The Gothic Line

by Mark Zuehlke

  Lieutenant General Tommy Burns, I Canadian Corps’s commander, realized at noon that the battle for San Fortunato Ridge had been won by “the gallant attackers—every battalion of whom had suffered repulse and heavy casualties in the actions against San Martino and in the plain they now looked back upon.”12 It was time to exploit the success.

  At 1330 hours, 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Graeme Gibson ordered the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry to advance with ‘B’ Squadron 48th Royal Tank Regiment in support to San Lorenzo. From there, they were to force a bridgehead over the Marecchia River.13 When the combined infantry and tank force reached San Lorenzo at 1500 hours, Dougan warned its commanders about the five Tiger tanks still in Monticello. His attempts during the day to knock these out with artillery or air strikes had proved fruitless and they were so positioned as to be able to block any daylight attack across the open plain.

  The British squadron commander deployed his Churchill troop behind the ridge with instructions to simultaneously roll into firing positions and attempt to hit the Tigers with armour-piercing shot. His Sherman troops were similarly positioned with instructions to fire high-explosive shells on the buildings that the Germans were using for protection. Each tank was to fire only one round at a time and then quickly pull back to cover before the Germans could retaliate. On the first attempt, one of the tanks scored a hit, but it was unclear if the Tiger was knocked out. The Churchills moved to new positions and popped up for another try. This time, one of the Tigers slammed an 88-millimetre shell into a Churchill. Although it failed to penetrate, the crew was stunned by the tremendous concussion. Although the British tankers kept this firefight going until nightfall, the Tigers never budged.14

  If the PPCLI were to win a bridgehead over the river, it would have to do so under the cloak of darkness.

  “SOMETHING UNPLEASANT has happened,” Tenth Army’s Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff told Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring at 1100 hours on September 20.15 Less than two hours earlier, he had reported that the night’s activities had resulted in no serious Canadian advances. Now he had to confess the loss of San Fortunato Ridge. The defending divisions were retreating in disarray and there had been heavy casualties.

  Most of those losses were men taken prisoner, rather than killed. The Canadian prison cages were bursting. The Seaforths alone had taken 214 prisoners by 1400 hours.16 The Van Doos also reported capturing more than 200 Germans and the Edmontons had another 300 in the cage at regimental headquarters. They reported having killed or wounded 150 Germans.17 During mopping-up operations, the Hasty P’s bagged 112 soldiers and killed about 40 more.18

  LXXVI Panzer Corps commander General der Panzertruppen Traugott Herr wanted to pull his artillery north of the Marecchia, for some of his batteries were under direct machine-gun fire. Thinking Herr was once again succumbing to defeatism, Kesselring refused. He needed to consult first with his staff. Tenth Army Chief of Staff, Generalmajor Friedrich Wentzell, discussed the matter by phone with his counterpart at Kesselring’s headquarters, Generalleutnant Army Group Chief of Staff Hans Röttiger. The situation on the Adriatic coast, he said, was “very strained.” The 29th Panzer Grenadier Division had been practically wiped out on San Fortunato Ridge and the 162nd Turcoman division had disintegrated. Things were little better for the 1st Parachute Division or 26th Panzer Division. “I think it will be necessary to withdraw behind the river,” he concluded.

  “Yes, there is nothing else to do,” Röttiger agreed. He asked Kesselring for permission to give the order. A moment later, the chief of staff said, “The Field Marshal agrees.”

  Although he knew the withdrawal necessary, Kesselring despaired of the consequences. “I have the terrible feeling that the thing is beginning to slide,” he confided to his diary that evening.19 There was no expectation that his torn-up divisions would be able to offer serious resistance from behind the Marecchia. The best he could hope for was to buy a little time. Time for the rains to come. Kesselring knew his best remaining defence was mud, mud to mire the inevitable Eighth Army armoured advance into the Po Valley. But the weather was un-promising. German meteorologists reported that the rains were two weeks late. And two weeks might be sufficient to allow the Allied tanks to drive the Germans back to Bologna or even farther.20

  AT 0230 HOURS on September 21, a single infantry regiment moved cautiously out onto the marshy plain and headed towards the Marecchia. The PPCLI constituted not only the point of I Canadian Corps, but also the entire Eighth Army. They were pitifully few. Lieutenant Syd Frost had rejoined the regiment on September 19 and been given command of a platoon in Captain Sam Potts’s ‘D’ Company. Even after taking in some reinforcements, the company mustered only sixty men. Frost’s No. 18 Platoon was twenty-one strong. The other companies and platoons were in similar straits.

