by Mark Zuehlke
At battalion headquarters, meanwhile, Johnston had been debating what to do next. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of fighting, which indicated that ‘D’ and ‘B’ companies were still hotly engaged. But were they advancing, stalled, or being beaten back? Lacking a wireless link to either, he had no idea. Deciding to bet that the attack was still going forward, he ordered ‘C’ Company to advance on the Schoolhouse. If the other two companies had gained the ridge, they would be positioned to support its attack with flanking fire.
Captain Ian Wallace led his men slowly and quietly into the darkness that had descended on the battleground. They were well along when the sounds of fighting to the left ceased. By 2300 hours, his men were a little down the slope from the crest upon which the Schoolhouse stood and getting ready for a final charge. Suddenly, a pair of German tanks opened fire from a position directly above, and within seconds several machine guns weighed in. Then, as abruptly, the enemy fire ceased. The Highlanders could hear tank tracks grinding into the distance. Cautiously probing forward, the lead platoon gained the summit and reported back to Wallace that the Germans had withdrawn. The Schoolhouse and possibly the entire ridge was theirs for the taking. Their casualties attested to the truth of this—just two wounded and one man missing.32
But it was too late. For within a short while a runner from Johnston arrived with orders for ‘C’ Company to fall back from wherever it was, because the withdrawal of the two other companies had left it with “exposed flanks.”33 Before dawn on July 26, the Highlanders were back west of Nissoria. The battalion had suffered forty-four casualties, including thirteen dead.34
The failed attack by the Highlanders on the night of July 25-26 shot the bolt for 1 CIB and Simonds ordered it into reserve for regrouping. Early the following morning, he issued orders for 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade to pass through 1 CIB’s lines at 1800 hours the same day to begin operations to capture Agira.35
WHILE IST CANADIAN Infantry Division’s attempt to seize Agira had been an abject failure that left Simonds deeply frustrated, it was hard for anyone at divisional headquarters to be in anything but good spirits. As most of the staff officers and a group of war correspondents had been eating breakfast that morning, they heard on the BBC’s eight o’clock report that Mussolini had resigned as head of Italy’s government. Tending to the needs of the Canadians was a young Italian soldier the officers had adopted as their mess orderly by giving him a Canadian cap and badge to wear with his soldier’s uniform. Hearing the news, the boy shouted: “Look at our people. Look at their boots and their clothes. He has starved and ruined our fine country.” Seemingly embarrassed at his outburst, the boy then set about pouring tea.
Details remained sketchy, but it appeared a coup the day before within the Grand Fascist Council had led to a demand that Mussolini step aside. Bowing to the inevitable, Il Duce had tendered his resignation, and King Vittorio Emmanuel III had accepted it. Mussolini had been placed in protective custody, and the government was now headed by Maresciallo d’Italia Pietro Badoglio, who had immediately dissolved the Fascist Party.
Anxious to get some reading of the Italian—or, at least, Sicilian—reaction to this news, Canadian Press war correspondent Ross Munro jumped into a Jeep and raced into Leonforte with a Canadian signaller of Italian ethnicity. The signaller told a group of “old men, boys in their ’teens and wrinkled old women the news of Mussolini’s downfall.” Munro was astonished by the depth of the “spontaneous outburst of emotion” that followed. “‘Bravo, bravo,’ they shouted, and clapped their hands and grabbed our arms and embraced us. The news flashed from group to group until the main street of Leonforte, with the two hulks of German tanks still lying at the corner, was filled with their cheers and the clamour of these excited, joyous folk.
“They shrieked in shrill Italian, ‘Death to Mussolini!’ and tore posters from the walls of the stores and defaced pictures of the grimacing dictator. A carabiniere ran off to get a bottle of wine and we had a dozen invitations to imbibe as Leonforte celebrated . . . The shadows of two-score years of Fascism slipped away from those people’s lives that morning and I felt I was seeing happy Italians for the first time since we had landed. Even the smiles of the old women sparkled.
