Ortona

by Mark Zuehlke

  Hoffmeister believed that Vokes would have accepted whatever decision he had made about the battle. If he had said, “Yes, we want to quit,” Hoffmeister thought Vokes would have gone back to his superiors and requested permission to break off the battle inside Ortona. He thought Vokes’s motive was entirely humanitarian. Vokes well knew how tired 2 CIB was and how many casualties it had suffered. But there could be no quitting. The Seaforths and Edmontons would have to soldier on and continue paying in blood for the “important objective” of Ortona.17

  As night closed in on Ortona, Private Melville McPhee stood guard duty in a doorway while his section ate and tried to sleep. The young man from Drumheller was exhausted, barely able to stay on his feet or to keep his eyes open. But he knew that were he to give in to sleep he and his comrades might well die. The Germans constantly infiltrated the Canadian lines at night. Earlier in the day, the Edmontons had discovered several tunnels running under the streets and realized the paratroopers had been using these tunnels to get in behind the Canadians. This explained how the Germans had seemed so easily able to come and go as they pleased from one section of the town to another. The Edmonton pioneers quickly blew the tunnel entrances closed with dynamite.18

  McPhee was startled out of his reverie by the sound of movement in some rubble about fifteen feet away. As far as he knew, the rubble was on the German side of the line. He cocked his Thompson submachine gun and waited. A few seconds passed and then a German officer was suddenly framed directly in the doorway. He was looking straight toward McPhee. The young private pointed the gun at the officer’s stomach and squeezed the trigger. He was sickened to hear only a loud click. McPhee waited for the German to gun him down. Instead the man disappeared. McPhee ran back into the room and grabbed a rifle. Then he returned to his position. Glancing out into the street, he saw no sign of the German. McPhee let the enemy officer go about his business and returned to guarding the doorway. He was not going to get himself killed trying to track the German through the streets of Ortona.19

  Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein wrote in his diary that during the day the paratroopers had learned the Führer had issued an order that Ortona be “kept under all circumstances.” There was no way the order could be fulfilled. “The enemy,” he wrote, “has the major part of the city in his hands. With a tremendous barrage the enemy increased his fire. Everywhere there is destruction. The sounds of the engines of the tanks are very close. They advance with the infantry behind. They seized the hospital and the Via Cavour is in the enemy’s hands despite our mines and booby traps. We could delay the enemy advance but we were not able to stop him. Our forces are too weak. The enemy power in personnel and matériel is in ratio of eight to one. The outcome is foreseeable.”20

  Meanwhile, the fate of the 48th Highlanders of Canada remained very much in doubt. Well before dawn on December 26, Major John Clarke, commander of ‘A’ Company, heard extensive movement of German forces in front of his position. The previous day such noise had presaged a counterattack by the 1st Parachute Division battalions surrounding the Highlanders on a ridge overlooking the hamlets of San Tomasso and San Nicola. That counterattack had been broken before it got underway when Clarke had launched a two-platoon raid on the Germans’ probable forming-up point. In the growing light, Clarke saw that the paratroopers were forming up in greater numbers along his front than they had the day before. Any counterstrike he might attempt with his thinly manned platoons would be decimated. All ‘A’ Company and the rest of the Highlanders could do was wait for the Germans to attack and hope to beat them back.

  Shortly after Clarke alerted Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston to the German force massing on his front, Lieutenant George Fraser, commanding ‘C’ Company, reported that the paratroopers were forming up on his front as well. Both German concentrations were subjected to heavy bombardments by the Canadian artillery, but the fire seemed to little deter the preparations that were visible from the Highlander lines.

  The morning was cold, but dry. This gave Johnston some cause for hope. He had received word first thing in the morning that the Ontario Tanks were able to move again. The muddy ground had hardened overnight. Already tanks were working their way toward the front positions of the Royal Canadian Regiment. If a guide was sent back, the tanks would try to break through to the Highlanders. Intelligence officer Lieutenant John Clarkson was given the dangerous mission. He would have to make his way across one thousand yards of enemy-held terrain in broad daylight. Clarkson went alone, setting off at 0930 hours.

