by Mark Zuehlke
Major de Faye and his Saskatoon Light Infantry troops were stuck in the column just before the bridge at about midday. He thought the bridge a bloody poor effort, a sagging pontoon construction that seemed on the point of washing out. Only two vehicles could cross at a time, explaining what the Canadians were finding to be the worst traffic jam of the war. The major’s SLI unit was a mini-battalion of about 500 men divided into three companies. One company was composed of three platoons, each equipped with four medium Vickers .303 machine guns and loaded into tracked, lightly armoured Bren carriers. The second company was broken into two platoons each armed with four 4.2-inch mortars mounted in fifteen-hundred-weight trucks (15 cwt.), with Bren carriers for the forward observation officers, who went up to the line with the infantry and radioed back firing coordinates for the mortars. His third company was armed with single-barrel twenty-millimetre Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns organized in four platoons with four guns each. A single gun was loaded by hand into the back of a 15-cwt. truck.
Originally, most of the men in the SLI had hailed from Saskatchewan and many from Saskatoon. But a reorganization in England prior to the Sicily invasion had boosted the numbers of the battalion and now de Faye had soldiers and officers from all parts of Canada in his unit, although the majority of the men were still from the prairie provinces.
The major was a career soldier, who had joined the SLI as a sixteen-year-old private in 1934. He had lied about his age, so he could receive the full soldier’s pay that would go to a man of eighteen. When war broke out, de Faye had gathered enough Canadian Officers Training Corps courses at the University of Saskatchewan to qualify for the rank of captain and, with a shortage of officers in the rapidly expanding army, found himself promoted to this position at the age of twenty-one. He was the first to admit that the idea of a twenty-one-year-old captain was ridiculous. What he did not know about soldiering “would probably have filled every military manual ever written.”77 But he had also the supreme self-confidence of youth, as did so many of the officers in Canada’s amateur and entirely volunteer army.
And now he sat in a jeep, right up next to the damned bridge. His men were jammed up behind him in their vehicles, every man undoubtedly wondering if they would get across the Sangro and away before the next German artillery salvo arrived. Traffic was completely stopped. Minutes passed, as the tension mounted. Every man in the column grew twitchier and twitchier. Next to de Faye’s jeep, a British dispatch rider was parked on the verge, lying back on his motorcycle with his feet up on the handlebars. “Waiting, waiting, always bloody waiting,” he sang in a clear, high voice. The soldiers in the vehicles all laughed, breaking the tension. Moments later the convoy lurched forward again. In a few minutes the bridge was crossed, the moment of immediate danger past.8
Throughout December 2 and the early part of December 3, as the rest of 1st Canadian Infantry Division started assembling in the 78th Division’s immediate rear south of the Moro River, 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade was engaged in the more complex manoeuvre of disengaging from its front-line positions in preparation to join the rest of the division. December 2 also saw 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade begin rolling its tank battalions across the Sangro to support the upcoming Canadian advance. Everything progressed relatively smoothly throughout the Canadian forces and it appeared that the scheduled takeover of all 78th Division positions by December 4 would proceed more or less as planned.
Third CIB’s West Nova Scotia Regiment had withdrawn from its forward positions on December 1. The men were able to rest for a couple of days just back of the upper Sangro River line in the village of Agnone in billets that were complete with lights, running water, and a movie theatre showing the 1930 film Gambling on the High Seas. Meanwhile, the Royal 22e and Carleton and York regiments were still carrying out light patrolling along the upper Sangro front, the Van Doos hearing heavy enemy transport beyond the German lines. The Carleton and York, for its part, was unable to put patrols over the Sangro due to the presence of a network of German heavy-machine-gun posts that fired on anyone, including civilians, who tried crossing the river section facing its front. By December 3, both battalions had been relieved by the British 5th Division and were moving slowly over rough terrain and in worsening weather toward the coast, as were the better rested West Novas. The brigade was scheduled to link up with the rest of the division on December 4 and to move into a reserve position, while 1st and 2nd Canadian infantry brigades assumed the front-line positions being handed over by the 78th Division.9
Divisional headquarters had reason to be relatively well pleased with the organization and execution of its move to and across the Sangro River. Despite the bottleneck on Highway 16, over which the division had no control, the Canadians had swiftly and with few logistical problems manoeuvred a total strength of approximately 1,850 officers and 24,800 other ranks of the infantry division and the armoured brigade seventy-five miles over difficult terrain in four days.
