by Mark Zuehlke
As earlier planned, Kitching gave the Perth Regiment the task of leading the way, for he thought the battalion “deserved a slight boost.” The battalion had been recruited mainly in southwestern Ontario with the men drawn off farms and from small towns. They marched in a regiment with a Scottish tradition, which normally served to infuse immediate esprit de corps throughout the ranks. But there was little ethnic harmony within the regiment itself, as most of the men traced their lineage back to all corners of Europe rather than to Scotland. They did not, Kitching thought, have “the ‘glamour’ of the Irish Regiment with its green ‘Cawbeen’ or of the Cape Breton Highlanders with their heavy Gaelic content.” Leading the brigade’s first major attack, he reasoned, would send the message to these men that their battalion was as highly regarded as the others under his command and would bind the men more tightly together.8 The battalion and company officers in the three battalions were briefed on Sunday, January 16.
While Kitching was setting out the specific company tasks to his line commanders, the Perth’s ‘D’ Company attended its first church parade in a front-line area. Private Stan Scislowski, a Polish-Canadian conscript, was amazed to see the company’s entire complement of just over 100 men made to line up “elbow to elbow out in the clear, within sniper shot of the enemy lines,” to sing hymns and listen to a sermon. Here they were, less than half a mile from the Germans, trying to sing “Abide With Me” or “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” with “ears cocked for the rustle of an incoming shell or the last second flutter of a mortar bomb on its downward flight.” Ordering such a church parade in the front lines, Scislowski thought, “had to be by far the stupidest order of the many stupid orders I’d had to obey since I took on the uniform.” He expected that at any moment a couple of mortar bombs were going to drop smack in the middle of them all and reduce everyone “to ratshit.”9 Amazingly, however, the Germans held their fire and let the service conclude and the men dispersed unmolested.
Back in the company lines, Scislowski and the rest of ‘D’ Company gathered around Captain Sam Ridge and learned they were going into the attack the next morning. Scislowski remembered hanging “on his every word, knowing there’d be no more pretending. From here on in everything would be for real.” Like most of the men around him, Scislowski was excited, more so than he had ever been during the pep talk preceding a football game because he knew “a man could get himself killed in this particular kind of game.”10
Ridge, whom the men called Sammy, said intelligence estimated they faced only a couple of platoons and, even though these were paratroopers, they were unlikely to hold up against the planned heavy artillery barrage and a battalion assault supported by tanks. ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies would lead off behind the creeping artillery barrage at 0530 hours.11 As this barrage moved forward in a series of designated lifts that eventually would roll over the defending Germans, the Perths would advance close behind its protective cover. The Perths’ line of attack would follow a rough track that crossed a fork in the Riccio River at two fords lying about 250 yards apart. Across the river, the track climbed steeply for half a mile to a junction where the Tollo Road came in from the west to meet Highway 16, which ran parallel to the Adriatic coast. This road junction, on top of the opposing ridge, was the Perths’ main objective. Once the junction and a blown bridge that crossed a gully 500 yards north of it were secure, the Cape Breton Highlanders would come forward to capture the high ground between the Tollo Road and Highway 16. Finally, both battalions would push forward in line to secure a position on the south bank of the Arielli River.12
The array of promised artillery designated to support the brigade was impressive. In addition to the creeping barrage, artillery would fire set concentrations against known defensive positions, and conduct counterfire to force the German artillerymen to keep their heads down throughout the advance. It would also lay down smokescreens to shield the advancing troops from observation by German machine-gun troops and Forward Observation Officers, who might otherwise call down direct artillery or mortar fire on the men. All the guns of 1st Canadian and 8th Indian divisions, as well as 1st Army Group Royal Artillery, would participate. This meant that one heavy 7.2-inch gun regiment, five medium 5.5-inch gun regiments, and nine field regiments would dedicate their guns to the operation. Each of the 25-pounder