Ortona
Page 30
Stone tracked down the Three Rivers Tanks commander and explained his plan. “Let’s start at first light tomorrow morning,” he said. “You put your tanks in low gear, get your sirens going, and fire your main armament at every building forward of you and your machine guns at the houses on the side of the road. I’ll put my infantry alongside the tanks and let’s try and go through.”1 It took some argument, because the commander started quoting chapter and verse from armoured tactical doctrine that stated tanks were not only of limited value in fighting within built-up areas but also extremely vulnerable to being destroyed by enemy action. Finally, however, Stone won the tank commander’s somewhat reluctant agreement to give the gamble a try.
That Stone was developing the tactics for the Edmontons’ December 22 attack reflected a shift in the regiment’s lines of command. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson had established his battalion headquarters on Ortona’s outskirts. This was unlike Seaforth Highlanders of Canada battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson, who had set up shop right on the town’s edge in Santa Maria di Costantinopoli. In fact, Jefferson’s headquarters was almost as far back as 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister’s. In a battle where troops were facing each other across distances of mere feet, trying to exercise effective control or to dictate strategy from such a distance to the rear was difficult, if not impossible.
Because of the distance between Jefferson’s headquarters and the rifle companies in Ortona, command of the Edmonton Regiment effectively shifted to the senior commander on the immediate scene. That was Major Jim Stone. The officer was well suited to the role. He was resourceful, independent-minded, determined, brave to the point of near recklessness, and, because he had come up through the ranks, well versed in small-unit tactics.
Stone’s attack went forward as planned. Tanks of the Three Rivers’ No. 2 Troop moved out in single file down the very centre of the Corso. Stone’s ‘D’ Company led for the Edmontons, the other two companies following. Losses on December 21 had been so high that Jefferson had ordered the rifle companies reduced from their normal strength of four companies to three. Even so, each company, including a reinforced ‘D’ Company, barely mustered 60 men apiece instead of what should have been a total strength of more than 400. Stone found the noise made by the tanks’ sirens and the thunder of their 75-millimetre guns in the narrow street “terrifying.”
The distance from Piazza Vittoria to Piazza Municipali, where a small cathedral and the municipal hall stood, was 300 yards. The Corso descended from the Canadian-held square to the municipal square on a grade of about 3 percent. This meant that the Canadians would be well silhouetted for the German defenders during their advance. The buildings lining this section of street were relatively modern, built in the last two centuries. To the west of the Corso, for the entire length running from the Piazza Vittoria to Piazza Municipali, the streets and buildings dated back to the Renaissance. Beyond Piazza Municipali, past the shattered ruin of Cattedrale San Tomasso to the ancient castle overlooking the sea, the Corso narrowed and the surrounding buildings and streets became a warren of buildings dating back to the 1400s.
Stone was elated. The attack rolled forward against virtually no opposition. He figured the Germans were frozen by fear and confusion. Progress toward the main square was rapid. Ahead stood a massive rubble pile, perhaps twenty-five feet high. It appeared to have been constructed by blowing the better part of the cathedral on the edge of the square out into the street. Despite the height of the pile, Stone thought the tanks could get over it. If tanks and men kept going, they would get right through to the castle and the battle would be won.
But suddenly, little more than twenty-five yards short of the rubble pile, the lead tank paused. The other tanks ground to a halt, maintaining their preset intervals between each other. They also ceased firing their guns. The infantry milled about, unsure what was happening. By pausing, the tankers were hopelessly messing up the attack. As an infantryman, Stone believed it was an all-too-common experience. Stone jumped up on the lead tank. “What the hell’s the matter?” he yelled.2 The tank commander pointed at a scrap of sheet metal lying in the road. “It’s probably concealing a mine,” he said. Stone was incredulous. The entire street, from one end to the other, was littered with bricks, stones, chunks of metal, broken boxes, and other debris from the battered and destroyed buildings fronting it. What made this piece of metal special? Stone tried to convince the man to get going again. He could feel the attack’s momentum slipping through his fingers, like so many grains of wheat. The tank commander said petulantly, “Don’t you realize a tank is worth $20,000? I can’t risk it.”
