Operation Husky
Page 26
On the morning of July 19, Alexander cabled Patton with clarifying instructions for Seventh Army’s northward advance. Instead of driving for Palermo—as Patton understood he had been authorized to do during the July 17 meeting in Tunis—Seventh Army would first advance directly north from its current positions in the centre of the island to cut Sicily in half and cover the left flank of Eighth Army. Only when it had gained the northern coast about thirty miles east of Palermo should Patton move against the city. Realizing the cable would scupper Patton’s intentions, Gay passed only the first part of the message—which ordered the 1st Division of II Corps to lead the push to the north coast—to Bradley and hid the rest in his desk. Next, Gay signalled Alexander’s headquarters that the message had been garbled and would need to be retransmitted.25
Bradley, already unhappy that his corps was to carry out the task Alexander had previously assigned the entire Seventh Army, exploded into fury when he learned that Eighth Army was constricting its line of advance east of Enna. In a signal to xxx Corps commander Lieutenant General Oliver Leese, Bradley growled: “I have just learned that you have side-slipped Enna, leaving my flank exposed. Accordingly we are taking Enna at once, even though it is in your sector. I assume we have the right to use any of your roads for this attack.”26 The claim on roads was a belated retort against Alexander’s earlier decision to give exclusive use of Highway 124 to the Canadians.
Anxious to prevent the divide between the American and British commands from widening further, Leese hurriedly apologized and sent Bradley a peace offering of two bottles of Scotch. He felt shamefaced that, no matter what instructions had emanated from Alexander regarding this, his corps staff had neglected to ensure that the Americans realized Enna was being bypassed.27
In reality, it was of little import. Although Enna had served as Sixth Army headquarters and was an ancient fortress that would challenge any besieger, 15th Panzer Grenadier Division commander Generalmajor Eberhard Rodt had decided against making a stand. With Valguarnera lost and the Canadians set to advance on Leonforte, any German forces in Enna risked being cut off. To prevent this, Rodt shifted his division northeastward to the area extending from Leonforte to the south and north to Nicosia. Rodt’s intention was to delay xxx Corps as long as possible, without risking serious casualties.28 On the night of July 18-19, the Canadians heard a massive explosion from Enna, and intelligence officers surmised correctly that the Germans were destroying munition dumps as part of a withdrawal.29
On July 19, realizing that Enna no longer posed a threat and that the Germans were falling back across his front in an eastward withdrawal, Major General Guy Simonds decided to concentrate his strength to the north. The only force assigned to cover his left flank was the division’s reconnaissance regiment—the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards—which he directed to take up watching positions a few miles east of the town.30
By hooking hard right while still short of Enna, Simonds was able to use two roads that cut through the Dittaino River valley to the north of Valguarnera for the next advance. One ran almost due north of Valguarnera to intersect Highway 121—the main Palermo-Catania highway—next to the Dittaino River. From the valley floor, this highway wound through the hills to Leonforte. Simonds assigned this route to 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, ordering it to move on the night of July 18-19 via the just-opened Portella Grottacalda to the Highway 117 junction, then north to Valguarnera and on to Leonforte. The other road, which would be used by 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade, angled in a northeasterly descent into the valley to Dittaino Station, a railway stop on the Catania-Enna line that bordered the river. From the station, the road turned northward and climbed to the town of Assoro, which lay a short distance to the east of Leonforte. Just beyond the latter town, the road converged with Highway 121. Here Simonds envisioned the two brigades would link up. Having gained the highway, the division would then advance in line with one brigade forward through Nissoria to Agira. At Agira, the Canadians would be met by the 231st (Malta) Brigade.
