The Gothic Line

by Mark Zuehlke

  Although rich in supporting arms, Poulin was poor in manpower. ‘D’ Company numbered only fifty-two men, twelve of whom were reinforcements the major had pieced off in fours to each of his three platoons. The company veterans—figuring the reinforcements inexperienced cannon fodder—hardly bothered learning their names.

  Three minutes after the guns started firing at 1934 hours, Poulin waved his men forward with the tanks clanking along behind. He had two platoons out front, each numbering eighteen men, and the weaker third platoon behind. After firing a ten-minute general soaking program, the artillery would switch to hunting specifically designated targets. Despite the smoke screen dropped to conceal the company from the heights of San Martino, machine guns positioned there started slashing at his right flank. Hearing the snap of dozens of rounds passing overhead, Poulin urged the leading platoons to greater speed. But suddenly everyone up ahead stopped dead and dived to the ground. The two platoon commanders yelled at the men to get up, but nobody would budge.

  A three-foot-high barbed-wire fence that looked as if it had been abandoned in mid-construction barred their path. “Mines,” one man pleaded when Poulin ordered him up. Time was ticking by. The artillery would soon cease firing and, free to raise their heads, the Germans to their front would cut the company to pieces.

  “Bunch of bastards,” he yelled. “Don’t you have any guts?”5 Jumping the fence, Poulin stomped towards the objective with his small headquarters section scrambling along behind. Glancing over his shoulder, the major was relieved to see the two shamed platoons on their feet, coming on quickly to get ahead of their commander. One man was wounded when he tripped a mine that also injured two others. But these two men refused to go back. The rest of the company got through the field unmolested. They ran towards Whipcord “yelling like banshees and firing their weapons from the hip.”6

  Poulin and the Van Doos hit the summit at full tilt. There was fire coming from the buildings, so the men hugged the dirt and started shooting back. Seeing the tanks were still grinding a slow path up the hill, Poulin ran down towards them and waved his arm furtively to signal them forward. As the first Sherman passed him, its officer yelled, “Where am I going?”

  “You’re going right up there!” Poulin shouted back. “Shoot with all you can.” The tank troop crested the hill and lit into the buildings. “Two of the houses were just coming to pieces,” Poulin later recalled. “Dust and fire everywhere. The haystacks were burning.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Poulin saw something move and shot it with his pistol. His runner snorted, “You just killed a fence post.”7 It was 1955 hours. Poulin told his men to start digging deep.8Whipcord was theirs, but now they had to hold it.

  Thirty minutes later, the Germans started shelling the company’s position with the same unerring accuracy hammering down on all of 1 CID’s regiments close to the front lines because of the spotters on San Martino and San Fortunato. Even the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, forming to the rear of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and the Van Doos, was in their line of sight. When Lieutenant Colonel David Rosser, only just recovered from a bout of malaria, had to be evacuated with a piece of shrapnel in his right calf, Major R.P. “Slug” Clark was promoted to acting lieutenant colonel and took over command.9

  The PPCLI was to relieve Poulin’s men on Whipcord, as part of 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s general takeover of the San Martino ridge from 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade. ‘C’ Company’s Captain L.G. Burton sent a twenty-one-man patrol up the slope at 2200 hours to contact Poulin. The small force quickly reported back that they had met “enemy in strength” two hundred yards short of Whipcord and were forced to return.10 Burton realized Poulin’s ‘D’ Company was surrounded.

  There followed a night of confused, sharp small-scale firefights across the breadth of the Canadian front as Germans and Canadians probed each other’s positions. A Seaforth Highlanders patrol commanded by Lieutenant Dave Fairweather was fifty yards from San Martino when heavy machine-gun and tank fire forced it to withdraw. Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson took this as a warning that the Germans were building up their strength there and decided to bounce them by having ‘B’ Company launch an immediate attack. At 0300 hours, Major “Ollie” Mace struck the village with his men while ‘D’ Company tried bypassing it on the left. In the pitch-black night, it was impossible for the two companies to coordinate operations. ‘B’ Company took a few buildings on the edge of the village only to be thrown out of them by a fierce counterattack, and ‘D’ Company was stopped cold by a wall of machine-gun fire. Both companies pulled back while Thomson reported to brigade that it was “evident that [San Martino] was the core of the enemy’s positions south of Rimini, and that it would have to be secured by a heavier attack.”11

