by Mark Zuehlke
Captain Gerry Wheeler, a forward observation officer for the 2nd Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery and who normally served with the Hasty P’s, spent two evenings in Cattolica at the naval barracks. Here, an officer’s mess had been established. He was just settling down in the airy mess for lunch one day when someone noticed through the large plate-glass window facing the beach that an Italian civilian on the shore was pulling a wooden object out of the sand. Wheeler realized the man was gathering firewood, but this time he had grabbed hold of an elongated Italian box mine. An officer raced around the room shouting, “eight to five the guy’s going to blow up,” but nobody took up the bet. Another officer wearing the collar of a Roman Catholic padre was crossing himself and mouthing silent prayers. Then the mine exploded and the Italian vanished in a spray of red mist. The officer who had been trying to run a bet chastised the others for not joining in. Wheeler returned to his lunch with barely another thought about the man’s death except to note in the recesses of his mind that the war was making them all terrifically “callous.”26
Wheeler soon returned to his posting with the Hasty P’s. The headquarters here was in a barn that had been subdivided, with one end holding a number of dead cattle and the other the headquarters. A door between was kept closed to somewhat stave off the rotting stench emanating from the carcasses. After the clean salt smells of Cattolica, Wheeler found the smell overwhelming, far stronger than seemed possible as long as the door was closed. Each passing day, the odour only worsened. Finally, as he sat down to eat some hardtack and bully beef with the other officers, Wheeler said, “It’s like there’s something dead right here. I can smell it.”
Curious, one of the men started poking around in the corners. When he was just three feet from Wheeler, the man reached down and picked up an odd-looking object. “Here you are,” he said, holding up a human arm.27
Any respite from the horrors of war was too good to last and so it came as no surprise to Padre Durnford when Seaforth Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson told him on September 12 that they would soon be back in the line and that “it might be fairly sticky.” Durnford replied, “I just finished the letters to the bereaved from the last fighting.”
“You will have a lot more soon,” Thomson cautioned. Durnford noted the officer’s “terrible grimness.” The padre walked to the edge of the sea, where the early morning sun dappled the water and gently lit the sand. “The beach was all mine for ten minutes,” he wrote. “It was the first chance I had of really getting wet feet. I suppose there are very few things on earth that set a man’s thoughts along philosophical lines than when, sitting on a beach—away from sight and sound of human voice and presence, he watches and listens to the pounding of the eternal wave beats on the shore.”28
Quartermaster Sergeant Basil Smith had seen artillery massing near the Hasty P’s billet and noted that everyone knew there would soon come “a smashing blow on the high ground to the west of Rimini.” Such an attack would add to the woes already being suffered by the Germans, he thought. In the most recent issue of the army newspaper, Maple Leaf, the American First Army was reported as five miles into the Rhineland, British troops were sending patrols over the Dutch border from a bridgehead behind the Albert Canal, and the Russians had broken into East Prussia. “Tomorrow is the day Kessel-ring gets his next jolt,” Smith told his diary, “but whether we break out of here or not, it looks like it is about five minutes to twelve as far as Germany is concerned.”29
IN PREPARATION FOR the artillery concentrations against Coriano Ridge, the Canadian gun regiments started stockpiling shells on September 9, with a buildup that day in the 17th Canadian Field Regiment’s area to between 1,400 and 1,500 rounds per gun. On September 12, hours before the shelling was to commence, 6,000 more rounds were delivered to the regimental ammunition dump.30
The guns were concentrated at distances from the Canadian front lines that some gunners thought dangerously close. The 3rd Canadian Field Regiment occupied a position only about two miles south of Riccione, well within range of the German artillery and mortars positioned just to the north of the seaside town. Previously, it had been 5,000 yards from the assigned targets on Coriano Ridge, but this move had brought the regiment 1,500 yards closer. Burns wanted the guns so close to the front that it would be several days before the regiments had to shift their positions forward to keep up with the advance.