artillery pieces in the field regiments would have 400 rounds available, while the mediums could fire up to 300 rounds. Also pitching in would be the thirty-two 4.2-inch mortars of 1 CID’s Saskatoon Light Infantry support group.13 On the left flank, the brigade’s own support group, an element of the Princess Louise Fusiliers, would shower indirect arcing fire from its 50-calibre Vickers machine guns on a small bridge crossing the Riccio. This would prevent German engineers from laying charges on the bridge and blowing it. Once the line companies took the assigned objectives, tanks and Bren carriers could use the bridge to bring up antitank weapons and other heavy support equipment.14 Beginning on Sunday, which was a clear sunny day, four Kittyhawk and twelve light-bomber squadrons started strafing and bombing targets along the Tollo Road. On Monday, the air squadrons were to return and subject the Arielli River positions to similar treatment.15
Scislowski went to bed Sunday night with a swarm of contradictory thoughts and emotions swirling through his head. Mostly he envisioned himself heroically acting as “a one-man army charging into the heart of the enemy positions, bludgeoning and bayoneting my way through a swarm of defenders.” This gallantry brought him next to “standing before the King at Buckingham Palace as he pinned the coveted Victoria Cross on my tunic.” Such thoughts were sobered, however, by thoughts of home, his mother, brother and sisters, the teachers, who, like his family, had been regularly writing to him and sending parcels. What would they all think of him now? As the night wore on, fear crept in and he tried hard not to dwell on thoughts that he might not be alive at day’s end or that he might lose a leg, an arm, “or even get my nuts shot off.” Finally, he cast off these morbid thoughts and fell into a slumber that was all too abruptly ended when a sergeant nudged him awake at 0400 hours.16
In the hour before the attack, Scislowski suddenly was struck by acute incontinence, as were many of the others in his company. Bladders and bowels had to be relieved three or four times before the orders to move up to the start line came down to them. As Scislowski adjusted his battle pack, checked the bolt of his rifle to make sure it worked smoothly, and ensured his two Type 36 grenades were properly fused, he noticed his platoon mate, Joe Gallant, sitting by a snow fence staring off into space. In his mid-thirties, Gallant was the oldest man in the platoon and was consequently nicknamed Pop. The man looked poorly, as he had for four or five days. Gallant had tried repeatedly to get permission to see the dentist because he said his teeth were hurting. The Medical Officer, suspecting cowardice, refused to send him to the rear for a checkup. Finally, Gallant told his friends one evening that he was going to be dead before noon if he went on this attack. Now as the men fell out on the road and started moving toward the start point, Gallant reminded Scislowski despairingly that he “was as good as dead.” Scislowski replied, “Aw, come off that, Joe! Quit your worrying. You’re going to be okay.”17
At precisely 0530 hours on January 17, the artillery barrage opened and the Perths went forward. It was a gloomy day with such a low ceiling that the promised air support was unable to fly.18 As the battalion reserve, ‘D’ Company remained at the start line. ‘A’ Company, under command of Captain Jack Kennedy, and ‘C’ Company, commanded by Major Robert MacDougall, led the assault with ‘A’ on the right and ‘C’ on the left. ‘C’ Company’s lead platoon quickly forded the dry stream but then ran face on into heavy machine-gun and rifle fire from positions held by the paratroopers’ 3rd Battalion. The weight of this fire was increased with deadly effect when well-sited mortar and artillery fire unchecked by the Allied counter-barrage caught the second wave of the company struggling through the mud in the second ford. ‘A’ Company was stopped by even more withering fire that pi
nned it down in the narrow valley bottom and sent many of the men crawling for shelter into abandoned German slit trenches.
The most accurate and deadly fire directed at ‘C’ Company came from a large white-painted stone house 200 yards up the hillside. MacDougall and Lieutenant Laurent Rochon gathered six men and attempted to storm it, with MacDougall in the lead waving his revolver to urge the men forward. In seconds, bullets cut down the entire small force.19 MacDougall, Rochon, and two of the men were killed instantly. The four others were wounded, but the heavy fire from the house prevented any attempt by the Perths to recover them from the open ground where they lay. All were eventually taken prisoner.
