Ortona

by Mark Zuehlke

  Unable to do anything for the lost units, Spry led his men across the Moro and ordered them to dig in on the river’s bank. His concern was to set up a defensive line to prevent any attempt by the Germans to launch a major assault across the river to outflank and surround the Canadian units positioned on the north side of the valley. Soon Spry was reinforced by ‘C’ Company, which had completed its transfer of the wounded to safety.11 The soldiers on the riverbank listened anxiously to the sounds of intense gunfire coming from the northern ridgeline, knowing the remnants of two RCR platoons were engaged in a bitter struggle to survive.

  Lieutenant Jimmy Quayle’s No. 8 Platoon numbered only about fifteen men. They were dug in to the right of the house occupied by the ten men remaining in No. 16 Platoon. Quayle watched two young Panzer Grenadiers with haggard faces and empty-eyed, exhausted expressions creep toward the building. One held a Schmeisser 9-millimetre submachine gun, the second grasped the wooden handle of a stick grenade. As the Germans approached the front door, one of Quayle’s corporals stood up in his slit trench and emptied a long burst of fire into the man with the submachine gun. Dropping his grenade, the other German fled.

  Quayle yelled across the fifty yards separating the two platoons, repeatedly calling out “Mitch, Mitch.” Finally Sterlin appeared in the doorway, waved almost cheerily, and disappeared back into the dark interior. Quayle started to rise, planning to go over and confer with his friend from officers training school, but a machine-gun burst showered him with splinters slashed off the trunk of a nearby olive tree. Quayle grovelled into his slit trench just as deadly accurate mortar fire bracketed the platoon.

  While the tall and lean Quayle was the spitting image of a military recruiting poster, his friend Mitch Sterlin was the antithesis. Stocky, perpetually overweight, and renowned for his clumsiness, Sterlin was also easygoing to a fault. He seemed to retain platoon discipline through winning the men over as friends rather than by his leadership abilities. During officer training, Sterlin had always been the man who failed the obstacle course. He fell off the logs crossing rivers, was unable to climb over the walls, and was far to the rear during cross-country marches and runs.

  But here was Sterlin, the unlikely officer, calmly leading his platoon in a terrific resistance against overwhelming odds. Quayle worried, however, that they were all going to die. Ammunition was running low. The lieutenant told Sergeant Albert Hocking to inform company commander Captain Slim Liddell of the situation. Repeatedly dashing forward and then dropping as machine gunners and mortarmen zeroed on him, Hocking disappeared from sight, heading in the direction of ‘A’ Company’s HQ. He made an identically hazardous return trip only minutes later to report that everyone else had disappeared. “What do you mean they’re gone? The whole company’s gone?” Quayle shouted. “Not just the company,” the grey-faced man panted between breaths, “but the whole bloody Regiment.”12 Sickened and angry, Quayle realized the two platoons had been abandoned; that somehow the rest of the regiment had withdrawn without his and Sterlin’s platoons being advised.

  There was precious little time to consider what should be done next, for the mortar bombardment lifted and a large German force charged the two platoons, guns blazing. The Germans were slowed by the deep mud, their run more of a clumsy stagger. Gunfire from Quayle’s platoon cut down two of the enemy and the rest retreated.

  Quayle shouted again to Sterlin, but received no reply. The door to the house stood open, and there seemed no sign of life. The mortaring resumed. Thinking Sterlin and his platoon were dead, Quayle reluctantly ordered his own unit to withdraw. Leapfrogging one section at a time through the others, Quayle’s men made their way through the intense mortar fire. One man was killed on the way. As darkness closed in, Quayle’s small force staggered through the river and joined the rest of the RCR.13

