by Mark Zuehlke
Orders cascaded out of Vokes’s HQ and from Eighth Army’s HQ, which endorsed the overall plan and committed the British and Indian artillery, the aerial bombardments, and the involvement of the Royal Navy. Trucks laden with shells and powder charges lumbered up to the artillery gun pits. Gunners worked desperately to stack the crates of shells near their weapons. Eighteen-year-old Gunner Bill Strickland had never seen anything like it in the two years he had been in the army. One truck after another came forward and the men staggered through deep mud with the boxes to get the shells to the guns. The fields were too wet for trucks to leave the road. Manpower had to suffice. Four 25-pound shells to a box, a total weight of 110 pounds. Two men carried a box together, each holding a rope handle on the box’s side in one hand. Often the boxes had to be carried 200 yards from the road to a gun.
Sweat poured off Strickland’s body. Some of his comrades stripped off their shirts and jackets despite the night’s cold and the occasional icy shower. The work continued for hour after deadening hour through the night and well into the morning. The gunners had been told success depended on them. If they failed to shatter the German resistance, the infantry would die. Strickland hated that thought. He ignored the sweat, ignored the pain in his arms and back, ignored the quiver in his legs. There were still more shell cases to carry to the stack that was now shoulder high. Strickland and his comrades worked on.27
THREE
BREAKING THE MORO RIVER LINE
9
INTO THE INFERNO
HE began every radio broadcast the same way: “This is Matthew Halton speaking from Italy.” The thirty-nine-year-old native of Pincher Creek, Alberta, was the most renowned Canadian war correspondent and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s senior European correspondent. A small, balding man possessed of a cultured and eloquent voice, Halton had followed the 1st Canadian Infantry Division from Sicily to the Moro River. Halton reported little of the grand strategies and tactics that directed the troops forward into battle. Instead, he attempted to enable Canadians at home to visualize the soldiers’ day-to-day experience. His sympathies were always with the men in the front lines. To capture their stories meant getting up close to the fighting. Halton and his assistant, Arthur Holmes, were often to be seen in a jeep well inside the Germans’ field of fire.
If Halton was war’s narrator, Holmes was the means behind the voice. He was a recording engineer genius. Having spent ten years as a wireless operator on ocean-going ships before joining the newly founded CBC in 1933, Holmes was fascinated by the challenge of producing disc recordings in unstable conditions. At the time, all recording had to be carefully undertaken in an environment that ensured the 78-rpm disc recorder cutting the track was perfectly level. With the outbreak of war, Holmes recognized that radio’s great advantage over newsprint was the ability to bring the sounds of war into the nation’s living rooms. That would only be possible if the recording equipment could function on the battlefield. In January 1940, Holmes toured the French Maginot line and the British Expeditionary Force positions to acquaint himself with the conditions under which the recording equipment must operate. He then set to work designing what the CBC overseas unit required.
As the war progressed, Holmes designed and equipped the European correspondents with several mobile units that worked well enough while the Canadian army was based in relatively static camps in Britain. He knew, however, that once the army took the offensive the large civilian vans required to carry the heavy recording equipment would be too unwieldy and prone to breakdown. Holmes decided the gear had to be customized to fit into the army’s Heavy Utility Personnel (HUP) carriers, which were basically four-wheel-drive station wagons. Inside the cramped space of a HUP, Holmes installed three turntables, amplifiers, a regular four-input sound mixer, sufficient batteries to run everything, and a battery charger. Having three turntables enabled Holmes to keep recording as long as there were discs and to simultaneously play back recordings already cut. This made it possible to dub from disc to disc, edit a finished broadcast, and then feed it through short-wave transmitters without the technician ever leaving the interior of the HUP.
