Ortona

by Mark Zuehlke

  From the outset, phase three of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade’s offensive plan, aimed at encircling the paratroopers stationed in Ortona, was a cobbled-together and ill-planned effort. Even with reinforcements, the RCR was still seriously understrength from the mauling it had taken during the earlier fights at Royal Canadian Avenue and in front of The Gully. Galloway’s men would be attempting to cross heavily contested ground. Throughout the night, the Hasty P’s had fought off numerous attempted infiltrations by the paratroopers. Just before dawn, its right and front flanks had been struck by determined counterattacks. Both had been repelled, but the attacks showed that the Germans were lurking in the very terrain through which the RCR was expected to attack.9 The mud would slow the attackers, while the vineyards sheltered the German defenders. Without the protection of a creeping barrage, the infantry would be exposed to enemy fire for the entire forward advance.

  Galloway and Hasty P’s commander Lieutenant Colonel Bert Kennedy climbed into a loft in the top of a tall house within the Canadian perimeter. From this perch, they were able to observe the ground over which the RCR would attack. The plan called for the battalion to push along the better-developed track that the Highlanders had found heavily covered by Germans during the previous night. Neither man liked the look of the terrain or the track. Galloway summoned the RCR company commanders into the loft and pointed out the route they were to follow in the attack. ‘A’ Company, commanded by Captain Dick Dillon, was to lead. Dillon, Galloway wrote in his diary, “was incredulous at the ground he had to cross.”10 Dillon’s men were to move up a small gully for a short distance, then cross over its crest and follow the muddy, vineyard-bordered track to link up with the 48th Highlanders.

  When ‘A’ Company emerged from the gully, it immediately came under heavy mortar and artillery fire. Within seconds, sixteen men had been killed or wounded. Captain Dillon, Lieutenant Buck Bowman, and Captain Fitzgerald, the FOO, were among the wounded. The company reeled back into the gully and took up a defensive position.

  Galloway sent ‘B’ Company into the gully to strengthen ‘A’ Company’s left flank. ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies closed up on the gully to the immediate rear of the two leading companies. 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel Dan Spry told Galloway to continue the attack when the timing seemed right.11

  While these manoeuvres were going on, the battalion received a large draft of reinforcements, totalling eight officers and 144 other ranks. Five of the officers were RCR veterans: Captain Ted Littleford, Captain Ernie Jackson, and lieutenants Pete Hertzberg, Bill Powers, and Bill Bennett. The other three officers were newly minted lieutenants with little experience. Most of the infantrymen were “green” troops with no former combat experience. Galloway took the officers aside and gave them a short briefing on what to expect in this tough battlefield. He warned them not to “stick out their necks until they got battlewise.”12 The reinforcements were then divided into company lots and sent forward to bolster the depleted strengths of the four rifle companies. Captain Jackson took over command of ‘A’ Company.

  Galloway saw no hope of fighting through to the Highlanders during the day. The Germans would see any attack coming and plaster it with the same deadly mortar and artillery fire that had shattered ‘A’ Company’s attack. He would have to wait until night.

  At 1830 hours, he sent ‘B’ Company under Captain Tony Burdett forward with instructions to creep through to the Highlanders. The company set off, advancing slowly and carefully through the impenetrable darkness of a night chilled by an icy drizzle. The mud sucked at the men’s boots, turning the advance into an exhausting slog. Conditions soon worsened, as the lead platoon came into an area of vineyards where the vines were secured to training wires so low that the men were forced to drop prone and wriggle forward under the thick foliage. Soon the entire company was crawling under the low vines through the quagmire. Burdett’s men wormed their way right into a trap. As they approached the other edge of the vineyard, they were raked by intense heavy-machine-gun fire. Several officers and men were wounded. Burdett, unable to direct his troops effectively in the morass of mud and the tangled vineyard, had to order a retreat.13