On the right, ‘A’ Company’s Kennedy desperately tried to get his men going again by sending a platoon led by Lieutenant Alfred Clements out to the right to circle behind two machine-gun posts that were pinning down the company. Within seconds of setting out, Clements and five of his men were cut down by two other machine guns hidden directly in the line of their advance.20
About this time, many of the Perths were wondering about the whereabouts of the Three Rivers tanks that should have been providing close support. So was Kitching. From his observation post, he could see that one tank had struck a mine and lost a track and a bogie wheel, but that “none of the others in the squadron had any intention of trying to cross the Riccio to go to the aid of the infantry.” Angrily he sent for the commander, Lieutenant Colonel E. Leslie Booth. When a major showed up in his stead, Kitching instructed the officer “to give the infantry all possible support by crossing the Riccio and getting into the fight.” Soon the tanks of ‘A’ Squadron’s No. 1 and No. 2 Troops began pressing forward.21 Minutes later, Corporal R. Bower of No. 1 Troop had two fingers sliced off when his hatch was blown closed by an exploding mortar round. The tankers began pouring heavy fire with their main 75-millimetre guns and machine guns against “known enemy machine gun positions and possible tank, anti-tank, and other positions in and around the various buildings along the line of advance and on the objective.”22
The fire had no apparent effect on the opposing paratroopers, who kept blasting away at the infantry. ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies remained pinned down. At 0700 hours, because ‘C’ Company had made the most gains, ‘D’ Company was ordered to advance to this company’s left at a point where the ridge was lower and might be more easily assaulted. ‘D’ Company had no sooner jumped off from the ditch where they had been sheltering than a heavy mortar barrage pounded down on top of the men. Gallant, who had been certain he was going to his death, was the only fatality. A large fragment ripped into the back of his head, killing him instantly. The platoon’s radio, which he carried, was also knocked out. Scislowski and the others hit the dirt. Chunks of half-frozen earth struck Scislowski’s face as he looked desperately around for a shell hole or ditch to take cover in. Other cowering Perths filled every good position. Finally, he found the slight depression left by the track of a German tank and crawled into the meagre refuge it afforded.
When the mortaring suddenly lifted, Ridge ordered the men forward again. Crouching, they moved warily up a small depression toward the Riccio valley. Behind them, two Three Rivers tanks rolled up to the rim of the valley and opened up with their machine guns. Scislowski’s No. 18 Platoon veered to the right to take cover in three rubble heaps that had once been a farmhouse and its outbuildings. Just as they reached the protection of the ruins, heavy machine-gun and mortar fire forced them to huddle out of sight among the piles of masonry, broken timbers, and chunks of stone. When the gunfire slackened, the platoon leapfrogged seventy-five yards forward with bullets tearing up the dirt around their legs to another ditch and hunkered down, barely able to offer any counterfire against the storm of German bullets and mortar rounds invited by the slightest movement.
Scislowski was exhausted. Adrenaline and sheer heart-pumping terror had shaken him to the core. Although he was proud he had not fled in panic or otherwise disgraced himself, the young private realized that about all that had kept him going was his determination to not let his friends down or be outdone by them. He was also damned sure that “our glorious attack wasn’t going at all well, otherwise we should have been on our objective by this time.”23
In fact, the attack was foundering and all Kitching’s attempts to breathe new life into the advance failed. At 1245 hours, he had sent the Cape Breton Highlanders toward a draw on the right of the Perths to get into the Riccio river bottom behind the cover of a smokescreen. The battalion was thirty-five yards from the Riccio when a mortar barrage reached through the smoke with uncanny accuracy, along with machine guns firing from houses on either side of the gully. The fire ripped into the advancing troops. For two hours, the two leading companies were helplessly pinned down, unable to go forward or to retreat. Kitching ordered Highlanders commander Lieutenant Colonel Jim Weir to hold back his remaining companies for fear of their becoming similarly trapped.24
The two companies pinned in the gully were taking heavy casualties. Every time a man moved, he attracted intense fire. Major W.W. Ogilvie commanding ‘D’ Company was wounded, but Company Sergeant Major M.A. O’Grady crawled to the ditch in which the stricken officer lay and dragged him back to protection. Three men were killed instantly by an exploding mortar round. In ‘C’ Company, lieutenants H.W. Carn and D.C. Johnson were wounded minutes after the company stopped. Throughout the hours of their ordeal in the gully, stretcher-bearer teams crawled back and forth between the trapped soldiers offering what aid they could. They also courageously managed to evacuate a few of the more badly wounded by dragging them back up the gully to the rear despite the continuous fire.25
Kitching was having a terrible time trying to follow events. All communication with the forward companies of both the Perths and Highlanders had been lost within minutes of their going into action. Highlanders commander Weir, who was in a trench dug well forward on the slope, provided his only real link to the action. From the trench, Weir could see quite well over the entire Riccio front. He also had a telephone cable link back to Kitching’s headquarters. Weir’s position was hardly a good observation post, though, as it had been spotted and was subject to gunfire every time anything appeared above the trench rim. To give Kitching an idea of the situation, Weir held up his phone while raising the antennae of a radio set and let the brigadier hear the bullets striking around it.
