Ortona

by Mark Zuehlke

  For the soldiers in the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, there was no elegant Christmas dinner. Many ate nothing besides their usual cold rations, despite an effort by the quartermasters to get roast pork and other luxuries up to the soldiers on the line.22 Major Jim Stone had his normal rations and a cold pork chop, hastily gobbled during an afternoon spent trying to get past Piazza Plebiscita.23 A massive rubble pile blocking the entrance to the square was frustrating efforts to get tanks through. Without their support, the Edmontons had little luck destroying the German machine-gun positions subjecting the square to a deadly deluge of fire. As the day wore on, Lieutenant R. Heggie managed to get his tank into a position on the rubble pile that allowed him to bring fire on the German positions, but Stone’s ‘D’ Company was unable to press forward despite this support. At dusk, both the tank and the infantry withdrew to their start line just outside the entrance to the square.24

  Elsewhere on the Edmonton front, the advance was also stalling. Much of the problem was simply that the battalion had too few men left to do the job. There were also too few veterans to ensure the new reinforcements pressed on. Stone’s company, for example, numbered barely thirty men of all ranks.25 Still, the Edmontons were slowly gaining ground against determined resistance.

  ‘B’ Company Sergeant J.E.W. Dick’s platoon was stalled in midafternoon by a combination of severe machine-gun fire, sniper fire, and searing blasts from a dug-in German flame-thrower. This was the first time the paratroopers had used flame-throwers against the Canadians. Spraying a jet of flame from a wand connected by a hose to fuel and pressurized air tanks worn on the operator’s back, the weapon could reach across the width of a street. Although cumbersome and often dangerous to the operator, the weapons introduced a terrifying new hazard to the Ortona battlefield. If caught in the fire stream, a soldier was instantly burned to death.

  Dick set out to find a way to outflank the enemy positions, including the flame-thrower operator. Crossing an exposed alley, he found a ten-foot-long water pipe that a section of men could climb to reach a small room overlooking the German position. From their perch in the room, the section was able to bring flanking fire against the paratroopers, forcing them to retreat or die. Dick won the Military Medal for this display of initiative and boldness in the face of enemy fire.26

  As night brought the worst of the fighting on Christmas Day to an end, Private Melville McPhee and his section received a small Christmas surprise. A man from the quartermaster section passed by and handed each man two bottles of beer and a few slices of cold pork. The beer tasted wonderful. Each man drank his two bottles slowly, knowing it would probably be many days before such a treat came again.27 Nobody expected the battle for Ortona to end soon.

  There had been a moment of cheer for the Highlanders in battalion headquarters. At dusk, Private John Cockford, intelligence officer Lieutenant John Clarkson’s batman, marched in with a Christmas cake. He had planned the treat for weeks. It was made from cornmeal with chocolate ration melted down for icing. In Campobasso, Cockford had liberated some walnuts from an Italian home and these were mixed in with the chocolate and some powdered milk. With a blunt finger, he had drawn in the icing the words “Merry Christmas” in Gothic script.28 Officers and men fell upon the cake with glee.

  Shortly after nightfall, there came another turn of good fortune when a small patrol from the Royal Canadian Regiment slipped into the lines of the 48th Highlanders. The patrol leader told Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston that Highlander Captain George Beal, a former Toronto Argonaut football quarterback, was leading a party of about sixty Saskatchewan Light Infantry men up the narrow trail used earlier by the battalion to capture its objective. The SLI soldiers were bringing rations, some light mortars, ammunition, spare batteries for the radio sets, and stretchers to evacuate the most badly wounded.29

  The news lifted the flagging spirits of the Highlanders. Their food was all but gone, ammunition was critically low. The batteries for the radio sets were either exhausted or so low that every minute of on-air time had to be carefully apportioned. Some of the wounded were likely to die if not soon evacuated to a Forward Aid Post.30

  At 2100 hours, the SLI carrying party reached the Highlanders. As expected, they brought with them food, ammunition, fresh batteries, and stretchers. Johnston took Beal aside. “You forgot to bring a tank. Ask Colonel Spry at Brigade to send us tanks, for God’s sake.” Johnston smiled then. “Tell him to send us just one tank and we’ll massacre them.” Beal laughed and asked Johnston if he was sure that all he wanted for Christmas was a tank. “That’s right,” Johnston said. “One Sherman.”31

  The SLI and Beal then gathered up seven stretcher cases and slipped back into the night, making a hazardous return journey down the path that curiously remained undiscovered by the Germans.

