by Mark Zuehlke
Major Jim Blair’s ‘C’ Company was riding on the tanks of ‘B’ Squadron, and Major Budge Bell-Irving’s ‘A’ Company was aboard ‘A’ Squadron’s Shermans. Just before the advance began, Blair had told Company Sergeant Major R.M. Black “that he had a feeling that something was going to happen . . . and that he wasn’t going to come out of it okay.”45 But everything seemed to be going extraordinarily well. The infantry clinging to the tanks were even getting some shade cover as the Shermans rolled through the orange groves. Bell-Irving’s company was short a platoon because he had left it behind to hold the hill won the day before. That had worried him initially, but now he wondered if its absence mattered.46
The reconnaissance squadron had just reached the point where the rest of the column would break left for the objective ridge north of the road, when troops of the 3rd Parachute Regiment opened fire with machine guns and mortars from a string of rocky nests scattered along the front of the ridge. Having held their fire in hopes of catching the infantry still aboard the tanks when these came within range, the Germans were disappointed, because Hoffmeister—riding inside Booth’s headquarters tank—had expected an attack from the ridge and had ordered his men off moments earlier. It was 1030 hours when the infantry-cum-tank action that Simonds had hoped for broke out.
Major Blair’s company advanced with ‘B’ Squadron providing fire support from directly behind. Blair, CSM Black, and the seven men in his headquarters section were pinned down by machine-gun fire and lost touch with the leading platoons. “I’ll have a look see,” Blair told Black. He “moved off to our left to try to make contact.”47
Blair caught up to the leading two platoons when they were about halfway up the slope and moving past a little group of farm buildings. About 150 yards farther up, the paratroops tore into them with heavy fire from a strong position behind a stone wall, driving the Seaforths to ground. Blair sent the leading platoon to flank the wall by going up a gully on the left. The platoon was commanded by a corporal because the Seaforths were so thin on the ground from casualties suffered during the overall campaign. The following platoon, under Lieutenant John F. McLean, was directed to the right. No sooner were both platoons on the move than the paratroops drenched the farm position with heavy fire, and several dashed forward to take Blair, who had remained there alone, prisoner.
McLean’s platoon ran into trouble straight away, suffering several casualties. Platoon Sergeant James Clifford Poole was killed. A bullet struck McLean in the shoulder, “and as he lay in a rocky crevice he was hit again by tracer bullets which burned off part of his clothes.” Evacuated by a Jeep ambulance to the RAP at the farmhouse, McLean told the medical officer, Captain Ken MacDonald, that there were still wounded lying exposed on the hill. MacDonald rushed forward to help the men, only to be killed by a sniper while tending to Private W.T. Broad of ‘C’ Company.
Hoping to get the advance moving again, Hoffmeister ordered ‘A’ Company to push past ‘C’ Company and continue up to the ridge’s summit. Major Bell-Irving led the way through a cactus hedge to start the climb. Suddenly, “I was met by a burst of machine-gun fire which sprayed my face with cactus thorn, so that I attacked this battle in a very bad temper,” he wrote later. He was also going into battle short a platoon, something he momentarily forgot, and without knowing that one of the two platoons that were with him had not received his orders to go forward. But it mattered little, because the Shermans were providing such excellent fire support. “We were shot on to the objective by the 75-millimetre guns . . . It was a magnificent piece of support—the tanks acting in their best possible role. They fired over open sights—right close over our heads—until we got within grenade distance of the summit. A number of Germans were still on top and they were either killed by grenades or small arms fire and a few ran away down the other side—most of them did not get too far. It was only then...that I discovered that my company consisted of a very small handful of men . . . My batman apologized to me for being stupid enough to get his arm practically shot off, which touched me very much indeed. We had a Company Sergeant Major and one man carrying a radio set and one or two odds and sods, and that’s about all.”48
Despite their weakness in numbers, the Seaforths carried the day largely through sheer grit. At about 1130 hours, Corporal G.L. McParlon was leading his section up the hill to the right of ‘A’ Company when machine-gun fire hit him in the leg and back. McParlon ordered his men to provide covering fire and, armed with a Thompson submachine gun, headed for the gun alone. Off to the left, Corporal R.J.P. Donohue saw him going forward. Turning his section over to another man, Donohue grabbed a Bren gun and a couple of ammunition pouches filled with ten magazines apiece. Joining McParlon in “his lonely advance,” Donohue crawled alongside him across about five hundred yards of bullet-swept ground. When the two men were within point-blank range, they sprayed the paratroops manning the gun with bursts of fire until all were killed. Both corporals were awarded the Military Medal.