  AT 0400, the Germans hit Whipcord with a sharp probing counterattack quickly rebuffed by the well-positioned men of ‘D’ Company. But Poulin was relieved when the PPCLI’s ‘C’ Company slipped through the Germans at his rear to form up alongside the Van Doos. This despite the fact that Captain Burton’s company numbered just over forty men, which brought the infantry strength on Whipcord up to almost one hundred men. Poulin knew he needed every man possible, particularly as the tank troop—less one tank abandoned in the Van Doo position with mechanical problems—pulled out at dawn to resupply.12

  The paratroopers returned in force with two tanks backing them up at 0920 hours, just as four tanks from the 145th Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps were entering the PPCLI area.13 When the tanks opened fire on the advancing Germans, the paratroopers sideslipped out of the tankers’ line of sight and hit Poulin’s position on an angle. Realizing he was about to be overrun, Poulin took a deadly gamble. Quickly positioning a platoon in positions on opposite flanks of the hill, he withdrew his remaining platoon and company headquarters two hundred yards to create a rectangular box on the summit itself. The Germans stormed into this seeming weak point “shouting and yelling. Pleased as punch that they were on the objective,” the major recalled.14 While the Germans had been entering the box, however, Poulin had radioed for every gun Allard could muster to fire right on top of Whipcord. Allard “asked no questions, and gave the order.”15

  An artillery forward observation officer with Allard brought the corps medium artillery to bear with devastating results. At the same time, two Van Doos climbed into the abandoned British tank and ambushed the Germans with its main gun. An observation plane was circling overhead minutes later and the artillery officer aboard corrected the fall of shot to keep the fire tightly concentrated on the now milling and cowering Germans. Finally at 1038 hours, Poulin told Allard to cease fire.16 The only Germans left on Whipcord that he could see were dead.

  Although the counterattack was smashed, there was nothing the Canadians on Whipcord could do to stave off the renewed shelling and mortaring. At 1400 hours, Poulin reported having only twenty-five men left and desperately wanting tanks and antitank guns.17 Fifteen minutes later, the German shelling reached a fierce crescendo and Captain Burton was killed. Lieutenant H.E. Dalquist took over, was promptly wounded, and replaced by Lieutenant W.G. McNeil.18 A flurry of movement three hundred yards northwest of his position warned Poulin another counterattack was forming. Allard said that a troop of three Sherman tanks was en route and for him to hold on.

  At 1443 hours, Poulin radioed: “Two enemy tanks approaching. Send the tanks and antitank guns.” Twenty-two minutes later, he told Allard: “Three tanks coming on us.” Poulin provided coordinates for engaging the tanks with artillery. At 1513 hours, he reported, “Enemy tanks still coming towards us. Artillery is engaging them successfully.” The shelling had the desired effect. The tanks stopped advancing and simply held in place. Poulin kept calling concentrations down on their armoured heads. The Panthers stalwartly endured the Canadian artillery and pounded the infantry with their 75-millimetre guns.19

  From San Fortunato, a German self-propelled gun opened up on Whipcord with an 88-millimetre gun that proved
dangerously accurate with each round. Poulin could see the gun on the ridge about eight hundred yards away. But every time he zeroed artillery on it, the SPG’s commander seemed to divine what was about to happen and ducked the machine out of sight. Then it clanked back into view and started shooting the Van Doos until the next artillery concentration was teed up.

  Noticing a flight of Kittyhawk fighter-bombers circling overhead in CAB rank, Poulin asked for air support. To his surprise, Allard soon reported that it was on the way. Then a Kittyhawk streaked out of the dazzling blue sky and Poulin “saw this big silvery torpedo of a bomb detaching itself from the underside of the plane and thought it was coming for us, but it went over us very gracefully and hit the ridge. The men went crazy. They were yelling and jumping. We could see the pilot’s face, he passed over so low.” Two other planes swooped down for added strikes and then the three planes carried out several machine-gun strafing runs. “It was absolutely glorious,” Poulin later remembered. Whether the SPG was destroyed, Poulin didn’t know. But it never reappeared.20 The stalemate with the tanks threatening his position, however, continued.