  Shortly after he left the Highlander lines, the German artillery and mortar fire that had been harassing the lines since daylight rushed toward a fiery crescendo. Shells hammered down throughout the small island of the Highlanders’ position. ‘A’ Company’s headquarters took several direct hits. Clarke suffered back injuries when debris inside the house fell on him. He refused to relinquish command of the company, and was installed on a mattress under the stairs leading to the building’s second storey.21

  At 1000 hours, the German counterattack came in directly against ‘A’ Company’s front. The Highlanders let the paratroopers advance almost to the front line before ripping into them with their Brens, Thompsons, rifles, and grenades. The intense fire broke the German wave, but some of the paratroopers managed to breach the defending line in several places. A fierce melee of hand-to-hand fighting broke out. The Highlanders fought with the desperation of men who knew there was no retreating. The battalion was cut off and surrounded; it either won or died. Eight Germans were killed trying to break through the back door of the company headquarters.22 Most of these men were killed by Company Sergeant Major Gordon Keeler, who first showered them with grenades from an upstairs window and then charged outside with his rifle and a fixed bayonet to stab the survivors to death.

  From the battalion headquarters, artillery forward observation officer Major Hawker directed a single artillery gun’s fire into the actual lines of ‘A’ Company. He could only trust that the Highlanders would stay down in their slit trenches, so that the shrapnel and blast would just kill exposed Germans.

  One section of ‘A’ Company was cut off, pinned down by machine-gun fire coming from two directions. Private Robert Crane saw the section’s plight. He grabbed a Bren gun, ran into the open to draw the enemy fire, then returned fire while the section slithered out of its holes and escaped to safety. The men in the small section then turned their weapons on one of the machine guns and knocked it out. Just as this gun was silenced, Crane’s Bren gun jammed. He threw down the useless weapon, snatched up a rifle with a fixed bayonet, and charged the remaining machine gun. Jumping into the German position, Crane bayoneted the two men crewing the gun.

  The German attack broke completely and the paratroopers fell back. Although two more attempts were made to penetrate ‘A’ Company’s lines, these attacks, half-hearted compared to the first, were easily driven off by decisive and accurate small-arms fire.23

  Lieutenant Colonel Johnston knew that the Highlanders could expect only a temporary period of grace. The paratroopers were again massing, determined to wipe the battalion off the face of the earth. As long as the Highlanders held their position overlooking the coast highway and the hamlets to the west of Ortona, they hampered the ability of the 1st Parachute Division to resupply Ortona. Ever since they had occupied their position, it was possible for FOO Hawker to direct long-ranging fire against German targets on the coast highway. Although surrounded, the Highlanders possessed the key to finally unravel the German defence of Ortona. If the battalion could not be shoved back, the paratroopers would be hard-pressed to continue holding the port town.

  Johnston knew he had little strength left to stave off another major assault. His companies were badly depleted. Despite the resupply of ammunition the night before, the earlier fighting during the day had reduced the Highlanders to again counting bullets and grenades. The previous day he had unbalanced the methodical Germans with a spontaneous and undergunned attack by two ‘A’ Co
mpany platoons. Perhaps ‘D’ Company could accomplish similar magic. Johnston was laying his plans for ‘D’ Company to try drawing German strength away from ‘A’ Company’s front through a diversionary attack when a cheer rose up from the ranks of ‘B’ Company, dug in on the southern perimeter.

  Running outside his headquarters, Johnston saw three Sherman tanks rolling into the perimeter. At their head was Lieutenant John Clarkson, the intelligence officer. The officer had guided the tanks up the same narrow dirt trail that the Highlanders had followed to establish their position. The Germans still had unaccountably neglected to establish a blocking force on this obvious route into the heart of their lines.24 It was a day late, but Johnston had his Christmas present in triplicate. Another, the last in the line of four Shermans, had bogged down in the still problematic ground that the first three had churned back into deep mud. Johnston hardly cared. He possessed what was needed to begin the massacre he had promised to deliver with even one tank.

