Ortona

by Mark Zuehlke

  Seconds later, Boyd regained consciousness and realized a German shell had punched directly through the gap. All three men in the room were wounded. A chunk of Leo Coty’s calf was torn away. Edmontons’ mortar officer, Lieutenant Tim Armstrong, was missing part of his buttock. A fragment of shrapnel was lodged in Boyd’s skull just one-sixteenth of an inch from his spinal cord.

  Ron Bowen, Company Sergeant Major of ‘D’ Company, organized the evacuation of the wounded men. While they waited for a Regimental Aid Post jeep to come up, Bowen gave Boyd a strong drink of vermouth laced with army-issue rum. Later Boyd learned that alcohol is a deadly mixture for head wounds, but at the time he was grateful for the drink’s dulling sensation because administering morphine was prohibited for such wounds. As Boyd was being loaded into the jeep, he directed Bowen to tell Jefferson, “that his goddamned idea was no goddamned good.”1 The jeep Boyd was loaded aboard contained two other wounded men. They had been dug from the rubble of another building the Germans had blown in on the Canadians.

  Shortly after dawn on December 27, a platoon bolstered by reinforcements received during the night took possession of a large building near Cattedrale San Tomasso. Unknown to the Edmontons, the building had been heavily mined by the paratroopers. Soon after Lieutenant E.D. “Bunny” Allan and his twenty-three men occupied the building, it was demolished by a massive explosion. The Edmontons’ pioneers immediately rushed to the rescue and started digging through the wreckage. From an adjacent building, a small group of paratroopers sought to drive the pioneers off by showering the rubble with stick grenades. Private G.E. O’Neill launched a single-handed counterattack against the German position and drove them back from the building. The pioneers recovered four injured men and one body. All the other soldiers were believed to have been killed and entombed inside the rubble.2 But the pioneers kept digging in search of bodies and with the faint hope of finding survivors.

  News of the demolition flashed through the ranks of the Edmontons and the other battalions of 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. Until now, the battle for Ortona had been fierce and bitter, but not vindictive. Now, however, the Canadians were looking for blood. They viewed the destruction of Allan’s platoon as a form of base treachery and bloodthirstiness on the part of the paratroopers. The Edmontons sought vengeance in kind.

  Captain Bill Longhurst, who had introduced the Canadians to mouse-holing, took the lead in organizing what the Edmontons considered just retaliation. He led ‘A’ Company in a hard-fought attack on a large building in the German sector. The men battled their way through the building room by room until they had cleared the Germans out. The regimental interpreter then crawled up to a window facing the adjoining building. He could hear an officer across the way berating his men for having surrendered the other building so easily. Longhurst sent a runner to round up some sappers and explosives. Half an hour later, the sappers crawled out from under the other building, where they had positioned a large quantity of explosives. Longhurst then blew up the building. The Edmontons claimed to have killed between forty and fifty paratroopers in this attack.3 Later in the day, Longhurst and his men destroyed a second building that also contained some Germans.4

  Increasingly, the weapon of choice on December 27 was high explosives. In the northwestern section of Ortona, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada were held up before a factory that had been heavily fortified by the paratroopers. Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson told Captain June Thomas to delay further attacks on the factory until the morning. That would allow Thomas’s ‘A’ Company to arm itself with a variety of four- to twenty-five pound explosive charges. Thomson instructed that the Seaforths should, rather than trying to capture the building, demolish it with the explosives.5

  For their part, the German engineers spent the day engaged in a frenzy of demolition. Obergefreiter Carl Bayerlein’s team carried out extensive demolitions in the vicinity of Via Tripoli, in front of the Edmontons. They were down to their last explosives and had orders to use up everything. Sometimes they demolished buildings one at a time. Other times they ran all the wires leading to explosives set in a row of buildings to a single detonator and brought the entire section crashing down. Around them, the Canadian shelling fell in tremendous salvoes that ripped other buildings apart.6