  That was the end of the RCR’s attempt to carry out phase three. Later that night, Spry told Galloway that the plan to cut the coast highway was scrapped. RCR would instead force open a corridor between the Hasty P’s and the 48th Highlanders. This would enable a badly needed resupply and the supporting arms to be moved up to the now surrounded Highlanders. The RCR’s new mission was to break the siege the Highlanders would surely face in the morning.14

  For their part, the Highlanders had passed a surprisingly quiet day. Although Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston had sent out several patrols that discovered paratroopers digging in on all the regiment’s flanks, only a few short firefights had ensued and just two Highlanders had been wounded. The battalion’s position had been harassed throughout the day by snipers and some machine guns in a group of nearby houses, but their fire was largely ineffective. For some unknown reason, the Germans largely ignored the battalion for the entire day. With no supporting weapons of their own, it was impossible for the Highlanders to retaliate against the paratroopers. All they could do was dig in and carefully preserve their limited small-arms ammunition, so they could offer determined resistance to the counterattacks that must surely come.15

  25

  IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE

  JOCK Gibson of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada had finally found what he considered a worthwhile role for himself as ‘D’ Company’s company sergeant major. He administered the resupplying with ammunition and grenades of the elements of his company scattered throughout Ortona. In the past two days, Gibson had built up a sizable stock of ammunition boxes and grenade cases in an apartment building just behind the company’s main positions.

  On Christmas Eve morning, however, Gibson realized that his effective system was jeopardized when several German mortar bombs landed close to the building. Gibson figured the paratroopers must have seen men coming and going from the ground floor and correctly surmised it served as a supply depot. If the mortars hit the building, all the ammunition stored there would be set off. He had to move the ammunition and move it fast.

  Gibson rounded up some men and led them into the building. They started loading up with cans of ammo and grenades. Hearing voices in the top storey, Gibson checked upstairs and was surprised to find 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade commander Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister and a scout officer looking out a window at the German positions. Gibson knew “Hoffy” well. He had served as the officer’s pipe sergeant in the Vancouver militia days. Gibson never even saluted. He just said, “You better get out of this building because they’ve got it spotted.” Hoffmeister looked at Gibson with a mockingly stern expression. “You didn’t shave this morning, eh, Jock?” Gibson laughed. “No, sir. I’ve been a bit busy.” He warned Hoffmeister again that the building was likely to be hit by artillery any minute. Gibson then went back to moving ammunition. A few minutes later, as heavily laden as he could manage, he fled the apartment building with the last of the ammunition boxes.1

  About the time Gibson entered the room, Hoffmeister had come to the same conclusion as the company sergeant major. The window he and the scout officer were looking out of had been blown apart by a shell, so it now formed a gaping hole. His view of the nearby enemy positions was excellent. So excellent that after Gibson left he turned to the other officer and said, “If I can see them, then they sure as hell can see me.” The two men ducked into the hallway and not a second later a German shell exploded directly in the spot where they had been standing. Hoffmeister and the officer ran down the stairs and out of the building. A heavy salvo of shells rained down, blowing the structure to pieces.2

  Hoffmeister was having a terrible time keeping abreast of the ebb and flow of the battle his Loyal Edmonton and Seaforth battalions fought inside Ortona. The men were scattered all over in small clumps numberi
ng from one man to a dozen or more. Along the wider streets, various tanks from ‘A’ Squadron of the Three Rivers Tanks were adding their weight by serving as close-quarters mobile artillery. If there was a building the infantry wanted knocked apart, the tankers were only too happy to oblige.

  The situation was frustrating for a brigade commander. He could hardly exert any control over the battle. Nor could his battalion commanders do much. They tried to focus attacks along streets that would enable the Canadians to continue forcing the paratroopers back toward the northern edge of the town. This still meant that men had to get into the adjacent side streets and clear the buildings there. Otherwise, the Germans infiltrated behind the companies advancing up the main streets. With half the infantry busily mouse-holing their way from building to building, even knowing where the Canadian soldiers were half the time proved next to impossible.