  Half an hour after the tanks arrived, Johnston moved to the offence with a major attack. It was now 1330 hours. With the infantry following, the tanks slammed out from the front line of the beleaguered ‘A’ Company. They hit so hard and with such concentrated firepower that the paratroopers broke immediately. The Germans fled the formerly impenetrable houses facing the Canadian front and in doing so ran into the flanking fire of ‘C’ and ‘B’ companies. As the 48th Highlanders war diarist described it, “quite a slaughter ensued.”25

  The tanks circled back, linking up with ‘D’ Company and driving again out of the perimeter on a hundred-yard front, to suppress the paratroopers in the houses from which they had harassed the infantry during their three days of isolation. The Highlanders again followed the tanks into the fray, and as the Shermans broke away the men plunged into the houses, clearing them in minutes. “This was,” the war diarist noted laconically at the end of the day, “the most effective use of tanks this unit has made. Total at end of day was 40 enemy killed and 20 taken prisoner. Estimate of enemy casualties for the day in battalion area 100 to 120.”

  The Highlanders quickly set about burying the German dead in mass graves to prevent contagion and stench. The battalion’s padre was so stricken by the spectacle that he dubbed the spot on which the slaughter had taken place “Cemetery Hill.” Remarkably, the Highlander casualties during the day were slight by comparison. Major Clarke was injured, but continued to refuse evacuation. Lieutenant Ken Arrell, who had led the ‘D’ Company attack, was mortally wounded and would receive a Mention in Despatches for his work. Two other infantrymen had been killed and four wounded.26

  At 2200 hours, another ration and stretcher-bearer party arrived. The isolation of the Highlanders was essentially finished, as the paratroopers lacked the resources to maintain a significant blocking force between the battalion and the rest of 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade. In its daily report to Tenth Army headquarters, 76th Korps, of which the 1st Parachute Division was a part, reported that “all reserves on the left wing of the Korps had been committed.”27

  The German leadership on the Ortona front was breaking down as well. For some unknown reason, 1st Parachute Division commander General Richard Heidrich departed from the Ortona area for a furlough in Berlin on the morning of December 26, at the very moment when his leadership was most critically required. He would later defend this decision, saying he believed the situation around Ortona was “more or less stabilized.”28 Yet the Germans were wildly overestimating the Canadian strength around the Highlander perimeter. The 1st Parachute Division report on the fighting for the day stated with regard to the Highlander battlefront: “In the centre of the divisional front the enemy attacked at about 1530 hrs with one reinforced battalion supported by 16 tanks in the direction of point 100 (1 km N.E. Villa San Tomasso) and succeeded in advancing to this point.”29

  Three tanks became sixteen, the shattered remnant that was the 48th Highlanders was inflated to a reinforced battalion. The Germans draped themselves in a cloak of delusion as to the strength of enemy force they faced, thereby mitigating their own failure to contain the 1st Canadian Infantry Division. Just as Fallschirmpionier Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein noted in his diary on December 26 that the Germans in Ortona were fighting a superior enemy which outnumbered the paratroopers eight to one, so the German high command made the same kinds of overestimates. In reality, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada fielded between them in Ortona on December 26 barely more than 300 men and a dozen tanks of the Three Rivers Tanks. The Germans had equivalent strength and were fighting from defensive positions.

  In the case of the 48th Highlanders, the Germans undoubtedly had enjoyed a numerical superiority at the beginning of the day. The tanks proved the equalizer. They combined with the determination of the Highlanders to transform the battalion’s isolated island into a bastion of strength and then a jumping-off point for a devastating counterattack against the paratroopers. By the end of the day, there was no question of the Highlanders being thrown out of their position. The Germans simply did not have the remaining strength required to regain the offensive anywhere along the Ortona front.

