by Mark Zuehlke
“Take the first one that goes by without an officer,” a voice growled from the darkness. Frost intercepted No. 8 Platoon. Falling in alongside the sergeant who had been commanding it, Frost headed towards his first battle.11
Captain W. “Bucko” Watson was commanding ‘A’ Company, Major Donald Brain ‘B’ Company. Both had already seen their share of fighting in Sicily. They expected the fight for Monte Seggio would be a hard one. A more immediate problem was simply finding the forming-up position. Their maps bore little resemblance to the terrain illuminated by “burning straw stacks and houses and in one spot an ammunition dump which flared up every now and then. There were flashes of gun fire and shell explosions in the darkness on either side.”
At 2300 hours, the PPCLI column was challenged by a Seaforth sentry. He guided them to battalion headquarters in a farmhouse to speak with Lieutenant Colonel Bert Hoffmeister. “The old room at the back of the house presented a strange sight,” Brain wrote. “A very dirty oil lamp, ‘scrounged’ from somewhere was burning on a ledge. The C.O. was sitting on a dilapidated straw chair munching away at some hardtack spread with jam and looking very tired. In another corner [Captain J.H.] Gowan was supervising a can of hot tea, from which we were given a welcome drink; while against the wall, on a pile of straw, lay a couple of wounded officers waiting to be evacuated.
“We were given the story of the hard fight the Seaforths had had in gaining their ground that afternoon. They also told us about Monte Seggio. To the best of their knowledge the hill still was held in some strength, although no mortaring or shelling of their area had occurred since nightfall. In our experience of the Germans, this had little significance.
“Our plan was discussed with Colonel Hoffmeister before we pushed off. On reaching the road again we encountered a squadron of tanks on their way forward to relieve another squadron which had expended its ammunition and petrol. We accepted the offer of a lift and loaded two companies on the tanks. Unfortunately a wrong turning was made and we finally offloaded on the edge of an irrigation ditch which the tanks could not cross.
“Then began our search for the forward companies of the Seaforths. A patrol was sent out which returned after twenty minutes. A second patrol was dispatched and it, too, returned after a short time but with the good news that contact had been made with Major Bell-Irving’s company. We moved forward once more and at 0230 hours we were inside the Seaforth area.”
The two PPCLI company commanders and Major Budge Bell-Irving discussed the attack, worrying about the likelihood of succeeding without any fire support from artillery or tanks. They finally decided to wait until first light to make the assault, hoping in the meantime to arrange support from the tanks that had given them the earlier lift and also to find a FOO, who could call in some artillery “to deal with the enemy posts which had been engaging the Seaforths the previous evening.”12
While the PPCLI companies sacked out on the ground within the Seaforth’s ‘A’ Company position, at 2 CIB headquarters Vokes and Brigade Major Bingham awaited word that the attacks had begun, but the news from the front was “as per usual vague...With first light it was learnt that neither of the two features had been taken.”13
Neither the Edmonton nor the PPCLI attack got off at first light, due to problems tying in the supporting arms. The Edmontons were ready first and started up Monte Revisotto at 0930 hours on August 6 behind “a very heavy artillery barrage from the Divisional Artillery as well as fire from 17 pounders, a troop of tanks and a platoon of medium machineguns.”14 Either the artillery “was too much for them or the attack by ‘D’ [Company] on [Hill] 736 was still too fresh in their minds, but the enemy in any event offered no opposition and the infantry encountered no enemy except for one forlorn PW [prisoner of war],” the battalion’s adjutant recorded.15
Ninety minutes later, a FOO having been found who arranged some artillery, the PPCLI went forward. Although the tanks had never shown up, the artillery, medium machine guns, and 4.2-inch mortars laid down a massive bombardment behind which the men struggled up the rugged slopes of Monte Seggio and assaulted. “Luck was with us,” Frost wrote. “The enemy had decamped in haste, leaving behind a damaged heavy machine gun, tools, ‘potato mashers,’ ammunition belts and a dead officer—a paratroop lieutenant.