  To make his presence felt — in order to bolster morale as much as anything — Hoffmeister insisted on going into the town a couple of times a day. He would visit the forward battalion headquarters of both units and then try to get up close to the actual fighting for a first-hand look at the battle’s progress, and to be seen doing so by the men in the line companies. Hoffmeister entered Loyal Edmonton commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson’s HQ just as the officer was sending some reinforcements out to the rifle companies. Among them was a young officer Hoffmeister thought looked bewildered by the instructions Jefferson was giving — instructions intended to help keep the officers alive.3

  Ortona ate up reinforcements at a frightening rate. There was no leeway in the streets for inexperienced soldiers to learn the art of urban combat. Lieutenant John Dougan of the Loyal Edmontons’ ‘D’ Company received word around mid-morning that a group of about twenty reinforcements was coming forward to join the company. Dougan set off to guide the men into forward positions. Dodging from building corner to building corner, ducking into doorways, crouching in holes in the rubble piles, Dougan moved a hundred yards to the rear and then peered around a corner to see if the reinforcements were coming up. They were. Twenty or so of them, marching right up the centre of the street as if on parade.

  Dougan stepped around the corner and started waving the men off, calling to them to take cover. He was too late. A mortar bomb exploded directly in the midst of the marching column. Seventeen of the men were immediately killed or wounded. Dougan helped organize a stretcher party to evacuate the wounded. Then, blood smeared all over his legs, Dougan made his way back to the front line. He felt terribly tired, terribly old. The weariness seemed to extend throughout his body. For some reason his left leg didn’t work properly. He had developed a limp.4

  An hour after, he joined company commander Major Jim Stone in the company headquarters set up in a badly battered old building. Stone looked over at Dougan with a puzzled expression. “What’s the matter with your leg?” “Nothing, sir,” answered Dougan. “What the hell are you dragging it for, then?”

  Dougan looked at his leg for the first time since he had started limping. The left knee of his pants was torn. Parting the material slightly, he saw welling blood. Stone called a stretcher-bearer over as Dougan pulled the pant leg up. There was a hole in his knee, blood dribbling from the wound. A fragment from the mortar bomb that had shredded the reinforcement party had hit him. Dougan thought he was simply too tired to have felt the pain that such a wound should have caused. Despite his protests, Stone ordered the lieutenant to lie down on a stretcher. Dougan was then evacuated to the Forward Aid Post at battalion headquarters.5

  The medical officer there told Dougan he would be sent back to San Vito Chietino immediately. Dougan was dismayed. He didn’t want to leave the battalion. They had all come through so much together in the past few weeks. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he said. “I want to stay here and be with the regiment on Christmas.” The medical officer, a friend of Dougan’s, finally agreed that he could stay at battalion headquarters until Christmas Day was over. After that, he would have to go to the rear for treatment.6

  A short time after Dougan arrived at battalion HQ, second-in-command Major Ted Day came in and stood beside his cot. “I’ve got something for you,” Day said. Without further ceremony, he handed over a Military Cross and told Dougan it was for his bravery at Hill 736 in Sicily. Day then went back to work. A bemused Dougan wondered if he had got the medal this way because Day expected him to die from the wound.7

  The rate of casualties had reduced most of the rifle companies in the two battalions engaged in Ortona to fewer than thirty men, instead of a normal strength of about one hundred. Effectively, the Edmontons and Seaforths were less battalions now than rifle companies, the companies mere platoons. Despite their weakened state, the regiments continued to shove the paratroopers back, gaining ground building by building, block by block.

  At Piazza Municipali, Corso Vittorio Emanuele broke up into a warren of streets branching to the right or left of the municipal hall. One ran to the right, passing the Piazza San Tomasso, where the cathedral stood, and terminated in front of the old castle. The left-hand street was short, barely fifty yards long. It led into Piazza Plebiscita. This square was the junction of three major Ortona streets: Via Monte Maiella, Via Roma, and Via Tripoli. Via Monte Maiella ran in a straight line southwest from here to Piazza San Francesco on the southwest side of the town. Three large buildings dominated that square: the San Francesco cathedral, and the town’s school and hospital. Following a northwestern line from Piazza Plebiscita was Via Roma, which hooked into the coast highway to Pescara. Running almost directly north from the square was Via Tripoli, which angled to the left after about a quarter mile and met the coast highway. At that point, it was bordered on one side by an escarpment overlooking the Adriatic and on the other by Ortona’s cemetery.