The section under Corporal D. Hadden also came under withering machine-gun fire short of the crest and two men fell wounded onto the rocky, bare slope. Ordering his men to scatter to cover, Hadden took the Bren and kept going. About seven hundred yards of naked ground stood between him and the German machine gun, but each time the paratroops raised their heads to sight on him, Hadden loosed a burst that forced them to duck. When he was within grenade range, the corporal chucked five grenades one after the other into the position and lunged forward waving his bayonet. Those paratroops still alive fled. Hadden received a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his bravery.
Courage often carries a terrible price. During the advance, Lieutenant Frank Constant Hall fell badly wounded. When his men hesitated and several moved to treat his wounds, Hall shouted at them to keep going and assured them he would be fine. After they gained the ridge, several men went back and discovered Hall had bled to death.49 Company Sergeant Major Black counted seventeen men left when ‘C’ Company finally stood triumphant on the ridge. The little group dug in alongside ‘A’ Company’s handful. Looking back down the slope Black saw “Padre [Roy] Durnford making his way up the hill, using a shepherd’s hook to propel himself. When he got to us, he gave us two very wizened up lemons, half a bottle of water, and eight cigarettes.”50
By midafternoon it was all over. “The operation by Booth Force had been completely successful,” the army’s official historian noted. It had been watched from the lofty heights of Centuripe by Simonds, Montgomery, and even Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had travelled to Sicily for a personal briefing. All these luminary souls agreed “that it was a model infantry-cum-tank” operation.51 Simonds declared it “the most successful of the First Canadian Division’s campaign.”52 Booth was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for coordinating the operation.
Good communication among all the arms of service involved was a key factor in this success. Riding in the same tank, Booth and Hoffmeister were able to ensure that the infantry and tanks worked closely together. They were also fortunate that wireless communication with the Seaforth company and Three Rivers squadron commanders remained mostly good throughout. Riding in the headquarters section tank behind Booth’s had been the 3rd Field Regiment’s forward observation officer, directing the artillery support for the time it was available over a No. 22 wireless netted into the Three Rivers frequency. “He afterwards claimed that he had never before had such a ‘field day’ and never before had the advantage of such excellent wireless communications with which to carry out his tasks. The whole operation . . . went according to plan, with every arm carrying out its role perfectly,” the Three Rivers war diarist wrote.53
Canadian casualties were relatively light considering the strength of the opposition in both numbers and position. Although no tally was taken, the ridge was strewn with German dead and a dozen paratroops were taken prisoner. But it was noticed that most fought to the death rather than surrender. The Seaforths—typical of what the British tellingly call
ed the “PBI” or “Poor Bloody Infantry”—paid the worst. Their losses were eleven killed and thirty-two wounded. The PLDG had come through unscathed, while the tankers had two men killed by sniper fire.54
That evening, despite being terribly weak from dysentery, Hoffmeister came up onto the ridge. The battalion commander stood on the hill chatting with the men that meant so much to him. Although they could not know it yet, the Seaforths had fought their last battle in Sicily.
[23]
On a Barren Sicilian Mountainside
ON THE MORNING of August 5, the Loyal Edmonton Regiment’s ‘C’ Company, behind Booth Force, had fought their way up the ever-rising heights until they were within a half-mile of the base of Hill 736—towering to 2,400 feet ahead. Major Archie Donald realized his men were spent. They had been under almost constant fire “for four days in a blazing sun and with practically no sleep,” the Edmontons’ adjutant noted. Donald asked for reinforcements, and Lieutenant Colonel Jim Jefferson sent two platoons from ‘D’ Company to lead the attack.1 It took a couple of hours for Nos. 15 and 16 platoons to reach ‘C’ Company’s position. Lieutenant John Dougan, who had shown such resourcefulness during his combat debut at the roadblock on the Agira-Nicosia road, still commanded No. 16 Platoon. His friend and former University of Alberta classmate, Lieutenant Earl John Christie, had No. 15 Platoon.2 Although these two platoons were in better condition than those of ‘C’ Company, they were hardly strong. Christie and Dougan had just forty-three men between them, instead of what should have been seventy-two.