  Unknown to Quayle, Sterlin’s platoon was still alive inside the house. None of the men had heard Quayle’s shouting. The intense racket of their guns firing in the small confines of the house had deafened them all. With six machine guns blasting the walls of Sterlin Castle, the Germans launched a frenzied final assault. A handful of Panzer Grenadiers fought their way right up to the building, seeking to direct fire through the windows and storm inside. Sterlin and his men cut them down with precisely aimed bullets. The bodies slumped against the wall, some remaining half standing. One oberleutnant tried shoving a stick grenade through the bars of a window. Sterlin’s sergeant pushed his rifle barrel through the bars and shot the German at point-blank range. A soldier wearing an Iron Cross at his throat was also shot while trying to provide cover for his German officer. The enemy attack broke and the Germans withdrew. Their dead lay in knots surrounding the house. About fifty Germans had been wounded in the attack, rendering it impossible for them all to be evacuated by the small number of medical orderlies that came forward to help.14 Sterlin’s men held their fire while the orderlies tried to provide first aid to the badly wounded soldiers.

  With this attack the battle of Sterlin Castle ended. The Germans made no further attempts to overrun the building. When night came, Sterlin and his men slipped away. They crossed into the Hastings and Prince Edward lines, then marched around to join Spry’s forces facing the Moro River. Quayle was overjoyed to see his friend wander out of the dark night into the farmhouse serving as his company’s headquarters. The two celebrated by drinking from a keg of bitter red wine found in the basement and eating a tin of sardines Sterlin had been saving for a special occasion.

  “I guess today was it for us,” Sterlin said. “Right,” Quayle replied. “They say there’s one time you get killed or you don’t. And if you don’t you’re okay from then on.” Sterlin finally said, “So maybe we’ll be okay.” Quayle offered him some more wine.15

  12

  AT ALL COSTS

  AS the fighting wound down for the night, the artillery and mortar units of both sides continued harassing their opponent’s front- and rear-area positions. Under this fire, the forward infantry and armoured brigades licked their wounds as best they could. Both the 1st Canadian Infantry Division and the 90th Panzer Grenadiers knew the bloody contest of December 9 had ended in the Germans’ Moro River line being irreparably breached. The Germans faded into the night, falling back to their next major defensive line. Where that line would be drawn, the Canadians had little idea. It might be immediately ahead. Or, come the morning advance, they might merely face delaying actions covering a German withdrawal to a line behind Ortona anchored on the Arielli River. For their part, the Canadians set about expanding their bridgehead around shell-torn San Leonardo in order to prepare a solid jumping-off point for the morning’s hostilities.

  Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister ordered the Loyal Edmonton Regiment to pass through the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada lines and take up a position immediately to the north of the village, while the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry settled in a short distance behind the Edmontons. Kept in reserve until now, the Edmontons were the only 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade battalion still close to full strength. They would now take the point for a renewed offensive aimed at finally cutting the Ortona-Orsogna lateral road. The objective would be a junction where the road leading north from San Leonardo intersected the highway running from Ortona to Orsogna. The code name for this crossroads was Cider.1

  While these plans were being drawn, Major General Chris Vokes’s headquarters staff assessed the results of the past four days’ bitter fighting. The divisional war diarist was jubilant. “This day will be remembered by the 1st Canadians for a long, long time,” he wrote. “We had our first real battle on a divisional level with the Germans. The battle of the Moro River — the Germans counterattacked very heavily and were thrown back.”2 Not one given to praising Vokes, for whom he had little respect, Montgomery offered a laconic message: “Hearty congratulations on day’s work and on throwing back counter-attack.”3

  The butcher’s bill for that day’s work was high. Casualties suffered by the two committe
d brigades exceeded anything the Canadians had previously faced. Among the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade’s battalions, the 48th Highlanders of Canada had taken the lightest losses: 16 dead and 22 wounded.4 Unscathed prior to the fighting of December 8–9, the Royal Canadian Regiment had been hardest hit during these two days: 21 dead, 51 wounded or missing.5 Locked in near continuous fighting in the hard-won coastal bridgehead since December 6, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment had lost fully one-third of its approximate strength of 400 as dead, wounded, or missing.6

  Of 2 CIB’s battalions, the Seaforths had suffered most. The December 9 attack on San Leonardo had cost more than 50 dead, wounded, and missing.7 With the additional men lost during the earlier offensive against the village, no Seaforth company mustered more than 50 men on the night of December 9. The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry was in only slightly better condition. Yet it was falling on Hoffmeister’s battalions to lead the way in the morning.