  The Edmontons were now fighting their way toward Piazza Plebiscita and also advancing along Corso Matteotti toward Cattedrale San Tomasso. Directly behind the Piazza was the head of Fosso Ciavocco, a narrow ravine that trailed down to the Adriatic, creating a physical barrier between the two northern sections of Ortona. The part of the town dominated by the great cathedral and the ancient castle was effectively isolated from the coast highway by this ravine. For this reason, the Edmonton advance into this area was less determined than the fight to seize the piazza and follow Via Tripoli. Once the Edmontons reached the northern end of Via Tripoli, any Germans in the area of the cathedral and the castle would likely withdraw along the Adriatic shoreline across the base of the ravine. They would be under Canadian guns the entire way. The Canadians did not expect the Germans to seriously defend the castle. It could be easily isolated, and the thick sandstone walls offered little protection from modern artillery. Already the seventeen-pounder antitank guns had punched several large holes in the walls, and artillery fire falling inside the castle walls had caused considerable damage to the interior of the ancient structure.

  West of the Edmontons, the Seaforths were concentrating on capturing Piazza San Francesco. Once in possession of the square, they could drive the paratroopers up Via Cavour and Via Monte Maiella toward Piazza Plebiscita, which was expected to soon be firmly in Edmonton hands. Again, the Germans would be faced with either abandoning the section of town lying between these two streets or being crushed between the two advancing pincers of the Seaforths and the Edmontons’ blocking force at the Piazza Plebiscita. To escape this entrapment, the paratroopers would have to allow the Canadians possession of virtually all the built-up areas of Ortona. They would be left holding the cemetery and a small scattering of houses in the Via Roma area. There would be no advantage in trying to defend this ground, so a complete withdrawal from Ortona should follow..8

  While this strategy seemed sound, its execution was anything but systematic. The Seaforths and Edmontons spent most of the day battering against fiercely defended German positions, in the most bitter fighting soldiers on either side had yet seen.

  It seemed inevitable to Seaforth Bren gunner Private Fred Mallett
that whenever a German position was located and engaged, at least one man in ‘B’ Company was killed or wounded during the ensuing fight. It also seemed that the number of German positions the Seaforths had to face ultimately outnumbered the company’s dwindling ranks.

  Ahead, another German position was discovered. The riflemen started closing on it. Mallett’s job was to provide covering fire for the riflemen. He climbed to the top of a two-storey building, so he could fire over the heads of his comrades. The building was badly shot up. Only a half wall remained to offer some protection. To his right, the wall had a great gaping hole in it. But that area had already been cleared, so he didn’t worry about being exposed to the windows of the buildings on that side.

  As he looked over the half wall, Mallett sensed a movement in a window of the building that the riflemen were attacking. He rose to a crouch, bringing up the Bren to fire a burst at the shadowy target. Blinding pain engulfed him before he could squeeze the trigger.

  Mallett regained consciousness perhaps five or ten minutes later, although he had no real idea of how long he had been unconscious. The soldier discovered that his right side was paralyzed. He lay on his right side, his back to the gaping hole facing the houses that were supposed to have been cleared of snipers. His left side seemed to still function. He started crawling toward the stairs. The moment he did so, however, another burst of fire hit him in the back. The sniper, obviously occupying one of the upper storeys of the buildings that Mallett had believed clear, had been keeping an eye on him, waiting to see if the first burst had succeeded in killing him. Mallett lay still for a long time, knowing if he moved again the German would shoot him. It was unlikely he would survive being shot three times.