Donald told the two lieutenants he believed there were about one hundred well-entrenched Germans on the hill, so the platoons would be badly outnumbered and attacking a well-prepared position. Hill 736 was so steep and fronted by such rugged ground that tank support was out of the question. Donald had resorted to planning a creeping barrage by one field regiment, a detachment of mortars, and two Saskatoon Light Infantry Vickers machine guns. Wireless reception was troublesome on this flank of the Salso valley, so the “supporting fire involved a very elaborate chain of shouted commands and No. 18 wireless sets in order to relay the fire orders from the observation post to the gun positions.” Effectively this entailed Donald shouting target information from where he crouched in a relatively exposed position to Lieutenant J.H. Snell, the battalion’s mortar platoon commander. Snell relayed these to the 3rd Field Regiment’s Captain D.J. Watson at battalion headquarters, who passed the coordinates to the artillery regiment for laying of guns on the target.
“Registration proved slower with this form of communication,” the battalion adjutant acknowledged, but it did work. At 0430 hours, the two ‘D’ Company platoons ran towards Hill 736 as the artillery, mortars, and machine guns blazed away.3 Dougan wished he had insisted on smoke rounds being mixed into the plan—it seemed an oversight. Despite the heavy supporting fire, the forty-five men were terribly exposed. Christie and his platoon were out on the right, Dougan going up on the left. “Keep close to the barrage,” Dougan shouted at his men. Shells were exploding less than two hundred yards ahead with a flash of flame and boil of smoke. Bits of stone, clods of soil, and slivers of shrapnel spattered around the men as they scrambled upward. “No rounds will fall short,” Dougan told himself. “Have faith. Keep going.”
Suddenly, the barrage rolled on to the crest and lifted. Dougan could see Germans in their coal-scuttle-style helmets and hear them yelling. They sounded mad as hell. Everyone seemed to open fire at once and the air was thick with lead as “a very, very sharp gunfight” broke out. Dougan was ripping off bursts with his Thompson submachine gun. Behind him, No. 16 Platoon’s Sergeant James Shannon Hammell, a forty-one-year-old Great War veteran whom Dougan had come to rely on heavily during his short stint as a platoon commander, was shot dead. To the right, Lieutenant Christie lay dying not far from the corpse of No. 15 Platoon’s Sergeant Robert McEwan. Yet the attack kept going, the section leaders exerting control over the rapidly diminishing number of men under their command.
Something struck Dougan a tremendous blow. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back. A slug had gone through the front of his helmet, buzzed around the circumference, and punched its way out the back. Another bullet had pierced his left arm, while a third had struck the Thompson, sending splinters of steel and wood into both arms and hands. All over the slope, men were down, wounded or dead. Screams rent the air only to be drowned out by the sheet-ripping shriek of the MG 42s raking them.
Dougan staggered to his feet. They were still short of the crest, well short of the German positions. His Thompson was gone. Reaching behind him, Dougan drew his officer’s revolver from its hiding place in the waistband of his shorts. (Nobody used holsters because a visible revolver would surely draw the fire of a sniper wanting to bag an officer.) His hands were so cut up and his arms in such a bad way it was impossible to hold the revolver one-handed. Blood was showering from a cut on Dougan’s scalp, across his face and into his eyes. More blood was spurting in rhythm to his heartbeat from the bullet wound in his left arm. Gripping the revolver in both hands, arms held straight out, Dougan went towards the Germans. Those men still in the fight followed, except for Dougan’s batman, who ducked hard to the left flank and worked his way up behind the machine gun that was mauling the platoon. He silenced it with a grenade, buying the precious seconds Dougan and the others needed to gain the summit. After that Dougan was aware of very little. There was more gunfire and then it was over, the Germans having melted away, leaving many dead scattered in their gun pits.4
“So this is what battle is like,” Dougan thought with a sense of dread and awe. If “this was ordinary platoon fare,” he wondered how anybody could survive. The platoon stretcher-bearer ripped Dougan’s shirt off and bound his wounds as best he could. Dougan walked down the hill, passing Major Donald and ‘C’ Company as they came forward to consolidate the Edmonton hold on Hill 736. He was soon in a clearing station. Shirtless, covered in dried blood, and swathed in bandages, Dougan noticed the attendants were carrying him towards a holding area crammed with wounded other ranks. “Just a moment, I’m an officer,” Dougan said.