  Despite these major setbacks, the paratroopers were far from finished. Had they been, the Royal Canadian Regiment would have ceased being plagued by harassment from their guns. Yet throughout the day the RCR had its lines infiltrated by Germans. Worse, perhaps, it was impossible to draw water from the local well to brew up a good pot of tea. Every time one of Major Strome Galloway’s men went out for water, he had to scurry for cover because of a machine gun that had the well covered. To his amazement, Galloway watched several of the fifteen or more civilians crammed into the battalion headquarters’ building wander out to the well in an almost casual manner without drawing fire. “I guess they figure that because they are neutral God will protect them!” he wrote in his diary. Noting their imperviousness to enemy fire, however, he employed them to bring water back for his tea.30

  The most amazing event, to Galloway’s mind, was the news that General Bernard Montgomery had ceded command of the Eighth Army and was heading for Britain to assume a role in the forthcoming invasion of northern Europe. Only the day before, Montgomery had issued a Christmas message extolling the way the strength of this “great army” lay “in its team spirit, in the firm determination of every man to do his duty, and in its high morale. This army is a great family, with an ARMY ‘Esprit de corps’ and spirit the like of which can seldom have been seen before. . . . The Christmas message will be our battle cry, not only now, but also in the years to come.” The somewhat inappropriate message was contained in his own missive: “GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST AND ON EARTH PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN.”31

  Montgomery left behind him an Eighth Army that was in tatters, bludgeoned to a standstill along the Ortona-Orsogna line. Things were so bad for the 2nd New Zealand Division, broken from repeated attacks thrown against the stout German defences dug in around Orsogna, that some of its troops mutinied. One eighteen-man-strong New Zealand platoon ordered to make a predawn attack balked. Fourteen of the men refused to go. The platoon was placed under close arrest and each man was sentenced to up to two years’ imprisonment for refusing a direct order. The non-commissioned officers, unable to exert their authority over the dispirited men, were demoted back to the ranks. The New Zealanders had a reputation as tough, determined soldiers. But in the face of the relentless mud, cold, near constant rain, and determined resistance by the Germans manning their strong defensive bastions, the New Zealanders broke. For its part, the 8th Indian Division on the immediate left of the Canadians was faring little better. It had finally captured Villa Grande on December 25, but the division’s advance had been sluggish. The Canadians had accomplished the most, and it was becoming apparent that they were close to done in as a result. Little more could be asked of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division. There were too few soldiers remaining to throw into the cauldron.32

  Galloway, aware of much of this, gloomily m
ade his way back to the RCR battalion rear headquarters. Things were so stalemated between his battalion and the Germans that no immediate offensive action would be possible in the morning. His presence would not be urgently required. He had not bathed since November 30. Nor had his men, but rank possessed certain privileges. Galloway peeled off his grubby and torn uniform for the first time in twenty-six days and luxuriated in a bath in a small foot tub set beside a roaring fire.33

  28

  THERE IS NO TOWN LEFT

  EDMONTON antitank gun commander Captain Ed Boyd faced an impossible task on December 27. Acting on orders from Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson, who was chafing more and more over the slow progress the regiment was making through Ortona, Boyd sought an upper-storey position suitable to bring plunging fire from a six-pounder antitank gun down on German machine-gun positions in neighbouring buildings. Boyd knew the notion was mad, but orders were orders. There was no such thing as a suitable firing position in the upper floor of a building for a six-pounder. The gun was never intended to fire down. Logistic practicalities were boggling. The gun would have to be dismantled, the parts carried upstairs, and then reassembled. Sandbags would have to prop up the gun trails to angle the weapon down. In the confined space, the recoil and gun blast might well kill the gun crew. Setting up each shot would take a ridiculously long time because the entire sandbag-propping system would have to be realigned. Hardly likely the Germans would sit about chatting and sipping schnapps while the gunners laboured away between shots.

  Boyd wandered from building to building with his team. He felt increasingly dispirited by his orders, as each room failed to yield a large enough hole in a wall to warrant implementing the bizarre scheme. Finally he found a sufficiently wide gap, looked out to see what targets might exist, and then saw nothing but stars.