  As far as Fallschirmpionier Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein was concerned, Christmas Day brought a welcome decrease in the intensity of fighting in Ortona. Harassing fire from Canadian artillery and mortars remained continuous, but the engineers were not called upon to carry out further extensive demolitions. When not standing guard duty, they spent most of the day sleeping. The rest was welcome and the men slept heavily despite the noise of the Canadian shelling and the continuous small-arms fire coming from the front lines.

  In the evening, Bayerlein was delighted to see warm food brought up from the rear in containers delivered by motorcycle. The men bringing in the food had run the gauntlet of the Coast Highway, now subject to almost continual mortar and artillery shelling.

  “We had potatoes, oranges, vegetables, roast beef,” Bayerlein wrote in his diary. “We also put up a small Christmas tree.” Obviously, headquarters to the rear “had not forgotten us.” Still, Bayerlein noted, “There is no place for Christmas sentiments here. We do not know how long we can hang onto Ortona.”32

  German high command was also deeply concerned about the events in Ortona. Tenth Army commander General der Panzertruppen Joachim Lemelsen and Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring conferred by telephone on Christmas Day. Kesselring told Lemelsen, “It is clear that we do not want to defend Ortona decisively, but the English have made it appear as important as Rome. . . . You can do nothing when things develop in this manner; it is only too bad that Montgomery was right for once and the world press makes so much of it.” Lemelsen replied, “It costs so much blood that it cannot be justified.”

  For his part, 1st Canadian Infantry Division commander Major General Chris Vokes issued the following message intended to rally the troops and put fire in their hearts and bellies: “This, the fifth Christmas of the war, finds us in totally different and less pleasant circumstances than the last four. However, let us have no regrets. We are out to do a real ‘job’ on our enemies and there will be no let-up in our efforts until we have accomplished this. Then we will be in a position to enjoy our Post-War Christmas Days to the full. May this Christmas Day, therefore, be as Merry as circumstances . . . permit.”33

  27

  CARRY ON

  IT was a morning ritual practised by every company of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. As dawn touched the ruins of Ortona, the company commander and sergeant major divided the platoon sections between them and then visited their allotted groups. Dawn was the worst time of day for men in combat. Ended was a long, often frightening night, passed with too little sleep. It was cold and usually wet. Another long day of deadly battle loomed. The soldiers shivered and wanted nothing more than to curl up in their fighting positions and leave the war to play itself out on its own.

  That was when Captain June Thomas, Company Sergeant Major Jock Gibson, or Major Jim Stone slipped in next to them. A kind word of encouragement. A shake of a shoulder to waken the soldier unable to rouse himself. The proffered canteens. One held water. The other dark rum. A swig from either or both was invited. The rum was a restorative, it warmed the men and helped chase away some of the fear that had grown during the night into a force that might complete
ly unnerve a man.1 Far too many were being sent to the rear with uncontrollable shakes or because they had simply said, “I can’t take it,” and refused to continue the fight.2

  On December 26, none of the officers or sergeant majors needed long to circulate through the companies. Hardly any numbered more than thirty men. Despite this, before the rounds were finished the battlefield had awakened. Canadian and German artillery shells whistled down and Ortona erupted in fire and smoke. Then came the ripping sheet sound distinctive of German machine guns, punctuated by the slower, duller thudding of the Bren guns responding in kind. Grenades popped, rifles cracked, the guns of the Three Rivers’ Shermans boomed, Moaning Minnies shrieked into the Canadian lines, the Canadian antitank guns thumped, mortar rounds ripped holes in roofs and sent cobblestones whirring through the streets, and the shattering blasts of explosives tore buildings to shreds. It was a new day and the battle of Ortona raged on.