“You armoured sissy,” Stone snapped. “I’ve got twenty to thirty men here with no damned armour at all and they’re worth a million dollars apiece. You’re just a bunch of goddamned armoured sissies.”3
But it was too late to save the plan. Whether the Germans had been in shock from the violent directness of the attack or had never intended to defend that stretch of the Corso, they were alert now. Small-arms fire started snapping around the Edmontons and the men dived for cover. The tanks would advance no farther. Suddenly a 57-millimetre PAK antitank gun started shooting at the lead tanks from a position on the corner next to the church. It was so placed that the Three Rivers tanks were unable to return its fire. Stone ordered his PIAT man to knock the gun out. The man fired from too far away, the round sailing harmlessly over the armoured shield that protected the crew manning the weapon, and exploding in a white flash of smoke inside the church.
Furious that his bold plan had failed because the tankers lacked sufficient courage, Stone yelled in frustration at the PIAT man, who was starting the unwieldy process of trying to reload the antitank weapon. Knowing that at any moment the Germans were likely to hit one of the tanks, Stone pulled a smoke grenade and chucked it in front of the antitank gun. He then charged the gun single-handedly, pulling a fragmentation grenade off his webbing belt as he went. Running up to the gun’s armour shield, Stone pulled the pin on the grenade, tossed it over the shield at the gunners, and pressed himself against the shield’s protective cover. The grenade exploded, killing the entire crew.4
The forward attack was faltering fast despite Stone’s heroic attempts to get things moving again. He and Lieutenant John Dougan moved up to the rubble pile, trying to find a way for the tanks to get across it. On the way, Stone saw that the sheet metal scrap hid nothing but cobblestones. Knowing he had been right and the tanker wrong just made him all the madder.5
Dougan was more philosophical. He thought the great height of the rubble pile had scuttled Stone’s plan, but in his friend and superior’s current state of mind there was no way Dougan was going to make the man see this truth.6 Dougan saw that a couple of men from ‘D’ Company had managed to crawl over the pile. They were moving cautiously up the street toward the municipal hall. One suddenly crumpled. Stone told Dougan that it looked as if the man might have been electrocuted because there were some live power lines lying on the street. However the man had died, there was no doubting that the other side of the rubble pile was a bad place to be. Dougan called the remaining soldier on the north side of the pile back. The officers then ordered the infantry to batter their way into the houses on either side of the street and get to work.7
The house-to-house battle that Stone had hoped to avoid now started in earnest. Within minutes, the fight ceased to be one he could effectively control. Sergeants, corporals, even privates operated on their own initiative. On the other side of the rubble pile, three machine guns were covering the Piazza Municipali from a nearby building on the left side of the street. Combined with the fire coming from at least two other machine guns, these guns meant that anyone moving around the rubble pile was likely to get killed. One of the other machine guns was firing out of a circular opening in the upper portion of the municipal hall’s front wall. The paratroopers had developed this machine-gun position by removing the town clock and sandbag
ging the opening to create a stout fortification.
Private C.G. Rattray and two other soldiers set their sights on knocking out the three guns in the building on the left. Under fire, the men crawled over the rubble pile and forced their way through the front door. Rattray left it to the other men to clear the riflemen defending the lower floor. He stormed upstairs and surprised five paratroopers manning the three guns. The startled Germans surrendered. Rattray found himself in possession of five prisoners, three machine guns, four rifles, and three Luger pistols.8
Elsewhere the battle did not go so well. When a stick grenade came bouncing down the stairs at him, Private Melville McPhee ducked into an alcove off a stairwell. The twenty-one-year-old from Drumheller had been plagued since Sicily by stomach ulcers, and for the next hour at least his experience did little to ease the condition. Every time he tried to move from the alcove, the German above him tossed down another grenade, forcing McPhee to cower back until the shrapnel stopped flying around. It seemed the man had a limitless supply of grenades. Outside the walls of the house he was cornered in, McPhee could hear machine guns blazing, rifles cracking, and grenades exploding. But nobody came into the building and there was nothing he could do to get out. Finally he poked his head out of the alcove and no grenade came bouncing down the stairs. McPhee took off, leaving the grenade-throwing German in undisputed possession of the building.9
At 1700 hours, with night falling, the tanks of ‘C’ Squadron withdrew from Ortona as they had the night before. The infantry spread out through the buildings on either side of the Corso and settled in as best they could for the night.