“They believed this would now bring peace to Sicily and Italy and prophetically the men told me that Marshal Badoglio would aid the Allies now that he was in charge in Rome. The Marshal would bring peace to this country and there would be no more fighting.
“And as they spoke these hopeful words, our guns were rolling through the streets, and along the road the western infantry regiments [of 2 CIB] were moving to the starting-line for another crack at the Nissoria slopes.”36
Munro was soon hammering out a story about Mussolini’s fall and the response to it for Canadian readers at home, but for 1st Canadian Infantry Division, the journalist scribed another tale of greater import. The Germans, he wrote, were calling the division “the Red Patch Devils” because the “battle patch worn by the Canadian troops here is a bright red rectangle carried near the shoulder.
“One prisoner told a Canadian officer today: ‘We see the Red Devils coming and we fire our mortars hard. But the Red Patches just keep running through the fire.
“‘I can’t understand it. Other troops we fought lay down and took shelter when the mortars fired right on top of them. The Red Patches are devils. They keep on coming.’”37
Whether Munro’s story was apocryphal would never be discerned, but it sparked the imagination of the division and was quickly picked up by the media in Canada. The division would thereafter be nicknamed “the Red Patch Devils,” and Munro would title his Canadian Press account of Canada’s role in the Sicily campaign, which was published in late 1943: Red Patch in Sicily: The Story of the 1st Canadian Division in Action.
ALTHOUGH THE TROOPS in 1st Division generally liked being thought of as devils, most remained painfully aware that they were made of mortal flesh that was all too vulnerable to the German fire. Yet if Agira was to be won, the blood of fresh men would have to be sent into harm’s way. In the words of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry’s regimental historian, “It was time to get out the whips and to spare neither men nor machines.”38
At 0900 hours on July 26, Brigadier Chris Vokes convened a preliminary ‘O’ Group with his staff and battalion commanders on the heights of Assoro to examine the ground 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade must cross. In his possession was a message from 1 CIB’s Brigadier Howard Graham that offered some good advice. The 48th Highlanders, he reported, had tried to take Monte di Nissoria and the area of ridge south of it and to the north of Highway 121, only to be “mortared off.” Rather than being dug in on the forward slope of the ridge, as intelligence reports had indicated, the Germans “were in positions on reverse slopes and the [artillery concentrations] on the [forward] slopes & top did not damage the enemy too much.” The Germans also had several tanks buttoned down in well-hidden firing positions, and Graham cautioned that the difficult ground made it rough going for the Three Rivers Regiment’s Shermans. Having succinctly summed up his brigade’s experience, Graham then offered Vokes the key to Agira. Lieutenant Colonel Ian Johnston, he said, believed “that a wide right flanking move toward the rear of the enemy [positions] with deep [concentrations; emphasis in the original] from right & left would give best chance of success.”39
The advice was sound, but Vokes was unable to immediately act upon it because Simonds was once again assembling a set-piece attack intended to allow his battalions to advance by weight of artillery. Although his plan did not call for a protracted advance of six miles over rugged terrain, it still had the infantry moving forward more than three miles—mostly in darkness. A series of phased objective lines had been marked out between Nissoria and Agira, each given the code name of a large predatory mammal. “Lion,” the ridge that had so bedevilled 1 CIB’s battalions—lying about one thousand yards east of Nissoria—was the first. Next was “Tiger,” a ridge tha
t stood about fifteen hundred yards farther along. After this, a fresh battalion would pass through and drive three thousand yards to gain “Grizzly,” a stretch of high ground less than a half-mile from Agira that rose at either end to well-defined crests—Monte Crapuzza to the north of the highway and Monte Fronte to the south.40