  Seaforth Captain June Thomas was in a building separated from another by only a few feet. Glancing around the corner of an upstairs window, he saw a German peering back from a corner of the facing building. The German saw Thomas. Both men simultaneously ducked back. Thomas flipped the pin of a grenade and lobbed it around the corner at the German. After it exploded he rushed over, thinking to finish the job if necessary with his rifle. The German was gone. There was no sign of blood.3

  Lieutenant Alon Johnson, the Loyal Edmontons’ scout commander, had a good view over the northern part of the town. Once he had conducted a first morning patrol of the Edmonton line, there was little else for his scouts to do in the way of patrolling. So he put the men and himself to work as snipers. The Germans seldom presented good targets, but this morning Johnson got lucky. A paratroop officer popped up from behind some rubble and peered at the Canadian lines through his binoculars. The range was long, almost to the maximum extent of the Lee Enfield, but Johnson took aim and fired. The German went down fast. It was impossible to tell if the shot had struck home or not. Johnson hoped he had killed the man.4

  Sergeant Major Jock Gibson ran across a wide street. Bullets started chipping the cobblestones near him. Gibson saw the muzzle flash of a German machine gun in a nearby building. He raised a Bren gun to his hip and loosed a long burst of fire toward the building. The recoil from the big weapon, meant to be fired with the gun well braced, nearly tore the Bren from his hands. He dashed on and took cover inside a ruined building. Gibson thought he would have been lucky to have hit the building, let alone the men manning the machine gun, but at least he had temporarily suppressed their fire.5

  Private Melville McPhee lay near the top of a pile of rubble facing the shattered remains of Cattedrale San Tomasso. In the massive ruin lying at the foot of the great gutted dome, the Loyal Edmonton saw what looked to be someone crawling about. McPhee fired his rifle at the target, lost sight of it, and saw no further movement.6

  Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson watched an old woman wandering about yelling and screaming in Dead Horse Square. She appeared to have gone out of her mind. Before he could send someone to bring her in, a shot rang out. The woman fell. German fire prevented the Seaforths carrying her body out of the square. Then the Sherman tanks came forward. Her body lay in their path. The tanks rolled back and forth repeatedly over her body as the day wore on. Slowly, inexorably, her corpse was ground into the cobblestones.7

  From a building near the great cathedral, the Germans started spraying Edmonton positions once again with the flame-thrower. A six-pounder antitank gun was dragged up by hand. It blew the building into an alley. The weapon was not seen again that day and the Edmontons presumed it destroyed.8

  Feldwebel Fritz Illi enjoyed teasing the Canadians with his excellent high-school English. He engaged the enemy soldiers in conversation whenever possible. Mostly he yelled over for them to pitch him tins of their delectable corned beef ration or cigarettes. The less imaginative responded by telling him to “fuck off.” It seemed to Illi that most of the Canadians possessed little imagination. Others called on him to surrender. Illi answered in kind. Once a Canadian turned the tables on Illi and told him in perfect German that he should give up. The man said he had emigrated to Canada years before and now fought Fascism. Illi told the man he could not surrender, that to do so would not be honourable. Illi did not tell the enemy soldier that there were times he wanted desperately to flee the hellhole of Ortona. Since the battle had started, Illi had hardly slept, seldom had food to eat, and had not washed. He tried persuading the Canadian-German to “come back to his own people, but he said he could not.”9

  Lieutenant Dave Fairweather was amazed how well prepared the paratroopers seemed. Every time his section mouse-holed its way into a room, they found that every windowsill or shelf contained meticulously lined-up rows of ammunition clips for the German Mauser rifles or for the Schmeisser submachine guns. In the corners were stacks of cans containing loose ammunition or stick grenades. If the Germans ran out of ammunition during a fight, they just had to fall back to the next position and all the munitions they required would be waiting there for them.10