Just before dark, Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister visited both the Loyal Edmonton and Seaforth Highlanders of Canada forward companies. He decided that the following morning the Seaforths should move across the Edmontons’ rear and come up on their left flank, both to protect it and force an advance through the older, western portion of the town to a square on Via Cavour. Via Cavour angled off Corso Vittorio Emanuele from the Piazza Municipali to the western edge of the town. If the Seaforths could reach Via Cavour and advance up it to Piazza Municipali, they would be able to break the German defence of the square by outflanking it.10
The Three Rivers’ ‘A’ Squadron was brought up to the outskirts of the town. The squadron would reinforce ‘C’ Squadron in the operations inside Ortona. Among the tankers in the squadron were the three Turnbull brothers, Joe, Gord, and Bill. The movement of the tanks must have been observed by the Germans, for the tank harbour was heavily shelled during the night. Lance Corporal Bill Turnbull was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and evacuated.11 The youngest, Bill was the first of the brothers to have been wounded. Although worried about his brother, Joe took comfort in the fact that the wound was not too serious. As a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Joe knew they faced probably their toughest fight since landing in Sicily, and there was a good chance that if all the brothers went into the town at least one of them might die in its narrow streets.12
Obergefreiter Carl Bayerlein had spent his day in the thick of the fight for the Piazza Municipali. He and some comrades had occupied a position on the roof of the small church. Two of the men had fired rifle grenades down on the Canadian tanks, but had caused no noticeable damage. They had, however, attracted the attention of the tankers and barely escaped from the position before it was blown up by repeated main-gun shell fire. Despite the vicious fighting, Bayerlein and the rest of his squad found time during part of the afternoon to have a nap in the basement of the chemist’s shop that served as their billet. They were worn out from having spent the previous night laying more mines and carrying out numerous demolitions.13 Bayerlein had wandered through the town like a mule, carrying Teller antitank mines on his back and shoulders. Always he was mindful that one enemy bullet could result in his being blown to pieces by his deadly burden.14
During the night, Bayerlein took up an assigned position on the roof of the chemist’s shop. His duty was to keep watch and to snipe at any enemy he might see. The darkness hardly made for good sniping conditions. A few fires burned in Ortona, but no Tommies were highlighted in front of the flames. Soon after he got settled, Bayerlein heard strange voices speaking a language other than German. His first thought was that the enemy were on the floor immediately below him and he was about to be attacked. Then he realized he was hearing Italian and that the voices were coming from a distant source. He listened for a moment. They seemed to be coming from a nearby house, probably from the basement. The battle for Ortona was hellish enough for soldiers, he thought. Terrible that civilians should be caught in its midst.
