The Gothic Line

by Mark Zuehlke

  Meanwhile, ‘B’ Company passed by the great building containing ‘D’ Company and headed directly towards the cluster of buildings to the north, only to suddenly come under heavy fire from numerous positions to their front. The company commander radioed back to Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson that the village was in enemy hands and held in force. Heavy artillery and mortar fire also started zeroing in on all elements of the regiment with an uncanny accuracy made possible by spotters positioned on San Fortunato Ridge. In short order, the Seaforths suffered more than two dozen casualties from shellfire.29

  Thomson set up his headquarters alongside ‘D’ Company in the Palazzo des Vergers. His radio signaller, Corporal Jack Haley, who was having trouble adjusting to being wrenched from a seaside villa in Cattolica and dropped back into combat, was unable to establish communications because the thick walls blocked transmissions.* So he strung a radio aerial through a window, trying to ignore the way Germans shells banging against the outside walls sent great shudders through the massive building. Once the aerial was in place, Haley decided the heavily constructed building was a pretty safe place to stay put in.

  But Thomson had a habit of never wanting to stay where it was safe and the radio reports coming in were confused and spotty on details. The Seaforths seemed to be engaged in a fight for ground that was supposed to be secure and the lieutenant colonel was supposed to shortly send his men to attack San Fortunato Ridge. Thomson told Haley to grab his No. 18 set and the two men would take a jeep and see what was really going on.

  Driving the jeep up a narrow track, Thomson parked behind an old powerhouse standing alone on a little pinnacle of rocky ground. Haley unloaded the radio and ran inside. Shells were exploding all around the building and bits and pieces of wall and ceiling kept collapsing. Shrapnel sizzled through the room. Haley thought they were in a “damned unsafe place.”30 Then the jeep was hit and blew up.

  Thomson, who had until then been calmly studying the surrounding land, decided Haley was right. He told the signaller to whistle up tactical headquarters and request a tank to come fetch them. It soon clanked up next to the building. Thomson jumped aboard and pulled the radio into the turret with him. Haley started to follow, but the tank commander cheerily told him there was no more room inside. The increasingly terrifled twenty-two-year-old radioman clung to the back of the tank, with dirt showering down upon him

  * Haley, serving in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals, had the distinction of serving in all three of 2 CIB’s regiments in the role of the commander’s signaller during pivotal battles. He served under PPCLI Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Ware at Villa Rogatti outside Ortona, Loyal Edmonton Lieutenant Colonel Rowan Coleman at the Hitler Line, and now with Thomson in his greatest test of arms. Haley, who was with the initial Canadian landing force in Sicily, ultimately marched through to war’s end without ever being wounded.

  from near misses that hurled great clots of earth into the air. As the tank rumbled through a farm, Haley saw a cow, one back leg shattered, struggling about on the remaining three. Finally, they reached the headquarters and Haley gratefully dragged his radio into the safety of its stout walls.31

  It was noon and Thomson returned just in time to be advised by a liaison officer from 2 CIB headquarters that Brigadier Graeme Gibson wanted the Seaforths to attack San Fortunato at 1530 hours.32

  Grabbing Haley and his radio, Thomson had the liaison officer drive them back to brigade headquarters. He walked straight up to Gibson and told the brigadier an attack on San Fortunato was impossible until San Martino was secured. Gibson received this information dourly and then stared down at Thomson’s feet, which were stuffed into running shoes rather than army-issue boots. “When the other ranks have to be wearing boots,” Gibson sniffed, “you shouldn’t be wearing running shoes.” Thomson just ignored him.33 He and Haley hitched a ride back to the Seaforths’ headquarters, where the lieutenant colonel told his staff the San Fortunato attack was off until 0700 hours the next day.