Because the corps’s medium and heavy artillery was also positioned near the 3rd Field Regiment’s guns, the Germans maintained constant shelling and mortaring on this wealth of targets throughout September 11. Anxious to get their own back with counter-battery fire, the regiment’s gunners were dismayed to learn that they were limited to firing just fifty rounds per gun until the main fire plan started on the night of September 12–13.31
With the forward movement of the guns and the shifting of infantry and armoured divisions, there was little question that the Germans must know Coriano Ridge was due for an attack. The six regiments of the 26th Panzer Division and 29th Panzer Grenadier Division positioned there continued burrowing ever deeper into the ground, readying their defenses. The Panzer Grenadiers had three regiments strung along the ridge facing 11 CIB—the 67th Panzer Grenadiers, the 15th Panzer Grenadiers, and the newly arrived 71st Panzer Grenadiers.
On September 11, sixteen-year-old Oviglio Monti had also returned with his father and mother to Coriano. They had returned in the mistaken belief that the Eighth Army had already won the village and passed it by. Conditions in the railroad tunnels of the Republic of San Marino had deteriorated so badly due to overcrowding and food and water shortages that Monti’s father, Paulo, had slipped down to Coriano a few days earlier and found the village seemingly empty. He found no traces of the Germans, who, unknown to him, were dug in to the front of Coriano. Then Monti had talked with several German soldiers who had passed through a section of the tunnels and were carrying a wounded man on a litter northward. One of the soldiers told him the battle in front of Rimini was lost and everyone was falling back.
So the Montis had decided to go home and walked across country down through the hills to their village. But they found Coriano shattered by the Eighth Army artillery and aerial bombardments that had started just two days earlier. Their home was destroyed and suddenly more shells started rocking the ruins of the village. Then dozens of Germans started dashing to and fro. It was as if they had just popped up out of the very earth. Paulo dragged his wife and sons into their home’s basement and there they waited, too frightened to try returning to San Martino.32
The Montis were not the only ones moving towards danger that day. Westminster Regiment Sergeant Ron Hurley had undergone minor surgery for the back injury suffered when his Bren carrier rolled down the embankment at Misano on September 4. On September 10, he was considered sufficiently recovered to be kicked out of hospital. Issued with a nondescript British uniform that lacked both his regimental shoulder badges and sergeant’s stripes, he was put on a train en route to a reinforcement depot. Hurley knew that the haphazard manner in which reinforcement depots operated meant there would be little likelihood that he would be reassigned to the Westminsters. Seated next to him was a guy the twenty-year-old Hurley thought looked like a “young kid.” He was all kitted out in Seaforth Highlanders of Canada regalia replete with kilt and tam, as if headed for a parade. Except the Seaforths were in Cattolica and the young man was headed south. Hurley was popping codeine tablets to ease his back pains and growing more agitated with each southward mile. When he grumbled about wanting to return to his regiment, the Seaforth kid said he wanted the same thing. The train had just entered a valley and was starting to climb up a steep grade that was slowing it to a crawl. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Hurley asked.
“Think we’re thinking the same thing,” the kid replied.
Just as the train edged over the crest, the two soldiers jumped down into a farm field. They rolled across the deep, soft dirt. Gaining his feet, Hurley watched the train
chug off into the distance. He could see the Adriatic off across some hills and knew the coastal highway followed the sea, so the two men started walking that way across country. Soon they came to an empty farmhouse and found some wine in the cellar. They got a little drunk and then walked on to the highway.
Because their travel orders directed them to report to the replacement depot, Hurley knew they were technically deserters and had to be careful not to get picked up by the military police who would be patrolling the highway. He led the young Seaforth into a hide behind a sand dune and watched the passing traffic. Some hours later, Hurley saw what he wanted, a Royal Canadian Army Service Corps truck heading north. When he ran out on the road waving his arms, the driver stopped and hung his head out the side window. “Where you guys from? You been on leave?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Hurley said with an incredulous laugh. The guy, he realized, had provided a perfect cover story. “On leave. Can you give us a lift?”
Jumping in the back, the two men were soon in the midst of I Canadian Corps. The driver dropped the Seaforth in Cattolica and then took Hurley to where the Westminsters were forming up for the attack on Coriano Ridge. When Hurley walked into headquarters, the sergeant major looked up and said, “Ron, Christ, where have you been?”
