by Mark Zuehlke
The Highlanders were elated when they saw the Calgary Tanks roaring across the bridge and making their way up to San Leonardo. But as the tanks approached the village they started firing shells into the Highlanders’ perimeter. One Canadian shell struck a metal barrel providing a roof over Major F.G. McLaren’s slit trench, transforming it into a hail of fine splinters that caused multiple wounds to the officer’s face. The concussion of the explosion also burst his eardrums. Another soldier was killed by the tank fire before two soldiers could alert the tankers to the Highlanders’ presence.
With the arrival of the Seaforths and tanks in San Leonardo, the Germans shifted their attention away from the Highlanders to a fierce attempt to regain the village. The Highlanders endured only continuing shelling throughout the day. As the morning wore on, Johnston received orders to move two companies to San Leonardo to reinforce the growing concentration of Canadian forces building there. The divisional plan was for the Loyal Edmonton Regiment to move up at day’s end and occupy San Leonardo, while the Seaforths and Calgary Tanks took up positions beyond the town in preparation for a morning offensive toward the Ortona-Orsogna lateral highway.18
It was becoming increasingly apparent that the Seaforth assault on San Leonardo had not only caught the Germans by surprise, but also in the middle of executing a dual offensive against the bridgehead to the east held by the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment and the isolated pocket held by the Royal Canadian Regiment. These attacks had left the Panzer Grenadiers with limited reserves to throw into the fighting at San Leonardo. With the RCR having narrowly escaped catastrophe and the Hasty P’s ably holding their position, it seemed likely German attention would now shift entirely to the Canadian forces holding the village. Therefore Vokes wanted every man he could get close to San Leonardo to ensure that this key position — now the focal point of the Canadian effort to shatter the Moro River defensive line — was held.
11
STERLIN CASTLE
IN the early morning of December 9, the Royal Canadian Regiment’s line resembled the circled wagons of a western movie. Although they were isolated on the northern edge of the Moro River valley between the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment beachhead and San Leonardo, the men’s morale remained high. At first light Lieutenant Dave Bindman, who had courageously bagged a group of prisoners during the night’s fighting, encountered three enemy soldiers abandoning an undetected machine-gun post on the immediate flank of ‘C’ Company. Standing, Tommy gun to his shoulder, the officer exchanged shots with the Panzer Grenadiers before they broke and ran. Bindman ran after them, firing from the hip. Two privates surrendered, but the officer managed to escape. An elated Bindman marched his second set of prisoners back to the perimeter. Just as he entered the RCR lines, however, a mortar bomb struck directly in front of him. The officer fell, mortally wounded. Bindman had been in action for less than twenty-four hours.1
The mortar round that killed Bindman signalled the beginning of an intense German effort to destroy the RCR with the heaviest bombardment the regiment had so far endured. Shells blanketed their position, causing them to quickly dub the area “Slaughterhouse Hill” because of the heavy casualties suffered. Broken and torn bodies lay scattered throughout the perimeter, and the screams and moans of the wounded carried on the air. Two Sikh muleteers were killed, along with several of their animals.
Despite the intense shelling, the RCR was heartened to see Canadian tanks crossing the Moro River and moving up into San Leonardo. Soon Brigadier Howard Graham signalled Lieutenant Colonel Dan Spry that “one sub-unit Wyman’s boys are across. They should be very close. . . .” At 0950 hours Graham added, “Brothers Number 2 [2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade] in town. . . . move over and contact.”2
Spry issued orders to continue the lateral movement across the Panzer Grenadiers’ front into San Leonardo. The attack on San Leonardo deflected the German artillery’s attention from the RCR. As the shelling around Major Strome Galloway’s position lessened, he was startled to see an Italian family emerge from a hidden cave. As they stepped into the open, a shell landed close by and one young man in the group appeared to faint. Closer examination revealed that he had died, presumably suffering a heart attack from fright. The women in the small group dropped to their knees. Apparently seeking God’s mercy, they started calling lamentations toward heaven.3
If God was present on the Moro River battlefield, the merciful side of his spirit was expressed through the efforts of the medical teams treating the many wounded. A complex operational network functioned under the most difficult of conditions to evacuate the wounded from the immediate battlefield along a chain of field dressing stations, surgeries, and hospitals located ever more distant from the embattled areas.