Simonds was going to throw into the barrage all the guns under his command—three field regiments, two medium regiments, and the Saskatoon Light Infantry’s 4.2-inch mortars. Each gun was to fire 139 rounds, but Simonds had ordered 400 rounds delivered to the gun pits in case extra firepower was required.41 This was not a simple supply order for the Royal Canadian Armoured Service Corps to fulfill on short notice. By this time, the Canadians were dependent on a supply line running 150 miles—mostly along inadequate roads—back to the beaches at Pachino. “This trip took between two and three days, including time spent issuing and loading,” noted the official history of the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps. Having lost almost five hundred trucks when the ships carrying them had been sunk, the truckers were desperately short of necessary transportation. While Eighth Army had provided substitutes for most of the trucks lost, they were smaller, clapped-out vehicles—and Dodges to boot—for which the Canadians had no spare parts.42 Despite the handicaps, using 150 trucks including a number borrowed from xxx Corps the truckers managed to deliver the shells on time.43
While the trucks ground towards the battlefront throughout the day on July 26, Vokes set his plans in place. The PPCLI would push past Lion and seize Tiger. Leapfrogging through, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada would then punch on to Grizzly.44 Taking Agira thereafter fell to the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. To confuse the Germans and disrupt their ability to either reinforce or withdraw troops from the area, the Edmontons were ordered to send a company-strength patrol north from Nissoria to cut the highway running northwest from Agira. The 231st (Malta) Brigade would also be at work behind the German front, coming down from the hills southeast of Agira to cut Highway 121 and take positions atop the high ground north of it. If the Canadians succeeded in the main assault, the British troops were under orders to remain in place. Should the attack fail, however, they would withdraw in the morning to their fortified positions in the hills to the south.45
By 1300 hours, the division’s chief gunner, Brigadier Bruce Matthews, had set out the “details of barrage.” Traces showing the lines of fire were soon marked on maps, which were reproduced and hurried to the gun regiments.46 “The initial artillery plan consisted of two minutes intense followed by fifteen minutes normal fire on the opening line just west of Nissoria, by the guns of the [three] field regiments less two batteries. This was to be followed in turn by sixteen 100-yard lifts at three-minute intervals with a further five minutes on the last line. The barrage was to pause for 20 or 30 minutes after the first objective to permit the reserve infantry companies to come up and prepare to advance on the second objective. Then it was to continue five minutes on a new start line followed by twelve 100-yard lifts at three-minute intervals.”47
At 1500 hours, Vokes held a final briefing on Castle Hill. Then the battalion commanders moved to the various points around Nissoria where each had his unit waiting for the attack. The brigade commander returned to his newly established headquarters, which had been set up in a rock quarry that seemed to be “the home for all the fleas in Sicily.” Along with everyone else there, Vokes was soon scratching furiously and worrying the fleas were a sign “that all was not to go well.”48
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Lion, Tiger, and Grizzly
AT 2000 HOURS on July 26, the Canadian barrage began. Because the “very narrow front” gave “a density unrivalled in any of the great battles of the desert, the effect was terrific.”1 “The artillery frontage is only about five hundred yards,” noted Three Rivers’ ‘C’ Squadron tanker, Lieutenant Jack Wallace, whose troop was supporting the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry attack. “Must have been over two thousand shells fell in that small area in five minutes and the barrage kept up for at least fifteen minutes. You could hear the shells whistle overhead and was that ever a comforting sound.”2
The PPCLI advanced towards the ridge hard on the heels of the artillery, which moved about one hundred yards ahead at three-minute intervals, adhering to the set pattern. Captain Rowan Coleman’s ‘C’ Company was on the right, Major A.E.T. Paquet’s ‘D’ Company the left. The other two companies would pass to the front at Lion and lead the way to Tiger. Covering the distance between the start line and Lion was to take forty minutes. The moment it crossed the start line, ‘D’ Company was struck by heavy fire from three machine-gun positions covering Highway 121 from around the Schoolhouse. On the company’s extreme right by the road, Lieutenant V.O. Auger’s No. 17 Platoon immediately charged one enemy gun position, and its Bren gun section quickly killed the Panzer Grenadiers manning the weapon. “By dint of keeping extremely close to the barrage,” Auger’s men broke through to the objective right on schedule. Meanwhile, No. 18 Platoon—the farthest platoon to the left—managed to get around the machine guns blocking its path and married up with Auger’s men on the objective.