  Meanwhile, their task was to secure San Martino, but his company commanders reported all being pinned down and taking heavy casualties. Nobody was inside San Martino and the prospects of getting there looked poor. Thomson ordered everyone to fall back and then sent patrols out after dark to gather intelligence on the locations of the German positions. In the early morning hours of September 17, they confirmed that San Martino and its approaches were strongly held. When advised of this, Gibson agreed to postpone the San Fortunato attack until 0700 hours of September 18 to give Thomson a day to clear San Martino.34

  AT 0300 HOURS on September 16, while the Seaforths and Van Doos were attempting to carry out the hand-off at San Martino, the 48th Highlanders set off from the north bank of the Marano River. They expected to pursue a demoralized enemy retreating to the fortified Rimini Line, which reportedly hinged on San Fortunato Ridge. So confident was 1st CIB’s Brigadier Allan Calder that the operation would proceed smoothly that he had pulled all the regimental commanders out of the line to give their second-in-commands a chance at combat leadership. It came as a complete surprise therefore when ‘B’ Company crossed the start line on this cold, moonless morning and was instantly raked by three machine guns. This was Lieutenant Walter Moore’s first action, and within seconds a bullet in the spine felled the young officer. More German machine guns opened up on the section of men he had been leading forward. There seemed to be enemy positions wherever they looked and German tanks were grinding about nearby. Moore was paralyzed and the section leader, Corporal Alex McCrae, feared that trying to move the officer without a stretcher might cause permanent injury. Forming a protective ring around their lieutenant, the section dug in.35

  Seeing that his lead platoon was pinned down not just by infantry but by tanks, Captain Gordon Proctor requested that the antitank platoon’s two six-pounder guns cover a renewed attack. He told the Highlanders’ second-in-command, Major Don Banton, that the company was also taking heavy casualties. Banton realized this was no exercise and that his command skills were about to be severely tested.

  Fortunately, he had some good news for Proctor. Instead of anti-tank guns, the major promised tanks. Meanwhile, he sent ‘D’ Company, under Captain Lloyd Smith, to link up with Proctor and get ready to pass through once the rest of the regiment came up on line. ‘B’ Company would then slip into reserve and have the opportunity to retrieve and evacuate its wounded.

  At 0405 hours, the Highlanders married up with tanks from ‘B’ Squadron, 48th Royal Tank Regiment and started moving out with three companies—‘A,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D’—in line across with the tanks in similarly extended order behind.36 Passing through ‘B’ Company, the strung-out force headed towards the obstructing machine-gun positions. It was growing light and San Martino overlooked the advancing troop to the northwest. From this height on their left flank, numerous machine guns, mortars, and Nebelwerfers opened up with a withering sheet of long-range fire to which seemingly countless snipers added their weight. ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, with the tanks in tow, pushed on, leaving a trail of blood-soaked khaki figures lying dead or wounded in their wake. ‘D’ Company meanwhile met head-on the same machine guns that had forced ‘B’ Company to ground and Captain Smith quickly ordered his men to take cover alongside Proctor’s troops. The right-hand flank of the attack was finished.

  ‘A’ Company’s Captain George Fraser had marched from the tip of Sicily through Italy to reach this day. During that long journey he had never experienced such concentrated fire. Somehow the two companies on the left flank managed to get within three hundred yards of their initial objective, a dry streambed running west to east across their front roughly in line with the northwest corner of Rimini airfield. They were about a half-mile southeast of San Martino and the closer they came to the ridge the thicker the fire. Finally, it was too much. The two companies hit the dirt. Fraser established his company headquarters in a culvert and was joined there by Major Bill Joss, the squadron tank commander. When Joss directed a Church
ill to blow down a house sheltering German positions, an 88-millimetre gun hidden inside returned fire and the tank was knocked out. Between paratroopers ambushing the tanks with Faustpatrones and the fire of the antitank guns, ‘B’ Squadron’s tanks were almost all disabled by 1100 hours.

  There was no going forward and no going back in broad daylight. Infantry and tankers hid as best they could and tried to endure. ‘C’ Company’s Captain Pat Bates tried to tee up some artillery, but Banton confessed that none was available because all the artillery assigned to support the 1 CIB attack was committed to trying to help the Royal Canadian Regiment extract itself from similarly dire straits.

