by Mark Zuehlke
The tent camp from which Comfort observed the battle was close to fifteen-year-old Anna Tucci’s home in the ruins of what had been San Donato. So few buildings remained standing that it was hard to remember a tiny hamlet had existed here only weeks before. The pretty little white church where Anna and her neighbours had gone to pray and attend mass was demolished, just so many bits of rubble.
Although German artillery still occasionally searched for targets around the area, life was slowly returning to normal. Anna’s father worked in the mud to repair the damage to the olive trees and vineyards. It would be a long process, he said, but eventually the farm would again prosper. Meanwhile, Anna washed clothes for the Canadians in exchange for rations. The food became a mainstay for the entire family. Anna’s father spoke a small amount of English and this led to his befriending two Canadian soldiers. They came most evenings to the battered Tucci home for a visit. The men always brought food for the family and cigarettes for Anna’s father. There was still much vino rosso in the family wine cellar, so the soldiers never left the house with empty hands.
The noise of the fighting in Ortona carried constantly on the wind, and Anna sometimes feared the war would never end. Her father had thought that when the Germans left their positions on the Moro River, the battle would soon be over and they would be free to rebuild and enjoy a life of peace. But the battle had not ended. The war continued to threaten their lives. For those civilians in Ortona, they thought, it must be like living in hell.11
The Canadians saw little of the civilians hiding in Ortona. Most were in the tunnels in the northern sector of the town, an area soundly controlled by the Germans. There were a few, however, in the basements of the houses they captured. Captain June Thomas, commander of the Seaforths’ ‘A’ Company, was on the ground floor of a house when an elderly woman dressed all in black, as was usual for Italian civilians, poked her head out of a cellar door and beckoned him to follow her into its depths. Somewhat warily, he descended the stairs and found himself in a dark, dank room lit only by candlelight. To his surprise and delight, the woman offered him a cup filled with steaming hot tea. In the shadows, he saw several children staring at him with big eyes. Thomas figured he must present a scary sight. There was something curiously restful about the whole scene in the cellar. The candles, the children, the warming tea, and the wrinkled smile of the old woman.
Outside, however, the war waited on him. Thomas forcibly gulped the scalding tea and handed the mug back to the woman. Then he ran back up the stairs, firmly closed the door to the cellar, and returned to his men.12
Nearby, journalist Christopher Buckley was also in a cellar. Buckley, along with Ross Munro and Matthew Halton, were the major war correspondents covering the battle. Their reports were drawing extraordinary attention. British, American, and Canadian newspapers carried headline stories comparing the battle in Ortona to that of Stalingrad, both in terms of ferocity and strategic significance. The New York Times ran two stories on consecutive days: “For some unknown reason the Germans are staging a miniature Stalingrad in Ortona,” read the first day’s report. The second described the fighting in Ortona as identical to “the fury of Stalingrad.”13
In the cellar, Buckley was struck less by the fury of battle than by the stoic ability of humanity to survive all travails with some dignity and grace. “What a strange clutter of humanity it was,” he wrote. “There were some five or six Canadian soldiers, there were old women and there were children innumerable. A painter of genius — Goya, perhaps — might have done justice to the scene. I felt no verbal description could do so. In the half-darkened room the pasta for the midday meal was simmering over the fire in the corner. Haggard, prematurely aged women kept emerging shyly one after another from some inner chamber where an old man, the grandfather of one of the numerous children, was dying. . . . Another old man was uttering maledictions against Mussolini. Then his wife surprisingly produced a jeroboam of Marsala and a half dozen glasses and moved among the soldiers, filling and re-filling glasses. . . . The children clambered around the Canadian soldiers and clutched at them convulsively every time one of our antitank guns, located only half a dozen paces from the door of the house, fired down the street in the direction of one of the remaining German machine-gun posts. Soon each one of us had a squirming, terrified child in his arms. And the old lady went on distributing Marsala.”14
After visiting the battalion headquarters of the Loyal Edmontons and the Seaforth Highlanders, Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister drove back to San Vito Chietino to check on the many wounded he knew had been evacuated from Ortona during the day. What he saw in the small hospital set up in the school there shocked him. The surgery was operating continuously, the two doctors seeming never to rest. German artillery was falling around the building. To protect one open-windowed wall from penetration by shrapnel, the medical staff had parked a hundredweight truck against the outside wall. The truck had suffered a direct hit and burned fiercely.