  Despite the collapse of the German forces on San Fortunato Ridge, the regiment’s passage through to Bovey had not gone unchallenged. They were heavily shelled and mortared. By 1600 hours on September 20, Frost’s platoon had lost two men. Of the remaining nineteen, two had slight wounds he worried would fester and another seemed to be suffering from malaria. None of the three would agree to be evacuated.

  Frost had an additional worry. He had come to the regiment unarmed and had yet to find a gun. When he finally stumbled across a Thompson lying next to a dead PPCLI section leader, he was unable to get the bolt action to move. Figuring a gun that didn’t work was better than nothing, Frost kept the weapon.21

  The PPCLI had originally been ordered to occupy Monticello with two companies and establish a base of fire to support the bound to the river. With the village still presumably held by five Tiger tanks and undoubtedly some covering infantry, Lieutenant Colonel R.P. “Slug” Clark decided to bypass it. The leading companies would head instead for a little cluster of white buildings standing close to the river that was codenamed Pique. ‘B’ and ‘D’ companies were to secure this objective and then ‘A’ Company would pass through and effect the river crossing. It was a mile from Bovey to Pique, all crossing open ground.22

  No. 18 Platoon led the way into the valley. As they moved out, it started to rain. Walking along, Frost tried distractedly to fix the Thompson. Finally, after an hour on the move, he threw the useless gun into a ditch. At that very moment, a guttural voice sounded ahead of him. Then a tank engine started, followed by another and yet another. The weaponless Frost jumped into the ditch, his men following suit while the tanks clanked off into the night towards the river.

  ‘D’ Company carried on, moving ever more cautiously as they drew closer to Pique. At 0445 hours, Frost’s leading section commander materialized out of the soggy blackness and tapped him on the shoulder. He reported that they were almost on Pique. The man pointed out a white shape ahead that the lieutenant realized was indeed a building. Leaving one section behind with the two-inch mortar to cover their advance, Frost took the other two sections forward and found the buildings abandoned.

  The two companies set up a defensive perimeter among the houses and Captain Potts tried to radio back that the leading companies were on the objective, but was jammed by static. Potts kept trying and finally reached Lieutenant Colonel Clark at 0545 hours.23 ‘A’ Company set off immediately from Bovey towards Pique.

  Major E.W. Cutbill and his company crossed the Marecchia at 0950 hours and took up a position astride Highway No. 9 running from Rimini inland to Cesena. The company came under sporadic shelling, but there was no response by either German infantry or armoured units. Clark ordered ‘D’ Company to move up to a position seven hundred yards west of ‘A’ Company.24

  Frost was starting to feel the effects of lack of sleep when Potts told him the company was to cross the river. His men looked dead on their feet. Little wonder, they had been under almost constant shelling since September 16, whereas he had been in the front lines less than forty-eight hours. Still, the platoon gathered its gear and forme
d up without a word of complaint. “A great bunch of lads,” he thought.25

  Moments before the company set off, a Bren carrier came slipping and sliding up the muddy road from the direction of San Fortunato Ridge. The men inside had brought ammunition and, to Frost’s delight, some extra weapons. Frost slammed a clip into a Thompson and headed towards the Marecchia.

  The river was a wide, stony bed with only a little water running down a series of shallow channels separated by sand and gravel beds. But ‘D’ Company never had to get its feet wet, for the Germans had neglected to blow a wooden bridge spanning the channel. The soldiers ran across it and dug in frantically on the other side, expecting any moment to be shelled or counterattacked. Potts told them to get up and start moving again, this time to the highway. Frost’s men were beginning to stagger with exhaustion.