  At 1300 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie, having refused to stand by uselessly in the rear while his command died, burst into the regimental headquarters and took over from Banton. An hour later, Bates and Fraser reported that further advance was impossible. Bates said his position was becoming “untenable.”37

  ‘D’ Company had meanwhile managed to reorganize and then bypass the enemy machine guns that had pinned it and ‘B’ Company down. When the company reached a position overlooking the dusty little streambed that was their objective, Lieutenant Murray Hoffman set up his platoon headquarters inside a stone building. Moments later, 88-millimetres firing from San Martino promptly blasted the little structure to pieces. Hoffman suffered a head injury from falling debris. Then Lieutenant D. Watson was shot in the hand by a sniper. Captain Smith told Mackenzie that the Germans had his company zeroed in.38

  At 1600 hours, the few surviving ‘B’ Squadron tanks pulled back 150 yards to a position where they could get hull down from the German antitank guns.39 Mackenzie ordered his three most forward rifle companies to fall back on this position as well. There was nothing to do but reorganize and try again next morning.

  The Glamour Boys had been hard hit. Thirteen men were dead, another forty wounded. Four other men were missing and presumed captured. After midnight, Corporal McCrae organized a stretcher party and brought Lieutenant Moore in from where he had spent the day lying helplessly under the barrels of the still intact German machine guns.40

  THE ROYAL CANADIAN REGIMENT had also passed the day creeping slowly into the face of determined resistance from 1st Parachute Division troops and the slashing fire from San Martino. As had been true for the Highlanders, the regiment’s second-in-command, Major Strome Galloway, was initially in charge. But unlike the Highlanders, the RCR had trouble even reaching the initial start line.41

  Captain J. Milton Gregg, a Permanent Force officer whose father, Milton Gregg, had won a Victoria Cross at Cambrai while serving as an RCR lieutenant on September 8, 1918, commanded ‘A’ Company. The entire route forward to the start line was bracketed by intermittent artillery and mortar fire that finally so grew in volume and duration that Gregg ordered his men into a weed-choked little irrigation ditch—fosso Rodello—and used it as a somewhat protected approach. With the dawn, the waist-deep ditch ceased to provide worthwhile cover and Gregg hurried his men into the cover of a culvert passing under a road crossing. His leading platoon, however, had already passed this point by and was unable to fall back, which Gregg thought probably for the best because his other men were crushed shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped space. The officer had another worry. The Germans had planted demolition charges in the dirt above the culvert and the twenty-four-year-old officer feared an incoming shell might detonate these, which would undoubtedly either bury or kill them all. It was with some relief that Gregg received an order from Galloway to forget reaching the start line and fall back to a defensive position hidden from enemy view.42

  Right of the regiment’s line of advance was the wide-open three-hundred-acre expanse of Rimini airfield, which was bordered on all sides by a narrow line of mixed residential housing and pocket farms. The other three RCR companies followed a secondary road running from the Marano River to the airfield’s northwest corner. Off to their right, the 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade was supposed to come straight up the airfield and its right boundary while the Royal Canadian Dragoons hugged the coastline on the Greeks’ right flank.

  It was 0630 hours when the leading RCR companies moved to the attack, with ‘B’ Company left and ‘D’ Company right. Within seconds, the two companies lost sight of each other in the thick vegetation and walked straight into the shredder of interlocked machine-gun positions and heavy shelling from the overlooking ridges to the west. Despite mounting casualties, Captain George Hungerford’s ‘D’ Company pressed on relentlessly to the corner of the airfield before becoming pinned down. Major Sandy Mitchell’s ‘B’ Company, however, was forced to ground right off the bat by the heavy fire coming from San Martino. Every attempt to continue was broken by a fusillade that left more men dead or wounded. Lieutenant Arnold Goode, a pre-war Permanent Force sergeant who had only rejoined the regiment four days previously, after spending the past five years of war as an instructor, was killed by a sniper bullet.43