Pushing forward “to continue the clearing of the hill,” the two platoons came under heavy mortar fire from several positions while also being shot at by an anti-tank gun stationed near the road. No. 16 Platoon, accompanied by the company headquarters section, was initially checked by the machine guns. Soon, however, the German guns fell silent and they carried on to the objective. Lieutenant Auger’s No. 17 Platoon, meanwhile, had “endeavoured to get to grips with the enemy but were pinned down by heavy fire.” As Major Paquet and the rest of the company joined the two forward platoons on the ridge, he was shot in the right elbow. Refusing to be evacuated until the fight was concluded, Paquet remained with his headquarters until daybreak. Having attained the objective, ‘D’ Company stood its ground while the Germans withdrew to a position about three hundred yards distant. Sporadic exchanges of fire continued through the night. Despite the stiff firefight gaining the hill, the company suffered only two men killed and seven wounded.
Captain Coleman’s ‘C’ Company had a comparatively easy advance. Crossing the start line “at 2017 [hours] and keeping close under the terrific barrage [they] got right on to their objective. The enemy was so demoralized by the shelling that about 15 of them surrendered immediately and others were pursued with bayonet and caught. However, opposition now appeared and a spirited grenade and Tommy-gun fight ensued,” Coleman wrote afterward. The Canadians won the shootout. Taking stock, Coleman found that No. 13 Platoon on the right side of the advance had lost two sections during the fast night advance. No. 14 Platoon, in the centre, also had a section missing. “In their enthusiasm [these men had] continued forward for another thousand yards” beyond the objective. Realizing they had outrun their company, the seven men took up a defensive position for the night and only returned to Lion just after dawn.3
On Lion itself, the men there had immediately started digging in to find shelter from the intensifying fire coming at them from Tiger and German positions on the ground between. Two troops from ‘C’ Squadron had also ground up the hill and set up alongside the infantry, but it had been too dark for them to see any targets. Lieutenant Wallace and the other tank commanders decided they were going to be in for an uncomfortable night sleeping inside the tanks unless ordered back to the start line. Standard doctrine being that tanks were not to be left in exposed, forward positions during hours of darkness made a recall order likely.4
The intensity of the barrage and the PPCLI’s success in keeping pace with its advance had left the Germans “dazed by the audacity of our attack,” Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsay reported enthusiastically. At dawn, ‘C’ and ‘D’ Company counted its prisoner toll at seventy and the German dead strewn around at between seventy and eighty.5 Captured German reports later revealed that most of the Panzer Grenadiers who escaped from the hills had been nursing wounds.6 One dazed soldier, who had fought in Poland, Fran
ce, Russia, and North Africa, told the Canadians “he never saw the likes of our chaps for their tenacious fighting spirit in the face of [heavy] concentrated fire.”7 To the delight of the gunners, one German officer—now that he was a prisoner and out of the war—asked to “see the automatic field gun that had such an amazing rate of fire.”8
But much of this stunningly effective artillery fire had been for naught. As the gunners had opened with the second phase of the barrage and started advancing in lifts from Lion towards Tiger, the two reserve PPCLI companies failed to appear. As Lindsay defensively put it, “Unfortunately, the other two [companies] lost their way, thereby losing the advantage of the barrage. During the cessation of the barrage the enemy’s heads came up again and they offered stiff opposition to both [companies,] a bitter fight then taking place. Neither of the [companies] gained their objectives.”9
Back in the quarry pit that served as 2 CIB’s headquarters, Brigadier Chris Vokes learned of the calamity “at midnight.” “I was furious at this disobedience,” he declared later. “I determined to houseclean the Patricias as soon as the battle was over.” But the damage was done. Tiger remained in German hands and the Panzer Grenadiers were lashing Lion with everything they had. Tanks prowled in the brush below, and a terrific rate of mortar and machine-gun fire saturated the ridge. Having no idea where half of the PPCLI had got to, and Lindsay also having no inkling, Vokes decided to push the Seaforths forward immediately to take both Tiger and Grizzly.