On July 17, this British brigade had moved independently between 1st Canadian Infantry Division and the 51st Highland Division. The brigade had made good progress, capturing Raddusa—eight miles east of Valguarnera—the following day and gaining the Dittaino River early on July 19. They had then quickly advanced to within three miles of Agira. In the course of their two-day drive, the brigade had rounded up more than one thousand prisoners—mostly Italians from the collapsed Livorno Division—and faced only relatively light resistance. As the brigade was headed for a juncture with the Canadians, General Bernard Montgomery placed it under Simonds’s command on the morning of July 19. Simonds immediately ordered Brigadier Robert Urquhart to hold his troops in place until Leonforte and Assoro were won. Intelligence reports indicated that the Germans had transformed Agira into a stronghold, so Simonds planned to attack it simultaneously from two flanks. His expectation was that his two-brigade advance on Leonforte and Assoro would quickly gain these two towns and that Agira’s capture would rapidly follow.31
In making his plans, Simonds was conforming to those set out by Montgomery just a few hours earlier. Forced to admit that 50th Division’s advance towards Catania had been blocked, Montgomery decided he must focus on the western flank. The 5th Division from XIII Corps was instructed to advance towards Misterbianco, while xxx Corps’s 51st Division drove towards Paterno. Both these towns lay on Highway 121, close to the southern flank of Mount Etna, with Paterno situated roughly midway between Adrano to the west and Catania to the east. Once Eighth Army had virtually all of Highway 121 in hand, it would be poised to send divisions around the western flank of the volcano to threaten the rear of the Germans holding Catania, while simultaneously advancing directly east towards the city via the highway.32
NEAR PIAZZA ARMERINA, Brigadier Chris Vokes started 2 CIB marching at 2230 hours on July 18. The Seaforth Highlanders led with the brigade’s support group immediately behind and brigade headquarters in trail. A little farther back were the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and the Loyal Edmonton Regiment.33 All went well until, in the early morning hours of July 19, the brigade came to a bridge a half-mile south of Valguarnera and found it blown. Leaving their motorized transport behind, the infantry yet again marched forward, while a call went back for engineers to bring up a bulldozer and create a crossing.
Carriers stranded, the Seaforth’s 3-inch mortar platoon watched forlornly as the infantry disappeared. The march assumed the all-too-familiar character of past Sicilian advances. While the temperature was less than the 100 degrees Fahrenheit normal for July days, the heat remained oppressive. Weary men quickly lost whatever renewal of energy the brief interlude in reserve had yielded. They slogged through the thick, white dust that lay several inches deep upon the roads. Private Richard Latimer noted that nobody spoke. All seemed focussed purely on putting one foot before the other. Each company adhered to a set ritual whereby the heavier weapons—the 23-pound Bren, 35.3-pound PIAT, and 23.7-pound 2-inch mortar—were passed around, so that every man had a turn. This was in addition to the weight of the almost 9-pound Lee-Enfield most carried and the rest of their battle gear. Each fifty minutes of marching was followed by a ten-minute break. Latimer and the others just flopped down in their tracks on the road. A few lucky men could instantly slip into a deep sleep, but most lay panting. Dysentery was rife, so there was a steady procession of soldiers scurrying a few feet away from the road to drop their pants and relieve themselves before the order came to start marching.34 More than a few of the afflicted soiled their pants before a halt was called. Anyone who broke ranks, no matter the cause, had to run to catch up with his platoon. Already exhausted, such a sprint could finish a man. Consequently, they tried to resist until the next rest.
At 0430 hours on July 19, the Seaforths trudged into the bleak, dark streets of Valguarnera. ‘A’ Company was out front, followed by Lieutenant Colonel Bert Hoffmeister and his battalion headquarters, with the other three companies in line b
ehind. The men marched in single file with good spacing between, so that if fired on they would be less hard hit than if they bunched together. Scattered through the town were abandoned German vehicles and corpses that were already putrefying.35 Padre Roy Durnford was so struck by the town’s condition that he could not “believe that squalor was the direct result of war. It bore unmistakable signs of having been there for generations.” 36 On the northern outskirts, the Seaforths halted for a rest that lasted until dawn.