“It was my first view of a dead German soldier. He had been caught in our barrage and his lower body was a horrible mess of bone, flesh, guts and torn uniform. I reached inside his camouflaged jacket and pulled out a wallet. Papers, postcards and pictures fell to the ground. I picked up a blood-stained postcard he had apparently written home but never posted. On the front was a picture of his idol—Adolph Hitler.
“‘The poor misguided bastard,’ I mumbled to myself. ‘Thousands of miles from home, his shattered body lies abandoned by his comrades on a barren Sicilian mountainside. Soon the peasants will steal his boots; the follow-up troops will take his watch and iron cross.”
Frost turned to his men and, summoning his best commanding officer tone, shouted, “Come on, platoon. He’s just another dead Kraut. Let’s get moving.” Soon they dug in on the highest part of the summit of Monte Seggio, facing no other enemy but the searing Sicilian sun that pushed the temperature that day to 110 Fahrenheit.16
The fighting in the Salso valley from August 2 to August 6 had cost 2 CIB more than 150 casualties.17 No estimate of German losses in the battle was ever determined. But three paratroops taken prisoner on August 6 told divisional intelligence officers that the units fighting there had become badly disorganized and “broken into groups of two or three, with instructions to make their way back as best they could to rejoin the main body of troops.”18
The Salso valley remained a dangerous place, subject throughout the course of August 6 to shelling from the heights east of Adrano. While moving towards Monte Seggio, the PPCLI were subjected to particularly heavy bombardment. Lieutenant John D’Arcy Horn, a popular officer, was mortally wounded when a shell landed in the midst of his platoon.19
Brigadier Vokes was furious at the PPCLI for delaying their attack—believing, rightly or wrongly, that if the entire battalion had struck Monte Seggio during the night, “they might have carried their objective with disastrous results to the enemy withdrawal,” as he wrote in an August 6 memo.20 It baffled him why Lieutenant Colonel Bob Lindsay had sent only two companies to carry out the attack while providing a “firm base” for the Edmontons. In doing so, and by remaining back with those companies, it fell to two company commanders to execute the assault. This had led to what appeared to be an independent decision on their part—possibly reached as a result of conversations with Lieutenant Colonel Hoffmeister and Major Bell-Irving of the Seaforths—to delay to first light. If Lindsay had countenanced this decision or even been aware of it, Vokes thought he should have notified the brigade. But Lindsay had not done so, and as far as Vokes was concerned, this failure was tantamount to direct disobedience of an order, and either the battalion commander or the two company commanders involved must shoulder the blame. The final nail in the coffin that Vokes was building, and into which he was about to consign Lindsay’s military career, was that the PPCLI had gone into the attack on Monte Seggio fresher than the rest of the battalion, for it had seen no fighting in the Salso prior to this attack.21
WHILE 2 CIB had been finishing up the Salso valley operation, 3 CIB had passed through its lines to continue the drive to Adrano. Royal 22e Régiment led the brigade advance and arrived in the Simeto River bridgehead in the early morning of August 6. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bernatchez immediately ordered ‘C’ Company to occupy the hills northeast of the river while ‘D’ Company came up on its right. The former company had just come under command of Captain Paul Triquet—who in December of that year would win a Victoria Cross in the legendary battle for Casa Berardi outside Ortona. His men made the advance quickly and without meeting opposition. While clearing some houses, they found an abandoned 88-millimetre gun, about two hundred mortar rounds, and two machine gun
s. These objectives in hand, Bernatchez ordered the companies to send fighting patrols forward to Adrano itself.
‘C’ Company’s Lieutenant Yves Dubé led one patrol to a road junction in front of the town and rounded up three German prisoners lurking about, two of whom were wounded. Having lost wireless contact with the rest of the battalion and believing his patrol was followed by the rest of the Van Doos, Dubé marched his men into town.