The HUP recording studio was an amazing feat, but Holmes hadn’t stopped there. Although the HUP could keep up with an advancing army, it was still too cumbersome to deploy on the front lines. What was needed was a more portable studio that could be installed on a jeep or even carried by hand. Holmes’s solution was a small studio system that was contained in two large boxes weighing eighty pounds apiece. Mounted on the back of a jeep, and drawing power from the vehicle’s battery, the mobile unit featured a twelve-inch recording turntable and vacuum-tube amplifier in one box, and a motor generator with leads to clip to a six-volt battery in the other. When the HUP and portable equipment followed 1st Canadian Infantry Division into battle in Sicily and Italy it worked like a charm, enabling Holmes to record the voices of Halton and his alternate correspondent, Peter Stursberg, in every imaginable battlefield and weather condition.1
On December 8, the portable set was positioned inside an old building in San Vito Chietino. A hole blown in the wall during earlier fighting provided a perfect view of the entire Canadian front facing the northern ridgeline of the Moro River valley. Behind this position, the artillery regiments of the division were scattered in the fields and folds of ground, gunners hunched over their weapons, munitions at the ready. It was 1526 hours.
“In four minutes,” Halton announced into the microphone, “there will be a tremendous artillery barrage on the enemy positions across the Moro from here. The barrage will continue intermittently for an hour or so and at half past four our infantry — I can’t say which infantry — will move across the valley, across the little river, and up out of the valley to attack the enemy positions. It is incredible that one is watching the battle, and that one should have such a dramatic view of the battle, and that on such a gorgeous day — with the warm sun and the Adriatic dancing in the light. War on such a day seems particularly tragic and unreal. . . . It’s so beautiful, I mean the view from here. The other side of the valley, an enchanting patchwork of vivid reds, greens, and yellows, like daubs of paint, like a painting by Cézanne, but the enemy is waiting there. Only two to three thousand yards away.”2
Not far from where Halton was recording his broadcast, another non-combatant observer lay in long grass on the skyline, mindful of how exposed this position rendered him and his companion to enemy eyes. Forty-three-year-old Captain Charles Comfort of the Historical Section of General Staff was a painter. His job was to capture the Canadian war with pencil and brush. Beside him lay another artist, Major William Ogilvie. The two painters were fast friends, both dedicated to the execution of their historical task. Together the artists waited for the guns.
Like Halton, it struck Comfort that this was not a day suited to war. The afternoon sun was warm. “Nearby a lizard basked on a stone, still, like ourselves, except for the rapid pulsing of his soft belly; a lark’s song descended from the zenith. . . . To our right was the headland that marked the estuary of the river, now held by the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, beyond it, the empty Adriatic, shimmering in the late autumnal sunshine. The valley below was typical of the water courses that channel this coastal plain, two hundred feet perhaps to its floor, a thousand yards across. At the bottom, a muddy stream, high at this season, meandered through shrubs and vetches and occasional clumps of willow. . . . The reverse slope, with its burden of olive, rose in gentle folds to its crest, the highway snaking up its flank toward San Leonardo. The plain beyond undulated off to the horizon with its plotted fertility and cube-like white farm buildings. Ortona gleamed attractively in the distance, clustered about the cupola of San Tomasso.
“. . . As the minutes ticked away, insects buzzed in the sunshine; a magpie, followed by its pendulous tail, flitted in deep swags across our line of vision. Five minutes to zero. . . . An idle shell whined across the valley; the horizon wavered in the cordial-like heat haze. . . . One minu
te.”3
Twenty-one-year-old Lance Sergeant Victor Bulger of Cobourg, Ontario, stuffed wads of cotton into his ears, knowing the scant protection this safety measure provided his eardrums. Bulger was second-in-command of one of the four twenty-five pounder guns belonging to ‘D’ Troop of the 1st Field Regiment’s ‘B’ Battery. The battery’s guns were dug into heavily mudded positions about half a mile south of San Vito Chietino.