Wounded men lay everywhere inside the school. Most were on cots, but some were lying on blankets stretched out on the floor. The place was chock-full of wounded soldiers, many in critical condition. Hoffmeister was deeply disturbed to see that nobody had taken the time to even clean up the wounded men. “They still had the original blood from their wounds on their faces and their hands,” he said later. Hoffmeister knew the male orderlies were doing the best they could for the men, but they were too few and were needed to perform basic first aid or to help out in the surgery. Yet in talking to the wounded, it was clear that the filth and blood covering them chipped away the last vestiges of their morale. Men could die if they lost the spirit to live. Hoffmeister was sure that unless conditions in the hospital were improved, there would be unnecessary deaths.
He managed to discuss the problem with surgeon Dr. Frank Mills. The doctor shared his concern. Hoffmeister suggested that a request be sent back down the medical service chain of command, calling for some of the nursing sisters stationed in a hospital south of the Sangro River to come forward and help out. Officially women were not allowed so close to the battlefield, but the need was urgent.
Mills agreed to forward the call for volunteers. On the morning of Christmas Eve, a small group of mostly British nursing sisters arrived at the hospital. The request had been presented to the women in a group meeting during the night. Every nurse present had volunteered to go forward into the battle zone to offer what succour she could to the wounded Canadians. Hearing the news, Hoffmeister felt overwhelmingly proud of “those girls and their willingness to risk their lives by working under shell fire and within range of long-range German mortars.” They were, he thought, the angels of Ortona.15
24
THE DARING GAMBLE
AT 1600 hours on December 23, the 48th Highlanders of Canada left the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment’s position on the ridgeline in a single file. About 400 men, they carried only rifles, Bren guns, Thompson submachine guns, ammunition, grenades, and a few rations. Left behind were the mortars, the antitank guns, and the Vickers medium machine-guns and mortars of the Saskatoon Light Infantry support battalion. They trudged past the forward platoons of the Hasty P’s and disappeared one after the other into a night drenched by heavy rain.
A mostly friendly rivalry existed between these two regiments of 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade. Both were formed from militias in Ontario. The Hasty P’s came out of the province’s rural roots: the men were drawn from farms, mines, and small factory towns. The 48th Highlanders hailed from Toronto. To the Highlanders, the Hasty P’s were the Plough Jockeys. That regiment retaliated by spurning the Highlanders as the Glamour Boys, soldiers who looked good in their kilts marching down Queen Street but were of little use in a fight.
Tonight the Highlanders wore no kilts. They moved quietly, each maintaining a space of only inches between himself and the back of the man in front of him. As they passed, one Hasty P muttered, “Good Christ! The Glamour Boys have gone crazy.”1
The soldier
was right. If successful, the Highlanders’ plan would be hailed as a daring gamble. Failure would result in tragedy, perhaps the destruction of the regiment. The Highlanders had been ordered to take an incredible risk.
Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston had not wanted his regiment to make this attack. The evening before, he had warned 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel Dan Spry that a night attack along the ridgeline could not be undertaken unless the battalion could conduct a visual reconnaissance from the attack’s start line prior to the onset of darkness. Because the Hasty P’s had been delayed in capturing their objectives, such reconnaissance had proved impossible. The Highlanders reached the start line only after darkness had concealed all land features and the enemy positions undoubtedly lurking beyond the perimeter held by the Hasty P’s. Johnston had argued that the attack should be cancelled. Spry passed Johnston’s request up the line to divisional headquarters. Major General Chris Vokes and his staff had come back with an order to proceed with the fantastic plan. Vokes wanted to keep the momentum of the three-phase attack moving. To wait for morning would be to allow the 1st Parachute Division time to reorganize and possibly to block 1 CIB’s plan to close the roads north of Ortona.2
Johnston and his company commanders were forced to plan a surprise attack in little more than an hour. Aerial photos of the area showed a meandering footpath that seemed to bear generally toward their objective — the ridge’s highest point, which overlooked the hamlets of San Nicola and San Tomasso. Surrounding the path was a sea of mud and vineyards. Trying to move in any normal attack formation through the mud and vines in darkness would be impossible. The footpath, however, would offer firmer ground over which men could move in a more organized fashion. If the path was unguarded or only lightly guarded, the Highlanders might get through. There was a slim chance they could surprise the enemy. It was a dreadful night, the worst to date. Would the Germans not be keeping their heads down, trying to stay warm and dry? That was the faint hope.
It was a mile to the objective. If they ran into more than token opposition or were discovered while still too far from the objective, the attack would be a disaster. Entering a firefight from a single-file formation would inevitably end in mass confusion, with the companies all intermixed. A retreat would surely turn into a rout, with every man fending for himself. Casualties would be terrible, and the probability of the entire battalion ending up dead, wounded, or as prisoners was too awful to even contemplate.
Decision made and preparation complete, Johnston gave Major John Clarke a grin, shook the rain from his helmet, and said in a surprisingly cheery voice, “Lead on. Let’s go!”3 Clarke, commanding ‘A’ Company, was the first man in the line to leave the start position. Everything depended on him. The line of march was ‘A’ Company leading, ‘C’ Company immediately behind, then battalion HQ, ‘D’ Company, and finally ‘B’ Company.4 When the last man in ‘B’ Company stepped off from the start line, the battalion was swallowed by the darkness.
The column advanced at a slow, shuffling pace punctuated by sudden halts and long pauses. It was so dark that each soldier clutched the bayonet scabbard of the man before him. This meant the entire line was physically linked one man to the other from head to tail. In the lead, Clarke felt his way up the trail. Seeing the path itself was impossible; only the footing warned if he was losing the track. On either side was deep mud, while on the trail the mud was slightly firmer. To use a flashlight would instantly betray their position to the Germans. Not a single star glimmered through the overhanging cloud. The rain was a mixed blessing. It soaked and chilled them to the bone, but it also splashed down noisily on the surrounding vines and other foliage, concealing the small muffled noises that 400 men could not avoid making. A splash here when a man stepped into a puddle, the clink of metal when a grenade bumped a rifle barrel, a soft curse when a soldier stumbled and almost fell. Despite the cold that caused the men to shiver, sweat streamed down many faces.
From the aerial photos it had been impossible to develop a list of recognizable landmarks to mark their progress. Clarke could only follow the trail. He could only hope that no unknown path crossed the one they followed. To take a wrong turn and become lost would mean disaster. To lose the trail and end up blundering in the vineyards would also spell disaster. All around him catastrophe lurked in unknown, unseen ways. The pressure the officer was under was almost unbearable.
Every few minutes, the surrounding countryside was softly illuminated by the glimmering light of a distant artillery burst or the flash of a battery firing. Sometimes the light came from in front of them, the fire of a German battery. Other times they were backlit by a Canadian battery firing. Each time they froze, tried to become statues who blended with their dark surroundings. Clarke used the brief seconds of dim light to try to orient himself.
They were about 700 yards out when the rattle of gunfire broke out behind them. The Hasty P’s were staving off the first paratrooper infiltration party. At least some of the Germans were active. The threat of the Highlanders bumping into a German patrol using the trail heightened.