Bayerlein knew that most of the people of Ortona were hiding in the railroad tunnels running under the town, rather than in basements of the houses over which the Canadians and the Germans were fighting. In the tunnels they were fairly safe, although there was little food or water. The Germans were also using the tunnels for shelter, and as a route for moving unmolested around the northern part of the town. The tunnels were where most of the paratroopers rested during the night, and where reinforcements waited to go forward to relieve the front-line troops so they too could rest.15 Only one paratroop battalion, 2nd Battalion of 3rd Regiment, was actually deployed inside Ortona at this time, along with Bayerlein and a good number of other men from the engineering unit.16 Because of the narrow nature of the Canadian penetration into Ortona, the paratroopers were able to hold the front with little more than about one hundred men committed to the battle at any given time. This enabled the remainder of the battalion to rest in the railroad tunnels.17
On paper the Canadian strength appeared greater than that of the Germans, but in the streets of Ortona the two forces were actually evenly matched. The two Canadian regiments engaged in the fighting within Ortona had entered the battle already weary and understrength from casualties suffered in more than two weeks of virtually continuous fighting. By comparison, 1st Parachute Division was relatively fresh and its battalions were close to what passed for normal strength in the always depleted German army. The paratroopers enjoyed excellent morale, were well equipped for the task of street fighting, and were confident of controlling the flow of the battle from their strong defensive positions. Many of the veterans also had experience in fighting in urban areas on the Russian front. While every German, from mere infantryman to Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring, was convinced that the soldiers of the Eighth Army possessed both greater numbers and surpluses of war matériel, they also believed that the German was a superior soldier, equipped with a natural boldness and audacity no British or Commonwealth soldier could possibly emulate.18
The Canadians were so seriously understrength that their two battalions barely equalled in numbers the single parachute battalion. The Germans also enjoyed the defensive advantage. They were dug into well-designed defensive positions and it was up to the Canadians to root them out — always a costly proposition. Unlike the 90th Panzer Grenadiers, who had allowed themselves to be ground up in near-suicidal counterattacks, doctrine in 1st Parachute Division opposed anything but very limited counterattacking. Rather, the paratrooper approach was to do precisely what they were doing in Ortona: establish formidable defensive positions and hold them for as long as possible. The paratroopers were also trained to infiltrate small parties behind the facing enemy units. Acting independently, these groups could cause havoc among the enemy ranks with lightning-fast raids and by establishing machine-gun positions that could bring devastating fire on enemy positions from the rear.
A Canadian intelligence summary written by Major N.L.C. Mathers on December 22 cited the most noteworthy characteristics of 1st Parachute Division’s tactics as exemplifying “dogged tenacity, extreme economy in manpower (evidenced by their reluctance to counterattack), skill in timing a withdrawal, and skill in concealment. . . . Often they are thrown in to help restore a critical situation. This manner of employment has largely governed the organization and equipment of parachute troops: they tend to be well supplied with machine guns
, mortars and antitank guns, but generally operate without their own artillery. . . . The fact that these ‘specialists’ have appeared on our front to relieve the exhausted 90th Panzer Grenadier Division gives us a clue to the enemy’s intentions and fears.”19 The fear, surmised the intelligence report, was an Eighth Army breakout and seizure of Pescara. The German intention was that 1st Parachute Division stem that breakout and hold the 1st Canadian Infantry Division in place until a strong defensive line could be constructed behind the Arielli River. This was, Mathers noted, the first time 1st Parachute Division had fought as a complete division. Usually it was sent into battle only on a regimental or even battalion scale.
Mathers’s summary added that for purposes of interrogation any captured paratroopers “were the toughest we have had to face yet and, of course, the most security minded.” Most of the veterans had served on the Russian front and had fought in Crete or Sicily, or both. When captured, they “knew what the score was and their discipline, morale and security are excellent. It is no wonder that they are the ‘picked troops’ and sent to whichever sector of the front needs strengthening. It is also interesting to note the condescending way in which the parachutists talk about the infantry, ‘they always mess things up, and we, the parachutists, have to straighten them out.’ And they too are the troops which have been put into the line to stem the advance of our Division.”20
Canadian intelligence determined that by the evening of December 22, the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division, except for its inherent artillery unit, which remained behind to add to the German artillery presence, had withdrawn from the Ortona area. Generalleutnant Ernst-Günther Baade now faced the challenging task of rebuilding the devastated division he had inherited only a few days earlier. The 90th Panzer Grenadiers were broken as a combat division. It would require months to rebuild its manpower and develop a renewed unit integrity. The losses of veteran troops, however, could never be replaced. None of the division’s battalions were believed to have more than one hundred men left. The 3rd Battalion of the 361st Regiment had been hardest hit. Even on December 15, Mathers reported this unit had only 12 men left out of a normal strength of about 300. The division’s strategy of repeated counterattacks had virtually destroyed it. More than 400 Panzer Grenadiers had been taken prisoner, most when counterattacks had crumbled. Hundreds of others had been killed or wounded.21 While the German division had succeeded in slowing the Canadian advance to a crawl through the mud and had blocked it for days in front of The Gully, the price paid robbed the achievement of both glory and strategic value.