-positioned German infantry in front of the river and a virtual rain of artillery and mortar fire, however, quickly drove these patrols back.17
At 1030 hours, Clark told Hoffmeister no further progress was possible so long as Coriano remained in German hands. Hoffmeister immediately arranged for the Desert Air Force to move its bomb demarcation line forward from the San Fortunato Ridge area to the north side of Marano River, so that targets there and on Coriano Ridge could be pounded from the air. But thickening cloud had settled over the entire area, which seriously hampered effective targeting and a planned attack by four hundred medium bombers was ultimately cancelled because the bombardiers could not see their targets.18
The Irish Regiment and the other two regiments of 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade positioned behind and on either flank endured a long, hard day of heavy shelling. Clark, who had earlier thought San Andrea was just a brief stop on the way to Rimini, issued orders in the afternoon for his staff to dig in as deeply as possible.
With the entire situation beginning to stagnate, I Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant General Tommy Burns arranged to meet Hull and Hoffmeister at 11 CIB’s headquarters.19 The three men agreed that until Coriano was taken, further advance by 5 CAD was impossible. Hull acknowledged that his division had the task of clearing the ridge, but was “being hampered by the high ground held by the enemy on his left and left rear.”20 Hoffmeister suggested that his division might clear Coriano by attacking from the east while Hull kept driving towards the village from the south. Although this plan looked feasible, the generals knew that Eighth Army commander General Oliver Leese must approve such a dramatic change in corps boundaries. Optimistic such approval would be granted, Hoffmeister started organizing the 12th Canadian Infantry Brigade to carry out such an attack against the ridge. At 1815 hours, Leese squelched the plan by instructing Burns that 12 CIB should “stand fast in its present positions.”21
With each passing day of only painfully and slowly won gains, Leese had grown more hesitant and petulant. There would be no grand dash to the Po Valley. Indeed, his insistence on bringing Eighth Army over to the Adriatic for the decisive assault on the Gothic Line seemed increasingly ill thought. Even the weather was conspiring against him, for September 6 had been a day of cloud and intermittent showers that reduced the roads to mud-slick tracks. If the rain continued, the offensive could stall right where it was and the battle be lost.
To his wife, Leese complained: “This campaign is a hard row to hoe. It is the most difficult country in Europe, and yet we always get troops and equipment taken away from us for elsewhere. We have done all our fighting on a very narrow margin
of relative strengths—I suppose it is all the more satisfactory to achieve.” Things, Leese said, had “not been easy” with General Harold Alexander, Deputy Supreme Commander, Mediterranean “since I decided not to go on slogging opposite Florence. I am sure I was right, and we’ve been partially vindicated since we’ve broken into the Plains, and I think there is disappointment. They don’t realize what we are up against and that it takes time.”22
But Eighth Army was not “into the Plains,” and it would take a set-piece attack against Coriano Ridge to even renew its advance towards the Po. Leese met with Alexander, who, after studying the situation and considering the meteorological reports that called for short-term weather deterioration, agreed that a reorganization of several days was necessary.23
ORDERS MADE ON HIGH take time to filter down to the line units, however, and so the afternoon of September 6 saw two Canadian regiments still battering their way forward. At 0400 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Ritchie mustered the seriously depleted companies of the Royal Canadian Regiment to try seizing the church fronting San Lorenzo in Strada. The job went to Captain J. Birnie Smith’s ‘A’ Company, which, having lost 35 per cent of its strength, numbered only 75 men. The even more reduced ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies were to follow behind.
It was raining as the men moved out at 0600 hours. Smith was up front slogging through the gooey mud with his leading platoons when the same “murderous machine-gun fire” that had shredded ‘B’ Company’s earlier attack ripped into his company. All down the company line, men fell dead or wounded. “In the face of this,” wrote the RCR war diarist, “and showing contempt for danger Captain Smith kept going steadily forward, urging his men to within thirty-five yards of the enemy strongpoint determined to achieve his objective and carry out his commanding officer’s intentions. By this time, the company was reduced to half its strength and was coming under withering fire from three sides. Rallying the remnants and personally hurling hand grenades at the enemy, Captain Smith kept leading his men forward.