Out of the gloom, Clarke saw a house standing next to the path before him. To get to their objective, the entire battalion would have to walk past the structure. Clarke halted the column and advanced on the house with the leading platoon. A German sentry hunkered against the rain in front of a door. One of the Canadians crept up, jumped the man, and knifed him to death. The other soldiers moved quickly to cover every ground-floor door and window. Then a section pushed the front door open and lunged into the house. In the big central room, a group of fifteen paratroopers sat around a large table. Their shirts were open, weapons leaning against walls or hanging from pegs, Christmas parcels and bottles of wine crowding the table top. The Germans stared blankly at the dripping, filthy Canadians. Then two of the paratroopers awoke from their surprise and sprang for their weapons. Clarke’s men killed the two with bayonet thrusts. The surviving paratroopers quickly put their hands up and surrendered.
The prisoners were bundled out of the house and sent back under guard down the side of the long line. They had been warned that if any of them tried to escape they would all immediately be killed. They would meet the same fate if any noise or alarm was raised. Clarke led the way again toward the objective. Soon another house was encountered. This time it was unguarded. The Canadians burst in and bagged six prisoners without a fight, rousting the dazed, sleeping Germans from their beds. They were passed back down the line and escorted from its tail through the night to the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment’s position.
The column pressed on, moving jerkily from one prolonged halt to another. There came a halt that was longer than any before. Then word came down the line from Clarke to Johnston. The major thought he was lost. Johnston and his intelligence officer hurried up the line to confer with Clarke. They found him in a small farmhouse. Two paratroopers sat in a corner of the main room. Both men were bleeding from minor bayonet wounds suffered in a short scuffle over possession of the house.
The three officers risked a flashlight inside the concealment of the house. They played the light back and forth from aerial photo to map. After a few minutes, Johnston and Clarke realized the Highlanders were not lost at all. Instead, they were standing precisely on the objective.5 The time was 1940. It had taken the Highlanders three hours and forty minutes to cover a distance of one mile to their objective on the ridgeline summit overlooking San Tomasso and San Nicola.6 Phase two of 1 CIB’s offensive task had been achieved without a single shot fired. Remarkably, the 1st Parachute Division remained unaware of the presence of the Highlanders. Johnston set his men to work establishing a circular perimeter around the little farmhouse. The Highlanders’ job was now to hold their position and wait for the Royal Canadian Regiment to carry out phase three. Midnight came and went. The Highlanders hunkered in their water-logged, hastily dug slit trenches. It was Christmas Eve.
At 0300, Johnston ordered ‘D’ Company to send a thirty-
man patrol back to the battalion’s rear-area headquarters with the order for a party to bring the mortars, antitank guns, medium machine guns, and rations up to the forward position. The plan was for the patrol to follow a more direct, wider dirt track back to the Hasty P’s and then to the rear-area HQ. The patrol set off, but returned only an hour and a half later with the report that the paratroopers had this route heavily covered. There was no way to get supporting arms up to the battalion, as the narrow trail used earlier was too poor to handle such heavy traffic. Luckily, the patrol had only briefly engaged in a firefight with the Germans, and had withdrawn without betraying the battalion’s position or strength to the paratroopers. The battalion remained hidden, but Johnston knew this would change at daybreak.7
At first light on Christmas Eve Day, the Royal Canadian Regiment moved into the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment’s perimeter. RCR commander Major Strome Galloway’s orders were to advance through the Hasty P’s to a position just south of where the 48th Highlanders were located. The RCR would then continue moving through the 48th Highlander ranks to cut the main coast highway north of Ortona. There would be no pre-artillery barrage, because the 48th Highlanders were positioned in front of the attacking force. However, the battalion would have four forward observation officers, one with Galloway and one accompanying each of the three leading company commanders. Their presence was intended to guarantee the ability of the artillery to bring immediate and well-targeted fire on any German strongpoints that might oppose the attack. The Ontario Tanks located near the Hasty P’s were to try and lumber through the mud in support.8