On the evening of December 4, the battalions of 2 CIB began relieving the last of the 78th Division troops on the southern ridge overlooking the Moro River. PPCLI Lieutenant Jerry Richards and his mortar platoon were parked at the side of a road, the men resting as well as they could in the gathering gloom as the troops of the 6th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers marched past. Richards fell into conversation with the battalion’s padre and the two were soon, as soldiers are prone to do, swapping impressions of their commanders and eventually of Montgomery himself. Both men wondered what the hell Monty was up to, trying to carry out a major offensive when the winter weather was closing in and soon the combination of cold and mud would effectively grind their advance to a halt. Even if they got over the Moro, there were many more rivers similar to it between here and Pescara.
The padre’s description of what the Inniskillings had gone through sounded more like something out of the Great War than the present one, and Richards didn’t think that boded too well for the Canadians. He recounted to the padre a story of the time when Monty came to visit the Canadians in Sicily, delivering a rousing speech from the back of a captured German jeep, known as a Kubelwagen. “There is no one better than my Canadians,” he had declared. Although there had been some rousing cheers in response, Richards and most of the men he overheard talking afterward doubted his sincerity. The padre laughed at the story. “That’s the very same thing he said to us. There’s none better than my Irish.” The padre shook Richards’s hand and followed his men into the darkness. Richards started loading up his men to move forward and join the infantry companies already looking out from the slit trenches left by the 78th Division toward the German positions.10
As 1st and 2nd brigades settled into their positions on the Moro River ridge without difficulty and with virtually no opposition from the Germans on the facing ridge, the situation to their rear fell into chaos. In the early morning hours of December 4, the Sangro River swelled in mere minutes by six feet. Floodwaters swept the precarious pontoon bridge away and reduced most of the footbridges to kindling. Third CIB and some divisional support units were stranded on the southern bank.
Montgomery was desolate, his dream of a breakthrough offensive carrying the Eighth Army to Rome shredded by the weather and V Corps’s initial failure to rapidly carry the advance forward to Pescara. He berated V Corps commander Charles Allfrey for having commanded the offensive amateurishly and with “a lack of ‘grip’ and ‘bite’” that was entirely unacceptable.11 Of the damage caused by the Sangro flooding and the increasing rainfall he wrote, “I don’t think we can get any spectacular results so long as it goes on raining; the whole country becomes a sea of mud and nothing on wheels or tracks can move off the roads.”12
Only days before, Monty had boasted that he hoped to accompany the New Zealand division into Rome. Now, he cast about for some way to transform disaster into partial success. Forcing the Germans back from the Sangro meant little. Thousands of men had perished for nothing if the Eighth Army became bogged down for the winter months before t
he Moro River. This was not the Great War, where it was accepted that heavy casualties could be taken for no discernible gain except some strip of devastated farmland. The olive groves and vineyards of the Sangro valley, the small towns of Lanciano and San Vito Chietino meant nothing. They were of no meaningful strategic value.
If he could not have Rome, Montgomery would create a target that was closer, easier, and still of strategic significance. Pescara would be best and it was that objective he continued to cite in all memos as his goal.13 But he was also looking at a nearer, more easily attainable target: Ortona. Since the Eighth Army had started its long march up the boot of Italy, the problem of supply had plagued its advance. The entire Italian campaign was of secondary importance to the massive buildup taking place in Britain preparatory to the planned spring or summer invasion of northern France. This meant that vital munitions, medical equipment, vehicles, and particularly amphibious vessels were too often either unavailable or in short supply. Reinforcements were also hard to come by and had to be transported from Algeria, so all the divisions were short-handed. Added to the problem of the lack of supply was the need for every man and every tin of food and box of ammunition to be hauled over poor roads from the heel of Italy to reach the ever advancing front-line units. With each German retreat, Montgomery’s supply lines grew longer and more difficult to sustain.