As the second hand ticked down, the six-man gun team prepared the weapon. One shoved the gleaming brass shell into the gun breech, another rammed it into the barrel. Then the cartridge case was added. 1530 hours. Like a rippling wave running through the gun lines positioned around San Vito, the artillery fired.4 The order was for “intense fire,” so the gunners’ pace was rushed. Five rounds a minute. Three hundred and fifty guns hurled more than 1,500 shells every sixty seconds toward the German lines in a barrage that crept across the landscape, leaving nothing in its path unscathed.
As the barrage started, Halton scrambled though the hole in the wall of the old building. He held the microphone aloft, enabling Holmes to clearly record the tremendous volleys of fire. It was impossible for Halton to speak, the noise of the firing was deafening. Inside the building, Holmes hunched over the recording equipment, capturing the massive din for posterity on his discs. The day was moving toward dusk and it seemed to Halton that the bombardment hastened the onset of approaching darkness.
“Then inferno broke loose,” Comfort wrote in his diary, “the earth trembled with cataclysmic shock. Instantly the pastoral valley became a valley of death. From its fertile groves sprang the instant and terrible orchids of death. The first impact was of sound, gigantic and preposterous sound. One was shuttled from warm sunlight into the roaring darkness of an endless tunnel. It battered and pounded the eardrums from all sides. We lay stunned and fearful, clawing the earth, as flights of frightened birds crossed the valley and passed over our heads to a relative safety. Before our eyes sprang the grey-blue flowers of death, withering instantly in the breeze, to form a concealing veil of sulphurous vapour, struggling to hide the agony of the clamorous garden. . . .
“No sound of speech or movement could be heard above the infernal dissonance; all was lost in the tumult of its fury. The target pattern soon became clear; neat rectangles were searched and scorched with fire, the finger pointing here and then there. Soon they all fitted together with diabolical accuracy, like the parts of a gigantic puzzle. When the assembly was complete, all that the eye could encompass had been burned with fire. The valley was gone, hidden in an opaque cloud of acrid cordite. One was possessed of a great fatigue, a throbbing of the temples. What a dreadful monotony it was, of key, of tempo, of colour, of purpose and effect.”5
At 1600 hours, the Saskatoon Light Infantry support battalion opened up with its Vickers medium machine guns, “spraying the enemy positions with penetrating bursts like pneumatic drills. To our astonishment, the enemy replied with the even faster falsetto of the Schmeisser. How could humans survive such a barrage? Why were they not helpless inarticulate blobs of quivering jelly?”6
So intense was the rate of fire that Bulger and the other Canadian gunners, like Gunner Bill Strickland, were amazed to see the barrels of their guns glow translucent red. They could actually see the shells sliding up the barrel prior to blasting off toward the enemy lines. Strickland’s cotton padding fell out of his ears and minutes later a dribble of blood ran from each eardrum down his cheeks. Around him gunners had torn off their coats and shirts to work the guns barechested, their bodies dripping with sweat. Strickland was reeling with exhaustion, passing shells forward at a manic pace. His sergeant’s mouth opened and moved, but Strickland heard no sound.7
At 1630 hours the firing abruptly ceased. Bulger felt numb, his whole body oddly dislocated by the continuous concussion of the firing. The smell of cordite was choking and a light blue smoke fog cloaked the firing position. He could have dropped to the ground. But there was no time to rest. The gun required cleaning, the hundreds of spent cartridges needed piling up, and hundreds more shells waited to be carried from the roads through the mud to replenish the gun’s ammunition supply. Any moment more firing plans could be announced, and the men would once again turn to the guns. During the long years of waiting in Britain, the artillerymen had been strictly rationed in the numbers of shells they could fire. It seemed at times that each shell had to be personally signed off by a regimental commander before it could be fired. Not so on December 8. The Canadian gunners had fired off thousands of rounds, rendering any accurate accounting of munitions spent impossible.8
“So you could hear the barrage,” said Halton, speaking into the microphone. “You must have heard it. You can hardly see the valley, it’s very ghostly now. . . . God knows what’s happening down there, our men are down there. The enemy must have been dazed and bewildered by our barrage.”9
Comfort wrote: “Everywhere destruction and disintegration: shattered buildings, mutilated trees, a spectral landscape of heaped-up fleshless bones, jostled by concussion and blast in a hideous monotonous danse macabre. Such was the new tempestuous world of cataclysm and shock we had inherited. Jesus Christ! How long can it go on? How long can this frail human mechanism stand it?”10
Even as the Germans began to hammer the Canadian lines with a
The schoolhouse at San Vito Chietino that served as the Advanced Dressing Station throughout the battle.