With first light the battalion had its inaugural view of the new battleground. Forty miles to the northeast hulked Mount Etna. About six miles northwest, Enna stood on a 3,300-square-foot crag. Between Etna and Enna stretched a chain of hills and low mountains ranging from five hundred feet to three thousand feet. Those closest to Etna were higher, rising in steps until the last shouldered against the volcano. Two rivers—the Dittaino and the Salso—pierced through this rugged country, both coursing roughly west to east within paralleling valleys. Descending from the north, the Troina intersected the Salso to the west of Adrano shortly before that river discharged into the larger Simeto River. None of these rivers—reduced by summer drought to mere trickles connecting shallow pools scattered along their broad, boulder-strewn beds—posed any obstacle to the infantry. But it required engineers to construct crossings for either wheeled or tracked vehicles. On either side of the rivers, their valleys stretched to a width of about a mile.37 Here Sicilian farmers had planted orchards and grew wheat in small fields, while parched vineyards were scattered across the rocky slopes. Few people lived on the valley floors; instead they dwelt in the mountaintop towns—descending each day to tend their farms and trudging back up the steep hillsides after sunset.38
Before them, the Seaforths could see Leonforte atop a nearly two-thousand-foot summit. With its rows of houses set out in ever-narrowing layers as the town closed on the narrow summit, ‘B’ Company’s Corporal Johnnie Cromb thought it resembled “a big wedding cake.”39 Rising like a giant broken tooth to the right of Leonforte was the summit of Assoro, higher by about one thousand feet. The western slope of this mountain was its least precipitous and Assoro village clung to this side, houses bordering steep, narrow streets that switchbacked to within a few hundred feet of the summit. On the summit stood “the fragmentary ruins of a castle built in the twelfth century by Roger II. The Norman king had chosen his site well, planting his stronghold in what seemed a well nigh impregnable position on the edge of the eastern cliff, which towered a thousand feet above the valley.”40
Between Leonforte and Assoro, a saddlelike ridge linked the two summits and formed the northern flank of the Dittaino valley. From the two mountaintops and the crest of the ridge, the Germans could fire on the Canadians wherever they tried to cross the valley floor.41 But before they reached the Dittaino River, 2 CIB had to first descend from Valguarnera by way of a broad saucer-shaped valley through which the road ran to a three-way junction, which was the Seaforth’s immediate objective. Although everything seemed peaceful enough, Lieutenant Colonel Hoffmeister looked at the high ground on either side of the road closing on the junction and decided the site was “a natural for an ambush.”42 Instinctively, he ordered the battalion onto the high ground right of the road. Unable to establish wireless communication with ‘A’ Company’s Captain F.W.I. “Bill” Merritt, Hoffmeister sent the battalion’s second-in-command, Major Douglas Forin, and his batman ahead to deliver the message on foot. Forin had just reached the tail of the company and sent the message forward by verbal relay when the Germans opened up with heavy machine-gun, mortar, and artillery fire from a ridge on the far side of the valley commanding the road.43 ‘A’ Company was pinned down on the slope. Every time Merritt attempted to send men forward, they were driven to ground by machine-gun volleys.
Company Sergeant Major D.R. Penman ordered the men to dig in, but eighteen inches down they hit bedrock. The German mortar rounds lit the stubbly grass on fire. Bursts of machine-gun fire kicked up puffs of dry earth, while the mortar bombs exploded on impact, mixing rocks and other debris in with the deadly shrapnel spray. Most of the men hit at the outset were farthest down the hill and could only be dragged to safer positions by men dangerously exposing themselves.44 Private J.G. McBride and Lance Corporal R.R. Story never hesitated. A medical orderly, McBride was wounded three times while helping other struck men. Suffering painful burns from phosphorous loosed by an incendiary bomb, Story ignored his own injuries in order to render first aid and drag the wounded to covered positions. Both men were awarded Military Medals.45
Penman realized ‘A’ Company was “actually in it” as they had never been before and he saw no way out. It was about two hundred yards back up the hill to the rest of the battalion, which appeared to have gone to ground on the opposite slope. Later the Seaforths would learn that the best way out of an ambush like this was to charge forward rather than retreat, but “we were green,” Penman recalled. “We couldn’t tell noises to be such and such a thing, self-propelled or stationary guns ... it was a baptism to us. The main thing was self-preservation,” and the only hope of that was to hunker down in the shallow slit trench and hope for the storm of fire to pass by.46