  Because of the difficulty bringing the tanks of 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade across the Moro River, only the Calgary Tank Regiment had so far seen action. While that regiment’s human toll had been surprisingly light — six dead, ten wounded — the cost in tanks had been heavy. Some tank crews had two or even three Shermans shot out from under them during the course of the two-day battle around San Leonardo. When a tank was lost to enemy fire, breakdown, or, as was all too common, bogging down in the ever worsening mud, the crew scrambled to the south shore of the Moro to pick up another one and roll back into the battle. Of the 51 battle-worthy tanks the regiment had put over the Moro during the fight for San Leonardo, only 24 were still operational at day’s end.8 Fortunately, most were either reparable or retrievable. Only 5 were written off as too badly damaged by enemy fire to be repaired.9

  Although the effect of the massive weight of artillery fire brought to bear against the Panzer Grenadiers holding the Moro River line had been far less than hoped, by the standard of western Allied forces the sheer volume of fire had been daunting. In four days, the twenty-five pounders of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Field regiments had blasted the narrow band of land stretching from the Moro River to Ortona with 65,000 rounds. Thousands more shells had been fired by main guns of the Eighth Army, naval ships, and the twenty-five pounders of the 8th Indian Division. Sustaining these rates of fire had placed a heavy burden on the supply network, which remained dependent on a single bridge spanning the Sangro River.10 The

  artillery bombardments had been supplemented by intensive aerial strafing and bomber runs, mortaring by battalion and Saskatoon Light Infantry weapons, and the utilization of antitank weapons as close-up artillery. Responding German artillery and mortar fire had also been the heaviest directed at any Eighth Army division since the early battles in North Africa.

  Caught in the middle between the Germans and the Canadians, tiny San Donato had been devastated by this deadly rain. The small white chapel was reduced to burned rubble, most of the houses were destroyed or badly damaged. During the battle, fifteen-year-old Anna Tucci and her family lived a routine corresponding to the rhythm of the guns. By day they huddled in a cave cut into the escarpment facing the Adriatic; by night, when the shelling slackened, they crept back into their battered home to sleep in relative warmth. If the night’s shelling unexpectedly shifted their way, the family cowered under the beds. Anna would try not to scream as the house shook from the concussion of nearby explosions and shrapnel spattered against its walls.

  After days of hiding, the family’s food supplies were mostly depleted. Yet the Tuccis counted themselves lucky. All were alive, nobody had been wounded. Not all the civilians of San Donato were so fortunate. Other families had seen both children and adults killed. For those who were wounded, there was neither the means nor the knowledge to treat their injuries. The people of San Donato desperately yearned for the battle to move past them. Frightened of the Germans, they believed when the Allies finally came they would receive much-needed succour.11

  On the night of December 9, the last Panzer Grenadiers faded out of the San Donato area. As they left, they closed with mines all the paths that ran through the wide swaths of minefields they had previously sown through the vineyards and orchards, extending back to Ortona. Minefield warning signs were removed. Some empty houses were booby-trapped. Opening a front door might trigger a bomb leaned against it from the inside. An overturned kitchen pot on a table might conceal a stick grenade that would explode when the pot was moved or turned right side up.

  Culverts running under roads were loaded with Teller mines, with detonators wired to be exploded by the weight of a vehicle passing overhead. Other mines were dug into the roadbeds. The German anti-vehicle mines, such as the Teller, and the anti-personnel S-mines were metallic and subject to detection by mine-clearing teams. Mines made by the Italian army, however, had wooden outer casings that eluded mine detection equipment. When the Italian army had surrendered, the German occupation forces had captured massive stockpiles of Italian armaments. The Panzer Grenadier engineers, like most other German engineers in Italy, were fond of the Italian mines. They randomly laced these deadly explosives among their own metal-cased ones — a deadly surprise for the Canadians and coincidentally for the Italian civilians.