First Canadian Infantry Division’s hurried entry into the battlefield at the beginning of the month had left the medical units scrambling to find suitable facilities for hospital operations close to the Moro River line. Many buildings in San Vito Chietino — the most logical base — were badly damaged, and the village was subject to near continual shelling. Matters had been further complicated when the Sangro River bridge washed out, effectively cutting the division off from an adequate transportation link until the British engineers replaced the bridge on December 9. Even then, it would be several more days before the wounded could be trucked across the bridge. A logjam of traffic flowed north as 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s battalions and other vitally needed forces moved to join the battle. Lacking priority status, the ambulances were unloaded and the wounded transferred across the river in the DUKW amphibious trucks, a slow process.
In response to these problems, the surgical teams moved closer than normal to the battlefield and conducted a large number of operations under enemy bombardment. Along with 1st Canadian Field Unit’s surgery, No. 5 Field Ambulance Unit established a casualty collection post in San Vito Chietino. Other facilities were established at Rocca San Giovanni, a bit farther back than San Vito. When the Sangro bridge was restored, No. 1 Field Dressing Station, No. 4 Field Ambulance Unit, and No. 2 Field Surgical Unit also moved into San Vito. On December 9, the fierce fighting on the Moro River resulted in 230 casualties being evacuated through the Rocca treatment facilities to hospitals south of the Sangro River. Most of these were soldiers operated on earlier by the forward field surgery teams.
The most forward surgery was at San Vito in a school pitted with shell holes and lacking any glass in its windows. At any given time, this hospital housed one hundred or more patients either waiting for evacuation or in too unstable a condition to be moved.4 Among those lying for days in this hospital was Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Lieutenant Jerry Richards, who had suffered shrapnel wounds to his stomach on the night of December 6–7. By the time Richards reached the surgery he was already developing peritonitis, a painful and dangerous inflammation of the transparent membrane lining the abdominal walls. The two surgeons, Dr. Frank Mills and Dr. Bruce Toby, had immediately cut away his bloody clothes and conducted emergency operations to contain the damage to Richards’s abdominal organs and to sew up his external wounds. Richards awoke hours after the operation to find various intravenous tubes running into the veins of both legs. He was “surprised and pleased to be lying there alive in this bed,” despite being naked except for the identity disks around his neck. Soon Richards learned that his clothes had been either cut to pieces or so blood-stained that the medical orderlies had thrown them away. As he learned about the severity of his wounds, Richards realized that his war against Germany was over. He was facing a more personal war to recover from the wounds, and would require several years of continued treatments.5
The surgical teams and medical orderlies in the San Vito operations depended on both the ambulance units, and the medical officers and orderlies posted to the various battalions to clear the wounded from the fighting lines. Geneva Convention rules required that these men wear a red cross on a white armband for identification, be unarmed, and not be fired upo
n while treating and collecting the wounded. In reality, their job was as dangerous as any front-line duty. Amid the confused, smoke-filled, and hazardous conditions prevailing during a battle, soldiers rarely held fire when presented with a target wearing an enemy uniform. Many stretcher-bearers, orderlies, and medical officers died on the Moro River front trying to rescue wounded soldiers. Some were shot by enemy soldiers. The majority were killed by artillery and mortar fire, which exempted nobody from its deadly rain.
As soon as a battalion established a new position, it set up a Regimental Aid Post (RAP) in the safest and most comfortable location available. Usually this was a building with solid walls and a sturdy roof that rendered it somewhat shellproof. If conditions were too bad, as was the case on December 8–9 for the RCR dug in on the reverse slope of the Moro River ridge, the RAP might merely be a series of slit trenches close to the centre of the infantry’s perimeter. Once a wounded soldier reached the RAP he received basic, often crude, first aid. Priority was placed on stopping external bleeding and preventing the onset of shock, a major cause of battlefield death. Wound cleaning to stave off gangrene was also a key task. Stabilization of the patient was the focus, rather than extensive treatment of the wound.