Although ‘A’ Company was caught in the open, the entire battalion could have been slaughtered had Hoffmeister not ordered the shift to the right of the road. In doing so, he forced the Germans to trigger their ambush prematurely.47 “If we’d had the whole battalion stretched out on the road, even moving at tactical intervals, we would have been massacred,” he said later.48 With battalion headquarters, Padre Roy Durnford was struck by the accuracy and fury of the German fire. “Vicious bursts of flame and clouds of dust, dirt and rock flew into the air to the left and right of us...In the not too distant hills we could hear the enemy guns fire and we could count the seconds which elapsed before the shell landed in our gulley. It was an anxious time for us all.” With the medical officer, Captain Ken McDonald, Durnford descended into ‘A’ Company’s position to oversee the casualties. “But to the dying [the shellfire] meant nothing. They were calm and bravely faced the end. Some were unconscious, having received morphine earlier from our first aid men. We dug graves out of sun-baked rock and rock-like soil and for hours we sweated over this before the last man was laid down in his blanket.”49
McDonald was seen running back and forth from ‘A’ Company’s exposed position with medical supplies and tending the wounded on both sides of the ridge. He seemed to be continually “where the fire was hottest to offer immediate aid to the wounded.” Although such bravery was typical of the man, for this day’s action he was awarded a Military Cross.50
While Durnford buried the dead and helped tend the wounded, Hoffmeister frantically tried to extract those still in the fight. The problem was their inability to strike back at the Germans. His 3-inch mortars were well back, the carriers just waddling across the streambed via the diversion. Repeated calls for artillery support yielded only the news that all the division’s field regiments were out of range and it would be some time before the 7th Medium Regiment’s heavier guns could be brought to bear.51
In this action, Hoffmeister established a reputation for leading from the front. Dodging through flying shrapnel, he seemed to be everywhere and anywhere—his presence and apparent disregard for the enemy fire helping to steady the Seaforths and prevent a panic that could have resulted in a rout.52 In an effort to establish personal contact with ‘A’ Company, Hoffmeister “went forward to see . . . through the smoke. I was going up one side of a cactus hedge, and could hear tanks not far away, when all of a sudden I came face to face with a German Mark IV tank right out of the smoke. The tank commander was riding with his head out of the turret and he saw me as soon as I saw him. Fortunately the gunner let go with a 75-millimetre round instead of his machinegun . . . and this . . . went whizzing past my head. That was all the encouragement I needed to go straight through the cactus hedge, which I did and didn’t get a scratch... When I landed on the other side, I was a
ll right, but running in high gear. I nipped up the other side of the hedge and the tank figured he was getting a little too far into our position and turned around and went back again.”53
Shortly before noon, the 3-inch mortar platoon finally arrived, and its commander, Lieutenant Don Harley, deployed behind battalion headquarters. The men were quickly pumping out rounds. A few minutes later the Saskatoon Light Infantry section ground up aboard its carriers and brought its 4.2-inch mortars into action.54 When the FOO from 2nd Canadian Field Regiment, who was accompanying the Seaforths, established contact with the gunners of 7th Medium Regiment, they dropped two rounds from each of the sixteen 5.5-inch guns on selected targets in a shoot lasting just a minute.55 The explosive weight of these shells was seventy-nine pounds, more than three times a field regiment’s 25-pounder, and the effect was instantaneous. Within an hour, the Germans broke off the action, and Hoffmeister called for ambulances to come forward to evacuate the casualties. Eighteen ‘A’ Company men had been killed or wounded, most in the first minutes after the ambush was sprung.56
While the Seaforths licked their wounds, the PPCLI passed through their lines after sunset and continued 2 CIB’s advance towards Leonforte. But they were not the first Canadians to venture beyond the battalion’s lines. At 1730 hours, 2 CIB’s Brigade Major Richard S. Malone had gone forward in a carrier to personally reconnoitre the approach to Leonforte. Malone had felt cocky as hell, for at last he was loose on the battlefield rather than stuck back in brigade headquarters while Brigadier Vokes was upfront with the brigade’s tactical headquarters team. Earlier that afternoon Vokes had come back for a brief rest and Malone had pleaded to be sent forward. “All right,” Vokes said. “Be careful. Take the carrier I got from Howard Graham.”57