Meanwhile, however, Bernatchez had been warned by 1st Canadian Infantry Division headquarters to withdraw back to the Simeto River, because the 78th British Infantry Division was going “to take the town which is in their new axis of advance.” All the other patrols were hurriedly recalled, but Bernatchez was unable to reach Dubé. Oblivious to the changed plans, Dubé and his men marched through Adrano’s battered streets without seeing any enemy. Adrano had been reduced to a ruin by relentless artillery and aerial bombardment. Until well into the night, when it became obvious the rest of the battalion was not coming forward, the platoon remained among the shattered buildings and torn-up streets. Throughout this time, Dubé was puzzled by the fact the Canadian artillery continued relentlessly shelling Adrano, despite the fact it had obviously been abandoned. Were he and his men the only ones to realize this? Deciding the answer to this question was probably affirmative, the lieutenant withdrew from Adrano and returned to the battalion lines in the early morning hours of August 7.
Lieutenant Dubé had led his men through 1st Canadian Infantry Division’s last combat action in Sicily. They had fired no shots and suffered not a single casualty. Brigadier Howard Penhale had quickly notified divisional headquarters that the Germans had evacuated Adrano. At 1100 hours on August 7, Penhale sent a message to the Van Doos: “General [Simonds] and myself are very pleased of your exploit of last night and this morning . . . your initiative in patrolling which produced first information of enemy withdrawal . . . enabled us to score one up on our friends on our right [78th Division].”22
Although Dubé’s patrol closed the division’s active role in Operation Husky, a small number of Canadian troops were still engaged. Having deployed in late July to close the gap between Eighth Army’s two corps, 1st Canadian Army Tank Brigade had encountered no enemy. By July 31, it was clear the Germans were not going to attempt to push into this gap. While the Calgary Tank Regiment and the rest of the brigade remained in place, the Ontario Tank Regiment was detached to support an advance by the 5th British Infantry Division’s 13th Brigade northeast from the Dittaino River towards Paterno, which lay about three miles southeast of Adrano. Their initial task was to guard the Sferro bridgehead across the river that provided the base for the British advance.23
At 1240 hours on August 1, the Ontarios were warned that a German armoured counterattack was driving towards the bridgehead. At first the number of tanks headed towards them was given as eight but was soon increased to twenty-five. The Canadian tankers jockeyed their Shermans into positions sited on several hillsides in front of the river valley and braced for what promised to be Eighth Army’s largest tank battle of the campaign. When the German tanks were about six thousand yards distant, however, the divisional artillery struck with a deadly accurate barrage. One tank exploded in flames and the others scattered, quickly retreating towards Paterno.
The following day, ‘B’ Squadron sent a troop under command of Captain L.I. Knowle from Sferro to support the advancing infantry. In this action, Knowle’s tank fired the regiment’s first shots in Sicily against a couple of German mortar positions that were giving the infantry grief. Knowle’s gunner, Corporal M. Corrigan, opened fire from a range of 2,500 yards. Ten high-explosive shells eliminated the mortar positions, as well as firing up a haystack that had concealed the observation post directing their fire.24
On August 3, a troop from ‘A’ Squadron accompanied an advance by 2nd Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, towards Gerbini aerodrome. Lieutenant D.S. Barlow joined the Wiltshire’s commander in a Jeep and together the two men looked for a suitable crossing over the Simeto River. As they approached the riverbed, two 37-millimetre anti-tank guns on the opposite shore opened fire. By wireless, Barlow directed the fire of his tanks against these guns and they were both destroyed.25
During the night, 2nd Battalion, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, crossed the Simeto River. ‘B’ Squadron was to have accompanied the infantry, but no serviceable bridge could be found. So the tankers consoled themselves with setting up on hills overlooking the line of advance and taking potshots at any likely targets. In the morning, engineers created a crossing, and two troops from ‘C’ Squadron joined the advance on Paterno while the rest of the squadron provided fire support for a set-piece attack on Monte Prefalci. Actually a low hill, it lay about fifteen hundred yards southeast of Paterno. The only real obstacle to the infantry advance was a large house near the summit that sheltered several German machine-gun and mortar positions. The tankers found it “deeply satisfying . . . to test the destructive ability of their guns” on the house, and it was soon “battered into a ragged shell.”