  Both Canadians and Germans sensed that the terrible battle inside Ortona was reaching a climactic point. The paratroopers’ hold on the town was tenuous. They retained control over little other than a small section of the old quarter of town fronting the indefensible castle, the relatively scattered buildings north of Via Monte Maiella and Via Tripoli, a large communal vegetable-garden plot, and the cemetery. The Canadians had the advantage now of artillery and tanks, which were able to operate more efficiently in the wider streets of the town’s extreme northern sections. Three Rivers tanks formed up at the head of Corso Matteotti and hammered the castle with ninety to a hundred shells.7

  Dead Horse Square was at last secured by the Seaforths. From the ruin of the hospital, which had been under almost continous shelling for three days, poured one hundred civilians. Throughout the battle, they had been sheltering underground in a large basement complex. Formed up in a column, they were hastily escorted out of town by the Seaforths.8

  Deep in the rubble of the school, which had stood next to the hospital, Private Gordon Currie-Smith lay as he had since Christmas Eve. For three days he had been buried in the rubble. He could breathe with difficulty and move his head slightly; otherwise the small man was completely immobilized by the concrete and masonry crushing down on him. Strangely, he was no longer thirsty or hungry. Currie-Smith was reconciled to the fact that the rubble pile would become his tomb.

  Yet now, he heard voices, seemingly from far away. Voices speaking English. Currie-Smith let out a soft croaking sound, meant to be a cry for help. He paused, forced himself to breathe deeply, to try and find some saliva to lubricate his voice box. Then he yelled. He yelled as loud as he possibly could and then he yelled again.

  The voices were suddenly above him. He heard the men’s exclamations, their shouts to others, their delighted surprise. Currie-Smith told them who he was. One man stayed with him, while the others ran for shovels and other equipment. Then there were Seaforths everywhere digging and casting rubble aside to liberate him from his tomb. Soon the weight of the large concrete slab that had been wedged on top of him, but which had also given him the headroom necessary to survive, was lifted away. Currie-Smith was gently raised from the rubble by two men and put on a stretcher. Later he would say only that he felt “very, very happy.” He also felt it was a “shame all those fine fellows had to die because an officer couldn’t be told anything.”9 Currie-Smith would spend the rest of the war in hospitals being treated for his injuries.

  As the Edmontons pushed past Piazza Plebiscita and moved into the Via Tripoli area, Three Rivers Tanks Corporal Joe Turnbull crawled out of the cellar where he had been hiding. The previous night had been long and harrowing. The Germans had seen him run away from the burning hulk of his tank Amazing, and he had spent a few nervous hours creeping around in the shadows of the cellar while paratroopers armed with submachine guns searched the area for him.

  It was a frightening moment when he revealed himself to the advancing Edmonton infantrymen, because Turnbull had no idea what the day’s passwords might be. Luckily, the jumpy soldiers recognized his filthy tanker’s uniform as Canadian and held their fire. Turnbull returned to his tank squadron to report.

  Brigadier Bert Hoffmeister, commander of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, thought one more hard push might end the battle in Ortona. He also knew that the Edmontons and the Seaforths were too weak to deliver that final knockout punch. His only possible course of action was to commit the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry to the fray. Throughout the past week, the PPCLI had been in reserve on the edge of Vino Ridge. They had endured fairly continuous shelling, had lost men as a result, and were more than ready to do something productive that would get the
m away from the ridge position.

  Hoffmeister had another reason for wanting to bring the PPCLI into Ortona. There were troubling intelligence reports that another paratrooper battalion was being moved into what the Germans appeared to be calling “Operation Ortona.” If the Germans were actually planning to launch a counterattack against the Canadian forces in Ortona, Hoffmeister wanted to have sufficient strength in the town to meet that threat and repel it.10 There were other reasons to suspect the Germans were up to something. Throughout the day, German aircraft swept in repeatedly to strafe and bomb portions of the town. Meanwhile, their artillery and mortar bombardments seemed to have lessened. Something was up, but its nature eluded the Canadian intelligence officers.11