  By now, the Germans were throwing some artillery and Nebelwerfer fire their way, but it was still desultory. Finally, the roadway appeared ahead and Frost shouted at his section leaders to seize a white house and assume defensive positions around it. Firing from the hip, the platoon moved forward by sections with one covering the bound of the others. As the leading section stormed into the house, three Germans jumped out a back window waving a white flag and then clasped their hands behind their heads in surrender. Inside were two dead Germans and two others who were wounded. It was 1225 hours.

  ‘D’ Company’s left flank was completely exposed to some other houses gathered alongside the road. German infantry in these buildings started harassing the company with small-arms fire. When Potts called an artillery concentration down on the buildings, the firing abruptly ceased. Frost set his headquarters up in the house he had stormed and positioned his sections to provide an all-round defence. Although he had two PIATs covering the road, Frost knew he would have little chance against an attack by Tigers. He also had too few men to send the German prisoners back under guard.

  That problem resolved itself a few minutes later when the company started being shelled by 88-millimetre guns. Two of Frost’s men were slightly wounded by shrapnel. He had them take the prisoners and go back for medical treatment. This left Frost with seventeen men. The whole company was barely fifty strong. Potts and Frost were the only officers left.26 But ‘D’ and ‘A’ companies were across the Marecchia and, although they were unaware of it, by dusk another Canadian regiment was approaching their right flank.

  THE 48TH HIGHLANDERS of Canada had received orders in the mid-morning to advance to the immediate west of Rimini, establish a bridgehead over the Marecchia, and capture Celle. This hamlet was situated at the junction of the coastal highway and Highway No. 9—an important objective for controlling the immediate northern approaches to Rimini. ‘D’ Company, under Captain Lloyd Smith, led off at 1000 hours with ‘B’ Company in trail. From their start point at the Ausa River to Celle was about two and a half miles. The regiment’s diarist noted that “the weather was wet and the rain blowing in gusts, making the work all the more uncomfortable for the men.”27

  It was a rapid advance, slowed only by the presence of minefields and demolished crossings over the many little streams that were filling rapidly with runoff. At 1715 hours, Smith’s company was on the banks of the Marecchia and Lieutenant Colonel Don Mackenzie ordered it across. Forty-five minutes later, Smith reported his company was over the river and had met no resistance. Mackenzie urged Smith on to Celle.

  Dusk was falling as the company closed to within one hundred yards of the hamlet. German machine guns opened up from several of the buildings, forcing Smith’s men to ground. Smith tried to work his platoons into Celle, but the enemy resistance was fierce. A protracted stalemate ensued that persisted into the early morning hours of September 22. At 0200 hours, Smith was personally so close to the German positions that he had to turn his radio set off for fear a signal from regimental headquarters would betray his location.

  Finally, after three attacks on the hamlet, ‘D’ Company gained a foothold and started clearing houses. By 0530 hours, Smith radioed that Celle was secure. Mackenzie offered congratulations and then told the captain to hold firm until 2nd New Zealand Division passed through later that day. After this happy event occurred, the regiment was to pull back from the Marecchia to a rest position south of Rimini.

  WHILE THE HIGHLANDERS experienced a quiet day in Celle until being relieved by the New Zealanders at 1700 hours, the PPCLI companies on their left endured heavy shelling. Lieutenant Syd Frost wondered if any of them would survive. One shell after another struck the house in which his platoon headquarters and one section sheltered in a large downstairs room. The second storey was being torn apart and plaster, bricks, and chunks of supporting timbers were falling from the ceiling. Outside, stonks from Nebelwerfers were blasting the yard so thickly that Frost could see none of the men from his other two sections. He hoped they were all deep inside their slit trenches.

  Suddenly, one of the men outside burst in with a shattered arm pumping blood. He said the bombardment was the worst he had ever seen and that Frost should pull the men into the farmhouse or they would all be killed. Thinking the house a poor refuge at best, but better than the yard, Frost agreed and signalled the section commanders outside to bring their men inside.