The medical orderlies forayed out from the RAP whenever a wounded soldier was reported. Often the flow of battle required the infantry to carry on the fight and abandon the wounded where they fell. To do otherwise jeopardized everyone’s safety, because a company or platoon concentrating on tending wounded seldom could fulfill assigned combat tasks. Leaving suffering friends was more easily done if the soldiers knew that stretcher-bearers followed in their wake, determined to gather up the wounded and spirit them to safety.
The forward medical teams were assisted by the padres and chaplains assigned to each battalion. Men such as Roy Durnford, the Seaforth padre, Three Rivers Tank Regiment’s chaplain Waldo E. Smith, and RCR chaplain Rusty Wilkes spent many hours under fire. Much of the time they helped man the jeeps fitted with stretcher racks to carry the wounded back from the RAP to rear-area hospital facilities. The clerics also oversaw the grim duty of burying the dead. This included the task of ensuring that grave sites were marked and coordinates recorded on maps so the bodies could later be recovered and moved to military cemeteries for permanent interment.
For many RCR soldiers killed on December 9, days passed before their bodies were recovered or buried. At 1430 hours, when the battalion moved off toward the safety of San Leonardo, it had no choice but to abandon its dead. Almost every man in ‘C’ Company was required just to assist the stretcher-bearers in carrying out the wounded who were incapable of walking on their own.
Providing a protective screen for the men assisting the wounded, Galloway’s ‘B’ Company took the point position. The soldiers moved through a landscape transformed by war into a charred, mud-choked hellhole. Olive trees were shattered and stripped of leaves, vineyards were devastated tangles of wire and torn vegetation, most buildings had been reduced to rubble or had their roofs stove in by direct artillery hits, small fires burned across the plain clear to Ortona. Everywhere the men looked were shell craters. The mud underfoot was slippery and filthy. Forty-eight hours before, Matthew Halton had likened the Moro ridgeline to a painting by Paul Cézanne. Now it appeared colourless, a bleak world made even grimmer by the close slate-grey sky.
‘B’ and ‘C’ companies slipped clear of the RCR position without meeting any resistance. ‘A’ Company and the battalion HQ section were not so lucky. Just as they prepared to move off, the Panzer Grenadiers attacked, slicing between the two groups and isolating ‘A’ Company and Spry’s HQ. Responsible for the wounded and under orders to get into San Leonardo, Galloway had no option but to leave the cutoff element to its fate. Upon reaching San Leonardo, ‘C’ Company immediately set off with the wounded down the road leading to the southern bank of the Moro River. ‘B’ Company took up position on the junction where the lateral ridgeline road intersected the main road entering San Leonardo.
Galloway was surprised by the reception Seaforth Highlanders of Canada commander Lieutenant Colonel Doug Forin gave him. “Thank God you have come,” Forin said excitedly. He then proceeded to order Galloway to push his ravaged company forward of San Leonardo toward the enemy lines. Galloway’s orders from Spry were to consolidate at the road junction inside the village, so he refused. Forin demanded to know what else Galloway would do to help him. Galloway told him his orders were to sit tight. If Forin failed to consider such action a help, that was too bad. He thought the lieutenant colonel left in a “huff.”6 Soon after, Galloway received a radio signal from Spry to withdraw from San Leonardo. He was to rejoin the RCR on the southern bank of the Moro, where the battalion was planning a reorganization for future operations. Because San Leonardo was taking heavy artillery fire, Galloway replied that he would link up with the rest of the battalion in the morning when it was safer to move.