Hurley said he had been in hospital and had decided to return to the unit, but had done so without orders. “I need to tell the commander that I’m not a deserter and that I came back,” he said.
The sergeant major grinned. “You find your pack, get yourself a tunic with some stripes on it, and get the hell back to your unit. We need you right now.” Hurley did as ordered and the sergeant major put him officially back on the regimental strength roster.33 A few hours after Hurley returned to his scout platoon, seven hundred guns opened up with one great thunderous roar at 2100 hours on September 12. The fight for Coriano Ridge was on.34
PART FIVE
THE RIDGES
[ 25 ]
This Is Our House
THE CORIANO RIDGE attack was timed so that two 1st British Armoured Division regiments struck the southern slopes at 2300 hours on September 12—two hours before 11th Canadian Infantry Brigade advanced into Besanigo Valley. By midnight, the 43rd Indian (Gurkha) Lorried Brigade had cleared the village of Passano while the 18th Lorried Infantry Brigade was entangled in a bitter house-to-house fight at San Savino.1 An hour later, the Cape Breton Highlanders and Perth Regiment moved to battle. The Cape Bretoners were on the right flank headed towards the northern end of the ridge, with ‘C’ Company under Captain D.M. Chisholm to the right and Major Art Gale’s ‘D’ Company left. Captain O.J. Price’s ‘A’ Company followed Chisholm’s men, while Major Tony MacLachlan’s ‘B’ Company trailed ‘D’ company. The Highlanders formed up just behind the ridgeline crest overlooking Besanigo Valley. It was a warm night, the sky clear, the breeze gentle. The men watched the flash of explosions rocking Coriano Ridge.
It was a complex artillery program. A general soaking of the ridge and slope descending to Besanigo River preceded the infantry, which was to follow a timed creeping barrage that advanced through fifteen predesignated linear concentrations.2 Each lift to the next concentration line was timed to match the infantry’s estimated speed in covering the intervening ground. During the descent, the lift rate was one hundred yards every three minutes; across the valley floor, a hundred yards every five minutes; slowing to a hundred yards every six minutes for the long grind uphill to the summit.3
As the Highlanders entered the valley, the two leading companies crowded up so they were advancing almost in among the exploding shells. This tactic of “leaning into the barrage” offered the best protection from the inevitable counterbarrage the Germans would fire to disrupt the infantry attack.
Consequently, Company Sergeant Major Joe McIntyre, at the head of the leading platoon of ‘C’ Company, was not surprised when German shells and mortar bombs started exploding around him. A few men fell screaming, while others just crumpled soundlessly to the ground. Most kept going. Nobody stopped for the wounded; that job was for others. ‘C’ Company’s task was to get up on the ridge whatever the cost.
As the Highlanders scrambled down the river’s steep bank, ‘D’ Company plowed into a minefield that claimed more dead and wounded. The pace slowed, everyone gingerly placing one foot ahead of the other, while the barrage continued marching to the beat of the predetermined schedule. This left ‘D’ and the following ‘B’ Company nakedly exposed to German counterfire. ‘B’ Company’s Major MacLachlan was wounded. To avoid a deadly halt while a platoon commander was shifted to the company headquarters section, Company Sergeant Major Joe Oldford assumed command. His subsequent actions in this role won him a Distinguished Conduct Medal.4
It was 0130 hours when the Highlanders started sweating up the slope to the ridgeline, harassed every step of the way by German artillery. Then machine guns lashed at the leading platoons. Some men hit the dirt, but more pressed head-on into the storm of bullets. Everyone started bunching up and the four companies began getting mixed together. Platoon and company commanders were unable to use their radios to sort out the growing mess because the crazily cutup terrain blocked signals. The officers could do nothing but keep climbing and hope that enough men followed to capture the ridge.