  The increasing pressure being applied to the German position in Ortona should have forced a withdrawal rather than the kind of retrenchment that a counterattack would require. To the west, 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade’s three battalions had managed during the day to stabilize their front. The 48th Highlanders of Canada were no longer isolated, as the Royal Canadian Regiment had extended its front to join the Highlanders’ position. Together, these two battalions and the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment had opened the way for the Canadians to start breaking out from 1 CIB’s position to cut the coast highway and encircle the paratroopers inside Ortona.12

  Unsure what the Germans were planning, Hoffmeister could only draft plans to either end the battle in a renewed offensive borne by the PPCLI, or to repulse a counterattack with the same battalion. He went into Ortona to carry out his daily visits to the two battalion headquarters there, and spoke with an obviously exhausted Lieutenant Colonel Syd Thomson. The Seaforth commander weighed only about 140 pounds in his boots and wanted nothing more than a chance to rest.13 Thomson thought the only thing keeping him going was rum. Hoffmeister patted him on the back and said, “Great show, Syd, terrific show, you are doing great.” Thomson smiled wanly, bit back the desire to plead for a rest, and soldiered on.14

  As another day of fierce bloodletting drew to a close in Ortona, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation war correspondent Matthew Halton lifted his microphone and gave one of the updates that, since the Moro River battle, had transfixed Canadians across the nation. “An epic thing is happening amid the crumbling and burning walls of the compact town. . . . For seven days and seven nights the Canadians have been trying to clear the town and the action is as fierce as perhaps modern man has ever fought. For seven days and seven nights the Canadians have been attacking in Ortona, yard by yard, building by building, window by window. And for seven days and seven nights the sullen young zealots of a crack German parachute division have been defending like demons. Canadian and German seem to be both beyond exhaustion and beyond fear. The battle has the quality of a nightmare. It has a special quality of its own, like . . . the fight at Stalingrad. . . . the same apocalyptic pall of smoke and fire and maniacal determination. . . . The splitting steel storm never stops and the men in there are as if possessed. Wounded men refuse to leave and the men don’t want to be relieved after seven days and seven nights. That is the report of effect of the Canadians in Ortona, that they have asked not to be relieved and deeds that have been done there will add records of selfless courage on the heritage of all men. . . . For us at least there is nothing but Ortona today. The infantry and the tanks fight from yard to yard with all the more stubbornness after the seven days and seven nights. And the Germans now know all too well the identity of the troops on the right.”15

  Unknown to the Canadians, the seven-day nightmare of the battle of Ortona was ending. There would be no last-ditch desperate counterattack. No fresh battalion was being embarked on “Operation Ortona.” Canadian intelligence had misinterpreted the intercepted German communiqué. General der Panzertruppen Traugott Herr, commander of 76th Korps, had in fact requested authority to withdraw the para-troops from Ortona. After consulting with Tenth Army commander General der Panzertruppen Joachim Lemelsen, Tenth Army chief of staff Generalmajor Fritz Wentzell responded to Herr’s request at 1100 hours on December 27. “Army Commander gives consent to immediate beginning of preparations for withdrawal. The movement may be carried out during the night.”16

  The paratroopers disappeared like ghosts moving into the darkness. Feldwebel Fritz Illi and his platoon gathered up their weapons and other gear. Then they simply walked away from their positions in the front lines with hardly a backward glance. They marched past the cemetery and up the coast highway. At no time during the withdrawal was Illi’s platoon fired on. And Illi had no sense that the Canadians knew the Germans were leaving.17

  Obergefreiter Karl Bayerlein received word in the early evening that a withdrawal was underway. He wrote in his diary, “There is no town left. Only the ruins. In the evening at 2200 hours we left without making noise. The enemy did not realize this. We left with all our weapons. I had only five rounds of ammunition. The enemy gained a destroyed city. We left undefeated.”18

  On the morning of December 28, Ortona did not waken to the rage of battle. Instead an eerie calm lay over the ruins. With two other men, Lieutenant Alon Johnson conducted a dawn patrol of the front lines. He later wrote that, “coming through a battered building near a well-known and very dangerous doorway, I heard something unfamiliar — the sound of excited voices somewhere in the distance. The significance of this babble seemed to escape the tired company rifleman guarding the doorway, but to me it suggested a sudden and radical change in the situation. Important enough to risk being shot at by showing myself in the doorway. Nothing happened, so I stepped into the street, once again drawing no enemy fire. Immediately the scouts and I moved forward through the rubble and battered buildings, taking what cover we could as we searched for the source of the ever-louder sound of chatter.”