  Another hazard was presented by the hundreds of unexploded shells fired by both sides. Duds were common; others failed to explode because they landed on their sides or at some other angle that resulted in the failure of the detonating fuse in the nose cap to ignite when the shell struck. The German engineers were highly skilled at booby-trapping unexploded shells and mortar bombs. Even if left alone, the explosives presented a great danger to civilians and soldiers alike.

  Farther back from the immediate front at Villa Deo, Antonio Di Cesare, his mother, two uncles, and their families sought to live as best they could in a war zone. The men and teenage boys worked the fields when the artillery fell elsewhere. If a bombardment came their way, everyone fled houses and fields for a nearby grotto containing several natural caves. Sometimes the shelling caught them in the open or in their houses. Everyone then sought shelter wherever they could. In the houses they crawled under beds, in the fields they tried clawing holes in the muddy soil. Some failed to find safety. The number of dead and wounded rose with each passing day.

  So far, because Villa Deo was to the west of the various approaches to Ortona, little of the shelling had been deliberately directed their way. Food was in short supply and all the homes were heavily overcrowded by Ortona refugees, but the civilians were coping. Antonio’s family was wedged in with a total of twenty people living under one small roof.

  The Panzer Grenadiers passing frequently through Villa Deo largely left the civilians alone. They neither demanded nor offered food. There was little looting or harassment, even of the younger women. Antonio thought the Germans were decent and were also victims of war. The whole family had grown fond of the young twenty-two-year-old engineering student turned soldier who often came to their home to chat during the evenings. When he failed to show up after the fierce fighting along the Moro River, Antonio became worried. Seeing a group of soldiers walking wearily past the house that night, he went outside to see if his friend was among them. Recognizing another soldier who had sometimes accompanied the engineering student during his visits, Antonio asked after his friend. Trudging on, the soldier said, “He is dead.” His voice a monotone, the man did not look up as he spoke. He seemed exhausted or emotionally so numbed that he was beyond caring. Deeply upset, Antonio told the rest of the family of the young man’s fate. They prayed for him and for all the young men dying around them.12

  The 90th Panzer Grenadiers had taken a terrific beating during the fighting on the Moro River line. All regiments were seriously depleted. In the counterattacks against the Hastings and Prince Edward bridgehead on December 9 alone, German casualties totalled 170 dead and 30 captured.13 The Panzer Grenadier strategy of determined and immediate counterattacks against every Canadian advance had cost them dearly. B
y the evening of December 9, Generalleutnant Karl Hans Lungershausen was forced to plug gaps in his defences with all available reserves because his four battalions of regular infantry and two squadrons of tanks were so reduced in strength. A company of infantry specialists equipped with halftracks was brought forward, as were three engineering companies, two squadrons of light reconnaissance tanks from 65th Division, and the division’s own reconnaissance squadron. In a bid to shore up the thinly stretched German defences, Lungershausen was given unprecedented access to artillery, boosting his weaponry from forty-eight to approximately seventy artillery guns. This excluded the usual artillery inherently linked to the division, and its assigned antitank gun battalion.14

  Deeply concerned, German Tenth Army chief of staff General-major Fritz Wentzell reported by telephone to his superior, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring. Wentzell told Kesselring that their losses were such that the division would have to be reinforced and probably soon withdrawn. The Canadians, he said, were attacking “on the whole front from the coast to San Leonardo. Everything is being taken up there. 2nd Battalion 3rd Paratroop Regiment goes to Ortona.”

  “To Ortona?” Kesselring asked.

  “Yes, so that he [the Canadians] will be prevented from getting there at all costs.”15

  The 3rd Paratroop Regiment was part of the elite 1st Parachute Division, considered one of the best divisions in the German army. Formed in Sicily in 1943 just prior to the Allied invasion, 1st Parachute Division was composed on paper of 16,000 men organized in three regiments, each divided into three battalions. The division had its own artillery regiment, antitank battalion, engineer battalion, and heavy mortar battalion, but no inherent tank regiment. Most of the paratroopers were veterans of many campaigns, including the invasion of Crete, and had seen extensive service on the Russian front. Newer recruits were superbly trained and selected from the fittest, most intelligent, and youngest enlistees.16