  By now, the entire two rooms of the upstairs had been blown clean away and the three downstairs rooms were receiving the full attention of several 88-millimetre guns. But the stout stone walls held. Then a mortar round pierced the ceiling and ripped one room, fortunately unoccupied, to pieces. Frost gathered everyone together in the big room, which he thought was better protected than the other smaller remaining room. The little room soon disintegrated when a large shell broke through the ceiling and exploded.

  Frost bent down to speak to one of his wounded men just as an armour-piercing round ripped through the wall where his head had been moments before and exited out the rear wall in a flash of sparks. Everyone flattened on the floor as another AP round flashed through the room. A Nebelwerfer stonk fell on the house and chunks of the ceiling collapsed, with only some strong beams overhead providing any protection. Smoke and dust filled the room. One man started sobbing hysterically. More holes were punched into the walls by AP rounds. It seemed impossible that the shattered structure could stand any more damage.

  Frost heard the hard grinding noise of approaching tank tracks—coming from the left flank where the Germans held the buildings. He figured they were going to be overrun. Warily, Frost raised his head and peeked out a window. The tanks were Churchills. Frost staggered outside, waving and shouting greetings to the New Zealanders.28 It was 1100 hours, September 22. For the Canadians, the Gothic Line Battle was over.

  [ 32 ]

  Well Done, Canada

  THE CANADIANS WALKED out of the smoking wasteland of San Fortunato Ridge or back from the still contested north bank of the Marecchia River by companies or regiments. It all depended on how the final hours of battle found them deployed. To a man, they were nearly dead with exhaustion. Uniforms were ragged and torn, caked with filth and dried blood. Many sported grimy bandages that covered various cuts, burns, holes opened in flesh by bullets or shrapnel—wounds insufficiently serious to warrant evacuation. Others had graver injuries, but had refused evacuation so as not to leave their buddies short a man who might make all the difference. There were those who carried deeper injuries of the mind that might never heal, the product of all they had seen and done during twenty-six days in hell. They were unshaven, hair stiff with dirt, fingernails broken and bloody from working weapons. Hunger gnawed at their guts. But they still lived and, for the moment, that was all that mattered.

  Italy’s fickle fall weather had brought rain that left their uniforms sodden, their bodies chilled. As the men trudged to the rear, quartermasters and other headquarters staff worked frantically to secure billets where the men might lie down with at least a roof over their heads to keep them dry. It was a difficult task in a land devastated by more than a month of shelling and bombing. Everywhere th
ey looked, buildings sat with roofs blown in by direct hits, or with no roof and walls shattered and jagged as broken teeth.

  The Seaforths marched from San Fortunato to Palazzo des Vergers on the San Martino Ridge. Here, its rear echelon headquarters had been established late on September 19, joined the next day by Brigadier Graeme Gibson’s 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade headquarters.1 At the time, the building had seemed no more than some luxurious mansion badly shot up by artillery, but afforded with a good view of the Ausa River valley and the southern slopes of San Fortunato Ridge. There had been shell holes in the walls and the roof and the great expanses of gardens had been reduced to a mess of craters. Padre Roy Durnford initially thought it was “a marvelous place. I do not sleep in the dungeons or wine cellars below but sleep on ground floor surrounded with oil paintings of fabulous worth.”2

  But the rifle companies on September 19 had enjoyed no pleasant sleep. Earlier they had prepared for battle and then marched into the gathering darkness towards the Ausa River. Durnford had watched their departure anxiously, worried by the high number of fresh reinforcements who all seemed “inadequately armed and fed… and some few, wholly inexperienced. I go to sleep thinking of dead faces I had seen and oil paintings and magnificent furniture and ornaments.”3

  It was sometime later on September 20 that the destruction began. Durnford watched in horror as exhausted soldiers yanked aged oil paintings from the walls and threw them out flat on the floor to serve as beds. Some of the canvases were strong and supple enough to bear the weight of men who “lay on old masterpieces boots and all.”4 Others, as Major Jim Stone of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment witnessed later that day, “smashed into a thousand pieces.”5