  Johnson saw a group of civilians, who beckoned the Canadians forward. Seeing people coming out of cellars up and down the street, Johnson reckoned it safe to show himself. A young Italian who spoke English came up and proceeded to show Johnson the location of the German headquarters in town, warning him that it was probably mined. He then gave Johnson that curiously disdainful, haughty expression that Italians master so well. “I can’t understand what took you so long. There weren’t many Germans here.” Johnson curbed a sharp retort. The young man guided Johnson through the rubble all the way to the shell-torn castle. It was empty. The paratroopers were gone. The Battle of Ortona was over.19

  29

  AFTERMATHS

  AT 0800 hours on December 28, CBC Radio war correspondent Matthew Halton bumped his jeep through the deep ruts that Three Rivers tanks had gouged into the road leading into Ortona. The town seemed strangely silent. Only a few machine guns could be heard chattering, and hardly any German shells were falling on the town. Canadian guns were quiet. In front of the battalion headquarters of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, a group of bearded soldiers “who hadn’t had their shoes off for thirty days were laughing.” Halton jumped out of his jeep and went into the headquarters. As he came in, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson gave him a wide grin.

  Halton said, “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yes, I think we have Ortona,” Jefferson said. “There’s a patrol going through the fort now and if they find no Germans there, we’ll know the thing is over.”

  A few minutes later Corporal Bill Clover, the radio operator, removed his earphones and reported, “Sir, the Germans are gone or else they are all dead.”1

  Halton wandered through the ruins of Ortona. His guide was Edmonton Captain Vic Soley. He fed Halton a steady stream of stories, but Halton hardly heard him. The correspondent was horrified by the destruction he was seeing for the first time. “I went slowly down another main street and came to another square,” he later reported. “The buildings were either empty shells or piles of brick and rubble, some covered with German dead and blood. And this havoc caused by shells, not bombs. On one pile of rubble, precariously balanced . . . was a Canadian tank. I see it now as I speak, as I will always see it — not
static and dead, but dynamic in that minute when gallantly it climbed the mine-filled pile of rubble only yesterday and was struck down.”2 The tank was Corporal Joe Turnbull’s Amazing.

  Only one of Soley’s stories imprinted itself onto Halton’s consciousness. Last evening, Soley said, amid a final heavy German artillery bombardment, a young Italian woman was discovered buried alive in the rubble of a building. Edmontons and Seaforth Highlanders of Canada worked together to rescue her. The woman, they discovered as they pulled her out of the ruin, was not only pregnant but in the middle of labour. A sergeant from Vancouver got to work and helped with the delivery. Both mother and child were healthy and well. The woman had promised the men her son’s middle name would be Canadese.3

  Throughout Ortona, Canadian soldiers wandered in a bewildered daze. Some sat down, kicked off their broken boots, leaned back, and slept like the dead. Others looted the buildings that had been left relatively unscathed. Major Jim Stone hated to see this. Posted throughout the town were German notices warning the paratroopers that looting was punishable by death. In many rooms, trinkets and various valuables sat untouched. Soon after the fighting stopped, however, Stone and the rest of the regiment learned that a couple of soldiers had discovered some silver hidden behind a wall. From then on, the plundering became rampant and there was a lack of will on the part of commanders to bring it to a halt. Stone tried speaking to some of the men, hoping to convince them that the looting was wrong. In no mood for lectures, they ignored him. Short of arresting a large number of his best soldiers, Stone saw that nothing could be done. So, like the other officers, he turned a blind eye. Soon a stream of packages containing everything from gold sovereigns to fine lace linens was making its way back by military post to Canada.4