— ALEXANDER STIRTON, NAC, PA-114037
Canadian tank recovery crew rescues two Shermans that ran off the road during the December 9 assault on San Leonardo.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-131644
A knocked-out Panzer Mark IV stands abandoned in the ruined farmland between the Moro River and The Gully.
— ALEXANDER STIRTON, NAC, PA-107937
‘B’ Company of The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada advances up a trail toward Ortona, visible in the far distance.
— FREDERICK WHITCOMBE, NAC, PA-152749
A Seaforth Highlander killed by a sniper while moving through a vineyard on the outskirts of Ortona, December 20, 1943.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-141302
‘B’ Company of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment advances into Ortona on December 21.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-116852
Loyal Edmonton riflemen fire on three Germans crouching in a slit trench one hundred yards away during the fight on Ortona’s outskirts.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-163935
Two German paratroopers surrender to the Canadians at the edge of Ortona.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-107934
Loyal Edmonton Lance Corporal E.A. Harris fires at a German position in Ortona.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-114490
A Three Rivers Regiment tank prepares to fire another round up the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-163933
Loyal Edmonton troopers advance into Ortona. Lance Corporal W.D. Smith (far right) is carrying a #18 wireless set.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-163932
A six-pounder antitank gun in action on the edge of Ortona, December 21.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-141671
On December 23, Three Rivers Regiment tanks push up Corso Vittorio Emanuele toward the rubble pile at Piazza Municipali.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-114028
Cattedrale San Tommaso after its destruction.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-136308
Christmas Day at the front. It is not known whether this picture was taken during the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada dinner or farther back in the lines.
— FREDERICK WHITCOMBE, NAC, PA-163936
The war continues unabated on Christmas Day. A dead paratrooper in his slit trench. The weapon is an MG-42 machine gun.
— FREDERICK WHITCOMBE, NAC, PA-115190
Although often used as an illustration of the dinner at San Maria di Costantanopoli, this photo was actually of the Christmas dinner served at divisional headquarters in San Vito Chientino on December 26, 1943.
/> — T. ROWE, NAC, PA-152839
Canadian soldiers take cover in the Banco di Napoli on Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-107936
A truck and jeep burn in Ortona after being hit by German mortar fire. A Bren carrier stands in the foreground.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-170291
Men of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment rescue Lance Corporal Roy Boyd from the rubble of a destroyed building. Boyd was buried for three-and-a-half days.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-152748
Battle over, civilians and soldiers alike find walking through the streets of Ortona a difficult task.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-114032
One of the narrow streets through which the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada fought on the western side of Ortona.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-153938
A young woman hangs out washing in the ruins of Ortona on January 13, 1944.
— T. ROWE, NAC, PA-114040
Graves of Loyal Edmonton Regiment soldiers who died in the Ortona street battle.
— ALEXANDER STIRTON, NAC, PA-115151
counter-barrage of artillery, Comfort imagined the infantry on both sides setting about their deadly purpose. “Men were emerging from deep hiding, like sullen beasts, shaken, baited, and desperate, crawling in cover in the vapour-filled valley, jockeying with death mid this fearful cacophony. What of those men? Were they battlewise and again secure in cover? Nothing, it seemed to us, could survive that fire as it tossed earth and trees high in the air. Yet down there were Canadian Engineers, ready to sweep the fords and get the bridge across; on their start line were the 48th, waiting for the quiet, ‘All right fellahs, let’s go!’”11