  At 1100 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Ritchie arrived at the tactical headquarters Galloway had established in a stout building right behind the start line and resumed command. He teed up an attack that sent ‘B’ and ‘D’ companies towards a line of gullies cutting across the regiment’s front, which the paratroopers were using like deep World War I trenches. Ritchie announced the attack would proceed without artillery support or tanks because whenever the supporting British tanks tried to join the infantry, a well-sited Panzerturm potshot them. The tanks were reduced to sitting helplessly behind the tactical headquarters and offering indirect fire from their main guns.44

  The two companies slogged off at 1430 hours and were immediately losing men at a steady rate. Just short of the first gully, a German shell exploded and Hungerford died. Captain Eric Hills took over.45 Corporal N.J. McMahon’s section came under fire from a house near the edge of the airfield. He led his men in a charge right into the teeth of the paratroopers’ machine guns. Inside the house, a wild melee of hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Twelve paratroops were killed and two taken prisoner. McMahon personally accounted for five or six German fatalities, but there were only two soldiers in his section still on their feet at the end of the fight. The rest were dead or wounded.46 He was awarded his third Distinguished Conduct Medal.47

  On the left flank, ‘B’ Company was mangled. When Lieutenant Dave Little and his six-man platoon got too far forward, they were cut off and captured. Among ‘B’ Company’s killed were Company Sergeant Major Anson Moore and Corporal E.G. Sullivan, both “July 10 men,” as those who had landed on the beaches of Sicily were often called.48

  Gregg’s ‘A’ Company tried to back ‘B’ Company up, but his three platoon commanders were all slightly wounded in the effort. By late afternoon, the RCR had a tenuous hold on the northwest corner of the airport, but could go no farther. The Greeks were well back on their right and the Highlanders had withdrawn to a position several hundred yards behind the RCR, who were left forming the tip of a dull arrowhead.

  Galloway confided to his diary at day’s end that “George [Hunger-ford] and I joined The Regiment at Wolseley Barracks the same day, on March 9th, 1940. He joined us out here last March at Ortona, having been left in the U.K. as an instructor. Too many friends are going. There seems so little reason for it now.”49

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  To the Last Man

  COURTESY OF ‘D’ COMPANY, Royal 22e Regiment, September 16 did yield 1st Canadian Infantry Division mastery of one significant chunk of real estate—the fingerlike spur codenamed Whipcord, southwest of San Martino. Just after 1500 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Jean Allard had briefed Major Tony Poulin outside Allard’s tactical headquarters. The lieutenant colonel pointed towards the mess of hills to their north and said, “You see that ridge there? That’s your objective.”

  Squinting, Poulin peered along Allard’s pointed arm. The incessant artillery fire had cloaked the countryside in a blue-grey smoke haze that cast everything in a watery, shimmering light. San Fortunato Ridge appeared as an ink
y black wall crowding the northwestern skyline. In front were a whole series of indistinguishable little hills. “I can’t see it,” the major confessed.1

  “God, are you blind?” Allard demanded. Poulin glanced sharply at his lieutenant colonel. The outburst was unexpected. His commander’s face was pale, drawn. Poulin thought: “He’s exhausted, fed up to the teeth. Can’t blame him. We all are. Too damned much.”

  Poulin replied carefully. “No, I’m not blind. Show me on the map.” Allard rattled a map loose and stabbed a finger at the position. Poulin recognized the little knoll that stood fifty to seventy feet higher than the surrounding terrain from when the regiment had been on San Martino ridge. Except for four buildings and a couple of haystacks, Whipcord had been flat and clear as a billiard table.

  “You’ve got to take it before nightfall,” Allard cautioned. Poulin’s watch showed he had just five hours.2 Allard gave him “full freedom to plan his approach route, his supporting fire and the disposition of the tanks.”3

  With no time for reconnaissance, Poulin could only use the map to set out a plan. Using the promised assets lavishly, the major called for a heavy concentration fired by medium and field artillery to precede the attack and then concentrate on various, specifically assigned targets. Smoke shells would cover his flanks and the regiment’s 4.2-inch and 3-inch mortars would provide covering fire. ‘C’ Squadron of the 48th Royal Tank Regiment would accompany the infantry. Once Whipcord was secure, the antitank platoon would rush the six-pounders up to bolster the night defence.4