“You’re an officer?” the man at the head of the stretcher asked skeptically.
“May not look it, but I am.” A check of his identity disk proved the point and he was taken to where officers were treated. Those mad minutes on Hill 736 kept running through Dougan’s mind, a chaotic collage that was becoming ever more difficult to keep in clear focus. “We took the objective,” he thought, “but, my God, we did lose a lot of good people doing it.”5
Just how many Edmontons fell on Hill 736 was never recorded. Dougan was awarded a Military Cross, and Major Donald received a Distinguished Service Order for his handling of ‘C’ Company in its four days of fighting. After several months’ hospitalization, Dougan returned to the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. During the course of those months he had forgotten the name of his batman, who apparently was no longer with the regiment. Dougan thought he quite likely owed his life to the batman’s knocking the machine gun out, but there was no way to thank him for the act.6 Sometime later, war artist Will Ogilvie and an unnamed officer ascended Hill 736. “We had to stop four times, just walking. You can imagine how steep the hill was. Our rifle company boys were simply marvelous and fearless. Words are inadequate to describe them,” the officer wrote.7
WHILE THE ATTACK on Hill 736 had been drawing to its bloody conclusion, the Edmontons’ ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies had attempted to carry Monte Revisotto on the eastern flank of the Troina River. Although getting almost to the base of the mountain, the two companies suffered the same fate as ‘C’ Company had earlier in front of Hill 736—heavy fire from the summit driving the men to ground. By this time, Hill 736 had fallen, and it was decided that the successful support provided by artillery in that venture should be emulated. The attack was postponed until 0930 hours on August 6 to gear up a gunnery plan.8
Brigadier Chris Vokes was increasingly frustrated by how lon
g it was taking the Edmontons and Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry to carry Hill 736, Monte Revisotto, and Monte Seggio. All these features were to have been taken on August 5, but the shadows were already growing long, and from the latter two objectives the Germans still threatened movement in the Salso valley. To make matters worse, Vokes had been informed by Major General Guy Simonds that the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade was to pass through the valley the next morning and exploit out of the bridgehead across the Simeto River that Booth Force had won that afternoon.
Summoned to an Eighth Army meeting at Catenanuova, Vokes headed off in the early evening while his brigade major, Major P.R. Bingham, passed tersely worded instructions to the Edmontons, the PPCLI, and the supporting tank and artillery commands that “come what may,” Revisotto and Seggio were to “be taken by tomorrow morning.”9
Vokes would have gone into a foaming lather had he been aware that at the time this order was issued, the PPCLI had not begun moving towards Monte Seggio from a holding position south of Monte Revisotto. Only at 2030 hours did Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsay send ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies towards the mountain. Curiously, despite the fact that the two Edmonton companies assaulting Monte Revisotto were to be heavily supported by artillery and tanks while the PPCLI attack was unsupported, Lindsay held the rest of the battalion in place “to provide a firm base” for the Edmontons.10
Just thirty minutes before the two companies pushed off, Lieutenant Syd Frost had jumped out of a truck outside battalion headquarters. He had landed in Sicily on July 12 as part of the PPCLI reinforcement pool, spent a curious time from July 16 to August 3 serving as the town mayor of Ispica, and then been ordered forward with a draft of replacements. Frost no sooner checked in with headquarters than he was told to report to ‘A’ Company. Grabbing his battle kit, the young officer dashed into the night. “Silent forms began to glide past in the darkness, broken only by flashes from our guns and fires in the valley ahead and on the surrounding hills. I had not the slightest idea where I was, much less where our troops, the enemy or the objective were.” Spotting what he took for an officer, Frost said, “I’ve just arrived . . . and been posted to ‘A’ Company. Any idea what platoon I’m supposed to join?”