  Worried that ‘D’ Company’s dwindling ranks would be overrun during the night, Allard sent a platoon from ‘C’ Company up to Poulin at 2108 hours. It was all he could offer because the rest of the regiment had spent the day repelling repeated counterattacks aimed at turning Poulin’s rear from the right and that of the Seaforths from the left. ‘B’ Company was particularly hard-pressed; a long day of shelling and sniping had left it badly reduced.

  After telling Poulin that the ‘C’ Company platoon was en route to Whipcord, Allard ordered the major to “hold to the last man, last round.”21 Poulin acknowledged just as the Germans attacked in strength with three tanks. Having won the gamble once, Poulin could only try for another jackpot by ordering his men and the PPCLI remnants to slip back into the same box formation used earlier. The artillery opened up on call and again the German attack was thrown into disarray. Poulin’s men stormed back onto Whipcord, driving the enemy out. Shortly thereafter, the ‘C’ Company platoon arrived to bulk up the badly thinned ranks.22 Whipcord was still in Canadian hands as September 17 ended, but it had been a close call.

  SAN MARTINO, however, still blocked the Canadian advance. In the early morning hours of September 17, 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Allan Calder had advised Major General Chris Vokes that “progress by RCR and 48th Highlanders could at best only be made at the expense of very heavy casualties as long as [San Martino] remained in enemy hands.” Calder advocated a three-battalion-wide attack to overcome this position. His plan, which Vokes approved, was for his two regiments that were trying to push between the Rimini airfield and San Martino to renew their attack in conjunction with an all-out effort by the Seaforth Highlanders against San Martino itself. The Royal Canadian Regiment and 48th Highlanders of Canada advance would be preceded and supported by massive artillery concentrations that would include smoke to obstruct the German view from San Martino and San Fortunato. There would also be a twenty-five-minute barrage on San Martino immediately before the Seaforths attacked. The attack was scheduled for 1330 hours.23

  Seaforth commander Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson called his company commanders together in the stronghold that ‘D’ Company had taken over from the Van Doos the previous day during the otherwise botched hand-off between the two regiments. His plan was for ‘A’ Company under Major Herbert Paterson and ‘C’ Company under Major Haworth Glendinning to carry out the attack.24 They would have four troops of tanks—two each of Shermans and Churchills—from the 145th Royal Armoured Corps in support.25 Paterson had not led a rifle company in some time and was largely unknown to the men in ‘A’ Company. Among these was Tennessee native Corporal Charles Monroe Johnson, who had enlisted in the Canadian army in 1940 when it seemed the United States was going to steer clear of the war against fascism. Johnson understood that Paterson, “a tall, oldish man,” was to lead this single attack and then be transferred back to England. To the American soldier, the major seemed very English in mannerisms and he crossed the start line with a walking stick in one hand, as if setting out on a stroll in the country.26

  Johnson had no idea what they were supposed to do. The company commanders had not briefed the section leaders, and so no information had filtered down to the men. They just followed Paterson as he strolled towards San Martino, which was being battered by the last phase of the artillery program. Laid out in an arrowhead formation, ‘A’ Company moved through a vineyard and then started up a slope across open ground. At that point, the men started to run and the tanks ground along behind. They were about 150 yards from the edge of San Martino when Johnson noted that it was a clear, bright fall afternoon more suited for basking in sunlight than killing men. Just as this thought entered his mind, the dying began. A Faustpatrone round shrieked out of a slit trench dug in front of a building and Lieutenant G.F.F. Douse’s tank went up in a ball of fire. None of the tankers got out. Having fired his charge, the German Faustpatrone man tried climbing through a hole in the wall of the house, but Lance Corporal Raymond C. Clarke threw a grenade on top of him first. An unseen German machine-gunner ripped a burst through Clarke, killing him. Then Private Walter Kadeniuk, who had won a Military Medal at the Hitler Line, was bowled over dead by a second burst. Johnson and the surviving members of his platoon hit the ground, desperately trying to locate the MG42 position.