While ‘A’ Company and battalion HQ were left surrounded on three flanks with their backs to the Moro River valley, most of ‘D’ Company remained in the Hastings and Prince Edward battalion’s perimeter, helping to fend off repeated counterattacks. The brunt of the German counterattacks fell on the front held by Hasty P’s Acting Major Frank Joseph Hammond’s Company ‘B.’ The twenty-nine-year-old had worked his way up from the rank of Lance Corporal and was known as a brave, stolid soldier. Seeing the advancing lines of Panzer Grenadiers, Hammond ordered his men to hold their fire. He let the Germans close to within 150 yards before unleashing a maelstrom of machine-gun and rifle fire, supported by the company’s two-inch mortars and the battalion’s three-inch mortars. The effect was devastating, throwing back the initial attack with heavy casualties.7
During this attack, Sergeant Gordon Pemberton was stunned by {a mortar bomb that landed near his slit trench. Head ringing from concussion, the twenty-seven-year-old from Port Hope, Ontario, still had the presence of mind to appreciate that one flank of his platoon section was hanging in the air, completely exposed to attack from a narrow ravine stretching back into the German lines. The Germans were raking the Canadian front with machine-gun and mortar fire, obviously trying to soften the position for a renewed assault. Pemberton realized the ravine approach had to be secured immediately. Unable to spare any men from his section’s line, Pemberton decided to tackle the job himself. Snatching up a Bren light machine gun and a bag of magazines, he crawled across 350 yards of ground subjected to heavy enemy fire to occupy a position overlooking the ravine from the ridge opposite his section’s trenches. As he set the Bren gun up on its bipod, assumed a prone position, and tucked the machine gun’s butt into his shoulder, a knot of Germans turned a bend inside the ravine and started creeping toward his hiding spot. Pemberton let them come in close before opening fire. He burned off several magazines, sending the completely surprised Panzer Grenadiers fleeing. They left fifteen dead.8
As this attack was being repelled, more Germans dug in a machine-gun post right in front of Hammond’s lines. From this position, the Panzer Grenadiers were able to lay down a screen of fire that forced ‘B’ Company to keep their heads down. Unless the post was destroyed, Hammond knew the next counterattack might well break through. Enlisting the help of thirty-two-year-old Company Sergeant Major Cecil Napoleon Yearwood, Hammond prepared a two-man attack against the German emplacement.
Both men armed themselves with Thompson submachine guns. While the rest of the company laid down supporting fire to force the Panzer Grenadiers to seek cover, Hammond and Yearwood charged the gun position, spraying the enemy with repeated bursts of fire. When they ceased firing, fourteen soldiers were dead or wounded, and the remaining eighteen in the position were standing with their hands up in surrender. This action broke the German offensive.9 For the rest of the day, the battalion was subjected to little more than desultory shelling, mortaring, the occasional infantry probe, and a surprise aerial attack by a squadron of Messerschmitt 109s that screamed in off the Adriatic to bomb and straf
e its positions.
Similar counterattacks were also directed toward the isolated RCR element still trapped between the bridgehead held by the Hasty P’s and San Leonardo. This small, battered group of soldiers was seriously threatened with being overrun. The Panzer Grenadiers sought to infiltrate behind ‘A’ Company and cut it off from the valley below. Were they to succeed, everyone in the encircled position would either be killed or forced to surrender. After about twenty minutes of fierce fighting, Spry decided a retreat into the valley and across the river by the nearest possible ford was the only way to avert destruction. He ordered Captain Slim Liddell’s ‘A’ Company to hold until his battalion HQ group had successfully slipped away. Liddell’s men would then follow by platoons.10
Breaking off a heavy action is a dangerous and difficult undertaking, usually requiring soldiers to relinquish good defensive positions and to cross open ground subject to fire from an alerted enemy. Heavy casualties are common. It is also common for some sections to get forgotten or cut off from the main body. The first two platoons of ‘A’ Company managed to extricate themselves and retreat to the river bottom. Casualties were light. At the river, Spry learned that ‘A’ Company’s No. 8 Platoon was missing and Lieutenant Mitch Sterlin’s No. 16 Platoon of ‘D’ Company, concentrated in the two-storey farmhouse dubbed Sterlin Castle, had similarly failed to join the retreat.