From Kitching’s position, it was impossible to see. “Smoke, dust and debris all floated slowly back towards our positions masking all accurate observation from the crest of our ridge,” he later wrote. When the Highlanders’ attack collapsed and a renewed attempt at 1600 hours by the Perths’ ‘D’ Company was stopped in its tracks, Kitching accepted the inevitable and gave the order for the two battalions to withdraw at nightfall.26
There was nothing dignified about the retreat. The Perths came back in small straggling groups. They were exhausted and badly shocked by the day’s fearful fighting and the loss of so many men. Kitching started organizing another attack for the morning but received word shortly from Vokes that the offensive was to be abandoned. The two battalions had lost enough men to clearly surpass Allfrey’s heavy casualty proviso. In all, 8 officers and 177 other ranks had been killed or wounded. The Perths were hardest hit: 3 officers and 44 men killed, 62 wounded, and one officer and 27 men taken prisoner. The Highlanders lost 13 men killed and 3 officers and 30 men wounded. The other 22 killed or wounded were mostly from the Irish Regiment, which had waited in forward positions subject to German artillery or mortar fire, but had not been committed to the attack. Some Three Rivers tank crewmen were also among the casualties. Nothing had been gained and the Germans lost only 27 men killed and another 36 wounded.
Commander-in-Chief Southwest Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring was so buoyed by the botched attack that in a telephone conversation on January 19 he told Tenth Army Commander Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff that the relief of 1 CID by elements of 5th Canadian Armoured Division was good news for th
e paratroops. “We need not be afraid that anything will happen there; they are unseasoned troops and we can easily cope with them.”
The Tenth Army commander answered cautiously, “They all want to show their wares.”
Kesselring scoffed: “The trial runs of green troops are nothing famous.”27
Eleven CIB’s trial run had not only been costly; it also contributed little to building a bond between the men of 5 CAD and the more veteran Canadians alongside whom they were to serve. During the night of their withdrawal, the Perths had failed to let the Three Rivers’ ‘A’ Squadron tankers know they were leaving. Morning found the tankers sitting on the rim of the Riccio River valley with nary an infantryman around to provide protection. They quickly rumbled back to a defence position inside the perimeter held by the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, who, along with the other two battalions of 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, had replaced 11 CIB in the front line.28
For their part, the 1 CID battalions that watched the men of 11 CIB straggle past on the way to the rear remembered the bold, derisive jests of only five days earlier. The men got their own back with sharp digs about the “Mighty Maroon Machine,” derived from the maroon identity patch each 5 CAD soldier wore on his sleeve. “Look at the Mighty Maroon Machine,” some of the men yelled, “marching bravely away from battle.” Rumours swept through 1 CID that the Perths had fled the field, many throwing aside their weapons in their panicked flight.29
Even Vokes, who had known from the outset that the attack was doomed to failure, could not resist attending a Perth roll call to offer some backhanded praise from the back of his Jeep and then scold the men loudly for letting themselves be pinned down. Scislowski had admired Vokes to this moment and thought most of 11 CIB had felt the same. Now he was disdainful, for the private knew in his heart that if they had kept pushing forward the entire battalion would only have died in vain. One soldier directly behind Scislowski said loudly, “Give me a fuckin’ Bren and I’ll show you, you bastard, what it’s like to be pinned down!” Obviously Vokes heard, for his face turned red. Abruptly stopping his speech, Vokes tapped his driver on the shoulder and directed him to roar off without saying another word.30 Vokes, for his part, decided that he would not approve of the Canadians’ taking any further part in Eighth Army offensive actions on the Adriatic front until spring came and the ground dried out. Until that happened, he felt, “General MUD allied himself with the defence,” which handed the Germans an overwhelming tactical advantage.31