Southern Italy’s east coast was lightly populated, the shoreline rugged and hostile. The few ports that did exist were poor and incapable of harbouring ocean-going freighters. Not so Ortona. The town was small, but aerial reconnaissance photos showed that it possessed a serviceable and adequate deepwater port backed by a rail yard. Although the Germans destroyed every inch of rail line as they retreated with a kind of plow hooked to the rear of a steam engine that left ties and steel rails ripped to pieces, Commonwealth engineers followed behind restoring the tracks as best they could. The combination of a usable port and a potential rail line from the boot of Italy to the front lines was enticing. Montgomery would, of course, prefer Pescara, prefer to have his troops facing the valley leading to Avezzano for a spring offensive toward Rome. Failing that, however, Ortona would do. And it should not be too difficult a prize to win. Crack the hastily cobbled-together Moro River defensive line, sever the Ortona-Orsogna road to deny the Germans good lines of supply from the coast to their inland divisions, push forward from the road, and Ortona should fall easily. With the Canadian division pressing in and around Ortona’s outskirts, the Germans would have little option but to fall back from the town to the Arielli River about three miles north of Ortona. Even with the dreadful weather, taking Ortona should require only a minor battle.
The reconnaissance pictures showed that the Germans had already taken measures to render the port unusable without some extensive repairs. Large holes had been blown in the northern mole, rendering the port unsafe for large vessels. To ensure the port was not further damaged by Allied action, and believing Ortona would also serve well as a rear-area rest base once the front line moved north to Pescara, Eighth Army command decided to spare the town the aerial bombing, followed by heavy artillery bombardment, that would normally be rained down upon a community possessing a serviceable railroad marshalling yard and port facility. There would be little value in capturing a harbour that required months of rebuilding.
Montgomery issued orders for Ortona’s capture that same day. A chastened Allfrey signalled to Vokes, “You must get over River Moro as soon as possible.”14 With all the bridges destroyed by the retreating Germans, it was necessary for the Canadians to find a site where the Royal Canadian Engineers could build a ford or bridge capable of supporting the weight of tanks. Otherwise, the infantry would have to carry out the attack without the backing of armoured units. To find a crossing point, Vokes immediately ordered the three battalions of 2 CIB and elements of the British 38th Brigade to initiate patrolling into the valley, accompanied by engineering sappers. The 38th temporarily remained under Vokes’s command until a full handover of the front from the 78th Division to the Canadians could be effected. Three possible areas for crossings held promise: on the right flank, along a new coast road that was missing from the Canadians’ topographical maps; on the old highway which snaked down into the valley and up the other side to enter a village named San Leonardo; and down an older dirt track about two miles upstream from San Leonardo, where a yet smaller village, Villa Rogatti, perched on the ridge.15
While orders went down the line from the headquarters of 2 CIB’s infantry battalions to the companies and eventually to the platoons that would send out the patrols, Major de Faye deployed his Saskatoon Light Infantry support companies along the ridgeline to provide covering fire for the infantry units. Periodically the Germans tossed over some desultory artillery fire that caused little harm, but the 78th had reported that the enemy were putting patrols of their own over the river to harass the forward positions. To counter these and provide anti-aircraft protection, de Faye set up his sixteen twenty-millimetre Oerlikons in a spaced line down the length of the brigade front. Several times during the day the anti-aircraft guns hammered away, tracers spewing into the sky on a low trajectory, as a single two-engined Messerschmitt 110 fighter bomber raced in from the coast to roar up the valley and drop a handful of small bombs in its wake. Neither the anti-aircraft fire nor the bombs seemed to do much damage.
Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Lieutenant Jerry Richards had established an observation post in an abandoned German slit trench across the Moro from Villa Rogatti. A motley collection of enemy equipment lay scattered around the position. It appeared Tedeschi had pulled out in a hurry. Peering through his binoculars, Richards looked over at the opposite ridge in hopes of spotting a good target for the three-inch mortars. Down on the road leading up to the enemy ridgeline, a German Mark IV tank sat, stationary and apparently unoccupied. Richards saw little point in firing at what seemed an abandoned tank. Presumably it had broken down and its crew had been forced to flee on foot.
Villa Rogatti itself was quiet, seemingly empty of life. Once he caught a fleeting image of the field-grey uniforms of a squad of Germans as they raced across an open patch of land and into the dense cover afforded by a vineyard. They moved far too quickly for the mortars to zero in on them before they were lost in the vegetation. Soon after, one of Richards’s mortar crews supporting a nearby infantry company started dropping rounds on some invisible target across the river. It looked to Richards as if the crew was simply wasting ammunition, but they ceased firing before he needed to order them to do so.
Even though it was not yet dark, a section from one of the infantry platoons slithered down into the valley to the river. They drew no fire and moved along the river for some distance, obviously searching for a ford, before beginning to head back up the slope. The patrol’s movement along the river had taken it to where the battalion’s outer left flank joined the 8th Indian Division’s lines. Suddenly from the 8th’s position, a Vickers machine gun began chattering, tracers arcing down toward the Canadians who were beginning to make their way up the slope. The soldiers scrambled into a ditch near the river and flattened down, bullets spitting up dirt in front of them. Richards grabbed his runner by the shoulder and told him to get over to battalion HQ and have someone radio the 8th Division to stop firing, that the patrol was Canadian, not German. The runner set off at a sprint and a few minutes later the Vickers ceased fire.
The Canadian patrol came up over the lip of the ridge right in front of Richards’s position. None of them was hurt, but every man looked badly shaken by the experience of being fired on by his own side. “If it wasn’t for that ditch,” the corporal said, “I don’t know what we’d have done. Been goners probably.” He shook his head and led the men off to his platoon position.16
Richards went back to observing the opposing ridgeline and the valley below. Although it was December, the landscape looked more like that of a Canadian fall than winter. In the narrow valley, where the Moro was barely visib
le amid a dense line of trees, scrub brush, and occasional stands of bamboo, the leaves and much of the grass had turned yellow. He could see glimpses of the Moro, a river barely more than ten feet wide and running the muddy brown that was typical of Italian streams. The vineyards and olive groves blanketing the slopes of the valley and stretching off across the plain to the north were thickly vegetated and intensely green even on a heavily over-cast and often drizzly day. The plain itself was corrugated with narrow gullies sharply dividing the terraced and cultivated land into defined sections. In Villa Rogatti, the two- and three-storey buildings were of rough grey-brown stone with red or black tile roofs. Behind the village he could see a number of hamlets identified on the map as La Torre, Villa Jubatti, and Villa Caldari. Each was separated from the other by deep gullies cutting sharply back from the Moro valley. If not for the war, it would have been a pretty scene. But there was always the war, and the rugged landscape before him appeared less a sight to enjoy than an obstacle that would be hard to cross.
South of the Sangro, 3 CIB faced another obstacle that was impossible to cross by normal means. The river was still in full spate and showed no indication of dropping any time soon. British engineers laboured frantically to throw an all-weather bridge across its span, but that work would take until December 6 to complete. There was no option for the Carleton and York, Royal 22e, and West Nova Scotia regiments but to bivouac on the south shore of the river and await the completion of a bridge. Meanwhile, supply of the rest of the division and the armoured brigade across the river would be carried out by a handful of DUKW amphibious trucks, called “ducks.” The American-made six-wheeled, two-and-a-half-ton trucks were capable of doing six knots afloat and also of operating on roads at about the same speed as the Commonwealth’s standard three-ton lorry. A flotilla of these vehicles now set about shuttling supplies across the mouth of the Sangro, as well as critical medical and other units needed on the distant shore preparatory to the beginning of the Canadian offensive scheduled for the night of December 5–6.