On the morning of August 6, ‘A’ and ‘C’ squadrons supported two infantry battalions in an assault on Paterno, but arrived to find the town had been abandoned during the night. With the Germans now conducting a general withdrawal, the tankers were hard-pressed to catch up. They were also often found outdistanced by the infantry, because the advance had entered the southeastern foothills of Mount Etna and at times required moving along the lower slope of the volcano itself. August 9 saw ‘A’ Squadron struggling along a mountain road that clung to Etna’s eastern slope. They were about two thousand feet above sea level and nearing Safferana Etnea when the Germans launched a sharp counterattack, which infantry and tankers fought off together. When the counterattack was broken, the Ontario Regiment received orders to return to a rest area near Monte del Casale, where all other elements of the 1st Canadian Army Tank Brigade were concentrating.
At 2300 hours on August 11, the tankers had just climbed out of their Shermans at Monte del Casale when several German bombers swept in and bombed the area. A nearby ammunition bunker was set on fire. Men scattered as hundreds of shells and bullets began exploding. One Ontario tanker was killed and two others wounded.26 Twenty-six-year-old Trooper Richard Arthur Burry had the misfortune of being not just the Ontario Regiment’s only fatality in the Sicily campaign but the last Canadian to die on the island due to enemy action.27
ON THE DAY Burry died, 1st Canadian Infantry Division began moving to a rest area in a valley west of Militello. “We moved south,” the Seaforth’s Padre Roy Durnford wrote, “passing through the debris which once was Regalbuto and on to Agira and south to the Catania plains. At 7:30 p.m. we arrived at our Happy Valley by means of a winding road corkscrewing down precipitous slopes for 3 1/2 miles to a river and broad green valley. Here I settled down in solid comfort—that is to say, with a camp bed and a canvas sheet for shade and my tea kettle going all day long. This was heaven. Peace and the absence of mortars, machine guns and shell fire.”28
“Happy Valley,” as the Canadians would forever remember this area, was only relatively heavenly. Despite its many olive and orange groves there was little shade to be had, flies were a “scourge,” and the camps had to be set on the higher ground to avoid the valley bottom, which had been declared a “malarial area.” However, the troops supplemented rations with bountiful harvests of figs, grapes, lemons, and oranges—most of the latter still green. There was also an abundance of local wine, the purchase of which was officially forbidden to all but the messes. This rule was widely ignored.
Most of the hundreds of wounded Canadians did not spend time in Happy Valley. The majority were evacuated to hospitals in North Africa. Among them was Seaforth Lieutenant Robert L. McDougall, who had been wounded in the fighting for Grizzly on July 27. From 95th General Hospital in Tripoli, McDougall wrote his mother on August 8. “First and foremost I’m doing very nicely, thank you, though still rather washed out from loss of blood. I have two wounds
on exhibit—both from Heine bullets. One of them passed through my left thigh and down, coming out between my legs. There was an artery injured but otherwise a complete miss on vital stuff so a month or so should see everything O.K. The other bullet nicked my right leg at the back about six inches above the ankle—the fibula and the Achilles tendon took a spot of rough treatment, but again nothing that will not mend in fairly short order. Well, these are the gory details, dear mother! . . . Being wounded, is, of course, a new experience! One imagines what it will be like, and then one finds it is quite different—that’s the way it is with most experience. I do not ask for a repetition. The wound itself on the battlefield is nothing because you are a bit dazed; it’s the long trip back in an ambulance over Sicilian roads, lying on a stretcher on the crowded floors of rooms and corridors. Just between you and me...there were times when I felt I’d hit a new high in human suffering—and mine was one of the less serious cases!”29
For the Canadians in Happy Valley the forthcoming weeks were dedicated to achieving three official purposes. First, there was “rest and recreation,” second, “resumption of normal training and discipline,” and third, “planning for the next operation.”30 The troops cared more about the first object than the others. Brigadier Chris Vokes was designated president of a divisional sports committee that organized sports days, interunit softball games, and brigade sports meets. When the fighting on the island drew to a close with completion of the German evacuation on August 16, swimming excursions were organized to Mediterranean beaches.