‘A’ Company’s Company Sergeant Major Dave Bellefontaine realized there must be dazed and lost men scattered from halfway up Coriano Ridge all the way back to the start line. He made five running trips under heavy fire to the start line, returning each time with a group of men gathered along the way. As he approached the forward lines on one return trip, Bellefontaine spotted the location of a machine gun holding up the advance. He rushed it, knocked the gun out, captured the crew, and then headed down the hill to collect more stragglers. Bellefontaine won a Military Medal.5
At 0230 hours, the Highlanders stalled well up the slope but short of the objective. Lieutenant Colonel Boyd Somerville sent a curt radio message to 11 CIB’s Brigadier Ian Johnston. “We are held up, cannot put you in the picture.” He then spent thirty minutes reorganizing the men under constant fire into some semblance of their proper companies before renewing the climb.6
Meanwhile, the Perth Regiment was closing on its objective about three hundred yards to the right of Coriano village and the small overlooking castle. There had been no minefield blocking their path and very little resistance offered by dug-in machine guns. The platoon of ‘C’ Company’s Lieutenant H.C. Pattison had leaned into the barrage right to the summit and reported being on the objective at 0215. A few minutes later, ‘A’ Company’s two leading platoons, under lieutenants T.S. Cooper and F. Culliton, arrived at their objectives just a few minutes later.7
At 0300 hours, a troop from 8th Princess Louise New Brunswick Hussars’ ‘C’ Squadron clanked onto the forward slope of the ridge south of Besanigo Valley to support the attack by shelling Coriano village. Given their druthers, the tankers would have been set up in their firing position before nightfall, but the infantry officers had scuttled that notion for fear that the presence of the tanks would betray the attack’s start line to the German artillery spotters. Realizing that finding the designated positions to ensure their 75-millimetre fire ranged accurately on the village would be impossible in the darkness unaided by lights, troop commander Lieutenant Ronald Lisson improvised an ingenious solution. While it was still light, he crawled down the slope and staked out each tank’s position. Then, when he heard the tanks groping through the inky blackness towards him, Lisson lit cigarettes and placed one atop each stake. The tankers used the dull red glow of each cigarette to align their Shermans precisely where they were supposed to be, set their guns to the preset angle and range, and started shelling the village. Their four hundred rounds all landed among the badly battered buildings.8
The fire from the Shermans did little to aid the Highlanders in winning a foothold on the ridgeline, however. ‘D’ Company was completely stalled, so ‘B’ Company slipped to the right beh
ind ‘C’ Company, which was closing on the objective. As ‘B’ Company undertook its hasty shift to the right, Lieutenant H.N. MacLeod assumed command of the company from CSM Oldford and then swung the men out in line to the left of ‘C’ Company. Ignoring the German machine-gun fire whipping around him, MacLeod doggedly led his men onto the ridge and both companies were digging in on the objective by 0400 hours.
‘C’ Company’s CSM Joe McIntyre never made the ridge. He fell victim to the counter-artillery fire halfway up the slope when a chunk of shrapnel drove in under his helmet and deeply gouged his head. Dizzy and bleeding, McIntyre staggered for the shelter of a small house. As he entered the building, the CSM spotted and fired at a German soldier crouched in the shadows. The unharmed German ripped a board off a rear window, dived out, and ran into the night.
Sometime later, Captain Chisholm’s batman, Private Fred Mallet, tracked the CSM down and was in the process of climbing into the house through a window when an artillery shell crashed through the roof and exploded in the room. The blast hurled Mallet seventy-five feet from the house and pierced his back with five pieces of shrapnel. Although both were evacuated as wounded, McIntyre and Mallet both returned to the regiment just ten days later.9
BACK AT BESANIGO RIVER, the 10th Field Squadron, Royal Canadian Engineers was trying to erect a crossing to enable the 8th Princess Louise New Brunswick Hussars to gain the ridge before daylight in order to repel the expected German counterattacks. It was a tough job made tougher by the incessant German shellfire and a grave manpower shortage. That morning, the men had been gathering around the cook’s truck for breakfast when a shell struck and inflicted twenty-eight casualties, nine of which were fatal. Reinforcing the squadron with a platoon drawn from the 14th Field Company, RCE had still failed to bring it up to full strength.10