  Realizing he was completely out in the open, Johnson ran to the cover of a small olive tree only to discover that its trunk was barely four inches thick. The movement had attracted the machine-gunner’s attention and slugs tore up the ground inches from his legs. Johnson scurried to a shallow shell hole “in which a six-year-old boy could not have hidden… and dug into the rock-like dirt with my hands until they began to bleed.”27 He kept waiting for orders from the company officers, instructions that would get the attack moving again. In frustration, he raised his rifle and snapped off some rounds at the buildings, but knew he was just wasting ammunition.

  Johnson was unaware that Paterson was dead and Lieutenant Robert K. Swinton had assumed command of ‘A’ Company. But with four of the tanks that had been providing immediate support all knocked out, the others having stalled behind the infantry, and the Germans raking the company with intense machine-gun and mortar fire, going forward was impossible. Despite the intense opposition, one platoon from ‘C’ Company did work its way into San Martino. This was No. 15 Platoon, under command of Acting Sergeant Raymond E. Jenkins. The regiment’s historian later wrote: “Doubling across the open field which the enemy had sited as a ‘killing ground,’ Jenkins and his men dashed into two houses barricaded and occupied by the enemy. He forced his way in, killing four of the enemy and taking the remainder prisoner. In the back garden were two slit trenches manned by the enemy. As the sergeant stepped out to deal with them he was shot through the neck and cheek. Bleeding and furious, Jenkins ran forward and killed those who were in the slit trenches.”28

  When Jenkins radioed Major Glendinning to report his men firm in the houses, the company commander ordered him to go back for medical treatment. Not wanting to further reduce his diminished platoon, Jenkins made his own way back without assistance.29

  Back in ‘D’ Company’s stone building, where his tactical headquarters was set up, Thomson was blessed with an opportunity that he expected was every battalion commander’s dream. From his position, “the whole picture was laid out in front of me. There was a big slope in front of me and my companies were going up there and fighting the Germans. On my right, [Glendinning’s] company was getting well ahead and was in fact going to outflank them, except he had lost all his tanks by that time.”30

  Thomson could see Germans fleeing from the buildings that Jenkins’s platoon had managed to enter and believed if he could just get some tanks up there the battle would be turned. He got on the radio and asked Lieutenant Colonel E.V. Strickland, commander of 145 RAC, to release a squadron of ta
nks from where they were sheltered from the German antitank guns that had destroyed Douse’s troop. “Oh, no, Syd,” Strickland said, “you better have a talk to your brigade commander and do this through channels.”31

  The Seaforth commander explained the situation by radio to Brigadier Graeme Gibson at 2 CIB headquarters. “Don’t get excited, Thomson,” Gibson said. “If you want to discuss this, you come back and see me.”

  Thomson thought, “For Christ sake.” He put the radio handset down without a reply. “Don’t get excited,” he muttered. “I’ve never got excited in my life.”32 But he knew an opportunity was lost. By the time he went back to brigade, received permission to deploy the tanks, made his way back to his tactical headquarters, issued the necessary orders, and actually got the tanks all the way up the hill to where they were needed, his two companies would most likely be destroyed. Thomson, who believed the heavy casualties 2 CIB had suffered at the Hitler Line had largely resulted from Gibson’s refusal to listen to his regimental commanders’ pleas that their right flank be covered during the attack, refused now to “sacrifice these troops for no gain.” He ordered the remnants of ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies withdrawn.33

  The platoons had to fall back over the same open ground they had gone up through, under heavy fire the entire way. There were many walking wounded who had to be helped out and most of the men requiring stretcher parties could only be left in sheltered hides for recovery after nightfall. Two sections of Jenkins’s No. 15 Platoon never made it back and were presumed captured.34 “Chased by bullets and shells,” Corporal Johnson “ran to join the remnants of my company.”35 It was 1600 hours before the withdrawal was complete.