  Three Rivers tank commander Corporal Joe Turnbull directed his tank Amazing onto the rubble pile at Piazza Plebiscita. The going was tough, but finally he had the tank perched precariously on the summit. Its tracks clawed and chewed at the ruins, inching forward. Once the centre of balance shifted and the tank tipped over the edge, the Sherman would be able to descend into the hitherto impregnable square. Amazing never made it. A paratrooper threw a sticky bomb onto the rear-engine compartment. An improvised weapon, a sticky bomb was an explosive charge encased in thick grease or other sticky substance so that it would adhere to metal when dropped or pressed by hand into place. The explosion tore open the engine compartment and set the tank on fire. Turnbull and his crew bailed out.11 Two of the men, driver Trooper Joe Gallagher and co-driver Trooper J. Morrison, were wounded.12 Turnbull helped the two uninjured men climb over the rubble pile and then boosted the wounded men up to them. Just as the other four men got over the top of the pile, a German machine gun started spraying the area around Turnbull with heavy fire. Unable to make his way to the safety of the other side, Turnbull ran into the German-held area of the square and wriggled into the safety of a cellar. Before he reached the cellar, the enemy machine gun stopped firing at him.

  Across the square, Corporal Gord Turnbull saw his older brother being shot at by a German machine gun. He cranked the turret of his Sherman around and fired the main gun at the enemy position. When he ceased fire, his brother was gone. He had no way of knowing whether Joe was alive or not.13

  The Seaforths’ ‘D’ Company had only twenty-two men left when it received a small clutch of reinforcements sent up from battalion HQ. The men arrived at the company front with rifles, but hardly any ammunition and no grenades. Company Sergeant Major Gibson got them into the latest building he was using as a supply dump and started handing out the ubiquitous Type 36 grenade that was standard for all Commonwealth forces. “What’s this?” one of the men said. Gibson gaped at him. “What do you mean, what’s this?” The man looked puzzled, embarrassed even. “Well, I’ve never had one of these before.” Gibson demanded to know what training the man had received. Not much, it appeared. The soldiers were equally unaware how to clean a Lee Enfield, and confessed to never having fired a Bren gun. “Lambs to the slaughter,” Gibson thought. “They’re sending us bloody lambs, who will just get butchered here.” He turned to face the men and assumed his best parade-ground voice from the militia days. Holding the grenade aloft so they could all see it, he began, “This is a Type 36 grenade. It has a fuse length of . . .”14

  Shortly after these men were sent to the forward platoons, Gibson entered an old shack on the edge of Ortona with several other men from ‘D’ Company. What seemed like an entire salvo of German shells shrieked down and struck directly outside. Gibson threw himself under a table. Everything in the room seemed to blow apart as shrapnel flew everywhere. He and two other men were the only ones
to crawl out of the ruin. Gibson was unhurt. He was amazed to still be alive. The sergeant major was shaking, and every noise made him incredibly jumpy. Gibson realized he was a nervous wreck. It seemed impossible any of them would ever get out of Ortona alive.15

  Major General Chris Vokes came up to 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade’s headquarters to meet with Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister. Vokes got directly to the point. “Would you like to quit, Bert? Would you like to pull out of Ortona?”

  Hoffmeister’s response was immediate. “Chris, when this job was given to us it was represented to be a highly important objective. We have had a lot of casualties, we’ve put a tremendous amount into it up to now; given it everything we had. To tell the Seaforths and Edmontons now that they could pull out and that it wasn’t all that important would have the most shocking effect, in my opinion, on the morale of these battalions, having paid the price they have paid up to that point. I think, furthermore, we’re getting the upper hand slowly. In other words we’re winning. I think we should end it.”

  Vokes looked long and hard at his brigadier. “Okay, carry on,” he said.

  It was a decision that Hoffmeister hated to make. A hell of a decision for any officer to have to assume responsibility for. But Hoffmeister believed in his heart and mind that it was the correct decision. The Edmontons and Seaforths had to see the fight through. They had to win it. If they failed to do so, they would never again be effective regiments. Their spirit would be irretrievably broken.16